The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (The History of Middle-Earth, #1)

by J.R.R. Tolkien

To read The Silmarillion one must place oneself imaginatively at the time of the ending of the Third Age—within Middle-earth, looking back: at the temporal point of Sam Gamgee’s ‘I like that!’—adding, ‘I should like to know more about it’.

tetralogy,

the original edition of The Lord of the Rings Bilbo gave to Frodo at Rivendell as his parting gift ‘some books of lore that he had made at various times, written in his spidery hand, and labelled on their red backs: Translations from the Elvish, by B.B.’ In the second edition (1966) ‘some books’ was changed to ‘three books’, and in the Note on the Shire Records added to the Prologue in that edition my father said that the content of ‘the three large volumes bound in red leather’ was preserved in that copy of the Red Book of Westmarch which was made in Gondor by the King’s Writer Findegil in the year 172 of the Fourth Age;

These three volumes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which…[Bilbo] had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written. But since they were little used by Frodo, being almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days, no more is said of them here.

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth Robert Foster says: ‘Quenta Silmarillion was no doubt one of Bilbo’s Translations from the Elvish preserved in the Red Book of Westmarch.’ So also I have assumed: the ‘books of lore’ that Bilbo gave to Frodo provided in the end the solution: they were ‘The Silmarillion’.

Anyone interested, as I am, in the growth of The Silmarillion will want to study Unfinished Tales, not only for its intrinsic value but also because its relationship to the former provides what will become a classic example of a long-standing problem in literary criticism: what, really, is a literary work? Is it what the author intended (or may have intended) it to be, or is it what a later editor makes of it?

Every person, every feature of the imagined world that seemed significant to its author is then worthy of attention in its own right, Manwë or Fëanor no less than Gandalf or Galadriel, the Silmarils no less than the Rings; the Great Music, the divine hierarchies, the abodes of the Valar, the fates of the Children of Ilúvatar, are essential elements in the perception of the whole.

By the publication of ‘The Silmarillion’ the ‘longitudinal’ was cut ‘transversely’, and a kind of finality imposed.

And when Vairë had spoken the words of welcome, and Lindo had asked of him his name and whence he came and whither he might be seeking, and he had named himself the Stranger and said that he came from the Great Lands,2 and that he was seeking whither-so his desire for travel led him,

Then he looked up, and lo, the hall and all its benches and chairs were filled with children of every aspect, kind, and size, while sprinkled among them were folk of all manners and ages. In one thing only were all alike, that a look of great happiness lit with a merry expectation of further mirth and joy lay on every face.

and Eoh was slain by his brother Beorn (in Old English ‘warrior’, but originally meaning ‘bear’, as does the cognate word björn in Old Norse; cf. Beorn the shape-changer in The Hobbit).

You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play You and me*—we know that land

Here was all the furniture of dark wood, and as his great candle flickered its soft rays worked a magic with the room, till it seemed to him that sleep was the best of all delights, but that fair chamber the best of all for sleep.

When he awoke the sun was rising and there was no music save that of a myriad of birds about his window. The light struck through the panes and shivered into merry glints, and that room with its fragrance and its pleasant draperies seemed even sweeter than before;

There he wandered breathing the airs and watching the sun rise above the strange roofs of that town, when behold the aged door-ward was before him, coming along a lane of hazel-bushes. He saw not Eriol, for he held his head as ever bent towards the earth, and muttered swiftly to himself; but Eriol spake bidding him good morrow, and thereat he started.

‘Nay sir, may Tevildo Prince of Cats harry him for daring to perch in a garden that is in the care of Rúmil. Know you that the Noldoli grow old astounding slow, and yet have I grey hairs in the study of all the tongues of Valar and of Eldar. Long ere the fall of Gondolin, good sir, I lightened my thraldom under Melko in learning the speech of all monsters and goblins—have I not conned even the speeches of beasts, disdaining not the thin voices of the voles and mice?—have I not cadged a stupid tune or two to hum of the speechless beetles?

Nay, I have worried at whiles even over the tongues of Men, but Melko take them! they shift and change, change and shift, and when you have them are but a hard stuff whereof to labour songs or tales.

here comes a bird, an imp of Melko—but I weary you sir, with babbling of songs and words.’

‘Nay, not so,’ quoth Eriol, ‘but I beg of you be not disheartened by one fat imp of an ousel. If my eyes deceive not, for a good age of years you have cared for this garden. Then must you know store of songs and tongues sufficient to comfort the heart of the greatest of all sages,

even Meril-i-Turinqi our queen herself—Manwë care for her. But even these be not all—there is beside the secret tongue in which the Eldar wrote many poesies and books of wisdom and histories of old and earliest things, and yet speak not. This tongue do only the Valar use in their high counsels, and not many of the Eldar of these days may read it or solve its characters. Much of it I learnt in Kôr, a lifetime gone, of the goodness of Aulë, and thereby I know many matters: very many matters.’

Who be the Valar—Manwë, Aulë, and the ones ye name—and wherefore came ye Eldar from that home of loveliness in Valinor?’

‘Very mighty are the things that you ask, and their true answer delves beyond the uttermost confines of the wastes of time, whither even the sight of Rúmil the aged of the Noldoli may not see; and all the tales of the Valar and the Elves are so knit together that one may scarce expound any one without needing to set forth the whole of their great history.’ ‘Yet’, said Eriol,

‘tell me, Rúmil, I beg, some of what you know even of the first beginnings, that I may begin to understand those things that are told me in this isle.’ But Rúmil said: ‘Ilüvatar was the first beginning, and beyond that no wisdom of the Valar or of Eldar or of Men can go.’ ‘Who was Ilúvatar?’ said Eriol. ‘Was he of the Gods?’

‘Nay,’ said Rúmil, ‘that he was not, for he made them. Ilúvatar is the Lord for Always who dwells beyond the world; who made it and ...

‘for ’tis early days in the world of Men as yet, nor is the Music of the Ainur much spoken of.’

Thus it was that the Ainulindalë was first to be heard by mortal ears, as Eriol sat in a sunlit garden in Tol Eressëa. Even after Eriol (or Ælfwine) had fallen away, Rúmil remained, the great Noldorin sage of Tirion ‘who first achieved fitting signs for the recording of speech and song’

It is to be noted that in this account Rúmil had been a slave under Melko.

In this link-passage Rúmil asserts: (1) that the Teleri, Solosimpi, and Inwir had linguistic differences in the past; (2) but that these dialects are now merged in the ‘tongue of the island Elves’ (3) that the tongue of the Noldoli (Gnomes) was deeply sundered through their departure into the Great Lands and their captivity under Melko; (4) that those Noldoli who now dwell in Tol Eressëa have learnt the tongue of the island Elves; but others remain in the Great Lands. (When Rúmil spoke of ‘the lost bands that dwell wandering sadly in the Great Lands’ who ‘maybe speak very strangely now’ he seems to have been referring to remnants of the Noldorin exiles from Kôr who had not come to Tol Eressëa (as he himself had done), rather than to Elves who never went to Valinor.)* In the Lost Tales the name given to the Sea-elves afterwards called the Teleri—the third of the three ‘tribes’—is Solosimpi (‘Shoreland Pipers’). It must now be explained that, confusingly enough, the first of the tribes, that led by King Inwë, were called the Teleri (the Vanyar of The Silmarillion). Who then were the Inwir? Eriol was told later by Meril-i-Turinqi (p. 115) that the Teleri were those that followed Inwë, ‘but his kindred and descendants are that royal folk the Inwir of whose blood I am.’

This is not so purely contradictory as appears at first sight. It seems that (on the one hand) the opposition of ‘Eldar’ or ‘Elfin’ to ‘Gnomish’ arose because Gnomish had become a language apart; and while the Gnomes were certainly themselves Eldar, their language was not. But (on the other hand) the Gnomes had long ago left Kôr, and thus came to be seen as not ‘Koreldar’, and therefore not ‘Eldar’. The word Eldar had thus narrowed its meaning, but might at any moment be expanded again to the older sense in which the Noldoli were ‘Eldar’.

If this is so, the narrowed sense of Eldar reflects the situation in after days in Tol Eressëa; and indeed, in the tales that follow, where the narrative is concerned with the time before the rebellion of the Noldoli and their departure from Valinor, they are firmly ‘Eldar’. After the rebellion, in the passage cited above, Aulë would not call the Noldoli who remained in Valinor by that name—and, by implication, he would not call those who had departed ‘Eldar’.

The Gods understood the language of the Elves but used it not among themselves. The wiser of the Elves learned much of the speech of the Gods and long treasured that knowledge among both Teleri and Noldoli, but by the time of the coming to Tol Eressëa none knew it save the Inwir, and now that knowledge is dead save in Meril’s house.

Tuor and Bronweg appear from the tale of The Fall of Gondolin, which was already written; Bronweg is the Gnomish form of Voronwë, that same Voronwë who accompanied Tuor from Vinyamar to Gondolin in the later legend. Tevildo Prince of Cats was a demonic servant of Melko and the remote forerunner of Sauron; he is a principal actor in the original story of Beren and Tinúviel, which was also already written (the Tale of Tinúviel

Then said Ilúvatar: “Mighty are the Ainur, and glorious, and among them is Melko the most powerful in knowledge; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung and played, lo! I have caused to be—not in the musics that ye make in the heavenly regions, as a joy to me and a play unto yourselves, alone, but rather to have shape and reality even as have ye Ainur, whom I have made to share in the reality of Ilúvatar myself. Maybe I shall love these things that come of my song even as I love the Ainur who are of my thought,4 and maybe more. Thou Melko shalt see that no theme can be played save it come in the end of Ilúvatar’s self, nor can any alter the music in Ilúvatar’s despite. He that attempts this finds himself in the end but aiding me in devising a thing of still greater grandeur and more complex wonder:—for lo! through Melko have terror as fire, and sorrow like dark waters, wrath like thunder, and evil as far from my light as the depths of the uttermost of the dark places, come into the design that I laid before you. Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born, and death without hope. Yet is this through him and not by him; and he shall see, and ye all likewise, and even shall those beings, who must now dwell am...

One thing only have I added, the fire that giveth Life and Reality”—and behold, the Secret Fire burnt at the heart of the world.

and for the great roaring of the ocean they were filled with longing. Their hearts were glad because of air and the winds, and the matters whereof the Earth was made—iron and stone and silver and gold and many substances: but of all these water was held the fairest and most goodly and most greatly praised. Indeed there liveth still in water a deeper echo of the Music of the Ainur than in any substance else that is in the world, and at this latest day many of the Sons of Men will hearken unsatedly to the voice of the Sea and long for they know not what.

There Melko ruled both fires and the cruellest frost, both the uttermost colds and the deepest furnaces beneath the hills of flame; and whatso is violent or excessive, sudden or cruel, in the world is laid to his charge, and for the most part with justice.

But Ulmo dwells in the outer ocean and controls the flowing of all waters and the courses of rivers, the replenishment of springs and the distilling of rains and dews throughout the world.

At the bottom of the sea he bethinks him of music deep and strange yet full ever of a sorrow: and therein...

Ossë and Ónen to whom he gave the control of the waves and lesser seas, and many another.

But Aulë dwelt in Valinor and fashioned many things; tools and instruments he devised and was busied as much in the making of webs as in the beating of metals; tillage too and husbandry was his delight as much as tongues and alphabets, or broideries and painting.

Yet was the greatest and chief of those four great ones Manwë Súlimo; and he dwelt in Valinor and sate in a glorious abode upon a throne of wonder on the topmost pinnacle of Taniquetil that towers up upon the world’s edge. Hawks flew ever to and fro about that abode, whose eyes could see to the deeps of the sea or penetrate the most hidden caverns and profoundest darkness of the world. These brought him news from everywhere of everything, and little escaped him—yet did some matters lie hid even from the Lord of the Gods.

With him was Varda the Beautiful, and she became his spouse and is Queen of the Stars, and their children were Fionwë-Úrion and Erinti most lovely.

and men love Manwë even more than mighty Ulmo, for he hath never of intent done ill to them nor is he so fain of honour or so jealous of his power as that ancient one of Vai. The Teleri whom Inwë ruled were e...

for if Ulmo hath a power of musics and of voices of instruments Manwë hath a splendour of poe...

Even we Eldar have found to our sorrow that Men have a strange power for good or ill and for turning things despite Gods and Fairies to their mood in the world;

so that we say: “Fate may not conquer the Children of Men, but yet are they strangely blind, whereas their joy should be great.”

“These too in their time shall find that all they have done, even the ugliest of deeds or works, redounds at the end only to my glory, and is tributary to the beauty of my world.”

Yet the Ainur say that the thought of Men is at times a grief even to Ilúvatar; wherefore if the giving of that gift of freedom was their envy and amazement, the patience of Ilúvatar at its misuse is a matter of the greatest marvelling to both Gods and Fairies.

and dying they are reborn in their children, so that their number minishes not, nor grows.

Yet while the Sons of Men will after the passing of things of a certainty join in the Second Music of the Ainur, what Ilúvatar has devised for the Eldar beyond the world’s end he has not revealed even to the Valar, and Melko has not discovered it.’