The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two
Page 53
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
* Footnote in the manuscript: Tifil (Bridhon) Miaugion or Tevildo (Vardo) Meoita.
* Written above Umuiyan here is the name Gumniow, enclosed within brackets.
* The long unfinished poem in rhyming couplets in which is told the story of Beren and Lúthien Tinúviel; composed in 1925–31, but parts of it substantially rewritten many years later.
* Cf. Professor T. A. Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth, 1982, p. 193: ‘In “Beren and Lúthien” as a whole there is too much plot. The other side of that criticism is that on occasion Tolkien has to be rather brisk with his own inventions. Celegorm wounds Beren, and the hound Huan turns on his master and pursues him; “returning he brought to Lúthien a herb out of the forest. With that leaf she staunched Beren’s wound, and by her arts and her love she healed him….” The motif of the healing herb is a common one, the centre for instance of the Breton lai of Eliduc (turned into conte by Marie de France). But in that it occupies a whole scene, if not a whole poem. In The Silmarillion it appears only to be dismissed in two lines, while Beren’s wound is inflicted and healed in five. Repeatedly one has this sense of summary…’ This sense is eminently justified! In the Lay of Leithian the wounding and the healing with the herb occupy some 64 lines. (Cf. my Foreword to The Silmarillion, p. 8.)
* In an early note there is a reference to ‘the sacred Silmarils’: I. 169, note 2.
* The idea that Timpinen (Tinfang Warble) was the son of Tinwelint and sister of Tinúviel (see I. 106, note 1) had been abandoned. Tifanto/Dairon is now named with Tinfang and Ivárë as ‘the three most magic players of the Elves’ (p. 10).
* In the outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale the ‘Shadow Folk’ of Hisilómë have ceased to be Elves and become ‘fays’ whose origin is unknown: I. 237, 239.
* In the Tale of Turambar the story of Beren and Tinúviel clearly and necessarily took place before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (pp. 71–2, 140).
* Nothing is said in any text to suggest that Gothmog played such a role in relation to Morgoth as the interpretation ‘Voice of Goth’ implies, but nor is anything said to contradict it, and he was from the beginning an important figure in the evil realm and in especial relation to Melko (see p. 216). There is perhaps a reminiscence of ‘the Voice of Morgoth’ in ‘the Mouth of Sauron’, the Black Númenórean who was the Lieutenant of Barad-dûr (The Return of the King V. 10).
* Gondolin
* At the bottom of the manuscript page is written:
‘Nieriltasinwa the battle of unnumbered tears
Glorund Laurundo or Undolaurë’
Later Glorund and Laurundo were emended to Glorunt and Laurunto.
* A note on the manuscript referring to this name reads: ‘Turumart go-Dhrauthodauros [emended to bo-Dhrauthodavros] or Turambar Rúsitaurion.’
* In the margin is written Firilanda.
* In the margin, apparently with reference to the word ‘wood-rangers’, is written Vettar.
* From the first of these passages it seems that when Beren came to Nargothrond the ‘secret’ policy was already pursued under Felagund; but from the second it seems that it came into being from the potent rhetoric of Curufin after Beren went there.
† In The Silmarillion she is named Finduilas, and the name Faclivrin ‘which is the gleam of the sun on the pools of Ivrin’ was given to her by Gwindor (pp. 209–10).
* In a later rewriting of a passage in that tale (p. 164 and note 22) it is said of Tuor and Idril of Gondolin: ‘Thus was first wed a child of Men with a daughter of Elfinesse, nor was Tuor the last.’
* Cf. his words to Mablung in the Narn, p. 144: ‘For see, I am blind! Did you not know? Blind, blind, groping since childhood in a dark mist of Morgoth!’
* Tasarinan survived as the Quenya name without change: ‘the willow-meads of Tasarinan’ in Treebeard’s Song in The Two Towers, 111.4.
* The Gnomish dictionary has the entry: gwalt ‘good luck—any providential occurrence or thought: “the luck of the Valar”, i·walt ne Vanion’ (I.272).
* Humphrey Carpenter in his Biography (p. 92) says that the tale ‘was written out during Tolkien’s convalescence at Great Haywood early in 1917’, but he is doubtless referring to the original pencilled text of Tuor A.
* Faintly pencilled above in Tuor B: Idril Talceleb.
* Pencilled above in Tuor B: Heborodin.
* Of the story of Gondolin from Tuor’s coming to its destruction my father wrote nothing after the version of ‘The Silmarillion’ made (very probably) in 1930; and in this the old conception of its history was still present. This was the basis for much of Chapter 23 in the published work.
* This is in fact specifically denied in The Silmarillion: ‘she contrived it that the work was known but to few, and no whisper of it came to Maeglin’s ears.’
† It seems that the ‘creatures of blood’ (said to be disliked by the people of Gondolin, p. 166), snakes, wolves, weasels, owls, falcons, are here regarded as the natural servants and allies of Melko.
* In the later Tuor (p. 50) he is ‘Lord of the Fountains’, plural (the reading in the manuscript is certain).
† In the version of ‘The Silmarillion’ made in 1930 (See footnote on p. 208), the last account of the Fall of Gondolin to be written and the basis for that in chapter 23 of the published work, the text actually reads: ‘…much is told in The Fall of Gondolin: of the death of Rog without the walls, and of the battle of Ecthelion of the Fountain’, &c. I removed the reference to Rog (The Silmarillion p. 242) on the grounds that it was absolutely certain that my father would not have retained this name as that of a lord of Gondolin.
* In a very late note written on one of the texts that constitute chapter 16 of The Silmarillion (‘Of Maeglin’) my father was thinking of making the ‘three lords of his household’ whom Turgon appointed to ride with Aredhel from Gondolin (p. 131) Glorfindel, Ecthelion, and Egalmoth. He notes that Ecthelion and Egalmoth ‘are derived from the primitive F[all of]G [ondolin]’, but that they ‘are well-sounding and have been in print’ (with reference to the names of the Stewards of Gondor). Subsequently he decided against naming Aredhel’s escort.
* The idea that Morgoth disposed of a ‘host’ of Balrogs endured long, but in a late note my father said that only very few ever existed—‘at most seven’.
† This element in the story was in fact still present in the 1930 ‘Silmarillion’ (see footnote on p. 208), but I excluded it from the published work on account of evidence in a much later text that the old entrance to Gondolin had by this time been blocked up—a fact which was then written into the text in chapter 23 of The Silmarillion.
* It also seems to be at variance with the story that all Men were shut in Hithlum by Melko’s decree after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears; but ‘wanderings’ is a strange word in the context, since the next words are ‘for Melko ringeth them in the Land of Shadows’.
* In the margin of the manuscript is written: Fangluin: Bluebeard.
* It is said in the Gnomish dictionary that the curse of Mîm was ‘appea
sed’ when the Nauglafring was lost in the sea; see the Appendix on Names, entry Nauglafring.
* For ‘Notebook C’ see p. 254.
* The words in this passage (‘Tree-men, Sun-dwellers…’) are clear but the punctuation is not, and the arrangement here may not be that intended.
* This preface is found in all the texts of the poem save the earliest, and the versions of it differ only in name-forms: Wingelot/Vingelot and Eglamar/Eldamar (varying in the same ways as in the accompanying versions of the poem, see textual notes p. 272), and Kôr > Tûn in the third text, Tûn in the fourth. For Egla = Elda see I.251 and II.338, and for Tûn see p. 292.
* From the Old English poem Crist: éalá! éarendel engla beorhtast ofer mid-dangeard monnum sended.
* From the Old English poem Crist: éalá! éarendel engla beorhtast ofer mid-dangeard monnum sended.
* A Northern Venture: see I.204, footnote. Mr Douglas A. Anderson has kindly supplied me with a copy of the poem in this version, which had been very slightly altered from that published in The Stapeldon Magazine (Exeter College, Oxford), June 1920 (Carpenter, p. 268).—Twilight in line 5 of the Leeds version is almost certainly an error, for Twilit, the reading of all the original texts.
* The term ‘Faring Forth’ is used here in a prophetic sense, not as it is in (18) and (20).
* Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians.
* In the sense of the March of the Elves from Kôr, as in (18) and (20).
* There is no external evidence for this, but it can hardly be doubted. In this case it might be thought that since the African Kôr was a city built on the top of a great mountain standing in isolation the relationship was more than purely ‘phonetic’.