The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [161]
Fourth part. Whereas B merely refers to Eärendel’s ‘many wanderings, occupying several years’ in his quest for Valinor, C gives some glimpses of what they were to be, as Wingilot was driven to the south and then into the west. The encounter with Ungweliantë on the western voyage is curious; it is said in The Tale of the Sun and Moon that ‘Melko held the North and Ungweliant the South’ (see I.182, 200).
In C we meet again the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl (said to be Idril, though this was struck out, note 6) awakened by Littleheart’s gong; cf. the account of Littleheart in The Cottage of Lost Play (I.15):
He sailed in Wingilot with Eärendel in that last voyage wherein they sought for Kôr. It was the ringing of this Gong on the Shadowy Seas that awoke the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl that stands far out to west in the Twilit Isles.
In The Coming of the Valar it is said that the Twilit Isles ‘float’ on the Shadowy Seas ‘and the Tower of Pearl rises pale upon their most western cape’ (I.68; cf. I.125). But there is no other mention in C of Littleheart, Voronwë’s son, as a companion of Eärendel, though he was named earlier in the outline, in a rejected phrase, as present at the Mouths of Sirion (see note 5), and in the Tale of the Nauglafring (p. 228) Ailios says that none still living have seen the Nauglafring ‘save only Littleheart son of Bronweg’ (where ‘save only’ is an emendation from ‘not even’).
Fifth and sixth parts. In C we meet the image of Eärendel’s shoes shining from the dust of diamonds in Kôr, an image that was to survive (The Silmarillion p. 248):
He walked in the deserted ways of Tirion, and the dust upon his raiment and his shoes was a dust of diamonds, and he shone and glistened as he climbed the long white stairs.
But in The Silmarillion Tirion was deserted because it was ‘a time of festival, and wellnigh all the Elvenfolk were gone to Valimar, or were gathered in the halls of Manwë upon Taniquetil’ here on the other hand it seems at least strongly implied, in both B and C, that Kôr was empty because the Elves of Valinor had departed into the Great Lands, as a result of the tidings brought by the birds of Gondolin. In these very early narrative schemes there is no mention of Eärendel’s speaking to the Valar, as the ambassador of Elves and Men (The Silmarillion p. 249), and we can only conclude, extraordinary as the conclusion is, that Eärendel’s great western voyage, though he attained his goal, was fruitless, that he was not the agent of the aid that did indeed come out of Valinor to the Elves of the Great Lands, and (most curious of all) that Ulmo’s designs for Tuor had no issue. In fact, my father actually wrote in the 1930 version of ‘The Silmarillion’:
Thus it was that the many emissaries of the Gnomes in after days came never back to Valinor—save one: and he came too late.
The words ‘and he came too late’ were changed to ‘the mightiest mariner of song’, and this is the phrase that is found in The Silmarillion, p. 102. It is unfortunately never made clear in the earliest writings what was Ulmo’s purpose in bidding Eärendel sail to Kôr, for which he had been saved from the ruin of Gondolin. What would he have achieved, had he come to Kôr ‘in time’, more than in the event did take place after the coming of tidings from Gondolin—the March of the Elves into the Great Lands? In a curious note in C, not associated with the present outline, my father asked: ‘How did King Turgon’s messengers get to Valinor or gain the Gods’ consent?’ and answered: ‘His messengers never got there. Ulmo [sic] but the birds brought tidings to the Elves of the