The continued text ends here, mid-sentence. However, to the first sentence Tolkien added this note in red ball-point pen:
Which was only the fixing or making more permanent this rate (“natural” [?in these cases]) already operative.
All of this was then struck through in black nib-pen.
Back to text
10 In the latest trade editions this is LR:243.
Back to text
11 This date agrees with that in text D of The Tale of Years (XI:352). The preceding text C gives the date as 527, emended to 530 (XI:348). The pre-LR Annals of Beleriand gave the date as 324, emended to 524 (see V:142–3).
Back to text
12 The pre-LR Annals of Beleriand as emended gives the date of the start of the Great or Terrible Battle, at the culmination of which the fall of Thangorodrim occurred, as FA 550 (see V:144), and says that the war lasted fifty years from Fionwë’s landing in 547 (V:143). Fionwë is said there to have departed Middle-earth in 597.
Back to text
13 As first published (1955) and still in the second edition (1965) App. B gives TA 100 as the date of the wedding of Elrond and Celebrían, and TA 139 as the date of the births of Elladan and Elrohir, their twin sons. In the revised second edition (1966) these dates are changed to TA 109 and TA 130, respectively.
Back to text
14 For more on this, see chap. XVI, “Galadriel and Celeborn”, in part three of this book.
Back to text
15 This is the text titled Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn that Christopher Tolkien describes and retells at UT:233–40.
Back to text
16 No such change was in the event made to App. B.
Back to text
17 Prior to the second edition of LR (1965), App. B gave the year of Aragorn’s death (in the Shire Reckoning) as 1521, at which point he was 190 years old.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
XIX Elvish Life-cycles
1 On the permanence of marriage, see the discussion of MARRIAGE in App. I.
Back to text
2 Tolkien placed a query mark next to this note.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
XX Time and its Perception
1 As first written, the March began in 1400 and took 7,200 years. Tolkien altered the figures in red ball-point pen and placed a large asterisk against it in the same pen.
Back to text
2 Tolkien placed a large asterisk against this paragraph in black nib-pen.
Back to text
3 This sentence was written in the right margin in red ball-point pen.
Back to text
4 This sentence was likewise written in red ball-point pen, in the bottom margin.
Back to text
5 As first written, the slowed rate was 1 : 15. According to LR App. B, the Fellowship entered Lothlórien on Jan. 17 and departed on Feb. 16, so staying there a total of 29 nights. Tolkien subsequently enclosed this and the preceding paragraphs back to that starting with “Elves should awake about VY 1050” in red ball-point pen lines, probably indicating his wish to retain them.
Back to text
6 Regarding the perception of time in terms of occupation and inspection, see chaps. IV, “Time-scales”, and XII, “Concerning the Quendi in their Mode of Life and Growth”, above.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
XXI Notes on Elvish Time-reference
1 The word relict meaning ‘widow’ (now considered archaic) is borrowed from Old French relicte, ‘(woman) left behind’, itself derived ultimately from the Latin verb relinquere ‘to leave behind’ (whence also English relinquish).
Back to text
* * *
* * *
XXII A Fragment from The Annals of Aman
1 The Annals of Aman (AAm) gives the year of the departure of the Vanyar from Tirion as 1165 (X:87) and the year of Fingolfin’s birth as 1190 (X:92).
Back to text
2 AAm gives the following dates: establishment of Menegroth in 1250 (X:93), Daeron’s invention of his Runes and the birth of Turgon in 1300 (X:106). The events for 1300 were a later addition to the AAm.
Back to text
3 AAm likewise has an added entry for 1320 giving that as the year Orcs first appear in Beleriand (X:106). All subsequent dates agree with AAm as given at X:93–4.
Back to text
4 AAm has an added entry for 1350 giving that as the year of the entry of the Nandor in Ossiriand (X:93, 102 n.8).
Back to text
5 AAm likewise has an added entry for 1362 giving that as the year of Isfin’s birth (X:102 n.8).
Back to text
* * *
* * *
XXIII A Fragment from The Grey Annals
1 After later pencil emendation, Fingolfin’s prose challenge ends:
“Den-dweller, wielder of thralls, liar and lurker, foe of gods and Elves, come for I would see thy craven face!”
Back to text
2 This was subsequently altered in pencil to read: “Fingolfin withstood him”.
Back to text
3 The words “that drowns the stars” were subsequently struck through in pencil.
Back to text
4 This sentence was subsequently struck out in pencil, and replaced as described below.
Back to text
5 The words “that Morgoth wielded as a mace” were subsequently struck through in pencil, as redundant following the replacement described below.
Back to text
6 This sentence was altered in pencil to begin “Fingolfin fell”, and the words “that Morgoth wielded as a mace” were struck through (see further below).
Back to text
7 Beneath this, and also in the top and left margins of the page, Tolkien added some additional textual elements in ink and pencil, with pencil lines indicating (roughly) where each element should be inserted in the text, thus in conjunction with the other changes noted above, bringing it into much closer agreement with the text given at XI:55:
so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar [to be inserted after “a great madness of ire was upon him”]
overshadowed the star of Fingolfin [to be inserted after “his black unblazoned shield”]
before the face of his Captains [replacing “before all his folk and captains”]
Morgoth fought with a great hammer, Grond, that he wielded as a mace, and Fingolfin with Ringil. Swift was Fingolfin, and avoiding the strokes of Grond, so that Morgoth smote but the ground (and [at] each stroke a great pit was made), he gave Morgoth seven wounds with his sword, and the cries of Morgoth echoed in the Northlands. [to be inserted after “like a thundercloud”]
and filled the pits of Grond. Then Morgoth lifted the body and would cast it to the wolves [to be inserted at the end of the text]
There remains one very rough pencil note in the left margin, with no indication that it is to be inserted here (but see XI:56):
Great wolves [?assailed] Rochallor and he escaped only because of his swiftness, and ran to Hithlum and there died.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
PART TWO: BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT
I Beauty and Goodness
1 See EVIL (AS LACK OF PERFECTION) in App. I.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
II Gender and Sex
1 For more on Q. órë, see chap. X, “Notes on Órë”, below.
Back to text
2 An apparently contemporary typescript note among Tolkien’s linguistic papers reads:
CE *khōn-, khond- was only used of the physical heart, and that was not regarded as or supposed to be a centre of either emotion or thought. Thus when Treebeard uses the adjectives morimaitë, sincahonda ‘black-handed, flint-hearted’ of the Orks, these were both physical in reference – as indeed were all the other adjectives, whatever they
may have implied with regard to Orkish minds and characters. Sincahonda referred to their immense staying power in exertion, marching, running, or climbing, which gave rise to the jesting assertion that their hearts must have been made of some exceedingly hard substance; it did not mean pitiless. The last adjective ‘blood-thirsty’ (serkilixa) was also literal: the Orks actually drank the blood of their victims. A compound of similar kind meaning ‘hard-hearted, pitiless’, would have been in Quenya ondórëa.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
III Eldarin Hands, Fingers, and Numerals
1 Cf. also IV:187, where the explanation of Mablung’s name as meaning ‘with weighted hand’ is cited from this material.
Back to text
2 On the implication here that Celeborn was himself an exiled Teler, see UT:233.
Back to text
3 I.e. LR:774.
Back to text
4 Tolkien did not originally conceive of the Elves as ambidexters. The earliest Qenya and Gnomish Lexicons explicitly portray the left hand as clumsy, the right as skilful: Q. lenka ‘slow, dull, stiff; left (hand)’ and malenka ‘lefthand, -ed’, G. gôg ‘clumsy; left (hand)’. Predominance of the right hand is still evident in the later Etymologies, which includes Q. formaite ‘righthanded, dexterous’. It is also implicit in the story of Maedhros, who after losing his right hand in his rescue by Fingon from Thangorodrim “lived to wield his sword with left hand more deadly than his right had been” (V:252). Even in the latest version of this story in the Grey Annals (written in the early 1950s), which simply notes that “Thereafter Maidros wielded his sword in his left hand” (XI:32), the mere fact that this is mentioned implies that the feat was somehow noteworthy or unusual.
Back to text
5 Tolkien himself made a few attempts at this practice of writing from right to left in mirror-image tengwar. Two examples are reproduced here:
The first reads Mordor while the second is Tindómrl (i.e., Tindómerel). The shakiness of Tolkien’s penmanship indicates that he probably wrote these tengwar inscriptions with his left hand.
Back to text
6 I.e. LR:392.
Back to text
7 Cf. the statement in App. E of The Lord of the Rings that the tengwar 17 númen ‘west’, 33 hyarmen ‘south’, 25 rómen ‘east’, and 10 formen ‘north’ “commonly indicated the points W, S, E, N even in languages that used quite different terms. They were, in the West-lands, named in this order, beginning with and facing west; hyarmen and formen indeed meant left-hand region and right-hand region (the opposite to the arrangement in many Mannish languages)” (LR:1123).
Back to text
8 This note is of interest as showing that the scheme that Tolkien eventually arrived at in the “Time and Ageing” papers, whereby Elves matured only somewhat more slowly than Men, persisted to at least the final years of the 1960s. Cf. chap. XV, “Note on the Youth and Growth of the Quendi”, of c. 1959 in part one of this book, where Elvish gestation occupies one sun-year and growth proceeds at the same rate as Men until maturity is reached at 24 sun-years; but cf. also chap. XVIII, “Elvish Ages & Númenórean” of 1965, also in part one, where the gestation is 3 sun-years and growth until maturity occurs at a rate of 3 : 1 sun-years compared to Men.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
V Beards
1 Hobbits are stated to be beardless in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings (LR:3).
Back to text
2 Some years earlier, however, Tolkien had written (VT41:9) that: “Elves did not have beards until they entered their third cycle of life. Nerdanel’s father [cf. XII:365–6 n.61] was exceptional, being only early in his second.” And in any event, in The Lord of the Rings it is said of Círdan the Shipwright that: “Very tall he was, and his beard was long” (LR:1030).
Back to text
3 On the longevity of the Númenóreans, cf. chap. XVII, “Elvish Ages & Númenórean”, in part one of this book, as well as chaps. XI, “Lives of the Númenóreans”, and XII, “The Ageing of Númenóreans”, in part three.
Back to text
4 Tar-Aldarion, whose only child, Ancalimë, was female, at some point before the end of reign in S.A. 1075, changed the Númenórean law of succession “so that the (eldest) daughter of a King should succeed, if he had no sons” (UT:219–20). This was long after the birth of Silmariën in S.A. 521 (UT:219, 225 n.4).
Back to text
5 Cf. LR:759.
Back to text
6 Tolkien here replaced “discovered” with “investigated”.
Back to text
7 I.e. LR:1039, 1052–3.
Back to text
8 With “in the name of the King until he shall return” cf. LR:1052.
Back to text
9 I.e. LR:872.
Back to text
10 Cf. LR:339–41.
Back to text
11 Christopher Tolkien quoted this passage (in slightly differently edited form) at UT:248.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
VI Descriptions of Characters
1 Not always identified as such. See in particular UT:286–7 (beginning with “The remarks [on the stature of Hobbits]”); LRRC:4, 107, 229, 447, 493.
Back to text
2 In extracting and arranging these elements from the MSS I have been highly selective and taken liberty in their ordering. As such I make no attempt to indicate excluded or elided passages, or where I have provided capitalization and punctuation to turn an extract into its own sentence.
Back to text
3 This sketch, titled One Morning Early in the Quiet of the World, is reproduced as fig. 1 of The Art of the Hobbit, (Hammond and Scull, 2012) p. 20.
Back to text
4 Just where and when Tolkien acquired the Berggeist postcard have been questioned; see TCG II:761–2 for the details.
Back to text
5 I.e. LR:359.
Back to text
6 I.e. LR:971
Back to text
7 “(II 137)”: i.e., LR:532.
Back to text
8 The page-citations in this paragraph are to LR:1082, 240, 426, and 292, respectively.
Back to text
9 The page citations to LR in this paragraph are to LR:382, 613, 382–4, 613–14, respectively
Back to text
10 I.e., LR: 613 and 644, respectively.
Back to text
11 I.e., LR:74.
Back to text
12 I.e., LR:725.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
VIII Knowledge and Memory
1 The sense Tolkien here gives to feign harkens back (according to the OED) to a previous, primary and material sense (now obsolete) ‘to fashion, form, shape’. This sense derives from Middle English, Old French, and ultimately from Latin fingere ‘to form, mould, feign’, whence both fiction and figment.
Back to text
2 Cf. the invocations of Varda (using her Sindarin name, Elbereth) by Frodo on Weathertop (LR:195) and Sam in Cirith Ungol (LR:729). For more on the nature of and constraints on contact between minds, see the next chapter.
Back to text
3 Cf. LR:442: “Legolas already lay motionless, his fair hands folded upon his breast, his eyes unclosed, blending living night and deep dream, as is the way with Elves.”
Back to text
4 On the matter of Elvish “rebirth”, following the death of their body, see chap. XV, “Elvish Reincarnation”, below.
Back to text
5 That is, of the disembodied fëa of an Elf in the Halls of Mandos.
Back to text
6 At a later time, Tolkien set an “X” against, and bracketed, the passage beginning with “But it is not complete”, in red ball-point pen, and wrote: “No! If they would take up life they must take up memory again”.
Back to text
7 At a later t
ime, again in red ball-point pen, Tolkien altered “hrondo” here to “hröa”. There is no independent evidence that the word hröa for ‘body’ was in use until after the typescript text B of Laws and Customs among the Eldar was made in c. 1958 (see X:141–3, 209, 304).
Back to text
8 See, e.g., the numerous examples in Morgoth’s Ring, and especially the probably closely contemporary text Dangweth Pengoloð (XII:396-402) which treats more briefly some of the same matters of speech and memory as here.
Back to text
* * *
* * *
IX Ósanwe-kenta
1 It is of course tempting to identify this redactor, and that of Quendi and Eldar, as Ælfwine, the Anglo-Saxon mariner who was the translator/transmitter of and commentator upon other works of Pengolodh, such as the Quenta Silmarillion (V:201, 203–4, 275 fn.) and, notably, Lhammas B (cf. V:167).
Back to text
2 While Pengolodh’s Lammas ‘Account of Tongues’ here is, within the sub-creation, the same work as his Lhammas (the text published in The Lost Road), it appears that it refers to an unwritten (or, at any rate, no longer extant) version of that work that differs in certain respects. The published Lhammas, for instance, does not end with a discussion of “direct thought-transmission”, as the present text states of the Lammas; and the Note on the “Language of the Valar” that concludes Quendi and Eldar, said to be “summarized” from Pengolodh’s comments at the beginning of his Lammas (XI:397), is very much longer and more detailed than the very brief, general statement that begins the Lhammas (V:168). (At least one contemporary reference to the Lammas may, however, have been to the extant Lhammas: see XI:208–9 n. §6.)
The Nature of Middle-earth Page 43
