Other writings are concerned exclusively with Gandalf (Olórin, Mithrandir). On the reverse of the isolated page containing the narrative of the choice of the Istari by the Valar appears the following very remarkable note:
Elendil and Gil-galad were partners; but this was ‘the Last Alliance’ of Elves and Men. In Sauron’s final overthrow, Elves were not effectively concerned at the point of action. Legolas probably achieved least of the Nine Walkers. Galadriel, the greatest of the Eldar surviving in Middle-earth, was potent mainly in wisdom and goodness, as a director or counsellor in the struggle, unconquerable in resistance (especially in mind and spirit) but incapable of punitive action. In her scale she had become like Manwë with regard to the greater total action. Manwë, however, even after the Downfall of Númenor and the breaking of the old world, even in the Third Age when the Blessed Realm had been removed from the ‘Circles of the World’, was still not a mere observer. It is clearly from Valinor that the emissaries came who were called the Istari (or Wizards), and among them Gandalf, who proved to be the director and coordinator both of attack and defence.
Who was ‘Gandalf’? It is said that in later days (when again a shadow of evil arose in the Kingdom) it was believed by many of the ‘Faithful’ of that time that ‘Gandalf’ was the last appearance of Manwë himself, before his final withdrawal to the watchtower of Taniquetil. (That Gandalf said that his name ‘in the West’ had been Olórin was, according to this belief, the adoption of an incognito, a mere by-name.) I do not (of course) know the truth of the matter, and if I did it would be a mistake to be more explicit than Gandalf was. But I think it was not so. Manwë will not descend from the Mountain until the Dagor Dagorath, and the coming of the End, when Melkor returns. 8 To the overthrow of Morgoth he sent his herald Eönwë. To the defeat of Sauron would he not then send some lesser (but mighty) spirit of the angelic people, one coëval and equal, doubtless, with Sauron in their beginnings, but not more? Olórin was his name. But of Olórin we shall never know more than he revealed in Gandalf.
This is followed by sixteen lines of a poem in alliterative verse:
Wilt thou learn the lore. that was long secret
of the Five that came from a far country?
One only returned. Others never again
under Men’s dominion Middle-earth shall seek
until Dagor Dagorath and the Doom cometh.
How hast thou heard it: the hidden counsel
of the Lords of the West in the land of Aman?
The long roads are lost that led thither,
and to mortal Men Manwë speaks not.
From the West-that-was a wind bore it
to the sleeper’s ear, in the silences
under night-shadow, when news is brought
from lands forgotten and lost ages
over seas of years to the searching thought.
Not all are forgotten by the Elder King.
Sauron he saw as a slow menace. . . .
There is much here that bears on the larger question of the concern of Manwë and the Valar with the fate of Middle-earth after the Downfall of Númenor, which must fall quite outside the scope of this book.
After the words ‘But of Olórin we shall never know more than he revealed in Gandalf’ my father added later:
save that Olórin is a High-elven name, and must therefore have been given to him in Valinor by the Eldar, or be a ‘translation’ meant to be significant to them. In either case, what was the significance of the name, given or assumed? Olor is a word often translated ‘dream’, but that does not refer to (most) human ‘dreams’, certainly not the dreams of sleep. To the Eldar it included the vivid contents of their memory, as of their imagination: it referred in fact to clear vision, in the mind, of things not physically present at the body’s situation. But not only to an idea, but to a full clothing of this in particular form and detail.
An isolated etymological note explains the meaning similarly:
olo-s: vision, ‘phantasy’: Common Elvish name for ‘construction of the mind’ not actually (pre)existing in Ea¨ apart from the construction, but by the Eldar capable of being by Art (Karmë) made visible and sensible. Olos is usually applied to fair constructions having solely an artistic object (i.e. not having the object of deception, or of acquiring power).
Words deriving from this root are cited: Quenya olos ‘dream, vision’, plural olozi/olori; Mla-(impersonal) ‘to dream’ olosta ‘dreamy’;. A reference is then made to Olofantur, which was the earlier ‘true’ name of Lórien, the Vala who was ‘master of visions and dreams’, before it was changed to Irmo in The Silmarillion (as Nurufantur was changed to Námo (Mandos): though the plural Fëanturi for these two ‘brethren’ survived in the Valaquenta).
These discussions of olos, olor are clearly to be connected with the passage in the Valaquenta (The Silmarillion pp. 30 – 1) where it is said that
Olórin dwelt in Lórien in Valinor, and that though he loved the Elves, he walked among them unseen, or in form as one of them, and they did not know whence came the fair visions or the promptings of wisdom that he put into their hearts.
In an earlier version of this passage it is said that Olórin was ‘counsellor of Irmo’, and that in the hearts of those who hearkened to him awoke thoughts ‘of fair things that had not yet been but might yet be made for the enrichment of Arda’.
There is a long note to elucidate the passage in The Two Towers IV 5 where Faramir at Henneth Annûn told that Gandalf had said:
Many are my names in many countries. Mithrandir among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves; Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, 9 in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not.
This note dates from before the publication of the second edition of The Lord of the Rings in 1966, and reads as follows:
The date of Gandalf’s arrival is uncertain. He came from beyond the Sea, apparently at about the same time as the first signs were noted of the re-arising of ‘the Shadow’: the reappearance and spread of evil things. But he is seldom mentioned in any annals or records during the second millennium of the Third Age. Probably he wandered long (in various guises), engaged not in deeds and events but in exploring the hearts of Elves and Men who had been and might still be expected to be opposed to Sauron. His own statement (or a version of it, and in any case not fully understood) is preserved that his name in youth was Olórin in the West, but he was called Mithrandir by the Elves (Grey Wanderer), Tharkûn by the Dwarves (said to mean ‘Staff-man’), Incánus in the South, and Gandalf in the North, but ‘to the East I go not’.
‘The West’ here plainly means the Far West beyond the Sea, not part of Middle-earth; the name Olórin is of High-Elven form. ‘The North’ must refer to the North-western regions of Middle-earth, in which most of the inhabitants or speaking-peoples were and remained uncorrupted by Morgoth or Sauron. In those regions resistance would be strongest to the evils left behind by the Enemy, or to Sauron his servant, if he should reappear. The bounds of this region were naturally vague; its eastern frontier was roughly the River Carnen to its junction with Celduin (the River Running), and so to Núrnen, and thence south to the ancient confines of South Gondor. (It did not originally exclude Mordor, which was occupied by Sauron, although outside his original realms ‘in the East’, as a deliberate threat to the West and the Númenóreans.) ‘The North’ thus includes all this great area: roughly West to East from the Gulf of Lune to Núrnen, and North and South from Carn Dûm to the southern bounds of ancient Gondor between it and Near Harad. Beyond Núrnen Gandalf had never gone.
This passage is the only evidence that survives for his having extended his travels further South. Aragorn claims to have penetrated ‘the far countries of Rhûn and Harad where the stars are strange’ (The Fellowship of the Ring II 2). 10 It need not be supposed that Gandalf did so. These legends are North-centred – because it is represented as an historical fact that the struggle against Morgoth and his servants occurred mainly in the
North, and especially the North-west, of Middle-earth, and that was so because the movement of Elves, and of Men afterwards escaping from Morgoth, had been inevitably westward, towards the Blessed Realm, and north-westward because at that point the shores of Middle-earth were nearest to Aman. Harad ‘South’ is thus a vague term, and although before its downfall Men of Númenor had explored the coasts of Middle-earth far southward, their settlements beyond Umbar had been absorbed, or being made by men already in Númenor corrupted by Sauron had become hostile and parts of Sauron’s dominions. But the southern regions in touch with Gondor (and called by men of Gondor simply Harad ‘South’, Near or Far) were probably both more convertible to the ‘Resistance’, and also places where Sauron was most busy in the Third Age, since it was a source to him of man-power most readily used against Gondor. Into these regions Gandalf may well have journeyed in the earlier days of his labours.
But his main province was ‘the North’, and within it above all the North-west, Lindon, Eriador, and the Vales of Anduin. His alliance was primarily with Elrond and the northern Dúnedain (Rangers). Peculiar to him was his love and knowledge of the ‘Halflings’, because his wisdom had presage of their ultimate importance, and at the same time he perceived their inherent worth. Gondor attracted his attention less, for the same reason that made it more interesting to Saruman: it was a centre of knowledge and power. Its rulers by ancestry and all their traditions were irrevocably opposed to Sauron, certainly politically: their realm arose as a threat to him, and continued to exist only in so far and so long as his threat to them could be resisted by armed force. Gandalf could do little to guide their proud rulers or to instruct them, and it was only in the decay of their power, when they were ennobled by courage and steadfastness in what seemed a losing cause, that he began to be deeply concerned with them.
The name Incánus is apparently ‘alien’, that is neither Westron, nor Elvish (Sindarin or Quenya), nor explicable by the surviving tongues of Northern Men. A note in the Thain’s Book says that it is a form adapted to Quenya of a word in the tongue of the Haradrim meaning simply ‘North-spy’ (Inkā + nūs). 11
Gandalf is a substitution in the English narrative on the same lines as the treatment of Hobbit and Dwarf names. It is an actual Norse name (found applied to a Dwarf in Völuspá) 12 used by me since it appears to contain gandr, a staff, especially one used in ‘magic’, and might be supposed to mean ‘Elvish wight with a (magic) staff’. Gandalf was not an Elf, but would be by Men associated with them, since his alliance and friendship with Elves was well-known. Since the name is attributed to ‘the North’ in general, Gandalf must be supposed to represent a Westron name, but one made up of elements not derived from Elvish tongues.
A wholly different view of the meaning of Gandalf’s words ‘in the South Incánus’, and of the etymology of the name, is taken in a note written in 1967:
It is very unclear what was meant by ‘in the South’. Gandalf disclaimed ever visiting ‘the East’, but actually he appears to have confined his journeys and guardianship to the western lands, inhabited by Elves and peoples in general hostile to Sauron. At any rate it seems unlikely that he ever journeyed or stayed long enough in the Harad (or Far Harad!) to have there acquired a special name in any of the alien languages of those little known regions. The South should thus mean Gondor (at its widest those lands under the suzerainty of Gondor at the height of its power). At the time of this Tale, however, we find Gandalf always called Mithrandir in Gondor (by men of rank or Númenórean origin, as Denethor, Faramir, etc.). This is Sindarin, and given as the name used by the Elves; but men of rank in Gondor knew and used this language. The ‘popular’ name in the Westron or Common Speech was evidently one meaning ‘Greymantle’, but having been devised long before was now in an archaic form. This is maybe represented by the Greyhame used byÉomer in Rohan.
My father concluded here that ‘in the South’ did refer to Gondor, and that Incánus was (like Olórin) a Quenya name, but one devised in Gondor in earlier times while Quenya was still much used by the learned, and was the language of many historical records, as it had been in Númenor.
Gandalf, it is said in the Tale of Years, appeared in the West early in the eleventh century of the Third Age. If we assume that he first visited Gondor, sufficiently often and for long enough to acquire a name or names there – say in the reign of Atanatar Alcarin, about 1800 years before the War of the Ring – it would be possible to take Incánus as a Quenya name devised for him which later become obsolete, and was remembered only by the learned.
On this assumption an etymology is proposed from the Quenya elements in(id) - ‘mind’ and kan - ‘ruler’, especially in cáno, cánu ‘ruler, governor, chieftain’ (which latter constitutes the second element in the names Turgon and Fingon). In this note my father referred to the Latin word incánus ‘grey-haired’ in such a way as to suggest that this was the actual origin of this name of Gandalf’s when The Lord of the Rings was written, which if true would be very surprising; and at the end of the discussion he remarked that the coincidence in form of the Quenya name and the Latin word must be regarded as an ‘accident’, in the same way that Sindarin Orthanc ‘forked height’ happens to coincide with the Anglo-Saxon word orpanc ‘cunning device’, which is the translation of the actual name in the language of the Rohirrim.
NOTES
1 In The Two Towers III 8 it is said that Saruman was ‘accounted by many the chief of Wizards’, and at the Council of Elrond (The Fellowship of the Ring II 2) Gandalf explicitly stated this: ‘Saruman the White is the greatest of my order.’
2 Another version of Círdan’s words to Gandalf on giving him the Ring of Fire at the Grey Havens is found in Of the Rings of Power (The Silmarillion p. 304), and in closely similar words in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings (headnote to the Tale of Years of the Third Age).
3 In a letter written in 1958 my father said that he knew nothing clearly about ‘the other two’, since they were not concerned in the history of the North-west of Middle-earth. ‘I think,’ he wrote, ‘they went as emissaries to distant regions, East and South, far out of Númenórean range: missionaries to “enemy-occupied” lands, as it were. What success they had I do not know; but I fear that they failed, as Saruman did, though doubtless in different ways; and I suspect they were founders or beginners of secret cults and “magic” traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron.’
4 In a very late note on the names of the Istari Radagast is said to be a name deriving from the Men of the Vales of Anduin, ‘not now clearly interpretable’. Rhosgobel, called ‘the old home of Radagast’ in The Fellowship of the Ring II 3, is said to have been ‘in the forest borders between the Carrock and the Old Forest Road’.
5 It appears indeed from the mention of Olórin in the Valaquenta (The Silmarillion pp. 30 –1) that the Istari were Maiar; for Olórin was Gandalf.
6 Curumo would seem to be Saruman’s name in Quenya, recorded nowhere else; Curunír was the Sindarin form. Saruman, his name among Northern men, contains the Anglo-Saxon word searu, saru ‘skill, cunning, cunning device’. Aiwendil must mean ‘lover of birds’ cf. Linaewen ‘lake of birds’ in Nevrast (see the Appendix to The Silmaril-lion, entry lin (1).) For the meaning of Radagast see p. 505 and note 4. Pallando, despite the spelling, perhaps contains palan ‘afar’, as in palantír and in Palarran ‘Far Wanderer’, the name of Aldarion’s ship.
7 In a letter written in 1956 my father said that ‘There is hardly any reference in The Lord of the Rings to things that do not actually exist, on its own plane (of secondary or sub-creational reality)’, and added in a footnote to this: ‘The cats of Queen Berúthiel and the names of the other two wizards (five minus Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast) are all that I recollect.’ (In Moria Aragorn said of Gandalf that ‘He is surer of finding the way home in a blind night than the cats of Queen Berúthiel’ (The Fellowship of the Ring II 4).)
Even the story of Queen Berúthiel does exist, however, if only in a very ‘primitive’ outlin
e, in one part illegible. She was the nefarious, solitary, and loveless wife of Tarannon, twelfth King of Gondor (Third Age 830 – 913) and first of the ‘Ship-kings’, who took the crown in the name of Falastur ‘Lord of the Coasts’, and was the first childless king (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, I, ii and iv). Berúthiel lived in the King’s House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea and the house that Tarannon built below Pelargir ‘upon arches whose feet stood deep in the wide waters of Ethir Anduin’ she hated all making, all colours and elaborate adornment, wearing only black and silver and living in bare chambers, and the gardens of the house in Osgiliath were filled with tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews. She had nine black cats and one white, her slaves, with whom she conversed, or read their memories, setting them to discover all the dark secrets of Gondor, so that she knew those things ‘that men wish most to keep hidden’, setting the white cat to spy upon the black, and tormenting them. No man in Gondor dared touch them; all were afraid of them, and cursed when they saw them pass. What follows is almost wholly illegible in the unique manuscript, except for the ending, which states that her name was erased from the Book of the Kings (‘but the memory of men is not wholly shut in books, and the cats of Queen Berúthiel never passed wholly out of men’s speech’), and that King Tarannon had her set on a ship alone with her cats and set adrift on the sea before a north wind. The ship was last seen flying past Umbar under a sickle moon, with a cat at the masthead and another as a figure-head on the prow.
Unfinished Tales Page 53
