The Book of Lost Tales, Part One

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  Finally, at the end of all the early writing concerning it, it may be remarked how major a place was taken in my father’s original conception by the creation of the Sun and the Moon and the government of their motions: the astronomical myth is central to the whole. Afterwards it was steadily diminished, until in the end, perhaps, it would have disappeared altogether.

  X

  GILFANON’S TALE: THE TRAVAIL OF THE NOLDOLI AND THE COMING OF MANKIND

  The rejected draft text of The Hiding of Valinor continues a little way beyond the end of Vairë’s tale, thus:

  Now after the telling of this tale no more was there of speaking for that night, but Lindo begged Ailios to consent to a tale-telling of ceremony to be held the next night or as soon as might be; but Ailios would not agree, pleading matters that he must needs journey to a distant village to settle. So was it that the tale-telling was fixed ere the candles of sleep were lit for a sevennight from that time—and that was the day of Turuhalmë1 or the Logdrawing. ‘’Twill be a fitting day,’ saith Lindo, ‘for the sports of the morning in the snow and the gathering of the logs from the woods and the songs and drinking of Turuhalmë will leave us of right mood to listen to old tales beside this fire.’

  As I have noticed earlier (p. 204), the original form of the Tale of the Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor belonged to the phase before the entry of Gilfanon of Tavrobel, replacing Ailios.

  Immediately following this rejected draft text, on the same manuscript page, the text in ink of the Tale of Turambar (Türin) begins, with these words:

  When then Ailios had spoken his fill the time for the lighting of candles was at hand, and so came the first day of Turuhalmë to an end; but on the second night Ailios was not there, and being asked by Lindo one Eltas began a tale…

  What was Ailios’ tale to have been? (for I think it certain that it was never written). The answer becomes clear from a separate short text, very rough, which continues on from the discussion at the end of The Hiding of Valinor, given above. This tells that at length the day of Turuhalmë was come, and the company from Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva went into the snowy woods to bring back firewood on sleighs. Never was the Tale-fire allowed to go out or to die into grey ash, but on the eve of Turuhalmë it sank always to a smaller blaze until Turuhalmë itself, when great logs were brought into the Room of the Tale-fire and being blessed by Lindo with ancient magic roared and flared anew upon the hearth. Vairë blessed the door and lintel of the hall and gave the key to Rúmil, making him once again the Doorward, and to Littleheart was given the hammer of his gong. Then Lindo said, as he said each year:

  ‘Lift up your voices, O Pipers of the Shore, and ye Elves of Kôr sing aloud; and all ye Noldoli and hidden fairies of the world dance ye and sing, sing and dance O little children of Men that the House of Memory resound with your voices…’

  Then was sung a song of ancient days that the Eldar made when they dwelt beneath the wing of Manwë and sang on the great road from Kôr to the city of the Gods (see p. 143–4).

  It was now six months since Eriol went to visit Meril-i-Turinqi beseeching a draught of limpë (see p. 96–8), and that desire had for a time fallen from him; but on this night he said to Lindo: ‘Would I might drink with thee!’ To this Lindo replied that Eriol should not ‘think to overpass the bounds that Ilúvatar hath set’, but also that he should consider that ‘not yet hath Meril denied thee thy desire for ever’. Then Eriol was sad, for he guessed in his deepest heart that ‘the savour of limpë and the blessedness of the Elves might not be his for ever’.

  The text ends with Ailios preparing to tell a tale:

  ‘I tell but as I may those things I have seen and known of very ancient days within the world when the Sun rose first, and there was travail and much sorrow, for Melko reigned unhampered and the power and strength that went forth from Angamandi reached almost to the ends of the great Earth.’

  It is clear that no more was written. If it had been completed it would have led into the opening of Turambar cited above (‘When then Ailios had spoken his fill…’); and it would have been central to the history of the Great Lands, telling of the coming of the Noldoli from Valinor, the Awakening of Men, and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

  The text just described, linking The Hiding of Valinor to Ailios’ unwritten tale, was not struck out, and my father later wrote on it: ‘To come after the Tale of Eärendel and before Eriol fares to Tavrobel—after Tavrobel he drinks of limpë.’ This is puzzling, since he cannot have intended the story of the Coming of Men to follow that of Eärendel; but it may be that he intended only to use the substance of this short text, describing the Turuhalmë ceremonies, without its ending.

  However this may be, he devised a new framework for the telling of these tales, though he did not carry it through, and the revised account of the arranging of the next tale-telling has appeared in the Tale of the Sun and Moon, where after Gilfanon’s interruption (p. 189) it was agreed that three nights after that on which The Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor were told by Lindo and Vairë there should be a more ceremonial occasion, on which Gilfanon should relate ‘the travail of the Noldoli and the coming of Mankind’.

  Gilfanon’s tale follows on, with consecutive page-numbers, from the second version of Vairë’s tale of The Hiding of Valinor; but Gilfanon here tells it on the night following, not three days later. Unhappily Gilfanon was scarcely better served than Ailios had been, for if Ailios scarcely got started Gilfanon stops abruptly after a very few pages. What there is of his tale is very hastily written in pencil, and it is quite clear that it ends where it does because my father wrote no more of it. It was here that my father abandoned the Lost Tales—or, more accurately, abandoned those that still waited to be written; and the effects of this withdrawal never ceased to be felt throughout the history of ‘The Silmarillion’. The major stories to follow Gilfanon’s, those of Beren and Tinúviel, Túrin Turambar, the Fall of Gondolin, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, had been written and (in the first three cases) rewritten; and the last of these was to lead on to ‘the great tale of Eärendel’. But that was not even begun. Thus the Lost Tales lack their middle, and their end.

  I give here the text of Gilfanon’s Tale so far as it goes.

  Now when Vairë made an end, said Gilfanon: ‘Complain not if on the morrow I weave a long tale, for the things I tell of cover many years of time, and I have waited long to tell them,’ and Lindo laughed, saying he might tell to his heart’s desire all that he knew.

  But on the morrow Gilfanon sat in the chair and in this wise he began:

  ‘Now many of the most ancient things of the Earth are forgotten, for they were lost in the darkness that was before the Sun, and no lore may recover them; yet mayhap this is new to the ears of many here that when the Teleri, the Noldoli, and the Solosimpi fared after Oromë and afterward found Valinor, yet was that not all of the race of the Eldalië that marched from Palisor, and those who remained behind are they whom many call the Qendi, the lost fairies of the world, but ye Elves of Kôr name Ilkorins, the Elves that never saw the light of Kôr. Of these some fell out upon the way, or were lost in the trackless glooms of those days, being wildered and but newly awakened on the Earth, but the most were those who left not Palisor at all, and a long time they dwelt in the pinewoods of Palisor, or sat in silence gazing at the mirrored stars in the pale still Waters of Awakening. Such great ages fared over them that the coming of Nornorë among them faded to a distant legend, and they said one to another that their brethren had gone westward to the Shining Isles. There, said they, do the Gods dwell, and they called them the Great Folk of the West, and thought they dwelt on firelit islands in the sea; but many had not even seen the great waves of that mighty water.

  Now the Eldar or Qendi had the gift of speech direct from Ilúvatar, and it is but the sunderance of their fates that has altered them and made them unlike; yet is none so little changed as the tongue of the Dark Elves of Palisor.2

  Now the tale tells of a certain
fay, and names him Tû the wizard, for he was more skilled in magics than any that have dwelt ever yet beyond the land of Valinor; and wandering about the world he found the…3 Elves and he drew them to him and taught them many deep things, and he became as a mighty king among them, and their tales name him the Lord of Gloaming and all the fairies of his realm Hisildi or the twilight people. Now the places about Koivië-néni the Waters of Awakening are rugged and full of mighty rocks, and the stream that feeds that water falls therein down a deep cleft…. a pale and slender thread, but the issue of the dark lake was beneath the earth into many endless caverns falling ever more deeply into the bosom of the world. There was the dwelling of Tû the wizard, and fathomless hollow are those places, but their doors have long been sealed and none know now the entry.

  There was…. a pallid light of blue and silver flickering ever, and many strange spirits fared in and out beside the [?numbers] of the Elves. Now of those Elves there was one Nuin, and he was very wise, and he loved much to wander far abroad, for the eyes of the Hisildi were become exceeding keen, and they might follow very faint paths in those dim days. On a time did Nuin wander far to the east of Palisor, and few of his folk went with him, nor did Tû send them ever to those regions on his business, and strange tales were told concerning them; but now4 curiosity overcame Nuin, and journeying far he came to a strange and wonderful place the like of which he had not seen before. A mountainous wall rose up before him, and long time he sought a way thereover, till he came upon a passage, and it was very dark and narrow, piercing the great cliff and winding ever down. Now daring greatly he followed this slender way, until suddenly the walls dropped upon either hand and he saw that he had found entrance to a great bowl set in a ring of unbroken hills whose compass he could not determine in the gloom.

  Suddenly about him there gushed the sweetest odours of the Earth—nor were more lovely fragrances ever upon the airs of Valinor, and he stood drinking in the scents with deep delight, and amid the fragrance of [?evening] flowers came the deep odours that many pines loosen upon the midnight airs.

  Suddenly afar off down in the dark woods that lay above the valley’s bottom a nightingale sang, and others answered palely afar off, and Nuin well-nigh swooned at the loveliness of that dreaming place, and he knew that he had trespassed upon Murmenalda or the “Vale of Sleep”, where it is ever the time of first quiet dark beneath young stars, and no wind blows.

  Now did Nuin descend deeper into the vale, treading softly by reason of some unknown wonder that possessed him, and lo, beneath the trees he saw the warm dusk full of sleeping forms, and some were twined each in the other’s arms, and some lay sleeping gently all alone, and Nuin stood and marvelled, scarce breathing.

  Then seized with a sudden fear he turned and stole from that hallowed place, and coming again by the passage through the mountain he sped back to the abode of Tû and coming before that oldest of wizards he said unto him that he was new come from the Eastward Lands, and Tû was little pleased thereat; nor any the more when Nuin made an end of his tale, telling of all he there saw—“and me-thought,” said he, “that all who slumbered there were children, yet was their stature that of the greatest of the Elves.”

  Then did Tû fall into fear of Manwë, nay even of Ilúvatar the Lord of All, and he said to Nuin:

  Here Gilfanon’s Tale breaks off. The wizard Tû and the Dark Elf Nuin disappeared from the mythology and never appear again, together with the marvellous story of Nuin’s coming upon the forms of the Fathers of Mankind still asleep in the Vale of Murmenalda—though from the nature of the work and the different degrees of attention that my father later gave to its different parts one cannot always distinguish between elements definitively abandoned and elements held in ‘indefinite abeyance’. And unhappy though it is that this tale should have been abandoned, we are nonetheless by no means entirely in the dark as to how the narrative would have proceeded.

  I have referred earlier (p. 107, note 3) to the existence of two ‘schemes’ or outlines setting out the plan of the Lost Tales; and I have said that one of these is a résumé of the Tales as they are extant, while the other is divergent, a project for a revision that was never undertaken. There is no doubt that the former of these, which for the purposes of this chapter I will call ‘B’, was composed when the Lost Tales had reached their furthest point of development, as represented by the latest texts and arrangements given in this book. Now when this outline comes to the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale it becomes at once very much fuller, but then contracts again to cursory references for the tales of Tinúviel, Túrin, Tuor, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, and once more becomes fuller for the tale of Eärendel. It is clear, therefore, that B is the preliminary form, according to the method that my father regularly used in those days, of Gilfanon’s Tale, and indeed the part of the tale that was written as a proper narrative is obviously following the outline quite closely, while substantially expanding it.

  There is also an extremely rough, though full, outline of the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale which though close to B has things that B does not, and vice versa; this is virtually certainly the predecessor of B, and in this chapter will be called ‘A’.

  The second outline referred to above, an unrealized project for the revision of the whole work, introduces features that need not be discussed here; it is sufficient to say that the mariner was now Ælfwine, not Eriol, and that his previous history was changed, but that the general plan of the Tales themselves was largely intact (with several notes to the effect that they needed abridging or recasting). This outline I shall call ‘D’. How much time elapsed between B and D cannot be said, but I think probably not much. It seems possible that this new scheme was associated with the sudden breaking-off of Gilfanon’s Tale. As with B, D suddenly expands to a much fuller account when this point is reached.

  Lastly, a much briefer and more cursory outline, which however adds one or two interesting points, also has Ælfwine instead of Eriol; this followed B and preceded D, and is here called ‘C’.

  I shall not give all these outlines in extenso, which is unnecessary in view of the amount of overlap between them; on the other hand to combine them all into one would be both inaccurate and confusing. But since A and B are very close they can be readily combined into one; and I follow this account by that of D, with C in so far as it adds anything of note, And since in the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale the outlines are clearly divided into two parts, the Awakening of Men and the history of the Gnomes in the Great Lands, I treat the narrative in each case in these two parts, separately.

  There is no need to give the material of the outlines in the opening passage of Gilfanon’s Tale that was actually written, but there are some points of difference between the outlines and the tale to be noted.

  A and B call the wizard-king Túvo, not Tû in C he is not named, and in D he is Tû ‘the fay’, as in the tale. Evil associations of this being appear in A: ‘Melko meets with Túvo in the halls of Mandos during his enchainment. He teaches Túvo much black magic.’ This was struck out, and nothing else is said of the matter; but both A and B say that it was after the escape of Melko and the ruin of the Trees that Túvo entered the world and ‘set up a wizard kingship in the middle lands’.

  In A, only, the Elves who remained behind in Palisor are said to have been of the people of the Teleri (the later Vanyar). This passage of Gilfanon’s Tale is the first indication we have had that there were any such Elves (see p. 131); and I incline to think that the conception of the Dark Elves (the later Avari) who never undertook the journey from the Waters of Awakening only emerged in the course of the composition of the Lost Tales. But the name Qendi, which here first appears in the early narratives, is used somewhat ambiguously. In the fragment of the written tale, the words ‘those who remained behind are they whom many call the Qendi, the lost fairies of the world,5 but ye Elves of Kôr name Ilkorins’ seem an altogether explicit statement that Qendirr="Dark" Elves; but a little later Gilfanon speaks of ‘the Eldar or Q
endi’, and in the outline B it is said that ‘a number of the original folk called Qendi (the name Eldar being given by the Gods) remained in Palisor’. These latter statements seem to show equally clearly that Qendi was intended as a term for all Elves.

  The contradiction is however only apparent. Qendi was indeed the original name of all the Elves, and Eldar the name given by the Gods and adopted by the Elves of Valinor; those who remained behind preserved the old name Qendi. The early word-list of the Gnomish tongue states explicitly that the name Elda was given to the ‘fairies’ by the Valar and was ‘adopted largely by them; the Ilkorins still preserved the old name Qendi, and this was adopted as the name of the reunited clans in Tol Eressëa’.6