by John Garth
pp.221-2
Road to hell: ‘Gylfaginning’ Chapter 49, in Snorri Sturluson, Edda.
p.222
‘Winter, and his blue-tipped spears…’ (footnote): LT1, 34. ‘wintry spell of Yelin’, etc.: written on the envelope of a letter from RQG to JRRT, 19 October 1915. Yelin, Yelur: Parma Eldalamberon 12, 105-6. ‘Yelur = Melko’ in the Qenya lexicon may have preceded the separate entry for Melko; both seem to have been added after Tolkien made the list of ‘Poetic and Mythologic Words’. In Gnomish, c.1917, Melko was labelled ‘Lord of utter heat and cold, of violence and evil’, with bynames Geluim, ‘Ice’, related to Gilim, ‘winter’; Parma Eldalamberon 11, 22, 38.
‘a binding terror’, etc.: LT2, 159. ‘drown his fear and disquiet’: ibid. 169.
p.223
‘unconquerable eagerness…’: LT2, 159. Thrall-Noldoli bent with their labours: ibid. 198 (note 18).
TWELVE Tol Withernon and Fladweth Amrod
p.224
‘You ought to start…’: CLW to JRRT, 18 January 1917.
There is no knowing when Tolkien had announced his plans for an epic, but it seems likely that Wiseman was here responding to a letter (no longer extant) written prior to Smith’s death, perhaps as early as November.
‘The Cottage of Lost Play’: name changes in or between the first, undated text and a fair copy begun by Edith Tolkien on 12 February 1917 match those in the early chart of names in ‘The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa’, which clearly predated ‘The Fall of Gondolin’. The elf-king’s name Ing in ‘The Cottage of Lost Play’ was emended to Inwë, his name in ‘The Fall of Gondolin’. The sun-tree of Valinor was first Glingol, a name given in the latter to the tree’s seedling in Gondolin itself. Most interesting is the occurrence of Manwë as a name for an Elf (emended to Valwë): in ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ and all later mythological texts Manwë is the name of the chief of the Valar. (LT1, 13, 21-2; Parma Eldalamberon 12, xx; Parma Eldalamberon 13, 98-9.)
pp.224-5
Background of Ottor/Eriol; ‘the true tradition…’: LT2, 290-2. Animalic Otter: Wynne and Smith, ‘Tolkien and Esperanto’, in Seven 17, 32-3.
p.225
‘all who enter…’: LT1, 14.
pp.225-6
‘At that same moment…’; ‘the walls shake with mirth’: ibid. 15.
p.226
‘hearing the lament of the world’: ibid. 16.
pp.226-7
‘This was the Cottage…’; ‘the children of the fathers…’; ‘Of the misty aftermemories…’: ibid. 19.
pp.227-8
‘old tales…’; ‘lonely children…’; ‘shall be thronged…’: ibid. 20.
p.228
‘the Faring Forth…’: ibid. 17.
p.229
‘Golden Book’: LT2, 290-1; Parma Eldalamberon 12, 72; Parma Eldalamberon 11, 63. i·band a·gwentin laithra: ibid. 11-12.
‘the lost Tale of Wade’: Chambers, Widsith, 98. ‘So this world…’, etc.: ibid. 3-4. Recreating early Roman poems: Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome, 405-9. Cf. Shippey, Author of the Century, 233-6.
‘Do not laugh…’: Letters, 144.
p.230
Support for Irish Home Rule: JRRT to CLW, 16 November 1914.
‘as an ambition…’: Boas and Herford (eds.), The Year’s Work in English Studies, 1925, 59-60.
p.231
Poetic output in 1917: CLW to JRRT, 1 September 1917. End of leave; 23 January medical board: JRRT service record. ‘unreservedly glad’; ‘malinger…’: CLW to JRRT, 18 January 1917.
pp.231-2
Late February: service record. The 3rd LF commanding officer had been kept informed of JRRT’s situation since 15 December 1916.
p.232
‘Every day in bed…’: Biography, 95. It may be noted here that where Humphrey Carpenter’s account of 1917 does not seem to match JRRT’s service record, I have followed the latter.
Council of Harrogate: CLW to JRRT, 14, 15 (‘I am going to burst into…’, etc.) and 17 April 1917.
‘As you said, it is you and I now…’: ibid., 4 March 1917.
pp.232-3
Surviving TCBSites and GBS’s poetry: ibid., 18 January 1917.
p.233
Roger Smith’s death: ibid., 4 March 1917; service record; Ruth Smith to JRRT, 6 March 1917. Never knew of GBS’s death: ibid., 22 January 1917.
‘I suppose very few…’; ‘a few acres of mud’: CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.
‘the starvation-year’: Letters, 53. The Asturias: Gibson and Prendergast, The German Submarine War 1914-1918, 164.
Shipping losses: Taylor, English History 1914-1945, 84.
p.234
Hornsea: Biography, 95. Musketry school: Lancashire Fusiliers’ Annual 1917, 304.
Holderness defences: Dorman, Guardians of the Humber, 13-65.
Wives’ visits to Thirtle Bridge: Cyril Dunn to the author. ‘Here some sixty…’: Platt papers.
Officers’ service fitness: weekly return of the British Army.
pp.234-5
11th LF officers: Fawcett-Barry papers; Lancashire Fusiliers’ Annual 1917, 317-18, 340-1, 348; service records of L. R. Huxtable and J. C. P. E. Metcalfe.
p.235
1917 photograph: Family Album, 41. Medical board, 1 May: JRRT service record. Patrols and Zeppelins: Mills memoir. Land and sea: Van De Noort and Ellis (eds.), Wetlands Heritage of Holderness, 15; Miles and Richardson, A History of Withernsea, 11, 237.
p.236
Books of Welsh: as well as J. Gwenogvryn Evans, Pedeir Kainc y Mabinogi, Smith bequeathed to Tolkien J. M. Edwards, Hanes A Chan; Thomas Evan, Gwaith / Twn o’r Nant; Samuel Roberts, Gwaith; William Spurrell, An English-Welsh Pronouncing Dictionary; and M. Williams, Essai sur la composition du Roman Gallois (Bodleian and English Faculty library catalogues, Oxford University).
Tol Withernon and Withernsea: Parma Eldalamberon 11, 3-4, 46, 71; Smith, The Place-names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, 26-7; Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, 502-3; Phillips, Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire, Part 1, 72. With thanks to Carl F. Hostetter and Patrick Wynne.
pp.237-8
‘The Horns of Ulmo’: The Shaping of Middle-earth, 214-17. ‘the upholder’: Parma Eldalamberon 11, 43.
p.238
Commanded outpost; lived with Edith: Letters, 420. Next to post office; Dents Garth: Peter Cook to the author.
JRRT, flower names and hemlock: Christopher Tolkien to the author.
p.239
1 June medical board: JRRT service record. Messines: Latter, Lancashire Fusiliers, 206-9.
Signals exam: Biography, 96. Minden Day: signed menu (Bodleian Tolkien).
Brooklands: Sheppard, Kingston-Upon-Hull Before, During and After the Great War, 114-15.
Passchendaele: Latter, Lancashire Fusiliers, 219-21.
p.240
Edith’s return to Cheltenham: Biography, 96.
‘It is all the more distressing…’; ‘I am very anxious…’: CLW to JRRT, 1 September 1917.
‘Companions of the Rose’: CLW to JRRT, 1 September 1917 (‘There is of course no legislation…’); Douglas A. Anderson to the author.
‘Tinúviel’ textual history: LT2, 3; Letters, 345, 420. Biography, 97-8, implies erroneously that the inspirational walk at Roos took place in 1918, owing to a misreading of ‘1917’ that is repeated in Letters, 221 (Christina Scull to the author).
pp.240-1
‘Turambar’ textual history: LT2, 69. That it was written in 1917 (Biography, 96) seems no more than a guess. But an early outline (LT2, 138-9) contains almost exclusively Qenya names, just like the 1917 pencil version of ‘Tinúviel’, in contrast to the extant revisions of the two tales, in which Gnomish forms replace them. The Qenya name Foalókë shows the ‘Turambar’ outline is later than ‘The Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa’ of late 1916 (Parma Eldalamberon 12, 38).
p.241
State of the mythology: JRRT wrote his first Gnomish lexicon in penc
il but over-wrote it in ink, probably late in 1917, obscuring most of the original definitions and germs of story. Additions to the Qenya lexicon continued, none of them datable. Beyond what has already been said here about ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ and ‘The Cottage of Lost Play’, only the barest hints can be gleaned about the state of the mythology in 1917. The best view of the flow of creativity in 1917 and 1918 can be gained from the two lexicons; many of the mythological concepts in them are reproduced in appendices to LT1 and LT2. Most published excerpts of other ‘Lost Tales’ notebooks appear from internal evidence to have been written after the war. The mythological concepts outlined in the list here, not exhaustive, are drawn from the ‘Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarissa’; the first version of ‘The Fall of Gondolin’; 1917’s ‘The Horns of Ulmo’ (The Shaping of Middle-earth, 215-7); the early pencil layer of the Gnomish lexicon, and the earlier or contemporaneous Gnomish grammar (Parma Eldalamberon 11); and matching Qenya lexicon entries.
p.242
Health: 16 October and 16 November medical boards, JRRT service record.
Birth of John Tolkien: Biography, 96-7.
‘The end of the war…’: Letters, 53.
‘when your kiddie…’: CLW to JRRT, 20 December 1917.
Patrimonial shares: Letters, 53.
Visits Cheltenham; Edith returns: Biography, 97.
Lieutenant: 19 January 1918 medical board (service record). Fever recurs; unit transfer: ibid.
p.243
Royal Defence Corps: weekly return of the British Army. Easington: Allison (ed.), Holderness: southern part, 21-31.
‘apparent lack of connection’: CLW to JRRT, 4 March 1917.
pp.243-5
‘The Song of Eriol’: LT2, 298-300.
p.245
1918 an ordeal: CLW to JRRT, 16 December 1918. Health to April: JRRT service record. Return to 13th LF: Biography, 98.
Spring Offensive: Latter, Lancashire Fusiliers, 301-3.
p.246
Penkridge Camp: Biography, 98. Brocton Camp: JRRT service record.
Staffordshire interlude: Priscilla Tolkien in Angerthas in English 3, 6-7; Artist, 26-8.
Fladweth Amrod: Parma Eldalamberon 11, 35.
A Spring Harvest Hammond with Anderson, Bibliography, 280-1.
Gastritis: medical board, 4 September 1918, JRRT service record. Edith; ‘I should think you ought…’: Biography, 98 (which gives an account slightly at odds with JRRT service record). ‘a long nomadic series…’: Letters, 430.
p.247
Embarkation orders: JRRT service record.
Fate of 11th and 19th LF: Stedman, Salford Pals, 160-7; Latter, Lancashire Fusiliers, 332-5, 344-7, 349-53.
pp.247-8
Brooklands: Biography, 98; medical board, 4 September 1918.
p.248
Home convalescence: Graves, Good-bye to All That, 261. Blackpool: JRRT service record. Italian meal: signed menu (Bodleian Tolkien).
‘unwonted silence’: Douie, The Weary Road, 16.
‘for the purposes…’: Biography, 98.
p.249
New English Dictionary: ibid. 98-9; Gilliver, ‘At the Wordface’, in Reynolds and GoodKnight (eds.), Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, 173-4. Gratitude to Craigie: ‘Valedictory Address’, Monsters, 238. ‘We rejoice…’: anonymous ‘Oxford Letter’, KESC, December 1919, 76.
50 St John Street: CLW to JRRT, 27 December 1918; Biography, 99-100.
‘were acutely aware…’: Winter, ‘Oxford and the First World War’, in Harrison (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, viii. 18.
1919 reading: Exeter College library register.
‘set himself the task…’: Graves, Good-bye to All That, 257.
‘The Fall of Gondolin’: Exeter College Essay Club minutes, 10 March 1920.
1910 rugby XV: Biography, facing p. 82.
p.250
Numbers of war dead: Heath, Service Record of King Edward’s School; How, Register of Exeter College Oxford 1891-1921; Winter, ‘Oxford and the First World War’, in Harrison (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, viii. 19-20.
Colin Cullis: death certificate. T. E. Mitton: KES registration details; KESC, December 1914, 77-8, and March 1918, 86.
T. K. Barnsley: service record. GBS: Family Album, 41.
‘perhaps in the ever-famous “Johnner”’: CLW to JRRT, 8 December 1916.
p.251
‘We must contrive…’: ibid., 1 September 1917.
‘grand old quarrel’: ibid., 1 March 1916. ‘clash of backgrounds’; ‘the decay of faith…’ (quoting JRRT); ‘That huge atmosphere…’, etc.: ibid., 20 December 1917.
Lost track of each other: ibid., 16 December 1918. ‘So the TCBS will again…’: ibid., 27 December 1918.
p.252
Demobilization: JRRT service record; protection certificate, etc. (Bodleian Tolkien). Pension: granted in T. P. Evans to JRRT, 4 September 1919 (ibid.), but backdated to 16 July.
EPILOGUE ‘a new light’
p.253
TCBS would outlive war: CLW to JRRT, 1 March 1916. ‘What is not…’: ibid., 18 January 1917.
‘We believe in…’: GBS to JRRT, 9 February 1916.
Smith’s goal and method: CLW to JRRT, 27 October 1915.
‘re-establish sanity…’: GBS to JRRT, 24 October 1915.
‘he never lived…’: CLW to JRRT, undated [summer 1917].
Wiseman referred to the ‘tales of our trodden course’ promised in ‘We who have bowed ourselves to time’, Smith, A Spring Harvest, 49.
RQG’s trench-digging drill: uncredited, in William Allport Brockington, Elements of Military Education (1916), 300-2.
Brockington promised to name its originator in any second edition. (Lt. A. S. Langley to Cary Gilson, 1 November 1916; Brockington to Langley, 28 November 1916.)
pp.253-4
‘I can still ask…’: CLW to JRRT, 18 January 1917.
Finance minister: ibid., 8 December 1916. CLW’s career: CLW memoir, OEG; Mrs Patricia Wiseman. Music teaching: Lightwood, The Music of the Methodist Hymn Book, 94-5.
p.254
‘a new light’: Letters, 10.
‘The Music of the Ainur’: features of Qenya, together with the paucity of mythological detail in the original version (Manwë is named simply Súlimo) might suggest a date close to the composition of ‘The Cottage of Lost Play’, which also has Solosimpë as a plural (for later Solosimpi) and likewise was written on slips rather than in notebooks like the rest of the Lost Tales. However, JRRT said ‘The Music of the Ainur’ was written in Oxford, while he was on the staff of the OED. He implied that it was the first tale he wrote after ‘Tinúviel’ and therefore that the rest of the Lost Tales came afterwards. (Letters, 345, LT1, 14, 45, 52, 60-1.)
‘The completed work…’; ‘the fugue…’: CLW to JRRT, 14 March 1916.
pp.254-5
Ainur: this soon became fixed as the plural of Ainu, but in the original manuscript Ainu is both singular and plural. For clarity, the account of ‘The Book of Lost Tales’ in this chapter uses the later and better-known forms unless otherwise stated.
Ilúvatar, Sā: Parma Eldalamberon 12, 42, 81.
p.255
Ilúvatar’s gift of language: LT1, 232, 236.
‘unity and a system…’: ibid., 54.
‘Through him has pain…’: ibid., 55.
p.256
‘It is the tragedy…’: JRRT to CLW, 16 November 1914.
‘beauty in all…’, etc.: JRRT, quoted in CLW to JRRT, 20 December 1917.
‘the theme more worth…’: LT1, 55.
The Valar and the Germanic Gods: plot outline, LT2, 290.
p.257
‘reddened…’: LT1, 78.
‘who loveth games…’: ibid., 75.
p.258
‘Mayhap she…’, ‘a denial…’: ibid., 152.
Eldar: ‘a being from outside’ is the gloss of the cognate Egla in the Gnomish lexicon; the Qenya lexicon gives no original
meaning. Parma Eldalamberon 11, 32, and Parma Eldalamberon 12, 35.
p.259
‘Vainly doth Ulmo…’: LT1, 120.
p.260
‘perhaps more poignant…’: 1964 interview with Denis Gueroult, BBC Sound Archives.
p.261
‘the large and cosmogonic’, etc.: Letters, 144. ‘One must begin with the elfin…’: Essay Club minutes, Exeter College library.
‘drawn with a team…’: Romeo and Juliet, I. iv.
‘a murrain…’: Letters, 143; cf. also 212 (for the Ents and Macbeth) and ‘On Fairy-stories’, Monsters, 111-12.
p.262
‘her skin was…’: LT2, 8.
Beren human in 1917 ‘Tinúviel’ (footnote): ibid., 52, 71-2, 139.
p.263
‘Rapunzel’: Lang, The Red Fairy Book, 282-5. Favourite book as a child: Biography, 22.
Tevildo, Tifil, Tiberth: LT2, 15, 45; Parma Eldalamberon 11, 70; Parma Eldalamberon 12, 90.
‘a mask…’: ‘On Fairy-stories’, Monsters, 117.
‘His eyes were long…’: LT2, 16.
‘the greatest wolf…’: ibid., 31.
p.264
‘the first example…’: Letters, 149.
‘The consolation…’: ‘On Fairy-stories’, Monsters, 153.
p.265
‘wonderful that shells…’: RQG to EK, 22 May 1916.
‘Such things seemed miraculous…’: Sassoon, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, 287-8.
‘I have a Silmaril…’: LT2, 37.
p.266
‘Soldier’s Dream’: Owen, The Collected Poems, 84.
‘the greatest cairn…’: LT1, 241; the reference in these notes to the burial of the Gnomes beneath this cairn is uncertain, but would be in keeping with all later versions of the story. ‘bulwark…’: LT2, 73.
Battle of Unnumbered Tears: LT1, 240-1; LT2, 70.
p.267
‘the luck…’: LT2, 79.
‘love lies…’: ibid., 85. ‘the land had become…’: ibid., 96.
p.268
‘for lo!…’: LT2, 102.
‘a swoon came…’: ibid., 99.
pp.268-9
‘In that sad band…’: ibid., 85-6. Mormakil, ‘Blacksword’, is Túrin’s pseudonym among the Rodothlim.
p.269
‘ease his sorrow…’: ibid., 74.
