The Nature of Middle-earth

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  The manuscript page ends mid-sentence, and without reaching an explanation of the element Bel-. Christopher Tolkien writes: “It was perhaps a purely experimental extension of the history, at once abandoned; but the assertion that Círdan was a Noldo is very strange. This runs clean counter to the entire tradition concerning him – yet it is essential to the idea sketched in this passage. Possibly it was his realization of this that led my father to abandon it in mid-sentence.”

  The typescript resumes with a replacement of the rejected passage on Belfalas (and now avoiding discussion of that problematic name):

  Several other names in Gondor are apparently of similar origin. Lamedon has no meaning in Sindarin (if it was Sindarin it would be referred to *lambeton-, *lambetân-, but C.E. lambe- ‘language’ can hardly be concerned). Arnach is not Sindarin. It may be connected with Arnen on the east side of Anduin. Arnach was applied to the valleys in the south of the mountains and their foothills between Celos and Erui. There were many rocky outcrops there, but hardly more than in the higher valleys of Gondor generally. Arnen was a rock outlier of the Ephel Dúath, round which the Anduin, south of Minas Tirith, made a wide bend.

  Suggestions of the historians of Gondor that arn- is an element in some pre-Númenórean language meaning ‘rock’ is merely a guess.[20] More probable is the view of the author (unknown) of the fragmentarily preserved Ondonórë Nómesseron Minaþurië (‘Enquiry into the Place-names of Gondor’). On internal evidence he lived as far back as the reign of Meneldil, son of Anárion – no events later than that reign are mentioned – when memories and records of the early days of the settlements now lost were still available, and the process of naming was still going on. He points out that Sindarin was not well-known to many of the settlers who gave the names, mariners, soldiers, and emigrants, though all aspired to have some knowledge of it. Gondor was certainly occupied from its beginning by the Faithful, men of the Elf-friend party and their followers; and these in revolt against the “Adunaic” Kings who forbade the use of the Elvish tongues gave all new names in the new realm in Sindarin, or adapted older names to the manner of Sindarin. They also renewed and encouraged the study of Quenya, in which important documents, titles, and formulas were composed. But mistakes were likely to be made.[21] Once a name had become current it was accepted by the rulers and organizers. He thinks therefore that Arnen originally was intended to mean ‘beside the water’, sc. Anduin; but ar- in this sense is Quenya, not Sindarin. Though since in the full name Emyn Arnen the Emyn is Sindarin plural of Amon ‘hill’, Arnen cannot be a Sindarin adjective, since an adjective of such shape would have a Sindarin plural ernain, or ernin. The name must therefore have meant ‘the hills of Arnen’. It is now forgotten, but it can be seen from old records that Arnen was the older name of the greater part of the region later called Ithilien. This was given to the narrow land between the Anduin and the Ephel Dúath, primarily to the part between Cair Andros and the southern end of the bend of Anduin, but vaguely extended north to the Nindalf and south towards the Poros. For when Elendil took as his dwelling the North Kingdom, owing to his friendship with the Eldar, and committed the South Kingdom to his sons, they divided it so, as is said in ancient annals: “Isildur took as his own land all the region of Arnen; but Anárion took the land from Erui to Mount Mindolluin and thence westward to the North Wood” (later in Rohan called the Firien Wood), “but Gondor south of Ered Nimrais they held in common.”

  Arnach, if the above explanation is accepted, is not then related to Arnen. Its origin and source are in that case now lost. It was generally called in Gondor Lossarnach. Loss is Sindarin for ‘snow’, especially fallen and long-lying snow. For what reason this was prefixed to Arnach is unclear. Its upper valleys were renowned for their flowers, and below them there were great orchards, from which at the time of the War of the Ring much of the fruit needed in Minas Tirith still came. Though no mention of this is found in any chronicles – as is often the case with matters of common knowledge – it seems probable that the reference was in fact to the fruit blossom. Expeditions to Lossarnach to see the flowers and trees were frequently made by the people of Minas Tirith. (See index Lossarnach, Imloth Melui ‘sweet flower-valley’, a place in Arnach.) This use of ‘snow’ would be specially likely in Sindarin, in which the words for fallen snow and flower were much alike, though different in origin: loss and loth, [the latter] meaning ‘inflorescence, a head of small flowers’. Loth is actually most often used collectively in Sindarin, equivalent to goloth; and a single flower denoted by elloth (er-loth) or lotheg.

  The names of the Beacon hills

  The full beacon system, that was still operating in the War of the Ring, can have been no older than the settlement of the Rohirrim in Calenardhon about 500 years before; for its principal function was to warn the Rohirrim that Gondor was in danger or (more rarely) the reverse. How old the names then used were cannot be said. The beacons were set on hills or on the high ends of ridges running out from the mountains, but some were not very notable objects.

  The first part of this statement was cited in the section Cirion and Eorl in UT:315 n.35.

  Amon Dîn

  This entry is given in full in UT:319 n.51 (last paragraph).

  Eilenach and Eilenaer

  This entry is given in the same note in Unfinished Tales, but in this case slightly reduced. In the original the passage begins:

  Eilenach (better spelt Eilienach). Probably an alien name; not Sindarin, Númenórean, or Common Speech. In true Sindarin eilen could only be derived from *elyen, *alyen, and would normally be written eilien. This and Eilenaer (older name of Halifirien: see that below) are the only names of this group that are certainly pre-Númenórean. They are evidently related. Both were notable features.

  The name and parenthetical note on Eilenaer entered here, as alterations to the typescript. Christopher Tolkien writes: “The name Eilenaer does not in fact occur in the account of Halifirien in this essay: my father intended to introduce it, but before he did so he rejected that account in its entirety, as will be seen.” At the end of the description of Eilenach and Nardol as given in Unfinished Tales, where it is said that the fire on Nardol could be seen from Halifirien, Tolkien added a note:

  The line of beacons from Nardol to Halifirien lay in a shallow curve bending a little southward, so that the three intervening beacons did not cut off the view.

  There follow statements concerning Erelas and Calenhad, elements of which were used in the index to Unfinished Tales.

  Erelas

  Erelas was a small beacon, as also was Calenhad. These were not always lit; their lighting as in The Lord of the Rings was a signal of great urgency. Erelas is Sindarin in style, but has no suitable meaning in that language. It was a green hill without trees, so that neither er ‘single’ nor las(s) ‘leaf’ seem applicable.

  Calenhad

  Calenhad was similar but rather larger and higher. Calen was the usual word in Sindarin for ‘green’ (its older sense was ‘bright’, Q. kalina). -had appears to be for sad (with usual mutation in combinations); if not misspelt this is from SAT ‘space, place, sc. a limited area naturally or artificially defined’ (also applied to recognized periods or divisions of time), ‘divide, mark off’, seen in S. sad ‘a limited area naturally or artificially defined, a place, spot’, etc. (also sant ‘a garden, field, yard, or other place in private ownership, whether enclosed or not’). Calenhad would thus mean simply ‘green space’, applied to the flat turf-covered crown of the hill. But had may stand for S. -hadh (the maps do not use dh, but this is the only case where dh might be involved, except Caradhras which is omitted, and Enedhwaith which is misspelt ened).[22] -hadh would then be for sadh (in isolated use sâdh) ‘sward, turf’ – base SAD ‘strip, flay, peel off’, etc.[23]

  Halifirien

  The essay ends (unfinished) with a long and notable discussion of the Halifirien; Tolkien’s interspersed notes are collected together at the end of this discussion. With this account cf. UT:300
–1, 303–5.

  Halifirien is a name in the language of Rohan. It was a mountain with easy approach to its summit. Down its northern slopes grew the great wood called in Rohan the Firien Wood. This became dense in lower ground, westward along the Mering Stream and northwards out into the moist plain through which the Stream flowed into the Entwash. The great West Road passed through a long ride or clearing through the wood, to avoid the wet land beyond its eaves. The name Halifirien (modernized in spelling for Háligfirgen) meant Holy Mountain. The older name in Sindarin had been Fornarthan ‘North Beacon’; the wood had been called Eryn Fuir ‘North Wood’. The reason for the Rohan name is not now known for certain. The mountain was regarded with reverence by the Rohirrim; but according to their traditions at the time of the War of the Ring that was because it was on its summit that Eorl the Young met Cirion, Steward of Gondor; and there when they had looked forth over the land they fixed the bounds of the realm of Eorl, and Eorl swore to Cirion the Oath of Eorl – “the unbroken oath” – of perpetual friendship and alliance with Gondor. Since in oaths of the greatest solemnity the names of the Valar were invoked[fn3] [24] – and though the oath was called “the Oath of Eorl” in Rohan it was also called “the Oath of Cirion” (for Gondor was equally pledged to aid Rohan) and he would use solemn terms in his own tongue – this might be sufficient to hallow the spot.

  But the account in annals contains two remarkable details: that there was at the place where Cirion and Eorl stood what appeared to be an ancient monument of rough stones nearly man-high with a flat top; and that on this occasion Cirion to the wonder of many invoked the One (that is God). His exact words are not recorded,[25] but they probably took the form of allusive terms such as Faramir used in explaining to Frodo the content of the unspoken “grace” (before communal meals)[26] that was a Númenórean ritual, e.g. “These words shall stand by the faith of the heirs of the Downfallen in the keeping of the Thrones of the West and of that which is above all Thrones for ever.”

  This would in effect hallow the spot for as long as the Númenórean realms endured, and was no doubt intended to do so, being not in any way an attempt to restore the worship of the One on the Meneltarma (‘pillar of heaven’), the central mountain of Númenor,[fn4] but a reminder of it, and of the claim made by “the heirs of Elendil” that since they had never wavered in their allegiance they[fn5] were still permitted to address the One in thought and prayer direct.

  The “ancient monument” – by which was evidently meant a structure made before the coming of the Númenóreans – is a curious feature, but is no support to the view that the mountain was already in some sense “hallowed” before its use in the oath-taking. Had it been regarded as of “religious” significance it would in fact have made this use impossible, unless it had at least been completely destroyed first.[fn6] [27] For a religious structure that was “ancient” could only have been erected by the Men of Darkness, corrupted by Morgoth or his servant Sauron. The Middle Men, descendants of the ancestors of the Númenóreans, were not regarded as evil nor inevitable enemies of Gondor. Nothing is recorded of their religion or religious practices before they came in contact with the Númenóreans,[fn7] and those who became associated or fused with the Númenóreans adopted their customs and beliefs (included in the “lore” which Faramir speaks of as being learned by the Rohirrim). The “ancient monument” can thus not have been made by the Rohirrim, or honoured by them as sacred, since they had not yet established themselves in Rohan at the time of the Oath (soon after the Battle of the Field of Celebrant), and such structures in high places as places of religious worship was no part of the customs of Men, good or evil.[fn8] [28] It may however have been a tomb.

  At the words “It may however have been a tomb”, Tolkien abandoned this text, and (no doubt immediately) marked the entire account of the Halifirien for deletion.

  Christopher Tolkien writes: “These last words may well signify the precise moment at which the tomb of Elendil on Halifirien [cf. UT:304] entered the history; and it is interesting to observe the mode of its emergence. The original ‘Firien’ was the ‘black hill’ in which were the caverns of Dunharrow (VIII:251); it was also called ‘the Halifirien’ (VIII:257, 262), and Dunharrow was ‘said to be a haliern’ (Old English hálig-ern ‘holy place, sanctuary’) ‘and to contain some ancient relic of old days before the Dark’; while Dunharrow, in my father’s later words, is ‘a modernisation of Rohan Dūnhaerg “the heathen fane on the hillside”, so-called because this refuge of the Rohirrim … was on the site of a sacred place of the old inhabitants’ (VIII:267 n.35). The name Halifirien was soon transferred to become the last of the beacon-hills of Gondor, at the western end of the chain (VIII:257), which had been first named Mindor Uilas (VIII:233); but there is no indication at all of what my father had in mind, with respect to the very express meaning of the name Halifirien, when he made this transference. The account given above, written so late in his life, seems to be the first statement on the subject; and here he assumed without question that (while the hill had earlier borne the Sindarin name Fornarthan ‘North Beacon’) it was the Rohirrim who called it ‘the Holy Mountain’: and they called it so, ‘according to their traditions at the time of the War of the Ring’, because of the profound gravity and solemnity of the oath of Cirion and Eorl taken on its summit, in which the name of Eru was invoked. He refers to a record in the ‘annals’ that ‘an ancient monument of rough stones nearly man-high with a flat top’ stood on the summit of the Halifirien – but he at once proceeds to argue strongly that its presence can be ‘no support to the view that the mountain was in some sense “hallowed” before its use in the oath-taking’, since any such ancient object of ‘religious’ significance ‘could only have been erected by the Men of Darkness, corrupted by Morgoth or his servant Sauron.’ But: ‘It may however have been a tomb.’

  “And thus the ‘hallowing’ of the hill (anciently named Eilenaer) was carried back two and a half thousand years before the Rohirrim settled in Calenardhon: already at the beginning of the Third Age it was the Hill of Awe, Amon Anwar of the Númenóreans, on account of that tomb on its summit. I have no doubt that the account of the Oath of Cirion and Eorl given, with the closely related texts, in Unfinished Tales, followed very shortly and perhaps with no interval at all the abandonment of this essay on the names of the rivers and beacon-hills of Gondor.

  “It is thus seen that not only the present work but all the history of the Halifirien and Elendil’s tomb arose from Mr. Bibire’s brief query.

  “This is a convenient place to notice a stage in the development of the story of Elendil’s tomb that was not mentioned in Unfinished Tales. There is a rejected draft page for the passage recounting the definition of the bounds of Gondor and Rohan by Cirion and Eorl, which scarcely differs from the text printed in Unfinished Tales until the paragraph beginning: ‘By this pact only a small part of the Wood of Anwar …’ (UT:306). Here the rejected text reads:

  By this agreement originally only a small part of the Wood west of the Mering Stream was included in Rohan; but the Hill of Anwar was declared by Cirion to be now a hallowed place of both peoples, and any of them might now ascend to its summit with the leave of the King of the Éothéod or the Steward of Gondor.

  For the following day after the taking of the oaths Cirion and Eorl with twelve men ascended the Hill again; and Cirion let open the tomb. “It is fitting now at last,” he said, “that the remains of the father of kings should be brought to safe-keeping in the hallows of Minas Tirith. Doubtless had he come back from the war his tomb would have been far away in the North, but Arnor has withered, and Fornost is desolate, and the heirs of Isildur have gone into the shadows, and no word of them has come to us for many lives of men.”

  “Here my father stopped, and taking a new page wrote the text as it stands in Unfinished Tales, postponing the opening of the tomb and the removal of the remains of Elendil to Minas Tirith to a later point in the story (UT:310).”

  APPENDI
CES

  I

  METAPHYSICAL AND THEOLOGICAL THEMES

  “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.” (L:172)

  “Among the exiles, remnants of the Faithful who had not adopted the false religion nor taken part in the rebellion, religion as divine worship (though perhaps not as philosophy and metaphysics) seems to have played a small part …” (L:194 fn.)

  “But since I have deliberately written a tale, which is built on or out of certain ‘religious’ ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else), and does not mention them overtly, still less preach them, I will not now depart from that mode …” (L:283–4)

  As stated in my introduction to part two of this book, Tolkien’s claim that “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” has puzzled many critics, because both The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s wider legendarium are all but devoid of references to any religious cultus (let alone a Catholic system of rites and worship). And as I suggest, I think this claim puzzles many critics because they have overlooked what I believe is the most important word in the claim: sc. fundamentally. I take this word quite literally, and not merely as a throwaway rhetorical intensifier; that is, I take it that Tolkien is saying that The Lord of the Rings and, by extension, his broader legendarium (of which the LR is a deliberate part, and its lengthy coda), is at its core and foundation, or as one might say in its essential nature, based on religious, and specifically Catholic, beliefs and thought. Tolkien says as much in the third (seldom quoted) passage from Letters given above: “a tale, which is built on or out of certain ‘religious’ ideas” (emphasis added).