'Who is Sarumather?' asked Piggin. 'Do you know anything about his history?'
'Sarumather is an MSP,' answered Treebeardedgit. 'More than that I cannot say. I do not know the history of MSPs. They appeared first after the Great Schisms; but if they came with the Schisms I never can tell. Sarumather was reckoned great among them, I believe. He gave up wandering about and minding the affairs of the voters, some time ago -- you would call it a very long time ago: and he settled down at Holyrood, or Pàrlamaid na h-Alba as the Men of Alba call it. He was very quiet to begin with, but his fame began to grow. He was chosen to be Shadow Enterprise and Economy Wizard, they say; but that did not turn out too well. I wonder now if even then Sarumather was not turning to evil ways. But at any rate he used to give no trouble to his neighbours. They used to talk to him. There was a time when he was always walking about the constituency. He was polite in those days, always asking leave ... and always eager to listen. Folk told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid them in like kind. They cannot remember that he ever told them anything. And he got more and more like that; his face... became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside.
'I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is now the Wizard for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment. And now it is clear that he is irresponsible. He has taken up with foul folk, with the RES... Worse than that: he has been doing something to them; something dangerous. For these renewable energy developers are more like wicked Men. It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the natural landscape; but Sarumather's RES can endure it, even while they pillage it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Eejuts and Men? That would be a black evil!'
Treebeardedgit rumbled for a moment, as if he were pronouncing some deep, subterranean Anglo-Saxon malediction. 'Some time ago I began to wonder how the RES dared to pass through the countryside so freely,' he went on. 'Only lately did I guess that Sarumather was to blame, and that long ago he had been spying out all the ways, and discovering the secrets. He and his foul folk are making havoc now...
With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien and to fellow LOTR fans everywhere.
Original text sourced from here.
Reason here.
