The Book Of Lost Tales: Part I

Chapter XI of The Silmarillion: And in that time, which songs call Nurtal Valinoreva, the Hiding of Valinor, the Enchanted Isles were set, and all the seas about them were filled with shadows and bewilderment. And these isles were strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south, before Tol Eressa, the Lonely Isle, is reached by one sailing west. Hardly might any vessel pa.s.s between them, for in the dangerous sounds the waves sighed for ever upon dark rocks shrouded in mist. And in the twilight a great weariness came upon mariners and a loathing of the sea; but all that ever set foot upon the islands were there entrapped, and slept until the Change of the World.

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15 The original draft has here: "but that is the tale of Qorinmi and I dare not tell it here, for friend Ailios is watching me" (see p. 197, notes 19 and 20).

16 The draft text had here at first: "and the galleon of the Sun goes out into the dark, and coming behind the world finds the East again, but there there is no door and the Wall of Things is lower; and filled with the lightness of the morning Kalaven rides above it and dawn is split upon the Eastern hills and falls upon the eyes of Men." Part of this, from "but there there is no door", was bracketed, and the pa.s.sage about the great arch in the East and the Gates of Morn introduced. In the following sentence, the draft had "back over the Eastern Wall", changed to the reading of the second text, "back unto the Eastern Wall". For the name Kalaven see p. 198.

17 I.e., until the Sunship issues forth, through the Door of Night, into the outer dark; as the Sunship leaves, the shooting stars pa.s.s back into the sky.

18 The second version of this part of Vair"s tale, "The Haven of the Sun", follows the original draft (as emended) fairly closely, with no differences of any substance; but the part of her tale that now follows, "The Weaving of the Days and Months and Years", is wholly absent from the draft text.

19 This concluding pa.s.sage differs in several points from the original version. In that, Ailios appears again, for Gilfanon; the "great foreboding" was spoken among the G.o.ds "when they designed first to build the Door of Night" and when Ilinsor has followed Urwendi through the Gates "Melko will destroy the Gates and raise the Eastern Wall beyond the [?skies] and Urwendi and Ilinsor shall be lost".

Changes made to names in

The Hiding of Valinor

Vansamrin < samirien"s="" road="" (samrien="" occurs="" as="" the="" name="" of="" the="" feast="" of="" double="" mirth,="" p.="">

Kr < kortirion="" (p.="" 207).="" afterwards,="" though="" kr="" was="" not="" struck="" out,="" my="" father="" wrote="" above="" it="" tn,="" with="" a="" query,="" and="" the="" same="" at="" the="" occurrence="" of="" kr="" on="" p.="" 210.="" this="" is="" the="" first="" appearance="" in="" the="" text="" of="" the="" lost="" tales="" of="" this="" name,="" which="" ultimately="" gave="" rise="" to="" tna="" (the="" hill="" on="" which="" tirion="" was="">

Ainairos <>< p="">

Moritarnon, Tarn Fui The original draft of the tale has "Mritar or Tarna Fui".

Sri The original draft has Kalaven (see p. 198 and note 13 above). At the first occurrence of the names of the three Sons of Time the sequence of forms was:

Danuin < danos="">< an="" illegible="" form="">

Ranuin < ranos="">< ranoth="">< rn="">

Fanuin < lathos="">< lathweg="">

Throughout the remainder of the pa.s.sage: Danuin < dana;="" ranuin="">< ranoth;="" fanuin=""><>

Aluin <>

Commentary on

The Hiding of Valinor

The account of the Council of the Valar and Eldar in the opening of this tale (greatly developed from the preliminary draft given in note 2) is remarkable and important in the history of my father"s ideas concerning the Valar and their motives. In The Silmarillion (p. 102) the Hiding of Valinor sprang from the a.s.sault of Melkor on the steersman of the Moon: But seeing the a.s.sault upon Tilion the Valar were in doubt, fearing what the malice and cunning of Morgoth might yet contrive against them. Being unwilling to make war upon him in Middle-earth, they remembered nonetheless the ruin of Almaren; and they resolved that the like should not befall Valinor.

A little earlier in The Silmarillion (p. 99) reasons are given for the unwillingness of the Valar to make war: It is said indeed that, even as the Valar made war upon Melkor for the sake of the Quendi, so now for that time they forbore for the sake of the Hildor, the Aftercomers, the younger Children of Ilvatar. For so grievous had been the hurts of Middle-earth in the war upon Utumno that the Valar feared lest even worse should now befall; whereas the Hildor should be mortal, and weaker than the Quendi to withstand fear and tumult. Moreover it was not revealed to Manw where the beginning of Men should be, north, south, or east. Therefore the Valar sent forth light, but made strong the land of their dwelling.

In The Silmarillion there is no vestige of the tumultuous council, no suggestion of a disagreement among the Valar, with Manw, Varda and Ulmo actively disapproving the work and holding aloof from it; no mention, equally, of any pleading for pity on the Noldor by Ulmo, nor of Manw"s disgust. In the old story it was the hostility of some of the Eldar towards the Noldoli, led by an Elf of Kpas (Alqualond)-who likewise disappeared utterly: in the later account there is never a word about the feelings of the Elves of Valinor for the exiled Noldor-that was the starting-point of the Hiding of Valinor; and it is most curious to observe that the action of the Valar here sprang essentially from indolence mixed with fear. Nowhere does my father"s early conception of the faineant G.o.ds appear more clearly. He held moreover quite explicitly that their failure to make war upon Melko then and there was a deep error, diminishing themselves, and (as it appears) irreparable. In his later writing the Hiding of Valinor remained indeed, but only as a great fact of mythological antiquity; there is no whisper of its condemnation.

The blocking-up and utter isolation of Valinor from the world without is perhaps even more strongly emphasized in the early narrative. The cast-off webs of Ungweliant and the use to which the Valar put them disappeared in the later story. Most notable is the different explanation of the fact that the gap in the encircling heights (later named the Calacirya) was not blocked up. In The Silmarillion (p. 102) it is said that the pa.s.s was not closed because of the Eldar that were faithful, and in the city of Tirion upon the green hill Finarfin yet ruled the remnant of the Noldor in the deep cleft of the mountains. For all those of elven-race, even the Vanyar and Ingw their lord, must breathe at times the outer air and the wind that comes over the sea from the lands of their birth; and the Valar would not sunder the Teleri wholly from their kin.

The old motive of the Solosimpi (> Teleri) wishing this to be done (sufficiently strange, for did the Sh.o.r.eland Pipers wish to abandon the sh.o.r.es?) disappeared in the general excision of their bitter resentment against the Noldoli, as did Ulmo"s refusal to aid them, and Oss"s willingness to do so in Ulmo"s despite. The pa.s.sage concerning the Magic Isles, made by Osse, is the origin of the conclusion of Chapter XI of The Silmarillion: And in that time, which songs call Nurtal Valinoreva, the Hiding of Valinor, the Enchanted Isles were set, and all the seas about them were filled with shadows and bewilderment. And these isles were strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south, before Tol Eressa, the Lonely Isle, is reached by one sailing west. Hardly might any vessel pa.s.s between them, for in the dangerous sounds the waves sighed for ever upon dark rocks shrouded in mist. And in the twilight a great weariness came upon mariners and a loathing of the sea; but all that ever set foot upon the islands were there entrapped, and slept until the Change of the World.

It is clear from this pa.s.sage in the tale that the Magic Isles were set to the east of the Shadowy Seas, though "the huge glooms.... stretched forth tongues of darkness towards them" while in an earlier pa.s.sage (p. 125) it is said that beyond Tol Eressa (which was itself beyond the Magic Isles) "is the misty wall and those great sea-glooms beneath which lie the Shadowy Seas". The later "Enchanted Isles" certainly owe much as a conception to the Magic Isles, but in the pa.s.sage just cited from The Silmarillion they were set in the Shadowy Seas and were in twilight. It is possible therefore that the Enchanted Isles derive also from the Twilit Isles (p. 68, 125).

The account of the works of Tulkas and Aul in the northern regions (p. 210) does not read as perfectly in accord with what has been said previously, though a real contradiction is unlikely. On p. 1667 it is plainly stated that there was a strip of water (Qerkaringa, the Chill Gulf) between the tip of the "Icefang" (Helkaraks) and the Great Lands at the time of the crossing of the Noldoli. In this same pa.s.sage the Icefang is referred to as "a narrow neck, which the G.o.ds after destroyed". The Noldoli were able to cross over to the Great Lands despite "that gap at the far end" (p. 168) because in the great cold the sound had become filled with unmoving ice. The meaning of the present pa.s.sage may be, however, that by the destruction of the Icefang a much wider gap was made, so that there was now no possibility of any crossing by that route.

Of the three "roads" made by Lrien, Orom, and Mandos there is no vestige in my father"s later writing. The Rainbow is never mentioned, nor is there ever any hint of an explanation of how Men and Elves pa.s.s to the halls of Mandos. But it is difficult to interpret this conception of the "roads"-to know to what extent there was a purely figurative content in the idea.

For the road of Lrien, Olre Mall the Path of Dreams, which is described by Vair in The Cottage of Lost Play, see p. 18, 27 ff. There Vair told that Olre Mall came from the lands of Men, that it was "a lane of deep banks and great overhanging hedges, beyond which stood many tall trees wherein a perpetual whisper seemed to live", and that from this lane a high gate led to the Cottage of the Children or of the Play of Sleep. This was not far from Kr, and to it came "the children of the fathers of the fathers of Men" the Eldar guided them into the Cottage and its garden if they could, "lest they strayed into Kr and became enamoured of the glory of Valinor". The accounts in the two tales seem to be in general agreement, though it is difficult to understand the words in the present pa.s.sage "it ran past the Cottage of the Children of the Earth and thence down the "lane of whispering elms" until it reached the sea". It is very notable that still at this stage in the development of the mythology, when so much more had been written since the coming of Eriol to Tol Eressa, the conception of the children of Men coming in sleep by a mysterious "road" to a cottage in Valinor had by no means fallen away.

In the account of Orom"s making of the Rainbow-bridge, the noose that he cast caught on the summit of the great mountain Kalorm ("Sunrising-hill") in the remotest East. This mountain is seen on the "World-Ship" drawing, p. 84.

The story that Vair named "The Haven of the Sun" (p. 213 ff.) provides the fullest picture of the structure of the world that is to be found in the earliest phase of the mythology. The Valar, to be sure, seem strangely ignorant on this subject-the nature of the world that came into being so largely from their own devising, if they needed Ulmo to acquaint them with such fundamental truths. A possible explanation of this ignorance may be found in the radical difference in the treatment of the Creation of the World between the early and later forms of The Music of the Ainur. I have remarked earlier (p. 62) that originally the Ainur"s first sight of the world was already in its actuality, and Ilvatar said to them: "even now the world unfolds and its history begins" whereas in the developed form it was a vision that was taken away from them, and only given existence in the word of Ilvatar: E! Let these things Be! It is said in The Silmarillion (p. 20) that when the Valar entered into E they were at first astounded and at a loss, for it was as if naught was yet made which they had seen in vision, and all was but on point to begin and yet unshaped...

and there follows (p. 212) an account of the vast labours of the Valar in the actual "construction" of the world: They built lands and Melkor destroyed them; valleys they delved and Melkor raised them up; mountains they carved and Melkor threw them down; seas they hollowed and Melkor spilled them...

In the old version there is none of this, and one gains the impression (though nothing is explicit) that the Valar came into a world that was already "made", and unknown to them ("the G.o.ds stalked north and south and could see little; indeed in the deepest of these regions they found great cold and solitude...", p. 69). Although the conception of the world was indeed derived in large measure from their own playing in the Music, its reality came from the creative act of Ilvatar ("We would have the guarding of those fair things of our dreams, which of thy might have now attained to reality", p. 57); and the knowledge possessed by the Valar of the actual properties and dimensions of their habitation was correspondingly smaller (so we may perhaps a.s.sume) than it was afterwards conceived to be.

But this is to lean rather heavily on the matter. More probably, the ignorance of the Valar is to be attributed to their curious collective isolation and indifference to the world beyond their mountains that is so much emphasized in this tale.

However this may be, Ulmo at this time informed the Valar that the whole world is an Ocean, Vai, on which the Earth floats, "upheld by the word of Ilvatar" and all the seas of the Earth, even that which divides Valinor from the Great Lands, are hollows in the Earth"s surface, and are thus distinct from Vai, which is of another nature. All this we have already seen (p. 84 ff.); and in an earlier tale something has been said (p. 68) of the nature of the upholding waters: Beyond Valinor I have never seen or heard, save that of a surety there are the dark waters of the Outer Seas, that have no tides, and they are very cool and thin, that no boat can sail upon their bosom or fish swim within their depths, save the enchanted fish of Ulmo and his magic car.

So here Ulmo says that neither fish nor boat will swim in its waters "to whom I have not spoken the great word that Ilvatar said to me and bound them with the spell".

At the outer edge of Vai stands the Wall of Things, which is described as "deep-blue" (p. 215). Valinor is nearer to the Wall of Things than is the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Great Lands, which must mean that Vai is narrower in the West than in the East. In the Wall of Things the G.o.ds at this time made two entrances, in the West the Door of Night and in the East the Gates of Morn; and what lies beyond these entrances in the Wall is called "the starless vast" and "the outer dark". It is not made clear how the outer air ("the dark and tenuous realm of Vaitya that is outside all", p. 181) is to be related to the conception of the Wall of Things or the Outer Dark. In the rejected preliminary text of this tale my father wrote at first (see note 16 above) that in the East "the Wall of Things is lower", so that when the Sun returns from the Outer Dark it does not enter the eastern sky by a door but "rides above" the Wall. This was then changed, and the idea of the Door in the Eastern Wall, the Gates of Morn, introduced; but the implication seems clear that the Walls were originally conceived like the walls of terrestrial cities, or gardens-walls with a top a "ring-fence". In the cosmological essay of the 1930s, the Ambarkanta, the Walls are quite other: About the World are the Ilurambar, or Walls of the World. They are as ice and gla.s.s and steel, being above all imagination of the Children of Earth cold, transparent, and hard. They cannot be seen, nor can they be pa.s.sed, save by the Door of Night.

Within these walls the Earth is globed: above, below, and upon all sides is Vaiya, the Enfolding Ocean. But this is more like to sea below the Earth and more like to air above the Earth.

See further p. 86.

The Tale of Qorinmi (p. 215) was never in fact told-in the first version of the present tale (see note 15 above) it seems that Vair would have liked to tell it, but felt the beady eye of the captious Ailios upon her. In the early Qenya word-list Qorinmi is defined as "the name of the Sun", literally "Drowned in the Sea", the name being a derivative from a root meaning "choke, suffocate, drown", with this explanation: "The Sun, after fleeing from the Moon, dived into the sea and wandered in the caverns of the Oaritsi." Oaritsi is not given in the word-list, but oaris = "mermaid". Nothing is said in the Lost Tales of the Moon giving chase to the Sun; it was the stars of Varda that Ilinsor, "huntsman of the firmament", pursued, and he was "jealous of the supremacy of the Sun" (p. 195).

The conclusion of Vair"s tale, "The Weaving of Days, Months, and Years", shows (as it seems to me) my father exploring a mode of mythical imagining that was for him a dead end. In its formal and explicit symbolism it stands quite apart from the general direction of his thought, and he excised it without trace. It raises, also, a strange question. In what possible sense were the Valar "outside Time" before the weavings of Danuin, Ranuin, and Fanuin? In The Music of the Ainur (p. 55) Ilvatar said: "even now the world unfolds and its history begins" in the final version (The Silmarillion p. 20) it is said that The Great Music had been but the growth and flowering of thought in the Timeless Halls, and the Vision only a foreshowing; but now they had entered in at the beginning of Time...

(It is also said in The Silmarillion (p. 39) that when the Two Trees of Valinor began to shine there began the Count of Time; this refers to the beginning of the measurement of Time from the waxing and the waning of the Trees.) In the present tale the works of Danuin, Ranuin, and Fanuin are said to be the cause of "the subjection of all things within the world to time and change". But the very notion of a history, a consecutive story, self-evidently implies time and change; how then can Valinor be said only now to come under the necessity of change, with the ordering of the motions of the Sun and Moon, when it has undergone vast changes in the course of the story of the Lost Tales? Moreover the G.o.ds now know "that hereafter even they should in counted time be subject to slow eld and their bright days to waning". But the very statement (for instance) that mar-Amillo was "the youngest of the great Valar" who entered the world (p. 67) is an a.s.sertion that the other Valar, older than he, were "subject to eld". "Age" has of course for mortal beings two aspects, which draw always closer: time pa.s.ses, and the body decays. But of the "natural" immortality of the Eldar it is said (p. 59): "nor doth eld subdue their strength, unless it may be in ten thousand centuries". Thus they "age" (so Gilfanon is "the most aged that now dwelt in the isle" and is "one of the oldest of the fairies", p. 175), but they do not "age" (do not become enfeebled). Why then do the G.o.ds know that "hereafter" they will be "subject to slow eld"-which can only mean ageing in the latter sense? It may well be that there is a deeper thought here than I can fathom; but certainly I cannot explain it.

Finally, at the end of all the early writing concerning it, it may be remarked how major a place was taken in my father"s original conception by the creation of the Sun and the Moon and the government of their motions: the astronomical myth is central to the whole. Afterwards it was steadily diminished, until in the end, perhaps, it would have disappeared altogether.

GILFANON"S TALE: THE TRAVAIL OF THE NOLDOLI AND THE COMING OF MANKIND The rejected draft text of The Hiding of Valinor continues a little way beyond the end of Vair"s tale, thus: Now after the telling of this tale no more was there of speaking for that night, but Lindo begged Ailios to consent to a tale-telling of ceremony to be held the next night or as soon as might be; but Ailios would not agree, pleading matters that he must needs journey to a distant village to settle. So was it that the tale-telling was fixed ere the candles of sleep were lit for a sevennight from that time-and that was the day of Turuhalm1 or the Logdrawing. ""Twill be a fitting day," saith Lindo, "for the sports of the morning in the snow and the gathering of the logs from the woods and the songs and drinking of Turuhalm will leave us of right mood to listen to old tales beside this fire."

As I have noticed earlier (p. 204), the original form of the Tale of the Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor belonged to the phase before the entry of Gilfanon of Tavrobel, replacing Ailios.

Immediately following this rejected draft text, on the same ma.n.u.script page, the text in ink of the Tale of Turambar (Trin) begins, with these words: When then Ailios had spoken his fill the time for the lighting of candles was at hand, and so came the first day of Turuhalm to an end; but on the second night Ailios was not there, and being asked by Lindo one Eltas began a tale...

What was Ailios" tale to have been? (for I think it certain that it was never written). The answer becomes clear from a separate short text, very rough, which continues on from the discussion at the end of The Hiding of Valinor, given above. This tells that at length the day of Turuhalm was come, and the company from Mar Vanwa Tyalieva went into the snowy woods to bring back firewood on sleighs. Never was the Tale-fire allowed to go out or to die into grey ash, but on the eve of Turuhalm it sank always to a smaller blaze until Turuhalm itself, when great logs were brought into the Room of the Tale-fire and being blessed by Lindo with ancient magic roared and flared anew upon the hearth. Vair blessed the door and lintel of the hall and gave the key to Rmil, making him once again the Doorward, and to Littleheart was given the hammer of his gong. Then Lindo said, as he said each year: "Lift up your voices, O Pipers of the Sh.o.r.e, and ye Elves of Kr sing aloud; and all ye Noldoli and hidden fairies of the world dance ye and sing, sing and dance O little children of Men that the House of Memory resound with your voices..."

Then was sung a song of ancient days that the Eldar made when they dwelt beneath the wing of Manw and sang on the great road from Kr to the city of the G.o.ds (see p. 1434).

It was now six months since Eriol went to visit Meril-i-Turinqi beseeching a draught of limp (see p. 968), and that desire had for a time fallen from him; but on this night he said to Lindo: "Would I might drink with thee!" To this Lindo replied that Eriol should not "think to overpa.s.s the bounds that Ilvatar hath set", but also that he should consider that "not yet hath Meril denied thee thy desire for ever". Then Eriol was sad, for he guessed in his deepest heart that "the savour of limp and the blessedness of the Elves might not be his for ever".

The text ends with Ailios preparing to tell a tale: "I tell but as I may those things I have seen and known of very ancient days within the world when the Sun rose first, and there was travail and much sorrow, for Melko reigned unhampered and the power and strength that went forth from Angamandi reached almost to the ends of the great Earth."

It is clear that no more was written. If it had been completed it would have led into the opening of Turambar cited above ("When then Ailios had spoken his fill..."); and it would have been central to the history of the Great Lands, telling of the coming of the Noldoli from Valinor, the Awakening of Men, and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

The text just described, linking The Hiding of Valinor to Ailios" unwritten tale, was not struck out, and my father later wrote on it: "To come after the Tale of Erendel and before Eriol fares to Tavrobel-after Tavrobel he drinks of limp." This is puzzling, since he cannot have intended the story of the Coming of Men to follow that of Erendel; but it may be that he intended only to use the substance of this short text, describing the Turuhalm ceremonies, without its ending.

However this may be, he devised a new framework for the telling of these tales, though he did not carry it through, and the revised account of the arranging of the next tale-telling has appeared in the Tale of the Sun and Moon, where after Gilfanon"s interruption (p. 189) it was agreed that three nights after that on which The Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor were told by Lindo and Vair there should be a more ceremonial occasion, on which Gilfanon should relate "the travail of the Noldoli and the coming of Mankind".

Gilfanon"s tale follows on, with consecutive page-numbers, from the second version of Vair"s tale of The Hiding of Valinor; but Gilfanon here tells it on the night following, not three days later. Unhappily Gilfanon was scarcely better served than Ailios had been, for if Ailios scarcely got started Gilfanon stops abruptly after a very few pages. What there is of his tale is very hastily written in pencil, and it is quite clear that it ends where it does because my father wrote no more of it. It was here that my father abandoned the Lost Tales-or, more accurately, abandoned those that still waited to be written; and the effects of this withdrawal never ceased to be felt throughout the history of "The Silmarillion". The major stories to follow Gilfanon"s, those of Beren and Tinviel, Trin Turambar, the Fall of Gondolin, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, had been written and (in the first three cases) rewritten; and the last of these was to lead on to "the great tale of Erendel". But that was not even begun. Thus the Lost Tales lack their middle, and their end.

I give here the text of Gilfanon"s Tale so far as it goes.

Now when Vair made an end, said Gilfanon: "Complain not if on the morrow I weave a long tale, for the things I tell of cover many years of time, and I have waited long to tell them," and Lindo laughed, saying he might tell to his heart"s desire all that he knew.

But on the morrow Gilfanon sat in the chair and in this wise he began: "Now many of the most ancient things of the Earth are forgotten, for they were lost in the darkness that was before the Sun, and no lore may recover them; yet mayhap this is new to the ears of many here that when the Teleri, the Noldoli, and the Solosimpi fared after Orom and afterward found Valinor, yet was that not all of the race of the Eldali that marched from Palisor, and those who remained behind are they whom many call the Qendi, the lost fairies of the world, but ye Elves of Kr name Ilkorins, the Elves that never saw the light of Kr. Of these some fell out upon the way, or were lost in the trackless glooms of those days, being wildered and but newly awakened on the Earth, but the most were those who left not Palisor at all, and a long time they dwelt in the pinewoods of Palisor, or sat in silence gazing at the mirrored stars in the pale still Waters of Awakening. Such great ages fared over them that the coming of Nornor among them faded to a distant legend, and they said one to another that their brethren had gone westward to the Shining Isles. There, said they, do the G.o.ds dwell, and they called them the Great Folk of the West, and thought they dwelt on firelit islands in the sea; but many had not even seen the great waves of that mighty water.

Now the Eldar or Qendi had the gift of speech direct from Ilvatar, and it is but the sunderance of their fates that has altered them and made them unlike; yet is none so little changed as the tongue of the Dark Elves of Palisor.2 Now the tale tells of a certain fay, and names him T the wizard, for he was more skilled in magics than any that have dwelt ever yet beyond the land of Valinor; and wandering about the world he found the...3 Elves and he drew them to him and taught them many deep things, and he became as a mighty king among them, and their tales name him the Lord of Gloaming and all the fairies of his realm Hisildi or the twilight people. Now the places about Koivi-neni the Waters of Awakening are rugged and full of mighty rocks, and the stream that feeds that water falls therein down a deep cleft.... a pale and slender thread, but the issue of the dark lake was beneath the earth into many endless caverns falling ever more deeply into the bosom of the world. There was the dwelling of T the wizard, and fathomless hollow are those places, but their doors have long been sealed and none know now the entry.

There was.... a pallid light of blue and silver flickering ever, and many strange spirits fared in and out beside the [?numbers] of the Elves. Now of those Elves there was one Nuin, and he was very wise, and he loved much to wander far abroad, for the eyes of the Hisildi were become exceeding keen, and they might follow very faint paths in those dim days. On a time did Nuin wander far to the east of Palisor, and few of his folk went with him, nor did T send them ever to those regions on his business, and strange tales were told concerning them; but now4 curiosity overcame Nuin, and journeying far he came to a strange and wonderful place the like of which he had not seen before. A mountainous wall rose up before him, and long time he sought a way thereover, till he came upon a pa.s.sage, and it was very dark and narrow, piercing the great cliff and winding ever down. Now daring greatly he followed this slender way, until suddenly the walls dropped upon either hand and he saw that he had found entrance to a great bowl set in a ring of unbroken hills whose compa.s.s he could not determine in the gloom.

Suddenly about him there gushed the sweetest odours of the Earth-nor were more lovely fragrances ever upon the airs of Valinor, and he stood drinking in the scents with deep delight, and amid the fragrance of [?evening] flowers came the deep odours that many pines loosen upon the midnight airs.

Suddenly afar off down in the dark woods that lay above the valley"s bottom a nightingale sang, and others answered palely afar off, and Nuin well-nigh swooned at the loveliness of that dreaming place, and he knew that he had trespa.s.sed upon Murmenalda or the "Vale of Sleep", where it is ever the time of first quiet dark beneath young stars, and no wind blows.

Now did Nuin descend deeper into the vale, treading softly by reason of some unknown wonder that possessed him, and lo, beneath the trees he saw the warm dusk full of sleeping forms, and some were twined each in the other"s arms, and some lay sleeping gently all alone, and Nuin stood and marvelled, scarce breathing.

Then seized with a sudden fear he turned and stole from that hallowed place, and coming again by the pa.s.sage through the mountain he sped back to the abode of T and coming before that oldest of wizards he said unto him that he was new come from the Eastward Lands, and T was little pleased thereat; nor any the more when Nuin made an end of his tale, telling of all he there saw-"and me-thought," said he, "that all who slumbered there were children, yet was their stature that of the greatest of the Elves."

Then did T fall into fear of Manw, nay even of Ilvatar the Lord of All, and he said to Nuin: Here Gilfanon"s Tale breaks off. The wizard T and the Dark Elf Nuin disappeared from the mythology and never appear again, together with the marvellous story of Nuin"s coming upon the forms of the Fathers of Mankind still asleep in the Vale of Murmenalda-though from the nature of the work and the different degrees of attention that my father later gave to its different parts one cannot always distinguish between elements definitively abandoned and elements held in "indefinite abeyance". And unhappy though it is that this tale should have been abandoned, we are nonetheless by no means entirely in the dark as to how the narrative would have proceeded.

I have referred earlier (p. 107, note 3) to the existence of two "schemes" or outlines setting out the plan of the Lost Tales; and I have said that one of these is a resume of the Tales as they are extant, while the other is divergent, a project for a revision that was never undertaken. There is no doubt that the former of these, which for the purposes of this chapter I will call "B", was composed when the Lost Tales had reached their furthest point of development, as represented by the latest texts and arrangements given in this book. Now when this outline comes to the matter of Gilfanon"s Tale it becomes at once very much fuller, but then contracts again to cursory references for the tales of Tinviel, Trin, Tuor, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, and once more becomes fuller for the tale of Erendel. It is clear, therefore, that B is the preliminary form, according to the method that my father regularly used in those days, of Gilfanon"s Tale, and indeed the part of the tale that was written as a proper narrative is obviously following the outline quite closely, while substantially expanding it.

There is also an extremely rough, though full, outline of the matter of Gilfanon"s Tale which though close to B has things that B does not, and vice versa; this is virtually certainly the predecessor of B, and in this chapter will be called "A".

The second outline referred to above, an unrealized project for the revision of the whole work, introduces features that need not be discussed here; it is sufficient to say that the mariner was now lfwine, not Eriol, and that his previous history was changed, but that the general plan of the Tales themselves was largely intact (with several notes to the effect that they needed abridging or recasting). This outline I shall call "D". How much time elapsed between B and D cannot be said, but I think probably not much. It seems possible that this new scheme was a.s.sociated with the sudden breaking-off of Gilfanon"s Tale. As with B, D suddenly expands to a much fuller account when this point is reached.

Lastly, a much briefer and more cursory outline, which however adds one or two interesting points, also has lfwine instead of Eriol; this followed B and preceded D, and is here called "C".

I shall not give all these outlines in extenso, which is unnecessary in view of the amount of overlap between them; on the other hand to combine them all into one would be both inaccurate and confusing. But since A and B are very close they can be readily combined into one; and I follow this account by that of D, with C in so far as it adds anything of note, And since in the matter of Gilfanon"s Tale the outlines are clearly divided into two parts, the Awakening of Men and the history of the Gnomes in the Great Lands, I treat the narrative in each case in these two parts, separately.

There is no need to give the material of the outlines in the opening pa.s.sage of Gilfanon"s Tale that was actually written, but there are some points of difference between the outlines and the tale to be noted.

A and B call the wizard-king Tvo, not T in C he is not named, and in D he is T "the fay", as in the tale. Evil a.s.sociations of this being appear in A: "Melko meets with Tvo in the halls of Mandos during his enchainment. He teaches Tvo much black magic." This was struck out, and nothing else is said of the matter; but both A and B say that it was after the escape of Melko and the ruin of the Trees that Tvo entered the world and "set up a wizard kingship in the middle lands".

In A, only, the Elves who remained behind in Palisor are said to have been of the people of the Teleri (the later Vanyar). This pa.s.sage of Gilfanon"s Tale is the first indication we have had that there were any such Elves (see p. 131); and I incline to think that the conception of the Dark Elves (the later Avari) who never undertook the journey from the Waters of Awakening only emerged in the course of the composition of the Lost Tales. But the name Qendi, which here first appears in the early narratives, is used somewhat ambiguously. In the fragment of the written tale, the words "those who remained behind are they whom many call the Qendi, the lost fairies of the world,5 but ye Elves of Kr name Ilkorins" seem an altogether explicit statement that Qendirr="Dark" Elves; but a little later Gilfanon speaks of "the Eldar or Qendi", and in the outline B it is said that "a number of the original folk called Qendi (the name Eldar being given by the G.o.ds) remained in Palisor". These latter statements seem to show equally clearly that Qendi was intended as a term for all Elves.

The contradiction is however only apparent. Qendi was indeed the original name of all the Elves, and Eldar the name given by the G.o.ds and adopted by the Elves of Valinor; those who remained behind preserved the old name Qendi. The early word-list of the Gnomish tongue states explicitly that the name Elda was given to the "fairies" by the Valar and was "adopted largely by them; the Ilkorins still preserved the old name Qendi, and this was adopted as the name of the reunited clans in Tol Eressa".6 In both A and B it is added that "the G.o.ds spoke not among themselves the tongues of the Eldali, but could do so, and they comprehended all tongues. The wiser of the Elves learned the secret speech of the G.o.ds and long treasured it, but after the coming to Tol Eressa none remembered it save the Inwir, and now that knowledge has died save in the house of Meril." With this compare Rmil"s remarks to Eriol, p. 48: "There is beside the secret tongue in which the Eldar wrote many poesies and books of wisdom and histories of old and earliest things, and yet speak not. This tongue do only the Valar use in their high counsels, and not many of the Eldar of these days may read it or solve its characters."

Nuin"s words to T on the stature of the sleepers in the Vale of Murmenalda are curious. In A is added: "Men were almost of a stature at first with Elves, the fairies being far greater and Men smaller than now. As the power of Men has grown the fairies have dwindled and Men waxed somewhat." Other early statements indicate that Men and Elves were originally of very similar stature, and that the diminishing in that of the Elves was closely related to the coming of, and the dominance of, Men. Nuin"s words are therefore puzzling, especially since in A they immediately precede the comment on the original similarity of size; for he can surely only mean that the sleepers in Murmenalda were very large by comparison with the Elves. That the sleepers were in fact children, not merely likened in some way to children, is made clear in D: "Nuin finds the Slumbrous Dale (Murmenalda) where countless sleeping children lie."

We come now to the point where the narrative is carried forward only in the outlines.

The Awakening of Men

according to the earlier outlines

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