The Lays of Beleriand (24 page)

'that tale of Isfin and Eol may not here be told', II. 165. In the Lay, Fingolfin's wife and daughter (Isfin) were seeking for him when Isfin was taken by Eol. Since in the 'Sketch' Isfin was lost in Taur-na-Fuin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears and there trapped by Eol, it is possible that at this stage Fingolfin was the Elvish king who died (beside Feanor?) in the great battle. It is also possible that we see here the genesis of the idea of Isfin's wandering in the wilds, although of course with subsequent shifts, whereby Fingolfin died in duel with Morgoth after the Battle of Sudden Flame and Fingon (Isfin's brother) was the Noldorin king slain in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the story that she was seeking her father was abandoned. What this passage does certainly show is that the story of Isfin's sending her son to Gondolin is original, but that originally Isfin remained with her captor Eol and never escaped from him.

Eol here dwells 'in a mountain dale afar in the gloom of Doriath's forest', 'in the forests of the night', 'where only the dim bat skims from Thu's dark-delved caverns'. This must be the earliest reference to Thu, and at any rate in connected writing the earliest to Doriath (Artanor of the Lost Tales). I have suggested (II. 63) that in the Tale of Tinuviel

'Artanor was conceived as a great region of forest in the heart of which was Tinwelint's cavern', and that the zone of the Queen's protection 'was originally less distinctly bordered, and less extensive, than "the Girdle of Melian" afterwards became'. Here the description of Eol's habitation in a forest without light (where Thu lives in caverns) suggests rather the forest of Taur-na-Fuin, where

Never-dawning night was netted clinging in the black branches of the beetling trees and where

goblins even

(whose deep eyes drill the darkest shadows)

bewildered wandered

(The Children of Hurin, p. 34 lines 753 ff.)

The passage also contains an interesting reference to the purpose of the miners of Gondolin: 'seeking their ancient jewels.'

Earlier in this Lay some lines are given to the coming of Tuor to the hidden door beneath the Encircling Mountains: Thither Tuor son of Fengel came out of the dim land that the Gnomes have called Dor-Lomin, with Bronweg at his hand, who fled from the Iron Mountains and had broken Melko's chain and cast his yoke of evil, of torment and bitter pain; who alone most faithful-hearted led Tuor by long ways through empty hills and valleys by dark nights and perilous days, till his blue lamp magic-kindled, where flow the shadowy rills beneath enchanted alders, found that Gate beneath the hills, the door in dark Dungorthin that only-the Gnome-folk knew.

In a draft for this passage the name here is Nan Orwen, emended to Dungorthin. In The Children of Hurin (lines 1457 ff.) Turin and Flinding came to this 'grey valley' after they had passed west over Sirion, and reached the roots of the Shadowy Mountains 'that Hithlum girdle'.

For earlier references to Nan Dungorthin and different placings of it see p. 87; the present passage seems to indicate yet another, with the hidden door of Gondolin opening into it.

A few other passages may be noticed. At the beginning there is a reference to old songs telling

how the Gods in council gathered on the outmost rocky bars of the Lonely Island westward, and devised a land of ease beyond the great sea-shadows and the shadowy seas; how they made the deep gulf of Faerie with long and lonely shore . . .

That the Gods were ferried on an island by Osse and the Oarni at the time of the fall of the Lamps is told in the tale of The Coming of the Valar (I. 70), and that this isle was afterwards that of the Elves' ferrying (becoming Tol Eressea) is told in The Coming of the Elves (I. 118).

When Gondolin was built the people cried 'Cor is built anew! ' and the guard who told Tuor the seven names said:

Loth, the Flower, they name me, saying 'Cor is born again, even in Loth-a-ladwen,* the Lily of the Plain.'

I have noticed earlier (II. 208) that whereas it is explicit in The Silmarillion that Turgon devised the city to be 'a memorial of Tirion upon Tuna', and it became 'as beautiful as a memory of Elven Tirion', this is not said in The Fall of Condolin: Turgon was born in the Great Lands after the return of the Noldoli from Valinor, and had never known Kor.

'One may feel nonetheless that the tower of the King, the fountains and stairs, the white marbles of Gondolin embody a recollection of Kor as it is described in The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kor (I. 122 - 3).

There is also a reference to Earendel

who passed the Gates of Dread,

half-mortal and half-elfin, undying and long dead.

The Gates of Dread are probably the gates of the Door of Night, through which Earendel passed (II. 255).

(* This is the only point in which the Seven Names differ from their forms in the Tale (II. 158). In the Tale the name of the city as 'Lily of the Valley' is Lothengriol. For ladwen 'plain' see II. 344. In a draft of the passage in the lay the name was Loth Barodrin.) III.

THE LAY OF LEITHIAN.

My father wrote in his diary that he began 'the poem of Tinuviel' during the period of the summer examinations of 1925 (see p. 3), and he abandoned it in September 193 I (see below), when he was 39. The rough workings for the whole poem are extant (and 'rough' means very rough indeed); from them he wrote a fair copy, which I shall call 'A'.*

On this manuscript A my father most uncharacteristically inserted dates, the first of these being at line 557 (August 23, 1925); and he composed the last hundred-odd lines of the third Canto (ending at line 757) while on holiday at Filey on the Yorkshire coast in September 1925.

The next date is two and a half years and 400 lines later, 27 - 28 March 1928 written against line 1161; and thereafter each day for a further nine days, till 6 April 1928, is marked, during which time he wrote out no less than 1768 lines, to 2929.

Since the dates refer to the copying of verses out fair in the manuscript, not to their actual composition, it might be thought that they prove little; but the rough workings of lines 2497 - 2504 are written on an abandoned letter dated x April 1928, and these lines were written in the fair copy A on 4 April - showing that lines 2505 - 2929 were actually composed between x and 6 April. I think therefore that the dates on A can be taken as effectively indicating the time of composition.

The date November 1929 (at line 3031) is followed by a substantial amount of composition in the last week of September 1930, and again in the middle of September 193 I; the last date is 17 September of that year against line 4085 very near the point where the Lay. was abandoned.

Details of the dates are given in the Notes.

There is also a typescript text ('B') made by my father, of which the last few hundred lines are in manuscript, and this text ends at precisely the same point as does A. This typescript was begun quite early, since my father mentioned in his diary for 16 August 1926 having done 'a little typing of part of Tinuviel', and before the end of 1929 he gave it to C. S. Lewis to read. On 7 December of that year Lewis wrote to him about it, saying:

I sat up late last night and have read the Geste as far as to where Beren and his gnomish allies defeat the patrol of orcs above the sources of the (* This was written on the backs of examination-scripts, tied together and prepared as a blank manuscript: it was large enough to last through the six years, and a few scripts at the end of the bundle remained unused.)

Narog and disguise themselves in the reaf [Old English: 'garments, weapons, taken from the slain']. I can quite honestly say that it is ages since I have had an evening of such delight: and the personal interest of reading a friend's work had very little to do with it. I should have enjoyed it just as well as if I'd picked it up in a bookshop, by an unknown author. The two things that come out clearly are the sense of reality in the background and the mythical value: the essence of a myth being that it should have no taint of allegory to the maker and yet should suggest incipient allegories to the reader, Lewis had thus reached in his reading about line 2017. He had evidently received more; it may be that the typescript by this time extended to the attack on Luthien and Beren by Celegorm and Curufin fleeing from Nargothrond, against which (at line 303 t) is the date November 1929 in the manuscript. Some time after this, probably early in 1930, Lewis sent my father 14 pages of detailed criticism, as far as line 1161 (if there was any more it has not survived). This criticism he contrived as a heavily academic commentary on the text, pretending to treat the Lay as an ancient and anonymous work extant in many more or less corrupt manuscripts, overlaid by scribal perversions in antiquity and the learned argumentation of nineteenth-century scholars; and thus entertainingly took the sting from some sharply expressed judgements, while at the same time in this disguise expressing strong praise for particular passages. Almost all the verses which Lewis found wanting for one reason or another are marked for revision in the typescript B if not actually rewritten, and in many cases his proposed emendations, or modifications of them, are incorporated into the text. The greater part of Lewis's commentary is given on pp. 315 ff., with the verses he criticised and the alterations made as a result.

My father abandoned the Lay at the point where the jaws of Carcharoth crashed together like a trap on Beren's hand and the Silmaril was engulfed, but though he never advanced beyond that place in the narrative, he did not abandon it for good. When ?he Lord of the Rings was finished he returned to the Lay again and recast the first two Cantos and a good part of the third, and small portions of some others.

To summarise the elements of this history:

(1). Rough workings of the whole poem, composed 1925 - 31.

(2). Manuscript A of the whole poem, written out progressively during 1925 - 31.

(3). Typescript B of the whole poem (ending in manuscript), already in progress in 1926.

This typescript given to C. S. Lewis towards the end of 1929, when it extended probably to about line 3031.

(4). Recasting of the opening Cantos and parts of some others (after the completion of The Lord of the Rings).

The manuscript A was emended, both by changes and insertions, at different times, the majority of these alterations being incorporated in the typescript B; while in B, as typed, there are further changes not '

found in A.

The amount of emendation made to B varies very greatly. My father used it as a basis for the later rewritings, and in these parts the old typescript is entirely covered with new verses; but for long stretches - by far the greater part of the poem - the text is untouched save for very '.

minor and as it were casual modifications to individual lines here and.

there.

After much experimentation I have concluded that to make a single, text, an amalgam derived from the latest writing throughout the poem, would be wholly mistaken. Quite apart from the practical difficulty of changed names in the rewritten parts that do not scan in the old lines, the later verse in its range and technical accomplishment is too distinct; too much time had passed, and in the small amount that my father rewrote of the Lay of Leithian after The Lord of the Rings we have fragments of a '

new poem: from which we can gain an idea of what might have been. I have therefore excised these parts, and give them subsequently and separately (Chapter IV).

A further reason for doing so lies in the purpose of this book, which includes the consideration of the Lays as important stages in the evolution of the legends. Some of the revisions to the Lay of Leithian are at least 30 years later than the commencement of the poem. From the point of view of the 'history', therefore, the abandonment of the poem in or soon after September 1931 constitutes a terminal point, and I have excluded emendations to names that are (as I believe) certainly later than that, but included those which are earlier.* In a case like that of Beleriand, for instance, which was Broseliand for much of the poem in B and always later emended to Beleriand, but had become Beleriand as first written by line 3957, I give Beleriand throughout. On the other hand I retain Gnomes since my father still used this in The Hobbit. '

The many small changes made for metrical/stylistic reasons, however, constitute a problem in the attempt to produce a 1931 text', since it is often impossible to be sure to which 'phase' they belong. Some are (* This leads to inconsistent treatment of certain names as between the two long Lays, e.g.

Finweg son of Fingo1fin in The Children of Hurin but Fingon in the Lay of Leithian.

Finweg survived into the 1930 version of 'The Silmarillion' but was early emended to Fingon.)

demonstrably very early - e.g. candle flowers emended to flowering candles (line 516), since C. S. Lewis-commented on the latter - while others are demonstrably from many years later, and strictly speaking belong with the late rewritings; but many cannot be certainly determined.

In any case, such changes - very often made to get rid of certain artifices employed as metrical aids, most notably among these the use of emphatic tenses with doth and did simply in order to obtain a syllable - such changes have no repercussions beyond the improvement of the individual line; and in such cases it seems a pity, through rigid adherence to the textual basis, to lose such small enhancements, or at any rate to hide them in a trail of tedious textual notes, while letting their less happy predecessors stand in the text. I have thought it justifiable therefore to be frankly inconsistent in these details, and while for example retaining Gnomes (for Elves or other substitution) or Thu (for Gorthu or Sauron), to introduce small changes of wording that are certainly later than these.