A Sense of History: Straight Road
The next in a series of articles about ships passing to and from the West, Simon uses "The Fall of Númenor" to attempt to arrive at Tolkien's reading of the exordium to "Beowulf."
Celeborn reached for one of the jars in the perfume cabinet. Instead of the resin tears he expected to encounter, the jar gave off the smell of rabbit glue. Frowning, he reached for the powdered charcoal only to find iron filings. That red powder was some kind of ground rock, not crushed rose petals. And as for the heavy blue lumps, he had no idea what they could be, but they were not the lavender he had expected when he reached for them. Some other kind of rock, probably.
"What are you looking for in my scribal cabinet?" asked Galadriel.