Morgoth's Ring (31 page)

This further revision makes Orome return at once to Valinor, and then come back to Kuivienen, where he aided the Elves in the making of language. It does not appear in LQ 1 and LQ 2

because, as I have said, this and other alterations were made to Text A after LQ 1 had been taken from it.

In AAm $39 (p. 72) the story is different: there the Quendi

'began to make speech and to give names to all things that they perceived' long before Orome came upon them (335 Sun Years after the Awakening); and nothing is said of his playing any part in the evolution of Elvish speech.

In the sentence 'while they dwelt yet silent upon the star-lit mere' Text A has beside; upon in LQ 1 (and LQ 2) was clearly an error introduced by the typist (and similarly with the omission of so earlier in this paragraph and tongues for tongue in $23).

$21 On LQ 2 my father changed 'the fortress of Melkor' in the first sentence to 'the fortresses of Melkor', and at the end of the paragraph 'the fortress of Melkor at Utumno' to 'the fortresses of Melkor'. In this case he made the changes on LQ 1 also, but I have not included them in the text printed, since they were very late, and belonged with the changed story of the origin of Angband: see the commentary on Chapter 2, $12 (p. 156).

On Text A 'little do they know of the riding of the power of the West' was changed to 'they know little', but this, like the major change made to $20, was made after LQ 1 had been taken from Text A.

There reappears here for the first time since the Lost Tales the story that Aule made the chain Angainor (elaborately recounted in The Chaining of Melko, I.100 - 1, where the form was Angaino; in The Tale of Tinuviel, II.19, there is a reference to

'the chain Angainu that Aule and Tulkas made').

$22 Changes were also made in this paragraph after LQ 1 had been made: 'from whence' > 'whence', and 'Vast are those halls and strong' > 'Vast and strong are those halls'.

In AAm $52 Melkor was condemned to Mandos for three ages (pp. 80, 88).

$23 That there were differing counsels of the Valar on the Summoning of the Quendi was not even hinted in the Quenta tradition till now. In AAm $53 (p. 81) there is mention of a debate, and in $73 (p. 86) it is told that in the council of the Valar Ulmo 'had chiefly spoken against the summons, deeming that it were better for the Quendi to remain in Middle-earth.' The belief that the Valar erred is not here imputed to them as an error 'with good intent' (QS, V.214), and to this extent is harshly repudiated.

The passage concerning the three ambassadors remains virtually unchanged from QS, but in the course of the revision (see under $27 below) there came to be an internal change of reference - when Elwe became Thingol, whereas previously he had been Thingol's brother (see V.217, $23). Probably the sentences 'These were Ingwe and Finwe and Elwe, who after were kings of the Three Kindreds of the Eldar' and 'The Elves that obeyed the summons and followed the three kings' should have been modified when that transformation took place, and when the Third Host came to have two lords.

There is no mention in LQ of the kindreds of Morwe and Nurwe, who refused the summons (AAm $57, p. 81).

Another very minor change was made to Text A after LQ 1

was made: 'And Mandos who had spoken not at all' > 'And Mandos who had not spoken'.

$25 The name Lindar was altered to Vanyar by a late change made to the final text of the Ainulindale' (p. 34, $36); in AAm $58

(p. 82) Vanyar appears in the text as written. - By a pencilled change to LQ 2 'High Elves' was changed to 'Fair Elves' (see V.218, $25).

$26 In Text A the opening sentence of this paragraph read: 'Next came the Noldor, a name of wisdom, and the Gnomes they may be called in our tongue', with 'Quoth AElfwine. (The word that he uses ...' placed in a footnote. The typist of LQ 1 placed all this in the body of the text; but my father directed that it should all go into a footnote, as is done in the text printed. In the Old English versions of the 1930s Witan was not used, but Noldelfe, Noldielfe (see also IV.212). On one copy of LQ 2 my father struck out 'Gnomes' and wrote above 'Enquirers'; this occurs nowhere else.

At the end of the paragraph he added to Text A: 'Dark is their hue and grey are their eyes'; this did not get into the later typescripts. See 1.44.

$27 By the end of the revision, represented by LQ 1, the final position had been reached, as in AAm $$58, 74: Elwe Singollo (Greymantle) - who is Elu Thingol King of Doriath - and his brother Olwe, the two lords of the host of the Teleri on the Great March until Elwe was lost. The stages passed through to reach this can be observed in the earlier version of the end of Text A (see p. 158). First came the idea that there were two lords, because the numbers were very great: Elwe and his brother Sindo ('the locks of Sindo were as grey as silver ... but the hair of Elwe was long and white, and he was the tallest of all the Elven-race'). Then Elwe' was changed to Solwe, and Sindo to Elwe'; at this stage, probably, Elwe (the Grey) became one of the three original ambassadors, displacing his brother (now Solwe) in this at the same time as he took his name (and became in his stead 'the tallest of all the Elven-folk').

$28 In the first stage of the 1951 revision, carried out on the original QS typescript, the people of Dan, still from the host of the Noldor, were thus described:

They are not counted among the Eldar, nor yet among the Avari. The [Nandar >] Nandor who turn back they were called, and akin was the name of their first leader Nano, who in their tongue was called Dan. His son was Denethor, who led them into Beleriand ere the rising of the Moon. The Danathrim, Danians, they were named in that land.

The term Pereldar 'Half-eldar' used in QS had now disappeared, and in this passage is clearly the first occurrence of the name Nandor (which appears subsequently in AAm $62: see pp. 83, 89).

In the next stage (Text A) the paragraph was removed from its former place and set at the end of $29. At this stage the Nandor, also called the Laiquendi or Green-elves, became Telerin Elves from the host of Sindo the Grey, and were placed with the other Teleri (followers of Sindo) who remained behind in Beleriand under the name Ekelli (first written Ecelli), 'the Forsaken'. See further under $$29 - 30.

$$29 - 30 In the first stage of the revision the form Lembi Lingerers

- the Elves of the Great Journey who 'were lost upon the long road' - became Lemberi, classed with the Avari as Moriquendi, Dark Elves. The term Kalaquendi, Light Elves, also appeared in the account (though found much earlier, together with Moriquendi, in the table associated with the Lhammas, V.197, and also in the Etymologies). At this stage the old subdivision Ilkorindi (comprising Lembi and Pereldar or Danas, see the table given in V.219) is not present, and the place of the Nandor is not defined.

In the next stage (Text A) the term Lemberi was not used, and there emerged the short-lived term Ekelli (Ecelli) used (like the old Ilkorindi) of all the 'lost Eldar', including the Nandor (see under $28); Ekelli was the name given to them by the Elves of Valinor, and meant 'the Forsaken, their kin that were left behind'. Thus:

Followers of

Nandor Avari

Elwe

Ekelli

(the Forsaken)

Moriquendi

(Dark Elves)

Ekelli was then replaced by Alamanyar ('since they came never to the Land of Aman'), and the Nandor became Elves from the host of Olwe; while those who sought in vain for Elwe Singollo (Thingol) are 'therefore' called Sindar, the Grey Elves,

'but themselves they named Eglath, the Forsaken.' Thus: Sindar Nandor

(= Eglath, the Forsaken) Avari Alamanyar

Moriquendi

It was here, undoubtedly, that the name Sindar arose: occurrences earlier in LQ were inserted later, and that in AAm ($74, see p. 91) was later also. With the change of Alamanyar to Umanyar on LQ 1 the final form (as shown in the table in the published Silmarillion, p. 309) was reached.

Thus some important developments in the narrative emerged in the course of the 1951 revision of the end of this chapter. The original Elwe, who in QS ($30) was Thingol's brother, became Olwe, while the name Elwe was transferred to Thingol - who became one of the three Elvish 'ambassadors' taken by Orome to Valinor, in the place of his brother; and both Olwe and Elwe were leaders of the Telerin host on the Great March from Kuivienen. The story that the Eldar of Beleriand (the Sindar) did not pass over the Sea because they were left behind seeking for Elwe Singollo takes up a passage in the Lhammas (V.174, cited on p. 90, $71); in QS there was no suggestion that the Elves of Doriath were specifically those of Thingol's following who would not abandon the search for him.

In AAm the whole matter is treated from a different point of view: there, the events and geography of the Great Journey are a central element, but the complexities of naming and classifica-tion are not. It is clear however that AAm was not written until the revision of the Quenta tradition concerning the Sundering of the Elves was virtually complete: for in AAm the Nandor are from the host of Olwe ($62), and the followers of Elwe who were left behind called themselves Eglath, the Forsaken People ($71).

The passage recounting the names used in poetry for the Elvish peoples, which goes back to QS, and which forms an integral part of Text A, was for some reason omitted from LQ 1; my father wrote it onto the typescript subsequently (with Vanyar for Lindar of Text A).

Later changes made to Text A altered 'Axe-elves' to 'Staff-elves' as a name of the Nandor, and introduced 'Axe-elves' as a name of the Sindar (following 'the Friends of Osse'); but these were 'lost' and do not appear in LQ 1 and LQ Z. - The name Lemberi 'Lingerers' (see under $$29 - 30 above) reappears as one of the by-names of the Sindar; and 'the Green Elves and the Brown' re-emerge from the old Tale of the Nauglafring (11.237, etc.).

It remains to notice lastly that on LQ 2 my father changed the title of the chapter to Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor, which was followed in the published Silmarillion; and also that on one copy of this typescript, against the first occurrence of Umanyar ($29), he wrote Alamanyar in the margin, as if he were considering a return to the earlier name.

4 OF THINGOL AND MELIAN.

Of Thingol and Melian was not a separate chapter in the QS

manuscript and the derived QS typescript, although in both there was a sub-heading (and in The Lost Road, V.220, I treated it as separate, numbering it 3(b)). The first text of the 1951 revision was a manuscript that continued on from the manuscript ending of 'Text A'

of The Coming of the Elves (see p. 158), and here my father may have intended it as a separate chapter, although there is no number. From

'Text A', as in the preceding chapter, LQ 1 was taken, and the final text was LQ 2 (in which the chapter is numbered '4').

The first paragraph remained almost unchanged from QS, but the remainder was much expanded.

Of Thingol and Melian.

$31 Thus it came to pass that Elu-thingol [> Elwe Singollo]

and many of his folk abode in Beleriand and went not to Valinor.

Melian was a maia, of the race of the Valar. She dwelt in the gardens of Olofantur, and among all his fair folk there was none more beautiful than she, nor more wise, nor more skilled in songs of enchantment. It is told that the gods would leave their business, and the birds of Valinor their mirth, that the bells of Valmar were silent and the fountains ceased to flow, when at the mingling of the lights Melian sang in Lorien. Nightingales went always with her, and she taught them their song. She loved the deep shadow of great trees; but she was akin, before the world was made, unto Yavanna herself, and on a time she departed from Valinor on a long journey into the Hither Lands, and there she filled the silence of Arda before the dawn with her voice and with the voices of her birds.

$32 Now it came to pass that when their journey was near its end the folk of Elwe rested long and dwelt in Beleriand beyond Gelion; and King Elwe went often through the great woods, for he had friendship with the Noldor who lay to the westward, and with Finwe their lord. And it chanced on a time that he came alone to the starlit wood of Nan Elmoth, and there on a sudden he heard the song of nightingales. Then an enchantment fell upon him, and he stood still; and afar off beyond the voices of the lomelindi * he heard the voice of Melian, and it filled all his heart with wonder and desire. He forgot then utterly all his folk and all the purposes of his mind, and following the birds under the shadows of the trees he passed deep into Nan Elmoth and was lost. But he came at last to a glade open to the stars, and there Melian stood; and out of the darkness he beheld her with hands outstretched, and the light of Aman was in her face.

No word she spoke; but being filled with love Elwe came to her and took her hand; and straightway a spell was laid on him, so that they stood thus, hand in hand, while long years were measured by the wheeling stars above them; and the trees of Nan Elmoth grew tall and dark ere they spoke any word one to another.