Voles

"There you lie like a vole under the bank, Mablung the mighty!"

From Glaurung's mockery of Mablung
The Children of Húrin XIV
The Journey of Morwen and Niënor

Small and timid burrowing rodents. The only reference we have to them in Tolkien's works is in Glaurung's words quoted above, though if Glaurung had heard of them in the depths of Angband, we must assume that they were fairly commonplace in Middle-earth. In context, Glaurung spoke these words after he discovered Mablung hiding under the banks of the river Narog before the Doors of Nargothrond, and so the specific reference seems to be to the Water Vole (or Water Rat), which makes its home in burrows under the banks of rivers.

Notes

There are actually dozens of different related species that are broadly known as 'voles', but in context, Tolkien clearly has in mind the river-dwelling water vole.

This animal was traditionally called a 'vole-mouse' (that is, a 'field mouse'), but over time the 'mouse' part of its name was lost, so that the vole was left with a name that literally means 'field'.

Related to the Old Norse völlr or 'field' that gave the vole its name was Old English wald for an area of wild land. From that came the name Wold for an untamed region of the land of Rohan, which therefore, by a circuitous linguistic route, shares its distant origins with the word 'vole'.

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Updated 28 December 2023
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Voles

Notes

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