Read The War of the Jewels Online

Authors: J. R. R. Tolkien

The War of the Jewels (65 page)

BOOK: The War of the Jewels
4.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

In this it is also notable that the old story that the Dwarves took the Nauglamir from Menegroth reappears (see pp. 346-7).

Beneath the -loriel of Rathloriel my father wrote in pencil: lorion (Rathlorion was the original form of this river-name), but he struck this out and then wrote mallen, sc. Rathmallen (cf. Rathmalad (?) on the map, p. 191, $69).

504. Dior's return to Doriath has been given already under 503 in D 1, the typescript part of the text. - In the B and C versions (pp.

346-7) Melian brought the Silmaril to Beren and Luthien in Ossiriand and then departed to Valinor, and this is said also in D 1 (p. 350). The present entry in D 2, a year later, repeats that Melian went to Valinor, and the suggestion is that she was in Doriath when Dior came; cf. the note cited on p. 350: 'Dior... appears in Doriath after its ruin, and is welcomed by Melian'. This seems clearly to have been the story in AB 1 (IV.307) and AB 2 (V.141 - 2). But it is impossible to be certain of anything with such compressed entries.

506-507. Ossir: Ossiriand. - On Maidros' unavailing search for Elrun and Eldun see p. 349, year 511.

The Lady Lindis: Lindis appears elsewhere as the name of Dior's wife (see p. 257). The sentence 'Thence hearing the rumour she fled to the Havens of Sirion' presumably means that Lindis heard the rumour that the survivors of Gondolin had reached the Havens (an event recorded in this text under the year 511).

by Maeglin was later changed: see pp. 272-3 and note 30.

511. Cf. the Quenta (IV.152): 'for them seemed that in that jewel lay the gift of bliss and healing that had come upon their houses and their ships'; also AB 2 (V.143).

512. That Maidros 'forswore his oath' was stated in AB 2 (V.142); in this and the following entries my father was following that text very closely (indeed D 2 is based upon it throughout).

525. The suggestion that Voronwe was the companion of Tuor and Idril on their voyage into the West is notable. He (Bronweg / Voronwe) was originally Earendil's fellow-mariner (IV.38, 150). Cf. Tuor's words to him in the later Tale of Tuor (Unfinished Tales p. 33): 'far from the Shadow your long road shall lead you, and your hope shall return to the Sea.'

It would be interesting to know when this manuscript conclusion D 2 was written. It looks as if it belongs with some of the alterations and additions made to the typescript in earlier entries, particularly those pertaining to the story of Turin, and in these there are suggestions that they derive from the period of my father's work on the Narn. But this is very uncertain; and if it is so, it is the more remarkable that he should have based these entries so closely on the old pre-Lord of the Rings annals.

A note on Chapter 22 Of the Ruin of Doriath

in the published Silmarillion.

Apart from a few matters of detail in texts and notes that have not been published, all that my father ever wrote on the subject of the ruin of Doriath has now been set out: from the original story told in the Tale of Turambar (II.113-15) and the Tale of the Nauglafring (II.221

ff.), through the Sketch of the Mythology (IV.32 - 3, with commentary 61 - 3) and the Quenta (IV.132 - 4, with commentary 187-91), together j with what little can be gleaned from The Tale of Years and a very few later references (see especially pp. 352 - 3). If these materials are compared with the story told in The Silmarillion it is seen at once that this latter is fundamentally changed, to a form for which in certain essential features there is no authority whatever in my father's own writings.

There were very evident problems with the old story. Had he ever turned to it again, my father would undoubtedly have found some solution other than that in the Quenta to the question, How was the treasure of Nargothrond brought to Doriath? There, the curse that Mim laid upon the gold at his death 'came upon the possessors in this wise. Each one of Hurin's company died or was slain in quarrels upon the road; but Hurin went unto Thingol and sought his aid, and the folk of Thingol bore the treasure to the Thousand Caves.' As I said in IV.188, 'it ruins the gesture, if Hurin must get the king himself to send for the gold with which he is then to be humiliated'. It seems to me most likely (but this is mere speculation) that my father would have reintroduced the outlaws from the old Tales (II.113-15, 222-3) as the bearers of the treasure (though not the fierce battle between them and the Elves of the Thousand Caves): in the scrappy writings at the end of The Wanderings of Hurin Asgon and his companions reappear after the disaster in Brethil and go with Hurin to Nargothrond (pp. 306 - 7).

How he would have treated Thingol's behaviour towards the Dwarves is impossible to say. That story was only once told fully, in the Tale of the Nauglafring, in which the conduct of Tinwelint (precursor of Thingol) was wholly at variance with the later conception of the king (see II.245-6). In the Sketch no more is said of the matter than that the Dwarves were 'driven away without payment', while in the Quenta 'Thingol... scanted his promised reward for their labour; and bitter words grew between them, and there was battle in Thingol's halls'. There seems to be no clue or hint in later writing (in The Tale of Years the same bare phrase is used in all the versions:

'Thingol quarrels with the Dwarves'), unless one is seen in the words quoted from Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn on p. 353: Celeborn in his view of the destruction of Doriath ignored Morgoth's part in it

'and Thingol's own faults'.

In The Tale of Years my father seems not to have considered the problem of the passage of the Dwarvish host into Doriath despite the Girdle of Melian, but in writing the word 'cannot' against the D

version (p. 352) he showed that he regarded the story he had outlined as impossible, for that reason. In another place he sketched a possible solution (ibid.): 'Somehow it must be contrived that Thingol is lured outside or induced to go to war beyond his borders and is there slain by the Dwarves. Then Melian departs, and the girdle being removed Doriath is ravaged by the Dwarves.'

In the story that appears in The Silmarillion the outlaws who went with Hurin to Nargothrond were removed, as also was the curse of Mim; and the only treasure that Hurin took from Nargothrond was the Nauglamir - which was here supposed to have been made by Dwarves for Finrod Felagund, and to have been the most prized by him of all the hoard of Nargothrond. Hurin was represented as being at last freed from the delusions inspired by Morgoth in his encounter with Melian in Menegroth. The Dwarves who set the Silmaril in the Nauglamir were already in Menegroth engaged on other works, and it was they who slew Thingol; at that time Melian's power was with-drawn from Neldoreth and Region, and she vanished out of Middle-earth, leaving Doriath unprotected. The ambush and destruction of the Dwarves at Sarn Athrad was given again to Beren and the Green Elves (following my father's letter of 1963 quoted on p. 353, where the Ents, 'Shepherds of the Trees', were introduced.

This story was not lightly or easily conceived, but was the outcome of long experimentation among alternative conceptions. In this work Guy Kay took a major part, and the chapter that I finally wrote owes much to my discussions with him. It is, and was, obvious that a Step was being taken of a different order from any other 'manipulation' of my father's own writing in the course of the book: even in the case of the story of The Fall of Gondolin, to which my father had never returned, something could be contrived without introducing radical changes in the narrative. It seemed at that time that there were elements inherent in the story of the Ruin of Doriath as it stood that were radically incompatible with 'The Silmarillion' as projected, and that there was here an inescapable choice: either to abandon thai conception, or else to alter the story. I think now that this was a mistaken view, and that the undoubted difficulties could have been, and should have been, surmounted without so far overstepping the bounds of the editorial function.

PART FOUR.

QUENDI

AND

ELDAR.

QUENDI AND ELDAR.

The title Quendi and Eldar clearly belongs properly to the long essay that is printed here, though my father used it also to include two other much briefer works, obviously written at much the same time; one of these, on the origin of the Orcs, was published in Morgoth's Ring (see X.415, where a more detailed account is given). Quendi and Eldar is extant in a typescript with carbon copy that can be fairly certainly dated to the years 1959-60 (ibid.); and both copies are preceded by a manuscript page that in addition to the following preamble gives a parallel title Essekenta Eldarinwa.

Enquiry into the origins of the Elvish names for Elves and their varieties clans and divisions: with Appendices on their names for the other Incarnates: Men, Dwarves, and Orcs; and on their analysis of their own language, Quenya: with a note on the 'Language of the Valar'.

My father corrected the two copies carefully and in precisely the same ways (except for a few later pencilled alterations). The text printed here follows the original very closely, apart from very minor changes made for consistency or clarity, the omission of a passage of extremely complex phonology, and a reorganisation of the text in respect of the notes. As often elsewhere in his later writings, my father interrupted his main text with notes, some of them long; and these I have numbered and collected at the end, distinguishing them from my own numbered notes by referring to them in the body of the text as Note 1, Note 2, &c., with a reference to the page on which they are found.

Also, and more drastically, I have omitted one substantial section from Appendix D (see p. 396). This was done primarily for reasons of space, but the passage in question is a somewhat abstract account of the phonological theories of earlier linguistic Loremasters and the contributions of Feanor, relying rather allusively on phonological data that are taken for granted: it stands apart from the content of the work at large (and entered, I suspect, from the movement of my father's train of thought rather than as a planned element in the whole).

Also for reasons of space my commentary is kept to a severe minimum. Abbreviations used are PQ (Primitive Quendian), CE

(Common Eldarin), CT (Common Telerin), Q (Quenya), T (Telerin), N (Noldorin), S (Sindarin), V (Valarin).

QUENDI AND ELDAR.

Origin and Meanings of the Elvish words referring to Elves and their varieties. With Appendices on their names for other Incarnates.

A. The principal linguistic elements concerned.

1. *KWENE.

(a) PQ *kwene 'person' (m. or f.). CE *kwen (-kwen), pl.

*kweni, person (m. or f.), one, (some)body-, pl. persons', '(some) people'.

(b) PQ and CE *kwende, pl. *kwendf. This form was made from *kwene by primitive fortification of the median n ) nd. It was probably at first only used in the plural, in the sense 'people, the people as a whole', sc. embracing all the three original clans.

(c) *kwendja adj. 'belonging to the *kwendi, to the people as a whole'.

2. *ELE According to Elvish legend this was a primitive exclamation, 'lo! ' 'behold! ' made by the Elves when they first saw the stars. Hence:

(a) CE *el, *ele, *el-a, 'lo!' 'look!' 'see!'

(b) CE *el, pl. *eli, eli, 'star'.

(c) CE *elen, pl. 'elena, 'star', with 'extended base'.

(d) CE *elda, an adjectival formation 'connected or concerned with the stars', used as a description of the *kwendi.

According to legend this name, and the next, were due to the Vala Orome. They were thus probably at first only used in the plural, meaning 'star-folk'.

(e) CE *elena, an adjectival form made from the extended stem *elen, of the same meaning and use as *elda.

3. *DELE.

(a) A verbal base 'dele, also with suffix *del-ja, 'walk, go, proceed, travel'.

(b) *edelo, an agental formation of primitive pattern: 'one who goes, traveller, migrant'. A name made at the time of the Separation for those who decided to follow Orome.

(c) *awa-delo, *awa-delo, ?*wa-delo. Old compounds with the element *awa 'away' (see below). A name made in Beleriand for those who finally departed from Middle-earth.

4. *HEKE. Probably not in origin a verbal base, but an adverbial element 'aside, apart, separate'.

(a) PQ *heke 'apart, not including'.

(b) PQ and CE verbal derivative, transitive: 'hek-ta 'set aside, cast out, forsake'.

(c) PQ *hekla 'any thing (or person) put aside from, or left out from, its normal company'. Also in personal form

*heklo 'a waif or outcast'; adjectival forms 'hekla and

*hekela.

The element *AWA, appearing in 3(c) above, referred to movement away, viewed from the point of view of the thing, person, or place left. As a prefix it had probably already developed in CE the form *au-. The form *awa was originally an independent adverbial form, but appears to have been also used as a prefix (as an intensive form of *awa-, 'au-). The form *wa- was probably originally used as a verbal stem, and possibly also in composition with verbal stems.

In the Eldarin languages this stem made contact in form with other elements, distinct in origin and in sense.*ABA 'refuse', 'say nay (in refusal or denial)': this is the source of the CE *abar, pl.

BOOK: The War of the Jewels
4.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Love Finds Lord Davingdale by Anne Gallagher
Desperado by Sandra Hill
Camo Girl by Kekla Magoon
ZAK SEAL Team Seven Book 3 by Silver, Jordan
Villiers Touch by Brian Garfield
Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler
Desperate Choices by Kathy Ivan
A Little White Lie by Mackenzie McKade