The Book of Lost Tales, Part One

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  As I noted earlier, ‘in the later evolution of the myths Vána sank down in relation to Nienna’, and here it is Vána and (Yavanna) Palúrien who are the midwives of the birth of the Trees, not as afterwards Yavanna and Nienna.

  As regards the names of the Trees, Silpion was for long the name of the White Tree; Telperion did not appear till long after, and even then Silpion was retained and is mentioned in The Silmarillion (p. 38) as one of its names. Laurelin goes back to the beginning and was never changed, but its other name in the Lost Tales, Lindeloksë and other similar forms, was not retained.

  (v) The Dwellings of the Valar (pp. 73 ff.)

  This account of the mansions of the Valar was very largely lost in the subsequent versions. In the published work nothing is told of Manwë’s dwelling, save the bare fact that his halls were ‘above the everlasting snow, upon Oiolossë, the uttermost tower of Taniquetil’ (p. 26). Here now appears Sorontur King of Eagles, a visitor to Manwë’s halls (cf. The Silmarillion p. 110: ‘For Manwë to whom all birds are dear, and to whom they bring news upon Taniquetil from Middle-earth, had sent forth the race of Eagles’); he had in fact appeared already in the tale of The Fall of Gondolin, as ‘Thorndor [the Gnomish name] King of Eagles whom the Eldar name Ramandur’, Ramandur being subsequently emended to Sorontur.

  Of Valmar and the dwellings of the Valar in the city scarcely anything survived in later writing, and there remain only phrases here and there (the ‘golden streets’ and ‘silver domes’ of Valmar, ‘Valmar of many bells’) to suggest the solidity of the original description, where Tulkas’ house of many storeys had a tower of bronze and Oromë’s halls were upheld by living trees with trophies and antlers hung upon their trunks. This is not to say that all such imagining was definitively abandoned: as I have said in the Foreword, the Lost Tales were followed by a version so compressed as to be no more than a résumé (as was its purpose), and the later development of the mythology proceeded from that—a process of re-expansion. Many things never referred to again after the Lost Tales may have continued to exist in a state of suspension, as it were. Valmar certainly remained a city, with gates, streets, and dwellings. But in the context of the later work one could hardly conceive of the tempestuous Ossë being possessed of a house in Valmar, even if its floor were of seawater and its roof of foam; and of course the hall of Makar and Meássë (where the life described owes something to the myths of the Unending Battle in ancient Scandinavia) disappeared with the disappearance of those divinities—a ‘Melko-faction’ in Valinor that was bound to prove an embarrassment.

  Several features of the original descriptions endured: the rarity of Ulmo’s visits to Valmar (cf. The Silmarillion p. 40), the frequency with which Palúrien and Oromë visit ‘the world without’ (ibid. pp. 29, 41, 47), the association of the gardens of Lórien with Silpion and of the gardens of Vána with Laurelin (ibid. p. 99); and much that is said here of the divine ‘characters’ can be seen to have remained, even if differently expressed. Here also appears Nessa, already as the wife of Tulkas and the sister of Oromë, excelling in the dance; and Ómar-Amillo is now named the brother of Noldorin-Salmar. It appears elsewhere (see p. 93) that Nielíqui was the daughter of Oromë and Vána.

  (vi) The Gods of Death and the Fates of Elves and Men

  (pp. 76–7)

  This section of the tale contains its most surprising and difficult elements. Mandos and his wife Nienna appear in the account of the coming of the Valar into the world at the beginning of the tale (p. 66), where they are named ‘Fantur of Death, Vefántur Mandos’ and ‘Fui Nienna’, ‘mistress of death’. In the present passage it is said that Vefántur named his dwelling Vê by his own name, whereas afterwards (The Silmarillion p. 28) he was called by the name of his dwelling; but in the early writing there is a distinction between the region (Mandos) and the halls (Vê and Fui) within the region. There is here no trace of Mandos as the ‘Doomsman of the Valar’, who ‘pronounces his dooms and his judgements only at the bidding of Manwë’, one of the most notable aspects of the later conception of this Vala; nor, since Nienna is the wife of Mandos, has Vairë the Weaver, his wife in the later story, appeared, with her tapestries that portray ‘all things that have ever been in Time’ and clothe the halls of Mandos ‘that ever widen as the ages pass’—in the Lost Tales the name Vairë is given to an Elf of Tol Eressëa. Tapestries ‘picturing those things that were and shall be’ are found here in the halls of Aulë (p. 74).

  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. This latter idea has already appeared in the tale of The Music of the Ainur (p. 59), 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. 42).

  With the account of Fui Nienna, however, we come upon ideas in deep contradiction to the central thought of the later mythology (and in this passage, also, there is a strain of another kind of mythic conception, in the ‘conceits’ of ‘the distilling of salt humours whereof are tears’, and the black clouds woven by Nienna which settle on the world as ‘despairs and hopeless mourning, sorrows and blind grief’). Here we learn that Nienna is the judge of Men in her halls named Fui after her own name; and some she keeps in the region of Mandos (where is her hall), while the greater number board the black ship Mornië—which does no more than ferry these dead down the coast to Arvalin, where they wander in the dusk until the end of the world. But yet others are driven forth to be seized by Melko and taken to endure ‘evil days’ in Angamandi (in what sense are they dead, or mortal?); and (most extraordinary of all) there are a very few who go to dwell among the Gods in Valinor. We are far away here from the Gift of Ilúvatar, whereby Men are not bound to the world, but leave it, none know where;* and this is the true meaning of Death (for the death of the Elves is a ‘seeming death’, The Silmarillion p. 42): the final and inescapable exit.

  But a little illumination, if of a very misty kind, can be shed on the idea of Men, after death, wandering in the dusk of Arvalin, where they ‘camp as they may’ and ‘wait in patience till the Great End’. I must refer here to the details of the changed names of this region, which have been given on p. 79. It is clear from the early word-lists or dictionaries of the two languages (for which see the Appendix on Names) that the meaning of Harwalin and Arvalin (and probably Habbanan also) was ‘nigh Valinor’ or ‘nigh the Valar’. From the Gnomish dictionary it emerges that the meaning of Eruman was ‘beyond the abode of the Mánir’ (i.e. south of Taniquetil, where dwelt Manwë’s spirits of the air), and this dictionary also makes it clear that the word Mánir was related to Gnomish manos, defined as ‘a spirit that has gone to the Valar or to Erumáni’, and mani ‘good, holy’. The significance of these etymological connections is very unclear.

  But there is also a very early poem on the subject of this region. This, according to my father’s notes, was written at Brocton Camp, Staffordshire, in December 1915 or at Étaples in June 1916; and it is entitled Habbanan beneath the Stars. In one of the three texts (in which there are no variants) there is a title in Old English: pa gebletsode [‘blessed’] felda under pam steorrum, and in two of them Habbanan in the title was emended to Eruman; in the third Eruman stood from the first. The poem is preceded by a short prose preamble.

  Habbanan beneath the Stars

  Now Habbanan is that region where one draws nigh to the places that are not of Men. There is the air very sweet and the sky very great by reason of the broadness of the Earth.

  In Habbanan beneath the skies

  Where all roads end however long

  There is a sound of faint guitars

&n
bsp; And distant echoes of a song,

  For there men gather into rings

  Round their red fires while one voice sings—

  And all about is night.

  Not night as ours, unhappy folk,

  Where nigh the Earth in hazy bars,

  A mist about the springing of the stars,

  There trails a thin and wandering smoke

  Obscuring with its veil half-seen

  The great abysmal still Serene.

  A globe of dark glass faceted with light

  Wherein the splendid winds have dusky flight;

  Untrodden spaces of an odorous plain

  That watches for the moon that long has lain

  And caught the meteors’ fiery rain—

  Such there is night.

  There on a sudden did my heart perceive

  That they who sang about the Eve,

  Who answered the bright-shining stars

  With gleaming music of their strange guitars,

  These were His wandering happy sons

  Encamped upon those aëry leas

  Where God’s unsullied garment runs

  In glory down His mighty knees.

  A final evidence comes from the early Qenya word-list. The original layer of entries in this list dates (as I believe, see the Appendix on Names) from 1915, and among these original entries, under a root mana (from which Manwë is derived), is given a word manimo which means a soul who is in manimuine ‘Purgatory’.

  This poem, and this entry in the word-list, offer a rare and very suggestive glimpse of the mythic conception in its earliest phase; for here ideas that are drawn from Christian theology are explicitly present. It is disconcerting to perceive that they are still present in this tale. 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?

  This becomes all the more extraordinary if we refer to the concluding passage of the tale of The Music of the Ainur (p. 59), where Ilúvatar said: ‘To Men I will give a new gift and a greater’, the gift that they might ‘fashion and design their life beyond even the original Music of the Ainur that is as fate to all things else’, and where it is said that ‘it is one with this gift of power that the Children of Men dwell only for a short time in the world alive, yet do not perish utterly for ever…’ In the final form given in The Silmarillion pp. 41–2 this passage was not very greatly changed. The early version does not, it is true, have the sentences:

  But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.

  Even so, it seems clear that this central idea, the Gift of Death, was already present.

  This matter I must leave, as a conundrum that I cannot solve. The most obvious explanation of the conflict of ideas within these tales would be to suppose The Music of the Ainur later than The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor; but as I have said (p. 61) all the appearances are to the contrary.

  Lastly may be noticed the characteristic linguistic irony whereby Eruman ultimately became Araman. For Arvalin meant simply ‘near Valinor’, and it was the other name Eruman that had associations with spirits of the dead; but Araman almost certainly simply means ‘beside Aman’. And yet the same element man- ‘good’ remains, for Aman was derived from it (‘the Unmarred State’).

  Two minor matters in the conclusion of the tale remain to be noticed. Here Nornorë is the Herald of the Gods; afterwards this was Fionwë (later Eonwë), see p. 63. And in the reference to ‘that low place amid the hills where Valinor may just be glimpsed’, near to Taniquetil, we have the first mention of the gap in the Mountains of Valinor where was the hill of the city of the Elves.

  On blank pages near the end of the text of this tale my father wrote a list of secondary names of the Valar (as Manwë Súlimo, etc.). Some of these names appear in the text of the Tales; those that do not are given in the Appendix on Names under the primary names. It emerges from this list that Ómar-Amillo is the twin of Salmar-Noldorin (they are named as brothers in the tale, p. 75); that Nielíqui (p. 75) is the daughter of Oromë and Vána; and that Melko has a son (‘by Ulbandi’) called Kosomot: this, it will emerge later, was Gothmog Lord of Balrogs, whom Ecthelion slew in Gondolin.

  IV

  THE CHAINING OF MELKO

  Following the end of Rúmil’s tale of The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor there is a long interlude before the next one, though the manuscript continues without even interrupting the paragraph. But on the cover of the notebook The Chaining of Melko is given as a separate title, and I have adopted this. The text continues in ink over an erased pencil manuscript.

  That night Eriol heard again in his sleep the music that had so moved him on the first night; and the next morning he went again into the gardens early. There he met Vairë, and she called him Eriol: ‘that was the first making and uttering of that name’. Eriol told Vairë of the ‘dream-musics’ he had heard, and she said that it was no dream-music, but rather the flute of Timpinen, ‘whom those Gnomes Rúmil and Littleheart and others of my house call Tinfang’. She told him that the children called him Tinfang Warble; and that he played and danced in summer dusks for joy of the first stars: ‘at every note a new one sparkles forth and glisters. The Noldoli say that they come out too soon if Tinfang Warble plays, and they love him, and the children will watch often from the windows lest he tread the shadowy lawns unseen.’ She told Eriol that he was ‘shier than a fawn—swift to hide and dart away as any vole: a footstep on a twig and he is away, and his fluting will come mocking from afar’.

  ‘And a marvel of wizardry liveth in that fluting,’ said Eriol, ‘if that it be indeed which I have heard now for two nights here.’

  ‘There be none,’ said Vairë, ‘not even of the Solosimpi, who can rival him therein, albeit those same pipers claim him as their kin; yet ’tis said everywhere that this quaint spirit is neither wholly of the Valar nor of the Eldar, but is half a fay of the woods and dells, one of the great companies of the children of Palúrien, and half a Gnome or a Shoreland Piper.1 Howso that be he is a wondrous wise and strange creature, and he fared hither away with the Eldar long ago, marching nor resting among them but going always ahead piping strangely or whiles sitting aloof. Now does he play about the gardens of the land; but Alalminórë he loves the best, and this garden best of all. Ever and again we miss his piping for long months, and we say: “Tinfang Warble has gone heart-breaking in the Great Lands, and many a one in those far regions will hear his piping in the dusk outside tonight.” But on a sudden will his flute be heard again at an hour of gentle gloaming, or will he play beneath a goodly moon and the stars go bright and blue.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Eriol, ‘and the hearts of those that hear him go beating with a quickened longing. Meseemed ’twas my desire to open the window and leap forth, so sweet was the air that came to me from without, nor might I drink deep enough, but as I listened I wished to follow I know not whom, I know not whither, out into the magic of the world beneath the stars.’

  ‘Then of a sooth ’twas Timpinen who played to you,’ said Vairë, ‘and honoured are you, for this garden has been empty of his melody many a night. Now, however, for such is the eeriness of that sprite, you will ever love the evenings of summer and the nights of stars, and their magic will cause your heart to ache unquenchably.’

  ‘But have you not all heard him many times and often, that dwell here,’ said Eriol, ‘yet do not seem to me like those who live with a longing that is half understood and may not be fulfilled.’
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  ‘Nor do we so, for we have limpë,’ said she, ‘limpë that alone can cure, and a draught of it giveth a heart to fathom all music and song.’

  ‘Then,’ said Eriol, ‘would I might drain a goblet of that good drink’ but Vairë told him that that might only be if he sought out Meril the queen.

  Of this converse of Eriol and Vairë upon the lawn that fair day-tide came it that Eriol set out not many days thereafter—and Tinfang Warble had played to him many times by dusk, by starry light and moongleam, till his heart was full. In that was Littleheart his guide, and he sought the dwellings of Meril-i-Turinqui in her korin of elms.

  Now the house of that fair lady was in that very city, for at the foot of the great tower which Ingil had built was a wide grove of the most ancient and beautiful elms that all that Land of Elms possessed. High to heaven they rose in three lessening storeys of bright foliage, and the sunlight that filtered through was very cool—a golden green. Amidst of these was a great green sward of grass smooth as a web of stuffs, and about it those trees stood in a circle, so that shades were heavy at its edge but the gaze of the sun fell all day on its middle. There stood a beautiful house, and it was builded all of white and of a whiteness that shone, but its roof was so o’ergrown with mosses and with houseleek and many curious clinging plants that of what it was once fashioned might not be seen for the glorious maze of colours, golds and red-russets, scarlets and greens.

  Innumerable birds chattered in its eaves; and some sang upon the housetops, while doves and pigeons circled in flights about the korin’s borders or swooped to settle and sun upon the sward. Now all that dwelling was footed in flowers. Blossomy clusters were about it, ropes and tangles, spikes and tassels all in bloom, flowers in panicles and umbels or with great wide faces gazing at the sun. There did they loose upon the faintly stirring airs their several odours blended to a great fragrance of exceeding marvellous enchantment, but their hues and colours were scattered and gathered seemingly as chance and the happiness of their growth directed them. All day long there went a hum of bees among those flowers: bees fared about the roof and all the scented beds and ways; even about the cool porches of the house. Now Littleheart and Eriol climbed the hill and it was late afternoon, and the sun shone brazen upon the western side of Ingil’s tower. Soon came they to a mighty wall of hewn stone blocks, and this leaned outward, but grasses grew atop of it, and harebells, and yellow daisies.