The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [201]
Kortirion (Mindon Gwar) is in this tale of course ‘Kortirion the Old’, the original Elvish dwelling in Lúthien, after which Kortirion in Tol Eressëa was named (see pp. 308, 310); in the same way we must suppose that the name Alalminórë (p. 313) for the region about it (‘Warwickshire’) was given anew to the midmost region of Tol Eressëa.
Turning to the question of the islands and archipelagoes in the Great Sea, what is said in Ælfwine of England may first be compared with the passages of geographical description in The Coming of the Valar (1.68) and The Coming of the Elves (I.125), which are closely similar the one to the other. From these passages we learn that there are many lands and islands in the Great Sea before the Magic Isles are reached; beyond the Magic Isles is Tol Eressëa; and beyond Tol Eressëa are the Shadowy Seas, ‘whereon there float the Twilit Isles’, the first of the Outer Lands. Tol Eressëa itself ‘is held neither of the Outer Lands or of the Great Lands’ (I.125); it is far out in mid-ocean, and ‘no land may be seen for many leagues’ sail from its cliffs’ (I.121). With this account Ælfwine of England agrees closely; but to it is added now the archipelago of the Harbourless Isles.
As I have noted before (I.137), this progression from East to West of Harbourless Isles, Magic Isles, the Lonely Isle, and then the Shadowy Seas in which were the Twilit Isles, was afterwards changed, and it is said in The Silmarillion (p. 102) that at the time of the Hiding of Valinor
the Enchanted Isles were set, and all the seas about them were filled with shadows and bewilderment. And these isles were strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south, before Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, is reached by one sailing west. Hardly might any vessel pass between them, for in the dangerous sounds the waves sighed for ever upon dark rocks shrouded in mist. And in the twilight a great weariness came upon mariners and a loathing of the sea; but all that ever set foot upon the islands were there entrapped, and slept until the Change of the World.
As a conception, the Enchanted Isles are derived primarily from the old Magic Isles, set at the time of the Hiding of Valinor and described in that Tale (I.211): ‘Ossë set them in a great ring about the western limits of the mighty sea, so that they guarded the Bay of Faëry’, and
all such as stepped thereon came never thence again, but being woven in the nets of Oinen’s hair the Lady of the Sea, and whelmed in agelong slumber that Lórien set there, lay upon the margin of the waves, as those do who being drowned are cast up once more by the movements of the sea; yet rather did these hapless ones sleep unfathomably and the dark waters laved their limbs…
Here three of Ælfwine’s companions
slept upon dim strands in deadly sleep, and their heads were pillowed on white sand and they were clad in foam, wrapped about in the agelong spells of Eglavain (p. 320).
(I do not know the meaning of the name Eglavain, but since it clearly contains Egla (Gnomish, = Elda, see I.251) it perhaps meant ‘Elfinesse’.) But the Enchanted Isles derive also perhaps from the Twilit Isles, since the Enchanted Isles were likewise in twilight and were set in the Shadowy Seas (cf. I.224); and from the Harbourless Isles as well, which, as Ælfwine was told by the Man of the Sea (p. 317), were set at the time of the Hiding of Valinor—and indeed served the same purpose as did the Magic Isles, though lying far further to the East.
Eneadur, the isle of the Ythlings (Old English ýð ‘wave’), whose life is so fully described in Ælfwine of England, seems never to have been mentioned again. Is there in Eneadur and the Shipmen