Sauron Defeated (54 page)

There was a short silence, and then Markison spoke. 'Why did you call it Elven-latin?' he asked. 'Why Elven?'

'It seemed to fit,' Lowdham answered. 'But certainly I didn't mean elf in any debased post-Shakespearean sort of sense....

The remainder of Night 66 is the same as in F 2 (pp. 242 - 5), except that, as in E, Lowdham's account of the ancient mode of utterance is absent.

It will be seen that in F 1, as in E, Wilfrid Jeremy interrupts to speak of his 'dream-manuscript' (p. 300), found in a library, in which occurred the names Numenor and Earendil: the unknown character of some passages in it was the same as that of the single leaf preserved from Edwin Lowdham's 'notes in a queer script' (p. 235), which Arundel Lowdham had now found again; but that this passage is entirely absent in F 2 (p. 237). Subsequently, in E, Jeremy returns to the subject ('That breaks my dream!', p. 303), remembering both that he found - in waking life, years before - the manuscript not in a library but in the second-hand room of a bookshop, and that the manuscript bore the title Quenta Eldalien, being the History of the Elves, by John Artburson; and this leads to a mention of Lewis's use of the name Numinor. This second interruption of Jeremy's is not in F 1, which is on the face of it strange, since his first speech was surely intended to lead on to his second. A probable explanation of this is that my father decided to discard this element of Jeremy's manuscript (perhaps as complicating excessively the already complex conception) while he was making the typescript, and that this was one reason why he produced the revised version at this point. But Jeremy's remarks at the previous meeting (Night 65, p. 232: 'I come into it too. I knew I had heard that name as soon as Arry said it. But I can't for the life of me remember where or when at the moment. It'll bother me now, like a thorn in the foot, until I get it out') should have been removed.

NOTES.

1. The genitive and accusative cases maris, marem are given because the nominative is mas ('male').

2. Jeremy is referring to the earlier passage (Night 65, p. 232) in which he claimed that he himself had heard the name Numenor, but could not remember when.

3. In the revised text F 2 there is no mention of the missing leaf having been found under Night 66 - naturally enough, since it was at this meeting that Lowdham referred to it as having been mislaid (p. 235). It was an odd oversight in E and F 1 that at the same meeting Lowdham both first mentions it and says that he cannot find it at the present time, and also declares that he has found it and discussed it with Jeremy. In F 2 he brings the leaf to the next meeting (p. 248).

4. E has here: '... the contents of the dream-manuscript - I call it that, because I doubt now whether this dream is really founded on any waking experience at all; though I don't somehow doubt that such a manuscript exists somewhere, probably in Oxford: it contains, I think, some kind of legendary history...'

5. Orendel in German, Aurvandill in Norse, Horwendillus in Latinized form in the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (latter half of the twelfth century). The form in Norse is Aurvandill, but at the occurrences of the name both in E and F 1

my father spelt it Aurvendill. See note 6.

6. In the 'Prose Edda' of Snorri Sturluson a strange tale is told by the god Thor, how he 'carried Aurvandill in a basket on his back from the North out of Jotunheim [land of giants]; and he added for a token that one of his toes had stuck out of the basket and become frozen; and so Thor broke it off and cast it into the sky, and made a star of it, which is called Aurvandilsta [Aurvandil's Toe]' (Snorra Edda, Skaldskaparmal $17). Association of Aurvandill with Orion is the basis of the suggestions mentioned by Lowdham earlier (p. 236): 'Some guess that it [Earendel] was really a star-name for Orion, or for Rigel' - Rigel being the very bright star in the left foot of Orion (as he is drawn in the old figure).

7. E has, And Earendil certainly had a connexion with a star in the strange tongue: I seem to remember that: like the ship' - the last words being changed from 'And the ship was Earendel's Star'.

Earlier in E (p. 284 note 25) the ship was called Earendel Star.

8. In E Lowdham translates Earendil as 'Lover of the Great Seas'; in the final text F 2 as 'Great Mariner, or literally Friend of the Sea'

(p. 237).

9. This passage is modelled on Alboin Errol's words to his father in The Lost Road (V.41), using the same examples, with the same distinction in respect of the word lome ('night' but not 'darkness'), the same note that alda was one of the earliest words to appear, and the same remark that (in Alboin's words) 'I like first one, then the other, in different moods.'

10. Eressean was Alboin Errol's name for his first language, 'Elf-latin'; the second was Beleriandic.

11. Cf. p. 221 note 65: the passage cited there from the B manuscript of Part One, in which 'Tolkien's Unfallen Elves' and 'Tolkien's Eldar, Eldalie' are referred to, though not struck out on that manuscript, must by now have been rejected; it is clear that Lowdham means that Eldar, Eldalie had 'come through' to him, and that he only knew them so. See further note 14.

12. See p. 286 note 38.

13. Whitburn: see p. 149 and note 7.

14. My father's father was Arthur Tolkien; he was referring of course to his manuscript of The Silmarillion, which had never been published but had washed up, forgotten and disregarded, in the second-hand room of a bookshop. The author of The Silmarillion is disguised by a pseudonym; for no reference can now be made to the works of Tolkien, least of all as having been published and known to members of the Notion Club (see the citation from manuscript B of Part One, p. 220 note 52 at end). - In a rejected form of this passage the title of the manuscript was not Quenta Eldalien but Quenta Eldaron.

15. Ramer's remark 'Lewis also mentions the name somewhere' is at first sight puzzling, since it was Lowdham's mention of Eldar, Eldalie that brought back to Jeremy's mind the manuscript by

'John Arthurson' that he had once seen, and the name Numenor has not been mentioned for some time. But Ramer was following his own thought, that 'several minds' had been 'working back along similar lines' (and of course it was the name Numenor that had originally caught Jeremy's attention and finally led to his recollection of the manuscript). - Jeremy's words 'In a preface, was it?' presumably refer to Lewis's preface to That Hideous Strength: 'Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R.

Tolkien.' But then why does Jeremy say 'from a source that hasn't been traced', since the source, though unpublished, was stated by Lewis? Such an untiring researcher as Wilfrid Jeremy would have found out who J. R. R. Tolkien was, even if now forgotten!

By 'All the other sources' Jeremy presumably means his own recollection of the manuscript by 'John Arthurson' and the name that had 'come through' to Ramer (p. 232) and Lowdham.

There are a number of references to Numinor in That Hideous Strength, as: 'Merlin's art was the last survival of something older and different - something brought to Western Europe after the fall of Numinor' (Chapter 9, $v); again with reference to Merlin, 'something that takes us back to Numinor, to pre-glacial periods' (Ch.12, $vi); (Merlin) '"Tell me, slave, what is Numinor?" "The True West," said Ransom' (Ch.13, $i); other references in Ch.13, $v.

16. Westfolde (folde 'earth, land, country') seems not to be recorded in Old English. This is the same as Westfold in The Lord of the Rings. - Hesperia: 'western land' (hesperus 'western', 'the evening star').

17. Above the th of wraithas is written kw (see p. 287 note 48).

18. In F 1 Lowdham's words about Avalloni in F 2 (p. 241) are absent ('Although that is a B name, it is with it, oddly enough, that I associate language A; so if you want to get rid of algebra, you can call A Avallonian, and B Adunaic'). Thus there is no explanation in F 1 why he calls the A language Avallonian despite the fact that Avalloni is a B name.

(ii) The original version of Lowdham's 'Fragments' (Night 67).

In the manuscript E Lowdham's fragments are, like Alboin Errol's in The Lost Road (V.47) in one language only, Quenya ('Eressean').

Lowdham bursts in to Ramer's rooms and tells of his visit to Pembrokeshire just as he does in F (p. 246), but he does not bring copies of the text that has come to him - he asks Ramer for a large sheet of paper to pin up on a board. Then he says, Well, here it is! It s Numenorean or Eressean, and I'll put the text that I can remember down first large, and the English gloss (where I can give any) underneath. It's fragmentary, just a collection of incomplete sentences.'

The first of the two fragments reads thus, as E was originally written (the change of ilu to eru was very probably made at the time of writing: for ilu 'the World' see IV.241 - 5):

ar sauron tule nahamna ... lantier turkildi and ? came ? ... they-fell ?

unuhuine ... tarkalion ohtakare valannar

under-shadow ... ? war-made on-Powers

Herunumen [ilu >] eru terhante ... Iluvataren ...

Lord-of-West world sunder-broke ... of-God

eari ullier kilyanna ... Numenore ataltane.

seas they-should-pour in-Chasm ... Numenor down-fell.

It will be seen that the Elvish here, apart from the curious change from ilu to eru, is identical in its forms with that of Alboin Errol's first fragment; and the only differences in the glosses are 'of-God' for Alboin's 'of-Iluvatar', 'sunder-broke' for 'broke', and 'they-should-pour' for 'poured'. A few changes were made subsequently: lantier o lantaner, eru > arda, terhante > askante, and the addition of leneme

'by leave' - the changed forms being found in the final version (p. 246) with the exception of askante, where the final version has sakkante

'rent'.

Then follows (where in The Lost Road it is said: 'Then there had seemed to be a long gap'): 'After that there came a long dark gap which slipped out of memory as soon as I woke to daylight. And then I got this."

Malle tena lende numenna ilya si maller

road straight went westward all now roads

raikar ... turkildi romenna ... nuruhuine

bent ... ? eastward ... death-shadow

mene lumna ... vahaya sin atalante.

on-us is-heavy ... far-away now ?

This is also very close to Alboin Errol's second passage. The word tena 'straight' was changed from tera (as in The Lost Road), perhaps in the act of writing; otherwise the only differences in the Quenya words are mene lumna for mel-lumna in The Lost Road (glossed

'us-is-heavy'), and sin for sin, where Lowdham's gloss was changed from 'now' (as in The Lost Road) to 'now-is'. This fragment appears in Adunaic in the final version (Fragment II, p. 247), apart from the words vahaiya sin Andore / atalante.

In E Lowdham makes the same observations as in F (pp.247 - 8) about his glimpse of the script, with the thought that these were passages out of a book; and he says likewise 'And then suddenly I remembered the curious script in my father's manuscript - but that can wait', without however adding, as he does in F, 'I've brought the leaf along', although at the end of the meeting, after the storm, Ramer picks up the leaf from the floor and puts it in a drawer (p. 291, notes 68 and 70).

Lowdham remarks that 'there are some new words here', and that 'all except nahamna I at once guessed to be names'. He naturally has less to say in E about the language of the fragments than he does in F, noting only that he thought that Tarkalion was a king's name and that Turkildi was 'the name of a people: "lordly men", I think', and commenting on Atalante in very much the same words as in F, translating it as '"It (or She) that is downfallen", or more closely

"who has slipped down into an abyss" '.

(iii) The earlier versions of Lowdham's 'Fragments'

in Adunaic (Night 67).

There are two manuscript pages of Lowdham's fragments in Quenya and Adunaic preceding those reproduced as frontispieces. The first of these pages, here called (1), has interlinear glosses in English in red ink; the second, (2), has not. In the Quenya fragment I (A) the development from the form found in E to the final form (pp. 246 - 7) can be observed, but there are only a few points to mention. The word nahamna, which neither Alboin Errol nor Lowdham could translate, became in (1) kamindon, still untranslatable but with the gloss -ly beneath, and in (2) akamna, changed to nukumna. The name herunu-men survived in (1) and (2), but was changed in the latter to Numekundo (numeheruvi in the final form).

The Adunaic fragments, I (B) and II (B), underwent a great deal of change, and I give here the text in (1), showing the changes made carefully to the text in ink, but ignoring scribbled pencilled emendations which are mostly very difficult to interpret.

Kado zigurun zabathan [hunekku >] unekku ... eruhin and so ? humbled he-came ... ?