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

by J.R.R. Tolkien

later years the Creation myth was revised and rewritten over and over again; but it is notable that in this case only and in contrast to the development of the rest of the mythology there is a direct tradition, manuscript to manuscript, from the earliest draft to the final version: each text is directly based on the one preceding.

Yet when all differences have been observed, they are much less remarkable than the solidity and completeness with which the myth of the Creation emerged at its first beginning.

and his spouse is Varda, Queen of the Stars. Manwë, Melko, Ulmo, and Aulë are marked out as ‘the four great ones’ ultimately the great Valar, the Aratar, came to be numbered nine, but there was much shifting in the membership of the hierarchy before this was reached.

Ainur without narrative break; and it has no title in the text. It is contained in three separate books (the Lost Tales were written in the most bewildering fashion, with sections from different tales interleaved with each other); and on the cover of the book that has the opening section, following on The Music of the Ainur, is written: ‘containeth also the Coming of the Valar and beginneth the Building of Valinor’. The text is in ink, written over an erased pencil manuscript.

‘Nay, but your questions are nigh as long and wordy as my tales—and the thirst of your curiosity would dry a well deeper than even my lore, an I let you drink and come again unstinted to your liking.

Then Eriol thanked them, and breaking his fast spent the remainder of that fair day hidden in the quiet alleys of that garden deep in thought; nor did he have lack of pleasance, for although it seemed enclosed within great stone walls covered with fruit-trees or with climbing plants whose golden and red blossoms shone beneath the sun, yet were the nooks and corners of the garden, its coppices and lawns, its shady ways and flowering fields, without end, and exploration discovered always something new. Nonetheless even greater was his joy when that night again the toast was drunk to the ‘Rekindling of the Magic Sun’ and the candles held aloft and the throng went once more to the room where the Tale-fire burnt.

or maybe roused dead minstrelsy of Valinor to life amid the flicker of that firelit room.

‘Then with the leave of Lindo and of Vairë I will begin the tale, else will you go on asking for ever; and may the company have pardon if they hear old tales again.’ But Vairë said that those words concerning the oldest things were far from stale yet in the ears of the Eldar.

but with Aulë was that great lady Palúrien whose delights were richness and fruits of the earth, for which reason has she long been called Yavanna among the Eldar.

there came still hurrying late Makar and his fierce sister Meássë and it had been better had they not found the world but remained for ever with the Ainur beyond Vaitya and the stars, for both were spirits of quarrelsome mood, and with some other lesser ones who came now with them had been the first and chief to join in the discords of Melko and to aid in the spreading of his music.

the lamps to North and South flickered and fell, and as they fell the waters rose about the isles. Now these things they did not then understand, but it so happened that the blaze of those lights had melted the treacherous ice of the pillars of Melko, Ringil and Helkar, and great floods of water had poured from them into the Shadowy Seas.

In the next ‘phase’ of the mythical cosmology (dating from the 1930s, and very clearly and fully documented and illustrated in a work called Ambarkanta, The Shape of the World) the whole world is contained within Vaiya, a word meaning ‘fold, envelope’ Vaiya ‘is more like to sea below the Earth and more like to air above the Earth’ (which chimes with the description of the waters of Vai (p. 68) as very ‘thin’, so that no boat can sail on them nor fish swim in them, save the enchanted fish of Ulmo and his car); and in Vaiya below the Earth dwells Ulmo. Thus Vaiya is partly a development of Vaitya and partly of Vai.

Now since in the earliest word-list of the Qenya tongue (see the Appendix on Names) both Vaitya (‘the outermost air beyond the world’) and Vai (‘the outer ocean’) are derived from a root vaya- ‘enfold’, and since Vaitya in the present tale is said to be ‘wrapped about the world and without it’, one might think that Vaitya-Vai already in the early cosmology was a continuous enfolding substance, and that the later cosmology, in this point, only makes explicit what was present but unexpressed in the Lost Tales.

Can it be that the shape of the Earth and of Vai as he had drawn them—with the appearance of a ship’s hull—prompted my father to add mast, sail, and prow as a jeu d’esprit, without deeper significance? That seems uncharacteristic and unlikely, but I have no other explanation to

Most important in the passage concerning Mandos is the clear statement about the fate of Elves who die: that they wait in the halls of Mandos until Vefántur decrees their release, to be reborn in their own children.

and it remained my father’s unchanged conception of Elvish ‘immortality’ for many years; indeed the idea that the Elves might die only from the wounds of weapons or from grief was never changed—it also has appeared in The Music of the Ainur (ibid.): ‘the Eldar dwell till the Great End unless they be slain or waste in grief’, a passage that survived with little alteration in The Silmarillion (p.

For in the tale there is an account of the fates of dead Men after judgement in the black hall of Fui Nienna. Some (‘and these are the many’) are ferried by the death-ship to (Habbanan) Eruman, where they wander in the dusk and wait in patience till the Great End; some are seized by Melko and tormented in Angamandi ‘the Hells of Iron’ and some few go to dwell with the Gods in Valinor. Taken with the poem and the evidence of the early ‘dictionaries’, can this be other than a reflection of Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven?

‘I know nought save that I desire to know the soul of every song and of all music and to dwell always in fellowship and kinship with this wondrous people of the Eldar of the Isle, and to be free of unquenchable longing even till the Faring Forth, even till the Great End!’ But Meril said: ‘Fellowship is possible, maybe, but kinship not so, for Man is Man and Elda Elda, and what Ilúvatar has made unalike may not become alike while the world remains. Even didst thou dwell here till the Great End and for the health of limpë found no death, yet then must thou die and leave us, for Man must die once.

‘The tongue of Tol Eressëa do I know, and of the Valar have I heard, and the great world’s beginning, and the building of Valinor; to musics have I hearkened and to poesy and the laughter of the Elves, and all I have found true and good, and my heart knows and it saith to me that these shall I always henceforth love, and love alone’

Behold, Aulë now gathered six metals, copper, silver, tin, lead, iron, and gold, and taking a portion of each made with his magic a seventh which he named therefore tilkal,* and this had all the properties of the six and many of its own. Its colour was bright green or red in varying lights and it could not be broken, and Aulë alone could forge it. Thereafter he forged a mighty chain, making it of all seven metals welded with spells to a substance of uttermost hardness and brightness and smoothness, but of tilkal he had not sufficient to add more than a little to each link. Nonetheless he made two manacles of tilkal only and four fetters likewise. Now the chain was named Angaino, the oppressor, and the manacles Vorotemnar that bind forever, but the fetters Ilterendi for they might not be filed or cleft.

But though deep down within those halls Melko heard him and was in doubt, he would not come, but sent Langon his servant and said by him that “Behold, he was rejoiced and in wonder to see the Gods before his gates. Now would he gladly welcome them, yet for the poverty of his abode not more than two of them could he fitly entertain; and he begged that neither Manwë nor Tulkas be of the two, for the one merited and the other demanded hospitality of great cost and richness. Should this not be to their mind then would he fain hearken to Manwë’s herald and learn what it were the Gods so greatly desired that they must leave their soft couches and indolence of Valinor for the bleak places where Melko laboured humbly and did his toilsome work.”

In sooth Manwë hoped even to the end for peace and amity, and the Gods would at his bidding indeed have received Melko into Valinor under truce and pledges of friendship, had not his pride been insatiate and his obstinacy in evil unconquerable. Now however was scant mercy left for him within their hearts, seeing that he abode in his demand that Manwë should do homage and Tulkas bend to those ruthless feet; nonetheless the Lord of Gods and Elves approaches now the chair of Melko and makes to kneel, for such was their plan the more to ensnare that evil one; but lo, so fiercely did wrath blaze up in the hearts of Tulkas and Aulë at that sight that Tulkas leapt across the hall at a bound despite Angaino, and Aulë was behind him and Oromë followed his father and the hall was full of tumult.

Then Melko sprang to his feet shouting in a loud voice and his folk came through all those dismal passages to his aid. Then lashed he at Manwë with an iron flail he bore, but Manwë breathed gently upon it and its iron tassels were blown backward,

while Tulkas and Ulmo break the gates of Utumna and pile hills of stone upon them. And the saps and cavernous places beneath the surface of the earth are full yet of the dark spirits that were prisoned that day when Melko was taken, and yet many are the ways whereby they find the outer world from time to time—from fissures where they shriek with the voices of the tide on rocky coasts, down dark water-ways that wind unseen for many leagues, or out of the blue arches where the glaciers of Melko find their end.

Thereat arose Palúrien in sorrow and tears, and told of the plight of Earth and of the great beauty of her designs and of those things she desired dearly to bring forth; of all the wealth of flower and herbage, of tree and fruit and grain that the world might bear if it had but peace.

“Take heed, O Valar, that both Elves and Men be not devoid of all solace whenso the times come for them to find the Earth” but Melko writhed in rage at the name of Eldar and of Men and at his own impotence.

Manwë sate and listened and was moved by the speech of Palúrien, yet was it his thought that Melko was an Ainu and powerful beyond measure for the future good or evil of the world; wherefore he put away harshness and his doom was this. For three ages during the displeasure of the Gods should Melko be chained in a vault of Mandos by that chain Angaino, and thereafter should he fare into the light of the Two Trees, but only so that he might for four ages yet dwell as a servant in the house of Tulkas, and obey him in requital of his ancient malice. “Thus,” said Manwë, “and yet but hardly, mayst thou win favour again sufficient that the Gods suffer thee to abide thereafter in an house of thine own and to have some slight estate among them as befitteth a Vala and a lord of the Ainur.”

Then he sent word to Ulmo of the new things that were done, and Ulmo desired not that the waters of the inner seas be longer unpeopled, but came forth seeking Palúrien, and she gave him spells, and the seas began to gleam with fish or strange creatures crawled at bottom; yet the shellfish and the oysters no-one of Valar or of Elves knows whence they are, for already they gaped in the silent waters or ever Melko plunged therein from on high, and pearls there were before the Eldar thought or dreamed of any gem.

the interlude between this tale and the last we encounter the figure of Timpinen or Tinfang. This being had existed in my father’s mind for some years, and there are two poems about him. The first is entitled Tinfang Warble; it is very brief, but exists in three versions. According to a note by my father the original was written at Oxford in 1914, and it was rewritten at Leeds in ‘1920–23’. It was finally published in 1927 in a further altered form, which I give here.

Tinfang Warble O the hoot! O the hoot! How he trillups on his flute! O the hoot of Tinfang Warble! Dancing all alone, Hopping on a stone, Flitting like a fawn, In the twilight on the lawn, And his name is Tinfang Warble! The first star has shown And its lamp is blown to a flame of flickering blue. He pipes not to me, He pipes not to thee, He whistles for none of you. His music is his own, The tunes of Tinfang Warble! In

‘This is no work of mine, but the hand of one far greater did this. Ilúvatar hath awakened his children at the last—ride home to Valinor and tell the Gods that the Eldar have come indeed!’” Then shouted all the people of Valinor: “I Eldar tulier—the Eldar have come”—and it was not until that hour that the Gods knew that their joy had contained a flaw, or that they had waited in hunger for its completion, but now they knew that the world had been an empty place beset with loneliness having no children for her own.

but Manwë said to them: “Rise, O Children of Ilúvatar, for very glad are the Gods of your coming! Tell us how ye came; how found ye the world; what seemeth it to you who are its first offspring, or with what desires doth it fill you.”

But Nólemë answering said: “Lo! Most mighty one, whence indeed come we! For meseems I awoke but now from a sleep eternally profound, whose vast dreams already are forgotten.” And Tinwë said thereto that his heart told him that he was new-come from illimitable regions, yet he might not recollect by what dark and strange paths he had been brought; and last spake Inwë, who had been gazing upon Laurelin while the others spake, and he said: “Knowing neither whence I come nor by what ways nor yet whither I go, the world that we are in is but one great wonderment to me, and me-thinks I love it wholly, yet it fills me altogether with a desire for light.”

Then Manwë saw that Ilúvatar had wiped from the minds of the Eldar all knowledge of the manner of their coming, and that the Gods might not discover it; and he was filled with deep astonishment; but Yavanna who hearkened also caught her breath...

Thereto answered Inwë: “Fain are we indeed of thy bidding, and who of the Eldalië that have already longed for the beauty of the stars will stay or rest till his eyes have feasted on the blessed light of Valinor!”

but it was his lust for the beauty of the gems for all his feigned indifference that in the end overbore his patience and caused him to design deep and evilly.

A road had been laid against this festival from the westward gate of Kôr even to the turrets of the mighty arch which opened in the walls of Valmar northward towards the Trees. Of white marble it was and many a gentle stream flowing from the far mountains crossëd its path. Here it would leap into slender bridges marvellously fenced with delicate balustrades that shone like pearls; scarcely did these clear the water, so that lilies of great beauty growing upon the bosom of the streams that fared but gently in the plain thrust their wide blossoms about its borders and iris marched along its flanks; for by cunning delving runnels of clearest water were made to flow from stream to stream bordering that whole long way with the cool noise of rippling water. At places mighty trees grew on either side, or at places the road would open to a glade and fountains spring by magic high into the air for the refreshment of all who sped that way.

Now their custom was on the third day to robe themselves all in white and blue and ascend to the heights of Taniquetil, and there would Manwë speak to them as he thought fit of the Music of the Ainur and the glory of Ilúvatar, and of things to be and that had been.

Now is there suddenly bitter war awake in the heart of Valinor and those guards are slain, even while the peace and gladness upon Taniquetil afar is very great—indeed for that reason none heard their cries. Now Melko knew that it was indeed war for ever between himself and all those other folk of Valinor, for he had slain the Noldoli—guests of the Valar—before the doors of their own homes.

With his own hand indeed he slew Bruithwir father of Fëanor,3 and bursting into that rocky house that he defended laid hands upon those most glorious gems, even the Silmarils, shut in a casket of ivory.

“Alas, O Manwë Súlimo,” they cry, “evil has pierced the Mountains of Valinor and fallen upon Sirnúmen of the Plain. There lies Bruithwir sire of Fëanor5 dead and many of the Noldoli beside, and all our treasury of gems and fair things and the loving travail of our hands and hearts through many years is stolen away. Whither O Manwë whose eyes see all things? Who has done this evil, for the Noldoli cry for vengeance, O most [?just] one!”

Then said Manwë to them: “Behold O Children of the Noldoli, my heart is sad towards you, for the poison of Melko has already changed you, and covetice has entered your hearts. Lo! had ye not thought your gems and fabrics6 of better worth than the festival of the folk or the ordinances of Manwë your lord, this had not been, and Bruithwir go-Maidros and those other hapless ones still had lived, and your jewels been in no greater peril.

Cease then to murmur and to speak against the Valar, or to set yourselves in your hearts as equals to their majesty; rather depart now in penitence knowing full well that Melko has wrought this evil against you, and that your secret trafficking with him has brought you all this loss and sorrow. Trust him not again therefore, nor any others that whisper secret words of discontent among you, for its fruit is humiliation and dismay.”

Now do those Noldoli confirm their fears, saying how Melko is indeed the author of the mischief, and they have but one desire and that is to lay hands upon him and his accomplices ere they can escape beyond the mountains.

The original idea of ‘the primeval spirit Móru’ (p. 151) is made explicit in an entry in the early word-list of the Gnomish language, where the name Muru is defined as ‘a name of the Primeval Night personified as Gwerlum or Gungliont’.

“If all your hearts be too faint to follow, behold I Fëanor go now alone into the wide and magic world to seek the gems that are my own, and perchance many great and strange adventures will there befall me more worthy of a child of Ilúvatar than a servant of the Gods.”

‘Of a truth never has such evil again been done in Valinor,’ said Lindo, ‘but Melko’s hand has laboured at worse things in the world, and the seeds of his evil have waxen since those days to a great and terrible growth.’ ‘Nay,’ said Eriol, ‘yet can my heart not think of other griefs, for sorrow at the destruction of those most fair Trees and the darkness of the world.’

Prophecy of Amnon. Great is the fall of Gondolin. Lo Turgon shall not fade till the lily of the valley fadeth. In some other notes for the Lost Tales this takes the form: Prophecy of Amnon. ‘Great is the fall of Gondolin’ and ‘When the lily of the valley withers then shall Turgon fade’.

In these notes Amnon might be either place or person. The ‘lily of the valley’ is Gondolin itself, one of whose Seven Names was Losengriol, later Lothengriol, which is translated ‘flower of the vale or lily of the valley’.

There is an interesting statement in the old story (p. 166) that the Noldoli would never have passed the ice if they had yet been subject to the ‘weariness, sickness, and the many weaknesses that after became their lot dwelling far from Valinor’, but ‘still was the blessed food of the Gods and their drink rich in their veins and they were half-divine’. This is echoed in the words of The Silmarillion (p. 90) that the Noldor were ‘but new-come from the Blessed Realm, and not yet weary with the weariness of Earth’. On the other hand it was specifically said in the Prophecy of the...