The War of the Jewels (59 page)

This is possibly compatible with the story that Eol gave Anglachel to Thingol as fee to dwell in Nan Elmoth. It would be interesting to know why my father wished thus to change Eol's history - or rather, why he wished to attribute Eol's skill in metals to a time of slavery in Angband; but in any event he thought better of it, for in a scribbled note beside the two versions of the story he said that this would not do, being too repetitive of the later history of Maeglin, and that Eol's skill was derived from the Dwarves.

$9. Now the traffic of the Dwarves...

The opening of this paragraph read as follows in A: Now the traffic of the Dwarves followed two roads, the northern of which, going towards Himring, passed nigh Nan Elmoth, and there Eol would meet the Enfeng and hold converse with them. And, as their friendship grew, he would at times go and dwell as a guest in the deep mansions of Belegost.

The only emendation to A was the replacement of the old term Enfeng (Longbeards, the Dwarves of Belegost, see pp. 108, 207 - 8) by Anfangrim, here first appearing. In B(ii) 'the deep mansions of Belegost' was changed to '... of Nogrod or Belegost'; adopting this in the published text I altered in consequence Anfangrim 'Longbeards' to the general term Naugrim.

In the following passage A had originally:

There he learned much of metalwork, and came to great skill therein; and he devised a metal hard and thin and yet pliable, and it was black and shining like jet. Rodeol, the metal of Eol, he named it, and he was clad therein, and so escaped many wounds.

The name of the metal was changed many times. First Rodeol was altered to Glindur, then to Targlin and Morlin; then (apparently) back to Glindur, and finally to Maeglin, the form in B.

The idea that the name of Eol's son was derived from that of the metal is found in the revised annal for 320 in GA (p. 48): 'Eol named him Glindur, for that was the name of the metal of Eol'; subsequently Glindur was changed to Maeglin both as the name of the metal and as the name of the son (as also in A: see under $10 below).

The passage was left as it stood in B(i), but at the head of the first page of B(ii) my father wrote: 'The metal must not have same name as Maeglin'; and he emended the text to the form that it has in the published Silmarillion, with the name of the metal galvorn. (Following

'whenever he went abroad' the words 'and so escaped many wounds'

were omitted in The Silmarillion, apparently through inadvertence.) To the passage 'But Eol... was no Dwarf, but a tall Elf of a high kin of the Teleri' my father wrote on the manuscript A (only) a note beginning with the words 'Not in revision' - which probably means that what follows is not in the corrections made to the copies of the typescript ('the revision'). In this note my father was copying a very faint and illegible form of it on the same page, and trying to interpret his own writing; I give it exactly as it stands: Eol should not be one of Thingol's kin, but one of the Teleri who refused to cross the Hithaeglir. But [later] he and a few others of like mood, averse to concourse of people, ... [had] crossed the [Mts]

long ago and come to Beleriand.

Against this note he wrote 'but the relationship to Thingol would have point', and the date 1971.

Aredhel Ar-Feiniel: B(ii) has here Ar-Feiniel (emended from Isfin); see p. 318.

$10. It is not said that Aredhel was wholly unwilling...

In the margin of the manuscript at the mention of the birth of Eol's son my father wrote later the date 320 (cf. p. 48, $119). The sentence in A as originally written read:

After some years Isfin bore to Eol a son in the shadows of Nan Elmoth, and he was named Meglin by his father, for he was dark and supple, as the metal of Eol.

The fact that the metal was originally named Rodeol in A (see under $9 above) but the son Meglin (the original name) seems to suggest that the idea that the son was named from the metal only arose after the initial writing of the manuscript, despite the words 'for he was dark and supple, as the metal of Eol'. The changing forms of the son's name in A were Meglin > Targlin > Morlin > Glindur and finally Maeglin.

The sentence in this form (with the name Maeglin, as of the metal also) was preserved in B(i); but in B(ii), the text on which my father declared that the same name must not be used both of Eol's son and Eol's metal and changed that of the latter to galvorn, he altered it to the form in the published text, in which Aredhel secretly gave her son the Noldorin name Lomion 'Child of the Twilight', and Eol named him Maeglin (interpreted 'Sharp Glance', see p. 337) when he was twelve years old.

$12. Yet it is said that Maeglin loved his mother better...

'Turgon... had no heir; for Elenwe his wife perished in the crossing of the Helcaraxe': here A has 'Turgon ... had no heir: for his wife, Alaire, was of the Vanyar and would not forsake Valinor'. On the page of jottings that concludes the abandoned later Tale of Tuor (see Unfinished Tales p. 56) a note which I did not include says that 'Alaire remained in Aman'. That this was the case because she was a Vanya is reminiscent of the story of Amarie, beloved of Felagund, who was a Vanya, 'and was not permitted to go with him into exile' (p. 44, $109).

The typescript B as typed has Alaire, but on both A and B(ii), not on B(i), my father corrected (presumptively in 1970) the name to Anaire.

The substitution of Elenwe in The Silmarillion was based on the Elvish genealogies of 1959 (see pp. 229, 350), where Anaire (defined as a Vanya 'who remained in Tuna') was later corrected to 'Elenwe who perished in the Ice'; on the same table at the same time Anaire was entered as the wife of Fingolfin, with the note that she 'remained in Aman'.

In a note added to the typescript of the Annals of Aman (X.128, $163) my father said that in the crossing of the Helkaraxe 'Turgon's wife was lost and he had then only one daughter and no other heir.

Turgon was nearly lost himself in attempts to rescue his wife - and he had less love for the Sons of Feanor than any other'; but Turgon's wife is not named.

$13. In the telling of these tales...

Golodhrim: A had Noldor, changed immediately to Golodrim (Golodhrim B).

In this paragraph, and in $14, the name of Eol's son (see under $$9, 10 above) passed through these forms in A: Morleg (which has not occurred before) > Morlin > Glindur > Maeglin.

$$14 ff. It came to pass that at the midsummer...

Against the opening sentence in A my father later wrote the date 400 (cf. p. 48, $120). The original text, preserved unchanged in both copies of B, read here:

And it came to pass that the Dwarves bade Eol to a feast in Nogrod, and he rode away. Then Maeglin went to his mother and said:

'Lady, let us depart while there is time! What hope is there in the wood for thee or for me? Here we are held in bondage, and no profit more shall I find in this place. For I have learned all that my father or the [Nornwaith >] Naugrim have to teach, or will reveal to me; and I would not for ever dwell in the dark woods with few servants, and those skilled only in smith-craft. Shall we not go to Gondolin?

Be thou my guide, and I will be thy guard.'

Then Isfin was glad, and looked with pride upon her son. 'That indeed I will do, and swiftly,' she said; 'and no fear shall I have upon the road with a guard so valiant.'

Therefore they arose and departed in haste, as secretly as they might. But Eol returned, ere his time, and found them gone; and so great was his wrath that he followed after them, even by the light of day.

(For Nornwaith, replaced by Naugrim, see p. 209.) At this point there are two earlier versions of the text in A, both struck through. The first reads:

But Morleg had also mistrusted his father, and he took cunning counsel, and so he went not at once by the East Road, but rode first to Celegorm and found him in the hills south of Himring. And of Celegorm he got horses surpassing swift, and the promise of other aid. Then Morleg and Isfin passed over Aros and Esgalduin far to the north where they spilled from the highlands of Dorthonion, and turned then southward, and came to the East Road far to the west.

But Celegorm and Curufin waylaid the East Road and its ford over Aros, and denied it to Eol, and though he escaped from them in the darkness he was long delayed.

The next version reads:

For his servants reported to him that they had fled to the fords of the East Road over Aros and Esgalduin. But they were two days ahead, and had taken the swiftest of his horses, and hard though he pursued them, he came never in sight of them, until they passed over the Brithiach and abandoned their horses. But there by ill fate he saw them even as they took the secret path, which lay in the course of the Dry River; and he followed them with great stealth, step by step, and came upon them even in the darkness of the great vault where the Guards of the Way kept watch unceasing. Thus he was taken, even as they, by the Guards

It is interesting to see the intervention of Celegorm and Curufin in the story here, removed at once but reappearing many years later.

On the page carrying these rejected passages there follow very rapidly pencilled notes outlining the further course of the story: After they entered he entered. Taken by guards. Claims to be Isfin's husband. Words to Turgon. Isfin acknowledges it. Turgon treats Eol with honour. Eol draws a bow and shoots at Morleg in the King's hall, saying that his own son shall not be filched. But Isfin sets herself in way and is wounded. While Eol is in prison Isfin dies of venom. Eol condemned to death. Taken to the precipice of Caragdar. Morleg stands by coldly. They hurl him over the precipice and all save Idril approve.

After the rejection of the passages given above my father wrote a final version, beginning again at 'even by the light of day' on p. 324: even by the light of day; for his servants reported to him that they had ridden to the East Road and the ford over Aros. But they were two days ahead, and hard though he pursued them, and had the swiftest steed, he came never in sight of them, until they [came under the shadows of the Crisaegrim, and sought for the secret path >] reached the Brithiach, and abandoned their horses.

The text then continues as in The Silmarillion $23 (paragraph beginning Then Eol rode off in haste...).

The final text of A was preserved in the typescript B, and in neither the top copy nor the carbon did my father change it (except for 'a feast' > 'a midsummer feast' in the latter). From here onwards, in fact, there were no further emendations or annotations made to the carbon copy B(ii), and this text no longer concerns us. But in B(i) my father inserted into the typescript a long text on separate pages; and this appears to be the last piece of substantial narrative that he wrote on the Matter of the Elder Days - it cannot be earlier than 1970 (see p. 316). It begins at the words 'It came to pass that at the midsummer', and continues through the flight of Maeglin and Aredhel, Eol's pursuit, and the intervention of Curufin: The Silmarillion pp. 134-6, $$14-23, where it joins the original A text at 'until they reached the Brithiach, and abandoned their horses'.

As has been seen '(p. 317) this story of Maeglin was not written to stand as an element in the Quenta Silmarillion; and the detail of the narrative in this very late interpolation was somewhat reduced in the published text, chiefly by the removal of all the precise timing and numbering of days and a return to the manner of the original simpler and more remote narrative. The chief omissions and consequent alterations are as follows.

$14. and he rode away. Original text: 'and he rode away, though he thought it likely that in his absence Maeglin might seek to visit the sons of Feanor in spite of his counsels, and he secretly ordered his servants to keep close watch on his wife and son.'

Therefore he said to Aredhel: 'Therefore when Eol had been gone some days Maeglin went to his mother and said, $$15-16. and telling the servants of Eol that they went to seek the sons of Feanor...: 'Therefore that night as secretly as they could they made provision for a journey, and they rode away at daybreak to the north-eaves of Nan Elmoth. There as they crossed the slender stream of Celon they spied a watchman, and Maeglin cried to him: "Tell your master that we go to visit our kin in Aglon." Then they rode on over the Himlad to the Fords of Aros, and then westward along the Fences of Doriath. But they had tarried overlong. For on the first night of the three days feast, as he slept, a dark shadow of ill foreboding visited Eol, and in the morning he forsook Nogrod without ceremony and rode homeward with all speed. Thus he returned some days earlier than Maeglin had expected, coming to Nan Elmoth at nightfall of the day after their flight. There he learned from his watchman that they had ridden north less than two days before and had passed into the Himlad, on their way to Aglon.

'Then so great was Eol's anger that he resolved to follow them at once; so staying only to take a fresh horse, the swiftest that he had, he rode away that night. But as he entered the Himlad he mastered his wrath...'

Against Celon is written? Limhir (see under $7 above).

$16. Curufin moreover was of perilous mood; but the scouts of Aglon had marked the riding of Maeglin and Aredhel...: 'Curufin was a man of perilous mood. So far they had left him [Eol] free to go his ways, but could if they wished confine him within the bounds of Nan Elmoth and cut him off from his friendship with Dwarves, of which Curufin was jealous. Things proved little better than he feared; for the scouts of Aglon...'