Sauron Defeated (52 page)

106. I cannot explain the reference of 'Broad Relic'.

107. cnearr: 'ship', a very rare Old English word probably taken from Norse, since it is only applied to vessels of the Vikings.

108. 'Sweet is the breath of flowers beyond the sea.'

109. After night 62: this is the later Night 63.

110. See p. 214 note 23; p. 194 and note 46; p. 199 and note 51; p.

206 and note 63.

111. That this list, following the revised title-page given on p. 149, was made after the completion of manuscript B is seen from the name Frankley for earlier Franks (p. 150).

Note on 'The Death of Saint Brendan'

with the text of the published form 'Imram'.

A great deal of work went into this poem, with its elaborate versification: there are no less than fourteen closely-written pages of initial working, and there follow four finished manuscript texts preceding the typescript text printed on pp. 261 - 4. Much further work on it followed later. It is notable, however, that already in the earliest text the final form reached in The Notion Club Papers was very closely approached: there is in fact only one passage that shows a significant difference (and this was corrected already on the first manuscript to the later form). This concerns lines 43 - 53, where the earliest text reads:

then the smoking cloud asunder broke

and we looked upon Mount Doom:

tall as a column in high Heaven's hall,

than all mortal mountains higher,

the tower-top of a foundered power,

with crown of redgold fire.

We sailed then on...

The first text bears the title The Ballad of St. Brendan's Death. The second text, which as the pagination shows belongs with the manuscript E of The Notion Club Papers, is entitled The Death of St.

Brendan. The third (with this title) and the fourth (without title) are finely written manuscripts, and the fifth (with the title The Death of St.

Brendan pencilled in as shown on p. 261) is part of the typescript F of The Notion Club Papers.

The poem, entitled Imram (Irish: 'sailing, voyaging') was once previously printed, in the issue of the periodical Time and Tide for 3 December 1955 (where it was illustrated by a woodcut of Saint Brendan and the great fishes by Robert Gibbings, originally made for Helen Waddell's book of translations Beasts and Saints, 1934). Three further typescripts, all with the title Imram, clearly belong to the later time. I print here in its entirety the text as it was published in Time and Tide, for that is now scarcely obtainable, and although the opening and concluding verses underwent very little alteration my father greatly changed most of the poem from its form in The Notion Club Papers.

IMRAM

At last out of the deep sea he passed,

and mist rolled on the shore;

under clouded moon the waves were loud,

as the laden ship him bore 4

to Ireland, back to wood and mire

and the tower tall and grey,

where the knell of Cluain-ferta's bell

tolled in green Galway. 8

Where Shannon down to Lough Derg ran

under a rain-clad sky

Saint Brendan came to his journey's end

to find the grace to die. 12

'0 tell me, father, for I loved you well,

if still you have words for me,

of things strange in the remembering

in the long and lonely sea, 16

of islands by deep spells beguiled

where dwell the Elvenkind:

in seven long years the road to Heaven

or the Living Land did you find?' 20

'The things I have seen, the many things,

have long now faded far;

only three come clear now back to me:

a Cloud, a Tree, a Star. 24

'We sailed for a year and a day and hailed

no field nor coast of men;

no boat nor bird saw we ever afloat

for forty days and ten. 28

Then a drumming we heard as of thunder coming,

and a Cloud above us spread;

we saw no sun at set or dawn,

yet ever the west was red. 32

'Upreared from sea to cloud then sheer

a shoreless mountain stood;

its sides were black from the sullen tide

up to its smoking hood, 36

but its spire was lit with a living fire

that ever rose and fell:

tall as a column in High Heaven's hall,

its roots were deep as Hell; 40

grounded in chasms the waters drowned

and swallowed long ago

it stands, I guess, on the foundered land

where the kings of kings lie low. 44

'We sailed then on till all winds failed,

and we toiled then with the oar;

we burned with thirst and in hunger yearned,

and we sang our psalms no more. 48

At last beyond the Cloud we passed

and came to a starlit strand;

the waves were sighing in pillared caves,

grinding gems to sand. 52

And here they would grind our bones we feared

until the end of time;

for steep those shores went upward leaping

to cliffs no man could climb. 56

But round by west a firth we found

that clove the mountain-wall;

there lay a water shadow-grey

between the mountains tall. 60

Through gates of stone we rowed in haste,

and passed, and left the sea;

and silence like dew fell in that isle,

and holy it seemed to be. 64

'To a dale we came like a silver grail

with carven hills for rim.

In that hidden land we saw there stand

under a moonlight dim 68

a Tree more fair than ever I deemed

in Paradise might grow:

its foot was like a great tower's root,

its height no man could know; 72

and white as winter to my sight

the leaves of that Tree were;

they grew more close than swan-wing plumes,

long and soft and fair. 76

'It seemed to us then as in a dream

that time had passed away,

and our journey ended; for no return

we hoped, but there to stay. 80

In the silence of that hollow isle

half sadly then we sang:

softly we thought, but the sound aloft

like sudden trumpets rang. 84

The Tree then shook, and flying free

from its limbs the leaves in air

as white birds rose in wheeling flight,

and the lifting boughs were bare. 88

On high we heard in the starlit sky

a song, but not of bird:

neither noise of man nor angel's voice,

but maybe there is a third 92

fair kindred in the world yet lingers

beyond the foundered land.

But steep are the seas and the waters deep

beyond the White-tree Strand! ' 96

'0 stay now, father! There is more to say.

But two things you have told:

the Tree, the Cloud; but you spoke of three.

The Star in mind do you hold?' 100

'The Star? Why, I saw it high and far

at the parting of the ways,

a light on the edge of the Outer Night

beyond the Door of Days, 104

where the round world plunges steeply down,

but on the old road goes,

as an unseen bridge that on arches runs

to coasts that no man knows.' 108

'But men say, father, that ere the end

you went where none have been.

I would hear you tell me, father dear,

of the last land you have seen.' 112

'In my mind the Star I still can find,

and the parting of the seas,

and the breath as sweet and keen as death

that was borne upon the breeze. 116

But where they bloom, those flowers fair,

in what air or land they grow,

what words beyond this world I heard,

if you would seek to know, 120

in a boat then, brother, far afloat

you must labour in the sea,

and find for yourself things out of mind:

you will learn no more of me.' 124

In Ireland over wood and mire

in the tower tall and grey

the knell of Cluain-ferta's bell

was tolling in green Galway. 128

Saint Brendan had come to his life's end

under a rain-clad sky,

journeying whence no ship returns;

and his bones in Ireland lie. 132

MAJOR DIVERGENCES IN EARLIER VERSIONS OF

THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS (PART TWO).

(i) The earlier versions of Night 66.

I have mentioned previously that from Lowdham's words 'Earendel seems to me a special word. It is not Anglo-Saxon' (see p. 237 and note 37) there is a third text to be considered: for the part of the typescript F that follows from this point and extends to the end of Night 66

(p. 245) was rejected and replaced by another version. I shall refer to the rejected portion as 'F 1', and its replacement as 'F 2'. That this rewriting was carried out while the typescript was being made is seen from the fact that at the end of the rewritten section it is F 2 that continues to the end of the Papers.

For some distance the original manuscript E was followed closely in F 1 and for this part it is only necessary to give the text of the latter.

In any case, said Lowdham, Earendel is not Anglo-Saxon.

Or rather, it is and it isn't. I think it is one of those curious cases of linguistic coincidence" that have long puzzled me. I sometimes think that they are too easily dismissed as "mere accident". You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philologists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or what not. Like mare 'male' in the New Hebrides and Latin maris, marem.(1) Or the example that used to be given as a frightful warning in the old text-books: that popol means

'people' or 'popular assembly' in Tamil, but has no connexion whatever with populus and its derivatives, and is really derived, they say, from a Tamil word for a mat for the councillors to squat on.

'I dare say some of these things are mere chance, or at least not very significant. Yet I think it also happens that a word-form may be arrived at by different routes, in far separated times and places, and yet the result may be the product of a hidden symbol-making process working out to a similar end. Or in any case the "accident" may touch off, as it were, deeper or sleeping mind-echoes, so that the similar form thus acquires similar significance or emotional content. Every language has words in which its genius seems to come to flash-point, words whose form, though it remains within the general style, achieves a brilliance or a beauty of universal virtue.'

'If I follow all this, and I'm not at all sure that I do,' said Markison, 'I suppose you are trying to say that you've discovered Earendel or something like it in some strange language.

Is that so?'

'I think I come in for a moment here,' said Jeremy, who had been as restless as a bird on a twig ever since the word Earendel had cropped up. 'We've been trying to strengthen our recollections under tuition; but I've not had much success yet. Still I have succeeded in connecting Numenor a little more clearly with a library,(2) with something I came across once when I was working on Ghost-stories. I can't get it more exact, or I couldn't. But a result of the effort to remember has been to drag up a good many vague dream-scenes of that rather troubled searching-for-something-missing variety: wandering about in libraries looking for a lost book, getting dusty and worried.

'Then two nights ago I got a dream of which I still remember one fairly clear passage. I took down a folder, or a cardboard case, from a high shelf, and in it I found a manuscript. It was in an ornamental and rather archaic hand, yet I seem to remember that I knew that it was not really old (by the paper, or the ink, or something), but belonged to this century. Here and there were passages in an unknown character.'

'I've found that missing leaf of my father's book,' interposed Lowdham.(3) 'I've shown it to Jeremy, and he's quite certain that the character is the same. Though we've not succeeded in deciphering it. It's not any alphabet known to the books.'

'And what is more peculiar', said Jeremy, 'there is nothing at all to connect my dream-vision or dream-manuscript with Edwin Lowdham: the style of the hands is wholly different, though the letter-forms are the same. Old Edwin's is a large, black, broad-stroke round hand; mine was more delicate and pointed.

'Well, unfortunately I don't recollect anything very clear or connected about the contents of my dream-manuscript - I call it that because I begin to wonder if this dream is really founded on any waking experience at all - but it contained, I think, some kind of legendary history,(4) full of strange names all seeming to belong to the same language. This much I do remember: the name Numenor or Numenore was frequent; and so was the name Earendil. Very nearly the same, you see, but actually spelt: e-a-r-e-n-d-i-l, Earendil.