Unfinished Tales

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  On the other hand, it is a certainty of the tradition (stated in Appendix A, in the Akallabêth, and in ‘The Line of Elros’) that Ar-Adûnakhôr was the first King to take the sceptre in a name of the Adûnaic tongue. On the assumption that Tar-Ardamin dropped out of the list in Appendix A by a mere oversight, it is surprising that the change in the style of the royal names should there be attributed to the first ruler after Tar-Calmacil. It may be that a more complex textual situation underlies the passage than a mere error of omission.

  12 In two genealogical tables her father is shown as Gimilzagar, the second son (born in 2630) of Tar-Calmacil, but this is clearly impossible: Inzilbêth must have been descended from Tar-Calmacil at more removes.

  13 There is a highly formalised floral design of my father’s, similar in style to that shown in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1979, no. 45, bottom right, which bears the title Inziladûn, and beneath it is written both in Fëanorian script and transliterated Númellótë [‘Flower of the West’].

  14 According to the Akallabêth (The Silmarillion p. 269) Gimilkhâd ‘died two years before his two hundredth year, which was accounted an early death for one of Elros’ line even in its waning’.

  15 As noted in Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings Míriel should have been the fourth Ruling Queen.

  A final discrepancy between ‘The Line of Elros’ and the Tale of Years arises in the dates of Tar-Palantir. It is said in the Akallabêth (p. 269) that ‘when Inziladûn acceded to the sceptre, he took again a title in the Elven-tongue as of old, calling himself Tar-Palantir’; and in the Tale of Years occurs the entry: ‘3175 Repentance of Tar-Palantir. Civil war in Númenor.’ It would seem almost certain from these statements that 3175 was the year of his accession; and this is borne out by the fact that in ‘The Line of Elros’ the death-date of his father Ar-Gimilzôr was originally given as 3175, and only later emended to 3177. As with the death-date of Tar-Atanamir (note 10 above) it is hard to understand why this small change was made, in contradiction to the Tale of Years.

  16 The statement that Elendil was the author of the Akallabêth is made only here. It is also said, elsewhere, that the story of Aldarion and Erendis, ‘one of the few detailed histories preserved from Númenor’, owed its preservation to its being of interest to Elendil.

  IV

  THE HISTORY OF GALADRIEL AND CELEBORN

  and of Amroth King of Lórien

  There is no part of the history of Middle-earth more full of problems than the story of Galadriel and Celeborn, and it must be admitted that there are severe inconsistencies ‘embedded in the traditions’; or, to look at the matter from another point of view, that the role and importance of Galadriel only emerged slowly, and that her story underwent continual refashionings.

  Thus, at the outset, it is certain that the earlier conception was that Galadriel went east over the mountains from Beleriand alone, before the end of the First Age, and met Celeborn in his own land of Lórien; this is explicitly stated in unpublished writing, and the same idea underlies Galadriel’s words to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring II 7, where she says of Celeborn that ‘He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted; for ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, and together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.’ In all probability Celeborn was in this conception a Nandorin Elf (that is, one of the Teleri who refused to cross the Misty Mountains on the Great Journey from Cuiviénen).

  On the other hand, in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings appears a later version of the story; for it is stated there that at the beginning of the Second Age ‘In Lindon south of the Lune dwelt for a time Celeborn, kinsman of Thingol; his wife was Galadriel, greatest of Elven women.’ And in the notes to The Road Goes Ever On (1968, p. 60) it is said that Galadriel ‘passed over the Mountains of Eredluin with her husband Celeborn (one of the Sindar) and went to Eregion’.

  In The Silmarillion there is mention of the meeting of Galadriel and Celeborn in Doriath, and of his kinship with Thingol (p. 115); and of their being among the Eldar who remained in Middle-earth after the end of the First Age (p. 254).

  The reasons and motives given for Galadriel’s remaining in Middle-earth are various. The passage just cited from The Road Goes Ever On says explicitly: ‘After the overthrow of Morgoth at the end of the First Age a ban was set upon her return, and she had replied proudly that she had no wish to do so.’ There is no such explicit statement in The Lord of the Rings; but in a letter written in 1967 my father declared:

  The Exiles were allowed to return – save for a few chief actors in the rebellion, of whom at the time of The Lord of the Rings only Galadriel remained. At the time of her Lament in Lórien she believed this to be perennial, as long as the Earth endured. Hence she concludes her lament with a wish or prayer that Frodo may as a special grace be granted a purgatorial (but not penal) sojourn in Eressëa, the solitary isle in sight of Aman, though for her the way is closed. Her prayer was granted – but also her personal ban was lifted, in reward for her services against Sauron, and above all for her rejection of the temptation to take the Ring when offered to her. So at the end we see her taking ship.

  This statement, very positive in itself, does not however demonstrate that the conception of a ban on Galadriel’s return into the West was present when the chapter ‘Farewell to Lórien’ was composed, many years before; and I am inclined to think that it was not (see p. 302).

  In a very late and primarily philological essay, certainly written after the publication of The Road Goes Ever On, the story is distinctively different:

  Galadriel and her brother Finrod were the children of Finarfin, the second son of Indis. Finarfin was of his mother’s kind in mind and body, having the golden hair of the Vanyar, their noble and gentle temper, and their love of the Valar. As well as he could he kept aloof from the strife of his brothers and their estrangement from the Valar, and he often sought peace among the Teleri, whose language he learned. He wedded Ea¨rwen, the daughter of King Olwë of Alqualondë, and his children were thus the kin of King Elu Thingol of Doriath in Beleriand, for he was the brother of Olwë; and this kinship influenced their decision to join in the Exile, and proved of great importance later in Beleriand. Finrod was like his father in his fair face and golden hair, and also in noble and generous heart, though he had the high courage of the Noldor and in his youth their eagerness and unrest; and he had also from his Telerin mother a love of the sea and dreams of far lands that he had never seen. Galadriel was the greatest of the Noldor, except Fëanor maybe, though she was wiser than he, and her wisdom increased with the long years.

  Her mother-name was Nerwen (‘man-maiden’), 1 and she grew to be tall beyond the measure even of the women of the Noldor; she was strong of body, mind, and will, a match for both the loremasters and the athletes of the Eldar in the days of their youth. Even among the Eldar she was accounted beautiful, and her hair was held a marvel unmatched. It was golden like the hair of her father and of her foremother Indis, but richer and more radiant, for its gold was touched by some memory of the starlike silver of her mother; and the Eldar said that the light of the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion, had been snared in her tresses. Many thought that this saying first gave to Fëanor the thought of imprisoning and blending the light of the Trees that later took shape in his hands as the Silmarils. For Fëanor beheld the hair of Galadriel with wonder and delight. He begged three times for a tress, but Galadriel would not give him even one hair. These two kinsfolk, the greatest of the Eldar of Valinor, were unfriends for ever.

  Galadriel was born in the bliss of Valinor, but it was not long, in the reckoning of the Blessed Realm, before that was dimmed; and thereafter she had no peace within. For in that testing time amid the strife of the Noldor she was drawn this way and that. She was proud, strong, and selfwilled, as were all the descendants of Finwë save Finarfin; and like her brother Finrod, of all her kin the nearest to her heart, she had dreams of far
lands and dominions that might be her own to order as she would without tutelage. Yet deeper still there dwelt in her the noble and generous spirit of the Vanyar, and a reverence for the Valar that she could not forget. From her earliest years she had a marvellous gift of insight into the minds of others, but judged them with mercy and understanding, and she withheld her goodwill from none save only Fëanor. In him she perceived a darkness that she hated and feared, though she did not perceive that the shadow of the same evil had fallen upon the minds of all the Noldor, and upon her own.

  So it came to pass that when the light of Valinor failed, for ever as the Noldor thought, she joined the rebellion against the Valar who commanded them to stay; and once she had set foot upon that road of exile she would not relent, but rejected the last message of the Valar, and came under the Doom of Mandos. Even after the merciless assault upon the Teleri and the rape of their ships, though she fought fiercely against Fëanor in defence of her mother’s kin, she did not turn back. Her pride was unwilling to return, a defeated suppliant for pardon; but now she burned with desire to follow Fëanor with her anger to whatever lands he might come, and to thwart him in all ways that she could. Pride still moved her when, at the end of the Elder Days after the final overthrow of Morgoth, she refused the pardon of the Valar for all who had fought against him, and remained in Middle-earth. It was not until two long ages more had passed, when at last all that she had desired in her youth came to her hand, the Ring of Power and the dominion of Middle-earth of which she had dreamed, that her wisdom was full grown and she rejected it, and passing the last test departed from Middle-earth for ever.

  This last sentence relates closely to the scene in Lothlórien when Frodo offered the One Ring to Galadriel (The Fellowship of the Ring II 7): ‘And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.’

  In The Silmarillion it is told (p. 84) that at the time of the rebellion of the Noldor in Valinor Galadriel

  was eager to be gone. No oaths she swore, but the words of Fëanor concerning Middle-earth had kindled in her heart, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will.

  There are however in the present account several features of which there is no trace in The Silmarillion: the kinship of Finarfin’s children with Thingol as a factor influencing their decision to join in Fëanor’s rebellion; Galadriel’s peculiar dislike and distrust of Fëanor from the beginning, and the effect she had on him; and the fighting at Alqualondë among the Noldor themselves – Angrod asserted to Thingol in Menegroth no more than that the kin of Finarfin were guiltless of the slaying of the Teleri (The Silmarillion p. 129). Most notable however in the passage just cited is the explicit statement that Galadriel refused the pardon of the Valar at the end of the First Age.

  Later in this essay it is said that though called Nerwen by her mother and Artanis (‘noble woman’) by her father, the name she chose to be her Sindarin name was Galadriel, ‘for it was the most beautiful of her names, and had been given to her by her lover, Teleporno of the Teleri, whom she wedded later in Beleriand’. Teleporno is Celeborn, here given a different history, as discussed further below (pp. 300 – 1); on the name itself see Appendix E, p. 346.

  A wholly different story, adumbrated but never told, of Galadriel’s conduct at the time of the rebellion of the Noldor appears in a very late and partly illegible note: the last writing of my father’s on the subject of Galadriel and Celeborn, and probably the last on Middle-earth and Valinor, set down in the last month of his life. In this he emphasized the commanding stature of Galadriel already in Valinor, the equal if unlike in endowments of Fëanor; and it is said here that so far from joining in Fëanor’s revolt she was in every way opposed to him. She did indeed wish to depart from Valinor and to go into the wide world of Middle-earth for the exercise of her talents; for ‘being brilliant in mind and swift in action she had early absorbed all of what she was capable of the teaching which the Valar thought fit to give the Eldar’, and she felt confined in the tutelage of Aman. This desire of Galadriel’s was, it seems, known to Manwë, and he had not forbidden her; but nor had she been given formal leave to depart. Pondering what she might do Galadriel’s thoughts turned to the ships of the Teleri, and she went for a while to dwell with her mother’s kindred in Alqualondë. There she met Celeborn, who is here again a Telerin prince, the grandson of Olwë of Alqualondë and thus her close kinsman. Together they planned to build a ship and sail in it to Middle-earth; and they were about to seek leave from the Valar for their venture when Melkor fled from Valmar and returning with Ungoliant destroyed the light of the Trees. In Fëanor’s revolt that followed the Darkening of Valinor Galadriel had no part: indeed she with Celeborn fought heroically in defence of Alqualondë against the assault of the Noldor, and Celeborn’s ship was saved from them. Galadriel, despairing now of Valinor and horrified by the violence and cruelty of Fëanor, set sail into the darkness without waiting for Manwë’s leave, which would undoubtedly have been withheld in that hour, however legitimate her desire in itself. It was thus that she came under the ban set upon all departure, and Valinor was shut against her return. But together with Cele-born she reached Middle-earth somewhat sooner than Fëanor, and sailed into the haven where Círdan was lord. There they were welcomed with joy, as being of the kin of Elwë (Thingol). In the years after they did not join in the war against Angband, which they judged to be hopeless under the ban of the Valar and without their aid; and their counsel was to withdraw from Beleriand and to build up a power to the eastward (whence they feared that Morgoth would draw reinforcement), befriending and teaching the Dark Elves and Men of those regions. But such a policy having no hope of acceptance among the Elves of Beleriand, Galadriel and Celeborn departed over Ered Lindon before the end of the First Age; and when they received the permission of the Valar to return into the West they rejected it.

  This story, withdrawing Galadriel from all association with the rebellion of Fëanor, even to the extent of giving her a separate departure (with Celeborn) from Aman, is profoundly at variance with all that is said elsewhere. It arose from ‘philosophical’ (rather than ‘historical’) considerations, concerning the precise nature of Galadriel’s disobedience in Valinor on the one hand, and her status and power in Middle-earth on the other. That it would have entailed a good deal of alteration in the narrative of The Silmarillion is evident; but that my father doubtless intended to do. It may be noted here that Galadriel did not appear in the original story of the rebellion and flight of the Noldor, which existed long before she did; and also, of course, that after her entry into the stories of the First Age her actions could still be transformed radically, since The Silmarillion had not been published. The book as published was however formed from completed narratives, and I could not take into account merely projected revisions.

  On the other hand, the making of Celeborn into a Telerin Elf of Aman contradicts not only statements in The Silmarillion, but also those cited already (p. 294) from The Road Goes Ever On and Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings, where Celeborn is a Sindarin Elf of Beleriand. As to why this fundamental alteration in his history was to be made, it might be answered that it arose from the new narrative element of Galadriel’s departure from Aman separately from the hosts of the rebel Noldor; but Celeborn is already transformed into a Telerin Elf in the text cited on p. 298, where Galadriel did take part in Fëanor’s revolt and march from Valinor, and where there is no indication of how Celeborn came to Middle-earth.

  The earlier story (apart from the question of the ban and the pardon), to which the statements in The Silmarillion, The Road Goes Ever On, and Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings refer, is fairly clear: Galadriel, coming to Middle-earth as one of the leaders of the second host of the Noldor, met Celeborn in Doriath, and was later wedded to him; he was the grandson of Thingol’s brother Elmo – a shadowy figure about whom nothing is told save that he was the younger brother of Elwë (Thingol) and Olwë, and
was ‘beloved of Elwë with whom he remained’. (Elmo’s son was named Galadhon, and his sons were Celeborn and Galathil; Galathil was the father of Nimloth, who wedded Dior Thingol’s Heir and was the mother of Elwing. By this genealogy Celeborn was a kinsman of Galadriel, the granddaughter of Olwë of Alqualondë, but not so close as by that in which he became Olwë’s grandson.) It is a natural assumption that Celeborn and Galadriel were present at the ruin of Doriath (it is said in one place that Celeborn ‘escaped the sack of Doriath’), and perhaps aided the escape of Elwing to the Havens of Sirion with the Silmaril – but this is nowhere stated. Celeborn is mentioned in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings as dwelling for a time in Lindon south of the Lune; 2 but early in the Second Age they passed over the Mountains into Eriador. Their subsequent history, in the same phase (so to call it) of my father’s writing, is told in the short narrative that follows here.

  Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn

  The text bearing this title is a short and hasty outline, very roughly composed, which is nonetheless almost the sole narrative source for the events in the West of Middle-earth up to the defeat and expulsion of Sauron from Eriador in the year 1701 of the Second Age. Other than this there is little beyond the brief and infrequent entries in the Tale of Years, and the much more generalised and selective account in Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age (published in The Silmarillion). It is certain that this present text was composed after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, both from there being a reference to the book and from the fact that Galadriel is called the daughter of Finarfin and the sister of Finrod Felagund (for these are the later namesof those princes, introduced in the revised edition: see p. 330, note 20). The text is much emended, and it is not always possible to see what belongs to the time of composition of the manuscript and what is indefinitely later. This is the case with those references to Amroth that make him the son of Galadriel and Celeborn; but whenever these references were inserted, I think it is virtually certain that this was a new construction, later than the writing of The Lord of the Rings. Had he been supposed to be their son when it was written, the fact would surely have been mentioned.