I.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE
LEGEND.
In February 1968 my father addressed a commentary to the authors of an
article about him (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien no. 294). In the course
of this he recorded that 'one day' C. S. Lewis said to him that since 'there
is too little of what we really like in stories' they would have to try to write
some themselves. He went on:
We agreed that he should try 'space-travel', and I should try 'time-
travel'. His result is well known. My effort, after a few promising
chapters, ran dry: it was too long a way round to what I really wanted
to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend. The final scene survives
as The Downfall of Numenor.*
Afewyearsearlier, in a letter of July 1964 (Letters no. 257), he gave some
account of his book, The Lost Road:
When C. S. Lewis and I tossed up, and he was to write on space-travel
and I on time-travel, I began an abortive book of time-travel of which
the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis.
This was to be called Numenor, the Land in the West. The thread was
to be the occurrence time and again in human families (like Durin
among the Dwarves) of a father and son called by names that could be
interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. These no longer understood
are found in the end to refer to the Atlantid-Numenorean situation and
mean 'one loyal to the Valar, content with the bliss and prosperity
within the limits prescribed' and 'one loyal to friendship with the
High-elves'. It started with a father-son affinity between Edwin and
Elwin of the present, and was supposed to go back into legendary time
by way of an Eadwine and AElfwine of circa A.D.918, and Audoin and
Alboin of Lombardic legend, and so to the traditions of the North Sea
concerning the coming of corn and culture heroes, ancestors of kingly
lines, in boats (and their departure in funeral ships). One such Sheaf,
or Shield Sheafing, can actually be made out as one of the remote
ancestors of the present Queen. In my tale we were to come at last to
Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Numenor, when it
fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil 'elf-friend' was the
founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor. But I found my
(* This is Akallabeth, The Downfall of Numenor, posthumously published in
The Silmarillion, pp. 259-82.)
real interest was only in the upper end, the Akallabeth or Atalantie*
('Downfall' in Numenorean and Quenya), so I brought all the stuff I
had written on the originally unrelated legends of Numenor into
relation with the main mythnlogy.
I do not know whether evidence exists that would date the conversation
that led to the writing of Out of the Silent Planet and The Last Road, but
the former was finished by the autumn of 1937, and the latter was
submitted, so far as it went, to Allen and Unwin in November of that
year (see 1 II.364).
The significance of the last sentence in the passage just cited is not
entirely clear. When my father said 'But I found my real interest was only
in the upper end, the Akallabeth or Atalantie' he undoubtedly meant that
he had not been inspired to write the 'intervening' parts, in which the
father and son were to appear and reappear in older and older phases of
Germanic legend; and indeed The Lost Road stops after the introductory
chapters and only takes up again with the Numenorean story that was to
come at the end. Very little was written of what was planned to lie
between. But what is the meaning of 'so I brought all the stuff I had
written on the originally unrelated legends of Numenor into relation with
the main mythology'? My father seems to be saying that, having found
that he only wanted to write about Numenor, he therefore and only then
(abandoning The Last Road) appended the Numenorean material to 'the
main mythology', thus inaugurating the Second Age of the World. But
what was this material? He cannot have meant the Numenorean matter
contained in The Lost Road itself, since that was already fully related to
'the main mythology'. It must therefore have been something else, already
existing when The last Road was begun, as Humphrey Carpenter assumes
in his Biography (p. 170): 'Tolkien's legend of Numenor... was prohably
composed some time before the writing of "The Lost Road", perhaps in
the late nineteen-twenties or early thirties.' But, in fact, the conclusion
seems to me inescapable that my father erred when he said this.
The original rough workings for The Lost Road are extant, but they are
very rough, and do not form a continuous text. There is one complete
manuscript, itself fairly rough and heavily emended in different stages;
and a professional typescript that was done when virtually all changes
had been made to the manuscript. f The typescript breaks off well before
<It is a curious chance that the stem talat used in Q[uenya] for 'slipping,
sliding, falling down', of which atalantie is a normal (in Q) noun-formation,
should so much resemble Atlantis. [Footnote to the letter.] - See the
Etymologies, stem TALAT. The very early Elvish dictionary described in I. 246 has
a verb talte 'incline (transitive), decline, shake at foundations, make totter, etc.'
and an adjective talta 'shaky, wobbly, tottering - sloping, slanting.'
+'This typescript was made at Allen and Unwin, as appears from a letter from
Stanley Unwin dated 30th November 1937: The Lost Road: We have had this
typed and are returning the original herewith. The typed copy will follow when
we have had an opportunity of reading it.' See further p. 73 note 14.
the point where the manuscript comes to an end, and my father's
emendations to it were very largely corrections of the typist's errors,
which were understandably many; it has therefore only slight textual
value, and the manuscript is very much the primary text.
The Lost Road breaks off finally in the course of a conversation during
the last days of Numenor between Elendil and his son Herendil; and in
this Elendil speaks at length of the ancient history: of the wars against
Morgoth, of Earendel, of the founding of Numenor, and of the coming
there of Sauron. The Lost Road is therefore, as I have said, entirely
integrated with 'the main mythology' - and this is true already in the
preliminary drafts.
Now as the papers were found, there follows immediately after the last
page of The Lost Road a further manuscript with a new page-numbering,
but no title. Quite apart from its being so placed, this text gives a strong
physical impression of belonging to the same time as The Last Road; and
it is closely associated in content with the last part of The Last Road, for it
tells the story of Numenor and its downfall - though this second text was
written with a different purpose, to be a complete if very brief history: it
is indeed the first fully-written draft of the narrative that ultimately
became the Akallabeth. But it is earlier than The Lost Road; for where
that has Sauron and Tarkalion this has Sur and Angor.
A second, more finished manuscript of this history of Numenor
followed, with the title (written in afterwards) The Last Tale: The Fall of
Numenor. This has several passages that are scarcely different from
passages in The Lost Road, but it seems scarcely possible to show for
certain which preceded and which followed, unless the evidence cited on
p. 74, note 25, is decisive that the second version of The Fall of Numenor
was the later of the two; in any case, a passage rewritten very near the
time of the original composition of this version is certainly later than The
Last Road, for it gives a later form of the story of Sauron's arrival in
Numenor (see pp. 26 - 7).
It is therefore clear that the two works were intimately connected; they
arose at the same time and from the same impulse, and my father worked
on them together. But still more striking is the existence of a single page
that can only be the original 'scheme' for The Fall of Numenor, the actual
first writing down of the idea. The very name Numenor is here only in
process of emergence. Yet in this primitive form of the story the term
Middle-earth is used, as it never was in the Quenta: it did not appear
until the Annals of Valinor and the Ambarkanta. Moreover the form
Ilmen occurs, which suggests that this 'scheme' was later than the actual
writing of the Ambarkanta, where Ilmen was an emendation of Ilma
(earlier Silma): IV.240, note 3.
I conclude therefore that 'Numenor' (as a distinct and formalised
conception, whatever 'Atlantis-haunting', as my father called it, lay
behind) arose in the actual context of his discussions with C. S. Lewis in
(as seems probable) 1936. A passage in the 1964 letter can be taken to say
precisely that: 'I began an abortive book of time-travel of which the end
was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to
be called Numenor, the Land in the West.' Moreover, 'Numenor' was
from the outset conceived in full association with 'The Silmarillion';
there never was a time when the legends of Numenor were 'unrelated to
the main mythology'. My father erred in his recollection (or expressed
himself obscurely, meaning something else); the letter cited above was
indeed written nearly thirty years later.
II.
THE FALL OF NUMENOR.
(i)
The original outline.
The text of the original 'scheme' of the legend, referred to in the previous
chapter, was written at such speed that here and there words cannot be
certainly interpreted. Near the beginning it is interrupted by a very
rough and hasty sketch, which shows a central globe, marked Ambar,
with two circles around it; the inner area thus described is marked Ilmen
and the outer Vaiya. Across the top of Ambar and cutting through the
zones of Ilmen and Vaiya is a straight line extending to the outer circle in
both directions. This must be the forerunner of the diagram of the World
Made Round accompanying the Ambarkanta, IV.247. The first sen-
tence of the text, concerning Agaldor (on whom see pp. 78 - 9) is written
separately from the rest, as if it were a false start, or the beginning of a
distinct outline.
Agaldor chieftain of a people who live upon the N.W. margin of
the Western Sea.
The last battle of the Gods. Men side largely with Morgoth.
After the victory the Gods take counsel. Elves are summoned to
Valinor. [Struck out: Faithful men dwell in the Lands]
Many men had not come into the old Tales. They are still at
large on earth. The Fathers of Men are given a land to dwell in,
raised by Osse and Aule in the great Western Sea. The Western
Kingdom grows up. Atalante. [Added in margin: Legend so
named it afterward (the old name was Numar or Numenos)
Atalante = The Falling.] Its people great mariners, and men of
great skill and wisdom. They range from Tol-eressea to the shores
of Middle-earth. Their occasional appearance among Wild Men,
where Faithless Men also [?ranged corrupting them]. Some
become lords in the East. But the Gods will not allow them to land
in Valinor - and though they become long-lived because many
have been bathed in the radiance of Valinor from Tol-eressea -
they are mortal and their span brief. They murmur against this
decree. Thu comes to Atalante, heralded [read heralding] the
approach of Morgoth. But Morgoth cannot come except as a
spirit, being doomed to dwell outside the Walls of Night. The
Atalanteans fall, and rebel. They make a temple to Thu-Morgoth.
They build an armament and assail the shores of the Gods with
thunder.
The Gods therefore sundered Valinor from the earth, and
an awful rift appeared down which the water poured and the
armament of Atalante was drowned. They globed the whole earth
so that however far a man sailed he could never again reach the
West, but came back to his starting-point. Thus new lands came
into being beneath the Old World; and the East and West were
bent back and [?water flowed all over the round] earth's surface
and there was a time of flood. But Atalante being near the rift was
utter[ly] thrown down and submerged. The remnant of [struck
out at time of writing: Numen the Lie-numen] the Numenoreans
in their ships flee East and land upon Middle-earth. [Struck out:
Morgoth induces many to believe that this is a natural cataclysm.]
The [?longing] of the Numenoreans. Their longing for life on
earth. Their ship burials, and their great tombs. Some evil and
some good. Many of the good sit upon the west shore. These also
seek out the Fading Elves. How [struck out at time of writing:
Agaldor] Amroth wrestled with Thu and drove him to the centre
of the Earth and the Iron-forest.
The old line of the lands remained as a plain of air upon which
only the Gods could walk, and the Eldar who faded as Men
usurped the sun. But many of the Numenorie could see it or
faintly see it; and tried to devise ships to sail on it. But they
achieved only ships that would sail in Wilwa or lower air. Whereas
the Plain of the Gods cut through and traversed Ilmen [in] which
even birds cannot fly, save the eagles and hawks of Manwe. But
the fleets of the Numenorie sailed round the world; and Men took
them for gods. Some were content that this should be so.
As I have said, this remarkable text documents the beginning of the
legend of Numenor, and the extension of 'The Silmarillion' into a
Second Age of the World. Here the idea of the World Made Round and
the Straight Path was first set down, and here appears the first germ of
the story of the Last Alliance, in the words 'These also seek out the
Fading Elves. How [Agaldor >] Amroth wrestled with Thu and drove
him to the centre of the Earth' (at the beginning of the text Agaldor is
named as the chief of a people living on the North-west coasts of Middle-
earth). The longevity of the Numenoreans is already present, but (even
allowing for the compression and distortion inherent in such 'outlines'
of my father's, in which he attempted to seize and dash onto paper a
bubbling up of new ideas) seems to have far less significance than it
would afterwards attain; and is ascribed, strangely, to 'the radiance of
Valinor', in which the mariners of Numenor were 'bathed' during their
visits to Tol-eressea, to which they were permitted to sail. Cf. the Quenta,
IV.98: Still therefore is the light of Valinor more great and fair than that
of other lands, because there the Sun and Moon together rest a while
before they go upon their dark journey under the world'; but this does
not seem a sufficient or satisfactory explanation of the idea (see further
p. 20). The mortuary culture of the Numenoreans does indeed appear,
but it arose among the survivors of Numenor in Middle-earth, after the
Downfall; and this remained into more developed forms of the legend, as
did the idea of the flying ships which the exiles built, seeking to sail on the
Straight Path through Ilmen, but achieving only flight through the lower
air, Wilwa.*
The sentence 'Thu comes to Atalante, herald[ing] the approach of
Morgoth' certainly means that Thu prophesied Morgoth's return, as in
subsequent texts. The meaning of 'But Morgoth cannot come except as a
spirit' is made somewhat clearer in the next version, $5.
(ii)
The first version of The Fall of Numenor.
The preliminary outline was the immediate precursor of a first full
narrative - the manuscript described above (p. 9), placed with The
Lost Road. This was followed by further versions, and I shall refer to the
work as a whole (as distinct from the Akallabeth, into which it was
afterwards transformed) as The Fall of Numenor, abbreviated 'FN'; the
first text has no title, but I shall call it 'FN I'.
FN I is rough and hasty, and full of corrections made at the time of
composition; there are also many others, mostly slight, made later and
moving towards the second version FN II. I give it as it was written,
without the second layer of emendations (except in so far as these make
small necessary corrections to clarify the sense). As explained in the
Preface, here as elsewhere I have introduced paragraph numbers into the
text to make subsequent reference and comparison easier. A com-
mentary, following the paragraphing of the text, follows at its end.
$1 In the Great Battle when Fionwe son of Manwe over-
threw Morgoth and rescued the Gnomes and the Fathers of Men,
many mortal Men took part with Morgoth. Of these those that
were not destroyed fled into the East and South of the World, and
the servants of Morgoth that escaped came to them and guided
(* Although this text has the final form Ilmen, beside Silma > Ilma > Ilmen in
the Ambarkanta, Wilwa was replaced in the Ambarkanta by Vista).
them; and they became evil, and they brought evil into many
places where wild Men dwelt at large in the empty lands. But after
their victory, when Morgoth and many of his captains were
bound, and Morgoth was thrust again into the Outer Darkness,
the Gods took counsel. The Elves were summoned to Valinor, as
has been told, and many obeyed, but not all. But the Fathers of
Men, who had served the Eldar, and fought against Morgoth,
were greatly rewarded. For Fionwe son of Manwe came among
them and taught them, and gave them wisdom, power and life
stronger than any others of the Second Kindred.
$2. And a great land was made for them to dwell in, neither
part of Middle-earth nor wholly separate from it. This was raised
by Osse out of the depths of Belegar, the Great Sea, and estab-
lished by Aule, and enriched by Yavanna. It was called Numenor,
that is Westernesse, and Andunie or the Sunsetland, and its chief
city in the midmost of its western coasts was in the days of its
might called Numar or Numenos; but after its fall it was named in
legend Atalante, the Ruin.
$3. For in Numenore a great people arose, in all things more
like the First Kindred than any other races of Men that have been,
yet less fair and wise than they, though greater in body. And above
all their arts the people of Numenor nourished shipbuilding and
sea-craft, and became mariners whose like shall never be again,
since the world was diminished. They ranged from Tol-eressea,
where for many ages they still had converse and dealings with the
Gnomes, to the shores of Middle-earth, and sailed round to the
North and South, and glimpsed from their high prows the Gates
of Morning in the East. And they appeared among the wild Men,
and filled them with wonder and also with fear. For many
esteemed them to be Gods or sons of Gods out of the West, and
evil men had told them lies concerning the Lords of the West. But
the Numenoreans tarried not long yet in Middle-earth, for their
hearts hungered ever westward for the undying bliss of Valinor.
And they were restless and pursued with desire even at the height
of their glory.
But the Gods forbade them to sail beyond the Lonely Isle,
and would not permit any save their kings (once in each life before
he was crowned) to land in Valinor. For they were mortal Men,
and it was not in the power and right of Manwe to alter their fate.
Thus though the people were long-lived, since their land was
more nigh than other lands to Valinor, and many had looked long
on the radiance of the Gods that came faintly to Tol-eressea, they
remained mortal, even their kings, and their span brief in the eyes
of the Eldar. And they murmured against this decree. And a great
discontent grew among them; and their masters of lore sought
unceasingly for the secrets that should prolong their lives, and
they sent spies to seek these in Valinor. And the Gods were
angered.
And in time it came to pass that Sur (whom the Gnomes
called Thu) came in the likeness of a great bird to Numenor and
preached a message of deliverance, and he prophesied the second
coming of Morgoth. But Morgoth did not come in person, but
only in spirit and as a shadow upon the mind and heart, for the
Gods shut him beyond the Walls of the World. But Sur spake to
Angor the king and Istar his queen, and promised them undying
life and lordship of the Earth. And they believed him and fell
under the shadow, and the greatest part of the people of Numenor
followed them. Angor raised a great temple to Morgoth in the
midst of the land, and Sur dwelt there.
$6. But in the passing of the years Angor felt the oncoming of
old age, and he was troubled; and Sur said that the gifts of
Morgoth were withheld by the Gods, and t hat to obtain plenitude
of power and undying life he must be master of the West.
Wherefore the Numenoreans made a great armament; and their
might and skill had in those days become exceedingly great, and
they had moreover the aid of Sur. The fleets of the Numenoreans
were like a great land of many islands, and their masts like a forest
of mountain-trees, and their banners like the streamers of a
thunderstorm, and their sails were black. And they moved slowly
into the West, for all the winds were stilled and the world lay silent
in the fear of that time. And they passed Tol-eressea, and it is said
that the Elves mourned and grew sick, for the light of Valinor was
cut off by the cloud of the Numenoreans. But Angor assailed the
shores of the Gods, and he cast bolts of thunder, and fire came
upon the sides of Taniquetil.
But the Gods were silent. Sorrow and dismay were in the
heart of Manwe, and he spoke to Iluvatar, and took power and
counsel from the Lord of All; and the fate and fashion of the world
was changed. For the silence of the Gods was broken suddenly,
and Valinor was sundered from the earth, and a rift appeared in
the midst of Belegar east of Tol-eressea, and into this chasm the
great seas plunged, and the noise of the falling waters filled all the
earth and the smoke of the cataracts rose above the tops of the
everlasting mountains. But all the ships of Numenor that were
west of Tol-eressea were drawn down into the great abyss and
drowned, and Angor the mighty and Istar his queen fell like stars
into the dark, and they perished out of all knowledge. And the
mortal warriors that had set foot in the land of the Gods were
buried under fallen hills, where legend saith that they lie im-
prisoned in the Forgotten Caves until the day of Doom and the
Last Battle. And the Elves of Tol-eressea passed through the gates
of death, and were gathered to their kindred in the land of the
Gods, and became as they; and the Lonely Isle remained only as a
shape of the past.
$8. But Iluvatar gave power to the Gods, and they bent back
the edges of the Middle-earth, and they made it into a globe, so
that however far a man should sail he could never again reach
the true West, but came back weary at last to the place of his
beginning. Thus New Lands came into being beneath the Old
World, and all were equally distant from the centre of the round
earth; and there was flood and great confusion of waters, and seas
covered what was once the dry, and lands appeared where there
had been deep seas. Thus also the heavy air flowed round all the
earth in that time, above the waters; and the springs of all waters
were cut off from the stars.
$9. But Numenor being nigh upon the East to the great rift was
utterly thrown down and overwhelmed in sea, and its glory
perished. But a remnant of the Numenoreans escaped the ruin in
this manner. Partly by the device of Angor, and partly of their own
will (because they revered still the Lords of the West and mis-
trusted Sur) many had abode in ships upon the east coast of their
land, lest the issue of war be evil. Wherefore protected for a while
by the land they avoided the draught of the sea, and a great wind
arose blowing from the gap, and they sped East and came at length
to the shores of Middle-earth in the days of ruin.
$10. There they became lords and kings of Men, and some
were evil and some were of good will. But all alike were filled with
desire of long life upon earth, and the thought of Death was heavy
upon them; and their feet were turned east but their hearts were
westward. And they built mightier houses for their dead than for
their living, and endowed their buried kings with unavailing
treasure. For their wise men hoped ever to discover the secret of
prolonging life and maybe the recalling of it. But it is said that the
span of their lives, which had of old been greater than that of lesser
races, dwindled slowly, and they achieved only the art of pre-
serving uncorrupt for many ages the dead flesh of men. Wherefore
the kingdoms upon the west shores of the Old World became a
place of tombs, and filled with ghosts. And in the fantasy of their
hearts, and the confusion of legends half-forgotten concerning
that which had been, they made for their thought a land of shades,
filled with the wraiths of the things of mortal earth. And many
deemed this land was in the West, and ruled by the Gods, and
in shadow the dead, bearing the shadows of their possessions,
should come there, who could no more find the true West in the
body. For which reason in after days many of their descendants,
or men taught by them, buried their dead in ships and set them in
pomp upon the sea by the west coasts of the Old World.
$11. )u$
round. And many abandoned the Gods, and put them out of their
legends, and even out of their dreams. But Men of Middle-earth
looked on them with wonder and great fear, and took them to be
gods; and many were content that this should be so.
$13. But not all the hearts of the Numenoreans were crooked;
and the lore of the old days descending from the Fathers of Men,
and the Elf-friends, and those instructed by Fionwe, was pre-
served among some. And they knew that the fate of Men was not
bounded by the round path of the world, nor destined for the
straight path. For the round is crooked and has no end but no
escape; and the straight is true, but has an end within the world,
and that is the fate of the Elves. But the fate of Men, they said, is
neither round nor ended, and is not within the world. And they
remembered from whence the ruin came, and the cutting off of
Men from their just portion of the straight path; and they avoided
the shadow of Morgoth according to their power, and hated Thu.
And they assailed his temples and their servants, and there were
wars of allegiance among the mighty of this world, of which only
the echoes remain.
$14. But there remains still a legend of Beleriand: for that land
in the West of the Old World, although changed and broken, held
still in ancient days to the name it had in the days of the Gnomes.
And it is said that Amroth was King of Beleriand; and he took
counsel with Elrond son of Earendel, and with such of the Elves as
remained in the West; and they passed the mountains and came
into inner lands far from the sea, and they assailed the fortress of
Thu. And Amroth wrestled with Thu and was slain; but Thu was
brought to his knees, and his servants were dispelled; and the
peoples of Beleriand destroyed his dwellings, and drove him
forth, and he fled to a dark forest, and hid himself. And it is said
that the war with Thu hastened the fading of the Eldar, for he had
power beyond their measure, as Felagund King of Nargothrond
had found in the earliest days; and they expended their strength
and substance in the assault upon him. And this was the last of the
services of the older race to Men, and it is held the last of the deeds
of alliance before the fading of the Elves and the estrangement of
the Two Kindreds. And here the tale of the ancient world, as the
Elves keep it, comes to an end.
Commentary on the first version of The Fall of Numenor.
$1. As Q $18 was first written (IV. 158), it was permitted by Fionwe
that 'with the Elves should those of the race of Hador and Beor
alone be suffered to Jepart, if they would. But of these only Elrond was
now left...' On this extremely puzzling passage see the commentary,
IV. zoo, where I suggested that obscure as it is it represents 'the first
germ of the story of the departure of the Elf-friends to Numenor.' It
was removed in the rewriting, Q II $18, where there appears a
reference to Men of Hithlum who 'repentant of their evil servitude did
deeds of valour, and many beside of Men new come out of the East',
but now no mention of the Elf-friends. A final hasty revision of the
passage (IV. 163, notes 2 and 3) gave:
And it is said that all that were left of the three Houses of the Fathers
of Men fought for Fionwe, and to them were joined some of the
Men of Hithlum who repenting of their evil servitude did deeds of
valour... But most Men, and especially those new come out of the
East, were on the side of the Enemy.
This is very close to, and no doubt belongs in fact to the same time
as, the corresponding passage in the following version of 'The Sil-
marillion' (QS*, p. 328 $16), which however omits the reference to
the Men of Hithlum. I have little doubt that this development came in
with the emergence of Numenor.
Here first appear the names Andunie' (but as a name of the island,
translated 'the Sunsetland'), and Numenor itself (which does not occur
in the preliminary outline, though the people are there called
Numenorie' and Numenoreans). The chief city is called Numar or
Numenos, which in the outline were the names of the land. The name
Belegar was emended later, here and in $7, to Belegaer.
After the words enriched by Yavanna the passage concerning names
was early replaced as follows:
It was called by the Gods Andor, the Land of Gift, but by its own
folk Vinya, the Young; but when the men of that land spake of
it to the men of Middle-earth they named it Numenor, that is
Westernesse, for it lay west of all lands inhabited by mortals. Yet it
was not in the true West, for there was the land of the Gods. The
chief city of Numenor was in the midmost of its western coasts, and
in the days of its might it was called Andunie, because it faced the
sunset; but after its fall it was named in the legends of those that fled
from it Atalante the Downfall.
Here first appears Andor, Land of Gift, and also the name given to the
land by the Numenoreans, Vinya, the Young, which did not survive in
the later legend (cf. Vinyamar, Vinyalonde', Index to Unfinished
Tales); Andunie' now becomes the name of the chief city. In the text as
originally written the name Atalante' could refer either to the land or
the city, but in the rewriting it can only refer to the city. It seems
(* Throughout this book the abbreviation 'QS' (Quenta Silmarillion) is used for
the version interrupted near the end of I937; see pp. 107- 8).
unlikely that my father intended this; see the corresponding passage in
FN II and commentary.
$3. The permission given to the Numenoreans to sail as far west as Tol-
eressea, found already in the original outline, contrasts with the
Akallabeth (pp. 262 - 3), where it is told that they were forbidden 'to
sail so far westward that the coasts of Numenor could no longer be
seen', and only the most keen-sighted among them could descry far off
the tower of Avallone on the Lonely Isle.
The Gates of Morning reappear, remarkably, from the Lost Tales
(I. 216). In the original astronomical myth the Sun passed into the
Outer Dark by the Door of Night and re-entered by the Gates of
Morn; but with the radical transformation of the myth that entered
with the Sketch of the Mythology (see IV. 49), and is found in the
Quenta and Ambarkanta, whereby the Sun is drawn by the servants of
Ulmo beneath the roots of the Earth, the Door of Night was given a
different significance and the Gates of Morn no longer appear (see IV.
252, 255). How the reference to them here (which survives in the
Akallabeth, p. 263) is to be understood I am unable to say.
In this paragraph is the first occurrence of the expression The Lords
of the West.
The words save their kings (once in each life before he was crowned)
were early placed in square brackets. In the conclusion of QS (p. 326
$$8 - 9) the prohibition appears to be absolute, not to be set aside for
any mortal; there Mandos says of Earendel 'Now he shall surely die,
for he has trodden the forbidden shores', and Manwe says 'To Earendel
I remit the ban, and the peril that he took upon himself.' Later (as
noted under $3 above) the Ban extended also, and inevitably, to Tol-
eressea ('easternmost of the Undying Lands', the Akallabeth, p. 263).
The ascription of the longevity of the Numenoreans to the light of
Valinor appeared already in the original outline, and I cited (p. 13) the
passage from the Quenta where it is said that the light of Valinor was
greater and fairer than in the other lands 'because there the Sun and
Moon together rest a while.' But the wording here, 'the radiance of the
Gods that came faintly to Tol-eressea', surely implies a light of a
different nature from that of the Sun and Moon (which illumine the
whole world). Conceivably, the further idea that appears in the
corresponding passage in QS ($79) is present here: 'moreover the
Valar store the radiance of the Sun in many vessels, and in vats and
pools for their comfort in times of dark.' The passage was later
enclosed in brackets, and it does not appear in FN II; but at a
subsequent point in the narrative ($6) the Elves of Tol-eressea
mourned 'for the light of Valinor was cut off by the cloud of the
Numenoreans', and this was not rejected. Cf. the Akallabeth (p. 278):
'the Eldar mourned, for the light of the setting sun was cut off by the
cloud of the Numenoreans.'
With what is said here of Morgoth's not returning 'in person', for he
was shut beyond the Walls of the World, 'but only in spirit and as a
shadow upon the mind and heart', cf. the Quenta (IV. 164): 'Some say
also that Morgoth at whiles secretly as a cloud that cannot be seen or
felt... creeps back surmounting the Walls and visiteth the world' (a
passage that survived in QS, pp. 332-3 $30).
The concluding sentence concerning the Elves of Tol-eressea was
an addition, but one that looks as if it belongs with the writing of the
text. It is very hard to interpret. The rift in the Great Sea appeared
east of Tol-eressea, but the ships that were west of the isle were drawn
down into the abyss; and it might be concluded from this that Tol-
eressea also was swallowed up and disappeared: so the Elves who dwelt
there 'passed through the gates of death, and were gathered to their
kindred in the land of the Gods', and 'the Lonely Isle remained only as
a shape of the past.' But this would be very strange, for it would imply
the abandonment of the entire story of AElfwine's voyage to Tol-
eressea in ages after; yet AElfwine as recorder and pupil was still
present in my father's writings after the completion of The Lord of the
Rings. On the diagram of the World Made Round accompanying the
Ambarkanta (IV. 247) Tol-eressea is marked as a point on the Straight
Path. Moreover, much later, in the Akallabeth (pp. 278 - 9), the same
is told of the great chasm: it opened 'between Numenor and the
Deathless Lands', and all the fleets of the Numenoreans (which had
passed on to Aman and so were west of Tol-eressea) were drawn down
into it; but 'Valinor and Eressea were taken from [the world] into the
realm of hidden things.'
$8 The concluding sentence ('Thus also the heavy air...') is a
marginal addition which seems certainly to belong with the original
text. It has no mark for insertion, but must surely be placed here.
$10 The desire to prolong life was already a mark of the Numenoreans
($4), but the dark picture in the Akallabeth (p. 266) of a land of tombs
and embalming, of a people obsessed with death, was not present. At
this stage in the evolution of the legend, as already in the preliminary
outline, the tomb-culture arose among the Numenoreans who escaped
the Downfall and founded kingdoms in the 'Old World': whether of
good or evil disposition 'all alike were filled with desire of long life
upon earth, and the thought of Death was heavy upon them', and it
was the life-span of the Exiles, as it appears, that slowly dwindled.
There are echoes of the present passage in the Akallabeth account of
Numenor after the Shadow fell upon it in the days of Tar-Atanamir
(cf. Unfinished Tales p. 221); but in the very different context of the
original story, when this culture arose among those who survived the
Cataclysm and their descendants, other elements were present: for the
Gods were now removed into the realm of the unknown and unseen,
and they became the 'explanation' of the mystery of death, their
dwelling-place in the far West the region to which the dead passed with
their possessions.
In 'The Silmarillion' the Gods are 'physically' present, because
(whatever the actual mode of their own being) they inhabit the same
physical world, the realm of the 'seen'; if, after the Hiding of Valinor,
they could not be reached by the voyages sent out in vain by Turgon of
Gondolin, they were nonetheless reached by Earendel, sailing from
Middle-earth in his ship Wingelot, and their physical intervention of
arms changed the world for ever through the physical destruction of
the power of Morgoth. Thus it may be said that in 'The Silmarillion'
there is no 'religion', because the Divine is present and has not been
'displaced'; but with the physical removal of the Divine from the
World Made Round a religion arose (as it had arisen in Numenor
under the teachings of Thu concerning Morgoth, the banished and
absent God), and the dead were despatched, for religious reasons, in
burial ships on the shores of the Great Sea.
$12 'But upon the straight road only the Gods and the vanished Elves
could walk, or such as the Gods summoned of the fading Elves of the
round earth, who became diminished in substance as Men usurped the
sun.' Cf. the Quenta, IV. 100 - 1, as emended (a passage that goes back
to the Sketch of the Mythology, IV. 21):
In after days, when because of the triumph of Morgoth Elves and
Men became estranged, as he most wished, those of the Eldalie that
still lived in the world faded, and Men usurped the sunlight. Then
the Eldar wandered in the lonelier places of the Outer Lands, and
took to the moonlight and to the starlight, and to the woods and
caves, and became as shadows, wraiths and memories, such as set
not sail unto the West and vanished from the world.
This passage survived very little changed in QS ($87).
I believe that the story of the flying ships built by the exiled
Numenoreans, found already in the preliminary draft (p. 12), is the
sole introduction of aerial craft in all my father's works. No hint is
given of the means by which they rose and were propelled; and the
passage did not survive into the later legend.
$I3. It is a curious feature of the original story of Numenor that there
is no mention of what befell Thu at the Downfall (cf. the Akallabeth
p. 280); but he reappears here as a master of temples (cf. the Lay of
Leithian lines 2064 - 7), dwelling in a fortress ($14), an object of hatred
to those of the survivors of Numenor who retained something of the
ancient knowledge.
$14. In the Quenta (IV. 160 - 1) it is told that in the Great Battle
the Northern regions of the Western world were rent and riven, and
the sea roared in through many chasms, and there was confusion
and great noise; and the rivers perished or found new paths, and the
valleys were upheaved and the hills trod down, and Sirion was no
more. Then Men fled away... and long was it ere they came back
over the mountains to where Beleriand once had been.
The last words of the earliest Annals of Beleriand (IV. 310) are 'So
ended the First Age of the World and Beleriand was no more.' It is also
said in the Quenta (IV. 162) that after the War was ended 'there was a
mighty building of ships on the shores of the Western Sea, and
especially upon the great isles, which in the disruption of the Northern
world were fashioned of ancient Beleriand.'
In FN a rather different conception is suggested. Though Beleriand
had been 'changed and broken', it is spoken of as 'that land', it was still
called Beleriand, and it was peopled by Men and Elves, able to form an
alliance against Thu. I would suggest (though hesitantly) that with the
emergence, here first glimpsed, of a Second Age of Middle-earth
consequent on the legend of Numenor, the utter devastation of
Beleriand, suitable to the finality of the conclusion of the earlier
conception, had been diminished." Moreover it seems that at this time
my father did not conceive of any further destruction of Beleriand
at the time of the Downfall of Numenor, as he would do later (see
p. 32).
At this stage there is no mention of a first and founder king of
Numenor. Elrond was still the only child of Earendel and Elwing; his
brother Elros has appeared only in late additions to the text of Q (IV.
155), which were inserted after the Numenorean legend had begun to
develop. In the oldest conception in the Sketch of the Mythology (IV.
38) Elrond 'bound by his mortal half elects to stay on earth' (i.e. in the
Great Lands), and in Q (IV. 158) he 'elected to remain, being bound
by his mortal blood in love to those of the younger race', see my
remarks on the Choice of the Half-elven, IV. 70. Elrond is here, as it
seems, a leader of the Elves of Beleriand, in alliance with Amroth,
predecessor of Elendil. The Last Alliance leading to the overthrow of
Thu is seen as the last intervention of the Elves in the affairs of the
World of Men, in itself hastening their inevitable fading. The 'dark
forest' to which Thu fled (cf. the 'Iron-forest' in the original outline) is
doubtless Mirkwood. In The Hobbit all that had been told of the
Necromancer was that he dwelt in a dark tower in the south of
Mirkwood.+
(iii)
The second version of The Fall of Numenor
FN II is a clear manuscript, made by my father with FN I before him and
probably soon after it. It has many emendations made in the act of
<The passages cited here from Q were rather surprisingly retained almost
unaltered in QS: see p. 337.
+Cf. Letters no. 257, referring to The Hobbit: 'the (originally) quite casual
reference to the Necromancer, whose function was hardly more than to provide a
reason for Gandalf going away and leaving Bilbo and the Dwarves to fend for
themselves, which was necessary for the tale.'
composition, and none that seem to have been made after any significant
interval, apart from the title, which was inserted later in pencil, and the
rejection of a sentence in $7. In contrast to my father's common tendency
to begin a new text keeping close to the antecedent but then to diverge
ever more strongly as he proceeded, in this case the earlier part is much
changed and expanded whereas the latter is scarcely altered, other than
in very minor improvements to the run of sentences, until the end is
reached. To give the whole of FN II is therefore unnecessary. Retaining
the paragraph numbering of FN I, I give $$ 1 - 5 and 14 in full, and of the
remainder only such short passages as were significantly altered.
THE LAST TALE: THE FALL OF NUMENOR
$1. In the Great Battle when Fionwe son of Manwe overthrew
Morgoth and rescued the Exiles, the three houses of the Men of
Beleriand fought against Morgoth. But most Men were allies of
the Enemy; and after the victory of the Lords of the West those
that were not destroyed fled eastward into Middle-earth; and the
servants of Morgoth that escaped came to them, and enslaved
them. For the Gods forsook for a time the Men of Middle-earth,
because they had disobeyed their summons and hearkened to the
Enemy. And Men were troubled by many evil things that
Morgoth had made in the days of his dominion: demons and
dragons and monsters, and Orcs, that are mockeries of the
creatures of Iluvatar; and their lot was unhappy. But Manwe put
forth Morgoth, and shut him beyond the world in the Void
without; and he cannot return again into the world, present and
visible, while the Lords are enthroned. Yet his Will remaineth,
and guideth his servants; and it moveth them ever to seek the
overthrow of the Gods and the hurt of those that obey them.
But when Morgoth was thrust forth, the Gods held council.
The Elves were summoned to return into the West, and such as
obeyed dwelt again in Eressea, the Lonely Island, which was
renamed Avallon: for it is hard by Valinor. But Men of the three
faithful houses and such as had joined with them were richly
rewarded. For Fionwe son of Manwe came among them and
taught them; and he gave them wisdom, power, and life stronger
than any others have of the mortal race.
$2. And a great land was made for them to dwell in, neither
part of Middle-earth nor wholly separate from it. It was raised by
Osse out of the depths of the Great Sea, and established by Aule
and enriched by Yavanna; and the Eldar brought thither flowers
and fountains out of Avallon and wrought gardens there of great
beauty, in which the Gods themselves at times would walk. That
land was called by the Valar Andor, the Land of Gift, and by its
own folk it was at first called Vinya, the Young; but in the days of
its pride they named it Numenor, that is Westernesse, for it lay
west of all lands inhabited by mortals; yet it was far from the true
West, for that is Valinor, the land of the Gods. But its glory fell
and its name perished; for after its ruin it was named in the legends
of those that fled from it Atalante, the Downfallen. Of old its chief
city and haven was in the midst of its western coasts, and it was
called Andunie, because it faced the sunset. But the high place of
its king was at Numenos in the heart of the land. It was built first
by Elrond son of Earendel, whom the Gods and Elves chose to be
the lord of that land; for in him the blood of the houses of Hador
and Beor was mingled, and with it some part of that of the Eldar
and Valar, which he drew from Idril and from Luthien. But
Elrond and all his folk were mortal; for the Valar may not
withdraw the gift of death, which cometh to Men from Iluvatar.
Yet they took on the speech of the Elves of the Blessed Realm, as it
was and is in Eressea, and held converse with the Elves, and
looked afar upon Valinor; for their ships were suffered to sail to
Avallon and their mariners to dwell there for a while.
$3. And in the wearing of time the people of Numenor grew
great and glorious, in all things more like the Firstborn than any
other races of Men that have been; yet less fair and wise than the
Elves, though greater in stature. For the Numenoreans were taller
even than the tallest of the sons of Men in Middle-earth. Above all
their arts they nourished shipbuilding and sea-craft, and became
mariners whose like shall never be again, since the world has been
diminished. They ranged from Eressea in the West to the shores of
Middle-earth, and came even into the inner seas; and they sailed
about the North and the South, and glimpsed from their high
prows the Gates of Morning in the East. And they appeared
among the wild Men and filled them with wonder and dismay, and
some esteemed them to be Gods or the sons of Gods out of the
West; and the Men of Middle-earth feared them, for they were
under the shadow of Morgoth, and believed the Gods to be
terrible and cruel. The Numenoreans taught them such of the
truth as they could comprehend, but it became only as a distant
rumour little understood; for as yet the Numenoreans came
seldom to Middle-earth and did not tarry there long. Their hearts
were set westward, and they began to hunger for the undying bliss
of Valinor; and they were restless and pursued by desire as their
power and glory grew.
For the Gods forbade them to sail beyond the Lonely Isle,
and would not permit any to land in Valinor, because the
Numenoreans were mortal; and though the Lords had rewarded
them with long life, they could not take from them the weariness
of the world that cometh at last; and they died, even their kings of
the seed of Earendel, and their span was brief in the eyes of the
Elves. And they began to murmur against this decree; and a great
discontent grew among them. Their masters of knowledge sought
unceasingly for secrets that should prolong their lives; and they
sent spies to seek forbidden lore in Avallon. But the Gods were
angered.
And it came to pass that Sauron, servant of Morgoth, grew
mighty in Middle-earth; and the mariners of Numenor brought
rumour of him. Some said that he was a king greater than the King
of Numenor; some said that he was one of the Gods or their sons
set to govern Middle-earth. A few reported that he was an evil
spirit, perchance Morgoth himself returned. But this was held to
be only a foolish fable of the wild Men. Tar-kalion was King of
Numenor in those days, and he was proud; and believing that the
Gods had delivered the dominion of the earth to the Numenoreans,
he would not brook a king mightier than himself in any land.
Therefore he purposed to send his servants to summon Sauron to
Numenor, to do homage before him. The Lords sent messages to
the king and spake through the mouths of wise men and coun-
selled him against this mission; for they said that Sauron would
work evil if he came; but he could not come to Numenor unless he
was summoned and guided by the king's messengers. But Tar-
kalion in his pride put aside the counsel, and he sent many ships.
Now rumour of the power of Numenor and its allegiance to the
Gods came also to Sauron, and he feared lest the Men of the West
should rescue those of Middle-earth from the Shadow; and being
cunning and filled with malice he plotted in his heart to destroy
Numenor, and (if he might) to bring grief upon the Gods.
Therefore he humbled himself before the messengers, and came
by ship to Numenor. But as the ships of the embassy drew nigh to
the land an unquiet came upon the sea, and it arose like a mountain
and cast the ships far inland; and the ship whereon Sauron stood
was set upon a hill. And Sauron stood upon the hill and preached a
message of deliverance from death to the Numenoreans; and he
beguiled them with signs and wonders. And little by little he
turned their hearts toward Morgoth, his master; and he pro-
phesied that ere long he would come again into the world. And
Sauron spake to Tar-kalion the king, and to Tar-ilien his queen,
and promised them life unending and the dominion of the earth, if
they would turn unto Morgoth. And they believed him, and fell
under the Shadow, and the greatest part of their people followed
them. And Tar-kalion raised a great temple to Morgoth upon the
Mountain of Iluvatar in the midst of the land; and Sauron dwelt
there and all Numenor was under his vigilance.
[The greater part of $5 was replaced by the following shorter version:]
And it came to pass that Sauron, servant of Morgoth, grew
strong in Middle-earth; and he learned of the power and glory of the
Numenoreans, and of their allegiance to the Gods, and he feared
lest coming they should wrest the dominion of the East from him
and rescue the Men of Middle-earth from the Shadow. And the
king heard rumour of Sauron; and it was said that he was a king
greater than the King of Numenor. Wherefore, against the counsel
of the Gods, the king sent his servants to Sauron, and bade him
come and do homage. And Sauron, being filled with cunning
and malice, humbled himself and came; and he beguiled the
Numenoreans with signs and wonders. But little by little Sauron
turned their hearts towards Morgoth; and he prophesied that ere
long he would come again into the world. And Sauron spake to
Tar-kalion King of Numenor and to Tar-ilien his queen...
For the remainder of FN II, until the final paragraph, I note only the
few differences from FN I that are of any substance. The changes of Sur,
Angor, and Istar to Sauron, Tar-kalion, and Tar-ilien are not noticed.
$6. 'And they passed Tol-eressea > 'And they encompassed Avallon';
'fire came upon the sides of Taniquetil' > 'fire came upon Kor and
smokes rose about Taniquetil.'
In FN II the paragraph opens: 'But the Gods made no answer.
Then many of the Numenoreans set foot upon the forbidden shores, and
they camped in might upon the borders of Valinor.'
'Angor the mighty and Istar his queen' > 'Tar-kalion the golden and
bright Ilien his queen', 'the Forgotten Caves' ) 'the Caves of the
Forgotten'.
The mysterious concluding sentence concerning the Elves of Eressea
(see the commentary on FN I) was retained but struck out later in pencil.
$8. The concluding sentence does not appear; see the commentary on
FN I.
$9. 'Partly by the [desire >] command of Tar-kalion, and partly by
their own will (because some still revered the Gods and would not go
with war into the West) many had remained behind, and sat in their
ships...'
There is now no mention of the great wind that arose.
$10. The paragraph now opens: 'There, though shorn of their
former power, and few in number and scattered, they after became lords
and kings of Men. Some were evil and forsook not Sauron in their hearts;
and some were of good will and retained memory of the Gods. But all
alike...'
In 'the span of their lives, which had of old been greater than that of the
lesser races' the words 'greater than' > 'thrice'.
The concluding sentence reads: 'For which reason in after days they
would bury their dead in ships, or set them in pomp...'
'And the spell that lay there was not wholly vain' > 'And this was
not wholly fantasy', but this was struck out.
'For the ancient line of the world remained in the mind of Iluvatar and
in the thought of the Gods, and in the memory of the world...'
At the end of the paragraph is added: 'Therefore they built very high
towers in those days.'
$12. The paragraph now begins: 'But most, who could not see this or
conceive it in thought, scorned the builders of towers, and trusted to
ships that sailed upon water. But they came only to the lands of the New
World, and found them like to those of the Old, and subject to death; and
they reported that the world was round. But upon the Straight Road only
the Gods could walk, and only the ships of the Elves of Avallon could
journey. For the Road being straight, whereas the surface of the earth
was bent...'
The paragraph concludes: 'Therefore many abandoned the Gods, and
put them out of their legends. But Men of Middle-earth looked up with
wonder upon them, and with great fear, for they descended out of the air;
and they took the Numenoreans to be Gods, and some were content that
this should be so.'
$13. The paragraph begins: 'But not all the hearts of the
Numenoreans were crooked; and the knowledge of the days before
the ruin, descending from their fathers and the Elf-friends, and those
that had held converse with the Gods, was long preserved among the
wise. And they said that the fate of Men...'
'But the fate of Men... is not complete within the world.'
'there were wars of faith among the mighty of Middle-earth'
But there remains still a legend of Beleriand: for that land
in the West of the North of the Old World, where Morgoth had
been overthrown, was still in a measure blessed and free from his
shadow; and many of the exiles of Numenor had come thither.
Though changed and broken it retained still in ancient days the
name that it had borne in the days of the Gnomes. And it is said
that in Beleriand there arose a king, who was of Numenorean race,
and he was named Elendil, that is Elf-friend. And he took counsel
with the Elves that remained in Middle-earth (and these abode
then mostly in Beleriand); and he made a league with Gil-galad
the Elf-king who was descended from Feanor. And their armies
were joined, and passed the mountains and came into inner lands
far from the Sea. And they came at last even to Mordor the Black
Country, where Sauron, that is in the Gnomish tongue named
Thu, had rebuilt his fortresses. And they encompassed the strong-
hold, until Thu came forth in person, and Elendil and Gil-galad
wrestled with him; and both were slain. But Thu was thrown
down, and his bodily shape destroyed, and his servants were
dispelled, and the host of Beleriand destroyed his dwelling; but
Thu's spirit fled far away, and was hidden in waste places, and
took no shape again for many ages. But it is sung sadly by the Elves
that the war with Thu hastened the fading of the Eldar, decreed by
the Gods; for Thu had power beyond their measure, as Felagund,
King of Nargothrond, had found aforetime; and the Elves
expended their strength and substance in the assault upon him.
And this was the last of the services of the Firstborn to Men, and it
is held the last of the deeds of alliance before the fading of the
Elves and the estrangement of the Two Kindreds. And here
endeth the tale of the ancient world as it is known to the Elves.
Commentary on the second version of The Fall of Numenor.
On 'Orcs, that are mockeries of the creatures of Iluvatar' see QS $18
and commentary. - It was said in FN I $5 that Morgoth 'did not come
in person, but only in spirit and as a shadow upon the mind and heart.'
Now the idea of his 'return' in any sense seems to be denied; but there
appears the concept of his malevolent and guiding Kill that remains
always in the world.
'such as obeyed dwelt again in Eressea': in FN I 'the Elves were
summoned to Valinor, as has been told, and many obeyed, but not all.'
In the Quenta (IV. 162) 'the Gnomes and Dark-elves rehabited for
the most part the Lonely Isle... But some returned even unto
Valinor, as all were free to do who willed' (retained in QS, pp. 33 I-2
$27). The name Avallon ('for it is hard by Valinor') appears, but as a
new name for Tol Eressea; afterwards, in the form Avallone ('for it is
of all cities the nearest to Valinor'), it became the name of a haven in
the isle: Akallabeth p. 260.
At first my father preserved exactly the rewriting of FN I given in
the commentary on FN I $2, whereby Atalante is the name of the city
Andunie after the Downfall. I have suggested that he did not in fact
intend this; at any rate he corrected it here, so that Atalante' again
becomes the name of Numenor drowned. Numenos now reappears
from FN I $2 as originally written, where it was the name of the
western city, but becomes the name of the high place of the king in the
centre of the land (afterwards Armenelos).
Elrond (see the commentary on FN I $14) now becomes the first
King of Numenor and the builder of Numenos; his brother Elros has
still not emerged.
The statement here that the Numenoreans 'took on the speech of the
Elves of the Blessed Realm, as it was and is in Eressea' suggests that
they abandoned their own Mannish tongue; and that this is the
meaning is shown in The Lost Road (p. 68). In the Lhammas it is said
(p. 179) that 'already even in [Hurin's father's] day Men in Beleriand
forsook the daily use of their own tongue and spoke and gave even
names unto their children in the language of the Gnomes.' The words
'as it was and is in Eressea' would contradict any idea that the Lonely
Isle was destroyed in the Downfall (see the commentary on FN I $7).
But the difficult passage which suggests it was preserved in the present
text, $7 (though subsequently struck out).
The association of the longevity of the Numenoreans with the
radiance of Valinor (see the commentary on FN I $4) is abandoned,
and is attributed solely to the gift of the Valar.
In all probability the name Sauron (replacing Sur of FN I) first
occurs here or in the closely related passage in The last Road (p. 66).
Its first occurrence in the 'Silmarillion' tradition is in QS $143. The
story of Sauron's coming to Numenor is changed from that in FN I,
and it is explicit that he could not have come had he not been sum-
moned. The story as told in the first version here, in which the ships
returning from Middle-earth were cast upon Numenor far inland by a
great wave, and Sauron stood upon a hill and 'preached a message of
deliverance', is told in more detail in The Lost Road; but the second
version in FN II, omitting the element of the great wave, looks as if it
were substituted for the first almost immediately (on the significance
of this see p. g).
The temple to Morgoth is now raised upon the Mountain of
Iluvatar in the midst of the land, and this (or in The Lost Road) is the
first appearance of the Meneltarma. The story was later rejected: in
the Akallabeth 'not even Sauron dared to defile the high place', and the
temple was built in Armenelos (pp. 272 - 3).
The addition in FN II, 'Therefore they built very high towers in
those days', must be the first reference to the White Towers on Emyn
Beraid, the Tower Hills. Cf. The Lord of the Rings Appendix A (I. iii),
where it is told of the palantir of Emyn Beraid that 'Elendil set it there
so that he could look back with "straight sight" and see Eressea in the
vanished West; but the bent seas below covered Numenor for ever.'
Cf. also Of the Rings of Power in The Silmarillion, p, 292. But when the
present text was written the palantiri had not (so far as one can tell)
been conceived.
The rewriting of the passage concerning Beleriand reinforces the
suggestion in FN I that it remained a country less destroyed after the
Great Battle than is described in the other texts: it was 'still in a
measure blessed' - and moreover the Elves who remained in Middle-
earth 'abode mostly in Beleriand'. Here Elendil 'Elf-friend' appears,
displacing Amroth of FN I. It might be thought from the words 'in
Beleriand there arose a king, who was of Numenorean race' that he was
not a survivor of the Downfall; but this is clearly not the case. In The
Lost Road, closely connected with FN II, Elendil (the father in the
Numenorean incarnation of 'Elwin-Edwin') is a resolute foe of Sauron
and his dominance in Numenor; and though The Lost Road breaks off
before the sailing of Tar-kalion's fleet, Elendil must have been among
those who 'sat in their ships upon the east coast of the land' (FN $9)
and so escaped the Downfall.
Here is certainly the first appearance of Gil-galad, the Elf-king in
Beleriand, descended from Feanor (it would be interesting to know his
parentage), and the story of the Last Alliance moves a stage further;
and there seems no question but that it was in this manuscript that the
name Mordor, the Black Country, first emerged in narrative.
(iv)
The further development of The Fall of Numenor.
FN II was followed by a typescript made on my father's typewriter of
that period, but not typed by him. This is seen from its being an exact
copy of FN II after all corrections had been made to it, and from two or
three misreadings of the manuscript. I have no doubt that the typescript
was made soon afterwards. In itself it has no textual value, but my father
used it as the basis for certain further changes.
Associated with it is a loose manuscript page bearing passages that
relate closely to changes made to the typescript. There is here a textual
development that has important bearings on the dating in general.
Two passages are in question. The first concerns $8 (which had
remained unchanged from FN I, apart from the omission in FN II of
the concluding sentence). The loose page has here two forms of a new
version of the paragraph, of which the first, which was struck through,
reads as follows:
Then Iluvatar cast back the Great Sea west of Middle-earth and the
Barren Land east of Middle-earth and made new lands and new seas
where aforetime nought had been but the paths of the Sun and Moon.
And the world was diminished; for Valinor and Eressea were taken
into the Realm of Hidden Things, and thereafter however far a man
might sail he could never again reach the True West. For all lands old
and new were equally distant from the centre of the earth. There was
[flood and great confusion of waters, and seas covered what once was
dry, and lands appeared where there had been deep seas,) and
Beleriand fell into the sea in that time, all save the land where Beren
and Luthien had dwelt for a while, the land of Lindon beneath the
western feet of the [struck out: Ered] Lunoronti.
(The section enclosed in square brackets is represented in the manu-
script by a mark of omission, obviously meaning that the existing text
was to be followed.) Here the words '[the Gods] bent back the edges of
the Middle-earth' have disappeared; it is the Great Sea in the West and
'the Barren Land' in the East that are 'cast back' by Iluvatar. It is now
said that the new lands and new seas came into being 'where aforetime
nought had been but the paths of the Sun and Moon' (i.e. at the roots of
the world, see the Ambarkanta diagrams IV. 243, 245). This was in turn
lost in the further rewriting (below), where the final and very brief
statement found in the Akallabeth (p. 279) is reached.
This passage is very notable, since the drowning of all Beleriand west
of Lindon is here ascribed to the cataclysm of the Downfall of Numenor;
see the commentaries on FN I and II, $14. The name Lunoronti of the
Blue Mountains has not occurred previously (but see the Etymologies,
stem LUG^2); and this is perhaps the first occurrence of the name Lindon
for the ancient Ossiriand, or such of it as remained above the sea (see the
commentary on QS $108).
The second form of this revised version of $8 follows immediately in
the manuscript:
Then Iluvatar cast back the Great Sea west of Middle-earth, and the
Empty Land east of it, and new lands and new seas were made; and the
world was diminished: for Valinor and Eressea were taken from it into
the realm of hidden things. And thereafter however a man might sail,
he could never again reach the True West, but would come back weary
at last to the place of his beginning; for all lands and seas were equally
distant from the centre of the earth, and all roads were bent. There was
flood and great confusion of waters in that time, and sea covered much
that in the Elder Days had been dry, both in the West and East of
Middle-earth.
Thus the passage concerning the drowning of Beleriand at the time of the
Numenorean cataclysm and the survival of Lindon was again removed.
In this form my father then copied it onto the typescript, with change of
Empty Land to Empty Lands. (If this region, called in the first version
the Barren Land, is to be related to the Ambarkanta map V (IV. 251) it
must be what is there called the Burnt Land of the Sun; perhaps also the
Dark Land, which is there shown as a new continent, formed from the
southern part of Pelmar or Middle-earth (map IV) after the vast exten-
sion of the former inland sea of Ringil at the time of the breaking of
Utumno). - The expression Elder Days is not found in any writing of my
father's before this.
The second passage is the concluding paragraph in FN II $14, con-
cerning Beleriand and the Last Alliance. Here a few pencilled changes
were made to the typescript: Thu was changed to Sauron except in the
sentence 'that is in the Gnomish tongue named Thu', where Thu >
Corthu (see p. 338); 'in Beleriand there arose a king' > 'in Lindon...';
and Gil-galad is descended from Finrod, not Feanor. The passage in the
typescript was then struck through, with a direction to introduce a
substitute. This substitute is found on the reverse of the loose page
giving the two forms of the rewriting of $8, and was obviously written at
the same time as those. It reads as follows:
But there remains a legend of Beleriand. Now that land had been
broken in the Great Battle with Morgoth; and at the fall of Numenor
and the change of the fashion of the world it perished; for the sea
covered all that was left save some of the mountains that remained as
islands, even up to the feet of Eredlindon. But that land where Luthien
had dwelt remained, and was called Lindon. A gulf of the sea came
through it, and a gap was made in the Mountains through which the
River Lhun flowed out. But in the land that was left north and south of
the gulf the Elves remained, and Gil-galad son of Felagund son of
Finrod was their king. And they made Havens in the Gulf of Lhun
whence any of their people, or any other of the Elves that fled from the
darkness and sorrow of Middle-earth, could sail into the True West
and return no more. In Lindon Sauron had as yet no dominion. And it
is said that the brethren Elendil and Valandil escaping from the fall of
Numenor came at last to the mouths of the rivers that flowed into the
Western Sea. And Elendil (that is Elf-friend), who had aforetime
loved the folk of Eressea, came to Lindon and dwelt there a while, and
passed into Middle-earth and established a realm in the North. But
Valandil sailed up the Great River Anduin and established another
realm far to the South. But Sauron dwelt in Mordor the Black Country,
and that was not very distant from Ondor the realm of Valandil; and
Sauron made war against all Elves and all Men of Westernesse or
others that aided them, and Valandil was hard pressed. Therefore
Elendil and Gil-galad seeing that unless some stand were made Sauron
would become lord of [?all] Middle-earth they took counsel together,
and they made a great league. And Gil-galad and Elendil marched into
the Middle-earth [?and gathered force of Men and Elves, and they
assembled at Imladrist].
Towards the end the text degenerates into a scribble and the final words
are a bit doubtful. If the name Imladrist is correctly interpreted there is
certainly a further letter after the s, which must be a t .Cf. The Tale of
Years in The Lord of the Rings (Appendix B): Second Age 3431 'Gil-
galad and Elendil march east to Imladris.'
All this passage was in turn struck through, and not copied into the
typescript. It will be seen that it brings in the new matter concerning
Beleriand and Lindon which appeared in the first form of the revision of
$8 but was then removed (pp. 31 - 2); and in addition many important
new elements have entered. Gil-galad is the son of Felagund; it is now
explicit that Elendil was one of the survivors of Numenor, and he has a
brother named Valandil (the name of his father in The Lost Road); the
river Lhun appears, and its gulf, and the gap in the Blue Mountains
through which it flowed; the Elves of Lindon built havens on the Gulf
of Lhun; Elendil established a kingdom in the North, east of the
mountains, and Valandil, sailing up the Anduin, founded his realm of
Ondor not far from Mordor.
Now there is no question that the entire conception of Gondor arose in
the course of the composition of The Lord of the Rings. Moreover my
father pencilled the following notes (also struck through) at the end of
the typescript:
More of this is told in The Lord of the Rings
Only alteration required is this:
(1) Many Elves remained behind
(2) Beleriand was all sunk except for a few islands = mountains,
and part of Ossiriand (called Lindon) where Gil-galad dwelt.
(3) Elrond remained with Gil-galad. Or else sailed back to
Middle-earth. The Half-elven.
The second of these is decisive, since the passage last given clearly
contains a working-up of this note; and it is clear that all the rewritings of
the second version of The Fall of Numenor considered here come from
several years later. FN II represents the form of the work at the time
when The Lord of the Rings was begun. On the other hand, these
revisions come from a time when it was a long way from completion, as is
seen by the form Ondor, and by the brothers Elendil and Valandil,
founders of the Numenorean kingdoms in Middle-earth.
Apart from these major passages of revision there were few other
changes made to the typescript copy of FN II, and those very minor, save
for the substitution of Elros for Elrond at both occurrences in $2. This
belongs to the pre-Lord of the Rings period, as is seen from the appear-
ance of Elros in the conclusion of QS (see p. 337, commentary on $28).*
<The third 'alteration' required (in the notes on the typescript of FN I I), that
'Elrond remained with Gil-galad, or else sailed back to Middle-earth', presum-
ably takes account of this change, and means that my father had not yet
determined whether or not Elrond originally went to Numenor with his brother
Elros.
Years in The Lord of the Rings (Appendix B): Second Age 3431 'Gil-
galad and Elendil march east to Imladris.'
All this passage was in turn struck through, and not copied into the
typescript. It will be seen that it brings in the new matter concerning
Beleriand and Lindon which appeared in the first form of the revision of
$8 but was then removed (pp. 31 - 2); and in addition many important
new elements have entered. Gil-galad is the son of Felagund; it is now
explicit that Elendil was one of the survivors of Numenor, and he has a
brother named Valandil (the name of his father in The Lost Road); the
river Lhun appears, and its gulf, and the gap in the Blue Mountains
through which it flowed; the Elves of Lindon built havens on the Gulf
of Lhun; Elendil established a kingdom in the North, east of the
mountains, and Valandil, sailing up the Anduin, founded his realm of
Ondor not far from Mordor.
Now there is no question that the entire conception of Gondor arose in
the course of the composition of The Lord of the Rings. Moreover my
father pencilled the following notes (also struck through) at the end of
the typescript:
More of this is told in The Lord of the Rings
Only alteration required is this:
(1) Many Elves remained behind
(2) Beleriand was all sunk except for a few islands = mountains,
and part of Ossiriand (called Lindon) where Gil-galad dwelt.
(3) Elrond remained with Gil-galad. Or else sailed back to
Middle-earth. The Half-elven.
The second of these is decisive, since the passage last given clearly
contains a working-up of this note; and it is clear that all the rewritings of
the second version of The Fall of Numenor considered here come from
several years later. FN II represents the form of the work at the time
when The Lord of the Rings was begun. On the other hand, these
revisions come from a time when it was a long way from completion, as is
seen by the form Ondor, and by the brothers Elendil and Valandil,
founders of the Numenorean kingdoms in Middle-earth.
Apart from these major passages of revision there were few other
changes made to the typescript copy of FN II, and those very minor, save
for the substitution of Elros for Elrond at both occurrences in $2. This
belongs to the pre-Lord of the Rings period, as is seen from the appear-
ance of Elros in the conclusion of QS (see p. 337, commentary on $28).*
(*The third 'alteration' required (in the notes on the typescript of FN II), that
'Elrond remained with Gil-galad, or else sailed back to Middle-earth', presum-
ably takes account of this change, and means that my father had not yet
determined whether or not Elrond originally went to Numenor with his brother
Elros).
My father next wrote a fine new manuscript incorporating the changes
made to the typescript of FN II - but now wholly omitting the con-
cluding passage ($14) concerning Beleriand and the Last Alliance, and
ending with the words 'there were wars among the mighty of Middle-
earth, of which only the echoes now remain.' This version, improved and
altered in detail, shows however very little further advance in narrative
substance, and clearly belongs to the same period as the revisions studied
in this section.
III.
THE LOST ROAD.
(i)
The opening chapters.
For the texts of The Lost Roar( and its relation to The Fall of Numenor see
pp. 8 - g. I give here the two completed chapters at the beginning of the
work, following them with a brief commentary.
Chapter I
A Step Forward. Young Alboin *
'Alboin! Alboin! '
There was no answer. There was no one in the play-room.
'Alboin!' Oswin Errol stood at the door and called into the small
high garden at the back of his house. At length a young voice
answered, sounding distant and like the answer of someone asleep
or just awakened.
'Yes?'
'Where are you?'
'Here! '
'Where is "here"?'
'Here: up on the wall, father.'
Oswin sprang down the steps from the door into the garden,
and walked along the flower-bordered path. It led after a turn to a
low stone wall, screened from the house by a hedge. Beyond the
stone wall there was a brief space of turf, and then a cliff-edge,
beyond which outstretched, and now shimmering in a calm
evening, the western sea. Upon the wall Oswin found his son, a
boy about twelve years old, lying gazing out to sea with his chin in
his hands.
'So there you are!' he said. 'You take a deal of calling. Didn't
you hear me?'
'Not before the time when I answered,' said Alboin.
'Well, you must be deaf or dreaming,' said his father. 'Dream-
(*The title was put in afterwards, as was that of Chapter II; see p. 78).
ing, it looks like. It is getting very near bed-time; so, if you want
any story tonight, we shall have to begin at once.'
'I am sorry, father, but I was thinking.'
'What about? '
'Oh, lots of things mixed up: the sea, and the world, and
Alboin.'
'Alboin? '
'Yes. I wondered why Alboin. Why am I called Alboin? They
often ask me "Why Alboin?" at school, and they call me All-bone.
But I am not, am I?'
'You look rather bony, boy; but you are not all bone, I am glad
to say. I am afraid I called you Alboin, and that is why you are
called it. I am sorry: I never meant it to be a nuisance to you.'
'But it is a real name, isn't it?' said Alboin eagerly. 'I mean, it
means something, and men have been called it? It isn't just
invented? '
'Of course not. It is just as real and just as good as Oswin; and it
belongs to the same family, you might say. But no one ever
bothered me about Oswin. Though I often used to get called
Oswald by mistake. I remember how it used to annoy me, though
I can't think why. I was rather particular about my name.'
They remained talking on the wall overlooking the sea; and did
not go back into the garden, or the house, until bed-time. Their
talk, as often happened, drifted into story-telling; and Oswin told
his son the tale of Alboin son of Audoin, the Lombard king; and of
the great battle of the Lombards and the Gepids, remembered as
terrible even in the grim sixth century; and of the kings Thurisind
and Cunimund, and of Rosamunda. 'Not a good story for near
bed-time,' he said, ending suddenly with Alboin's drinking from
the jewelled skull of Cunimund,
'I don't like that Alboin much,' said the boy. 'I like the Gepids
better, and King Thurisind. I wish they had won. Why didn't you
call me Thurisind or Thurismod?'
'Well, really mother had meant to call you Rosamund, only you
turned up a boy. And she didn't live to help me choose another
name, you know. So I took one out of that story, because it seemed
to fit. I mean, the name doesn't belong only to that story, it is
much older. Would you rather have been called Elf-friend? For
that's what the name means.'
'No-o,' said Alboin doubtfully. 'I like names to mean some-
thing, but not to say something.'
'Well, I might have called you AElfwine, of course; that is the
Old English form of it. I might have called you that, not only after
AElfwine of Italy, but after all the Elf-friends of old; after AElfwine,
King Alfred's grandson, who fell in the great victory in 937, and
AElfwine who fell in the famous defeat at Maldon, and many other
Englishmen and northerners in the long line of Elf-friends. But I
gave you a latinized form. I think that is best. The old days of the
North are gone beyond recall, except in so far as they have been
worked into the shape of things as we know it, into Christendom.
So I took Alboin; for it is not Latin and not Northern, and that is
the way of most names in the West, and also of the men that bear
them. I might have chosen Albinus, for that is what they some-
times turned the name into; and it wouldn't have reminded your
friends of bones. But it is too Latin, and means something in
Latin. And you are not white or fair, boy, but dark. So Alboin you
are. And that is all there is to it, except bed.' And they went in.
But Alboin looked out of his window before getting into bed;
and he could see the sea beyond the edge of the cliff. It was a late
sunset, for it was summer. The sun sank slowly to the sea, and
dipped red beyond the horizon. The light and colour faded
quickly from the water: a chilly wind came up out of the West, and
over the sunset-rim great dark clouds sailed up, stretching huge
wings southward and northward, threatening the land.
'They look like the eagles of the Lord of the West coming upon
Numenor,' Alboin said aloud, and he wondered why. Though it
did not seem very strange to him. In those days he often made up
names. Looking on a familiar hill, he would see it suddenly
standing in some other time and story: 'the green shoulders of
Amon-ereb,' he would say. 'The waves are loud upon the shores of
Beleriand,' he said one day, when storm was piling water at the
foot of the cliff below the house.
Some of these names were really made up, to please himself
with their sound (or so he thought); but others seemed 'real', as if
they had not been spoken first by him. So it was with Numenor. 'I
like that,' he said to himself. 'I could think of a long story about the
land of Numenor.'
But as he lay in bed, he found that the story would not be
thought. And soon he forgot the name; and other thoughts
crowded in, partly due to his father's words, and partly to his own
day-dreams before.
'Dark Alboin,' he thought. 'I wonder if there is any Latin in me.
Not much, I think. I love the western shores, and the real sea - it
is quite different from the Mediterranean, even in stories. I wish
there was no other side to it. There were darkhaired people who
were not Latins. Are the Portuguese Latins? What is Latin? I
wonder what kind of people lived in Portugal and Spain and
Ireland and Britain in old days, very old days, before the Romans,
or the Carthaginians. Before anybody else. I wonder what the man
thought who was the first to see the western sea.'
Then he fell asleep, and dreamed. But when he woke the dream
slipped beyond recall, and left no tale or picture behind, only the
feeling that these had brought: the sort of feeling Alboin con-
nected with long strange names. And he got up. And summer
slipped by, and he went to school and went on learning Latin.
Also he learned Greek. And later, when he was about fifteen, he
began to learn other languages, especially those of the North: Old
English, Norse, Welsh, Irish. This was not much encouraged -
even by his father, who was an historian. Latin and Greek, it
seemed to be thought, were enough for anybody; and quite
old-fashioned enough, when there were so many successful modern
languages (spoken by millions of people); not to mention maths
and all the sciences.
But Alboin liked the flavour of the older northern languages,
quite as much as he liked some of the things written in them. He
got to know a bit about linguistic history, of course; he found that
you rather had it thrust on you anyway by the grammar-writers of
'unclassical' languages. Not that he objected: sound-changes were
a hobby of his, at the age when other boys were learning about the
insides of motor-cars. But, although he had some idea of what
were supposed to be the relationships of European languages, it
did not seem to him quite all the story. The languages he liked had
a definite flavour - and to some extent a similar flavour which they
shared. It seemed, too, in some way related to the atmosphere of
the legends and myths told in the languages.
One day, when Alboin was nearly eighteen, he was sitting in the
study with his father. It was autumn, and the end of summer
holidays spent mostly in the open. Fires were coming back. It
was the time in all the year when book-lore is most attractive (to
those who really like it at all). They were talking 'language'. For
Errol encouraged his boy to talk about anything he was interested
in; although secretly he had been wondering for some time
whether Northern languages and legends were not taking up more
time and energy than their practical value in a hard world justified.
'But I had better know what is going on, as far as any father can,'
he thought. 'He'll go on anyway, if he really has a bent - and it had
better not be bent inwards.'
Alboin was trying to explain his feeling about 'language-
atmosphere'. 'You get echoes coming through, you know,' he said,
'in odd words here and there - often very common words in their
own language, but quite unexplained by the etymologists; and in
the general shape and sound of all the words, somehow; as if
something was peeping through from deep under the surface.'
'Of course, I am not a philologist,' said his father; 'but I never
could see that there was much evidence in favour of ascribing
language-changes to a substratum. Though I suppose underlying
ingredients do have an influence, though it is not easy to define, on
the final mixture in the case of peoples taken as a whole, different
national talents and temperaments, and that sort of thing. But
races, and cultures, are different from languages.'
'Yes,' said Alboin; 'but very mixed up, all three together. And
after all, language goes back by a continuous tradition into the
past, just as much as the other two. I often think that if you knew
the living faces of any man's ancestors, a long way back, you might
find some queer things. You might find that he got his nose quite
clearly from, say, his mother's great-grandfather; and yet that
something about his nose, its expression or its set or whatever you
like to call it, really came down from much further back, from,
say, his father's great-great-great-grandfather or greater. Anyway
I like to go back - and not with race only, or culture only, or
language; but with all three. I wish I could go back with the three
that are mixed in us, father; just the plain Errols, with a little
house in Cornwall in the summer. I wonder what one would see.'
'It depends how far you went back,' said the elder Errol. 'If you
went back beyond the Ice-ages, I imagine you would find nothing
in these parts; or at any rate a pretty beastly and uncomely race,
and a tooth-and-nail culture, and a disgusting language with no
echoes for you, unless those of food-noises.'
'Would you?' said Alboin. 'I wonder.'
'Anyway you can't go back,' said his father; 'except within the
limits prescribed to us mortals. You can go back in a sense by
honest study, long and patient work. You had better go in for
archaeology as well as philology: they ought to go well enough
together, though they aren't joined very often.'
'Good idea,' said Alboin. 'But you remember, long ago, you
said I was not all-bone. Well, I want some mythology, as well. I
want myths, not only bones and stones.'
'Well, you can have 'em! Take the whole lot on! ' said his father
laughing. 'But in the meanwhile you have a smaller job on hand.
Your Latin needs improving (or so I am told), for school pur-
poses. And scholarships are useful in lots of ways, especially for
folk like you and me who go in for antiquated subjects. Your first
shot is this winter, remember.'
'I wish Latin prose was not so important,' said Alboin. 'I am
really much better at verses.'
'Don't go putting any bits of your Eressean,or Elf-latin,o r
whatever you call it, into your verses at Oxford. It might scan, but
it wouldn't pass.
'Of course not!' said the boy, blushing. The matter was too
private, even for private jokes. 'And don't go blabbing about
Eressean outside the partnership,' he begged; 'or I shall wish I
had kept it quiet.'
'Well, you did pretty well. I don't suppose I should ever have
heard about it, if you hadn't left your note-books in my study.
Even so I don't know much about it. But, my dear lad, I shouldn't
dream of blabbing, even if I did. Only don't waste too much time
on it. I am afraid I am anxious about that schol[arship], not only
from the highest motives. Cash is not too abundant.'
'Oh, I haven't done anything of that sort for a long while, at least
hardly anything,' said Alboin.
'It isn't getting on too well, then?'
'Not lately. Too much else to do, I suppose. But I got a lot of
jolly new words a few days ago: I am sure lomelinde' means
nightingale, for instance, and certainly lome is night (though not
darkness). The verb is very sketchy still. But - ' He hesitated.
Reticence (and uneasy conscience) were at war with his habit of
what he called 'partnership with the pater', and his desire to
unbosom the secret anyway. 'But, the real difficulty is that another
language is coming through, as well. It seems to be related but
quite different, much more - more Northern. Alda was a tree (a
word I got a long time ago); in the new language it is galadh, and
orn. The Sun and Moon seem to have similar names in both:
Anar and Isil beside Anor and Ithil. I like first one, then the other,
in different moods. Beleriandic is really very attractive; but it
complicates things.'
'Good Lord!' said his father, 'this is serious! I will respect
unsolicited secrets. But do have a conscience as well as a heart, and
- moods. Or get a Latin and Greek mood!'
'I do. I have had one for a week, and I have got it now; a Latin
one luckily, and Virgil in particular. So here we part.' He got up. 'I
am going to do a bit of reading. I'll look in when I think you ought
to go to bed.' He closed the door on his father's snort.
As a matter of fact Errol did not really like the parting shot. The
affection in it warmed and saddened him. A late marriage had left
him now on the brink of retirement from a schoolmaster's small
pay to his smaller pension, just when Alboin was coming of
University age. And he was also (he had begun to feel, and this
year to admit in his heart) a tired man. He had never been a strong
man. He would have liked to accompany Alboin a great deal
further on the road, as a younger father probably would have
done; but he did not somehow think he would be going very far.
'Damn it,' he said to himself, 'a boy of that age ought not to be
thinking such things, worrying whether his father is getting
enough rest. Where's my book?'
Alboin in the old play-room, turned into junior study, looked
out into the dark. He did not for a long time turn to books. 'I wish
life was not so short, ' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and
so do all the things one wants to know about. And the pater, he is
looking tired. I want him for years. If he lived to be a hundred I
should be only about as old as he is now. and I should still want
him. But he won't, I wish we could stop getting old. The pater
could go on working and write that book he used to talk about,
about Cornwall; and we could go on talking. He always plays up,
even if he does not agree or understand. Bother Eressean. I wish
he hadn't mentioned it. I am sure I shall dream tonight; and it is so
exciting. The Latin-mood will go. He is very decent about it, even
though he thinks I am making it all up. If I were, I would stop it to
please him. But it comes, and I simply can't let it slip when it does.
Now there is Beleriandic.'
Away west the moon rode in ragged clouds. The sea glimmered
palely out of the gloom, wide, flat, going on to the edge of the
world. 'Confound you, dreams! ' said Alboin. 'Lay off, and let me
do a little patient work at least until December. A schol[arship]
would brace the pater.'
He found his father asleep in his chair at half past ten. They
went up to bed together. Alboin got into bed and slept with no
shadow of a dream. The Latin-mood was in full blast after
breakfast; and the weather allied itself with virtue and sent
torrential rain.
Chapter II.
Alboin and Audoin.
Long afterwards Alboin remembered that evening, that had
marked the strange, sudden, cessation of the Dreams. He had got
a scholarship (the following year) and had 'braced the pater'. He
had behaved himself moderately well at the university - not too
many side-issues (at least not what he called too many); though
neither the Latin nor the Greek mood had remained at all steadily
to sustain him through 'Honour Mods.' They came back, of
course, as soon as the exams were over. They would. He had
switched over, all the same, to history, and had again 'braced the
pater' with a 'first-class'. And the pater had needed bracing.
Retirement proved quite different from a holiday: he had seemed
just to slip slowly out. He had hung on just long enough to see
Alboin into his first job: an assistant lecturership in a university
college.
Rather disconcertingly the Dreams had begun again just before
'Schools', and were extraordinarly strong in the following vacation
- the last he and his father had spent together in Cornwall. But at
that time the Dreams had taken a new turn, for a while.
He remembered one of the last conversations of the old pleasant
sort he had been able to have with the old man. It came back
clearly to him now.
'How's the Eressean Elf-latin, boy?' his father asked, smiling,
plainly intending a joke, as one may playfully refer to youthful
follies long atoned for.
'Oddly enough,' he answered, 'that hasn't been coming through
lately. I have got a lot of different stuff. Some is beyond me, yet.
Some might be Celtic, of a sort. Some seems like a very old form of
Germanic; pre-runic, or I'll eat my cap and gown.'
The old man smiled, almost raised a laugh. 'Safer ground, boy,
safer ground for an historian. But you'll get into trouble, if you let
your cats out of the bag among the philologists - unless, of course,
they back up the authorities.'
'As a matter of fact, I rather think they do,' he said.
'Tell me a bit, if you can without your note-books,' his father
slyly said.
Westra lage wegas rehtas, nu isti sa wraithas. ' He quoted that,
because it had stuck in his mind, though he did not understand it.
Of course the mere sense was fairly plain: a straight road lay
westward, now it is bent. He remembered waking up, and feeling
it was somehow very significant. 'Actually I got a bit of plain
Anglo-Saxon last night,' he went on. He thought Anglo-Saxon
would please his father; it was a real historical language, of which
the old man had once known a fair amount. Also the bit was very
fresh in his mind, and was the longest and most connected he had
yet had. Only that very morning he had waked up late, after a
dreamful night, and had found himself saying the lines. He jotted
them down at once, or they might have vanished (as usual) by
breakfast-time, even though they were in a language he knew.
Now waking memory had them secure.
'Thus cwaeth AElfwine Widlast:
Fela bith on Westwegum werum uncuthra
wundra and wihta, wlitescene land,
eardgeard elfa, and esa bliss.
Lyt aenig wat hwylc his longath sie
tham the eftsithes eldo getwaefeth.'
His father looked up and smiled at the name AElfwine. He
translated the lines for him; probably it was not necessary, but the
old man had forgotten many other things he had once known
much better than Anglo-Saxon.
'Thus said AElfwine the far-travelled: "There is many a thing in
the West-regions unknown to men, marvels and strange beings, a
land fair and lovely, the homeland of the Elves, and the bliss of the
Gods. Little doth any man know what longing is his whom old age
cutteth off from return."'
He suddenly regretted translating the last two lines. His father
looked up with an odd expression. 'The old know,' he said. 'But
age does not cut us off from going away, from - from forthsith.
There is no eftsith: we can't go back. You need not tell me that.
But good for AElfwine-Alboin. You could always do verses.'
Damn it - as if he would make up stuff like that, just to tell it to
the old man, practically on his death-bed. His father had, in fact,
died during the following winter.
On the whole he had been luckier than his father; in most ways,
but not in one. He had reached a history professorship fairly early;
but he had lost his wife, as his father had done, and had been left
with an only child, a boy, when he was only twenty-eight.
He was, perhaps, a pretty good professor, as they go. Only in a
small southern university, of course, and he did not suppose he
would get a move. But at any rate he wasn't tired of being one; and
history, and even teaching it, still seemed interesting (and fairly
important). He did his duty, at least, or he hoped so. The
boundaries were a bit vague. For, of course, he had gone on with
the other things, legends and languages - rather odd for a history
professor. Still there it was: he was fairly learned in such book-
lore, though a lot of it was well outside the professional borders.
And the Dreams. They came and went. But lately they had
been getting more frequent, and more - absorbing. But still
tantalizingly linguistic. No tale, no remembered pictures; only
the feeling that he had seen things and heard things that he wanted
to see, very much, and would give much to see and hear again -
and these fragments of words, sentences, verses. Eressean as he
called it as a boy - though he could not remember why he had felt
so sure that that was the proper name - was getting pretty
complete. He had a lot of Beleriandic, too, and was beginning to
understand it, and its relation to Eressean. And he had a lot of
unclassifiable fragments, the meaning of which in many cases he
did not know, through forgetting to jot it down while he knew
it. And odd bits in recognizable languages. Those might be
explained away, of course. But anyway nothing could be done
about them: not publication or anything of that sort. He had an
odd feeling that they were not essential: only occasional lapses
of forgetfulness which took a linguistic form owing to some
peculiarity of his own mental make-up. The real thing was the
feeling the Dreams brought more and more insistently, and taking
force from an alliance with the ordinary professional occupations
of his mind. Surveying the last thirty years, he felt he could say
that his most permanent mood, though often overlaid or sup-
pressed, had been since childhood the desire to go back. To walk
in Time, perhaps, as men walk on long roads; or to survey it, as
men may see the world from a mountain, or the earth as a living
map beneath an airship. But in any case to see with eyes and to
hear with ears: to see the lie of old and even forgotten lands, to
behold ancient men walking, and hear their languages as they
spoke them, in the days before the days, when tongues of for-
gotten lineage were heard in kingdoms long fallen by the shores of
the Atlantic.
But nothing could be done about that desire, either. He used to
be able, long ago, to talk about it, a little and not too seriously, to
his father. But for a long while he had had no one to talk to about
that sort of thing. But now there was Audoin. He was growing up.
He was sixteen.
He had called his boy Audoin, reversing the Lombardic order.
It seemed to fit. It belonged anyway to the same name-family, and
went with his own name. And it was a tribute to the memory of his
father - another reason for relinquishing Anglo-Saxon Eadwine,
or even commonplace Edwin. Audoin had turned out remarkably
like Alboin, as far as his memory of young Alboin went, or his
penetration of the exterior of young Audoin. At any rate he
seemed interested in the same things, and asked the same ques-
tions; though with much less inclination to words and names, and
more to things and descriptions. Unlike his father he could draw,
but was not good at 'verses'. Nonetheless he had, of course,
eventually asked why he was called Audoin. He seemed rather
glad to have escaped Edwin. But the question of meaning had not
been quite so easy to answer. Friend of fortune, was it, or of fate,
luck, wealth, blessedness? Which?
'I like Aud,' young Audoin had said - he was then about thirteen
-'if it means all that. A good beginning for a name. I wonder what
Lombards looked like. Did they all have Long Beards?'
Alboin had scattered tales and legends all down Audoin's
childhood and boyhood, like one laying a trail, though he was not
clear what trail or where it led. Audoin was a voracious listener, as
well (latterly) as a reader. Alboin was very tempted to share his
own odd linguistic secrets with the boy. They could at least have
some pleasant private fun. But he could sympathize with his own
father now - there was a limit to time. Boys have a lot to do.
Anyway, happy thought, Audoin was returning from school
tomorrow. Examination-scripts were nearly finished for this year
for both of them. The examiner's side of the business was decid-
edly the stickiest (thought the professor), but he was nearly
unstuck at last. They would be off to the coast in a few days,
together.
There came a night, and Alboin lay again in a room in a house
by the sea: not the little house of his boyhood, but the same sea. It
was a calm night, and the water lay like a vast plain of chipped and
polished flint, petrified under the cold light of the Moon. The path
of moonlight lay from the shore to the edge of sight.
Sleep would not come to him, although he was eager for it. Not
for rest - he was not tired; but because of last night's Dream. He
hoped to complete a fragment that had come through vividly that
morning. He had it at hand in a note-book by his bed-side; not that
he was likely to forget it once it was written down.
ar sauron tule nahamna... lantier turkildi
and ? came ? ... they-fell ?
unuhuine ... tarkalion ohtakare valannar ...
under-Shadow ... ? war-made on-Powers ...
herunumen ilu terhante ... iluvataren ... eari
Lord-of-West world broke ... of-Iluvatar ... seas
ullier kilyanna ... numenore ataltane ...
poured in-Chasm ... Numenor down-fell
Then there had seemed to be a long gap.
malle tera lende numenna ilya si maller
road straight went Westward all now roads
raikar ..... turkildi romenna... nuruhuine mel-lumna
bent ..... ? eastward ... Death-shadow us-is-heavy
...vahaya sin atalante.
...far-away now ?
There were one or two new words here, of which he wanted to
discover the meaning: it had escaped before he could write it down
this morning. Probably they were names: tarkalion was almost
certainly a king's name, for tar was common in royal names. It was
curious how often the remembered snatches harped on the theme
of a 'straight road'. What was atalante? It seemed to mean ruin or
downfall, but also to be a name.
Alboin felt restless. He left his bed and went to the window. He
stood there a long while looking out to sea; and as he stood a chill
wind got up in the West. Slowly over the dark rim of sky and
water's meeting clouds lifted huge heads, and loomed upwards,
stretching out vast wings, south and north.
'They look like the eagles of the Lord of the West over
Numenor,' he said aloud, and started. He had not purposed any
words. For a moment he had felt the oncoming of a great disaster
long foreseen. Now memory stirred, but could not be grasped. He
shivered. He went back to bed and lay wondering. Suddenly the
old desire came over him. It had been growing again for a long
time, but he had not felt it like this, a feeling as vivid as hunger or
thirst, for years, not since he was about Audoin's age.
'I wish there was a "Time-machine",' he said aloud. 'But Time
is not to be conquered by machines. And I should go back, not
forward; and I think backwards would be more possible.'
The clouds overcame the sky, and the wind rose and blew; and
in his ears, as he fell asleep at last, there was a roaring in the leaves
of many trees, and a roaring of long waves upon the shore. 'The
storm is coming upon Numenor!' he said, and passed out of the
waking world.
In a wide shadowy place he heard a voice.
'Elendil!' it said. 'Alboin, whither are you wandering?'
'Who are you?' he answered. 'And where are you?'
A tall figure appeared, as if descending an unseen stair towards
him. For a moment it flashed through his thought that the face,
dimly seen, reminded him of his father.
'I am with you. I was of Numenor, the father of many fathers
before you. I am Elendil, that is in Eressean "Elf-friend", and
many have been called so since. You may have your desire,'
'What desire? '
'The long-hidden and the half-spoken: to go back.'
'But that cannot be, even if I wish it. It is against the law.'
'It is against the rule. Laws are commands upon the will and are
binding. Rules are conditions; they may have exceptions.'
'But are there ever any exceptions?'
'Rules may be strict, yet they are the means, not the ends, of
government. There are exceptions; for there is that which governs
and is above the rules. Behold, it is by the chinks in the wall that
light comes through, whereby men become aware of the light and
therein perceive the wall and how it stands. The veil is woven, and
each thread goes an appointed course, tracing a design; yet the
tissue is not impenetrable, or the design would not be guessed;
and if the design were not guessed, the veil would not be
perceived, and all would dwell in darkness. But these are old
parables, and I came not to speak such things. The world is not a
machine that makes other machines after the fashion of Sauron.
To each under the rule some unique fate is given, and he is
excepted from that which is a rule to others. I ask if you would
have your desire?'
'I would.'
'You ask not: how or upon what conditions.'
'I do not suppose I should understand how, and it does not seem
to me necessary. We go forward, as a rule, but we do not know
how. But what are the conditions?'
'That the road and the halts are prescribed. That you cannot
return at your wish, but only (if at all) as it may be ordained. For
you shall not be as one reading a book or looking in a mirror, but as
one walking in living peril. Moreover you shall not adventure
yourself alone.'
'Then you do not advise me to accept? You wish me to refuse
out of fear?'
'I do not counsel, yes or no. I am not a counsellor. I am a
messenger, a permitted voice. The wishing and the choosing are
for you.'
'But I do not understand the conditions, at least not the last. I
ought to understand them all clearly.'
'You must, if you choose to go back, take with you Herendil,
that is in other tongue Audoin, your son; for you are the ears and
he is the eyes. But you may not ask that he shall be protected from
the consequences of your choice, save as your own will and
courage may contrive.'
'But I can ask him, if he is willing?'
'He would say yes, because he loves you and is bold; but that
would not resolve your choice.'
'And when can I, or we, go back?'
'When you have made your choice.'
The figure ascended and receded. There was a roaring as of seas
falling from a great height. Alboin could still hear the tumult far
away, even after his waking eyes roamed round the room in the
grey light of morning. There was a westerly gale blowing. The
curtains of the open window were drenched, and the room was full
of wind.
He sat silent at the breakfast-table. His eyes strayed continually
to his son's face, watching his expressions. He wondered if Audoin
ever had any Dreams. Nothing that left any memory, it would
appear. Audoin seemed in a merry mood, and his own talk was
enough for him, for a while. But at length he noticed his father's
silence, unusual even at breakfast.
'You look glum, father,' he said. 'Is there some knotty problem
on hand?'
'Yes - well no, not really,' answered Alboin. 'I think I was
thinking, among other things, that it was a gloomy day, and not a
good end to the holidays. What are you going to do?'
'Oh, I say! ' exclaimed Audoin. 'I thought you loved the wind. I
do. Especially a good old West-wind. I am going along the shore.'
'Anything on?'
'No, nothing special - just the wind.'
'Well, what about the beastly wind?' said Alboin, unaccount-
ably irritated.
The boy's face fell. 'I don't know,' he said. 'But I like to be in it,
especially by the sea; and I thought you did.' There was a silence.
After a while Audoin began again, rather hesitatingly: 'Do you
remember the other day upon the cliffs near Predannack, when
those odd clouds came up in the evening, and the wind began to
blow?'
'Yes,' said Alboin in an unencouraging tone.
'Well, you said when we got home that it seemed to remind you
of something, and that the wind seemed to blow through you, like,
like, a legend you couldn't catch. And you felt, back in the quiet,
as if you had listened to a long tale, which left you excited, though
it left absolutely no pictures at all.'
'Did I?' said Alboin. 'I can remember feeling very cold, and
being glad to get back to a fire.' He immediately regretted it, and
felt ashamed. For Audoin said no more; though he felt certain that
the boy had been making an opening to say something more,
something that was on his mind. But he could not help it. He
could not talk of such things to-day. He felt cold. He wanted
peace, not wind.
Soon after breakfast Audoin went out, announcing that he was
off for a good tramp, and would not be back at any rate before
tea-time. Alboin remained behind. All day last night's vision
remained with him, something different from the common order
of dreams. Also it was (for him) curiously unlinguistic - though
plainly related, by the name Numenor, to his language dreams.
He could not say whether he had conversed with Elendil in
Eressean or English.
He wandered about the house restlessly. Books would not be
read, and pipes would not smoke. The day slipped out of his hand,
running aimlessly to waste. He did not see his son, who did not
even turn up for tea, as he had half promised to do. Dark seemed
to come unduly early.
In the late evening Alboin sat in his chair by the fire. 'I dread
this choice,' he said to himself. He had no doubt that there was
really a choice to be made. He would have to choose, one way or
another, however he represented it to himself. Even if he dis-
missed the Dream as what is called 'a mere dream', it would be a
choice - a choice equivalent to no.
'But I cannot make up my mind to no,' he thought. 'I think, I
am almost sure, Audoin would say yes. And he will know of my
choice sooner or later. It is getting more and more difficult to hide
my thoughts from him: we are too closely akin, in many ways
besides blood, for secrets. The secret would become unbearable,
if I tried to keep it. My desire would become doubled through
feeling that I might have, and become intolerable. And Audoin
would probably feel I had robbed him through funk.
'But it is dangerous, perilous in the extreme - or so I am
warned. I don't mind for myself. But for Audoin. But is the peril
any greater than fatherhood lets in? It is perilous to come into the
world at any point in Time. Yet I feel the shadow of this peril more
heavily. Why? Because it is an exception to the rules? Or am
I experiencing a choice backwards: the peril of fatherhood
repeated? Being a father twice to the same person would make one
think. Perhaps I am already moving back. I don't know. I wonder.
Fatherhood is a choice, and yet it is not wholly by a man's will.
Perhaps this peril is my choice, and yet also outside my will. I
don't know. It is getting very dark. How loud the wind is. There is
storm over Numenor.' Alboin slept in his chair.
He was climbing steps, up, up on to a high mountain. He felt,
and thought he could hear, Audoin following him, climbing
behind him. He halted, for it seemed somehow that he was again
in the same place as on the previous night; though no figure could
be seen.
'I have chosen,' he said. 'I will go back with Herendil.'
Then he lay down, as if to rest. Half-turning: 'Good night! ' he
murmured. 'Sleep well, Herendil! We start when the summons
comes.'
'You have chosen,' a voice said above him. 'The summons is at
hand.'
Then Alboin seemed to fall into a dark and a silence, deep and
absolute. It was as if he had left the world completely, where all
silence is on the edge of sound, and filled with echoes, and where
all rest is but repose upon some greater motion. He had left the
world and gone out. He was silent and at rest: a point.
He was poised; but it was clear to him that he had only to will it,
and he would move.
'Whither?' He perceived the question, but neither as a voice
from outside, nor as one from within himself.
'To whatever place is appointed. Where is Herendil?'
'Waiting. The motion is yours.'
'Let us move! '
Audoin tramped on, keeping within sight of the sea as much as
he could. He lunched at an inn, and then tramped on again,
further than he had intended. He was enjoying the wind and the
rain, yet he was filled with a curious disquiet. There had been
something odd about his father this morning.
'So disappointing,' he said to himself. 'I particularly wanted to
have a long tramp with him to-day. We talk better walking, and I
really must have a chance of telling him about the Dreams. I can
talk about that sort of thing to my father, if we both get into the
mood together. Not that he is usually at all difficult - seldom like
to-day. He usually takes you as you mean it: joking or serious;
doesn't mix the two, or laugh in the wrong places. I have never
known him so frosty.'
He tramped on. 'Dreams,' he thought. 'But not the usual sort,
quite different: very vivid; and though never quite repeated, all
gradually fitting into a story. But a sort of phantom story with no
explanations. Just pictures, but not a sound, not a word. Ships
coming to land. Towers on the shore. Battles, with swords
glinting but silent. And there is that ominous picture: the great
temple on the mountain, smoking like a volcano. And that awful
vision of the chasm in the seas, a whole land slipping sideways,
mountains rolling over; dark ships fleeing into the dark. I want to
tell someone about it, and get some kind of sense into it. Father
would help: we could make up a good yarn together out of it. If I
knew even the name of the place, it would turn a nightmare into a
story.
Darkness began to fall long before he got back. 'I hope father
will have had enough of himself and be chatty to-night,' he
thought. 'The fireside is next best to a walk for discussing dreams.'
It was already night as he came up the path, and saw a light in the
sitting-room.
He found his father sitting by the fire. The room seemed very
still, and quiet - and too hot after a day in the open. Alboin sat, his
head rested on one arm. His eyes were closed. He seemed asleep.
He made no sign.
Audoin was creeping out of the room, heavy with disappoint-
ment. There was nothing for it but an early bed, and perhaps
better luck tomorrow. As he reached the door, he thought he
heard the chair creak, and then his father's voice (far away and
rather strange in tone) murmuring something: it sounded like
herendil.
He was used to odd words and names slipping out in a murmur
from his father. Sometimes his father would spin a long tale round
them. He turned back hopefully.
'Good night! ' said Alboin. 'Sleep well, Herendil! We start when
the summons comes.' Then his head fell back against the chair.
'Dreaming,' thought Audoin. 'Good night! '
And he went out, and stepped into sudden darkness.
Commentary on Chapters I and II
Alboin's biography sketched in these chapters is in many respects closely
modelled on my father's own life - though Alboin was not an orphan, and
my father was not a widower. Dates pencilled on the covering page of the
manuscript reinforce the strongly biographical element: Alboin was
born on February 4, (1891 >) 1890, two years earlier than my father.
Audoin was born in September 1918.
'Honour Mods.' (i.e. 'Honour Moderations'), referred to at the begin-
ning of Chapter II, are the first of the two examinations taken in the
Classical languages at Oxford, after two years (see Humphrey Carpenter,
Biography, p. 62); 'Schools', in the same passage, is a name for the final
Oxford examinations in all subjects.
Alboin's father's name Oswin is 'significant': os 'god' and nine 'friend'
(see I V. 208, 212); Elendil's father was Valandil (p. 60). That Errol is to
be associated in some way with Eriol (the Elves' name for AElfwine the
mariner, IV. 206) must be allowed to be a possibility.*
The Lombardic legend.
The Lombards ('Long-beards': Latin Langobardi, Old English Long-
beardan) were a Germanic people renowned for their ferocity. From
their ancient homes in Scandinavia they moved southwards, but very
little is known of their history before the middle of the sixth century. At
that time their king was Audoin, the form of his name in the Historia
Langobardorum by the learned Paul the Deacon, who died about 790.
Audoin and Old English Eadwine (later Edwin) show an exact corres-
pondence, are historically the same name (Old English ea derived from
the original diphthong au). On the meaning of ead see p. 46, and cf.
Eadwine as a name in Old English of the Noldor, IV. 212.
Audoin's son was Alboin, again corresponding exactly to Old English
AElfuine (Elwin). The story that Oswin Errol told his son (p. 37) is
known from the work of Paul the Deacon. In the great battle between the
Lombards and another Germanic people, the Gepids, Alboin son of
Audoin slew Thurismod, son of the Gepid king Thurisind, in single
combat; and when the Lombards returned home after their victory they
(*It is worth mentioning that Oswin Errol's frequent address to Alboin as 'boy'
is not intended to suggest an aloofly schoolmasterish tone. My father frequently
used it to his sons as a term of friendship and affection).
asked Audoin to give his son the rank of a companion of his table, since it
was by his valour that they had won the day. But this Audoin would not
do, for, he said, 'it is not the custom among us that the king's son should
sit down with his father before he has first received weapons from the
king of some other people.' When Alboin heard this he went with forty
young men of the Lombards to king Thurisind to ask this honour from
him. Thurisind welcomed him, invited him to the feast, and seated him
at his right hand, where his dead son Thurismod used to sit.
But as the feast went on Thurisind began to think of his son's death,
and seeing Alboin his slayer in his very place his grief burst forth in
words: 'Very pleasant to me is the seat,' he said, 'but hard is it to look
upon him who sits in it.' Roused by these words the king's second son
Cunimund began to revile the Lombard guests; insults were uttered on
both sides, and swords were grasped. But on the very brink Thurisind
leapt up from the table, thrust himself between the Gepids and the
Lombards, and threatened to punish the first man who began the fight.
Thus he allayed the quarrel; and taking the arms of his dead son he gave
them to Alboin, and sent him back in safety to his father's kingdom.
It is agreed that behind this Latin prose tale of Paul the Deacon, as also
behind his story of Alboin's death, there lies a heroic lay: as early a
vestige of such ancient Germanic poetry as we possess.
Audoin died some ten years after the battle, and Alboin became king of
the Lombards in 565. A second battle was fought against the Gepids,
in which Alboin slew their king Cunimund and took his daughter
Rosamunda captive. At Easter 568 Alboin set out for the conquest of
Italy; and in 572 he was murdered. In the story told by Paul the Deacon,
at a banquet in Verona Alboin gave his queen Rosamunda wine to drink
in a cup made from the skull of king Cunimund, and invited her to drink
merrily with her father ('and if this should seem to anyone impossible,'
wrote Paul, 'I declare that I speak the truth in Christ: I have seen
[Radgisl] the prince holding the very cup in his hand on a feastday and
showing it to those who sat at the table with him.')
Here Oswin Errol ended the story, and did not tell his son how
Rosamunda exacted her revenge. The outcome of her machinations was
that Alboin was murdered in his bed, and his body was buried 'at the
going up of the stairs which are near to the palace,' amid great lamen-
tation of the Lombards. His tomb was opened in the time of Paul the
Deacon by Gislbert dux Veronensium, who took away Alboin's sword
and other gear that was buried with him; 'wherefore he used to boast to
the ignorant with his usual vanity that he has seen Alboin face to face.'
The fame of this formidable king was such that, in the words of Paul,
'even down to our own day, among the Bavarians and the Saxons and
other peoples of kindred speech, his open hand and renown, his success
and courage in war, are celebrated in their songs.' An extraordinary
testimony to this is found in the ancient English poem Widsith, where
occur the following lines:
Swylce ic waes on Eatule mid AElfwine:
se haefde moncynnes mine gefraege
leohteste hond lofes to wyrcenne,
heortan unhneaweste hringa gedales,
beorhta beaga, bearn Eadwines.
(I was in Italy with Alboin: of all men of whom I have heard he had the
hand most ready for deeds of praise, the heart least niggard in the giving
of rings, of shining armlets, the son of Audoin.)*
In my father's letter of 1964 (given on pp. 7 - 8) he wrote as if it had
been his intention to find one of the earlier incarnations of the father and
son in the Lombard story: 'It started with a father-son affinity between
Edwin and Elwin of the present, and was supposed to go back into
legendary time by way of an Eadwine and AElfwine of circa A.D. 918,
and Audoin and Alboin of Lombardic legend...' But there is no
suggestion that at the time this was any more than a passing thought; see
further pp. 77 - 8.
The two Englishmen named AElfwine (p. 38). King Alfred's youngest
son was named AEthelweard, and it is recorded by the twelfth century
historian William of Malmesbury that AEthelweard's sons AElfwine and
AEthelwine both fell at the battle of Brunanburh in 937.
Years later my father celebrated the AElfwine who died at Maldon in
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, where Torhthelm and Tidwald find his
corpse among the slain: 'And here's AElfwine: barely bearded, and his
battle's over.'
Oswin Errol's reference to a 'substratum ' (p. 40) . Put very simply, the
substratum theory attributes great importance, as an explanation of
linguistic change, to the influence exerted on language when a people
abandons their own former speech and adopts another; for such a people
will retain their habitual modes of articulation and transfer them to the
new language, thus creating a substratum underlying it. Different
substrata acting upon a widespread language in different areas is there-
fore regarded as a fundamental cause of divergent phonetic change.
The Old English verses of AElfwine Widlast (p.44). These verses, in
identical form except for certain features of spelling, were used in the
title-pages to the Quenta Silmarillion (p. 203); see also p. 103.
(*The generous heart of Alboin, the hand ready for deeds of praise, made a
different impression on the stricken population of Italy in the sixth century.
From the walls of Rome Pope Gregory the Great watched men being led away by
'the unspeakable Lombards', tied together at the neck to be sold as slaves; and in
one of his letters he welcomed the advent of bubonic plague, for 'when we
consider the way in which other men have died we find a solace in reflecting on
the form of death that threatens us. What mutilations, what cruelties we have
seen inflicted upon men, for which death is the only cure, and in the midst of
which life is a torture! ')
Names and words in the Elvish languages. Throughout, the term
Eressean was a replacement of Numenorean. Perhaps to be compared is
FN II, $2: 'Yet they [the Numenoreans) took on the speech of the Elves
of the Blessed Realm, as it was and is in Eressea.' The term 'Elf-latin',
applied by Alboin to 'Eressean' (pp. 41, 43), is found in the Lhammas
(p. 172). There it refers to the archaic speech of the First Kindred of the
Elves (the Lindar), which 'became early fixed... as a language of high
speech and of writing, and as a common speech among all Elves; and all
the folk of Valinor learned and knew this language.' It was called Qenya,
the Elvish tongue, tarquesta high-speech, and parmalambe the book-
tongue. But it is not explained in The Lost Road why Alboin should have
called the language that 'came through' to him by this term.
Amon-ereb (p. 38): the rough draft of this passage had Amon Gwareth,
changed more than once and ending with Amon Thoros. Amon Ereb (the
Lonely Hill) is found in the Annals of Beleriand (p. 143, annal 340) and
in QS $ 113.
'The shores of Beleriand' (p. 38): the draft has here 'the rocks of the
Falasse'.' The form Falasse' occurs on the Ambarkanta map IV (IV.
249).
'Alda was a tree (a word I got a long time ago)' (p. 41). Alda 'tree' is
found in the very early 'dictionary' (I. 249), where also occurs the word
lome, which Alboin also refers to here, with the meanings 'dusk, gloom,
darkness' (I. 255).
Anar, Isil, and Anor, Ithil (p. 41): in QS $75 the names of the Sun and
Moon given by the Gods are Urin and Isil, and by the Elves Anar and
Rana (see the commentary on that passage).
The Eressean fragment concerning the Downfall of Numenor and the
Straight Road (p. 47) is slightly different in the draft text:
Ar Sauron lende numenorenna... lantie nu huine... ohtakarie
valannar... manwe ilu terhante. eari lantier kilyanna numenor
atalante... malle tera lende numenna, ilya si maller raikar.
Turkildi romenna... nuruhuine me lumna.
And Sauron came to-Numenor... fell under Shadow... war-made
on-Powers... ? ? broke. seas fell into-Chasm. Numenor
down-fell. road straight went westward, all now roads bent. ?
eastward. Death-shadow us is-heavy.
The name Tar-kalion is here not present, but Sauron is (see p. 9), and
is interpreted as being a name. Most notably, this version has manwe
(which Alboin could not interpret) for herunumen 'Lord-of-West' of the
later; on this see p. 75.
On the name Herendil (=Audoin, Eadwine) see the Etymologies, stem
KHER.
(ii).
The Numenorean chapters.
My father said in his letter of 1964 on the subject that 'in my tale we were
to come at last to Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in
Numenor, when it fell under the domination of Sauron.' It is nonetheless
plain that he did not reach this conception until after the extant narrative
had been mostly written, or even brought to the point where it was
abandoned. At the end of Chapter II the Numenorean story is obviously
just about to begin, and the Numenorean chapters were originally
numbered continuously with the opening ones. On the other hand the
decision to postpone Numenor and make it the conclusion and climax to
the book had already been taken when The Last Road went to Allen and
Unwin in November 1937.
Since the Numenorean episode was left unfinished, this is a con-
venient point to mention an interesting note that my father presumably
wrote while it was in progress. This says that when the first 'adventure'
(i.e. Numenor) is over 'Alboin is still precisely in his chair and Audoin
just shutting the door.'
With the postponement of Numenor the chapter-numbers were
changed, but this has no importance and I therefore number these 'III'
and 'IV'; they have no titles. In this case I have found it most convenient
to annotate the text by numbered notes.
Chapter III.
Elendil was walking in his garden, but not to look upon its beauty
in the evening light. He was troubled and his mind was turned
inward. His house with its white tower and golden roof glowed
behind him in the sunset, but his eyes were on the path before his
feet. He was going down to the shore, to bathe in the blue pools of
the cove beyond his garden's end, as was his custom at this hour.
And he looked also to find his son Herendil there. The time had
come when he must speak to him.
He came at length to the great hedge of lavaralda^1 that fenced
the garden at its lower, western, end. It was a familiar sight,
though the years could not dim its beauty. It was seven twelves of
years' or more since he had planted it himself when planning his
garden before his marriage; and he had blessed his good fortune.
For the seeds had come from Eressea far westward, whence ships
came seldom already in those days, and now they came no more.
But the spirit of that blessed land and its fair people remained still
in the trees that had grown from those seeds: their long green
leaves were golden on the undersides, and as a breeze off the water
stirred them they whispered with a sound of many soft voices, and
glistened like sunbeams on rippling waves. The flowers were pale
with a yellow flush, and laid thickly on the branches like a sunlit
snow; and their odour filled all the lower garden, faint but clear.
Mariners in the old days said that the scent of lavaralda could be
felt on the air long ere the land of Eressea could be seen, and that
it brought a desire of rest and great content. He had seen the trees
in flower day after day, for they rested from flowering only at rare
intervals. But now, suddenly, as he passed, the scent struck him
with a keen fragrance, at once known and utterly strange. He
seemed for a moment never to have smelled it before: it pierced
the troubles of his mind, bewildering, bringing no familiar
content, but a new disquiet.
'Eressea, Eressea!' he said. 'I wish I were there; and had not
been fated to dwell in Numenor' half-way between the worlds.
And least of all in these days of perplexity! '
He passed under an arch of shining leaves, and walked swiftly
down rock-hewn steps to the white beach. Elendil looked about
him, but he could not see his son. A picture rose in his mind of
Herendil's white body, strong and beautiful upon the threshold of
early manhood, cleaving the water, or lying on the sand glistening
in the sun. But Herendil was not there, and the beach seemed
oddly empty.
Elendil stood and surveyed the cove and its rocky walls once
more; and as he looked, his eyes rose by chance to his own house
among trees and flowers upon the slopes above the shore, white
and golden, shining in the sunset. And he stopped and gazed: for
suddenly the house stood there, as a thing at once real and
visionary, as a thing in some other time and story, beautiful,
beloved, but strange, awaking desire as if it were part of a mystery
that was still hidden. He could not interpret the feeling.
He sighed. 'I suppose it is the threat of war that maketh me look
upon fair things with such disquiet,' he thought. 'The shadow of
fear is between us and the sun, and all things look as if they were
already lost. Yet they are strangely beautiful thus seen. I do not
know. I wonder. A Numenore! I hope the trees will blossom on
your hills in years to come as they do now; and your towers will
stand white in the Moon and yellow in the Sun. I wish it were not
hope, but assurance - that assurance we used to have before the
Shadow. But where is Herendil? I must see him and speak to him,
more clearly than we have spoken yet. Ere it is too late. The time is
getting short.'
'Herendil!' he called, and his voice echoed along the hollow
shore above the soft sound of the light-falling waves. 'Herendil!'
And even as he called, he seemed to hear his own voice, and to
mark that it was strong and curiously melodious. 'Herendil!' he
called again.
At length there was an answering call: a young voice very clear
came from some distance away - like a bell out of a deep cave.
'Man-ie, atto, man-ie?'
For a brief moment it seemed to Elendil that the words were
strange. 'Man-ie, atto? What is it, father?' Then the feeling
passed.
'Where art thou?'
'Here! '
'I cannot see thee.'
'I am upon the wall, looking down on thee.'
Elendil looked up; and then swiftly climbed another flight of
stone steps at the northern end of the cove. He came out upon a flat
space smoothed and levelled on the top of the projecting spur of
rock. Here there was room to lie in the sun, or sit upon a wide
stone seat with its back against the cliff, down the face of which
there fell a cascade of trailing stems rich with garlands of blue and
silver flowers. Flat upon the stone with his chin in his hands lay a
youth. He was looking out to sea, and did not turn his head as his
father came up and sat down on the seat.
'Of what art thou dreaming, Herendil, that thy ears hear not?'
'I am thinking; I am not dreaming. I am a child no longer.'
'I know thou art not,' said Elendil; 'and for that reason I wished
to find thee and speak with thee. Thou art so often out and away,
and so seldom at home these days.'
He looked down on the white body before him. It was dear to
him, and beautiful. Herendil was naked, for he had been diving
from the high point, being a daring diver and proud of his skill. It
seemed suddenly to Elendil that the lad had grown over night,
almost out of knowledge.
'How thou dost grow!' he said. 'Thou hast the makings of a
mighty man, and have nearly finished the making.'
'Why dost thou mock me?' said the boy. 'Thou knowest I am
dark, and smaller than most others of my year. And that is a
trouble to me. I stand barely to the shoulder of Almariel, whose
hair is of shining gold, and she is a maiden, and of my own age. We
hold that we are of the blood of kings, but I tell thee thy friends'
sons make a jest of me and call me Terendul(4) - slender and dark;
and they say I have Eressean blood, or that I am half-Noldo. And
that is not said with love in these days. It is but a step from being
called half a Gnome to being called Godfearing; and that is
dangerous.'
Elendil sighed. 'Then it must have become perilous to be the
son of him that is named elendil; for that leads to Valandil, God-
friend, who was thy father's father.'
There was a silence. At length Herendil spoke again: 'Of whom
dost thou say that our king, Tarkalion, is descended?'
'From Earendel the mariner, son of Tuor the mighty who was
lost in these seas.'
'Why then may not the king do as Earendel from whom he is
come? They say that he should follow him, and complete his work.'
'What dost thou think that they mean? Whither should he go,
and fulfil what work?'
'Thou knowest. Did not Earendel voyage to the uttermost
West, and set foot in that land that is forbidden to us? He doth not
die, or so songs say.'
'What callest thou Death? He did not return. He forsook all
whom he loved, ere he stepped on that shore.' He saved his
kindred by losing them.'
'Were the Gods wroth with him?'
'Who knoweth? For he came not back. But he did not dare that
deed to serve Melko, but to defeat him; to free men from Melko,
not from the Lords; to win us the earth, not the land of the Lords.
And the Lords heard his prayer and arose against Melko. And the
earth is ours.'
'They say now that the tale was altered by the Eresseans, who
are slaves of the Lords: that in truth Earendel was an adventurer,
and showed us the way, and that the Lords took him captive for
that reason; and his work is perforce unfinished. Therefore the
son of Earendel, our king, should complete it. They wish to do
what has been long left undone.'
'What is that?'
'Thou knowest: to set foot in the far West, and not withdraw it.
To conquer new realms for our race, and ease the pressure of this
peopled island, where every road is trodden hard, and every tree
and grass-blade counted. To be free, and masters of the world. To
escape the shadow of sameness, and of ending. We would make
our king Lord of the West: Nuaran Numenoren(9).Death comes
here slow and seldom; yet it cometh. The land is only a cage gilded
to look like Paradise.'
'Yea, so I have heard others say,' said Elendil. 'But what
knowest thou of Paradise? Behold, our wandering words have
come unguided to the point of my purpose. But I am grieved to
find thy mood is of this sort, though I feared it might be so. Thou
art my only son, and my dearest child, and I would have us at one
in all our choices. But choose we must, thou as well as I - for at thy
last birthday thou became subject to arms and the king's service.
We must choose between Sauron and the Lords (or One Higher).
Thou knowest, I suppose, that all hearts in Numenor are not
drawn to Sauron? '
'Yes. There are fools even in Numenor,' said Herendil, in a
lowered voice. 'But why speak of such things in this open place?
Do you wish to bring evil on me?'
'I bring no evil,' said Elendil. 'That is thrust upon us: the choice
between evils: the first fruits of war. But look, Herendil! Our
house is one of wisdom and guarded learning; and was long
revered for it. I followed my father, as I was able. Dost thou follow
me? What dost thou know of the history of the world or Numenor?
Thou art but four twelves,(10) and wert but a small child when
Sauron came. Thou dost not understand what days were like
before then. Thou canst not choose in ignorance.'
'But others of greater age and knowledge than mine - or thine -
have chosen,' said Herendil. 'And they say that history confirmeth
them, and that Sauron hath thrown a new light on history. Sauron
knoweth history, all history.'
'Sauron knoweth, verily; but he twisteth knowledge. Sauron is
a liar! ' Growing anger caused Elendil to raise his voice as he spoke.
The words rang out as a challenge.
'Thou art mad,' said his son, turning at last upon his side and
facing Elendil, with dread and fear in his eyes. 'Do not say such
things to me! They might, they might...'
'Who are they, and what might they do?' said Elendil, but a chill
fear passed from his son's eyes to his own heart.
'Do not ask! And do not speak - so loud! ' Herendil turned away,
and lay prone with his face buried in his hands. 'Thou knowest it is
dangerous - to us all. Whatever he be, Sauron is mighty, and
hath ears. I fear the dungeons. And I love thee, I love thee.
Atarinya tye-melane.'
Atarinya tye-melane, my father, I love thee: the words sounded
strange, but sweet: they smote Elendil's heart. 'A yonya inye tye-
mela: and I too, my son, I love thee,' he said, feeling each syllable
strange but vivid as he spoke it. 'But let us go within! It is too late
to bathe, The sun is all but gone. It is bright there westwards in
the gardens of the Gods. But twilight and the dark are coming
here, and the dark is no longer wholesome in this land. Let us go
home. I must tell and ask thee much this evening - behind closed
doors, where maybe thou wilt feel safer.' He looked towards the
sea, which he loved, longing to bathe his body in it, as though to
wash away weariness and care. But night was coming.
The sun had dipped, and was fast sinking in the sea. There was
fire upon far waves, but it faded almost as it was kindled. A chill
wind came suddenly out of the West ruffling the yellow water off
shore. Up over the fire-lit rim dark clouds reared; they stretched
out great wings, south and north, and seemed to threaten the land.
Elendil shivered. 'Behold, the eagles of the Lord of the West
are coming with threat to Numenor,' he murmured.
'What dost thou say?' said Herendil. 'Is it not decreed that the
king of Numenor shall be called Lord of the West? '
'It is decreed by the king; but that does not make it so,'
answered Elendil. 'But I meant not to speak aloud my heart's
foreboding. Let us go! '
The light was fading swiftly as they passed up the paths of the
garden amid flowers pale and luminous in the twilight. The trees
were shedding sweet night-scents. A lomelinde began its thrilling
bird-song by a pool.
Above them rose the house. Its white walls gleamed as if
moonlight was imprisoned in their substance; but there was no
moon yet, only a cool light, diffused and shadowless. Through the
clear sky like fragile glass small stars stabbed their white flames. A
voice from a high window came falling down like silver into the
pool of twilight where they walked. Elendil knew the voice: it was
the voice of Firiel, a maiden of his household, daughter of
Orontor. His heart sank, for Firiel was dwelling in his house
because Orontor had departed. Men said he was on a long voyage.
Others said that he had fled the displeasure of the king. Elendil
knew that he was on a mission from which he might never return,
or return too late." And he loved Orontor, and Firiel was fair.
Now her voice sang an even-song in the Eressean tongue, but
made by men, long ago. The nightingale ceased. Elendil stood still
to listen; and the words came to him, far off and strange, as some
melody in archaic speech sung sadly in a forgotten twilight in the
beginning of man's journey in the world.
Illu Iluvatar en kare eldain a firimoin
ar antarota mannar Valion: numessier.....
The Father made the World for elves and mortals, and he gave
it into the hands of the Lords, who are in the West.
So sang Firiel on high, until her voice fell sadly to the question
with which that song ends: man tare antava nin Iluvatar,
Iluvatar, enyare tar i tyel ire Anarinya qeluva? What will
Iluvatar, 0 Iluvatar, give me in that day beyond the end, when
my Sun faileth? '(12)
'E man antavaro? What will he give indeed?' said Elendil; and
stood in sombre thought.
'She should not sing that song out of a window,' said Herendil,
breaking the silence. 'They sing it otherwise now. Melko cometh
back, they say, and the king shall give us the Sun forever.'
'I know what they say,' said Elendil. 'Do not say it to thy father,
nor in his house.' He passed in at a dark door, and Herendil,
shrugging his shoulders, followed him.
Chapter IV.
Herendil lay on the floor, stretched at his father's feet upon a
carpet woven in a design of golden birds and twining plants with
blue flowers. His head was propped upon his hands. His father sat
upon his carved chair, his hands laid motionless upon either arm
of it, his eyes looking into the fire that burned bright upon the
hearth. It was not cold, but the fire that was named 'the heart of
the house' (hon-maren)(13) burned ever in that room. It was more-
over a protection against the night, which already men had begun
to fear.
But cool air came in through the window, sweet and flower-
scented. Through it could be seen, beyond the dark spires of still
trees, the western ocean, silver under the Moon, that was now
swiftly following the Sun to the gardens of the Gods. In the night-
silence Elendil's words fell softly. As he spoke he listened, as if to
another that told a tale long forgotten."
'There" is Iluvatar, the One; and there are the Powers, of
whom the eldest in the thought of Iluvatar was Alkar the Radiant;"
and there are the Firstborn of Earth, the Eldar, who perish not
while the World lasts; and there are also the Afterborn, mortal
Men, who are the children of Iluvatar, and yet under the rule of
the Lords. Iluvatar designed the World, and revealed his design
to the Powers; and of these some he set to be Valar, Lords of the
World and governors of the things that are therein. But Alkar,
who had journeyed alone in the Void before the World, seeking to
be free, desired the World to be a kingdom unto himself. There-
fore he descended into it like a falling fire; and he made war upon
the Lords, his brethren. But they established their mansions in
the West, in Valinor, and shut him out; and they gave battle to
him in the North, and they bound him, and the World had peace
and grew exceeding fair.
'After a great age it came to pass that Alkar sued for pardon; and
he made submission unto Manwe, lord of the Powers, and was set
free. But he plotted against his brethren, and he deceived the
Firstborn that dwelt in Valinor, so that many rebelled and were
exiled from the Blessed Realm. And Alkar destroyed the lights of
Valinor and fled into the night; and he became a spirit dark and
terrible, and was called Morgoth, and he established his dominion
in Middle-earth. But the Valar made the Moon for the Firstborn
and the Sun for Men to confound the Darkness of the Enemy. And
in that time at the rising of the Sun the Afterborn, who are Men,
came forth in the East of the world; but they fell under the shadow
of the Enemy. In those days the exiles of the Firstborn made war
upon Morgoth; and three houses of the Fathers of Men were
joined unto the Firstborn: the house of Beor, and the house of
Haleth, and the house of Hador. For these houses were not subject
to Morgoth. But Morgoth had the victory, and brought all to ruin.
'Earendel was son of Tuor, son of Huor, son of Gumlin, son of
Hador; and his mother was of the Firstborn, daughter of Turgon,
last king of the Exiles. He set forth upon the Great Sea, and he
came at last unto the realm of the Lords, and the mountains of the
West. And he renounced there all whom he loved, his wife and his
child, and all his kindred, whether of the Firstborn or of Men; and
he stripped himself." And he surrendered himself unto Manwe,
Lord of the West; and he made submission and supplication to
him. And he was taken and came never again among Men. But the
Lords had pity, and they sent forth their power, and war was
renewed in the North, and the earth was broken; but Morgoth was
overthrown. And the Lords put him forth into the Void without.
'And they recalled the Exiles of the Firstborn and pardoned
them; and such as returned dwell since in bliss in Eressea, the
Lonely Isle, which is Avallon, for it is within sight of Valinor and
the light of the Blessed Realm. And for the men of the Three
Houses they made Vinya, the New Land, west of Middle-earth in
the midst of the Great Sea, and named it Andor, the Land of Gift;
and they endowed the land and all that lived thereon with good
beyond other lands of mortals. But in Middle-earth dwelt lesser
men, who knew not the Lords nor the Firstborn save by rumour;
and among them were some who had served Morgoth of old, and
were accursed. And there were evil things also upon earth, made
by Morgoth in the days of his dominion, demons and dragons and
mockeries of the creatures of Iluvatar.(18) And there too lay hid
many of his servants, spirits of evil, whom his will governed still
though his presence was not among them. And of these Sauron
was the chief, and his power grew. Wherefore the lot of men in
Middle-earth was evil, for the Firstborn that remained among
them faded or departed into the West, and their kindred, the men
of Numenor, were afar and came only to their coasts in ships that
crossed the Great Sea. But Sauron learned of the ships of Andor,
and he feared them, lest free men should become lords of Middle-
earth and deliver their kindred; and moved by the will of Morgoth
he plotted to destroy Andor, and ruin (if he might) Avallon and
Valinor.(19)
'But why should we be deceived, and become the tools of his
will? It was not he, but Manwe the fair, Lord of the West, that
endowed us with our riches. Our wisdom cometh from the Lords,
and from the Firstborn that see them face to face; and we have
grown to be higher and greater than others of our race - those who
served Morgoth of old. We have knowledge, power, and life
stronger than they. We are not yet fallen. Wherefore the dominion
of the world is ours, or shall be, from Eressea to the East. More can
no mortals have.'
'Save to escape from Death,' said Herendil, lifting his face to his
father's. 'And from sameness. They say that Valinor, where the
Lords dwell, has no further bounds.'
'They say not truly. For all things in the world have an end,
since the world itself is bounded, that it may not be Void. But
Death is not decreed by the Lords: it is the gift of the One, and a
gift which in the wearing of time even the Lords of the West shall
envy.(20) So the wise of old have said. And though we can perhaps
no longer understand that word, at least we have wisdom enough
to know that we cannot escape, unless to a worse fate.'
'But the decree that we of Numenor shall not set foot upon the
shores of the Immortal, or walk in their land - that is only a decree
of Manwe and his brethren. Why should we not? The air there
giveth enduring life, they say.'
'Maybe it doth,' said Elendil; 'and maybe it is but the air which
those need who already have enduring life. To us perhaps it is
death, or madness.'
'But why should we not essay it? The Eresseans go thither, and
yet our mariners in the old days used to sojourn in Eressea without
hurt.'
'The Eresseans are not as we. They have not the gift of death.
But what doth it profit to debate the governance of the world? All
certainty is lost. Is it not sung that the earth was made for us, but
we cannot unmake it, and if we like it not we may remember that
we shall leave it. Do not the Firstborn call us the Guests? See what
this spirit of unquiet has already wrought. Here when I was young
there was no evil of mind. Death came late and without other pain
than weariness. From Eresseans we obtained so many things of
beauty that our land became well nigh as fair as theirs; and maybe
fairer to mortal hearts. It is said that of old the Lords themselves
would walk at times in the gardens that we named for them. There
we set their images, fashioned by Eresseans who had beheld them,
as the pictures of friends beloved.
'There were no temples in this land. But on the Mountain we
spoke to the One, who hath no image. It was a holy place, un-
touched by mortal art. Then Sauron came. We had long heard
rumour of him from seamen returned from the East. The tales
differed: some said he was a king greater than the king of
Numenor; some said that he was one of the Powers, or their
offspring set to govern Middle-earth. A few reported that he was
an evil spirit, perchance Morgoth returned; but at these we
laughed. (21)
'It seems that rumour came also to him of us. It is not many
years - three twelves and eight (22) - but it seems many, since he
came hither. Thou wert a small child, and knew not then what was
happening in the east of this land, far from our western house.
Tarkalion the king was moved by rumours of Sauron, and sent
forth a mission to discover what truth was in the mariners' tales.
Many counsellors dissuaded him. My father told me, and he was
one of them, that those who were wisest and had most knowledge
of the West had messages from the Lords warning them to beware.
For the Lords said that Sauron would work evil; but he could not
come hither unless he were summoned.(23) Tarkalion was grown
proud, and brooked no power in Middle-earth greater than his
own. Therefore the ships were sent, and Sauron was summoned
to do homage.
'Guards were set at the haven of Morionde in the east of the
land,(24) where the rocks are dark, watching at the king's command
without ceasing for the ships' return. It was night, but there was a
bright Moon. They descried ships far off, and they seemed to be
sailing west at a speed greater than the storm, though there was
little wind. Suddenly the sea became unquiet; it rose until it
became like a mountain, and it rolled upon the land. The ships
were lifted up, and cast far inland, and lay in the fields. Upon that
ship which was cast highest and stood dry upon a hill there was a
man, or one in man's shape, but greater than any even of the race
of Numenor in stature.
'He stood upon the rock (25) and said: "This is done as a sign of
power. For I am Sauron the mighty, servant of the Strong"
(wherein he spoke darkly). "I have come. Be glad, men of
Numenor, for I will take thy king to be my king, and the world
shall be given into his hand."
'And it seemed to men that Sauron was great; though they
feared the light of his eyes. To many he appeared fair, to others
terrible; but to some evil. But they led him to the king, and he was
humble before Tarkalion.
'And behold what hath happened since, step by step, At first he
revealed only secrets of craft, and taught the making of many
things powerful and wonderful; and they seemed good. Our ships
go now without the wind, and many are made of metal that
sheareth hidden rocks, and they sink not in calm or storm; but
they are no longer fair to look upon. Our towers grow ever
stronger and climb ever higher, but beauty they leave behind
upon earth. We who have no foes are embattled with impregnable
fortresses - and mostly on the West. Our arms are multiplied as if
for an agelong war, and men are ceasing to give love or care to the
making of other things for use or delight. But our shields are
impenetrable, our swords cannot be withstood, our darts are like
thunder and pass over leagues unerring. Where are our enemies?
We have begun to slay one another. For Numenor now seems
narrow, that was so large. Men covet, therefore, the lands that
other families have long possessed. They fret as men in chains.
'Wherefore Sauron hath preached deliverance; he has bidden
our king to stretch forth his hand to Empire. Yesterday it was over
the East. To-morrow - it will be over the West.
'We had no temples. But now the Mountain is despoiled. Its
trees are felled, and it stands naked; and upon its summit there is a
Temple. It is of marble, and of gold, and of glass and steel, and is
wonderful, but terrible. No man prayeth there. It waiteth. For
long Sauron did not name his master by the name that from old is
accursed here. He spoke at first of the Strong One, of the Eldest
Power, of the Master. But now he speaketh openly of Alkar,(26) of
Morgoth. He hath prophesied his return. The Temple is to be his
house. Numenor is to be the seat of the world's dominion.
Meanwhile Sauron dwelleth there. He surveys our land from the
Mountain, and is risen above the king, even proud Tarkalion, of
the line chosen by the Lords, the seed of Earendel.
'Yet Morgoth cometh not. But his shadow hath come; it lieth
upon the hearts and minds of men. It is between them and the
Sun, and all that is beneath it.'
'Is there a shadow? ' said Herendil. 'I have not seen it. But I have
heard others speak of it; and they say it is the shadow of Death.
But Sauron did not bring that; he promiseth that he will save us
from it.'
'There is a shadow, but it is the shadow of the fear of Death, and
the shadow of greed. But there is also a shadow of darker evil. We
no longer see our king. His displeasure falleth on men, and they go
out; they are in the evening, and in the morning they are not. The
open is insecure; walls are dangerous. Even by the heart of the
house spies may sit. And there are prisons, and chambers under-
ground. There are torments; and there are evil rites. The woods at
night, that once were fair - men would roam and sleep there for
delight, when thou wert a babe - are filled now with horror. Even
our gardens are not wholly clean, after the sun has fallen. And now
even by day smoke riseth from the temple: flowers and grass are
withered where it falleth. The old songs are forgotten or altered;
twisted into other meanings.'
'Yea: that one learneth day by day,' said Herendil. 'But some of
the new songs are strong and heartening. Yet now I hear that some
counsel us to abandon the old tongue. They say we should leave
Eressean, and revive the ancestral speech of Men. Sauron teacheth
it. In this at least I think he doth not well.'
'Sauron deceiveth us doubly. For men learned speech of the
Firstborn, and therefore if we should verily go back to the
beginnings we should find not the broken dialects of the wild men,
nor the simple speech of our fathers, but a tongue of the Firstborn.
But the Eressean is of all the tongues of the Firstborn the fairest,
and they use it in converse with the Lords, and it linketh their
varied kindreds one to another, and them to us. If we forsake it, we
should be sundered from them, and be impoverished." Doubtless
that is what he intendeth. But there is no end to his malice. Listen
now, Herendil, and mark well. The time is nigh when all this evil
shall bear bitter fruit, if it be not cut down. Shall we wait until the
fruit be ripe, or hew the tree and cast it into the fire?'
Herendil got suddenly to his feet, and went to the window. 'It is
cold, father,' he said; 'and the Moon is gone. I trust the garden is
empty. The trees grow too near the house.' He drew a heavy
embroidered cloth across the window, and then returned, crouch-
ing by the fire, as if smitten by a sudden chill.
Elendil leant forward in his chair, and continued in a lowered
voice. 'The king and queen grow old, though all know it not, for
they are seldom seen. They ask where is the undying life that
Sauron promised them if they would build the Temple for
Morgoth. The Temple is built, but they are grown old. But
Sauron foresaw this, and I hear (already the whisper is gone forth)
that he declareth that Morgoth's bounty is restrained by the
Lords, and cannot be fulfilled while they bar the way. To win life
Tarkalion must win the West. (28) We see now the purpose of the
towers and weapons. War is already being talked of - though they
do not name the enemy. But I tell thee: it is known to many that
the war will go west to Eressea: and beyond. Dost thou perceive
the extremity of our peril, and the madness of the king? Yet this
doom draws swiftly near. Our ships are recalled from the
[?corners] of the earth. Hast thou not marked and wondered that
so many are absent, especially of the younger folk, and in the
South and West of our land both works and pastimes languish? In
a secret haven to the North there is a building and forging that
hath been reported to me by trusty messengers.'
'Reported to thee? What dost thou mean, father?' asked
Herendil as if in fear.
'Even what I say. Why dost thou look on me so strangely? Didst
thou think the son of Valandil, chief of the wise men of Numenor,
would be deceived by the lies of a servant of Morgoth? I would not
break faith with the king, nor do I purpose anything to his hurt.
The house of Earendel hath my allegiance while I live. But if I
must choose between Sauron and Manwe, then all else must come
after. I will not bow unto Sauron, nor to his master.'
'But thou speakest as if thou wert a 1eader in this matter - woe i s
me, for I love thee; and though thou swearest allegiance, it will not
save thee from the peril of treason. Even to dispraise Sauron is
held rebellious.'
'I am a leader, my son. And I have counted the peril both for
myself and for thee and all whom I love. I do what is right and my
right to do, but I cannot conceal it longer from thee. Thou must
choose between thy father and Sauron. But I give thee freedom of
choice and lay on thee no obedience as to a father, if I have not
convinced thy mind and heart. Thou shalt be free to stay or go, yea
even to report as may seem good to thee all that I have said. But if
thou stayest and learnest more, which will involve closer counsels
and other [? names] than mine, then thou wilt be bound in honour
to hold thy peace, come what may. Wilt thou stay?'
'Atarinya tye-melane,' said Herendil suddenly, and clasping his
father's knees he laid his [?head there] and wept. 'It is an evil hour
that [?putteth] such a choice on thee,' said his father, laying a
hand on his head. 'But fate calleth some to be men betimes. What
dost thou say? '
'I stay, father.'
The narrative ends here. There is no reason to think that any more
was ever written. The manuscript, which becomes increasingly rapid
towards the end, peters out in a scrawl.
Notes on the Numenorean chapters of The Lost Road.
1. Lavaralda (replacing lavarin) is not mentioned in A Description of
Numenor (Unfinished Tales p. 167) among the trees brought by the
Eldar from Tol-eressea.
2. seven twelves of years is an emendation of four score of years (first
written three score of years); see note 10.
3. Vinya is written above Numenor in the manuscript; it occurs again
in a part of the text that was rewritten (p. 64), rendered 'the New
Land'. The name first appeared in an emendation to FN I (p. 19,
$2)
4. For Terendul see the Etymologies, stem TER, TERES.
5. As the text was originally written there followed here:
Poldor called me Earendel yesterday.'
Elendil sighed. 'But that is a fair name. I love the story above
others; indeed I chose thy name because it recalleth his. But I did
not presume to give his name even to thee, nor to liken myself to
Tuor the mighty, who first of Men sailed these seas. At least thou
canst answer thy foolish friends that Earendel was the chief of
mariners, and surely that is still held worthy of honour in
Numenor? '
'But they care not for Earendel. And neither do I. We wish to
do what he left undone.'
'What dost thou mean?'
'Thou knowest; to set foot in the far West...' (&c. as on p. 60).
6. This is the earliest appearance of a Numenorean named Valandil.
In later rewriting of FN II Valandil is Elendil's brother, and they
are the founders of the Numenorean kingdoms in Middle-earth
(pp. 33 - 4). The name was afterwards given to both an earlier
Numenorean (the first Lord of Andunie) and a later (the youngest
son of Isildur and third King of Arnor): Index to Unfinished Tales,
entries Valandil and references.
7. In the Quenta (IV. 151) it is not told that Tuor was 'lost'. When he felt
old age creeping on him 'he built a great ship Earame, Eagle's Pinion,
and with Idril he set sail into the sunset and the West, and came no
more into any tale or song.' Later the following was added (I V. x 55):
'But Tuor alone of mortal Men was numbered among the elder race,
and joined with the Noldoli whom he loved, and in after time dwelt
still, or so it hath been said, ever upon his ship voyaging the seas of the
Elven-lands, or resting a while in the harbours of the Gnomes of Tol
Eressea; and his fate is sundered from the fate of Men.'
8. This is the final form in the Quenta of the story of Earendel's
landing in Valinor, where in emendations made to the second text
Q II (I V. 156) Earendel 'bade farewell to all whom he loved upon
the last shore, and was taken from them for ever,' and 'Elwing
mourned for Earendel yet found him never again, and they are
sundered till the world endeth.' Later Elendil returns more fully to
the subject (p. 64). In QS the story is further changed, in that
Elwing entered Valinor (see pp. 324 - 5 $$1-2, and commentary).
9. Nuaran Numenoren: the letters or were scratched out in the type-
script (only).
10. Thou art but four twelves replaced Thou art scarce two score and
ten. As in the change recorded in note z, a duodecimal counting
replaces a decimal; but the number of years is in either case very
strange. For Herendil has been called a 'boy', a 'lad', and a 'youth',
and he is 'upon the threshold of early manhood' (p. 58); how then
can he be forty-eight years old? But his age is unequivocally stated,
and moreover Elendil says later (p. 66) that it is 44 years since
Sauron came and that Herendil was then a small child; it can only
be concluded therefore that at this time the longevity of the
Numenoreans implied that they grew and aged at a different rate
from other men, and were not fully adult until about fifty years old.
Cf. Unfinished Tales pp. 224 - 5.
11. Orontor's mission, from which he might never return, seems like a
premonition of the voyage of Amandil into the West, from which he
never returned (Akallabeth pp. 275 - 6).
12. The manuscript (followed by the typescript) is here confused, since
in addition to the text as printed the whole song that Firiel sang is
given as well, with translation; thus the two opening and the two
closing lines and their translations are repeated. It is clear however
from pencilled markings on the manuscript that my father moved at
once to a second version (omitting the greater part of the song)
without striking out the first.
The text of the song was emended in three stages. Changes made
probably very near the time of writing were Valion numenyaron
(translated 'of the Lords of the West') > Valion: numessier in line 2,
and hondo-ninya > indo-ninya in line 9; Vinya was written above
Numenor as an alternative in line 8 (cf. note 3). Before the later
emendations the text ran thus:
Ilu Iluvatar en kare eldain a firimoin
ar antarota mannar Valion: numessier.
Toi aina, mana, meldielto - enga morion:
talantie. Mardello Melko lende: marie.
Eldain en karier Isil, nan hildin Ur-anar.
Toi irimar. Ilqainen antar annar lestanen
Iluvatiren. Ilu vanya, fanya, eari,
i-mar, ar ilqa imen. Irima ye Numenor.
Nan uye sere indo-ninya simen, ullume;
ten si ye tyelma, yeva tyel ar i-narqelion,
ire ilqa yeva notina, hostainieva, yallume:
ananta uva tare farea, ufarea!
Man tare antava nin Iluvatar, Iluvatar
enyare tar i tyel, ire Anarinya qeluva?
The Father made the World for Elves and Mortals, and he gave it
into the hands of the Lords. They are in the West. They are holy,
blessed, and beloved: save the dark one. He is fallen. Melko has
gone from Earth: it is good. For Elves they made the Moon, but
for Men the red Sun; which are beautiful. To all they gave in
measure the gifts of Iluvatar. The World is fair, the sky, the seas,
the earth, and all that is in them. Lovely is Numenor. But my
heart resteth not here for ever; for here is ending, and there will
be an end and the Fading, when all is counted, and all numbered
at last, but yet it will not be enough, not enough. What will the
Father, 0 Father, give me in that day beyond the end when my
Sun faileth?
Subsequently Mardello Melko in line 4 was changed to Melko
Mardello, and lines 5-6 became
En karielto eldain Isil, hildin Ur-anar.
Toi irimar. Ilyain antalto annar lestanen
Then, after the typescript was made, Melko was changed to Alkar
in text and translation; see note 15.
The thought of lines 5 - 6 of the song reappears in Elendil's words
to Herendil later (p. 64): 'But the Valar made the Moon for the
Firstborn and the Sun for Men to confound the Darkness of the
Enemy.' Cf. QS $75 (The Silmarillion p. 99): 'For the Sun was set
as a sign for the awakening of Men and the waning of the Elves; but
the Moon cherishes their memory.'
13. For hon-maren 'heart of the house' see the Etymologies, stem KHO-N.
14. Here the typescript made at Allen and Unwin (p. 8, footnote) ends.
The publishers' reader (see p. 97) said that 'only the preliminary
two chapters... and one of the last chapters... are written.' It
might be supposed that the typescript ended where it does because
no more had been written at that time, but I do not think that this
was the reason. At the point where the typescript breaks off (in the
middle of a manuscript page) there is no suggestion at all of any
interruption in the writing, and it seems far more likely that the
typist simply gave up, for the manuscript here becomes confused
and difficult through rewriting and substitutions.
In the previous parts of The Lost Road I have taken up all
corrections to the manuscript, however quickly and lightly made,
since they all appear in the typescript. From this point there is no
external evidence to show when the pencilled emendations were
made; but I continue to take these up into the text as before.
15. Elendil's long tale to Herendil of the ancient history, from 'There is
Iluvatar, the One' to 'and ruin (if he might) Avallon and Valinor' on
p. 65, is a replacement of the original much briefer passage. This
replacement must be later than the submission of The Lost Road to
Allen and Unwin, for Morgoth is here called Alkar as the text was
first written, not Melko, whereas in the song sung by Firiel in the
previous chapter Melko was only changed in pencil to Alkar, and
this was not taken up into the typescript. The original passage read
thus:
He spoke of the rebellion of Melko [later > Alkar and sub-
sequently], mightiest of the Powers, that began at the making of
the World; and of his rejection by the Lords of the West after he
had wrought evil in the Blessed Realm and caused the exile of the
Eldar, the firstborn of the earth, who dwelt now in Eressea. He
told of Melko's tyranny in Middle-earth, and how he had enslaved
Men; of the wars which the Eldar waged with him, and were
defeated, and of the Fathers of Men that had aided them; how
Earendel brought their prayer to the Lords, and Melko was
overthrown and thrust forth beyond the confines of the World.
Elendil paused and looked down on Herendil. He did not move
or make a sign. Therefore Elendil went on. 'Dost thou not
perceive then, Herendil, that Morgoth is a begetter of evil, and
brought sorrow upon our fathers? We owe him no allegiance
except by fear. For his share of the governance of the World was
forfeit long ago. Nor need we hope in him: the fathers of our race
were his enemies; wherefore we can look for no love from him or
any of his servants. Morgoth doth not forgive. But he cannot
return into the World in present power and form while the Lords
are enthroned. He is in the Void, though his Will remaineth and
guideth his servants. And his will is to overthrow the Lords, and
return, and wield dominion, and have vengeance on those who
obey the Lords.
'But why should we be deceived...' (&c. as on p. 65).
The closing sentences ('But he cannot return into the World...')
closely echo, or perhaps rather are closely echoed by (see note 25) a
passage in FN II ($1).
16. In QS $ 10 it is said that Melko was 'coeval with Manwe'. The name
Alkar 'the Radiant' of Melko occurs, I believe, nowhere outside this
text.
17. See note 8. The reference to Earendel's child shows that Elros had
not yet emerged, as he had not in FN II (p. 34).
18. 'mockeries of the creatures of Iluvatar': cf. FN II $1 and com-
mentary.
19. Here the long replacement passage ends (see note 15), though as
written it continued in much the same words as did the earlier form
('For Morgoth cannot return into the World while the Lords are
enthroned...'); this passage was afterwards struck out.
20. The words 'a gift which in the wearing of time even the Lords of the
West shall envy' were a pencilled addition to the text, and are the
first appearance of this idea: a closely similar phrase is found in a
text of the Ainulindale written years later (cf. The Silmarillion
p. 42: 'Death is their fate, the gift of Iluvatar, which as Time wears
even the Powers shall envy.')
21. Cf. FN I I $5: Some said that he was a king greater than the King of
Numenor; some said that he was one of the Gods or their sons set to
govern Middle-earth. A few reported that he was an evil spirit,
perchance Morgoth himself returned. But this was held to be only a
foolish fable of the wild Men.'
22. This duodecimal computation is found in the text as written; see
note 10.
23. Cf. FN II $5: for [the Lords] said that Sauron would work evil if
he came; but he could not come to Numenor unless he was
summoned and guided by the king's messengers.'
24. The name Morionde occurs, I think, nowhere else. This eastern
haven is no doubt the forerunner of Romenna.
25. This is the story of the coming of Sauron to Numenor found in FN II
$5, which was replaced soon after by a version in which the lifting up
of the ships by a great wave and the casting of them far inland was re-
moved; see pp. 9, 26 - 7. In the first FN II version the sea rose like a
mountain, the ship that carried Sauron was set upon a hill, and
Sauron stood upon the hill to preach his message to the Numenoreans.
In The Lost Road the sea rose like a hill, changed in pencil to
mountain, Sauron's ship was cast upon a high rock, changed in pencil
to hill, and Sauron spoke standing on the rock (left unchanged). This
is the best evidence I can see that of these two companion works (see
notes 15, 21, 23) The Lost Road was written first.
26. Alkar: pencilled alteration of Melko: see note 15.
27. On Eressean ('Elf-latin', Qenya), the common speech of all Elves,
see p. 56. The present passage is the first appearance of the idea of
a linguistic component in the attack by the Numenorean 'govern-
ment' on Eressean culture and influence; cf. The Line of Elros in
Unfinished Tales (p. 222), of Ar-Adunakhor, the twentieth ruler of
Numenor: 'He was the first King to take the sceptre with a title in
the Adunaic tongue... In this reign the Elven-tongues were no
longer used, nor permitted to be taught, but were maintained in
secret by the Faithful'; and of Ar-Gimilzor, the twenty-third ruler:
'he forbade utterly the use of the Eldarin tongues' (very similarly in
the Akallabeth, pp. 267 - 8). But of course at the time of The Lost
Road the idea of Adunaic as one of the languages of Numenor had
not emerged, and the proposal is only that 'the ancestral speech of
Men' should be 'revived'.
28. This goes back to FN I $6: 'Sur said that the gifts of Morgoth were
withheld by the Gods, and that to obtain plenitude of power and
undying life he [the king Angor] must be master of the West.'
There are several pages of notes that give some idea of my father's
thoughts - at a certain stage - for the continuation of the story beyond the
point where he abandoned it. These are in places quite illegible, and in
any case were the concomitant of rapidly changing ideas: they are the
vestiges of thoughts, not statements of formulated conceptions. More
important, some at least of these notes clearly preceded the actual
narrative that was written and were taken up into it, or replaced by
something different, and it may very well be that this is true of them all,
even those that refer to the latter part of the story which was never
written. But they make it very clear that my father was concerned above
all with the relation between the father and the son, which was cardinal.
In Numenor he had engendered a situation in which there was the
potentiality of anguishing conflict between them, totally incommen-
surate with the quiet harmony in which the Errols began - or ended.
The relationship of Elendil and Herendil was subjected to a profound
menace. This conflict could have many narrative issues within the
framework of the known event, the attack on Valinor and the Downfall of
Numenor, and in these notes my father was merely sketching out some
solutions, none of which did he develop or return to again.
An apparently minor question was the words 'the Eagles of the Lord of
the West': what did they mean, and how were they placed within the
story? It seems that he was as puzzled by them as was Alboin Errol when
he used them (pp. 38, 47). He queries whether 'Lord of the West' means
the King of Numenor, or Manwe, or whether it is the title properly of
Manwe but taken in his despite by the King; and concludes 'probably the
latter'. There follows a 'scenario' in which Sorontur King of Eagles is
sent by Manwe, and Sorontur flying against the sun casts a great shadow
on the ground. It was then that Elendil spoke the phrase, but he was
overheard, informed upon, and taken before Tarkalion, who declared
that the title was his. In the story as actually written Elendil speaks the
words to Herendil (p. 62), when he sees clouds rising out of the West in
the evening sky and stretching out 'great wings' - the same spectacle
as made Alboin Errol utter them, and the men of Numenor in the
Akallabeth (p. 277); and Herendil replies that the title has been decreed
to belong to the King. The outcome of Elendil's arrest is not made clear
in the notes, but it is said that Herendil was given command of one of the
ships, that Elendil himself joined in the great expedition because he
followed Herendil, that when they reached Valinor Tarkalion set Elendil
as a hostage in his son's ship, and that when they landed on the shores
Herendil was struck down. Elendil rescued him and set him on ship-
board, and 'pursued by the bolts of Tarkalion' they sailed back east. 'As
they approach Numenor the world bends; they see the land slipping
towards them'; and Elendil falls into the deep and is drowned.> This
group of notes ends with references to the coming of the Numenoreans to
Middle-earth, and to the 'later stories'; 'the flying ships', 'the painted
caves', 'how Elf-friend walked on the Straight Road'.
Other notes refer to plans laid by the 'anti-Saurians' for an assault on
the Temple, plans betrayed by Herendil 'on condition that Elendil is
spared'; the assault is defeated and Elendil captured. Either associated
with this or distinct from it is a suggestion that Herendil is arrested and
imprisoned in the dungeons of Sauron, and that Elendil renounces the
Gods to save his son.
My guess is that all this had been rejected when the actual narrative
was written, and that the words of Herendil that conclude it show that
my father had then in mind some quite distinct solution, in which Elendil
and his son remained united in the face of whatever events overtook
them.+
In the early narratives there is no indication of the duration of the
realm of Numenor from its foundation to its ruin; and there is only one
named king. In his conversation with Herendil, Elendil attributes all the
evils that have befallen to the coming of Sauron: they have arisen
therefore in a quite brief time (forty-four years, p. 66); whereas in the
Akallabeth, when a great extension of Numenorean history had taken
(* It would be interesting to know if a tantalisingly obscure note, scribbled
down in isolation, refers to this dimly-glimpsed story: 'If either fails the other
they perish and do not return. Thus at the last moment Elendil must prevail on
Herendil to hold back, otherwise they would have perished. At that moment he
sees himself as Alboin: and realises that Elendil and Herendil had perished.'
+ I have suggested (p. 31) that since Elendil of Numenor appears in FN II
($ 14) as king in Beleriand he must have been among those who took no part in the
expedition of Tar-kalion, but 'sat in their ships upon the east coast of the land'
(FN $9).
place, those evils began long before, and are indeed traced back as far as
the twelfth ruler, Tar-Ciryatan the Shipbuilder, who took the sceptre
nearly a millennium and a half before the Downfall (Akallabeth p. 265,
Unfinished Tales p. 221).
From Elendil's words at the end of The Lost Road there emerges a
sinister picture: the withdrawal of the besotted and aging king from the
public view, the unexplained disappearance of people unpopular with
the 'government', informers, prisons, torture, secrecy, fear of the night;
propaganda in the form of the 'rewriting of history' (as exemplified by
Herendil's words concerning what was now said about Earendel, p. 60);
the multiplication of weapons of war, the purpose of which is concealed
but guessed at; and behind all the dreadful figure of Sauron, the real
power, surveying the whole land from the Mountain of Numenor. The
teaching of Sauron has led to the invention of ships of metal that traverse
the seas without sails, but which are hideous in the eyes of those who have
not abandoned or forgotten Tol-eressea; to the building of grim for-
tresses and unlovely towers; and to missiles that pass with a noise like
thunder to strike their targets many miles away. Moreover, Numenor is
seen by the young as over-populous, boring, 'over-known': 'every tree
and grass-blade is counted', in Herendil's words; and this cause of
discontent is used, it seems, by Sauron to further the policy of 'imperial'
expansion and ambition that he presses on the king. When at this time my
father reached back to the world of the first man to bear the name 'Elf-
friend' he found there an image of what he most condemned and feared in
his own.
(iii)
The unwritten chapters.
It cannot be shown whether my father decided to alter the structure of
the book by postponing the Numenorean story to the end before he
abandoned the fourth chapter at Herendil's words 'I stay, father'; but it
seems perfectly possible that the decision in fact led to the abandonment.
At any rate, on a separate sheet he wrote: 'Work backwards to Numenor
and make that last', adding a proposal that in each tale a man should utter
the words about the Eagles of the Lord of the West, but only at the end
would it be discovered what they meant (see pp. 75 - 6). This is followed
by a rapid jotting down of ideas for the tales that should intervene
between Alboin and Audoin of the twentieth century and Elendil and
Herendil in Numenor, but these are tantalisingly brief: 'Lombard
story?'; 'a Norse story of ship-burial (Vinland)'; 'an English story - of the
man who got onto the Straight Road?'; 'a Tuatha-de-Danaan story, or
Tir-nan-Og' (on which see pp. 81 - 3); a story concerning 'painted
caves'; 'the Ice Age - great figures in ice', and 'Before the Ice Age: the
Galdor story'; 'post-Beleriand and the Elendil and Gil-galad story of the
assault on Thu'; and finally 'the Numenor story'. To one of these, the
'English story of the man who got onto the Straight Road', is attached a
more extended note, written at great speed:
But this would do best of all for introduction to the Lost Tales: How
AElfwine sailed the Straight Road. They sailed on, on, on over the sea;
and it became very bright and very calm, - no clouds, no wind. The
water seemed thin and white below. Looking down AElfwine suddenly
saw lands and mt [i.e. mountains or a mountain] down in the water
shining in the sun. Their breathing difficulties. His companions dive
overboard one by one. AElfwine falls insensible when he smells a
marvellous fragrance as of land and flowers. He awakes to find the ship
being drawn by people walking in the water. He is told very few men
there in a thousand years can breathe air of Eressea (which is Avallon),
but none beyond. So he comes to Eressea and is told the Lost Tales.
Pencilled later against this is 'Story of Sceaf or Scyld'; and it was only
here, I think, that the idea of the Anglo-Saxon episode arose (and this
was the only one of all these projections that came near to getting off the
ground).
This note is of particular interest in that it shows my father combining
the old story of the voyage of AElfwine to Tol-eressea and the telling of the
Lost Tales with the idea of the World Made Round and the Straight Path,
which entered at this time. With the words about the difficulty of
breathing cf. FN $ 12, where it is said that the Straight Path 'cut through
the air of breath and flight [Wilwa, Vista], and traversed Ilmen, in which
no flesh can endure.'
My father then (as I judge) roughed out an outline for the structure of
the book as he now foresaw it. Chapter III was to be called A Step
Backward: AElfwine and Eadzvine * - the Anglo-Saxon incarnation of the
father and son, and incorporating the legend of King Sheave; Chapter
IV 'the Irish legend of Tuatha-de-Danaan - and oldest man in the
world'; Chapter V 'Prehistoric North: old kings found buried in the ice':
Chapter VI 'Beleriand'; Chapter VIII (presumably a slip for VII)
'Elendil and Herendil in Numenor'. It is interesting to see that there is
now no mention of the Lombard legend as an ingredient: see p. 55.
This outline structure was sent to Allen and Unwin with the manu-
script and was incorporated in the typescript made there.
Apart from the Anglo-Saxon episode, the only scrap of connected
writing for any of the suggested tales is an extremely obscure and
roughly-written fragment that appears to be a part of 'the Galdor story'
(p. 77). In this, one Agaldor stands on a rocky shore at evening and sees
great clouds coming up, 'like the very eagles of the Lord of the West'. He
is filled with a formless foreboding at the sight of these clouds; and he
(* I think it almost certain that the titles of Chapters I and 11 were put in at this
time: as the manuscript was written they had no titles.)
turns and climbs up the beach, passing down behind the land-wall to the
houses where lights are already lit. He is eyed doubtfully by men sitting
at a door, and after he has gone by they speak of him.
'There goes Agaldor again, from his speech with the sea: earlier than
usual,' said one. 'He has been haunting the shores more than ever of
late.' 'He will be giving tongue soon, and prophesying strange things,'
said another; 'and may the Lords of the West set words more
comforting in his mouth than before.' 'The Lords of the West will tell
him naught,' said a third. 'If ever they were on land or sea they have
left this earth, and man is his own master from here to the sunrise.
Why should we be plagued with the dreams of a twilight-walker? His
head is stuffed with them, and there let them bide. One would think to
hear him talk that the world had ended in the last age, not new begun,
and we were living in the ruins.'
'He is one of the old folk, and well-nigh the last of the long-lived in
these regions,' said another. 'Those who knew the Eldar and had seen
even the Sons of the Gods had a wisdom we forget.' 'Wisdom I know
not,' said the other, 'but woe certainly in abundance if any of their tales
are true. I know not (though I doubt it). But give me the Sun. That is
glory... I would that the long life of Agaldor might be shortened. It is
he that holds [?? nigh] this sea-margin - too near the mournful water. I
would we had a leader to take us East or South. They say the land is
golden in the [??domains) of the Sun.'
Here the fragment ends. Agaldor has appeared in the original outline for
The Fall of Numenor: 'Agaldor chieftain of a people who live upon the
N.W. margin of the Western Sea' (p. 11), and later in that text it was
Agaldor who wrestled with Thu, though the name was there changed
at the time of writing to Amroth (p. 12). That this is a fragment of
'the Galdor story' seems to be shown by a pencilled and partly illegible
scrawl at the head of the page, where Galdor appears; but the story is
here significantly different.
Galdor is a good man [?among] the exiles (not a Numenorean) - not a
long-liver but a prophet. He prophesies [?coming] of Numenoreans
and [?salvation] of men. Hence holds his men by sea. This foreboding
passage heralds the Ruin and the Flood. How he escapes in the
flood..... of land. The Numenoreans come - but appear no longer as
good but as rebels against the Gods. They slay Galdor and take the
chieftainship.
There is very little to build on here, and I shall not offer any speculations.
The story was abandoned without revealing how the AElfwine-Eadwine
element would enter.
Turning now to 'the AElfwine story', there are several pages of very
rough notes and abandoned beginnings. One of these pages consists of
increasingly rapid and abbreviated notes, as follows:
AElfwine and Eadwine live in the time of Edward the Elder, in North
Somerset. AElfwine ruined by the incursions of Danes. Picture opens
with the attack (c. 915) on Portloca (Porlock) and Waeced. AElfwine is
awaiting Eadwine's return at night. (The attack actually historically
took place in autumn, at harfest).
Conversation of AElfwine and Eadwine. Eadwine is sick of it. He
says the Danes have more sense; always pressing on. They go west.
They pass round and go to Ireland; while the English sit like Wealas
waiting to be made into slaves.
Eadwine says he has heard strange tales from Ireland. A land in the
North-west filled with ice, but fit for men to dwell - holy hermits have
been driven out by Norsemen. AElfwine has Christian objections.
Eadwine says the holy Brendan did so centuries ago - and lots of
others, [as] Maelduin. And they came back - not that he would want
to. Insula Deliciarum - even Paradise.
AElfwine objects that Paradise cannot be got to by ship - there are
deeper waters between us than Garsecg. Roads are bent: you come
back in the end. No escape by ship.
Eadwine says he does not think it true - and hopes it isn't. At any
rate their ancestors had won new lands by ship. Quotes story of Sceaf.
In the end they go off with ten neighbours. Pursued by Vikings off
Lundy. Wind takes them out to sea, and persists. Eadwine falls sick
and says odd things. AElfwine dreams too. Mountainous seas.
The Straight Road..... water (island of Azores?)..... off.
AElfwine [?restores? restrains] Eadwine. Thinks it a vision of delirium.
The vision of Eressea and the sound of voices. Resigns himself to die
but prays for Eadwine. Sensation of falling. They come down in
[?real] sea and west wind blows them back. Land in Ireland (impli-
cation is they settle there, and this leads to Finntan).
I add some notes on this far-ranging outline. Edward the Elder, eldest
son of King Alfred, reigned from 900 to 924. In the year 914 a large
Viking fleet, coming from Brittany, appeared in the Bristol Channel, and
began ravaging in the lands beyond the Severn. According to the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle the leaders were two jarls ('earls') named Ohtor
and Hroald. The Danes were defeated at Archenfield (Old English
Ircingafeld) in Herefordshire and forced to give hostages in pledge of
their departure. King Edward was in arms with the forces of Wessex on
the south side of the Severn estuary, 'so that', in the words of the
Chronicle, 'they did not dare to attack the land anywhere on that side.
Nonetheless they twice stole inland by night, on one occasion east of
Watchet and on the other at Porlock (aet oprum cierre be eastan Waeced,
and aet oprum cierre at Portlocan). Each time they were attacked and
only those escaped who swam out to the ships; and after that they were
out on the island of Steepholme, until they had scarcely any food, and
many died of hunger. From there they went to Dyfed [South Wales] and
from there to Ireland; and that was in the autumn (and pis waes on
harfest).'
Porlock and Watchet are on the north coast of Somerset; the island of
Steepholme lies to the North-east, in the mouth of the Severn. My father
retained this historical mise-en-scene in the draft of a brief 'AElfwine'
narrative given below, pp. 83 - 4, and years later in The Notion Club
Papers (1945).
Wealas: the British (as distinct from the English or Anglo-Saxons); in
Modern English Wales, the name of the people having become the name
of the land.
'A land in the North-west filled with ice, but fit for men to dwell - holy
hermits have been driven out by Norsemen.' It is certain that by the end
of the eighth century (and how much earlier cannot be said) Irish
voyagers had reached Iceland, in astounding journeys achieved in their
boats called curachs, made of hides over a wooden frame. This is known
from the work of an Irish monk named Dicuil, who in his book Liber de
Mensura Orbis Terrae (written in 825) recorded that
It is now thirty years since certain priests who lived in that island from
the first day of February to the first day of August told me that not only
at the summer solstice, but also in the days before and after, the setting
sun at evening hides itself as if behind a little hill, so that it does not
grow dark even for the shortest period of time, but whatever task a man
wishes to perforni, even picking the lice out of his shirt, he can do it
just as if it were broad daylight.
When the first Norsemen came to Iceland (about 860) there were Irish
hermits living there. This is recorded by the Icelandic historian Ari the
Learned (1067 - 1148), who wrote:
At that time Christian men whom the Norsemen call papar dwelt here;
but afterwards they went away, because they would not live here
together with heathen men, and they left behind them Irish books,
bells, and croziers; from which it could be seen that they were
Irishmen.
Many places in the south of Iceland, such as Papafjordr and the island of
Papey, still bear names derived from the Irish papar. But nothing is
known of their fate: they fled, and they left behind their precious things.
Brendan; Maelduin; Insula Deliciarum. The conception of a 'blessed
land' or 'fortunate isles' in the Western Ocean is a prominent feature of
the old Irish legends: Tir-nan-Og, the land of youth; Hy Bresail, the
fortunate isle; Insula Deliciosa; etc. Tir-nan-Og is mentioned as a
possible story for The Lost Road, p. 77.
The holy Brendan is Saint Brendan called the Navigator, founder of
the Abbey of Clonfert in Galway, and the subject of the most famous
of the tales of seavoyaging (imrama) told of early Irish saints. Another
is the Imram Maelduin, in which Maelduin and his companions set out
from Ireland in a curach and came in their voyaging to many islands in
succession, where they encountered marvel upon marvel, as did Saint
Brendan.
My father's poem Imram, in which Saint Brendan at the end of his life
recalls the three things that he remembers from his voyage, was pub-
lished in 1955, but it originally formed a part of The Notion Club Papers.
Many years before, he had written a poem (The Nameless Land) on the
subject of a paradisal country 'beyond the Shadowy Sea', in which
Brendan is named. This poem and its later forms are given in a note at the
end of this chapter, pp. 98 ff.; to the final version is attached a prose note
on AElfwine's voyage that relates closely to the end of the present outline.
Garsecg: the Ocean. See II. 312 and note 19; also the Index to Vol. I V,
entry Belegar.
Sceaf: see pp. 7, 78, and 85 ff.
Lundy: an island off the west coast of Devon.
It is unfortunate that the last part of this outline is so illegible. The
words following 'The Straight Road' could be interpreted as 'a world like
water'. After the mysterious reference to the Azores the first word is a
noun or name in the plural, and is perhaps followed by 'driven'.
Finntan: An isolated note elsewhere among these papers reads: 'See
Lit. Celt. p. 137. Oldest man in the world Finntan (Narkil White Fire).'
The reference turns out to be to a work entitled The Literature of the
Celts, by Magnus Maclean (1906). In the passage to which my father
referred the author wrote of the history of Ireland according to mediaeval
Irish annalists:
Forty days before the Flood, the Lady Caesair, niece or granddaughter
of Noah - it is immaterial which - with fifty girls and three men came
to Ireland. This, we are to understand, was the first invasion or
conquest of that country. All these were drowned in the Deluge,
except Finntan, the husband of the lady, who escaped by being cast
into a deep sleep, in which he continued for a year, and when he awoke
he found himself in his own house at Dun Tulcha.... At Dun Tulcha
he lived throughout many dynasties down to the sixth century of our
era, when he appears for the last time with eighteen companies of his
descendants engaged in settling a boundary dispute. Being the oldest
man in the world, he was ipso facto the best informed regarding
ancient landmarks.
After the Flood various peoples in succession stepped onto the
platform of Irish history. First the Partholans, then the Nemedians,
Firbolgs, Tuatha de Danaan, and last of all the Milesians, thus
carrying the chronology down to the time of Christ. From the arrival
of the earliest of these settlers, the Fomorians or 'Sea Rovers' are
represented as fighting and harassing the people. Sometimes in con-
junction with the plague, at other times with the Firbolgs and Gaileoin
and Fir-Domnann, they laid waste the land. The Partholans and
Nemedians were early disposed of. And then appeared from the north
of Europe, or from heaven, as one author says, the Tuatha de Danann,
who at the great battle of Moytura South overcame the Firbolgs,
scattering them to the islands of Aran, Islay, Rathlin, and the
Hebrides, and afterwards defeating the Fomorians at Moytura North,
thus gaining full possession of the land.
The Tuatha de Danann are twice mentioned (pp. 77 - 8) as a possible
narrative element in The Lost Road.
The only actual narrative concerning AElfwine from this time (apart
from some beginnings abandoned after a few lines) is brief and roughly
scrawled; but it was to be used afterwards, and in places quite closely
followed, in The Notion Club Papers.
AElfwine awoke with a start - he had been dozing on a bench
with his back to a pillar. The voices poured in on him like a
torrent. He felt he had been dreaming; and for a moment the
English speech about him sounded strange, though mostly it was
the soft speech of western Wessex. Here and there were men of the
Marches, and a few spoke oddly, using strange words after the
manner of those among whom the Danes dwelt in the eastern
lands. He looked down the hall, looking for his son Eadwine. He
was due on leave from the fleet, but had not yet come.
There was a great crowd in the hall, for King Edward was here.
The fleet was in the Severn sea, and the south shore was in arms.
The jarls had been defeated far north at Irchenfield, but the
Danish ships were still at large on the Welsh coast; and the men of
Somerset and Devon were on guard.
AElfwine looked down the hall. The faces of the men, some old
and careworn, some young and eager, were dim, not only because
the torchlight was wavering and the candles on the high table were
guttering. He looked beyond them. There was a wind blowing,
surging round the house; timbers creaked. The sound brought
back old longings to him that he had thought were long buried. He
was born in the year the Danes wintered in Sheppey, and he had
sailed many seas and heard many winds since then. The sound of
the west wind and the fall of seas on the beaches had always been a
challenging music to him. Especially in spring. But now it was
autumn, and also he was growing old. And the seas were wide,
beyond the power of man to cross - to unknown shores: wide and
dangerous. The faces of the men about him faded and the clamour
of their voices was changed. He heard the crash of waves on the
black cliffs and the sea-birds diving and crying; and snow and hail
fell. Then the seas opened pale and wide; the sun shone on the
land and the sound and smell of it fell far behind. He was alone
going west towards the setting sun with fear and longing in his
heart, drawn against his will.
His dream was broken by calls for the minstrel. 'Let AElfwine
sing! ' men were crying. The king had sent to bid him sing
something. He lifted up his voice and chanted aloud, but as one
speaking to himself alone:
Monad modes lust mid mereflode
ford to feran, paet ic feor heonan
ofer hean holmas, ofer hwaeles edel
elpeodigra eard gesece.
Nis me to hearpan hyge ne to hring pege
ne to wife wyn ne to worulde hyht
ne ymb owiht elles nefne ymb yda gewealc.
'The desire of my spirit urges me to journey forth over the flowing
sea, that far hence across the hills of water and the whale's country
I may seek the land of strangers. No mind have I for harp, nor gift
of ring, nor delight in women, nor joy in the world, nor concern
with aught else save the rolling of the waves.'
Then he stopped suddenly. There was some laughter, and a few
jeers, though many were silent, as if feeling that the words were
not spoken to their ears - old and familiar as they were, words of
the old poets whom most men had heard often. 'If he has no mind
to the harp he need expect no [?wagesj,' said one. 'Is there a
mortal here who has a mind?' 'We have had enough of the sea,' said
another. 'A spell of Dane-hunting would cure most men's love of
it.' 'Let him go rolling on the waves,' said another. 'It is no great
sail to the... Welsh country, where folk are strange enough - and
the Danes to talk to as well.'
'Peace! ' said an old man sitting near the threshold. 'AElfwine has
sailed more seas than you have heard of; and the Welsh tongue is
not strange to him..... His wife was of Cornwall. He has been to
Ireland and the North, and some say far to the west of all living
lands. Let him say what his mood bids.' There was a short silence.
The text ends here. The historical situation is slightly filled out, with
mention of the Viking jarls and their defeat at Irchenfield (Archenfield),
on which see p. So. AElfwine 'was born in the year the Danes
wintered in Sheppey' (the isle of Sheppey off the north coast of
Kent). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records under the year 855:
Her haepne men aerest on Sceapige ofer winter saetun (In this year heathen
men for the first time stayed in Sheppey ['Sheep-isle'] over the winter);
but an earlier wintering on Thanet is recorded under 851. These
winterings by Vikings were ominous of what was to come, a sign of the
transition from isolated raids followed by a quick departure to the great
invasions in the time of AEthelred and Alfred. - AElfwine was therefore
approaching sixty at this time.
The verses that AElfwine chanted are derived from the Old English
poem known as The Seafarer, with the omission of five lines from the
original after line 4, and some alterations of wording. The third line is an
addition (and is enclosed, both in the Old English and in the translation,
in square brackets in the manuscript).
With the reference to AElfwine's wife who came from Cornwall cf. the
old tale of AElfwine of England, where his mother came 'from the West,
from Lionesse' (II. 313).
It seems to me certain that what was to follow immediately on the end
of this brief narrative was the legend of King Sheave, which in one of the
three texts is put into AElfwine's mouth (and which follows here in The
Notion Club Papers, though it is not there given to AElfwine). There is
both a prose and a verse form of King Sheave; and it may well be that the
prose version, which I give first, belongs very closely with the AElfwine
narrative; there is no actual link between them, but the two manuscripts
are very similar.
To the shore the ship came and strode upon the sand, grinding
upon the broken shingle. In the twilight as the sun sank men came
down to it, and looked within. A boy lay there, asleep. He was fair
of face and limb, dark-haired, white-skinned, but clad in gold.
The inner parts of the boat were gold-adorned, a vessel of gold
filled with clear water was at his side, [added: at his right was a
harp,] beneath his head was a sheaf of corn, the stalks and ears of
which gleamed like gold in the dusk. Men knew not what it was. In
wonder they drew the boat high upon the beach, and lifted the boy
and bore him up, and laid him sleeping in a wooden house in their
burh. They set guards about the door.
In the morning the chamber was empty. But upon a high rock
men saw the boy standing. The sheaf was in his arms. As the risen
sun shone down, he began to sing in a strange tongue, and they
were filled with awe. For they had not yet heard singing, nor seen
such beauty. And they had no king among them, for their kings
had perished, and they were lordless and unguided. Therefore
they took the boy to be king, and they called him Sheaf; and so is
his name remembered in song. For his true name was hidden and
is forgotten. Yet he taught men many new words, and their speech
was enriched. Song and verse-craft he taught them, and rune-
craft, and tillage and husbandry, and the making of many things;
and in his time the dark forests receded and there was plenty, and
corn grew in the land; and the carven houses of men were filled
with gold and storied webs. The glory of King Sheaf sprang far
and wide in the isles of the North. His children were many and
fair, and it is sung that of them are come the kings of men of the
North Danes and the West Danes, the South Angles and the East
Gothfolk. And in the time of the Sheaf-lords there was peace in
the isles, and ships went unarmed from land to land bearing
treasure and rich merchandise. And a man might cast a golden
ring upon the highway and it would remain until he took it up
again.
Those days songs have called the golden years, while the great
mill of Sheaf was guarded still in the island sanctuary of the
North; and from the mill came golden grain, and there was no
want in all the realms.
But it came to pass after long years that Sheaf summoned his
friends and counsellors, and he told them that he would depart.
For the shadow of old age was fallen upon him (out of the East)
and he would return whence he came. Then there was great
mourning. But Sheaf laid him upon his golden bed, and became as
one in deep slumber; and his lords obeying his commands while
he yet ruled and had command of speech set him in a ship. He lay
beside the mast, which was tall, and the sails were golden.
Treasures of gold and of gems and fine raiment and costly stuffs
were laid beside him. His golden banner flew above his head. In
this manner he was arrayed more richly than when he came among
them; and they thrust him forth to sea, and the sea took him, and
the ship bore him unsteered far away into the uttermost West out
of the sight or thought of men. Nor do any know who received him
in what haven at the end of his journey. Some have said that that
ship found the Straight Road. But none of the children of Sheaf
went that way, and many in the beginning lived to a great age, but
coming under the shadow of the East they were laid in great tombs
of stone or in mounds like green hills; and most of these were by
the western sea, high and broad upon the shoulders of the land,
whence men can descry them that steer their ships amid the
shadows of the sea.
This is a first draft, written at speed and very roughly; but the form in
alliterative verse is very finished, so far as it goes (it does not extend to the
departure of Sheaf, or Sheave, and was not added to for its inclusion in
The Notion Club Papers). There are two texts of the verse form: (i) a
clear manuscript in which the poem is written out as prose, and (ii) a
more hasty text in which it is written out in verse-lines. It is hard to
decide which of the two came first, but the poem is in any case almost
identical in the two versions, which were obviously closely contempor-
ary. I print it here in lines, with breaks introduced from the paragraphs
of the 'prose' form. Version (i) has a formal title, King Sheave; (ii) has a
short narrative opening, which could very well follow the words 'There
was a short silence' on p. 84.
Suddenly AElfwine struck a note on his harp. 'Lo!' he cried,
loud and clear, and men stiffened to attention. 'Lo! ' he cried, and
began to chant an ancient tale, yet he was half aware that he was
telling it afresh, adding and altering words, not so much by
improvisation as after long pondering hidden from himself, catch-
ing at the shreds of dreams and visions.
In days of yore out of deep Ocean
to the Longobards, in the land dwelling
that of old they held amid the isles of the North,
a ship came sailing, shining-timbered
without oar and mast, eastward Hoating.
The sun behind it sinking westward
with flame kindled the fallow water.
Wind was wakened. Over the world's margin
clouds greyhelmed climbed slowly up
wings unfolding wide and looming, 10
as mighty eagles moving onward
to eastern Earth omen bearing.
Men there marvelled, in the mist standing
of the dark islands in the deeps of time:
laughter they knew not, light nor wisdom;
shadow was upon them, and sheer mountains
stalked behind them stern and lifeless,
evilhaunted. The East was dark.
The ship came shining to the shore driven
and strode upon the strand, till its stem rested 20
on sand and shingle. The sun went down.
The clouds overcame the cold heavens.
In fear and wonder to the fallow water
sadhearted men swiftly hastened
to the broken beaches the boat seeking,
gleaming-timbered in the grey twilight.
They looked within, and there laid sleeping
a boy they saw breathing softly:
his face was fair, his form lovely,
his limbs were white, his locks raven 30
golden-braided. Gilt and carven
with wondrous work was the wood about him.
In golden vessel gleaming water
stood beside him; strung with silver
a harp of gold neath his hand rested;
his sleeping head was soft pillowed
on a sheaf of corn shimmering palely
as the fallow gold doth from far countries
west of Angol. Wonder filled them.
The boat they hauled and on the beach moored it 40
high above the breakers; then with hands lifted
from the bosom its burden. The boy slumbered.
On his bed they bore him to their bleak dwellings
darkwalled and drear in a dim region
between waste and sea. There of wood builded
high above the houses was a hall standing
forlorn and empty. Long had it stood so,
no noise knowing, night nor morning,
no light seeing. They laid him there,
under lock left him lonely sleeping 50
in the hollow darkness. They held the doors.
Night wore away. New awakened
as ever on earth early morning;
day came dimly. Doors were opened.
Men strode within, then amazed halted;
fear and wonder filled the watchmen.
The house was bare, hall deserted;
no form found they on the Hoor lying,
but by bed forsaken the bright vessel
dry and empty in the dust standing. 60
The guest was gone. Grief o'ercame them.
In sorrow they sought him, till the sun rising
over the hills of heaven to the homes of men
light came bearing. They looked upward
and high upon a hill hoar and treeless
the guest beheld they: gold was shining
in his hair, in hand the harp he bore;
at his feet they saw the fallow-golden
cornsheaf lying. Then clear his voice
a song began, sweet, unearthly, 70
words in music woven strangely,
in t./, " ~r dim houses. Doors were opened
and gates unbarred. Gladness wakened.
To the hill they thronged, and their heads lifting
on the guest they gazed. Greybearded men
bowed before him and blessed his coming 90
their years to heal; youths and maidens,
wives and children welcome gave him.
His song was ended. Silent standing
he looked upon them. Lord they called him;
king they made him, crowned with golden
wheaten garland, white his raiment,
his harp his sceptre. In his house was fire,
food and wisdom; there fear came not.
To manhood he grew, might and wisdom.
Sheave they called him, whom the ship brought them, 100
a name renowned in the North countries
ever since in song. For a secret hidden
his true name was, in tongue unknown
of far countries where the falling seas
wash western shores beyond the ways of men
since the world worsened. The word is forgotten
and the name perished.
Their need he healed,
and laws renewed long forsaken.
Words he taught them wise and lovel> -
their tongue ripened in the time of Sheave 110
to song and music. Secrets he opened
runes revealing. Riches he gave them,
reward of labour, wealth and comfort
from the earth calling, acres ploughing,
sowing in season seed of plenty,
hoarding in garner golden harvest
for the help of men. The hoar forests
in his days drew back to the dark mountains;
the shadow receded, and shining corn,
white ears of wheat, whispered in the breezes 120
where waste had been. The woods trembled.
Halls and houses hewn of timber,
strong towers of stone steep and lofty,
golden-gabled, in his guarded city
they raised and roofed. In his royal dwelling
of wood well-cari en the walls were wrought;
fair-hued figures filled with silver,
gold and scarlet, gleaming hung there,
stories boding of strange countries,
were one wise in wit the woven legends 130
to thread with thought. At his throne men found
counsel and comfort and care's healing,
justice in judgement. Generous-handed
his gifts he gave. Glory was uplifted.
Far sprang his fame over fallow water,
through Northern lands the renown echoed
of the shining king, Sheave the mighty.
At the end of (ii) occur eight lines which seem to have been added to the
text; they were also inserted in pencil to the 'prose' text (i), here written
in as verse-lines, with a further eight lines following (the whole passage of
sixteen lines was struck through, hut it was used afterwards in The
Notion Club Papers, in the form of an addition to the poem proper).
Seven sons he begat, sires of princes,
men great in mind, mighty-handed
and high-hearted. From his house cometh
the seeds of kings, as songs tell us,
fathers of the fathers, who before the change
in the Elder Years the earth governed,
Northern kingdoms named and founded,
shields of their peoples: Sheave begat them:
Sea-danes and Goths, Swedes and Northmen,
Franks and Frisians, folk of the islands,
Swordmen and Saxons, Swabes and English,
and the Langobards who long ago
beyond Myrcwudu a mighty realm 150
and wealth won them in the Welsh countries
where AElfwine Eadwine's heir
in Italy was king. All that has passed.
Notes on King Sheave.
References in the following notes are given to the lines of the poem.
1-3. On the association of Sheave with the Longobards (Lombards)
see p. 93.
7. The word fallow ('golden, golden-brown') is used several times
in this poem of water, and once of gold (38); the corn sheaf is
fallow-golden (68). See III. 369.
8-12. The 'eagle-clouds' that precede Sheave's coming in the poem
do not appear in the prose version.
39. Angol: the ancient home of the English before their migration
across the North Sea. See I. 24, 252 (entry Eriol).
142-3. I am at a loss to say what is referred to in these lines, where the
'fathers of the fathers' who founded kingdoms in the North, the
descendants of Sheave, 'governed the earth before the change
in the Elder Years'.
148. Swordmen: it is evident that this is intended as the name of a
people, but it is not clear to me which people. Conceivably, my
father had in mind the Brondingas, ruled by Breca, Beowulf's
opponent in the swimming-match, for that name has been
interpreted to contain the word brond (brand) 'sword'.
Swabes: this reading seems clear (Swabians in The Notion
Club Papers). The Old English form was Swaefe: thus in
Widsith is found Engle and Swaefe, and Mid Englum ic waes
rind mid Swaefum. The Suevi of Roman historians, a term used
hroadly to cover many Germanic tribes, but here evidently
used as in Widsith to refer particularly to Swabians dwelling in
the North and neighbours of the Angles.
150. Myrcwudu (Old English): 'Mirkwood'. This was an ancient
Germanic legendary name for a great dark boundary-forest,
found in various quite different applications. The reference
here is to the Eastern Alps (see note to line 151).
151. Welsh: 'foreign' (Roman). My father used the word here in the
ancient sense. The old Germanic word walhoz meant 'Celtic or
Roman foreigner'; whence in the plural the Old English Walas
(modern Wales), the Celts of Britain. So in Widsith the
Romans are called Rum-walas, and Caesar ruled over the
towns and riches of Wala rice, the realm of the Walas. A line in
King Sheave rejected in favour of 150 - 1 reads Wide realms
won them beyond the Welsh Mountains, and these are the Alps.
The ancient meaning survives in the word walnut, 'nut of the
Roman lands'; also in Wallace, Walloon.
152 - 3. See pp. 54-5.
The roots of King Sheave lie far back in Northern Germanic legend.
There are three primary sources: Beowulf, and the statements of two
later chroniclers writing in Latin, AEthelweard (who died about the year
1000), and William of Malmesbury (who died in 1143). I give those of
the historians first.
In AEthelweard's Chronicle the genealogy of the English kings ends
with the names Beo - Scyld - Scef (which mean Barley, Shield, and
Sheaf; Old English sc = 'sh'); and of Scef he says:
This Scef came in a swift boat, surrounded by arms, to an island of the
ocean called Scani, and he was a very young boy, and unknown to the
people of that country; but he was taken up by them, and they watched
over him attentively as one of their own kin, and afterwards chose him
to be their king.
William of Malmesbury (a writer notable for his drawing on popular
stories and songs) has likewise in his genealogy the three figures Beowius
- Sceldius - Sceaf, and he tells this of Sceaf:
He, as they say, was brought as a child in a boat without any oarsman
to Scandza, a certain island of Germany.... He was asleep, and by his
head was placed a handful of corn, on which account he was called
'Sheaf'. He was regarded as a marvel by the people of that country, and
carefully fostered; when he was grown he ruled in the town which was
then called Slaswic, hut now Haithebi. That region is called Old
Anglia, whence the Angli came to Britain.
The prologue, or as my father called it the exordium, to Beowulf, 1 give
from his prose translation of the poem.
Lo! the glory of the kings of the people of the Spear-Danes in days of
old we have heard tell, how those princes deeds of valour wrought. Oft
Scyld Scefing robbed the hosts of foemen, many peoples of the seats
where they drank their mead, laid fear upon men, who first was found
in poverty; comfort for that he lived to know, mighty grew under
heaven, throve in honour, until all that dwelt nigh about over the sea
where the whale rides must hearken to him and yield him tribute - a
good king was he!
To him was an heir afterwards born, a young child in his courts
whom God sent for the comfort of the people: perceiving the dire need
which they long while endured aforetime being without a prince. To
him therefore the Lord of Life who rules in glory granted honour
among men: Beowulf was renowned, far and wide his glory sprang -
the heir of Scyld in Scedeland. Thus doth a young man bring it to pass
with good deed and gallant gifts, while he dwells in his father's bosom,
that after in his age there cleave to him loyal knights of his table, and
the people stand by him when war shall come. By worthy deeds in
every folk is a man ennobled.
Then at his allotted hour Scyld the valiant passed into the keeping
of the Lord; and to the flowing sea his dear comrades bore him, even as
he himself had bidden them while yet their prince he ruled them with
his words - beloved lord of the land, long was he master. There at the
haven stood with ringed prow, ice-hung, eager to be gone, the prince's
bark; they laid then their beloved king, giver of rings, in the bosom of
the ship, in glory by the mast. There were many precious things and
treasures brought from regions far away; nor have I heard tell that men
ever in more seemly wise arrayed a boat with weapons of war and
harness of battle; on his lap lay treasures heaped that now must go with
him far into the dominion of the sea. With lesser gifts no whit did they
adorn him, with treasures of that people, than did those that in the
beginning sent him forth alone over the waves, a little child. More-
over, high above his head they set a golden standard and gave him to
Ocean, let the sea bear him. Sad was their heart and mourning in their
soul. None can report with truth, nor lords in their halls, nor mighty
men beneath the sky, who received that load.
There is also a reference to a king named Sheaf (Sceafa) in Widsith,
where in a list of rulers and the peoples they ruled occurs Sceafa [weold]
Longbeardum, 'Sheaf ruled the Lombards'; at the beginning of the poem
King Sheave it is to the Lombards that the boat bearing the child comes.
This is obviously not the place to enter into elaborate discussion of so
intricate a subject as that of Scyld Scefing: 'a most astonishing tangle',
my father called it. His lectures at Oxford during these years devote
many pages to refined analysis of the evidences, and of competing
theories concerning them. The long-fought argument concerning the
meaning of 'Shield Sheafing' in Beowulf - does 'Sheafing' mean 'with a
sheaf' or 'son of Sheaf', and is 'Shield' or 'Sheaf' the original ancestor
king? - could in my father's opinion be settled with some certainty. In a
summarising statement of his views in another lecture (here very slightly
edited) he said:
Scyld is the eponymous ancestor of the Scyldingas, the Danish royal
house to which Hrothgar King of the Danes in this poem belongs. His
name is simply 'Shield': and he is a 'fiction', that is a name derived
from the 'heraldic' family name Scyldingas after they became famous.
This process was aided by the fact that the Old English (and Germanic)
ending -ing, which could mean 'connected with, associated with,
provided with', etc., was also the usual patronymic ending. The
invention of this eponymous 'Shield' was probably Danish, that is
actually the work of Danish dynastic historians (pylas) and alliterative
poets (scopas) in the lifetime of the kings of whom we hear in Beowulf,
the certainly historical Healfdene and Hrothgar.
As for Scefing, it can thus, as we see, mean 'provided with a sheaf,
connected in some way with a sheaf of corn', or son of a figure called
Sheaf. In favour of the latter is the fact that there are English
traditions of a mythical (not the same as eponymous and fictitious)
ancestor called Sceaf, or Sceafa, belonging to ancient culture-myths
of the North; and of his special association with Danes. In favour of
the former is the fact that Scyld comes out of the unknown, a babe, and
the name of his father, if he had any, could not be known by him or the
Danes who received him. But such poetic matters are not strictly
logical. Only in Beowulf are the two divergent traditions about the
Danes blended in this way, the heraldic and the mythical. I think the
poet meant (Shield) Sheafing as a patronymic. He was blending the
vague and fictitious warlike glory of the eponymous ancestor of the
conquering house with the more mysterious, far older and more
poetical myths of the mysterious arrival of the babe, the corn-god or
the culture-hero his descendant, at the beginning of a people's history,
and adding to it a mysterious Arthurian departure, back into the
unknown, enriched by traditions of ship-burials in the not very remote
heathen past - to make a magnificent and suggestive exordium, and
background to his tale.
Beowulf, son of Scyld Scefing, who appears in the exordium (to every
reader's initial confusion, since he is wholly unconnected with the hero of
the poem) my father held to be a corruption of Beow ('Barley') - which is
the name found in the genealogies (p. 92).
To my mind it is overwhelmingly probable [he wrote] that the Beowulf
name properly belongs only to the story of the bear-boy (that is of
Beowulf the Geat); and that it is a fairy-tale name, in fact a 'kenning'
for bear: 'Bee-wolf', that is 'honey-raider'. Such a name would be very
unlikely to be transferred to the Scylding line by the poet, or at any
time while the stories and legends which are the main fabric of the
poem had any existence independent of it. I believe that Beow was
turned into Beowulf after the poet's time, in the process of scribal
tradition, either deliberately (and unhappily), or merely casually and
erroneously.
Elsewhere he wrote:
A complete and entirely satisfactory explanation of the peculiarities of
the exordium has naturally never been given. Here is what seems to me
the most probable view.
The exordium is poetry, not (in intent) history. It was composed for
its present place, and its main purpose was to glorify Scyld and his
family, and so enhance the background against which the struggle of
Grendel and Beowulf takes place. The choice of a marvellous legend,
rather than a mere dynastic invention, was therefore natural. That our
author was working principally on the blended form: Beow < Scyld <
Sceaf [found in the genealogies, see p. 92] is shown by his retention of
the patronymic Scefing. This title has indeed little point in his version,
and certainly would not have appeared, had he really drawn on a story
in which it was Scyld that came in a boat; while certain points in his
account (the little destitute child) belong clearly to the Sheaf-Barley
legends.
Why then did he make Scyld the child in the boat? - plainly his own
device: it occurs nowhere else. Here are some probable reasons: (a) He
was concentrating all the glamour on Scyld and the Scylding name.
(b) A departure over sea - a sea-burial - was already associated with
northern chieftains in old poems and lore, possibly already with the
name of Scyld. This gains much in power and suggestiveness, if the
same hero arrives and departs in a boat. The great heights to which
Scyld climbed is also emphasized (explicitly) by the contrast thus
made with his forlorn arrival.
(c) Older and even more mysterious traditions may well still have
been current concerning Danish origins: the legend of Ing who came
and went back over the waves [see II. 305]. Our poet's Scyld has (as it
were) replaced Ing.
Sheaf and Barley were after all in origin only rustic legends of no
great splendour. But their legend here catches echoes of heroic
traditions of the North going back into a remote past, into what
philologists would call Primitive Germanic times, and are at the same
time touched with the martial glories of the House of the Shield. In
this way the poet contrives to clothe the lords of the golden hall of Hart
with a glory and mystery, more archaic and simple but hardly less
magnificent than that which adorns the king of Camelot, Arthur son
of Uther. This is our poet's way throughout, seen especially in the
exaltation among the great heroes that he has achieved for the Bear-
boy of the old fairy-tale, who becomes in his poem Beowulf last king of
the Geatas.
I give a final quotation from my father's lectures on this subject, where in
discussing the concluding lines of the exordium he wrote of
the suggestion - it is hardly more; the poet is not explicit, and the idea
was probably not fully formed in his mind - that Scyld went back to
some mysterious land whence he had come. He came out of the
Unknown beyond the Great Sea, and returned into It: a miraculous
intrusion into history, which nonetheless left real historical effects: a
new Denmark, and the heirs of Scyld in Scedeland. Such must have
been his feeling.
In the last lines 'Men can give no certain account of the havens
where that ship was unladed' we catch an echo of the 'mood' of pagan
times in which ship-burial was practised. A mood in which the
symbolism (what we should call the ritual) of a departure over the sea
whose further shore was unknown; and an actual belief in a magical
land or otherworld located 'over the sea', can hardly be distinguished -
and for neither of these elements or motives is conscious symbolism, or
real belief, a true description. It was a murnende mod, filled with
doubt and darkness.
There remains to notice an element in my father's legend of Sheaf which
was not derived from the English traditions. This is found only in the
prose version (p. 86), where in the account of the great peace in the
Northern isles in the time of 'the Sheaf-lords' (so deep a peace that a gold
ring lying on the highway would be left untouched) he wrote of 'the great
mill of Sheaf', which 'was guarded still in the island sanctuary of the
North.' In this he was drawing on (and transforming) the Scandinavian
traditions concerned with Freyr, the god of fruitfulness, and King Frothi
the Dane.
I cite here the story told by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179 -
1241) in his work known as the Prose Edda, which is given to explain the
meaning of the 'kenning' mjol Froda ('Frothi's meal') for 'gold'. Accord-
ing to Snorri, Frothi was the grandson of Skjoldr (corresponding to Old
English Scyld).
Frothi succeeded to the kingdom after his father, in the time when
Augustus Caesar imposed peace on the whole world; in that time
Christ was born. But because Frothi was the mightiest of all kings in
the Northlands the peace was named after him wherever the Danish
tongue was spoken, and men call it the Peace of Frothi. No man
injured another, even though he met face to face with the slayer of his
father or of his brother, free or bound; and there was no thief or robber
in those days, so that a gold ring lay long on Ialangrsheidi [in
Jutland]. King Frothi went to a feast in Sweden at the court of a king
named Fjolnir. There he bought two bondwomen called Fenia and
Menia; they were big and strong. At that time there were in Denmark
two millstones so huge that no man was strong enough to turn them;
and the nature of these stones was such that whatever he who turned
them asked for was ground out by the mill. This mill was called Grotti.
King Frothi had the bondwomen led to the mill, and he bade them
grind gold; and they did so, and at first they ground gold and peace and
happiness for Frothi. Then he gave them rest or sleep no longer than
the cuckoo was silent or a song could be sung. It is said that they sang
the song which is called the Lay of Grotti, and this is its beginning:
Now are come to the king's house
The two foreknowing ones, Fenia and Menia;
They are by Frothi, son of Frithleif,
The mighty maidens, as bondslaves held.
And before they ended their song they ground out a host against
Frothi, so that on that very night the sea-king named Mysing came,
and slew Frothi, and took much plunder; and then the Peace of Frothi
was ended.
Elsewhere it is said that while the Danes ascribed the peace to Frothi the
Swedes ascribed it to Freyr; and there are close parallels between
them. Freyr (which itself means 'the Lord') was called inn Frodi, which
almost certainly means 'the Fruitful One'. The legend of the great peace,
which in my father's work is ascribed to the time of Sheaf and his sons,
goes back to very ancient origins in the worship of a divinity of
fruitfulness in the great sanctuaries of the North: that of Freyr the
Fruitful Lord at the great temple of Uppsala, and (according to an
extremely plausible theory) that on the island of Zealand (Sjaelland).
Discussion of this would lead too far and into evidences too complex for
the purpose of this book, but it may be said at least that it seems beyond
question that Heorot, hall of the Danish kings in Beowulf, stood where is
now the village of Leire, about three miles from the sea on the north coast
of Zealand. At Leire there are everywhere huge grave mounds; and
according to an eleventh-century chronicler, Thietmar of Merseburg,
there was held at Leire in every ninth year (as also at Uppsala) a great
gathering, in which large numbers of men and animals were sacrificed. A
strong case can be made for supposing that the famous sanctuary
described by Tacitus in his Germania (written near the end of the first
century A.D.) where the goddess Nerthus, or Mater Terra, was wor-
shipped 'on an island in the ocean', was indeed on Zealand. When
Nerthus was present in her sanctuary it was a season of rejoicing and
peace, when 'every weapon is laid aside.'*
In my father's legend of Sheaf these ancient echoes are used in new
ways and with new bearings; and when Sheaf departed on his last
journey his ship (as some have said) found the Straight Road into the
vanished West.
A brief but perceptive report on The Lost Road, dated 17 December
1937, was submitted by a person unknown invited by Allen and Unwin
to read the text. It is to be remembered that the typescript that had been
made extended only to the beginning of the fourth chapter (p. 73 note 14)
- and also, of course, that at this time nothing concerning the history of
Middle-earth, of the Valar and Valinor, had been published. The reader
described it as 'immensely interesting as a revelation of the personal
enthusiasms of a very unusual mind', with 'passages of beautiful descrip-
tive prose'; but found it difficult to imagine this novel when completed
receiving any sort of recognition except in academic circles.' Stanley
(*In Norse mythology the name of the goddess Nerthus survives in that of the
god Njorth, father of Freyr. Njorth was especially associated with ships and the
sea; and in very early writing of my father's Xeorth briefly appears for Ulmo (II.
375, entry Neorth)) .
Unwin, writing to my father on 20 December 1937, said gently that he
had no doubt of its being a succes d'estime, but while he would 'doubtless
want to publish it' when complete, he could not 'hold out any hope of
commercial success as an inducement to you to give the finishing of it
prior claim upon your time.' He wrote this on the day after my father had
written to say that he had finished the first chapter of 'a new story about
Hobbits'(see III. 366).
With the entry at this time of the cardinal ideas of the Downfall of
Numenor, the World Made Round, and the Straight Road, into the
conception of 'Middle-earth', and the thought of a 'time-travel' story in
which the very significant figure of the Anglo-Saxon AElfwine would
be both 'extended' into the future, into the twentieth century, and
'extended' also into a many-layered past, my father was envisaging a
massive and explicit linking of his own legends with those of many other
places and times: all concerned with the stories and the dreams of peoples
who dwelt by the coasts of the great Western Sea. All this was set aside
during the period of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, but not
abandoned: for in 1945, before indeed The Lord of the Rings was
completed, he returned to these themes in the unfinished Notion Club
Papers. Such as he sketched out for these parts of The Last Road remain,
as it seems to me, among the most interesting and instructive of his
unfinished works.
Note on the poem 'The Nameless Land' and its later form.
The Nameless Land* is written in the form of the mediaeval poem Pearl,
with both rhyme and alliteration and partial repetition of the last line of
one stanza in the beginning of the next. I give it here in the form in which
it was published; for Tir-nan-Og the typescripts have Tir na nOg.
THE NAMELESS LAND.
There lingering lights do golden lie
On grass more green than in gardens here,
On trees more tall that touch the sky
With silver leaves a-swinging clear:
By magic dewed they may not die
Where fades nor falls the endless year,
Where ageless afternoon goes by
O'er mead and mound and silent mere.
(* The Nameless Land was published in Realities: an Anthology of Verse, edited
by G. S. Tancred (Leeds, at the Swan Press; London, Gay and Hancock Ltd.;
1927). A note on one of the typescripts states that it was written in May 1924 in
the house at Darnley Road, Leeds (Carpenter, Biography, p. 107), and was
'inspired by reading Pearl for examination purposes').
There draws no dusk of evening near,
Where voices move in veiled choir,
Or shrill in sudden singing sheer.
And the woods are filled with wandering fire.
The wandering fires the woodland fill,
In glades for ever green they glow,
In dells that immortal dews distill
And fragrance of all flowers that grow.
There melodies of music spill,
And falling fountains plash and flow,
And a water white leaps down the hill
To seek the sea no sail doth know.
Its voices fill the valleys low,
Where breathing keen on bent and briar
The winds beyond the world's edge blow
And wake to flame a wandering fire.
That wandering fire hath tongues of flame
Whose quenchless colours quiver clear
On leaf and land without a name
No heart may hope to anchor near.
A dreamless dark no stars proclaim,
A moonless night its marches drear,
A water wide no feet may tame,
A sea with shores encircled sheer.
A thousand leagues it lies from here,
And the foam doth flower upon the sea
'Neath cliffs of crystal carven clear
On shining beaches blowing free.
There blowing free unbraided hair
Is meshed with light of moon and sun,
And tangled with those tresses fair
A gold and silver sheen is spun.
There feet do beat and white and bare
Do lissom limbs in dances run,
Their robes the wind, their raiment air -
Such loveliness to look upon
Nor Bran nor Brendan ever won,
Who foam beyond the furthest sea
Did dare, and dipped behind the sun
On winds unearthly wafted free.
Than Tir-nan-Og more fair and free,
Than Paradise more faint and far,
O! shore beyond the Shadowy Sea,
O! land forlorn where lost things are,
O! mountains where no man may be!
The solemn surges on the bar
Beyond the world's edge waft to me;
I dream I see a wayward star,
Than beacon towers in Gondobar
More fair, where faint upon the sky
On hills imagineless and far
The lights of longing flare and die.
My father turned again later to The Nameless Land, and altered the
title first to AElfwine's Song calling upon Earendel and then to The Song of
AElfwine (on seeing the uprising of Earendel). There are many texts, both
manuscript and typescript, of The Song of AElfwine, forming a continuous
development. That development, I feel certain, did not all belong to the
same time, but it seems impossible to relate the different stages to
anything external to the poem. On the third text my father wrote
afterwards 'Intermediate Version', and I give this here; my guess is - but
it is no more than a guess - that it belongs to about the time of The Last
Road. Following it are two further texts which each change a few lines,
and then a final version with more substantial changes (including the loss
of a whole stanza) and an extremely interesting prose note on AElfwine's
voyage. This is certainly relatively late: probably from the years after
The Lord of the Rings, though it might be associated with the Notion Club
Papers of 1945 - with the fifth line of the last verse (a line that entered
only in this last version) 'The white birds wheel; there flowers the Tree!' ]
compare the lines in the poem Imram (see p. 82), of the Tree full of birds
that Saint Brendan saw:
The Tree then shook, and flying free
from its limbs the leaves in air
as white birds rose in wheeling flight,
and the lifting boughs were bare.
Of course the imrama of Brendan and AElfwine are in any case closely
associated. - There follow the texts of the 'intermediate' and final
versions.
THE SONG OF AELFWINE.
(on seeing the uprising of Earendel)
There lingering lights still golden lie
on grass more green than in gardens here,
On trees more tall that touch the sky
with swinging leaves of silver clear.
While world endures they will not die,
nor fade nor fall their timeless year,
As morn unmeasured passes by
o'er mead and mound and shining mere.
When endless eve undimmed is near,
o'er harp and chant in hidden choir
A sudden voice upsoaring sheer
in the wood awakes the Wandering Fire.
The Wandering Fire the woodland fills:
in glades for ever green it glows,
In dells where immortal dew distils
the Flower that in secret fragrance grows.
There murmuring the music spills,
as falling fountain plashing flows,
And water white leaps down the hills
to seek the Sea that no sail knows.
Through gleaming vales it singing goes,
where breathing keen on bent and briar
The wind beyond the world's end blows
to living flame the Wandering Fire.
The Wandering Fire with tongues of flame
with light there kindles quick and clear
The land of long-forgotten name:
no man may ever anchor near;
No steering star his hope may aim,
for nether Night its marches drear,
And waters wide no sail may tame,
with shores encircled dark and sheer.
Uncounted leagues it lies from here,
and foam there flowers upon the Sea
By cliffs of crystal carven clear
on shining beaches blowing free.
There blowing free unbraided hair
is meshed with beams of Moon and Sun,
And twined within those tresses fair
a gold and silver sheen is spun,
As fleet and white the feet go bare,
and lissom limbs in dances run,
Shimmering in the shining air:
such loveliness to look upon
No mortal man hath ever won,
though foam upon the furthest sea
He dared, or sought behind the Sun
for winds unearthly flowing free.
O! Shore beyond the Shadowy Sea!
O! Land where still the Edhil are!
O! Haven where my heart would be!
the waves that beat upon thy bar
For ever echo endlessly,
when longing leads my thought afar,
And rising west of West I see
beyond the world the wayward Star,
Than beacons bright in Gondobar
more clear and keen, more fair and high:
O! Star that shadow may not mar,
nor ever darkness doom to die!
In the final version of the poem that now follows the prose note
concerning AElfwine's voyage is linked by an asterisk to the name AElfwine
in the title.
THE SONG OF AELFWINE.
on seeing the uprising of Earendil
Eressea! Eressea!
There elven-lights still gleaming lie
On grass more green than in gardens here,
On trees more tall that touch the sky
With swinging leaves of silver clear.
While world endures they will not die,
Nor fade nor fall their timeless year,
As morn unmeasured passes by
O'er mead and mount and shining mere.
When endless eve undimmed is near,
O'er harp and chant in hidden choir
A sudden voice up-soaring sheer
In the wood awakes the wandering fire.
With wandering fire the woodlands fill:
In glades for ever green it glows;
In a dell there dreaming niphredil
As star awakened gleaming grows,
And ever-murmuring musics spill,
For there the fount immortal flows:
Its water white leaps down the hill,
By silver stairs it singing goes
To the field of the unfading rose,
Where breathing on the glowing briar
The wind beyond the world's end blows
To living flame the wandering fire.
The wandering fire with quickening flame
Of living light illumines clear
That land unknown by mortal name
Beyond the shadow dark and drear
And waters wild no ship may tame.
No man may ever anchor near,
To haven none his hope may aim
Through starless night his way to steer.
Uncounted leagues it lies from here:
In wind on beaches blowing free
Neath cliffs of carven crystal sheer
The foam there flowers upon the Sea.
O Shore beyond the Shadowy Sea!
O Land where still the Edhil are!
O Haven where my heart would be!
The waves still beat upon thy bar,
The white birds wheel; there flowers the Tree!
Again I glimpse them long afar
When rising west of West I see
Beyond the world the wayward Star,
Than beacons bright in Gondobar
More fair and keen, more clear and high.
0 Star that shadow may not mar,
Nor ever darkness doom to die.
AElfwine (Elf-friend) was a seaman of England of old who, being
driven out to sea from the coast of Erin [ancient name of Ireland],
passed into the deep waters of the West, and according to legend by
some strange chance or grace found the 'straight road' of the Elvenfolk
and came at last to the Isle of Eressea in Elvenhome. Or maybe, as
some say, alone in the waters, hungry and athirst, he fell into a trance
and was granted a vision of that isle as it once had been, ere a West-
wind arose and drove him back to Middle-earth. Of no other man is it
reported that he ever beheld Eressea the fair. AElfwine was never again
able to rest for long on land, and sailed the western seas until his death.
Some say that his ship was wrecked upon the west shores of Erin and
there his body lies; others say that at the end of his life he went forth
alone into the deeps again and never returned.
It is reported that before he set out on his last voyage he spoke these
verses:
Fela bid on Westwegum werum uncudra
wundra and wihta, wlitescyne lond,
eardgeard Ylfa and Esa bliss.
Lyt aenig wat hwylc his longad sy
pam pe eftsides yldu getwaefed.
'Many things there be in the West-regions unknown to Men, many
wonders and many creatures: a land lovely to behold, the homeland of
the Elves and the bliss of the Valar. Little doth any man understand
what the yearning may be of one whom old age cutteth off from
returning thither.'
Here reappears the idea seen at the end of the outline for the AElfwine
story in The Lost Road (p. 80), that after seeing a vision of Eressea he was
blown back again by a wind from the West. At the time when the outline
was written the story that AElfwine actually came to Tol-eressea and was
there told 'the Lost Tales' was also present (p. 78), and in the same way it
seems from the present passage that there were the two stories. The idea
that AElfwine never in fact reached the Lonely Isle is found in a version of
the old tale of AElwine of England, where he did not leap overboard but
returned east with his companions (II. 332 - 3).
The verses that he spoke before his last voyage are those that Alboin
Errol spoke and translated to his father in The Lost Road (p. 44), and
which were used also in the title-pages to the Quenta Silmarillion
(P 203).
The retention of the name Gondobar right through from The Name-
less Land is notable. It is found in the late version of the poem The Happy
Mariners, which my father afterwards dated '1940?' (II. 274 - 5): 'O
happy mariners upon a journey far, / beyond the grey islands and past
Gondobar'. Otherwise Condobar 'City of Stone' is one of the Seven
Names of Gondolin (II. 158, 172; III. 145 - 6).
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