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J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Lost Road
AND OTHER WRITINGS
Language and Legend before
‘The Lord of the Rings’
Christopher Tolkien
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published in Great Britain by Unwin Hyman 1987
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Note on Accessibility
Preface
PART ONE: THE FALL OF NÚMENOR AND THE LOST ROAD
I THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEGEND
II THE FALL OF NÚMENOR
(i) The original outline
(ii) The first version of The Fall of Númenor
(iii) The second version of The Fall of Númenor
(iv) The further development of The Fall of Númenor
III THE LOST ROAD
(i) The opening chapters
(ii) The Númenórean chapters
(iii) The unwritten chapters
PART TWO: VALINOR AND MIDDLE-EARTH BEFORE THE LORD OF THE RINGS
I THE TEXTS AND THEIR RELATIONS
II THE LATER ANNALS OF VALINOR
III THE LATER ANNALS OF BELERIAND
IV AINULINDALË
V THE LHAMMAS
VI QUENTA SILMARILLION
PART THREE
THE ETYMOLOGIES
APPENDIX
I THE GENEALOGIES
II THE LIST OF NAMES
III THE SECOND ‘SILMARILLION’ MAP
Searchable Terms
Other books by J.R.R. Tolkien
About the Publisher
NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY
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PREFACE
This fifth volume of The History of Middle-earth completes the presentation and analysis of my father’s writings on the subject of the First Age up to the time at the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938 when he set them for long aside. The book provides all the evidence known to me for the understanding of his conceptions in many essential matters at the time when The Lord of the Rings was begun; and from the Annals of Valinor, the Annals of Beleriand, the Ainulindalë, and the Quenta Silmarillion given here it can be quite closely determined which elements in the published Silmarillion go back to that time, and which entered afterwards. To make this a satisfactory work of reference for these purposes I have thought it essential to give the texts of the later 1930s in their entirety, even though in parts of the Annals the development from the antecedent versions was not great; for the curious relations between the Annals and the Quenta Silmariliion are a primary feature of the history and here already appear, and it is clearly better to have all the related texts within the same covers. Only in the case of the prose form of the tale of Beren and Lúthien have I not done so, since that was preserved so little changed in the published Silmariliion; here I have restricted myself to notes on the changes that were made editorially.
I cannot, or at any rate I cannot yet, attempt the editing of my fathers strictly or narrowly linguistic writings, in view of their extraordinary complexity and difficulty; but I include in this book the general essay called The Lhammas or Account of Tongues, and also the Etymologies, both belonging to this period. The latter, a kind of etymological dictionary, provides historical explanations of a very large number of words and names, and enormously increases the known vocabularies of the Elvish tongues – as they were at that time, for like everything else the languages continued to evolve as the years passed. Also hitherto unknown except by allusion is my father’s abandoned ‘time-travel’ story The Lost Road, which leads primarily to Númenor, but also into the history and legend of northern and western Europe, with the associated poems The Song of Ælfwine (in the stanza of Pearl) and King Sheave (in alliterative verse). Closely connected with The Lost Road were the earliest forms of the legend of the Drowning of Númenor, which are also included in the book, and the first glimpses of the story of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.
In the inevitable Appendix I have placed three works which are not given complete: the Genealogies, the List of Names, and the second ‘Silmarillion’ Map, all of which belong in their original forms to the earlier 1930s. The Genealogies only came to light recently, but they add in fact little to what is known from the narrative texts. The List of Names might have been better included in Vol. IV, but this was again a work of reference which provides very little new matter, and it was more convenient to postpone it and then to give just those few entries which offer new detail. The second Map is a different case. This was my father’s sole ‘Silmarillion’ map for some forty years, and here I have redrawn it to show it as it was when first made, leaving out all the layer upon layer of later accretion and alteration. The Tale of Years and the Tale of Battles, listed in title-pages to The Silmarillion as elements in that work (see p. 202), are not included, since they were contemporary with the later Annals and add nothing to the material found in them; subsequent alteration of names and dates was also carried out in a precisely similar way.
In places the detailed discussion of dating may seem excessive, but since the chronology of my father’s writings, both ‘internal’ and ‘external’, is extremely difficult to determine and the evidence full of traps, and since the history can be very easily and very seriously falsified by mistaken deductions on this score, I have wished to make as plain as I can the reasons for my assertions.
In some of the texts I have introduced paragraph-numbering. This is done in the belief that it will provide a more precise and therefore quicker method of reference in a book where the discussion of its nature moves constantly back and forth.
As in previous volumes I have to some degree standardized usage in respect of certain names: thus for example I print Gods, Elves, Orcs, Middle-earth, etc. with initial capitals, and Kôr, Tûn, Eärendel, Númenórean, etc. for frequent Kór, Tún, Earendel, Númenórean of the manuscripts.
The earlier volumes of the series are referred to as I (The Book of Lost Tales Part I), II (The Book of Lost Tales Part II), III (The Lays of Beleriand), and IV (The Shaping of Middle-earth). The sixth volume now in preparation will concern the evolution of The Lord of the Rings.
The tables illustrating The Lhammas are reproduced with the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, who kindly supplied photographs.
I list here for convenience the abbreviations used in the book in reference to various works (for a fuller account see pp. 107–8).
Texts in Vol. IV:
| S | The Sketch of the Mythology or ‘earliest Silmarillion’. |
| Q | The Quenta (‘Quenta Noldorinwa’), the second version of ‘The Silmarillion’. |
| AV 1 | The earliest Annals of Valinor. |
| AB 1 | The earliest Annals of Beleriand (in two versions, the second early abandoned). |
Texts in Vol. V:
| FN | The Fall of Númenor (FN I and FN II referring to the first and second texts). |
| AV 2 | The second version of the Annals of Valinor. |
| AB 2 | The second version (or strictly the third) of the Annals of Beleriand. |
| QS | The Quenta Silmarillion, the third version of ‘The Silmarillion’, nearing completion at the end of 1937. |
Other works (Ambarkanta, Ainulindalë, Lhammas, The Lost Road) are not referred to by abbreviations.
In conclusion, I take this opportunity to notice and explain the erroneous representation of the Westward Extension of the first ‘Silmarillion’ Map in the previous volume (The Shaping of Middle-earth p. 228). It will be seen that this map presents a strikingly different appearance from that of the Eastward Extension on p. 231. These two maps, being extremely faint, proved impossible to reproduce from photographs supplied by the Bodleian Library, and an experimental ‘reinforcement’ (rather than re-drawing) of a copy of the Westward Extension was tried out. This I rejected, and it was then found that my photocopies of the originals gave a result sufficiently clear for the purpose. Unhappily, the rejected ‘reinforced’ version of the Westward Extension map was substituted for the photocopy. (Photocopies were also used for diagram III on p. 247 and map V on p. 251, where the originals are in faint pencil.)
PART ONE
THE FALL OF NÚMENOR AND THE LOST ROAD
I
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LEGEND
In February 1968 my father addressed a commentary to the authors of an article about him (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien no. 294). In the course of this he recorded that ‘one day’ C. S. Lewis said to him that since ‘there is too little of what we really like in stories’ they would have to try to write some themselves. He went on:
We agreed that he should try ‘space-travel’, and I should try ‘time-travel’. His result is well known. My effort, after a few promising chapters, ran dry: it was too long a way round to what I really wanted to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend. The final scene survives as The Downfall of Númenor.*
A few years earlier, in a letter of July 1964 (Letters no. 257), he gave some account of his book, The Lost Road:
When C. S. Lewis and I tossed up, and he was to write on space-travel and I on time-travel, I began an abortive book of time-travel of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Númenor, the Land in the West. The thread was to be the occurrence time and again in human families (like Durin among the Dwarves) of a father and son called by names that could be interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. These no longer understood are found in the end to refer to the Atlantid-Númenórean situation and mean ‘one loyal to the Valar, content with the bliss and prosperity within the limits prescribed’ and ‘one loyal to friendship with the High-elves’. It started with a father-son affinity between Edwin and Elwin of the present, and was supposed to go back into legendary time by way of an Eädwine and Ælfwine of circa A.D.918, and Audoin and Alboin of Lombardic legend, and so to the traditions of the North Sea concerning the coming of corn and culture heroes, ancestors of kingly lines, in boats (and their departure in funeral ships). One such Sheaf, or Shield Sheafing, can actually be made out as one of the remote ancestors of the present Queen. In my tale we were to come at last to Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Númenor, when it fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil ‘Elf-friend’ was the founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor. But I found my real interest was only in the upper end, the Akallabêth or Atalantie* (‘Downfall’ in Númenórean and Quenya), so I brought all the stuff I had written on the originally unrelated legends of Númenor into relation with the main mythology.
I do not know whether evidence exists that would date the conversation that led to the writing of Out of the Silent Planet and The Lost Road, but the former was finished by the autumn of 1937, and the latter was submitted, so far as it went, to Allen and Unwin in November of that year (see III.364).
The significance of the last sentence in the passage just cited is not entirely clear. When my father said ‘But I found my real interest was only in the upper end, the Akallabêth or Atalantie’ he undoubtedly meant that he had not been inspired to write the ‘intervening’ parts, in which the father and son were to appear and reappear in older and older phases of Germanic legend; and indeed The Lost Road stops after the introductory chapters and only takes up again with the Númenórean story that was to come at the end. Very little was written of what was planned to lie between. But what is the meaning of ‘so I brought all the stuff I had written on the originally unrelated legends of Númenor into relation with the main mythology’? My father seems to be saying that, having found that he only wanted to write about Númenor, he therefore and only then (abandoning The Lost Road) appended the Númenórean material to ‘the main mythology’, thus inaugurating the Second Age of the World. But what was this material? He cannot have meant the Númenórean matter contained in The Lost Road itself, since that was already fully related to ‘the main mythology’. It must therefore have been something else, already existing when The Lost Road was begun, as Humphrey Carpenter assumes in his Biography (p. 170): ‘Tolkien’s legend of Númenor… was probably composed some time before the writing of “The Lost Road”, perhaps in the late nineteen-twenties or early thirties.’ But, in fact, the conclusion seems to me inescapable that my father erred when he said this.
The original rough workings for The Lost Road are extant, but they are very rough, and do not form a continuous text. There is one complete manuscript, itself fairly rough and heavily emended in different stages; and a professional typescript that was done when virtually all changes had been made to the manuscript.† The typescript breaks off well before the point where the manuscript comes to an end, and my father’s emendations to it were very largely corrections of the typist’s errors, which were understandably many; it has therefore only slight textual value, and the manuscript is very much the primary text.
The Lost Road breaks off finally in the course of a conversation during the last days of Númenor between Elendil and his son Herendil; and in this Elendil speaks at length of the ancient history: of the wars against Morgoth, of Eärendel, of the founding of Númenor, and of the coming there of Sauron. The Lost Road is therefore, as I have said, entirely integrated with ‘the main mythology’ – and this is true already in the preliminary drafts.
Now as the papers were found, there follows immediately after the last page of The Lost Road a further manuscript with a new page-numbering, but no title. Quite apart from its being so placed, this text gives a strong physical impression of belonging to the same time as The Lost Road; and it is closely associated in content with the last part of The Lost Road, for it tells the story of Númenor and its downfall – though this second text was written with a different purpose, to be a complete if very brief history: it is indeed the first fully-written draft of the narrative that ultimately became the Akallabêth. But it is earlier than The Lost Road; for where that has Sauron and Tarkalion this has Sûr and Angor.
A second, more finished manuscript of this history of Númenor followed, with the title (written in afterwards) The Last Tale: The Fall of Númenor. This has several passages that are scarcely different from passages in The Lost Road, but it seems scarcely possible to show for certain which preceded and which followed, unless the evidence cited on p. 74, note 25, is decisive that the second version of The Fall of Númenor was the later of the two; in any case, a passage rewritten very near the time of the original composition of this version is certainly later than The Lost Road, for it gives a later form of the story of Sauron’s arrival in Númenor (see pp. 26–7).
It is therefore clear that the two works were intimately connected; they arose at the same time and from the same impulse, and my father worked on them together. But still more striking is the existence of a single page that can only be the original ‘scheme’ for The Fall of Númenor, the actual first writing down of the idea. The very name Númenor is here only in process of emergence. Yet in this primitive form of the story the term Middle-earth is used, as it never was in the Quenta: it did not appear until the Annals of Valinor and the Ambarkanta. Moreover the form Ilmen occurs, which suggests that this ‘scheme’ was later than the actual writing of the Ambarkanta, where Ilmen was an emendation of Ilma (earlier Silma): IV.240, note 3.
I conclude therefore that ‘Númenor’ (as a distinct and formalised conception, whatever ‘Atlantis-haunting’, as my father called it, lay behind) arose in the actual context of his discussions with C. S. Lewis in (as seems probable) 1936. A passage in the 1964 letter can be taken to say precisely that: ‘I began an abortive book of time-travel of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Númenor, the Land in the West.’ Moreover, ‘Númenor’ was from the outset conceived in full association with ‘The Silmarillion’; there never was a time when the legends of Númenor were ‘unrelated to the main mythology’. My father erred in his recollection (or expressed himself obscurely, meaning something else); the letter cited above was indeed written nearly thirty years later.
II
THE FALL OF NÚMENOR
(i)
The original outline
The text of the original ‘scheme’ of the legend, referred to in the previous chapter, was written at such speed that here and there words cannot be certainly interpreted. Near the beginning it is interrupted by a very rough and hasty sketch, which shows a central globe, marked Ambar, with two circles around it; the inner area thus described is marked Ilmen and the outer Vaiya. Across the top of Ambar and cutting through the zones of Ilmen and Vaiya is a straight line extending to the outer circle in both directions. This must be the forerunner of the diagram of the World Made Round accompanying the Ambarkanta, IV.247. The first sentence of the text, concerning Agaldor (on whom see pp. 78–9), is written separately from the rest, as if it were a false start, or the beginning of a distinct outline.
Agaldor chieftain of a people who live upon the N.W. margin of the Western Sea.
The last battle of the Gods. Men side largely with Morgoth. After the victory the Gods take counsel. Elves are summoned to Valinor. [Struck out: Faithful men dwell in the Lands]
Many men had not come into the old Tales. They are still at large on earth. The Fathers of Men are given a land to dwell in, raised by Ossë and Aulë in the great Western Sea. The Western Kingdom grows up. Atalantë. [Added in margin: Legend so named it afterward (the old name was Númar or Númenos) Atalantë = The Falling.] Its people great mariners, and men of great skill and wisdom. They range from Tol-eressëa to the shores of Middle-earth. Their occasional appearance among Wild Men, where Faithless Men also [?ranged corrupting them]. Some become lords in the East. But the Gods will not allow them to land in Valinor – and though they become long-lived because many have been bathed in the radiance of Valinor from Tol-eressëa – they are mortal and their span brief. They murmur against this decree. Thû comes to Atalantë, heralded [read heralding] the approach of Morgoth. But Morgoth cannot come except as a spirit, being doomed to dwell outside the Walls of Night. The Atalanteans fall, and rebel. They make a temple to Thû-Morgoth. They build an armament and assail the shores of the Gods with thunder.
The Gods therefore sundered Valinor from the earth, and an awful rift appeared down which the water poured and the armament of Atalantë was drowned. They globed the whole earth so that however far a man sailed he could never again reach the West, but came back to his starting-point. Thus new lands came into being beneath the Old World; and the East and West were bent back and [?water flowed all over the round] earth’s surface and there was a time of flood. But Atalantë being near the rift was utter[ly] thrown down and submerged. The remnant of [struck out at time of writing: Númen the Lie-númen] the Númenóreans in their ships flee East and land upon Middle-earth. [Struck out: Morgoth induces many to believe that this is a natural cataclysm.]
The [?longing] of the Númenóreans. Their longing for life on earth. Their ship burials, and their great tombs. Some evil and some good. Many of the good sit upon the west shore. These also seek out the Fading Elves. How [struck out at time of writing: Agaldor] Amroth wrestled with Thû and drove him to the centre of the Earth and the Iron-forest.
The old line of the lands remained as a plain of air upon which only the Gods could walk, and the Eldar who faded as Men usurped the sun. But many of the Númenórië could see it or faintly see it; and tried to devise ships to sail on it. But they achieved only ships that would sail in Wilwa or lower air. Whereas the Plain of the Gods cut through and traversed Ilmen [in] which even birds cannot fly, save the eagles and hawks of Manwë. But the fleets of the Númenórië sailed round the world; and Men took them for gods. Some were content that this should be so.
As I have said, this remarkable text documents the beginning of the legend of Númenor, and the extension of ‘The Silmarillion’ into a Second Age of the World. Here the idea of the World Made Round and the Straight Path was first set down, and here appears the first germ of the story of the Last Alliance, in the words ‘These also seek out the Fading Elves. How [Agaldor >] Amroth wrestled with Thû and drove him to the centre of the Earth’ (at the beginning of the text Agaldor is named as the chief of a people living on the North-west coasts of Middle-earth). The longevity of the Númenóreans is already present, but (even allowing for the compression and distortion inherent in such ‘outlines’ of my father’s, in which he attempted to seize and dash onto paper a bubbling up of new ideas) seems to have far less significance than it would afterwards attain; and is ascribed, strangely, to ‘the radiance of Valinor’, in which the mariners of Númenor were ‘bathed’ during their visits to Tol-eressëa, to which they were permitted to sail. Cf. the Quenta, IV.98: ‘Still therefore is the light of Valinor more great and fair than that of other lands, because there the Sun and Moon together rest a while before they go upon their dark journey under the world’; but this does not seem a sufficient or satisfactory explanation of the idea (see further p. 20). The mortuary culture of the Númenóreans does indeed appear, but it arose among the survivors of Númenor in Middle-earth, after the Downfall; and this remained into more developed forms of the legend, as did the idea of the flying ships which the exiles built, seeking to sail on the Straight Path through Ilmen, but achieving only flight through the lower air, Wilwa.*
The sentence ‘Thû comes to Atalantë, herald[ing] the approach of Morgoth’ certainly means that Thû prophesied Morgoth’s return, as in subsequent texts. The meaning of ‘But Morgoth cannot come except as a spirit’ is made somewhat clearer in the next version, §5.
(ii)
The first version of The Fall of Númenor
The preliminary outline was the immediate precursor of a first full narrative – the manuscript described above (p. 9), placed with The Lost Road. This was followed by further versions, and I shall refer to the work as a whole (as distinct from the Akallabêth, into which it was afterwards transformed) as The Fall of Númenor, abbreviated ‘FN’; the first text has no title, but I shall call it ‘FN I’.
FN I is rough and hasty, and full of corrections made at the time of composition; there are also many others, mostly slight, made later and moving towards the second version FN II. I give it as it was written, without the second layer of emendations (except in so far as these make small necessary corrections to clarify the sense). As explained in the Preface, here as elsewhere I have introduced paragraph numbers into the text to make subsequent reference and comparison easier. A commentary, following the paragraphing of the text, follows at its end.
§1 In the Great Battle when Fionwë son of Manwë overthrew Morgoth and rescued the Gnomes and the Fathers of Men, many mortal Men took part with Morgoth. Of these those that were not destroyed fled into the East and South of the World, and the servants of Morgoth that escaped came to them and guided them; and they became evil, and they brought evil into many places where wild Men dwelt at large in the empty lands. But after their victory, when Morgoth and many of his captains were bound, and Morgoth was thrust again into the Outer Darkness, the Gods took counsel. The Elves were summoned to Valinor, as has been told, and many obeyed, but not all. But the Fathers of Men, who had served the Eldar, and fought against Morgoth, were greatly rewarded. For Fionwë son of Manwë came among them and taught them, and gave them wisdom, power and life stronger than any others of the Second Kindred.
§2 And a great land was made for them to dwell in, neither part of Middle-earth nor wholly separate from it. This was raised by Ossë out of the depths of Belegar, the Great Sea, and established by Aulë, and enriched by Yavanna. It was called Númenor, that is Westernesse, and Andúnië or the Sunsetland, and its chief city in the midmost of its western coasts was in the days of its might called Númar or Númenos; but after its fall it was named in legend Atalantë, the Ruin.
§3 For in Númenórë a great people arose, in all things more like the First Kindred than any other races of Men that have been, yet less fair and wise than they, though greater in body. And above all their arts the people of Númenor nourished shipbuilding and sea-craft, and became mariners whose like shall never be again, since the world was diminished. They ranged from Tol-eressëa, where for many ages they still had converse and dealings with the Gnomes, to the shores of Middle-earth, and sailed round to the North and South, and glimpsed from their high prows the Gates of Morning in the East. And they appeared among the wild Men, and filled them with wonder and also with fear. For many esteemed them to be Gods or sons of Gods out of the West, and evil men had told them lies concerning the Lords of the West. But the Númenóreans tarried not long yet in Middle-earth, for their hearts hungered ever westward for the undying bliss of Valinor. And they were restless and pursued with desire even at the height of their glory.
§4 But the Gods forbade them to sail beyond the Lonely Isle, and would not permit any save their kings (once in each life before he was crowned) to land in Valinor. For they were mortal Men, and it was not in the power and right of Manwë to alter their fate. Thus though the people were long-lived, since their land was more nigh than other lands to Valinor, and many had looked long on the radiance of the Gods that came faintly to Tol-eressëa, they remained mortal, even their kings, and their span brief in the eyes of the Eldar. And they murmured against this decree. And a great discontent grew among them; and their masters of lore sought unceasingly for the secrets that should prolong their lives, and they sent spies to seek these in Valinor. And the Gods were angered.
§5 And in time it came to pass that Sûr (whom the Gnomes called Thû) came in the likeness of a great bird to Númenor and preached a message of deliverance, and he prophesied the second coming of Morgoth. But Morgoth did not come in person, but only in spirit and as a shadow upon the mind and heart, for the Gods shut him beyond the Walls of the World. But Sûr spake to Angor the king and Istar his queen, and promised them undying life and lordship of the Earth. And they believed him and fell under the shadow, and the greatest part of the people of Númenor followed them. Angor raised a great temple to Morgoth in the midst of the land, and Sûr dwelt there.
