The War of the Jewels (61 page)

'his servants reported to him that they had ridden to the East Road and the ford over Aros.'

From all these passages it is clear that when he wrote the original text of Maeglin in 1951 my father conceived of an East - West road running from the ford of Brithiach between the Mountains of Terror and the northern borders of Doriath, and across the rivers Esgalduin and Aros; and the fact that the first of these passages was allowed to stand in both typescripts seems to show that he still retained this conception in 1970. The only difference seems to be the introduction of a bridge, rather than a ford, over Esgalduin. That this was certainly the case is seen from the following passage:

Eol's house (in the middle of Elmoth) was about 15 miles from the northmost point of the wood beside Celon. From that point it was about 65 miles N.W. to the Ford of Aros.(2) At that time Curufin was dwelling at the S.E. corner of the Pass of Aglond (3) about 45 miles N.E. from the Ford of Aros. The Himlad (cool-plain) behind Aglond and Himring, between the northern courses of the Rivers Aros and Celon, he claimed as his land.(4) He and his people naturally kept watch on the Ford of Aros; but they did not prevent the few hardy travellers (Elves or Dwarves) that used the road West - East past the north fences of Doriath. (Beyond the Ford was an entirely unin-habited region between the mountains north [? read in the north,]

Esgalduin and Aros and Doriath: not even birds came there. It was thus called Dor Dhinen the 'Silent Land'.)(5)

Beyond the Aros (some 25 miles) lay the more formidable obstacle of the Esgalduin in which no fordable point was to be found. In the 'peaceful days' before the return of Morgoth and Ungoliant, when Doriath's north borders were the mountains of Fuin (not yet evil), the West - East road passed over the Esgalduin by a bridge outside the later fence of Melian. This stone-bridge, the Esgaliant or Iant Iaur (old bridge) was still in existence, and watched by the wardens of Doriath, but its use by Eldar was not hindered. It was necessary therefore to fugitives crossing Aros to turn S.W. to the bridge; From there they would keep as close as they could to the Fences of Doriath (if Thingol and Melian were not hostile to them). At the time of this story, though many evils lurked in the Mountains the chief peril lay in passing Nan Dungortheb from which clouds and darkness would creep down almost to the Fences.

Turning to the photocopy of the map, Eol's house was marked in Nan Elmoth as shown in my redrawing (p. 331). A line in green ball-point pen connects his house to a point on the northern border of the wood beside the river; and from here a green dotted line (represented as a line of dashes in the redrawing) runs across the Himlad to the

'Fords of Aros', marked in red ball-point pen.(6) The green dots then run S.W. to the bridge over Esgalduin, this being labelled 'Bridge'

simply (Esgaliant or Iant Iaur in the text just cited).(7) Beyond the Iant Iaur the green dots continue S.W. for a short way and then stop: they are not shown in relation to the List Melian (the Girdle of Melian).

It is stated in a note on the photocopy map that this green line marks the 'track of Maeglin and his mother, fleeing to Gondolin'. In the light of the text just cited, it is also the line of the East - West road from the Ford of Aros to the Iant Iaur; but otherwise the course of the road is not represented. The dotted line along the edge of Neldoreth is named on the map List Melian, and does not mark a road. Westward this line was indeed extended beyond Mindeb to the Brithiach, but these dots were struck out (p. 188, $38); eastwards it was extended between Esgalduin and Aros, and then between Aros and Celon, and this seems to represent the continuation of the List Melian.

On account of these obscurities I excluded from the text of the chapter Of Maeglin in The Silmarillion the references to the 'East Road' and rephrased the passages; but on the map accompanying the book I marked in its course. This seems now to have been the wrong thing to do in both cases: for there certainly was an East Road, but its course is unclear and its destination unknown. Beyond Aros going east there is no indication of where it went: it is said in the passage cited above that it and the bridge by which it passed over Esgalduin were ancient works deriving from the 'peaceful days' before the return of Morgoth: it was not a road made by the Noldor for communication between the western realms and the Feanorians. There is also no justification for marking it as turning S.E. after the Fords of Aros.

Beyond Esgalduin going west it is said in this passage that travellers

'would keep as close as they could to the Fences of Doriath', which does not sound like the following of a beaten road.

The Dwarf-roads. Equally obscure is the question of the Dwarf-roads in Eastern Beleriand. In the earliest Annals of Beleriand (AB 1, IV.332) it was said that the Dwarves had of old a road into the West that came up along Eredlindon to the East and passed westward in the passes south of Mount Dolm and down the course of the River Ascar and over Gelion at the ford Sarn Athrad and so to Aros.' This agrees exactly with the (revised) course of the road on the 'Eastward Extension' of the first Silmarillion map (see IV.231, 336). It is seen from the central (original) part of the first map that it crossed Celon and Aros west of Nan Elmoth (which of course did not at that time yet exist) and so ran in a W.S.W. direction to the Thousand Caves (between pp. 220 and 221 in Vol.IV). But the course of the ancient route of the Dwarves after the passage of Sarn Athrad was never marked in on the second map - unless the vague line described in the notes on the map, p. 190, $68, is correctly interpreted as the Dwarf-road. If that is so, then its course had been changed to cross Aros much further to the south, and then to run northwards through the Forest of Region to Menegroth. But better evidence is provided in the late Quenta Silmarillion chapter Of the Coming of Men into the West, pp. 218 - 19, where it is said that 'Marach ... came down the Dwarf-road and settled his people in the country to the south and east of the dwellings of Baran son of Beor': this was Estolad, 'the name ever after of the land east of Celon and south of Nan Elmoth'. On the disuse of the old Dwarf-road(s) into Beleriand after the coming of the Noldor see p. 121, commentary on GA $114.

It was said already in the original text of Maeglin (p. 321, $9) that 'the traffic of the Dwarves followed two roads, the northern of which, going towards Himring, passed nigh Nan Elmoth'. This was not altered in the late work on Maeglin; and on the primary map (already present when the photocopy was made) a line of faintly pencilled dots marked 'north road of Dwarves' (see p. 189, $50) runs E.S.E. from near Nan Elmoth, crosses Gelion some way south of the confluence of its arms, and then turns southward, running more or less parallel to the river. There is no trace of its course west or north of Nan Elmoth, and it is impossible to be sure whether any further continuation southwards or eastwards is marked beyond the point where it ends in my redrawing (p. 183).

The Maeglin papers do not resolve the course of this 'north road of the Dwarves', because (although all obviously belong to the same time) they evidently represent different conceptions.

(i) Writing of Eol's journey to Nogrod, my father said: From Elmoth to Gelion the land was, north of the Andram and the Falls below the last Ford over Gelion (8)(just above the inflow of the River Ascar from the Mountains), mostly rolling plain, with large regions of big trees without thickets. There were several beaten tracks made originally by Dwarves from Belegost and Nogrod, the best (most used and widest) being from the Little Ford past the north of Elmoth and to the Ford of Aros, it crossed the Bridge of Esgalduin but went no further for, if the Dwarves wished to visit Menegroth

This text then becomes altogether illegible. At the mention of 'the last Ford over Gelion' he added a note that the name Sarn Athrad of this ford must be changed to Harathrad 'South Ford', 'in contrast to the much used northern ford where the river was not yet very swift or deep, nearly due east of Eol's house (72 miles distant)'; and against Harathrad here he wrote Athrad Daer ( the Great Ford ).(9) The implication seems to be that Eol crossed Gelion at the northern ford, but this is not actually stated. There are two alterations to the photocopies of the map that relate to what is said here. One is the marking of a crossing over Gelion on square E 13 (p. 331), just above the point where the dotted line 'north road of Dwarves' crosses the river on the primary map, but without any track leading to this crossing. The other is at the ford of Sarn Athrad on the South-east section (p. 185), where on the photocopy my father wrote the name anew over the existing name, circled it, and wrote beside it Harathrad.

Beyond this nothing can be said of the north road of the Dwarves, and there is no indication in map or text of where, or indeed whether, it joined the 'south road'. It is indeed very puzzling that this northerly road, which in the text of Maeglin is said to have gone 'towards Himring' (as is to be expected: leading to territories of the Sons of Feanor), is in the citation (i) just given said to pass the Ford of Aros and the Bridge of Esgalduin: for these crossings were on the East Road to the Brithiach (pp. 332 - 3). And apart from this, why should this road turn westward, and why should it go no further than the Bridge of Esgalduin?

(ii) On another page my father said that the journey from Eol's house to Nan Elmoth in the direction of Nogrod was.

through wilds (but not generally in difficult country for horses) without any made roads, but along a beaten track made by Dwarvish traders to the Sarn Athrad (the last point where the River Gelion could be crossed) meeting the Dwarf-road up to and through the high pass in the mountains leading to Nogrod.

Here there is no mention of the northern ford, or indeed of the northern road; and it seems to be implied that Eol would necessarily cross at Sarn Athrad (still so called, not Harathrad); moreover it is said that Eol riding from Nan Elmoth to Nogrod took 'a beaten track made by Dwarvish traders' to Sarn Athrad that met the Dwarf-road up to the high pass.

In addition to the green dotted line entered on the photocopy of the map and stated to be the track of Maeglin and Aredhel fleeing from Nan Elmoth (p. 333), lines of red dots (represented on my redrawing as lines of closely-spaced dots) run from Nan Elmoth to the Ford of Aros, and also south-east from Nan Elmoth (p. 331). On the South-east section in the photocopy (see the redrawing of the primary map on p. 185) this red dotted line continues straight on across square G 13

to Sarn Athrad, and then coincides with the Dwarf-road up into the mountains, already present on the primary map. There is no note on the photocopy to explain what these lines represent, but there can be no doubt that they mark the journeys of Eol (even though the dots continue all the way to the Ford of Aros, whereas he was arrested in his pursuit of Maeglin and Aredhel by the riders of Curufin 'ere he had ridden half the way over Himlad', p. 326, $16). Thus the line running from Nan Elmoth to Sarn Athrad clearly corresponds to what is said in citation (ii).

The absence of any really clear and full statement - indeed the suggestion that my father's ideas on the subject had not reached any stability, and the extreme doubtfulness of some of the markings on the map, led me to omit the course of the Dwarf-roads on the published map.

Apart from the matter of roads, there are some notes on names in these papers that show my father's dissatisfaction with old names already seen in the cases of Isfin and Eol (pp. 317, 320): here those in question are Gelion and Celon (cf. his note on the primary map, p. 191, where he said that 'these river-names need revision to etymologizable words').(10) In notes in different places he proposed (in sequence) Gelduin, Gevilon, Gevelon, and also Duin Daer (cf. Duin Dhaer in the note on the primary map just referred to); Gevelon is derived from Dwarvish Gabilan 'great river'. On the back of one of the photocopies of the map he wrote:

The land east of it [the river] is Thorewilan [the a is underlined]. The Dwarvish name was also often translated Duin Daer. The name Gabilan was by the Dwarves given only to the River south of the Falls where (after the junction of the River with the Asgar coming from the Mountains) it became swift and was steadily increased in volume by the inflow of five more tributaries.

The name Thargelion on the primary map was changed to Thargelian (with the a underlined: p. 331): the latter form has appeared in emendations to the typescripts of Maeglin (p. 320). The form Asgar appeared in the 1930s (beside Ascar), see IV.209; cf. the Etymologies, V..386, stem SKAR: 'N[oldorin] asgar, ascar violent, rushing, impetu-ous'.

The substitution of the name Limhir for Celon has appeared as a proposal in one of the typescripts of Maeglin (p. 320), and among the