The Peoples of Middle-earth (71 page)

some former sound by the new sound in all words that contained it - or if not in all, then in a number selected according to their shapes and other elements, as he is guided by some new pattern that he has in mind. Even as a weaver might change a thread from red to blue, either throughout his web, or in such parts thereof as were suitable to the new pattern, but not randomly here and there nor only in one corner.(4)

And lo! AElfwine, these changes differ little from like changes that come in the speeches of Men with the passing of time. Now as for the Eldar we know that such things were done of old by choice, full-wittingly, and the names of those who made new words or first moved great changes are yet often remembered.

For which reason the Eldar do not believe that in truth the changes in the tongues of Men are wholly unwitting; for how so, say they, comes the order and harmony that oft is seen in such changes? or the skill both in the devices that are replaced and the new that follow them? And some answer that the minds of Men are half asleep: by which they mean not that the part whereof Men are unaware and can give no account slumbers, but the other part. Others perceiving that in nothing do Men, and namely those of the West,(5) so nearly resemble the Eldar as in speech, answer that the teaching which Men had of the Elves in their youth works on still as a seed in the dark. But in all this maybe they err, AElfwine, for despite all their lore least of all things do they know the minds of Men or understand them.(6) And to speak of memory, AElfwine: with regard to the Elves -

for I know not how it is with Men - that which we call the coirea quenya, the living speech, is the language wherethrough we think and imagine; for it is to our thought as the body to our spirit, growing and changing together in all the days of our being.(7) Into that language therefore we render at once whatso-ever we recall out of the past that we heard or said ourselves. If a Man remembers some thing that he said in childhood, doth he recall the accents of childhood that he used in that moment long ago? I know not. But certainly we of the Quendi do not so. We may know indeed how children not yet accomplished in speech, and how the 'fullspoken', as we say, spake at times long ago, but that is a thing apart from the images of life-memory, and is a matter of lore. For we have much lore concerning the languages of old, whether stored in the mind or in writings; but we hear not ourselves speak again in the past save with the language that clothes our thought in the present. Verily, it may chance that in the past we spake with strangers in an alien tongue, and remember what was then said, but not the tongue that was used. Out of the past indeed we may recall the sounds of an alien speech as we may other sounds: the song of birds or the murmur of water; but that is but in some cry or brief phrase. For if the speech were long or the matter subtle then we clothe it in the living language of our present thought, and if we would now relate it as it was spoken, we must render it anew, as it were a book, into that other tongue - if it is preserved still in learned lore. And even so, it is the alien voices that we hear using words in our memory, seldom ourselves - or to speak of myself, never.

It is true indeed that the Eldar readily learn to use other tongues skilfully, and are slow to forget any that they have learned, but these remain as they were learned, as were they written in the unchanging pages of a book;*(8) whereas the coirea quenya, the language of thought, grows and lives within, and each new stage overlies those that went before, as the acorn and the sapling are hidden in the tree.

Wherefore, AElfwine, if thou wilt consider well all that I have said to thee at this time, not only what is plainly expressed, but also what is therein to be discovered by thought, thou wilt now understand that, albeit more wittingly, albeit more slowly, the tongues of the Quendi change in a manner like to the changes of mortal tongues. And that if one of the Eldar survives maybe the chances of fifty thousand of your years, then the speech of his childhood will be sundered from the speech of his present, as maybe the speech of some city or kingdom of Men will be sundered in the days of its majesty from the tongue of those that founded it of old.

In this last point also our kindreds are alike. Greater as is the skill of the Quendi to mould things to their will and delight, and to overcome the chances of Ea, yet they are not as the Valar, and with regard to the might of the World and its fate, they are but weak and small. Therefore to them also severance is severance, and friends and kin far away are far away. Not even the Seeing (* Save only in the strange event of the learning by one whole people of an alien speech, that thereafter they take into living and daily use, which will then change and grow with them, but their own former tongue pass away or become but a matter of lore. This has happened only once in the history of the Eldalie, when the Exiles took up the speech of Beleriand, the Sindarin tongue, and the Noldorin was preserved among them as a language of lore.)

Stones of the craftsmen of old could wholly unite those that were sundered, and they and the masters that could make them were few. Therefore change, witting or unwitting, was not even long ages ago shared, nor did it proceed alike save among those that met often and had converse in labour and in mirth. Thus, swifter or slower, yet ever inescapably, the far-sundered kindreds of the Quendi were sundered also in speech: the Avari from the Eldar; and the Teleri from the other Eldar; and the Sindar, who abode in Middle-earth, from the Teleri that came at last unto Aman; and the Exiles of the Noldor from those that remained in the land of the Valar. And so still it goes in Middle-earth.

Yet long since, AElfwine, the fashion of the World was changed; and we that dwell now in the Ancient West are removed from the circles of the World, and in memory is the greater part of our being: so that now we preserve rather than make anew. Wherefore, though even in Aman - beyond the circles of Arda, yet still with Ea - change goes ever on, until the End, be it slow beyond perceiving save in ages of time, nonetheless here at last in Eressea our tongues are steadfast; and here over a wide sea of years we speak now still little otherwise than we did - and those also that perished - in the wars of Beleriand, when the Sun was young.

Sin Quente Quendingoldo

Elendilenna.

NOTES.

1. The end of this sentence, from 'offspring of one yet older tree', is not found in version A.

2. 'dying or dead' A.

3. In the note to The Shibboleth of Feanor which I have omitted (p. 339) my father wrote:

The Eldar had an instinctive grasp of the structure and sound-system of their speech as a whole, and this was increased by instruction; for in a sense all Eldarin languages were 'invented'

languages, art-forms, not only inherited but also material engag-ing the active interest of their users and challenging awarely their own taste and inventiveness. This aspect was evidently still prominent in Valinor; though in Middle-earth it had waned, and the development of Sindarin had become, long before the arrival of the Noldorin exiles, mainly the product of unheeded change like the tongues of Men.

4. Version A has here a footnote omitted in B:

Thus it was that when the name Banyai of old was changed to Vanyar this was done only because the sound b was changed to v throughout the language (save in certain sequences) - and this change, it is recorded, began among the Vanyar; whereas for the showing of many the new device of r was brought in and used in all words of a certain shape - and this, it is said, was begun among the Noldor.

5. namely is used here in the original but long lost sense of the word,

'especially, above all'. The phrase is absent in A, which reads simply: 'Or some answer that the teaching ...'

6. Here version A, as originally written, moves at once to the concluding paragraphs of the Dangweth, from 'But in this point at least our kindreds are alike ...' (p. 400) to its ending in the words

'we speak now still little otherwise than they did who fought in Beleriand when the Sun was young.' These paragraphs were struck out, and all the intervening matter (from 'And to speak of memory, AElfwine ...') introduced, before they were reached again, somewhat changed in expression but not in content, and now virtually identical to the form in version B.

7. This sentence, from 'for it is to our thought ...', is absent in A.

8. The footnote here is absent in A.

XV.

OF LEMBAS.

For the association of this brief work, extant in a single manuscript, with the Dangweth Pengolod see p. 395. It is a finely written text of two pages, in style like that of the fine manuscript of the Dangweth which it accompanies, but not of the same quality, and on thin paper.

My father introduced some illumination at its beginning in red ball-point pen, and with the same pen wrote at the head of the first page, above the title Of Lembas: 'Mana i-coimas in-Eldaron?' maquente Elendil (the same question as appears on the cardboard folder enclosing the two texts, p. 395). At the same time he added quotation marks at the beginning and end of the text, showing that it is the answer of Pengolod to AElfwine's question, 'What is the coimas of the Eldar?' It seems possible that these additions in ball-point pen were added later, to make the text into a companion piece to the Dangweth; but there is in any case no evidence for date, beyond the limits of 1951 and 1959

(p. 395).

Of Lembas.

'This food the Eldar alone knew how to make. It was made for the comfort of those who had need to go upon a long journey in the wild, or of the hurt whose life was in peril. Only these were permitted to use it. The Eldar did not give it to Men, save only to a few whom they loved, if they were in great need.*

The Eldar say that they first received this food from the Valar in the beginning of their days in the Great Journey. For it was made of a kind of corn which Yavanna brought forth in the fields of Aman, and some she sent to them by the hand of Orome for their succour upon the long march.

(* This was not done out of greed or jealousy, although at no time in Middle-earth was there great store of this food; but because the Eldar had been commanded to keep this gift in their own power, and not to make it common to the dwellers in mortal lands. For it is said that, if mortals eat often of this bread, they become weary of their mortality, desiring to abide among the Elves, and longing for the fields of Aman, to which they cannot come.)

Since it came from Yavanna, the queen, or the highest among the elven-women of any people, great or small, had the keeping and gift of the lembas, for which reason she was called massanie or besain: the Lady, or breadgiver.(1)

Now this corn had in it the strong life of Aman, which it could impart to those who had the need and right to use the bread. If it was sown at any season, save in frost, it soon sprouted and grew swiftly, though it did not thrive in the shadow of plants of Middle-earth and would not endure winds that came out of the North while Morgoth dwelt there. Else it needed only a little sunlight to ripen; for it took swiftly and multiplied all the vigour of any light that fell on it.

The Eldar grew it in guarded lands and sunlit glades; and they gathered its great golden ears, each one, by hand, and set no blade of metal to it. The white haulm was drawn from the earth in like manner, and woven into corn-leep (2) for the storing of the grain: no worm or gnawing beast would touch that gleaming straw, and rot and mould and other evils of Middle-earth did not assail it.

From the ear to the wafer none were permitted to handle this grain, save those elven-women who were called Yavannildi (or by the Sindar the Ivonwin),(3) the maidens of Yavanna; and the art of the making of the lembas, which they learned of the Valar, was a secret among them, and so ever has remained.'

Lembas is the Sindarin name, and comes from the older form lenn-mbass 'journey-bread'. In Quenya it was most often named coimas which is 'life-bread'.(4)

Quente Quengoldo.

NOTES.

1. In the story of Turin it is said of Melian's gift of lembas to Beleg the Bowman (The Silmarillion p. 202) that it was 'wrapped in leaves of silver, and the threads that bound it were sealed at the knots with the seal of the Queen, a wafer of white wax shaped as a single flower of Telperion; for according to the customs of the Eldalie the keeping and giving of lembas belonged to the Queen alone. In nothing did Melian show greater favour to Turin than in this gift; for the Eldar had never before allowed Men to use this waybread, and seldom did so again.'

With 'massanie or besain' cf. the entry in the Etymologies, V.372, stem MBAS 'knead': Quenya masta, Noldorin bast, 'bread'; also the words lembas, coimas, explained at the end of the present text as 'journey-bread' and 'life-bread'. Above the ain of besain is faintly pencilled oneth. sc. besoneth.

In using the word Lady here my father no doubt had an eye to its origin in Old English hlaef-dige, of which the first element is hlaf (modern English loaf) with changed vowel, and the second a derivative of the stem dig- 'knead' (to which dough is ultimately related); cf. lord from hlaf-weard 'bread-keeper'.