The Book Of Lost Tales: Part I Part 1

J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Book of Lost Tales.

Part I.

Christopher Tolkien.

FOREWORD.

The Book of Lost Tales, written between sixty and seventy years ago, was the first substantial work of imaginative literature by J. R. R. Tolkien, and the first emergence in narrative of the Valar, of the Children of Ilvatar, Elves and Men, of the Dwarves and the Orcs, and of the lands in which their history is set, Valinor beyond the western ocean, and Middle-earth, the 'Great Lands' between the seas of east and west. Some fifty-seven years after my father ceased to work on the Lost Tales, The Silmarillion,* profoundly transformed from its distant forerunner, was published; and six years have pa.s.sed since then. This Foreword seems a suitable opportunity to remark on some aspects of both works.

The Silmarillion is commonly said to be a 'difficult' book, needing explanation and guidance on how to 'approach' it; and in this it is contrasted to The Lord of the Rings. In Chapter 7 of his book The Road to Middle-earth Professor T. A. Shippey accepts that this is so ('The Silmarillion could never be anything but hard to read', p. 201), and expounds his view of why it should be. A complex discussion is not treated justly when it is extracted, but in his view the reasons are essentially two (p. 185). In the first place, there is in The Silmarillion no 'mediation' of the kind provided by the hobbits (so, in The Hobbit, 'Bilbo acts as the link between modern times and the archaic world of dwarves and dragons'). My father was himself well aware that the absence of hobbits would be felt as a lack, were 'The Silmarillion' to be published-and not only by readers with a particular liking for them. In a letter written in 1956 (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 238), soon after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, he said: I do not think it would have the appeal of the L.R.-no hobbits! Full of mythology, and elvishness, and all that 'heigh stile' (as Chaucer might say), which has been so little to the taste of many reviewers.

In 'The Silmarillion' the draught is pure and unmixed; and the reader is worlds away from such 'mediation', such a deliberate collison (far more than a matter of styles) as that produced in the meeting between King Theoden and Pippin and Merry in the ruins of Isengard: 'Farewell, my hobbits! May we meet again in my house! There you shall sit beside me and tell me all that your hearts desire: the deeds of your grandsires, as far as you can reckon them...'

The hobbits bowed low. 'So that is the King of Rohan!' said Pippin in an undertone. 'A fine old fellow. Very polite.'

In the second place, Where The Silmarillion differs from Tolkien's earlier works is in its refusal to accept novelistic convention. Most novels (including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) pick a character to put in the foreground, like Frodo and Bilbo, and then tell the story as it happens to him. The novelist of course is inventing the story, and so retains omniscience: he can explain, or show, what is 'really' happening and contrast it with the limited perception of his character.

There is, then, and very evidently, a question of literary 'taste' (or literary 'habituation') involved; and also a question of literary 'disappointment'-the '(mistaken) disappointment in those who wanted a second Lord of the Rings' to which Professor Shippey refers. This has even produced a sense of outrage-in one case formulated to me in the words 'It's like the Old Testament!': a dire condemnation against which, clearly, there can be no appeal (though this reader cannot have got very far before being overcome by the comparison). Of course, 'The Silmarillion' was intended to move the heart and the imagination, directly, and without peculiar effort or the possession of unusual faculties; but its mode is inherent, and it may be doubted whether any 'approach' to it can greatly aid those who find it unapproachable.

There is a third consideration (which Professor Shippey does not indeed advance in the same context): One quality which [The Lord of the Rings] has in abundance is the Beowulfian 'impression of depth', created just as in the old epic by songs and digressions like Aragorn's lay of Tinviel, Sam Gamgee's allusions to the Silmaril and the Iron Crown, Elrond's account of Celebrimbor, and dozens more. This, however, is a quality of The Lord of the Rings, not of the inset stories. To tell these in their own right and expect them to retain the charm they got from their larger setting would be a terrible error, an error to which Tolkien would be more sensitive than any man alive. As he wrote in a revealing letter dated 20 September 1963: I am doubtful myself about the undertaking [to write The Silmarillion]. Part of the attraction of The L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed. (Letters, p. 333) To go there is to destroy the magic. As for the revealing of 'new unattainable vistas', the problem there-as Tolkien must have thought many times-was that in The Lord of the Rings Middle-earth was already old, with a vast weight of history behind it. The Silmarillion, though, in its longer form, was bound to begin at the beginning. How could 'depth' be created when you had nothing to reach further back to?

The letter quoted here certainly shows that my father felt this, or perhaps rather one should say, at times felt this, to be a problem. Nor was it a new thought: while he was writing The Lord of the Rings, in 1945, he said in a letter to me (Letters, p. 110): A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving. I think you are moved by Celebrimbor because it conveys a sudden sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees (like Niggle's) never to be approached-or if so only to become 'near trees'...

This matter is perfectly ill.u.s.trated for me by Gimli's song in Moria, where great names out of the ancient world appear utterly remote: The world was fair, the mountains tall, In Elder Days before the fall.

Of mighty kings in Nargothrond.

And Gondolin, who now beyond.

The Western Seas have pa.s.sed away...

'I like that!' said Sam. 'I should like to learn it. In Moria, in Khazad-dm. But it makes the darkness seem heavier, thinking of all those lamps.' By his enthusiastic 'I like that!' Sam not only 'mediates' (and engagingly 'Gamgifies') the 'high', the mighty kings of Nargothrond and Gondolin, Durin on his carven throne, but places them at once at an even remoter distance, a magical distance that it might well seem (at that moment) destructive to traverse.

Professor Shippey says that 'to tell [the stories that are only alluded to in The Lord of the Rings] in their own right and expect them to retain the charm they got from their larger setting would be a terrible error'. The 'error' presumably lies in the holding of such an expectation, if the stories were told, not in the telling of the stories at all; and it is apparent that Professor Shippey sees my father as wondering, in 1963, whether he should or should not put pen to paper, for he expands the words of the letter, 'I am doubtful myself about the undertaking', to mean 'the undertaking to write The Silmarillion'. But when my father said this he was not-most emphatically not-referring to the work itself, which was in any case already written, and much of it many times over (the allusions in The Lord of the Rings are not illusory): what was in question for him, as he said earlier in this same letter, was its presentation, in a publication, after the appearance of The Lord of the Rings, when, as he thought, the right time to make it known was already gone.

I am afraid all the same that the presentation will need a lot of work, and I work so slowly. The legends have to be worked over (they were written at different times, some many years ago) and made consistent; and they have to be integrated with The L.R.; and they have to be given some progressive shape. No simple device, like a journey and a quest, is available.

I am doubtful myself about the undertaking...

When after his death the question arose of publishing 'The Silmarillion' in some form, I attached no importance to this doubt. The effect that 'the glimpses of a large history in the background' have in The Lord of the Rings is incontestable and of the utmost importance, but I did not think that the 'glimpses' used there with such art should preclude all further knowledge of the 'large history'.

The literary 'impression of depth...created by songs and digressions' cannot be made a criterion by which a work in a wholly different mode is measured: this would be to treat the history of the Elder Days as of value primarily or even solely in the artistic use made of it in The Lord of the Rings. Nor should the device of a backward movement in imagined time to dimly apprehended events, whose attraction lies in their very dimness, be understood mechanically, as if a fuller account of the mighty kings of Nargothrond and Gondolin would imply a dangerously near approach to the bottom of the well, while an account of the Creation would signify the striking of the bottom and a definitive running-out of 'depth'-'nothing to reach further back to'.

This, surely, is not how things work, or at least not how they need work. 'Depth' in this sense implies a relation between different temporal layers or levels within the same world. Provided that the reader has a place, a point of vantage, in the imagined time from which to look back, the extreme oldness of the extremely old can be made apparent and made to be felt continuously. And the very fact that The Lord of the Rings establishes such a powerful sense of a real time-structure (far more powerful than can be done by mere chronological a.s.sertion, tables of dates) provides this necessary vantage-point. To read The Silmarillion one must place oneself imaginatively at the time of the ending of the Third Age-within Middle-earth, looking back: at the temporal point of Sam Gamgee's 'I like that!'-adding, 'I should like to know more about it'. Moreover the compendious or epitomising form and manner of The Silmarillion, with its suggestion of ages of poetry and 'lore' behind it, strongly evokes a sense of 'untold tales', even in the telling of them; 'distance' is never lost. There is no narrative urgency, the pressure and fear of the immediate and unknown event. We do not actually see the Silmarils as we see the Ring. The maker of 'The Silmarillion', as he himself said of the author of Beowulf, 'was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote'.

As has now been fully recorded, my father greatly desired to publish 'The Silmarillion' together with The Lord of the Rings. I say nothing of its practicability at the time, nor do I make any guesses at the subsequent fate of such a much longer combined work, quadrilogy or tetralogy, or at the different courses that my father might then have taken-for the further development of 'The Silmarillion' itself, the history of the Elder Days, would have been arrested. But by its posthumous publication nearly a quarter of a century later the natural order of presentation of the whole 'Matter of Middle-earth' was inverted; and it is certainly debatable whether it was wise to publish in 1977 a version of the primary 'legendarium' standing on its own and claiming, as it were, to be self-explanatory. The published work has no 'framework', no suggestion of what it is and how (within the imagined world) it came to be. This I now think to have been an error.

The letter of 1963 quoted above shows my father pondering the mode in which the legends of the Elder Days might be presented. The original mode, that of The Book of Lost Tales, in which a Man, Eriol, comes after a great voyage over the ocean to the island where the Elves dwell and learns their history from their own lips, had (by degrees) fallen away. When my father died in 1973 'The Silmarillion' was in a characteristic state of disarray: the earlier parts much revised or largely rewritten, the concluding parts still as he had left them some twenty years before; but in the latest writing there is no trace or suggestion of any 'device' or 'framework' in which it was to be set. I think that in the end he concluded that nothing would serve, and no more would be said beyond an explanation of how (within the imagined world) it came to be recorded.

In the original edition of The Lord of the Rings Bilbo gave to Frodo at Rivendell as his parting gift 'some books of lore that he had made at various times, written in his spidery hand, and labelled on their red backs: Translations from the Elvish, by B.B.' In the second edition (1966) 'some books' was changed to 'three books', and in the Note on the Shire Records added to the Prologue in that edition my father said that the content of 'the three large volumes bound in red leather' was preserved in that copy of the Red Book of Westmarch which was made in Gondor by the King's Writer Findegil in the year 172 of the Fourth Age; and also that These three volumes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which...[Bilbo] had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written. But since they were little used by Frodo, being almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days, no more is said of them here.

In The Complete Guide to Middle-earth Robert Foster says: 'Quenta Silmarillion was no doubt one of Bilbo's Translations from the Elvish preserved in the Red Book of Westmarch.' So also I have a.s.sumed: the 'books of lore' that Bilbo gave to Frodo provided in the end the solution: they were 'The Silmarillion'. But apart from the evidence cited here, there is, so far as I know, no other statement on this matter anywhere in my father's writings; and (wrongly, as I think now) I was reluctant to step into the breach and make definite what I only surmised.

The choice before me, in respect of 'The Silmarillion', was threefold. I could withhold it indefinitely from publication, on the ground that the work was incomplete and incoherent between its parts. I could accept the nature of the work as it stood, and, to quote my Foreword to the book, 'attempt to present the diversity of the materials-to show "The Silmarillion" as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century' and that, as I have said in Unfinished Tales (p. 1), would have entailed 'a complex of divergent texts interlinked by commentary'-a far larger undertaking than those words suggest. In the event, I chose the third course, 'to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative'. Having come, at length, to that decision, all the editorial labour of myself and of Guy Kay who a.s.sisted me was directed to the end that my father had stated in the letter of 1963: 'The legends have to be worked over...and made consistent; and they have to be integrated with the L.R.' Since the object was to present 'The Silmarillion' as 'a completed and cohesive ent.i.ty' (though that could not in the nature of the case be entirely successful), it followed that there would be in the published book no exposition of the complexities of its history.

Whatever may be thought of this matter, the result, which I by no means foresaw, has been to add a further dimension of obscurity to 'The Silmarillion', in that uncertainty about the age of the work, whether it is to be regarded as 'early' or 'late' or in what proportions, and about the degree of editorial intrusion and manipulation (or even invention), is a stumbling-block and a source of much misapprehension. Professor Randel Helms, in Tolkien and the Silmarils (p. 93), has stated the question thus: Anyone interested, as I am, in the growth of The Silmarillion will want to study Unfinished Tales, not only for its intrinsic value but also because its relationship to the former provides what will become a cla.s.sic example of a long-standing problem in literary criticism: what, really, is a literary work? Is it what the author intended (or may have intended) it to be, or is it what a later editor makes of it? The problem becomes especially intense for the practising critic when, as happened with The Silmarillion, a writer dies before finishing his work and leaves more than one version of some of its parts, which then find publication elsewhere. Which version will the critic approach as the 'real' story?

But he also says: 'Christopher Tolkien has helped us in this instance by honestly pointing out that The Silmarillion in the shape that we have it is the invention of the son not the father' and this is a serious misapprehension to which my words have given rise.

Again, Professor Shippey, while accepting (p. 169) my a.s.surance that a 'very high proportion' of the 1937 'Silmarillion' text remained into the published version, is nonetheless elsewhere clearly reluctant to see it as other than a 'late' work, even the latest work of its author. And in an article ent.i.tled 'The Text of The Hobbit: Putting Tolkien's Notes in Order' (English Studies in Canada, VII, 2, Summer 1981) Constance B. Hieatt concludes that 'it is very clear indeed that we shall never be able to see the progressive steps of authorial thinking behind The Silmarillion'.

But beyond the difficulties and the obscurities, what is certain and very evident is that for the begetter of Middle-earth and Valinor there was a deep coherence and vital interrelation between all its times, places, and beings, whatever the literary modes, and however protean some parts of the conception might seem when viewed over a long lifetime. He himself understood very well that many who read The Lord of the Rings with enjoyment would never wish to regard Middle-earth as more than the mise-en-scene of the story, and would delight in the sensation of 'depth' without wishing to explore the deep places. But the 'depth' is not of course an illusion, like a line of imitation book-backs with no books inside them; and Quenya and Sindarin are comprehensive structures. There are explorations to be conducted in this world with perfect right quite irrespective of literary critical considerations; and it is proper to attempt to comprehend its structure in its largest extent, from the myth of its Creation. Every person, every feature of the imagined world that seemed significant to its author is then worthy of attention in its own right, Manw or Fanor no less than Gandalf or Galadriel, the Silmarils no less than the Rings; the Great Music, the divine hierarchies, the abodes of the Valar, the fates of the Children of Ilvatar, are essential elements in the perception of the whole. Such enquiries are in no way illegitimate in principle; they arise from an acceptance of the imagined world as an object of contemplation or study valid as many other objects of contemplation or study in the all too unimaginary world. It was in this opinion and in the knowledge that others shared it that I made the collection called Unfinished Tales.

But the author's vision of his own vision underwent a continual slow shifting, shedding and enlarging: only in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings did parts of it emerge to become fixed in print, in his own lifetime. The study of Middle-earth and Valinor is thus complex; for the object of the study was not stable, but exists, as it were 'longitudinally' in time (the author's lifetime), and not only 'transversely' in time, as a printed book that undergoes no essential further change. By the publication of 'The Silmarillion' the 'longitudinal' was cut 'transversely', and a kind of finality imposed.

This rather rambling discussion is an attempt to explain my primary motives in offering The Book of Lost Tales for publication. It is the first step in presenting the 'longitudinal' view of Middle-earth and Valinor: when the huge geographical expansion, swelling out from the centre and (as it were) thrusting Beleriand into the west, was far off in the future; when there were no 'Elder Days' ending in the drowning of Beleriand, for there were as yet no other Ages of the World; when the Elves were still 'fairies', and even Rmil the learned Noldo was far removed from the magisterial 'loremasters' of my father's later years. In The Book of Lost Tales the princes of the Noldor have scarcely emerged, nor the Grey-elves of Beleriand; Beren is an Elf, not a Man, and his captor, the ultimate precursor of Sauron in that rle, is a monstrous cat inhabited by a fiend; the Dwarves are an evil people; and the historical relations of Quenya and Sindarin were quite differently conceived. These are a few especially notable features, but such a list could be greatly prolonged. On the other hand, there was already a firm underlying structure that would endure. Moreover in the history of the history of Middle-earth the development was seldom by outright rejection-far more often it was by subtle transformation in stages, so that the growth of the legends (the process, for instance, by which the Nargothrond story made contact with that of Beren and Lthien, a contact not even hinted at in the Lost Tales, though both elements were present) can seem like the growth of legends among peoples, the product of many minds and generations.

The Book of Lost Tales was begun by my father in 191617 during the First War, when he was 25 years old, and left incomplete several years later. It is the starting-point, at least in fully-formed narrative, of the history of Valinor and Middle-earth; but before the Tales were complete he turned to the composition of long poems, the Lay of Leithian in rhyming couplets (the story of Beren and Lthien), and The Children of Hrin in alliterative verse. The prose form of the 'mythology' began again from a new starting-point* in a quite brief synopsis, or 'Sketch' as he called it, written in 1926 and expressly intended to provide the necessary background of knowledge for the understanding of the alliterative poem. The further written development of the prose form proceeded from that 'Sketch' in a direct line to the version of 'The Silmarillion' which was nearing completion towards the end of 1937, when my father broke off to send it as it stood to Allen and Unwin in November of that year; but there were also important side-branches and subordinate texts composed in the 1930s, as the Annals of Valinor and the Annals of Beleriand (fragments of which are extant also in the Old English translations made by lfwine (Eriol)), the cosmological account called Ambarkanta, the Shape of the World, by Rmil, and the Lhammas or 'Account of Tongues', by Pengolod of Gondolin. Thereafter the history of the First Age was laid aside for many years, until The Lord of the Rings was completed, but in the years preceding its actual publication my father returned to 'The Silmarillion' and a.s.sociated works with great vigour.

This edition of the Lost Tales in two parts is to be, as I hope, the beginning of a series that will carry the history further through these later writings, in verse and prose; and in this hope I have applied to this present book an 'overriding' t.i.tle intended to cover also those that may follow it, though I fear that 'The History of Middle-earth' may turn out to have been over-ambitious. In any case this t.i.tle does not imply a 'History' in the conventional sense: my intention is to give complete or largely complete texts, so that the books will be more like a series of editions. I do not set myself as a primary object the unravelling of many single and separate threads, but rather the making available of works that can and should be read as wholes.

The tracing of this long evolution is to me of deep interest, and I hope that it may prove so to others who have a taste for this kind of enquiry: whether the major transformations of plot or cosmological theory, or such a detail as the premonitory appearance of Legolas Greenleaf the keen-sighted in the tale of The Fall of Gondolin. But these old ma.n.u.scripts are by no means of interest only for the study of origins. Much is to be found there that my father never (so far as one can tell) expressly rejected, and it is to be remembered that 'The Silmarillion', from the 1926 'Sketch' onwards, was written as an abridgement or epitome, giving the substance of much longer works (whether existing in fact, or not) in a smaller compa.s.s. The highly archaic manner devised for his purpose was no fustian: it had range and great vigour, peculiarly apt to convey the magical and eerie nature of the early Elves, but as readily turned to the sarcastic, sneering Melko or the affairs of Ulmo and Oss. These last approach at times a comic conception, and are delivered in a rapid and lively language that did not survive in the gravity of my father's later 'Silmarillion' prose (so Oss 'fares about in a foam of business' as he anchors the islands to the sea-bed, the cliffs of Tol Eressa new-filled with the first sea-birds 'are full of a chattering and a smell of fish, and great conclaves are held upon its ledges', and when the Sh.o.r.eland Elves are at last drawn over the sea to Valinor Ulmo marvellously 'fares at the rear in his fishy car and trumpets loudly for the discomfiture of Oss').

The Lost Tales never reached or even approached a form in which my father could have considered their publication before he abandoned them; they were experimental and provisional, and the tattered notebooks in which they were written were bundled away and left unlooked at as the years pa.s.sed. To present them in a printed book has raised many th.o.r.n.y editorial problems. In the first place, the ma.n.u.scripts are intrinsically very difficult: partly because much of the text was written rapidly in pencil and is now in places extremely hard to read, requiring a magnifying gla.s.s and much patience, not always rewarded. But also in some of the Tales my father erased the original pencilled text and wrote a revised version over it in ink-and since at this period he used bound notebooks rather than loose sheets, he was liable to find himself short of s.p.a.ce: so detached portions of tales were written in the middle of other tales, and in places a fearsome textual jigsaw puzzle was produced.

Secondly, the Lost Tales were not all written progressively one after the other in the sequence of the narrative; and (inevitably) my father began a new arrangement and revision of the Tales while the work was still in progress. The Fall of Gondolin was the first of the tales told to Eriol to be composed, and the Tale of Tinviel the second, but the events of those tales take place towards the end of the history; on the other hand the extant texts are later revisions. In some cases nothing earlier than the revised form can now be read; in some both forms are extant for all, or a part, of their length; in some there is only a preliminary draft; and in some there is no formed narrative at all, but only notes and projections. After much experimentation I have found that no method of presentation is feasible but to set out the Tales in the sequence of the narrative.

And finally, as the writing of the Tales progressed, relations were changed, new conceptions entered, and the development of the languages pari pa.s.su with the narrative led to continual revision of names.

An edition that takes account of such complexities, as this does, rather than attempt to smooth them artificially away, is liable to be an intricate and crabbed thing, in which the reader is never left alone for a moment. I have attempted to make the Tales themselves accessible and uncluttered while providing a fairly full account, for those who want it, of the actual textual evidences. To achieve this I have drastically reduced the quant.i.ty of annotation to the texts in these ways: the many changes made to names are all recorded, but they are lumped together at the end of each tale, not recorded individually at each occurrence (the places where the names occur can be found from the Index); almost all annotation concerned with content is taken up into, or boiled down into, a commentary or short essay following each tale; and almost all linguistic comment (primarily the etymology of names) is collected in an Appendix on Names at the end of the book, where will be found a great deal of information relating to the earliest stages of the 'Elvish' languages. In this way the numbered notes are very largely restricted to variants and divergences found in other texts, and the reader who does not wish to trouble with these can read the Tales knowing that that is almost all that he is missing.

The commentaries are limited in their scope, being mostly concerned to discuss the implications of what is said within the context of the Tales themselves, and to compare them with the published Silmarillion. I have eschewed parallels, sources, influences; and have mostly avoided the complexities of the development between the Lost Tales and the published work (since to indicate these even cursorily would, I think, be distracting), treating the matter in a simplified way, as between two fixed points. I do not suppose for one moment that my a.n.a.lyses will prove either altogether just or altogether accurate, and there must be clues to the solution of puzzling features in the Tales which I have failed to observe. There is also included a short glossary of words occurring in the Tales and poems that are obsolete, archaic, or rare.

The texts are given in a form very close to that of the original ma.n.u.scripts. Only the most minor and obvious slips have been silently corrected; where sentences fall awkwardly, or where there is a lack of grammatical cohesion, as is sometimes the case in the parts of the Tales that never got beyond a first rapid draft, I have let them stand. I have allowed myself greater freedom in providing punctuation, for my father when writing at speed often punctuated erratically or not at all; and I have gone further than he did in consistency of capitalisation. I have adopted, though hesitantly, a consistent system of accentuation for Elvish names. My father wrote, for instance: Palrien, Palrien, Palurien; nen, Onen; Kr, Kor. I have used the acute accent for macron, circ.u.mflex, and acute (and occasional grave) accents of the original texts, but the circ.u.mflex on monosyllables-thus Palrien, nen, Kr: the same system, at least to the eye, as in later Sindarin.

Lastly, the division of this edition into two parts is entirely due to the length of the Tales. The edition is conceived as a whole, and I hope that the second part will appear within a year of the first; but each part has its own Index and Appendix on Names. The second part contains what are in many respects the most interesting of the Tales: Tinviel, Turambar (Trin), The Fall of Gondolin, and the Tale of the Nauglafring (the Necklace of the Dwarves); outlines for the Tale of Erendel and the conclusion of the work; and lfwine of England.

I.

THE COTTAGE OF LOST PLAY.

On the cover of one of the now very battered 'High School Exercise Books' in which some of the Lost Tales were composed my father wrote: The Cottage of Lost Play, which introduceth [the] Book of Lost Tales; and on the cover is also written, in my mother's hand, her initials, E.M.T., and a date, Feb. 12th 1917. In this book the tale was written out by my mother; and it is a fair copy of a very rough pencilled ma.n.u.script of my father's on loose sheets, which were placed inside the cover. Thus the date of the actual composition of this tale could have been, but probably was not, earlier than the winter of 191617. The fair copy follows the original text precisely; some further changes, mostly slight (other than in the matter of names), were then made to the fair copy. The text follows here in its final form.

Now it happened on a certain time that a traveller from far countries, a man of great curiosity, was by desire of strange lands and the ways and dwellings of unaccustomed folk brought in a ship as far west even as the Lonely Island, Tol Eressa in the fairy speech, but which the Gnomes1 call Dor Faidwen, the Land of Release, and a great tale hangs thereto.

Now one day after much journeying he came as the lights of evening were being kindled in many a window to the feet of a hill in a broad and woody plain. He was now near the centre of this great island and for many days had wandered its roads, stopping each night at what dwelling of folk he might chance upon, were it hamlet or good town, about the hour of eve at the kindling of candles. Now at that time the desire of new sights is least, even in one whose heart is that of an explorer; and then even such a son of Erendel as was this wayfarer turns his thoughts rather to supper and to rest and the telling of tales before the time of bed and sleep is come.

Now as he stood at the foot of the little hill there came a faint breeze and then a flight of rooks above his head in the clear even light. The sun had some time sunk beyond the boughs of the elms that stood as far as eye could look about the plain, and some time had its last gold faded through the leaves and slipped across the glades to sleep beneath the roots and dream till dawn.

Now these rooks gave voice of home-coming above him, and with a swift turn came to their dwelling in the tops of some high elms at the summit of this hill. Then thought Eriol (for thus did the people of the island after call him, and its purport is 'One who dreams alone', but of his former names the story nowhere tells): 'The hour of rest is at hand, and though I know not even the name of this fair-seeming town upon a little hill here I will seek rest and lodging and go no further till the morrow, nor go even then perchance, for the place seems fair and its breezes of a good savour. To me it has the air of holding many secrets of old and wonderful and beautiful things in its treasuries and n.o.ble places and in the hearts of those that dwell within its walls.'

Now Eriol was coming from the south and a straight road ran before him bordered at one side with a great wall of grey stone topped with many flowers, or in places overhung with great dark yews. Through them as he climbed the road he could see the first stars shine forth, even as he afterwards sang in the song which he made to that fair city.

Now was he at the summit of the hill amidst its houses, and stepping as if by chance he turned aside down a winding lane, till, a little down the western slope of the hill, his eye was arrested by a tiny dwelling whose many small windows were curtained snugly, yet only so that a most warm and delicious light, as of hearts content within, looked forth. Then his heart yearned for kind company, and the desire for wayfaring died in him-and impelled by a great longing he turned aside at this cottage door, and knocking asked one who came and opened what might be the name of this house and who dwelt therein. And it was said to him that this was Mar Vanwa Tyalieva, or the Cottage of Lost Play, and at that name he wondered greatly. There dwelt within, 'twas said, Lindo and Vair who had built it many years ago, and with them were no few of their folk and friends and children. And at this he wondered more than before, seeing the size of the cottage; but he that opened to him, perceiving his mind, said: 'Small is the dwelling, but smaller still are they that dwell here-for all who enter must be very small indeed, or of their own good wish become as very little folk even as they stand upon the threshold.'

Then said Eriol that he would dearly desire to come therein and seek of Vair and Lindo a night's guest-kindliness, if so they would, and if he might of his own good wish become small enough there upon the threshold. Then said the other, 'Enter', and Eriol stepped in, and behold, it seemed a house of great s.p.a.ciousness and very great delight, and the lord of it, Lindo, and his wife, Vair, came forth to greet him; and his heart was more glad within him than it had yet been in all his wanderings, albeit since his landing in the Lonely Isle his joy had been great enough.

And when Vair had spoken the words of welcome, and Lindo had asked of him his name and whence he came and whither he might be seeking, and he had named himself the Stranger and said that he came from the Great Lands,2 and that he was seeking whither-so his desire for travel led him, then was the evening meal set out in the great hall and Eriol bidden thereto. Now in this hall despite the summertide were three great fires-one at the far end and one on either side of the table, and save for their light as Eriol entered all was in a warm gloom. But at that moment many folk came in bearing candles of all sizes and many shapes in sticks of strange pattern: many were of carven wood and others of beaten metal, and these were set at hazard about the centre table and upon those at the sides.

At that same moment a great gong sounded far off in the house with a sweet noise, and a sound followed as of the laughter of many voices mingled with a great pattering of feet. Then Vair said to Eriol, seeing his face filled with a happy wonderment: 'That is the voice of Tombo, the Gong of the Children, which stands outside the Hall of Play Regained, and it rings once to summon them to this hall at the times for eating and drinking, and three times to summon them to the Room of the Log Fire for the telling of tales,' and added Lindo: 'If at his ringing once there be laughter in the corridors and a sound of feet, then do the walls shake with mirth and stamping at the three strokes in an evening. And the sounding of the three strokes is the happiest moment in the day of Littleheart the Gong-warden, as he himself declares who has known happiness enough of old; and ancient indeed is he beyond count in spite of his merriness of soul. He sailed in Wingilot with Erendel in that last voyage wherein they sought for Kr. It was the ringing of this Gong on the Shadowy Seas that awoke the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl that stands far out to west in the Twilit Isles.'

To these words did Eriol's mind so lean, for it seemed to him that a new world and very fair was opening to him, that he heard naught else till he was bidden by Vair to be seated. Then he looked up, and lo, the hall and all its benches and chairs were filled with children of every aspect, kind, and size, while sprinkled among them were folk of all manners and ages. In one thing only were all alike, that a look of great happiness lit with a merry expectation of further mirth and joy lay on every face. The soft light of candles too was upon them all; it shone on bright tresses and gleamed about dark hair, or here and there set a pale fire in locks gone grey. Even as he gazed all arose and with one voice sang the song of the Bringing in of the Meats. Then was the food brought in and set before them, and thereafter the bearers and those that served and those that waited, host and hostess, children and guest, sat down: but Lindo first blessed both food and company. As they ate Eriol fell into speech with Lindo and his wife, telling them tales of his old days and of his adventures, especially those he had encountered upon the journey that had brought him to the Lonely Isle, and asking in return many things concerning the fair land, and most of all of that fair city wherein he now found himself.

Lindo said to him: 'Know then that today, or more like 'twas yesterday, you crossed the borders of that region that is called Alalminr or the "Land of Elms", which the Gnomes call Gar Lossion, or the "Place of Flowers". Now this region is accounted the centre of the island, and its fairest realm; but above all the towns and villages of Alalminr is held Koromas, or as some call it, Kortirion, and this city is the one wherein you now find yourself. Both because it stands at the heart of the island, and from the height of its mighty tower, do those that speak of it with love call it the Citadel of the Island, or of the World itself. More reason is there thereto than even great love, for all the island looks to the dwellers here for wisdom and leadership, for song and lore; and here in a great korin of elms dwells Meril-i-Turinqi. (Now a korin is a great circular hedge, be it of stone or of thorn or even of trees, that encloses a green sward.) Meril comes of the blood of Inw, whom the Gnomes call Inwithiel, he that was King of all the Eldar when they dwelt in Kr. That was in the days before hearing the lament of the world Inw led them forth to the lands of Men: but those great and sad things and how the Eldar came to this fair and lonely island, maybe I will tell them another time.

'But after many days Ingil son of Inw, seeing this place to be very fair, rested here and about him gathered most of the fairest and the wisest, most of the merriest and the kindest, of all the Eldar.3 Here among those many came my father Valw who went with Noldorin to find the Gnomes, and the father of Vair my wife, Tulkastor. He was of Aul's kindred, but had dwelt long with the Sh.o.r.eland Pipers, the Solosimpi, and so came among the earliest to the island.

'Then Ingil builded the great tower4 and called the town Koromas, or "the Resting of the Exiles of Kr", but by reason of that tower it is now mostly called Kortirion.'

Now about this time they drew nigh the end of the meal; then did Lindo fill his cup and after him Vair and all those in the hall, but to Eriol he said: 'Now this which we put into our cups is limp, the drink of the Eldar both young and old, and drinking, our hearts keep youth and our mouths grow full of song, but this drink I may not administer: Turinqi only may give it to those not of the Eldar race, and those that drink must dwell always with the Eldar of the Island until such time as they fare forth to find the lost families of the kindred.' Then he filled Eriol's cup, but filled it with golden wine from ancient casks of the Gnomes; and then all rose and drank 'to the Faring Forth and the Rekindling of the Magic Sun'. Then sounded the Gong of the Children thrice, and a glad clamour arose in the hall, and some swung back big oaken doors at the hall's end-at that end which had no hearth. Then many seized those candles that were set in tall wooden sticks and held them aloft while others laughed and chattered, but all made a lane midmost of the company down which went Lindo and Vair and Eriol, and as they pa.s.sed the doors the throng followed them.

Eriol saw now that they were in a short broad corridor whose walls half-way up were arra.s.sed; and on those tapestries were many stories pictured whereof he knew not at that time the purport. Above the tapestries it seemed there were paintings, but he could not see for gloom, for the candle-bearers were behind, and before him the only light came from an open door through which poured a red glow as of a big fire. 'That,' said Vair, 'is the Tale-fire blazing in the Room of Logs; there does it burn all through the year, for 'tis a magic fire, and greatly aids the teller in his tale-but thither we now go,' and Eriol said that that seemed better to him than aught else.

Then all that company came laughing and talking into the room whence came the red glow. A fair room it was as might be felt even by the fire-flicker which danced upon the walls and low ceiling, while deep shadows lay in the nooks and corners. Round the great hearth was a mult.i.tude of soft rugs and yielding cushions strewn; and a little to one side was a deep chair with carven arms and feet. And so it was that Eriol felt at that time and at all others whereon he entered there at the hour of tale-telling, that whatso the number of the folk and children the room felt ever just great enough but not large, small enough but not overthronged.

Then all sat them down where they would, old and young, but Lindo in the deep chair and Vair upon a cushion at his feet, and Eriol rejoicing in the red blaze for all that it was summer stretched nigh the hearthstone.

Then said Lindo: 'Of what shall the tales be tonight? Shall they be of the Great Lands, and of the dwellings of Men; of the Valar and Valinor; of the West and its mysteries, of the East and its glory, of the South and its untrodden wilds, of the North and its power and strength; or of this island and its folk; or of the old days of Kr where our folk once dwelt? For that this night we entertain a guest, a man of great and excellent travel, a son meseems of Erendel, shall it be of voyaging, of beating about in a boat, of winds and the sea?'5 But to this questioning some answered one thing and some another, till Eriol said: 'I pray you, if it be to the mind of the others, for this time tell me of this island, and of all this island most eagerly would I learn of this goodly house and this fair company of maids and boys, for of all houses this seems to me the most lovely and of all gatherings the sweetest I have gazed upon.'

Then said Vair: 'Know then that aforetime, in the days of6 Inw (and farther back it is hard to go in the history of the Eldar), there was a place of fair gardens in Valinor beside a silver sea. Now this place was near the confines of the realm but not far from Kr, yet by reason of its distance from the sun-tree Lindelos there was a light there as of summer evening, save only when the silver lamps were kindled on the hill at dusk, and then little lights of white would dance and quiver on the paths, chasing black shadow-dapples under the trees. This was a time of joy to the children, for it was mostly at this hour that a new comrade would come down the lane called Olr Mall or the Path of Dreams. It has been said to me, though the truth I know not, that that lane ran by devious routes to the homes of Men, but that way we never trod when we fared thither ourselves. It was a lane of deep banks and great overhanging hedges, beyond which stood many tall trees wherein a perpetual whisper seemed to live; but not seldom great glow-worms crept about its gra.s.sy borders.

'Now in this place of gardens a high gate of lattice-work that shone golden in the dusk opened upon the lane of dreams, and from there led winding paths of high box to the fairest of all the gardens, and amidmost of the garden stood a white cottage. Of what it was built, nor when, no one knew, nor now knows, but it was said to me that it shone with a pale light, as it was of pearl, and its roof was a thatch, but a thatch of gold.

'Now on one side of the cot stood a thicket of white lilac and at the other end a mighty yew, from whose shoots the children fashioned bows or clambered by his branches upon the roof. But in the lilacs every bird that ever sang sweetly gathered and sang. Now the walls of the cottage were bent with age and its many small lattice windows were twisted into strange shapes. No one, 'tis said, dwelt in the cottage, which was however guarded secretly and jealously by the Eldar so that no harm came nigh it, and that yet might the children playing therein in freedom know of no guardianship. This was the Cottage of the Children, or of the Play of Sleep, and not of Lost Play, as has wrongly been said in song among Men-for no play was lost then, and here alas only and now is the Cottage of Lost Play.

'These too were the earliest children-the children of the fathers of the fathers of Men that came there; and for pity the Eldar sought to guide all who came down that lane into the cottage and the garden, lest they strayed into Kr and became enamoured of the glory of Valinor; for then would they either stay there for ever, and great grief fall on their parents, or would they wander back and long for ever vainly, and become strange and wild among the children of Men. Nay, some even who wandered on to the edge of the rocks of Eldamar and there strayed, dazzled by the fair sh.e.l.ls and the fishes of many colours, the blue pools and the silver foam, they drew back to the cottage, alluring them gently with the odour of many flowers. Yet even so there were a few who heard on that beach the sweet piping of the Solosimpi afar off and who played not with the other children but climbed to the upper windows and gazed out, straining to see the far glimpses of the sea and the magic sh.o.r.es beyond the shadows and the trees.

'Now for the most part the children did not often go into the house, but danced and played in the garden, gathering flowers or chasing the golden bees and b.u.t.terflies with embroidered wings that the Eldar set within the garden for their joy. And many children have there become comrades, who after met and loved in the lands of Men, but of such things perchance Men know more than I can tell you. Yet some there were who, as I have told, heard the Solosimpi piping afar off, or others who straying again beyond the garden caught a sound of the singing of the Telelli on the hill, and even some who reaching Kr afterwards returned home, and their minds and hearts were full of wonder. Of the misty aftermemories of these, of their broken tales and s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, came many strange legends that delighted Men for long, and still do, it may be; for of such were the poets of the Great Lands.7 'Now when the fairies left Kr that lane was blocked for ever with great impa.s.sable rocks, and there stands of a surety the cottage empty and the garden bare to this day, and will do until long after the Faring Forth, when if all goes well the roads through Arvalin to Valinor shall be thronged with the sons and daughters of Men. But seeing that no children came there for refreshment and delight, sorrow and greyness spread amongst them and Men ceased almost to believe in, or think of, the beauty of the Eldar and the glory of the Valar, till one came from the Great Lands and besought us to relieve the darkness.

'Now there is alas no safe way for children from the Great Lands. .h.i.ther, but Meril-i-Turinqi hearkened to his boon and chose Lindo my husband to devise some plan of good. Now Lindo and I, Vair, had taken under our care the children-the remainder of those who found Kr and remained with the Eldar for ever: and so here we builded of good magic this Cottage of Lost Play: and here old tales, old songs, and elfin music are treasured and rehea.r.s.ed. Ever and anon our children fare forth again to find the Great Lands, and go about among the lonely children and whisper to them at dusk in early bed by night-light and candle-flame, or comfort those that weep. Some I am told listen to the complaints of those that are punished or chidden, and hear their tales and feign to take their part, and this seems to me a quaint and merry service.

'Yet all whom we send return not and that is great grief to us, for it is by no means out of small love that the Eldar held children from Kr, but rather of thought for the homes of Men; yet in the Great Lands, as you know well, there are fair places and lovely regions of much allurement, wherefore it is only for the great necessity that we adventure any of the children that are with us. Yet the most come back hither and tell us many stories and many sad things of their journeys-and now I have told most of what is to tell of the Cottage of Lost Play.'

Then Eriol said: 'Now these are tidings sad and yet good to hear, and I remember me of certain words that my father spake in my early boyhood. It had long, said he, been a tradition in our kindred that one of our father's fathers would speak of a fair house and magic gardens, of a wondrous town, and of a music full of all beauty and longing-and these things he said he had seen and heard as a child, though how and where was not told. Now all his life was he restless, as if a longing half-expressed for unknown things dwelt within him; and 'tis said that he died among rocks on a lonely coast on a night of storm-and moreover that most of his children and their children since have been of a restless mind-and methinks I know now the truth of the matter.'

And Vair said that 'twas like to be that one of his kindred had found the rocks of Eldamar in those old days.

NOTES.

1 Gnomes: the Second Kindred, the Noldoli (later Noldor). For the use of the word Gnomes see p. 43; and for the linguistic distinction made here see pp. 501.

2 The 'Great Lands' are the lands East of the Great Sea. The term 'Middle-earth' is never used in the Lost Tales, and in fact does not appear until writings of the 1930s.

3 In both MSS the words 'of all the Eldar' are followed by: 'for of most n.o.ble there were none, seeing that to be of the blood of the Eldar is equal and sufficient' but this was struck out in the second MS.

4 The original reading was 'the great Tirion', changed to 'the great tower'.

5 This sentence, from 'a son meseems...', replaced in the original MS an earlier reading: 'shall it be of Erendel the wanderer, who alone of the sons of Men has had great traffic with the Valar and Elves, who alone of their kindred has seen beyond Taniquetil, even he who sails for ever in the firmament?'

6 The original reading was 'before the days of', changed to 'in the first days of', and then to the reading given.

7 This last phrase was an addition to the second MS.

Changes made to names in.

The Cottage of Lost Play.

The names were at this time in a very fluid state, reflecting in part the rapid development of the languages that was then taking place. Changes were made to the original text, and further changes, at different times, to the second text, but it seems unnecessary in the following notes to go into the detail of when and where the changes were made. The names are given in the order of their occurrence in the tale. The signs > and < are="" used="" to="" mean="" 'changed="" to'="" and="" 'changed="">

Dor Faidwen The Gnomish name of Tol Eressa was changed many times: Gar Eglos > Dor Edloth > Dor Usgwen > Dor Uswen > Dor Faidwen.

Mar Vanwa Tyalieva In the original text a s.p.a.ce was left for the Elvish name, subsequently filled in as Mar Vanwa Talieva.

Great Lands Throughout the tale Great Lands is an emendation of Outer Lands, when the latter was given a different meaning (lands West of the Great Sea).

Wingilot <>

Gar Lossion <>

Koromas <>

Meril-i-Turinqi The first text has only Turinqi, with in one place a s.p.a.ce left for a personal name.

Inw < ing="" at="" each="">