The War of the Jewels (45 page)

In this connection must be mentioned the passage in the Grey Annals $$108-9 (p. 44), where it is expressly stated that 'King Inglor Felagund had no wife', and that when Galadriel came to Nargothrond for the feast celebrating its completion in the year 102 she asked him why:

... but foresight came upon Felagund as she spoke, and he said:

'An oath I too shall swear and must be free to fulfill it and go into darkness. Nor shall anything of all my realm endure that a son should inherit.'

But it is said that not until that hour had such cold thoughts ruled him; for indeed she whom he had loved was Amarie of the Vanyar, and she was not permitted to go with him into exile.

Amarie appears again in GA, in both versions of the retelling of the story of Beren and Luthien ($$180, 199), where it is said that Felagund dwells in Valinor with Amarie.

Later evidence makes it certain that the notes on the QS manuscript represent a rejected idea for the incorporation of Gil-galad into the traditions of the Elder Days; and the passage just cited from the Grey Annals is to be taken as showing that it had been abandoned. That Gil-galad was the son of Fingon (The Silmarillion p. 154) derives from the late note pencilled on the manuscript of GA ($157), stating that when Fingon became King of the Noldor on the death of Fingolfin 'his young son (?Findor) [sic] Gilgalad he sent to the Havens.' But this, adopted after much hesitation, was not in fact by any means the last of my father's speculations on this question.

THE LAST CHAPTERS OF THE

QUENTA SILMARILLION.

Of the next chapters in QS (12 - 15), the tale of Beren and Luthien, there is almost nothing to add to my account in V.292 ff. A typescript in the LQ 1 series was made, but my father only glanced through it cursorily, correcting a few errors in the typing and missing a major one; from this it was copied in the LQ 2 series, which again he looked at in a cursory and uncomparative fashion: such old names as Inglor and Finrod were not changed to Finrod and Finarfin. The only change that he made to the LQ 2 text was at the very beginning (V.296), where against 'Noldor' he wrote in the margin 'Numenor', i.e. 'which is the longest save one of the songs of [the Noldor >] Numenor concerning the world of old.' With this cf. X.373.

The textual history of the following chapters (16 and 17) of the Quenta Silmarillion has been fully described in Vol.V (see especially pp. 293-4), and need not be repeated here. To Chapter 16, the story of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, no further changes to the text as given in V.306-13 had been made (apart from those mentioned in V.313, $1) when the LQ 1 typescript was taken from it, and this my father did not correct or change at any point. Years later, the LQ 2

typescript was simply a copy of LQ 1, perpetuating its errors, and similarly neglected. Thus the confused account of Turgon's emergence from Gondolin, discussed in V.314-15, which had been resolved in the story as told in the Grey Annals (see p. 133, $221), remained in this text without so much as a comment in the margin.

With Chapter 17, the beginning of the story of Turin (V.316-21), my father abandoned, in December 1937, the writing of the continuous Quenta Silmarillion. He had made no changes to the chapter when the last typescript of the LQ 1 series was taken from it, and this text he never touched. In this case he did indeed return later to the manuscript, making many additions and corrections (and rejecting the j whole of the latter part of the chapter, V.319 - 21, $34-40); but this is best regarded as an aspect of the vast, unfinished work on the 'Saga of Turin' that engaged him during the 1950s, from which no brief retelling suitable in scale to the Quenta Silmarillion ever emerged.

LQ 2 was again a simple copy of LQ 1, by that time altogether obsolete.

Chapter 17 ended with Turin's flight from Menegroth after the slaying of Orgof and his gathering of a band of outlaws beyond the borders of Doriath: 'their hands were turned against all who came in their path, Elves, Men, or Orcs' (V.321). The antecedent of this passage is found in Q (Quenta Noldorinwa), IV.123; and from this point, in terms of the Silmarillion narrative strictly or narrowly defined, there is nothing later than Q (written, or the greater part of it, in 1930) for the rest of the tale of Turin, and for all the story of the return of Hurin, the Nauglamir, the death of Thingol, the destruction of Doriath, the fall of Gondolin, and the attack on Sirion's Haven, until we come to the rewriting of the conclusion of Q which my father carried out in 1937.

This is not to suggest for a moment, of course, that he had lost interest in the later tales: 'Turin' is the most obvious contradiction to that, while the later Tale of Tuor was undoubtedly intended to lead to a richly detailed account of the Fall of Gondolin, and The Wanderings of Hurin was not to end with his departure from Brethil, but to lead into the tale of the Necklace of the Dwarves. But the Quenta Silmarillion was at an end. I have said of the Quenta Noldorinwa (Q) in IV.76:

The title ['This is the brief History of the Noldoli or Gnomes, drawn from the Book of Lost Tales'] makes it very plain that while Q was written in a finished manner, my father saw it as a compendium, a

'brief history' that was 'drawn from' a much longer work; and this aspect remained an important element in his conception of 'The Silmarillion' properly so called. I do not know whether this idea did indeed arise from the fact that the starting point of the second phase of the mythological narrative was a condensed synopsis (S) [the Sketch of the Mythology]; but it seems likely enough, from the step by step continuity that leads from S through Q to the version that was interrupted towards its end in 1937.

In these versions my father was drawing on (while also of course continually developing and extending) long works that already existed in prose and verse, and in the Quenta Silmarillion he perfected that characteristic tone, melodious, grave, elegiac, burdened with a sense of loss and distance in time, which resides partly, as I believe, in the literary fact that he was drawing down into a brief compendious history what he could also see in far more detailed, immediate, and dramatic form. With the completion of the great 'intrusion' and departure of The Lord of the Rings, it seems that he returned to the Elder Days with a desire to take up again the far more ample scale with which he had begun long before, in The Book of Lost Tales. The completion of the Quenta Silmarillion remained an aim; but the 'great tales', vastly developed from their original forms, from which its later chapters should be derived were never achieved.

It remains only to record the later history of the final element in QS, the rewritten conclusion of the Quenta Noldorinwa, which was given in V.323 ff. with such emendations as I judged to have been made very early and before the abandonment of work on QS at the end of 1937.

It is curious to find that a final typescript in the LQ 2 series of 1958(?) was made, in which the text of Q was copied from the words

'Hurin gathered therefore a few outlaws of the woods unto him, and they came to Nargothrond' (IV.132) to the end. It has no title, and apart from some corrections made to it by my father has no independent value: its interest lies only in the fact of its existence. The reason why it begins at this place in the narrative is, I think, clear (though not why it begins at precisely this point). At the time when my father decided to 'get copies made of all copyable material' (December 1957, see X.141-2) he provided the typist not only with the Quenta Silmarillion papers but also with (among other manuscripts) the Grey Annals. Thus the story of Turin, in that form, was (or would be) secure in two typescript copies. But from the death of Turin, if anything of the concluding parts of The Silmarillion was to be copied in this way, it had to be the text of Q: for there was nothing later (except the rewritten version of the conclusion). Yet in this text we are of course in quite early writing: for a single example among many, Q

has (IV.139) 'For Turgon deemed, when first they came into that vale after the dreadful battle ...' - an explicit reference to the now long-discarded story of the foundation of Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears; and so this appears in the late typescript. That was of course a mere pis-aller, an insurance against the possibility of a catastrophe, but its existence underlines, and must have underlined for my father, the essential and far-reaching work that still awaited him, but which he would never achieve.

The typist of LQ 2 was given the manuscript (see V.323) of the 1937

rewriting of the conclusion of Q, beginning 'And they looked upon the Lonely Isle and there they tarried not'. Some of the later, roughly made emendations (see V.324) had already been made to the manuscript, but others had not. Up to the point where the rewritten text begins my father understandably paid no attention at all to the typescript, but the concluding portion he corrected cursorily - it is clear that he did not have the actual manuscript by him to refer to. These corrections are mostly no more than regular changes of name, but he made one or two independent alterations as well, and these are recorded in the notes that follow.

The corrections to the manuscript, carried out as it appears in two stages (before and after the making of the typescript), are mostly fairly minor, and a few so slight as not to be worth recording. I refer to the numbered paragraphs in V.324 - 34.

Changes of name or forms of name were: Airandir > Aerandir ($1); Tun > Tirion ($3 and subsequently); Kor > Tuna ($4); Lindar > Vanyar ($$6, 26); Vingelot > Vingilot ($11, but not at the other occurrences); Gumlin > Galion ($16); Gorthu > Gorthaur ($30, see p. 240, $143); Palurien > Kementari ($32); Eriol > Ereol ($33).

Fionwe was changed to Eonwe throughout, and son of Manwe to

'herald of Manwe' in $5 (but in $6 'Fionwe son of Manwe' > 'Eonwe to whom Manwe gave his sword'); 'the sons of the Valar' became 'the host of the Valar' in $6, but 'the Children of the Valar' in $18, 'the sons of the Gods' in $20, and 'the sons of the Valar' in $$29, 32, were not corrected (see also under $15 below).

Other changes were:

$6. 'Ingwiel son of Ingwe was their chief': observing the apparent error, in that Ingwiel appears to be named the leader of the Noldor (see V.334, $6), my father changed this to 'Finarphin son of Finwe': see IV.196, second footnote. In the typescript he let the passage stand, but changed Ingwiel to Ingwion (and also 'Light-elves' to

'Fair-elves', see X.168, 180).

$9. 'Manwe' > 'Manwe the Elder King'

$12. 'she let build for her' > 'there was built for her'

$13. 'they took it for a sign of hope' > 'they took it for a sign, and they called it Gil-Orrain, the Star of high hope', with Gil-Orrain subsequently changed to Gil-Amdir (see X.320). The typescript had the revised reading, with Gil-Orrain, which my father emended to Gil-Estel; on the carbon copy he wrote Orestel above Orrain.

$15. 'the Light-elves of Valinor' > 'the Light-elves in Valinor'

'the sons of the Gods were young and fair and terrible' > 'the host of the Gods were arrayed in forms of Valinor'

$16. 'the most part of the sons of Men' > 'a great part of the sons of Men'

$17. 'was like a great roar of thunder, and a tempest of fire' > 'was with a great thunder, and lightning, and a tempest of fire'

$18. 'and in his fall the towers of Thangorodrim were thrown down'

> 'and he fell upon the towers of Thangorodrim and they were broken and thrown down'

'the chain Angainor, which long had been prepared' > 'the chain Angainor, which he had worn aforetime'

$20. 'But Maidros would not harken, and he prepared... to attempt in despair the fulfilment of his oath' > 'But Maidros and Maglor would not harken...', with change of 'he' to 'they' and 'his' to 'their'.

$26. 'and especially upon the great isles' > 'and upon the great isles'

$30. 'and bears dark fruit even to these latest days' > 'and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days'

'Sauron ... who served Morgoth even in Valinor and came with him' > '... who served Morgoth long ago and came with him into the world' (cf. the removal of the passage on this subject from the chapter Of the Ruin of Beleriand, p. 240, $143).

$31. 'Turin Turambar... coming from the halls of Mandos' > 'Turin Turambar... returning from the Doom of Men at the ending of the world'. In the margin of the manuscript my father wrote 'and Beren Camlost' without direction for its insertion.

$32. 'and she will break them [the Silmarils] and with their fire rekindle the Two Trees': this was emended on the carbon copy of the typescript only to: 'and he [Feanor] will break them and with their fire Yavanna will rekindle the Two Trees'

Approximately against the last two sentences of the paragraph (from 'In that light the Gods will grow young again...') my father put a large X in the margin of the manuscript.

Among these later changes were also the subheadings (Of the Great Battle and the War of Wrath at $15, Of the Last End of the Oath of Feanor and his Sons at $20, and Of the Passing of the Elves at $26) which were noticed in the commentary on this text, V.336; I neglected however to mention there the introduction of a further subheading, The Second Prophecy of Mandos, at $31.