Durin’s Day - Part IV - The thrushes and the dwarves
The royal family of Erebor, while they cannot understand the speech of birds, have a long-standing relationship with the thrushes:
"Drat the bird!" said Bilbo crossly. "I believe he is listening, and I don't like the look of him."
"Leave him alone!" said Thorin. "The thrushes are good and friendly-this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundreds years or more ago. The Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the Lake and elsewhere."
The thrushes of Erebor must have known what sort of place the little bay was before Thrain ever saw a ray of sun pick out the place that the keyhole should be. The likeliest way I can think for the ancestral dwarves to ever learn what could be seen from the little bay on Durin’s Day is through the thrushes. I think that all the thrushes used congregate there to feed on snails as the year turned cold. While the first dwarves of Erebor were busy perfecting the cave that led to the place they intended to put the side-door, Durin’s Day arrived, and outside the snails were drawn from hiding, and the thrushes set up a squawking and knocking that the brought the dwarves running (?) outside at the right moment.
They immediate recognized it as the kind of day that a window opens onto another world, the kind of day that Durin would have seen the eternal stars reflected in Mirrormere and known what their eternity meant for him - and therefore the day that a secret door should be made to open.
I think that the way it must feel to the snails and the thrushes (and to any other animals that get up there) is like a rising flow in them that lifts/draws them towards the space through which the light passes towards the door - something that affects all of nature. Not just the temperature that signals late autumn, or even the light but something less tangible that touches even snails and pulls them to itself, even at the cost of their lives.
As Gimli will say outside Moria: "Dwarf-doors are not made to be seen when shut…They are invisible, and their own masters cannot find them or open them, if their secret is forgotten." It is never explained why the ancestral dwarves would have wanted this door to open from the outside only on Durin’s Day. It may be that there is more than one way to make the door visible but waiting for Durin’s Day was the only one that Thorin's father was sure enough of to write on the map.
"Drat the bird!" said Bilbo crossly. "I believe he is listening, and I don't like the look of him."
"Leave him alone!" said Thorin. "The thrushes are good and friendly-this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundreds years or more ago. The Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the Lake and elsewhere."
The thrushes of Erebor must have known what sort of place the little bay was before Thrain ever saw a ray of sun pick out the place that the keyhole should be. The likeliest way I can think for the ancestral dwarves to ever learn what could be seen from the little bay on Durin’s Day is through the thrushes. I think that all the thrushes used congregate there to feed on snails as the year turned cold. While the first dwarves of Erebor were busy perfecting the cave that led to the place they intended to put the side-door, Durin’s Day arrived, and outside the snails were drawn from hiding, and the thrushes set up a squawking and knocking that the brought the dwarves running (?) outside at the right moment.
They immediate recognized it as the kind of day that a window opens onto another world, the kind of day that Durin would have seen the eternal stars reflected in Mirrormere and known what their eternity meant for him - and therefore the day that a secret door should be made to open.
I think that the way it must feel to the snails and the thrushes (and to any other animals that get up there) is like a rising flow in them that lifts/draws them towards the space through which the light passes towards the door - something that affects all of nature. Not just the temperature that signals late autumn, or even the light but something less tangible that touches even snails and pulls them to itself, even at the cost of their lives.
As Gimli will say outside Moria: "Dwarf-doors are not made to be seen when shut…They are invisible, and their own masters cannot find them or open them, if their secret is forgotten." It is never explained why the ancestral dwarves would have wanted this door to open from the outside only on Durin’s Day. It may be that there is more than one way to make the door visible but waiting for Durin’s Day was the only one that Thorin's father was sure enough of to write on the map.