The Beginning of the Orcs

[page 6] DAVID BRADLEY is the youngest contributor to ANDURIL, as well as the youngest member of the _Fellowship of the Ring_ and of the N3F. His age is eleven. This article; printed without editorial omissions or retouchings, is presented as an interesting and logical, if perhaps not entirely tenable thesis about the BEGINNING of the ORCS Goblins spawned by elves? I have been wondering where the Orcs came from. We know they were short and had long arms and were bow-legged, because Sam said, when Frodo was disguised, "..a perfect little orc.. ..if we could give you longer arms and make you bowlegged." We know that they were very cruel, and (from "The Hobbit") that "they made no beautiful things but many clever ones." They lived below the earth, I expect, because the sun hurt their eyes badly and made them weak. The most characteristic thing about them, I think, is their fear of the Elf swords. How did they get that way? There was something wrong with them, not quite right. They speak of them as having been "spawned" rather than born. What sort of things are spawned. Fish and frogs, cold-blooded things. The orcs must have been cold blooded also, Treebeard said "Sauron made them in mockery of elves". But Treebeard was only using a figure of speech, I am sure. For Frodo said "The Enemy cannot make real true living things....he did not create the orcs, he only ruined them and twisted them...." (Refer here to Doc Weir's explanation of radioactivity and mutations, in his article on _Hithlain._) * Before the sinking of Beleriand, there were "webs of horror..." and such things there, caused by the Great Darkness. This was what caused the elves to make their magical swords. Now the way I see it, there must have been a group of elves living in Beleriand, and when the great evil came, when they had children they were strangely deformed. The elves treated them with kindness but watched them to see what they would be like. They were meaner than the elves and did many cruel deeds. The elves would have treated these things (who were still their children) as humanely as possible (as the parents in THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, or, if you've seen the movie, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, treated their mutant children.) I think that in the end when these were grown they took them off to another place and gave them their home there. They had to get rid of them, maybe, because one of them had played a cruel practical joke and caused the death of an Elf and the elves sent them away ere some worse thing should happen. They drove them away with the elf swords which hurt their eyes. Question; did the orcs have any feeling for the elves? No, I think not, because they have no love for anything, which is why the elves gave up on them. That's why they say "spawned". Because the orcs didn't even love one another, or their children, any more than any cold blooded creature. The elves were too kind to kill them. But when they saw what these creatures had brought on the world they repented it, and stayed to die in Beleriand when it was sunk under the sea. By now you have probably guessed that this was the beginning of the orcs. DAVID STEPHEN BRADLEY