Talk:Tharbad

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[edit] Tharbad colonized by the Rohirrim?

There is something amiss with this article. The last paragraph states:In the early Fourth Age, the "ruined town" [9] was probably rebuilt and resettled at last, both by the Rohirrim — who colonized Enedwaith and "multiplied exceedingly" [9] — and the Reunited Kingdom, which began to repopulate Eriador. (with [9] being following reference: [9]^ a b c d Tolkien, J.R.R. (1974). Lord of the Rings. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395193958.). I have looked in my copy of the Lord of the Rings and I cannot find anything in the Appendices which even mentions the Rohirrim colonizing Tharbad, much less all of Enedwaith. Therefore it would seem that the reference has been incorrectly applied. What makes all of this more suspicious is that the original author of that paragraph was one Herumor Stormraven. Herumor Stormraven added that entry on December 26, 2004 at 01:07 without any reference. Herumor then added a vague reference (literally (LR) with no page reference or extended quote) on December 27, 2004 at 08:25. On September 30, 2006 at 21:27 Hike395 then finished a long needed cleanup but in so doing changed the reference from simply (LR) to the one that is presently seen at #9 in the references section. Hike395 did a good cleanup job, but the "Fourth Age" paragraph and subsequent references within it, provided by Herumor Stormraven are suspect since Wikipedia does not seem to have a user page for Herumor Stormraven (either it existed and was deleted because the user was banned or it never existed in the first place) and even more suspicious is the fact that a glance at Herumor's talk page will show that Herumor apparently played a prank on Wikipedia by deliberatly posting false information (a false book reference) in an article (Deryke Drow) which has since been deleted. Now if this contributor has apparently been banned and had their user page deleted and in the past has posted false references then it is possible that the entire paragraph on the Tharbad in the Fourth Age may either be partly fictitious or at best partly speculative. I say speculative because the name "Herumor Stormraven" would at least indicate that the user had some interest in Tolkien's work and it would seem that the user simply guessed that Tharbad and Enedwaith had been colonized by the Rohirrim (he/she even uses the word "probably"). Note that the only quotes that would appear to be from the Lord of the Rings are "ruined town" and "multiplied exceedingly". Those quotes are so short that they could have been taken from almost anywhere in the corpus of the book (in which case it would have nothing to do with the Fourth Age, since the Fourth Age is dealt with primarily in the Appendices) or from the Appendices. It would appear that Herumor assumed that since the Rohirrim "multiplied exceedingly" (if indeed the quotes refers to the Rohirrim at all) then they must have colonized nearby lands such as Enedwaith (including Tharbad). The only relevant reference to the Rohirrim in the Fourth Age that I can find is in Appendix A, p. 1045 of the Lord of the Rings published by Harper Collins in 1994 (ISBN 0-261-10320-2): In Éomer's day in the Mark men had peace who wished for it, and the people increased both in the dales and the plains, and their horses multiplied. In Gondor, the King Elessar now ruled, and in Arnor also. In all the lands of those realms of old he was king, save in Rohan only; for he renewed to Éomer the gift of Cirion, and Éomer took again the Oath of Eorl.... Now if anyone can actually find the proper reference for the Rohirrim colonizing Enedwaith then please do not hesitate to share it, but until such time I think this article should have a disputed tag (which I will put up).72.27.92.21 18:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I am certain there exists no reference of any resettlement in Tharbad, least of all by the Rohirrim! Tharbad is outside the borders of the Mark. I am going to just delete it.

Herumor Stormraven simply never created a userpage. But he /did/ make some suspect edits to many articles, evidently influenced by some LOTR-based RPG. -- Jordi·✆ 18:28, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I converted the references to standard format, didn't do any fact checking while doing it. hike395 03:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)