The Peoples of Middle-earth (66 page)

'foam' and the white crest of waves: (13) ros. Its older form [was]

roth (rop). This was used in Adunaic songs and legends concerning the coming of the Atani to Numenor in a translation of the name of Earendil's ship. This they called Rothinzil.(14) Also in Numenor their first king was usually given the name Elroth.

The word wing(a) was not known in Adunaic. It was maybe an invention of the Lesser Folk,(15) for in their steep shores there had been waterfalls, whereas in the wooded land of the Greater Folk that went down in gentle slopes there had been none.

In this way also may be explained the name that Earendil gave to his ship in which he at last succeeded in passing over the Great Sea. He himself called it Wingalote, which like his own names were Quenya in form; for Quenya was his childhood's speech, since in the house of his mother's father, Turukano (Turgon), King of Gondolin, that speech was in daily use.(16) But Vinga- was not a Quenya word: it was a Quenyarized form of the Beorian wing that appeared in Elwing the name of his spouse. The form given to this name in Sindarin was Gwingloth, but as said above it was in the Adunaic of Numenor translated as Rothinzil.

In the havens of refuge, when Morgoth's conquest was all but complete, there were several tongues to be heard. Not only the Sindarin, which was chiefly used, but also its Northern dialect; and among the Men of the Atani some still used their Mannish speeches; and of all these Earendil had some knowledge. It is said that before Manwe he spoke the errand of Elves and Men first in Sindarin, since that might represent all those of the suppliants who had survived the war with Morgoth; but he repeated it in Quenya, since that was the language of the Noldor, who alone were under the ban of the Valar; and he added a prayer in the Mannish tongues of Hador and Beor,(17) pleading that they were not under the ban, and had aided the Eldar only in their war against Morgoth, the enemy of the Valar.

For the Atani had not rebelled against the Valar; they had rejected Morgoth and fled Westward seeking the Valar as the representatives of the One. This plea Manwe accepted, and one voice alone spoke aloud the doubt that was in the hearts of all the Valar. Mandos said: Nonetheless they are descendants of Men, who rejected the One himself. That is an evil seed that may grow again. For even if we under Eru have the power to return to Middle-earth and cast out Morgoth from the Kingdom of Arda, we cannot destroy all the evil that he has sown, nor seek out all his servants - unless we ravaged the whole of the Kingdom and made an end of all life therein; and that we may not do.'

The names Elros and Elrond that Elwing gave to her sons were held prophetic, as many mother-names among the Eldar.(18) For after the Last Battle and the overthrow of Morgoth, when the Valar gave to Elros and Elrond a choice to belong either to the kin of the Eldar or to the kin of Men, it was Elros who voyaged over sea to Numenor following the star of Earendil; whereas Elrond remained among the Elves and carried on the lineage of King Elwe.(19) Now Elrond was a word for the firma-ment, the starry dome as it appeared like a roof to Arda; and it was given by Elwing in memory of the great Hall of the Throne of Elwe in the midst of his stronghold of Menegroth that was called the Menelrond,(20) because by the arts and aid of Melian its high arched roof had been adorned with silver and gems set in the order and figures of the stars in the great Dome of Valmar (21) in Aman, whence Melian came.

But alas! This explanation fell foul of a small fact that my father had missed; and it was fatal. He noted on the text that 'most of this fails', because of the name Cair Andros (a Sindarin name, as were virtually all the place-names of Gondor), the island in the Anduin north of Minas Tirith, of which it had been said in Appendix A (RK p. 335, footnote) that it 'means "Ship of Long-foam"; for the isle was shaped like a great ship, with a high prow pointing north, against which the white foam of Anduin broke on sharp rocks.' So he was forced to accept that the element -ros in Elros must be the same as that in Cair Andros, the word must be Eldarin, not Atanic (Beorian), and there could be no historical relationship between it and the Numenorean Adunaic Rothinzil.(22)

Evidently following this is another note, from which it emerges that he still held to the view that the word wing ('spray, spindrift') was of Beorian origin; and while noting that the name Wingalote

[> Wingelote] of Earendil's ship had not appeared in print, he observed that it 'must be retained, since it is connected with the name Elwing, and is in intention formed to resemble and "explain" the name of Wade's ship Guingelot.'(23) On Guingelot and Wingelot see my discussion in III.142-4 (in which I overlooked this remarkable statement). Concerning wing he said again that Earendil named his ship in Quenya form, since that language had been his childhood speech, and that he intended its meaning to be 'Foam-flower'; but he adopted the element wing from the name of Elwing his wife. That name was given to her by her father Dior, who knew the Beorian tongue (cf.

p 369).(24)

NOTES.

1. [Cf. the Etymologies, V.384, stem Ros (1), 'distil, drip': Quenya rosse 'fine rain, dew', Noldorin rhoss 'rain', seen also in Celebros

'Silver-rain' (when Celebros was the name of the waterfall rather than the stream, XI.151).]

2. [Added in the margin: 'Though Maedros is now so long established that it would be difficult to alter'. In a later note, however, my father declared that he would change Maedros to Maedron.]

3. [See p. 365, note 55.]

4. This was the reason, in addition to their admiration of the Eldar, why the chieftains, elders, and wise men and women of the Atani learned Sindarin. The Halethian language was already failing before Turin's time, and finally perished after Hurin in his wrath destroyed the small land and people. [Cf. Of Dwarves and Men, pp. 307-8 and note 49. In the chapter Of the Coming of Men into the West added to the Quenta Silmarillion Felagund learned from Beor that the Haladin (the Folk of Haleth) 'speak the same tongue as we', whereas the People of Marach (the 'Hadorians') were 'of a different speech' (XI.218, $10). This was changed in the published Silmarillion: see XI.226. - With what is said here of the decline of the 'Halethian' language cf. The Wanderings of Hurin (XI.283 and note 41): 'the old tongue of the Folk which was now out of daily use'.]

5. Not necessarily confined to names of things that had not before

[been] known. In the nomenclature of later generations assimil-ation to the Eldarin modes, and the use of some elements frequent in Eldarin names, can be observed. [It has been stated many times that the 'Beorians' forsook their own language in Beleriand: see V.275 (footnote), XI.202, 217 (first footnote), 226; Unfinished Tales p. 215, note 19.]

6. He [Thingol] had small love for the Northern Sindar who had in regions near to Angband come under the dominion of Morgoth, and were accused of sometimes entering his service and providing him with spies. The Sindarin used by the Sons of Feanor also was of the Northern dialect; and they were hated in Doriath.

7. [Eluchil (Thingol's Heir): see XI.350.]

8. 'Remembrance of Elu': containing Sindarin rin from Common Eldarin rene < base REN 'recall, have in mind'. [These names Elured and Elurin replace Eldun and Elrun (originally Elboron and Elbereth); and the story that Dior's sons were twins had been abandoned (see XI.300, 349-50). From this passage and note were derived the names in the published Silmarillion and the statements in the index concerning them.]

9. [Cf. The Shibboleth of Feanor, p. 349: 'Beside one great waterfall, called in Sindarin Lanthir Lamath ("waterfall of echoing voices"), Dior had his house.' From these passages the reference in the published Silmarillion (p. 235) was derived.]

10. Which is not recorded, but was probably similar to the Adunaic azar. [In The Notion Club Papers, IX.305, the Adunaic name of Earendil, Azrubel, was said to be 'made of azar "sea" and the stem bel- (azra, IX.431).]

11. [This opinion is referred to in The Shibboleth of Feanor (pp.

340-1), but regarded as improbable.]

12. [The original story was that Dior's sons 'were slain by the evil men of Maidros' host' (see IV.307). Subsequently they were

'taken captive by the evil men of Maidros' following, and they were left to starve in the woods' (V.142); in a version of the Tale of Years the perpetrators were 'the cruel servants of Celegorn'

(XI.351).]

13. The Atani had never seen the Great Sea before they came at last to Beleriand; but according to their own legends and histories the Folk of Hador had long dwelt during their westward migration by the shores of a sea too wide to see across; it had no tides, but was visited by great storms. It was not until they had developed a craft of boat-building that the people afterwards known as the Folk of Hador discovered that a part of their host from whom they had become separated had reached the same sea before them, and dwelt at the feet of the high hills to the south-west, whereas they [the Folk of Hador] lived in the north-east, in the woods that there came near to the shores. They were thus some two hundred miles apart, going by water; and they did not often meet and exchange tidings. Their tongues had already diverged, with the swiftness of the speeches of Men in the 'Unwritten Days', and continued to do so; though they remained friends of acknowledged kinship, bound by their hatred and fear of the Dark Lord (Morgoth), against whom they had rebelled.

Nonetheless they did not know that the Lesser Folk had fled from the threat of the Servants of the Dark and gone on westward, while they had lain hidden in their woods, and so under their leader Beor reached Beleriand at last many years before they did.

[There has of course never been any previous trace or hint of this story of the long sojourn of the 'Beorians' and the 'Hadorians' ('the People of Marach', a name not mentioned in this essay, see p. 325, note 41) by the shores of a great inland sea. In this account of their dwellings my father first wrote 'south-east' and

'north-west', changing them at once; and the particularity of this suggests that he had a specific geographical image in mind. This must surely be the Sea of Rhun, where (features going back to the First Map to The Lord of the Rings, VII.305) there are hills on the south-western side and a forest coming down to the north-eastern shores; moreover the distance of two hundred miles across the sea agrees with the map. - It is said here that the

'Beorians' reached Beleriand 'many years' before the 'Hadorians'.

According to the later Quenta Silmarillion chapter Of the Coming of Men into the West Felagund met Beor in Ossiriand in 310, and the People of Marach came over the Blue Mountains in 313 (XI.218, $13 and commentary). In Of Dwarves and Men (p. 307) 'the first of the three hosts of the Folk of Hador' came into Beleriand 'not long after' the Folk of Beor, having in fact reached the eastern foothills of the Ered Lindon first of all the kindreds of the Edain. In that text there is mention of an opinion that a long period of separation between the two peoples would account for the divergence of their languages from an original common tongue (p. 308 and note 45).]

14. [The name Rothinzil 'Flower of the Foam' appeared in The Drowning of Anadune, IX.360 (Rothinzil).]

15. ['The Lesser Folk': the People of Beor. This sentence refers to the content of note 13.]

16. Though for most of its people it had become a language of books, and as the other Noldor they used Sindarin in daily speech. In this way there arose several blended forms, belonging strictly to neither language. Indeed, the name of the great city of Turgon by which it was best known in legend, Gondolin(d), is an example.

It was given by Turgon in Quenya Ondolinde, but generally its people turned it towards Sindarin, in which Eldarin *gon,

*gondo 'stone, rock' had retained the g- lost in Quenya. [See XI.201.)

17. The language of the Folk of Haleth was not used, for they had perished and would not rise again. Nor would their tongue be heard again, unless the prophecy of Andreth the Wise-woman should prove true, that Turin in the Last Battle should return from the Dead, and before he left the Circles of the World for ever should challenge the Great Dragon of Morgoth, Ancalagon the Black, and deal him the death-stroke.

[This remarkable saying has long roots, extending back to the prophecy at the end of the old Tale of Turambar (II.115-16), where it was told that the Gods of Death (Fui and Vefantur) would not open their doors to Turin and Nienori, that Urin and Mavwin (Hurin and Morwen) went to Mandos, and that their prayers

came even to Manwe, and the Gods had mercy on their unhappy fate, so that those twain Turin and Nienori entered into Fos'Almir, the bath of flame, even as Urwendi and her maidens had done in ages past before the first rising of the Sun, and so were all their sorrows and stains washed away, and they dwelt as shining Valar among the blessed ones, and now the love of that brother and sister is very fair; but Turambar indeed shall stand beside Fionwe in the Great Wrack, and Melko and his drakes shall curse the sword of Mormakil.