Day 337: In The Bleak Midwinter

elena_tiriel gave me the quote

The waning of the Northmen of Rhovanion began with the Great Plague, which appeared there in the winter of the year 1635 and soon spread to Gondor. In Gondor the mortality was great especially among those who dwelt in cities. It was greater in Rhovanion, for though its people lived mostly in the open and had no great cities, the Plague came with a cold winter when horses and men were driven into shelter and their low wooden houses and stables were thronged; moreover they were little skilled in the arts of healing and medicine.... When the Plague passed it is said that more than half of the folk of Rhovanion had perished, and of their horses also.

Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 2, Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan: The Northmen and the Wainriders

Day 337

In The Bleak Midwinter

Outside, the wind howled and snowflakes whirled through the dark, but no finger of cold found its way through the sturdy walls. Inside, it was warm. The smoor of the hearth-fire curled up to the blackened thatch, and the shifting and stamping of the beasts crowded in the byre-end provided a muffled counterpoint to Blain telling one of the old sagas.

A child coughed, his fevered whine quickly smothered by his mother taking him in her lap. Blain’s mother, minding the porridge-pot, shrugged. All children suffer from sniffles in wintertime, though ‘twas said many in the next valley were sick....