Morgoth's Ring (60 page)

3. change was an emendation to the typescript B (only); the manuscript has growth.

4. Cf. the words of Pengolod to AElfwine at the end of the Ainulindale (p. 37), of the mortality of Men, Death is their fate, the gift of Iluvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy. But Melkor has cast his shadow upon it, and confounded it with darkness, and brought forth evil out of good, and fear out of hope.'

5. The manuscript has here: 'What do ye know of death? Ye do not fear it, because you do not know it.' The typist of C replaced the first ye by you; my father let this stand, but corrected the original occurrence of you to ye. On the opening page of the typescript he noted that ye is used for the plural only, and that you 'represents the Elvish pronoun of polite address', while thou, thee 'represent the familiar (or affectionate) pronoun'. This distinction is not always maintained in the manuscript; but in a number of cases you, where ye might be expected, may be intended, and I have only corrected the forms where error seems certain.

6. This is a strange error. Fingolfin died in 456, the year after the Dagor Bragollach (V.132, repeated in the Grey Annals): see p. 306.

7. Cf. Laws and Customs, p. 220: 'The new fea, and therefore in their beginning all fear, they [the Eldar] believe to come direct from Eru and from beyond Ea. Therefore many of them hold that it cannot be asserted that the fate of the Elves is to be confined within Arda for ever and with it to cease.'

8. mort: the note sounded on a horn at the death of the quarry.

9. The distinction between ye (plural) and you (singular) is presumably intended (see note 5).

10. The manuscript has Mirruyainar, followed in both typescripts.

On B my father emended the name to Mirroyainar here but not at the second occurrence (p. 316); on C he changed it to Mirroanwi at both occurrences. See the 'Glossary' to the Athrabeth, p. 350.

11. In the margin of the manuscript, repeated in the typescript C, is written against this paragraph: 'In the Music of Eru Men only entered after the discords of Melkor.' Of course this was true of the Elves also. See Author's Note 1 to the Commentary on the Athrabeth and note 10 (p. 358).

12. Cf. the words of Manwe at the end of the Debate of the Valar in Laws and Customs (p. 245): 'For Arda Unmarred hath two aspects or senses. The first is the Unmarred that they [the Eldar) discern in the Marred...: this is the ground upon which Hope is built. The second is the Unmarred that shall be: that is, to speak according to Time in which they have their being, the Arda Healed, which shall be greater and more fair than the first, because of the Marring: this is the Hope that sustaineth.'

13. It is said in the Ainulindale' (p. 13, $19) that 'the history was incomplete and the circles not full-wrought when the vision was taken away', to which in the final text D (p. 31) was added a footnote, attributed to Pengolod:

And some have said that the Vision ceased ere the fulfilment of the Dominion of Men and the fading of the Firstborn; wherefore, though the Music is over all, the Valar have not seen as with sight the Later Ages or the ending of the World.

In the 'lost' typescript AAm' of the opening of the Annals of Aman (p. 64) it is said that Nienna could not endure to the end of the Music, and that 'therefore she has not the hope of Manwe'

(p. 68).

14. See p. 312 and note 7.

15. On the conception of Arda Complete see note (iii) at the end of Laws and Customs (p. 251).

16. It was of course fundamental to the whole conception of the Elder Days that Men awoke in the East at the first Sunrise, and that they had existed for no more than a few hundred years when Finrod Felagund came upon Beor and his people in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. There have been suggestions earlier in the Athrabeth that Andreth was looking much further back in time to the awakening of Men (thus she speaks of 'legends of days when death came less swiftly and our span was still far longer', p. 313); in her words here, 'a rumour that has come down through years uncounted', a profound alteration in the conception seems plain.

The chronology of the Years of the Sun is however maintained in the Athrabeth, with the dating of the meeting of Finrod and Andreth as 'about 409 during the Long Peace (260 - 455)' (see p. 306). See further p. 378.

17. Both here and on p. 324 the name was written Egnor in the manuscript, subsequently changed to Aegnor; cf. p. 177 ($42) and p. 197.

18. Cf. QS $117 (V.264): 'Angrod and Egnor watched Bladorion from the northern slopes of Dorthonion' (during the Siege of Angband), and $129 (V.276): 'Barahir [son of Beor the Old]

dwelt mostly on the north marches with Angrod and Egnor.'

19. The sentence 'But say not thou to me, for so he once did' was an addition to the manuscript; Finrod has begun to address Andreth as thou from shortly before this point. But from here to the end of the text the usage is very confused, inconsistent in the manuscript and with inconsistent emendation to the typescript (both thou to you and you to thou); it seems that my father was in two minds as to which forms Finrod should employ, and I have left the text as it stands.

20. pitiful: i.e. filled with pity, compassionate.

21. Cf. Laws and Customs, p. 213: 'it would seem to any of the Eldar a grievous thing if a wedded pair were sundered during the bearing of a child, or while the first years of its childhood lasted.

For which reason the Eldar would beget children only in days of happiness and peace if they could.'

*

The Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth perhaps marks the culmination of my father's thought on the relation of Elves and Men, in Finrod's exalted vision of the original design of Eru for Mankind; but his central purpose was to explore fully for the first time the nature of 'the Marring of Men'. In the long account of his work that he wrote for Milton Waldman in 1951 (Letters no.131, pp. 147 - 8) he had said: The first fall of Man... nowhere appears - Men do not come on the stage until all that is long past, and there is only a rumour that for a while they fell under the domination of the Enemy and that some repented.

In the Athrabeth Finrod approaches this 'rumour' directly: 'Therefore I say to you, Andreth, what did ye do, ye Men, long ago in the dark?

How did ye anger Eru? ... Will you say what you know or have heard?' He is met by a blank refusal: '"I will not," said Andreth. "We do not speak of this to those of other race"'; but to Finrod's subsequent question 'Are there no tales of your days before death, though ye will not tell them to strangers?' Andreth replies: 'Maybe. If not among my folk, then among the folk of Adanel, perhaps.' The legend of the Fall of Man preserved among certain of the Edain was (as will be seen shortly) about to enter.

Presenting the fundamental differences of destiny, nature, and experience between Elves and Men in the form of a philosophical debate between Finrod Lord of Nargothrond and Andreth descendant of Beor the Old, the argument is nonetheless conducted with an increasing intensity, and bitterness on the part of Andreth, the bearing of which (though known to both speakers independently) is only revealed at the end. But to this passionate work my father appended a long discursive and critical commentary in a very different vein, which follows here.

The newspapers in which the Athrabeth and the commentary were preserved (see p. 304) bear the inscription:

Addit. Silmarillion.

------------

Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth.

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Commentary.

On one of these wrappers my father added: 'Should be last item in an appendix' (i.e. to The Silmarillion).

This commentary he typed himself, in top copy and carbon, with a few subsequent emendations almost identical in both. Following the commentary are numbered notes that bulk much larger than the commentary itself, since some of them constitute short essays. I distinguish these from my own numbered notes to the text (pp. 357ff.) by the words 'Author's Note'.

Very rough drafting for the commentary is extant, and thar this followed the making of the amanuensis typescripts of the Athrabeth itself is seen from the occurrence in it of the word Mirroanwi (see note 10 above).

ATHRABETH FINROD AH ANDRETH

The Debate of Finrod and Andreth

This is not presented as an argument of any cogency for Men in their present situation (or the one in which they believe themselves to be), though it may have some interest for Men who start with similar beliefs or assumptions to those held by the Elvish king Finrod.

It is in fact simply part of the portrayal of the imaginary world of the Silmarillion, and an example of the kind of thing that enquiring minds on either side, the Elvish or the Human, must have said to one another after they became acquainted.

We see here the attempt of a generous Elvish mind to fathom the relations of Elves and Men, and the part they were designed to play in what he would have called the Oienkarme Eruo (The One's perpetual production), which might be rendered by

'God's management of the Drama'.

There are certain things in this world that have to be accepted as 'facts'. The existence of Elves: that is of a race of beings closely akin to Men, so closely indeed that they must be regarded as physically (or biologically) simply branches of the same race.(1) The Elves appeared on Earth earlier, but not (mythologically or geologically) much earlier;(2) they were 'immortal', and did not 'die' except by accident. Men, when they appeared on the scene (that is, when they met the Elves), were, however, much as they now are: they 'died', even if they escaped all accidents, at about the age of 70 to 80. The existence of the Valar: that is of certain angelic Beings (created, but at least as powerful as the 'gods' of human mythologies), the chief of whom still resided in an actual physical part of the Earth. They were the agents and vice-gerents of Eru (God). They had been for nameless ages engaged in a demiurgic labour (3) completing to the design of Eru the structure of the Universe (Ea); but were now concentrated on Earth for the principal Drama of Creation: the war of the Eruhin (The Children of God), Elves and Men, against Melkor. Melkor, originally the most powerful of the Valar,(4) had become a rebel, against his brethren and against Eru, and was the prime Spirit of Evil.

With regard to King Finrod, it must be understood that he starts with certain basic beliefs, which he would have said were derived from one or more of these sources: his created nature; angelic instruction; thought; and experience.

1. There exists Eru (The One); that is, One God Creator, who made (or more strictly designed) the World, but is not Himself the World. This world, or Universe, he calls Ea, an Elvish word that means 'It is', or 'Let It Be'.

2. There are on Earth 'incarnate' creatures, Elves and Men: these are made of a union of hroa and fea (roughly but not exactly equivalent to 'body' and 'soul'). This, he would say, was a known fact concerning Elvish nature, and could therefore be deduced for human nature from the close kinship of Elves and Men.

3. Hroa and fea he would say are wholly distinct in kind, and not on the 'same plane of derivation from Eru', (Author's Note 1, p. 336) but were designed each for the other, to abide in perpetual harmony. The fea is indestructible, a unique identity which cannot be disintegrated or absorbed into any other identity. The hroa, however, can be destroyed and dissolved: that is a fact of experience. (In such a case he would describe the fea as 'exiled' or 'houseless'.)

4. The separation of fea and hroa is 'unnatural', and proceeds not from the original design, but from the 'Marring of Arda', which is due to the operations of Melkor.

5. Elvish 'immortality' is bounded within a part of Time (which he would call the History of Arda), and is therefore strictly to be called rather 'serial longevity', the utmost limit of which is the length of the existence of Arda. (Author's Note 2, p. 337) A corollary of this is that the Elvish fea is also limited to the Time of Arda, or at least held within it and unable to leave it, while it lasts.

6. From this it would follow in thought, if it were not a fact of Elvish experience, that a 'houseless' Elvish fea must have the power or opportunity to return to incarnate life, if it has the desire or will to do so. (Actually the Elves discovered that their fear had not this power in themselves, but that the opportunity and means were provided by the Valar, by the special permission of Eru for the amendment of the unnatural state of divorce.

It was not lawful for the Valar to force a fea to return; but they could impose conditions, and judge whether return should be permitted at all, and if so, in what way or after how long.) (Author's Note 3, p. 339)

7. Since Men die, without accident, and whether they will to do so or not, their fear must have a different relation to Time.

The Elves believed, though they had no certain information, that the fear of Men, if disembodied, left Time (sooner or later), and never returned. (Author's Note 4, p. 340)