The War of the Jewels (2 page)

'The Silmarillion', again in the widest sense, is very evidently a literary entity of a singular nature. I would say that it can only be defined in terms of its history; and that history is with this book largely completed ('largely', because I have not entered further into the complexities of the tale of Turin in those parts that my father left in confusion and uncertainty, as explained in Unfinished Tales, p. 6). It is indeed the only 'completion'

possible, because it was always 'in progress'; the published work is not in any way a completion, but a construction devised out of the existing materials. Those materials are now made available, save only in a few details and in the matter of 'Turin'

just mentioned; and with them a criticism of the 'constructed'

Silmarillion becomes possible. I shall not enter into that question; although it will be apparent in this book that there are aspects of the work that I view with regret.

In The War of the Jewels I have included, as Part Four, a long essay of a very different nature: Quendi and Eldar. While there was no possibility of making The History of Middle-earth a history of the languages as well, I have not wished to eschew them altogether even when not essential to the narrative (as Adunaic is in The Notion Club Papers); I have wished to give at least some indication at different stages of the presence of this vital and evolving element, especially in regard to the meaning of names - thus the appendices to The Book of Lost Tales and the Etymologies in The Lost Road. Quendi and Eldar illustrates perhaps more than any other writing of my father's the significance of names, and of linguistic change affecting names, in his histories. It gives also an account of many things found nowhere else, such as the gesture-language of the Dwarves, and all that will ever be known, I believe, of Valarin, the language of the Valar.

I take this opportunity to give the correct text of a passage in Morgoth's Ring. Through an error that entered at a late stage and was not observed a line was dropped and a line repeated in note 16 on page 327; the text should read:

There have been suggestions earlier in the Athrabeth that Andreth was looking much further back in time to the awakening of Men (thus she speaks of 'legends of days when death came less swiftly and our span was still far longer', p. 313); in her words here, 'a rumour that has come down through years uncounted', a profound alteration in the conception seems plain.

I have received a communication from Mr Patrick Wynne concerning Volume IX, Sauron Defeated, which I would like to record here. He has pointed out that several of the names in Michael Ramer's account of his experiences to the Notion Club are 'not just Hungarian in style but actual Hungarian words'

(Ramer was born and spent his early childhood in Hungary, and he refers to the influence of Magyar on his 'linguistic taste', Sauron Defeated pp. 159, 201). Thus the world of the story that he wrote and read to the Club was first named Gyonyoru (ibid.

p. 214, note 28), which means 'lovely'. His name for the planet Saturn was first given as Gyuruchill (p. 221, note 60), derived from Hungarian gyuru 'ring' and csillag 'star' (where cs is pronounced as English ch in church); Gyuruchill was then changed to Shomoru, probably from Hungarian szomoru 'sad'

(though that is pronounced 'somoru'), and if so, an allusion to the astrological belief in the cold and gloomy temperament of those born under the influence of that planet. Subsequently these names were replaced by others (Emberu, and Enekol for Saturn) that cannot be so explained.

In this connection, Mr Carl F. Hostetter has observed that the Elvish star-name Lumbar ascribed to Saturn (whether or not my father always so intended it, see Morgoth's Ring pp. 434 - 5) can be explained in the same way as Ramer's Shomoru, in view of the Quenya word lumbe, 'gloom, shadow', recorded in the Elvish Etymologies (The Lost Road and Other Writings, p. 170).

Mr Hostetter has also pointed out that the name Byrde given to Finwe s first wife Miriel in the Annals of Aman (Morgoth s Ring, pp. 92, 185) is not, as I said (p. 103), an Old English word meaning 'broideress', for that is not found in Old English. The name actually depends on an argument advanced (on very good evidence) by my father that the word byrde 'broideress' must in fact have existed in the old language, and that it survived in the Middle English burde 'lady, damsel', its original specific sense faded and forgotten. His discussion is found in his article Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (The Review of English Studies 1.2, April 1925).

I am very grateful to Dr Judith Priestman for her generous help in providing me with copies of texts and maps in the Bodleian Library. The accuracy of the intricate text of this book has been much improved by the labour of Mr Charles Noad, unstintedly given and greatly appreciated. He has read the first proof with extreme care and with critical understanding, and has made many improvements; among these is an interpretation of the way in which the narrow path, followed by Turin and afterwards by Brandir the Lame, went down through the woods above the Taeglin to Cabed-en-Aras: an interpretation that justifies expressions of my father's that I had taken to be merely erroneous (pp. 157, 159).

There remain a number of writings of my father's, other than those that are expressly philological, that I think should be included in this History of Middle-earth, and I hope to be able to publish a further volume in two years' time.

PART ONE.

THE

GREY ANNALS.

THE GREY ANNALS.

The history of the Annals of Beleriand began about 1930, when my father wrote the earliest version ('AB 1') together with that of the Annals of Valinor ('AV 1'). These were printed in Vol.IV, The Shaping of Middle-earth; I remarked there that 'the Annals began, perhaps, in parallel with the Quenta as a convenient way of driving abreast, and keeping track of, the different elements in the ever more complex narrative web.' Second versions of both sets of Annals were composed later in the 1930s, as part of a group of texts comprising also the Lhammas or Account of Tongues, a new version of the Ainulindale, and the central work of that time: a new version of 'The Silmarillion'

proper, the unfinished Quenta Silmarillion ('QS'). These second versions, together with the other texts of that period, were printed in Vol.V, The Lost Road and Other Writings, under the titles The Later Annals of Valinor ('AV 2') and The Later Annals of Beleriand ('AB 2').

When my father turned again, in 1950-1, to the Matter of the Elder Days after the completion of The Lord of the Rings, he began new work on the Annals by taking up the AV 2 and AB 2 manuscripts from some 15 years earlier and using them as vehicles for revision and new writing. In the case of AV 2, correction of the old text was limited to the opening annals, and the beginnings of a new version written on the blank verso pages of this manuscript likewise petered out very quickly, so that there was no need to take much account of this preliminary work (X.47). In AB 2, on the other hand, the preparatory stages were much more extensive and substantial.

In the first place, revision of the original AB 2 text continues much further - although in practice this can be largely passed over, since the content of the revision appears in subsequent texts. (In some cases, as noted in V.124, it is not easy to separate 'early' (pre-Lord of the Rings) revisions and additions from 'late' (those of the early 1950s).) In the second place, the beginning of a new and much fuller version of the Annals of Beleriand on the blank verso pages of AB 2 extends for a considerable distance (13 manuscript pages) - and the first part of this is written in such a careful script, before it begins to degenerate, that it may be thought that my father did not at first intend it as a draft. This is entitled 'The Annals of Beleriand', and could on that account be referred to as 'AB 3', but I shall in fact call it 'GA 1' (see below).

The final text is a good clear manuscript bearing the title 'The Annals of Beleriand or the Grey Annals'. I have chosen to call this work the Grey Annals, abbreviated 'GA', in order to mark its distinctive nature in relation to the earlier forms of the Annals of Beleriand and its close association with the Annals of Aman ('AAm'), which also bears a title different from that of its predecessors. The abandoned first version just mentioned is then more suitably called

'GA 1' than 'AB 3', since for most of its length it was followed very closely in the final text, and is to be regarded as a slightly earlier variant: it will be necessary to refer to it, and to cite passages from it, but there is no need to give it in full. Where it is necessary to distinguish the final text from the aborted version I shall call the former 'GA 2'.

There is some evidence that the Grey Annals followed the Annals of Aman (in its primary form), but the two works were, I feel certain, closely associated in time of composition. For the structure of the history of Beleriand the Grey Annals constitutes the primary text, and although much of the latter part of the work was used in the published Silmarillion with little change I give it in full. This is really essential on practical grounds, but is also in keeping with my intention in this

'History', in which I have traced the development of the Matter of the Elder Days from its beginning to its end within the compass of my father's actual writings: from this point of view the published work is not its end, and I do not treat his later writing primarily in relation to what was used, or how it was used, in 'The Silmarillion'. - It is a most unhappy fact that he abandoned the Grey Annals at the death of Turin

- although, as will be seen subsequently (pp. 251 ff.), he added elements of a continuation at some later time.

I have not, as I did in the case of the Annals of Aman, divided the Grey Annals into sections, and the commentary, referenced to the numbered paragraphs, follows the end of the text (p. 103). Subsequent changes to the manuscript, which in places were heavy, are indicated as such.

At the top of the first page of the old AB 2 text, no doubt before he began work on the enormously enlarged new version, my father scribbled these notes: 'Make these the Sindarin Annals of Doriath and leave out most of the...' (there are here two words that probably read

'Nold[orin] stuff'); and 'Put in notes about Denethor, Thingol, etc.

from AV'.

Two other elements in the complex of papers constituting the Grey Annals remain to be mentioned. There are a number of disconnected rough pages bearing the words 'Old material of Grey Annals' (see p.

29); and there is an amanuensis typescript in top copy and carbon that clearly belongs with that of the Annals of Aman, which I tentatively dated to 1958 (X.47).

THE ANNALS OF BELERIAND

OR

THE GREY ANNALS.

$1. These are the Annals of Beleriand as they were made by the Sindar, the Grey Elves of Doriath and the Havens, and enlarged from the records and memories of the remnant of the Noldor of Nargothrond and Gondolin at the Mouths of Sirion, whence they were brought back into the West.

$2. Beleriand is the name of the country that lay upon either side of the great river Sirion ere the Elder Days were ended. This name it bears in the oldest records that survive, and it is here retained in that form, though now it is called Belerian. The name signifies in the language of that land: the country of Balar.

For this name the Sindar gave to Osse, who came often to those coasts, and there befriended them. At first, therefore, this name was given to the land of the shores, on either side of Sirion's mouths, that face the Isle of Balar, but it spread until it included all the ancient coast of the North-west of Middle-earth south of the Firth of Drengist and all the inner land south of Hithlum up to the feet of Eryd Luin (the Blue Mountains). But south of the mouths of Sirion it had no sure boundaries; for there were pathless forests in those days between the unpeopled shores and the lower waters of Gelion.

VY 1050.

$3. Hither, it is said, at this time came Melian the Maia from Valinor, when Varda made the great stars. In this same time the Quendi awoke by Kuivienen, as is told in the Chronicle of Aman.

1080

$4. About this time the spies of Melkor discovered the Quendi and afflicted them.

1085

$5. In this year Orome found the Quendi, and befriended them.

1090

$6. At this time the Valar came hither from Aman for their assault upon Melkor, whose stronghold was in the North beyond Eryd Engrin (the Iron Mountains). In these regions, therefore, were fought the first battles of the Powers of the West and the North, and all this land was much broken, and it took then that shape which it had until the coming of Fionwe. For the Great Sea broke in upon the coasts and made a deep gulf to the southward, and many lesser bays were made between the Great Gulf and Helkaraxe far in the North, where Middle-earth and Aman came nigh together. Of these bays the Bay of Balar was the chief; and into it the mighty river Sirion flowed down from the new-raised highlands northwards: Dorthonion and the mountains about Hithlum. At first these lands upon either side of Sirion were ruinous and desolate because of the War of the Powers, but soon growth began there, while most of Middle-earth slept in the Sleep of Yavanna, because the Valar of the Blessed Realm had set foot there; and there were young woods under the bright stars. These Melian the Maia fostered; and she dwelt most in the glades of Nan Elmoth beside the River Celon.