The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [173]
37 Ye] You
40 outer omitted
41–3 struck through
46 the] those
Line added at end: beyond the country of the shining Trees.
10 The two earliest extant texts date it thus, one of them with the addition ‘Ex[eter] Coll[ege] Essay Club Dec. 1914’, and on a third is written ‘Gedling, Notts., Sept. 1913 [error for 1914] and later’. My father referred to having read ‘Eärendel’ to the Essay Club in a letter to my mother of 27 November 1914.
11 But rocks in line 27 (26) should read rock.
12 According to one note it was written at ‘Barnt Green [see Biography p. 36] July 1915 and Bedford and later’, and another note dates it ‘July 24 [1915], rewritten Sept. 9’. The original workings are on the back of an unsent letter dated from Moseley (Birmingham) July 11, 1915; my father began military training at Bedford on July 19.
VI
THE HISTORY OF ERIOL OR ÆLFWINE AND THE END OF THE TALES
In this final chapter we come to the most difficult (though not, as I hope to show, altogether insoluble) part of the earliest form of the mythology: its end, with which is intertwined the story of Eriol/Ælfwine—and with that, the history and original significance of Tol Eressëa. For its elucidation we have some short pieces of connected narrative, but are largely dependent on the same materials as those that constitute Gilfanon’s Tale and the story of Eärendel: scribbled plot-outlines, endlessly varying, written on separate slips of paper or in the pages of the little notebook ‘C’ (see p. 254). In this chapter there is much material to consider, and for convenience of reference within the chapter I number the various citations consecutively. But it must be said that no device of presentation can much diminish the inherent complexity and obscurity of the matter.
The fullest account (bald as it is) of the March of the Elves of Kôr and the events that followed is contained in notebook C, continuing on from the point where I left that outline on p. 255, after the coming of the birds from Gondolin, the ‘counsels of the Gods and uproar of the Elves’, and the ‘March of the Inwir and Teleri’, with the Solosimpi only agreeing to accompany the expedition on condition that they remain by the sea. The outline continues:
(1) Coming of the Eldar. Encampment in the Land of Willows of first host. Overwhelming of Noldorin and Valwë. Wanderings of Noldorin with his harp.
Tulkas overthrows Melko in the battle of the Silent Pools. Bound in Lumbi and guarded by Gorgumoth the hound of Mandos.
Release of the Noldoli. War with Men as soon as Tulkas and Noldorin have fared back to Valinor.
Noldoli led to Valinor by Egalmoth and Galdor.
There have been previous references in the Lost Tales to a battle in Tasarinan, the Land of Willows: in the Tale of Turambar (pp. 70, 140), and, most notably, in The Fall of Gondolin (p. 154), where when Tuor’s sojourn in that land is described there is mention of events that would take place there in the future:
Did not even after the days of Tuor Noldorin and his Eldar come there seeking for Dor Lómin and the hidden river and the caverns of the Gnomes’ imprisonment; yet thus nigh to their quest’s end were like to abandon it? Indeed sleeping and dancing here…they were whelmed by the goblins sped by Melko from the Hills of Iron and Noldorin made bare escape thence.
Valwë has been mentioned once before, by Lindo, on Eriol’s first evening in Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva (I.16): ‘My father Valwë who went with Noldorin to find the Gnomes.’ Of Noldorin we know also that he was the Vala Salmar, the twin-brother of Ómar-Amillo; that he entered the world with Ulmo, and that in Valinor he played the harp and lyre and loved the Noldoli (I.66, 75, 93, 126).
An isolated note states:
(2) Noldorin escapes from the defeat of the Land of Willows and takes his harp and goes seeking in the Iron Mountains for Valwë and the Gnomes until he finds their place of imprisonment. Tulkas follows. Melko comes to meet him.
The only one of the great Valar who is mentioned in these notes as taking