Sauron Defeated (43 page)

Monath modaes lust mith merifloda

forth ti foeran thaet ic feorr hionan

obaer gaarseggaes grimmae bolmas

aelbuuina eard uut gisoecae.

Nis me ti hearpun hygi ni ti hringthegi

ni ti wibae wyn ni ti weoruldi hyct

ni ymb oowict ellaes nebnae ymb ytha giwalc.

It sounds to me now almost like my own father speaking across grey seas of world and time:

My soul's desire over the sea-torrents

forth bids me fare, that I afar should seek

over the ancient water's awful mountains

Elf-friends' island in the Outer-world.

For no harp have I heart, no hand for gold,

in no wife delight, in the world no hope:

one wish only, for the waves' tumult.

'I know now, of course, that these lines very closely resemble some of the verses in the middle of The Seafarer, as that strange old poem of longing is usually called. But they are not the same.

In the text preserved in manuscript it runs elpeodigra eard 'the land of aliens', not aelbuuina or aelfwina (as it would have been spelt later) 'of the AElfwines, the Elven-friends'. I think mine is probably the older and better text - it is in a much older form and spelling anyway - but I daresay I should get into trouble, as Pip suggests, if I put it into a "serious journal".(50)

'It was not until quite recently that I picked up echoes of some other lines that are not found at all among the preserved fragments of the oldest English verses.(51)

Pus cwaed AElfwine Widlast Eadwines sunu:

Fela bid on Westwegum werum uncudra,

wundra and wihta, wlitescene land,

eardgeard aelfa and esa bliss.

Lyt aenig wat hwylc his langod sie

pam pe eftsides eldo getwaefed.

'Thus spake AElfwine the Fartravelled son of Eadwine: There is many a thing in the west of the world unknown to men; marvels and strange beings, [a land lovely to look on,]

the dwelling place of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods.

Little doth any man know what longing is his whom old age cutteth off from return.

'I think my father went before Eld should cut him off. But what of Eadwine's son?

'Well, now I've had my say for the present. There may be more later. I am working at the stuff - as hard as time and my duties allow, and things may happen. Certainly I'll let you know, if they do. For now you have endured so much, I expect you will want some more news, if anything interesting turns up.

If it's any comfort to you, Philip, I think we shall get away from Anglo-Saxon sooner or later.'

'If it's any comfort to you, Arry,' said Frankley, 'for the first time in your long life as a preacher you've made me faintly interested in it.'

'Good Heavens!' said Lowdham. 'Then there must be something very queer going on! Lor bless me! Give me a drink and I will sing, as the minstrels used to say.

Fil me a cuppe of ful gode ale,

for longe I have spelled tale!

Nu wil I drinken or I ende

that Frenche men to helle wende!'(52)

The song was interrupted by Frankley. Eventually a semblance of peace was restored, only one chair being a casualty.

Nothing toward or untoward occurred for the remainder of the evening.

AAL. MGR. WTJ. JM. RD. RS. PF. JJ. JJR. NG.

Night 67. Thursday, June 12th, 1987.(53)

We met in Ramer's rooms in Jesus College. There were eight of us present, including Stainer and Cameron, and all the regulars except Lowdham. It was very hot and sultry, and we sat near the window looking into the inner quadrangle, talking of this and that, and listening for the noises of Lowdham's approach; but an hour passed and there was still no sign of him.

'Have you seen anything of Arry lately?' said Frankley to Jeremy. 'I haven't. I wonder if he's going to turn up at all tonight?'

'I couldn't say,' said Jeremy. 'Ramer and I saw a good deal of him in the first few days after our last meeting, but I haven't set eyes on him for some time now.'

'I wonder what he's up to? They say he cancelled his lectures last week. I hope he's not ill.'

'I don't think you need fret about your little Elf-friend,' said Dolbear. 'He's got a body and a constitution that would put a steamroller back a bit, if it bumped into him. And don't worry about his mind! He's getting something off it, and that will do him no harm, I think. At least whatever it does, it will do less harm than trying to cork it up any longer. But what on earth it all is - well, I'm still about as much at sea as old Edwin Lowdham himself.'

'Sunk, in fact,' said Stainer. 'I should say it was a bad attack of repressed linguistic invention, and that the sooner he brings out an Adunaic Grammar the better for all.'

'Perhaps,' said Ramer. 'But he may bring out a lot more besides. I wish he would come!'

At that moment there was the sound of loud footsteps, heavy and quick, on the wooden stairs below. There was a bang on the door, and in strode Lowdham.

'I've got something new!' he shouted. 'More than mere words. Verbs! Syntax at last!' He sat down and mopped his face.

'Verbs, syntax! Hooray!' mocked Frankley. 'Now isn't that thrilling! '

'Don't try and start a row, O Lover of Horses (54) and Horseplay!' said Lowdham. 'It's too hot. Listen!

'It's been very stuffy and thundery lately, and I haven't been able to sleep, a troublesome novelty for me; and I began to have a splitting headache. So I cleared off for a few days to the west coast, to Pembroke. But the Eagles came up out of the Atlantic, and I fled. I still couldn't sleep when I came back, and my headache got worse. And then last night I fell suddenly into a deep dark sleep - and I got this.' He waved a handful of papers at us. 'I didn't come round until nearly twelve this morning, and my head was ringing with words. They began to fade quickly as soon as I woke; but I jotted down at once all I could.

'I have been working on the stuff every minute since, and I've made six copies. For I think you'll find it well worth a glance; but you fellows would never follow it without something to look at. Here it is! '

He passed round several sheets of paper. On them were inscribed strange words in a big bold hand, done with one of the great thick-nibbed pens Lowdham is fond of. Under most of the words were glosses in red ink.(55)

I.

(A) O sauron tule nukumna ... lantaner turkildi and ? came humbled ... fell ?

nuhuinenna ... tar-kalion ohtakare valannar

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

nimeheruvi arda sakkante leneme iluvataren

Lords-of-West Earth rent with leave of ?

eari ullier ikilyanna ... numenore ataltane

seas should flow into chasm ... Numenor fell down

(B) Kado zigurun zabathan unakkha ... eruhinim

and so ? humbled he-came ... ?

dubdam ugru-dalad ... ar-pharazonun azaggara

fell ?shadow under ... ? was warring

avaloiyada ... barim an-adun yurahtam daira

against Powers ... Lords of-West broke Earth

saibeth-ma eruvo ... azriya du-phursa akhasada

assent-with ?-from ... seas so-as-to-gush into chasm

... anadune ziran hikallaba ... bawtba dulgi

... Numenor beloved she-fell down ... winds black

... balik hazad an-nimruzir azulada

... ships seven of ? eastward

(B) Agannalo buroda nenud ... zaira nenud

Death-shadow heavy on-us ... longing (is) on-us

... adun izindi batan taido ayadda: ido

west straight road once went now

katha batina lokhi

all roads crooked

(A) Vahaiya sin And ore

far away now (is) Land of Gift

(B) Ephalak idon Yozayan

far away now (is) Land of Gift

(B) Ephal ephalak idon hi-Akallabeth

far far away now (is) She-that-hath-fallen

(A) Haiya vahaiya sin atalante.

far far away now (is) the Downfallen.(56)

'There are two languages here,' said Lowdham, 'Avallonian and Adunaic: I have labelled them A and B. Of course, I have put them down in a spelling of my own. Avallonian has a clear simple phonetic structure and in my ear it rings like a bell, but I seemed to feel as I wrote this stuff down that it was not really spelt like this. I have never had the same feeling before, but this morning I half glimpsed quite a different script, though I couldn't visualize it clearly. I fancy Adunaic used a very similar script too.

'"I believe these are passages out of some book," I said to myself. And then suddenly I remembered the curious script in my father's manuscript. But that can wait. I've brought the leaf along.

'These are only fragmentary sentences, of course, and not by any means all that I heard; but they are all that I could seize and get written down. Text I is bilingual, though they are not identical, and the B version is a little longer. That's only because I could remember a bit more of it. They correspond so closely because I heard the A version, a sentence at a time, with the B

version immediately following: in the same voice, as if someone was reading out of an ancient book and translating it bit by bit for his audience. Then there came a long dark gap, or a picture of confusion and darkness in which the word-echoes were lost in a noise of winds and waves.

'And then I got a kind of lamentation or chant, of which I have put down all that I can now remember. You'll notice the order is altered at the end. There were two voices here, one singing A and the other singing B, and the chant always ended up as I have set it out: A B B A. The last word was always Atalante. I can give you no idea of how moving it was, horribly moving. I still feel the weight of a great loss myself, as if I shall never be really happy on these shores again.

'I don't think there are any really new words here. There are a lot of very interesting grammatical details; but I won't bother you with those, interesting as they are to me - and they seem to have touched off something in my memory too, so that I now know more than is actually contained in the fragments. You'll see a lot of query marks, but I think the context (and often the grammar) indicates that these are all names or titles.

'Tar-kalion, for instance: I think that is a king's name, for I've often come across the prefix tar in names of the great, and ar in the corresponding Adunaic name (on the system I told you about) is the stem of the word for "king". On the other hand turkildi and eruhinim, though evidently equivalent, don't mean the same thing. The one means, I think, 'lordly men', and the other is rather more startling, for it appears to be the name of God the Omnipotent with a patronymic ending: in fact, unless I am quite wrong, "Children of God". Indeed, I need not have queried the words eruvo and iluvataren: there can't really be any doubt that eruvo is the sacred name Eru with a suffixed element meaning "from", and that therefore iluvataren means the same thing.

'There is one point that may interest you, after what we were saying about linguistic coincidence. Well, it seems to me a fair guess that we are dealing with a record, or a legend, of an Atlantis catastrophe.'

'Why or?' said Jeremy. 'I mean, it might be a record and a legend. You never really tackled the question I propounded at our first meeting this term. If you went back would you find myth dissolving into history or history into myth? Somebody once said, I forget who, that the distinction between history and myth might be meaningless outside the Earth. I think it might at least get a great deal less sharp on the Earth, further back.

Perhaps the Atlantis catastrophe was the dividing line?'

'We may be able to deal with your question a great deal better when we've got to the bottom of all this,' said Lowdham. 'In the meantime the point I was going to bring up is worth noting. I said "Atlantis" because Ramer told us that he associated the word Numenor with the Greek name. Well, look! here we learn that Numenor was destroyed; and we end with a lament: far, far au ay, now is Atalante. Atalante is plainly another name for Numenor-Atlantis. But only after its downfall. For in Avallonian atalante is a word formed normally from a common base talat "topple over, slip down": it occurs in Text I in an emphatic verbal form ataltane "slid down in ruin", to be precise. Atalante means "She that has fallen down", So the two names have approached one another, have reached a very similar shape by quite unconnected routes. At least, I suppose the routes are unconnected. I mean, whatever traditions may lie behind Plato's Timaeus,(57) the name that he uses, Atlantis, must be just the same old "daughter of Atlas" that was applied to Calypso. But even that connects the land with a mountain regarded as the pillar of heaven. Minul-Tarik, Minul-Tarik! Very interesting.'

He got up and stretched. 'At least I hope you all think so! But, good lord, how hot and stuffy it is getting! Not an evening for a lecture! But anyway, I can't make much more out of this with only words, and without more words. And I need some pictures.

'I wish I could see a little, as well as hear, like you, Ramer. Or like Jerry. He's had a few glimpses of strange things, while we worked together; but he can't hear. My words seem to waken his sight, but it's not at all clear yet. Ships with dark sails.

Towers on sea-washed shores. Battles: swords that glint, but are silent. A great domed temple.(58) I wish I could see as much. But I've done what I can. Sauron. Zigurun, Zigur. I can't fathom those names. But the key is there, I think. Zigur.'