Q: Did Pauline Baynes Choose the Location of Dorwinion?
ANSWER: Some Tolkien fan sites are reporting that Pauline Baynes appears to have chosen the location for Dorwinion when she made her famous map in 1969. The Tolkien Gateway (at the time of this writing) even cites Volume III of The History of Middle-earth, The Lays of Beleriand, as a source for this point of view.
However, in checking one of my copies of the book I found no such claim. What I did find was the following passage:
*Dorwinion is marked on the decorated map by Pauline Baynes, as a region on the North-western shores of the Sea of Rhun. It must be presumed that this, like other names on that map, was communicated to her by my father (see Unfinished Tales p. 261, footnote), but its placing seems surprising.
The footnote to which Christopher refers reads thus:
* The Glanduin (‘border-river’) flowed down from the Misty Mountains south of Moria to join the Mitheithel above Tharbad. On the original map to The Lord of the Rings the name was not marked (it only occurs once in the book, in Appendix A (I, iii)). It seems that in 1969 my father communicated to Miss Pauline Bayne certain additional names for inclusion in her decorated map of Middle-earth: ‘Edhellond’ (referred to above, p. 255, note 18), ‘Andrast’, ‘Druwaith Iaur (Old Pukel-land)’, ‘Lond Daer (ruins)’, ‘Eryn Vorn’, ‘R. Adorn’, ‘Swanfleet’, and ‘R.Glanduin’. The last three of these names were then written into the original map that accompanies the book, but why this was done I have been unable to discover; and while ‘R.Adorn’ is correctly placed, ‘Swanfleet’ and ‘River Glandin’ [sic] are blunderingly placed against the upper course of the Isen. For the correct interpretation of the relation between the names Glanduin and Swanfleet see pp. 264-5.
Unless someone can cite another source where Christopher Tolkien recants his statement in The Lays of Beleriand, or produces some clear and authoritative text that contradicts him, I think we have to accept that J.R.R. Tolkien told Pauline Baynes where to place Dorwinion on the map.
Christopher does not elaborate on why he thinks the placement of Dorwinion is surprising, unless he was thinking only of earlier reference to Dorwinion in “Lay of the Children of Hurin”. The placement on the map seems to me to be consistent with the raft-elves’ song as they throw the barrels into the forest river:
Down the swift dark stream you go
Back to lands you once did know!
Leave the halls and caverns deep,
Leave the northern mountains steep,
Where the forest wide and dim
Stoops in shadow grey and grim!
Float beyond the world of trees
Out into the whispering breeze,
Past the rushes, past the reeds,
Past the marsh’s waving weeds,
Through the mist that riseth white
Up from mere and pool at night!
Follow, follow stars that leap
Up the heavens cold and steep;
Turn when dawn comes over land,
Over rapid, over sand,
South away! and South away!
Seek the sunlight and the day,
Back to pasture, back to mead,
Where the kine and oxen feed!
Back to gardens on the hills
Where the berry swells and fills
Under sunlight, under day!
South away! and South away!
Down the swift dark stream you go
Back to lands you once did know!
At the very least, the barrels were being sent downstream. The River Running was long and one could expect Dorwinion to be found anywhere along its course. On the other hand, the Kine of Araw may have been found in Wilderland, but it’s also possible they were found south of the Inland Sea of Rhun (see the picture of the ox on Pauline Baynes’ map). The hills are actually placed at the southwest corner of the Inland Sea. So I suppose the mystery of Dorwinion’s location and nature is only deepened by the map, rather than resolved.
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