The Peoples of Middle-earth (65 page)

47. He was the son of Arothir, nephew of Finrod. [See the note on the parentage of Gil-galad, pp. 349 ff. - From this work was derived Gil-galad's name Ereinion introduced into The Silmarillion.]

48. [Earlier (p. 346) the name is Itarille; Itarilde appears in the first three genealogical tables, but the fourth has ltarille'.]

49. These names were given in the language of that kindred of the Atani (Edain) - but adapted to Sindarin - from which in the main the Adunaic or native Atanic language of Numenor was descended. Their explanation is not here attempted.

50. [The term Pereldar 'Half-eldar' was originally used of the Nandor or Danas (see V.200, 215), but it is here used as is the Sindarin form Peredhil in Appendix A (I, i) of Elrond and Elros; cf. i-Pheredhil p. 256, Peredil p. 348.]

51. [In the account of Ulmo's words to Tuor on the coast at Vinyamar in the later Tale of Tuor the Vala did indeed allude prophetically to Earendil, but in a manner far more veiled and mysterious:

'But it is not for thy valour only that I send thee, but to bring into the world a hope beyond thy sight, and a light that shall pierce the darkness' (Unfinished Tales p. 30).]

52. Forms affected by Sindarin in manuscripts, such as Aerendil, Aerennel, etc. were casual and accidental.

53. When Aragorn, descended in long line from Elros, wedded Arwen in the third union of Men and Elves, the lines of all the Three Kings of the High Elves (Eldar), Ingwe, Finwe, and Olwe and Elwe were united and alone preserved in Middle-earth. Since Luthien was the noblest, and the most fair and beautiful, of all the Children of Eru remembered in ancient story, the descendants of that union were called 'the children of Luthien'. The world has grown old in long years since then, but it may be that their line has not yet ended. (Luthien was through her mother, Melian, descended also from the Mayar, the people of the Valar, whose being began before the world was made. Melian alone of all those spirits assumed a bodily form, not only as a raiment but as a permanent habitation in form and powers like to the bodies of the Elves. This she did for love of Elwe; and it was permitted, no doubt because this union had already been foreseen in the beginning of things, and was woven into the Amarth of the world, when Eru first conceived the being of his children, Elves and Men, as is told (after the manner and according to the understanding of his children) in that myth that is named The Music of the Ainur.)

[As is said in the text at this point Arwen was descended from Finwe both in the line of Fingolfin (through Elrond) and in the line of Finarfin (through Celebrian); but she was also descended from Elwe (Thingol) through Elrond's mother Elwing, and through Galadriel's mother Earwen from Olwe of Alqualonde.

She was not directly descended from Ingwe, but her fore-mother Indis was (in earlier texts) the sister of Ingwe (X.261-2, etc.), or (in the present work, p. 343) the daughter of his sister. It is hard to know what my father had in mind when he wrote the opening of this note.]

54. Until they died the death of mortal Men, according to the decree of the Valar, and left this world for ever.

55. [Here the typescript stops, not at the foot of a page; and at this point my father wrote:

Alter this to: Wing. This word, which the loremasters explained as meaning 'foam, spindrift', only actually occurs in two names of the Earendil legend: Elwing the name of his wife, and (in Quenya form) Vingilote (translated in Adunaic as Rothinzil) 'Foam-flower', the name of Earendil's ship. The word is not otherwise known in Quenya or Sindarin - nor in Telerin despite its large vocabulary of sea-words. There was a tradition that the word came from the language of the Green Elves of Ossiriand.]

56. [Elsewhere in these notes the stem rot, s-rot is given the meaning

'delve underground, excavate, tunnel', whence Quenya hrota

'dwelling underground, artificial cave or rockhewn hall', rotto 'a small grot or tunnel'.]

57. ['Finwe third': his grandfather was Finwe, and his father Kurufinwe, first named Finwe also (p. 343).]

58. [Kano: see note 36.]

59. [The P of Pityafinwe, but not of the short form Pityo, was changed to N.]

60. [Pityafinwe and Telufinwe are bracketed with the words

'Twins Gwenyn'.]

61. [On a separate page written at the same time is a note on the father of Nerdanel (Feanor's wife);

Nerdanel's father was an 'Aulendil' [> 'Aulendur'], and became a great smith. He loved copper, and set it above gold.

His name was [space; pencilled later Sarmo?], but he was most widely known as Urundil 'copper-lover'. He usually wore a band of copper about his head. His hair was not as dark or black as was that of most of the Noldor, but brown, and had glints of coppery-red in it. Of Nerdanel's seven children the oldest, and the twins (a very rare thing among the Eldar) had hair of this kind. The eldest also wore a copper circlet.

A note is appended to Aulendur:

'Servant of Aule': sc. one who was devoted to that Vala. It was applied especially to those persons, or families, among the Noldor who actually entered Aule's service, and who in return received instruction from him.

A second note on this page comments on the name Urundil: v RUN 'red, glowing', most often applied to things like embers, hence adjective runya, Sindarin ruin ' "fiery" red'. The Eldar had words for some metals, because under Orome's instruction they had devised weapons against Morgoth's servants especially on the March, but the only ones that appear in all Eldarin languages were iron, copper, gold and silver (ANGA, URUN> MALAT> KYELEP).

Earlier Nerdanel's father, the great smith, had been named Mahtan (see X.272, 277), and he was so called in the published Silmarillion. For earlier statements concerning the arming of the Eldar on the Great Journey see X.276 - 7, 281.]

62. [Ambarto was changed to Umbarto, and the positions of Umbarto and Ambarussa were reversed: see p. 355.]

63. ['shocked' was an uncertain interpretation on my father's part of the illegible word.]

64. [The deed of his father: the treacherous taking of all the Telerian ships for the passage of the Feanorians to Middle-earth.]

65. [The text ends with brief notes on the 'Sindarizing' of the Quenya names of the Sons of Feanor, but these are too rapid, elliptical, and illegible to be reproduced. It may be mentioned, however, that Sindarin Maedros is explained as containing elements of Nelyafinwe's mother-name Maitimo (Common Eldarin magit-

'shapely', Sindarin maed) and of his epesse Russandol (Common Eldarin russa, Sindarin ross); and also that the Sindarin form of Ambarussa (numbered 6, i.e. the elder twin) is here Amros, not Amras.]

XII.

THE PROBLEM OF ROS.

In his last years my father attached the utmost importance to finding explanations, in historical linguistic terms, of names that went far back in the 'legendarium' (see for example his discussion of the very old names Isfin and Eol in XI.317-18, 320), and if such names had appeared in print he felt bound by them, and went to great pains to devise etymologies that were consonant with the now minutely refined historical development of Quenya and Sindarin. Most taxing of all was the case of the name Elros, and others associated with it either in form or through connection in the legends; but, equally characteristically, his writings on this matter contain many observations of interest beyond the detail of phonological history: for the linguistic history and the 'legendarium' became less and less separable.

In the long excursus on the names of the descendants of Finwe given in the last chapter he had said (p. 349) that Elros and Elrond were

'formed to recall the name of their mother Elwing', and he had noted that the element wing occurs only in that name and in the name of Earendil's ship Vingilote (p. 365, note 55): he referred to a speculation of loremasters that wing was a word of the tongue of the Green-elves of Ossiriand, whose meaning was guessed with some probability to be

'foam, spindrift'. The name Elros he stated there without hesitation to mean 'star(lit) foam', in Quenya form Elerosse (but earlier, in Quendi and Eldar (XI.414), he had said that the meaning was 'star-glitter', while Elrond meant 'star-dome', as still in the present essay).

But this was not the last of his speculations on the matter, and there are several typewritten texts that return to the problem (all of them belonging to the same period, 1968 or later, as The Shibboleth of Feanor, but certainly following that work). The most notable of these I give in full. It has no title, but begins with a statement defining the content:

The best solution of the difficulty presented by the name Elros, fixed by mention in The Lord of the Rings, and the names of the sons of Feanor: Maedros, the eldest, and Amros, now proposed as the name of both the twins (sixth and seventh) - to which a story is attached that it is desirable to retain.

This is a reference to the very rough manuscript text (appended to the list of father-names and mother-names of the Sons of Feanor) in which the extraordinary story of the twin brothers is told (pp. 353-5); for the form Amros (not Amras) see p. 366, note 65.

The typescript was made very rapidly (with the usual number of interspersed notes, among them two of great interest), and it has required some editing, of a very minor kind, for the sake of clarity.

The one -ros was supposed (at its adoption) in Elros to contain a Sindarin stem *ross- from base ROS 'spray, spindrift' (as scattered by a wind from a fountain, waterfall, or breaking waves).(1) The other is supposed to be a colour word, referring to the red, red-brown hair of the first, sixth, and seventh sons of Feanor, descending to them from their maternal grandfather, father of Nerdanel, Feanor's wife, a great craftsman, devoted to the Vala Aule.

It is difficult to accept these two homophonic elements -

of unconnected, indeed unconnectable, meanings - as used in Sindarin, or Sindarized names.(2) It is also unfortunate that the first appears too reminiscent of Latin ros ['dew'] or Greek drosos, and the latter too close to well-known modern European 'red' words: as Latin russus, Italian rosso, English russet, rust, etc. However, the Elvish languages are inevitably full of such reminiscences, so that this is the lesser difficulty.

Proposed solution. Associate the name Elros with that of his mother Elwing: both contain final elements that are isolated in the legendary nomenclature (see note on wing in the discussion of the Sindarizing of the Noldorin heroic names).(3) But instead of deriving them from the Nandorin (or Green-elvish) of Ossiriand, it would be an improvement to derive them from the Mannish tongues: the language of Beren father of Dior; both *ros and *wing could thus be removed from Eldarin. The Adunaic of Numenor was mainly derived from that of the most powerful and numerous people of 'the House of Hador'. This was related to the speech of Beor's people who first entered Beleriand (probably about as nearly as Noldorin Quenya to Telerin of Valinor): communication between the two peoples was possible but imperfect, mainly because of phonetic changes in the Beorian dialect. The language of the Folk of Haleth, so far as it was later known, appears to have been unrelated (unless in remote origin) and unintelligible to the other two peoples.(4) The folk of Beor continued to speak their own tongue among themselves with fair purity, though many Sindarin words were borrowed and adapted by them.(5) This was of course the native tongue of Beren, lineal descendant of Beor the Old. He spoke Sindarin after a fashion (probably derived from North Sindarin); but his halting and dialectal use of it offended the ears of King Thingol.(6) But it was told in the legend of Beren and Luthien that Luthien learned Beren's native tongue during their long journeys together and ever after used it in their speech together. Not long before they came at last back to the borders of Doriath he asked her why she did so, since her own tongue was richer and more beautiful. Then she became silent and her eyes seemed to look far away before she answered: 'Why?

Because I must forsake thee, or else forsake my own people and become one of the children of Men. Since I will never forsake thee, I must learn the speech of thy kin, and mine.' Dior their son, it is said, spoke both tongues: his father's, and his mother's, the Sindarin of Doriath. For he said: 'I am the first of the Peredil (Half-elven),. but I am also the heir of King Elwe, the Eluchil.'(7) He gave to his elder son the name Elured, that is said to have the same significance, but ended in the Beorian word reda 'heir'; to his second son he gave the name Elurin,(8) but his daughter the name Elwing. For she was born on a clear night of stars, the light of which glittered in the spray of the waterfall by which his house was built.(9) The word wing was Beorian, meaning fine rain or the spray from fountains and waterfalls blown by a wind; but he joined this to Elvish el- 'star' rather than to the Beorian,(10) because it was more beautiful, and also went with the names of her brothers: the name Elwe (Sindarin Elu) was believed to be and probably was derived from el 'star'.(11) Elured and Elurin, before they came to manhood, were both slain by the sons of Feanor,(12) in the last and most abominable deed brought about by the curse that the impious oath of Feanor laid upon them. But Elwing was saved and fled with the Silmaril to the havens of the surviving Eldar at the Mouths of Sirion. There she later wedded Earendil, and so joined the two Half-elven lines. Her sons she named Elros and Elrond; and after the manner of her brothers the first ended in a Beorian word, and the second in an Elvish. Elros was indeed close in meaning to her own name: it contained the Beorian word for