Not sure if that is spelt right but what exactly are the Drudain? They most closely resemable Dwarves so it says in Unfinished tales so I thought it would be best posted here.
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Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva!
Druedain is a race of man, atani and they are related to Folk of Haleth quite closely.
"The strangest of all customs of the Folk of Haleth was the presence among them of people of a wholly differend kind, the like of which neither the Eldar in Beleriand nor the other Atani had seen before. They were not many, a few hundreds maybe, living apart in families or small tribes, but in friendship, as members of the same community. The Folk of Haleth called them by the name drûg, that being a word of their own language."
"The Eldar called them Drúedain, admitting them to the rank of Atani."Both quotes from UT, The Druedain.
And mouthofsauron, when you say that they didn't last long, do you remember when Theoden's army goes through the Druadan Forest? They are guided through that forest by woses which is a mannish name for Druedain. So they did exist atleast to the end of III age. They were given that Forest by Aragorn after the War of the Ring and they could live in peace there so i believe that they exist to the IV age.
-- Edited by Agarwaen at 17:42, 2006-03-24
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I am Tulkas the Valiant who laughs ever in the face of Good or Evil.
no, they didn't disappear. they survived all the way into the fourth age, so of course they didn't disappear. And I very much doubt you read that in the UT.
I have looked over the chapter 'Druedain' in UT and you are indeed right, I cannot find any text stating there premature extinction. Perhaps I read it in one of the other books...
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Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva!
I think you might have remembered it this way...I could think about the fact that their numbers did indeed decrease in time, and that they were left in only 2 regions in ME: in the Druadan forest, and in the far west of the Ered Nimrais, in the Druwaith Iaur and near the river Adorn. So it was indeed a decrease in their number, but they weren't gone for good.
I know it isn't in the topic, I just wanted to add as an interesting fact, there is a quote in UT where it is told that not only the Druedain in the Druadan Forest took part in the War of the Ring, but also that some orcs retreating south after beeing defeated by the Rohirrim, where ambushed and attacked by the Druedain from the west of the Ered Nimrais.