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By Root 1292 0

essential difference may be made clear now, before citing the difficult evidence: Tol Eressëa is now in no way identified with England, and the story of the drawing back of the Lonely Island across the sea has been abandoned. England is indeed still at the heart of this later conception, and is named Luthany.14 The mariner, Ælfwine, is an Englishman sailing westward from the coast of Britain; and his role is diminished. For whereas in the writings studied thus far he comes to Tol Eressëa before the dénouement and disaster of the Faring Forth, and either he himself or his descendants witness the devastation of Tol Eressëa by the invasion of Men and their evil allies (in one line of development he was even to be responsible for it, p. 294), in the later narrative outlines he does not arrive until all the grievous history is done. His part is only to learn and to record.15

I turn now to a number of short and very oblique passages, written on separate slips, but found together and clearly dating from much the same time.

(15) Ælfwine of England dwelt in the South-west; he was of the kin of Ing, King of Luthany. His mother and father were slain by the sea-pirates and he was made captive.

He had always loved the fairies: his father had told him many things (of the tradition of Ing). He escapes. He beats about the northern and western waters. He meets the Ancient Mariner—and seeks for Tol Eressëa (seo unwemmede íeg), whither most of the unfaded Elves have retired from the noise, war, and clamour of Men.

The Elves greet him, and the more so when they learn of him who he is. They call him Lúthien the man of Luthany. He finds his own tongue, the ancient English tongue, is spoken in the isle.

The ‘Ancient Mariner’ has appeared in the story that Eriol told to Vëannë (pp. 5, 7), and much more will be told of him subsequently.

(16) Ælfwine of Englaland, [added later: driven by the Normans,] arrives in Tol Eressëa, whither most of the fading Elves have withdrawn from the world, and there fade now no more.

Description of the harbour of the southern shore. The fairies greet him well hearing he is from Englaland. He is surprised to hear them speak the speech of Ælfred of Wessex, though to one another they spoke a sweet and unknown tongue.

The Elves name him Lúthien for he is come from Luthany, as they call it (‘friend’ and ‘friendship’). Eldaros or Ælfhâm. He is sped to Rôs their capital. There he finds the Cottage of Lost Play, and Lindo and Vairë.

He tells who he is and whence, and why he has long sought for the isle (by reason of traditions in the kin of Ing), and he begs the Elves to come back to Englaland.

Here begins (as an explanation of why they cannot) the series of stories called the Book of Lost Tales.

In this passage (16) Ælfwine becomes more firmly rooted in English history: he is apparently a man of eleventh-century Wessex—but as in (15) he is of ‘the kin of Ing’. The capital of the Elves of Tol Eressëa is not Kortirion but Rôs, a name now used in a quite different application from that in citation (5), where it was a promontory of the Great Lands.

I have been unable to find any trace of the process whereby the name Lúthien came to be so differently applied afterwards (Lúthien Tinúviel). Another note of this period explains the name quite otherwise: ‘Lúthien or Lúsion was son of Telumaith (Telumektar). Ælfwine loved the sign of Orion, and made the sign, hence the fairies called him Lúthien (Wanderer).’ There is no other mention of Ælfwine’s peculiar association with Orion nor of this interpretation of the name Lúthien; and this seems to be a development that my father did not pursue.

It is convenient to give here the opening passage from the second Scheme for the Lost Tales, referred to above; this plainly belongs to the same time as the rest of these ‘Ælfwine’ notes, when the Tales had been written so far as they ever went within their first framework.

(17) Ælfwine awakens upon a sandy beach. He listens to the sea, which is far out. The tide is low and has left him.

Ælfwine meets the Elves of Rôs; finds