The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [202]
The following passage (pp. 316–17) is not easy to interpret:
Thence [i.e. from the Bay of Faëry] slopes the world steeply beyond the Rim of Things to Valinor, that is God-home, and to the Wall and to the edge of Nothingness whereon are sown the stars.
In the Ambarkanta or ‘Shape of the World’ of the 1930s a map of the world shows the surface of the Outer Land sloping steeply westwards from the Mountains of Valinor. Conceivably it is to this slope that my father was referring here, and the Rim of Things is the great mountainwall; but this seems very improbable. There are also references in Ælfwine of England to ‘the Rim of Earth’, beyond which the dead pass (pp. 314, 322); and in an outline for the Tale of Eärendel (p. 260) Tuor’s boat ‘dips over the world’s rim’. More likely, I think, the expression refers to the rim of the horizon (‘the horizon of Men’s knowledge’, p. 313).
The expression ‘the sun was sinking to the Mountains of Valinor beyond the Western Walls’ (p. 320) I am at a loss to explain according to what has been told in the Lost Tales. A possible, though scarcely convincing, interpretation is that the sun was sinking towards Valinor, whence it would pass ‘beyond the Western Walls’ (i.e. through the Door of Night, see I.215–16).
Lastly, the suggestion (p. 313) is notable that the Elves sailing west from Lúthien might go beyond the Lonely Isle and reach even back to Valinor; on this matter see p. 280.
Before ending, there remains to discuss briefly a matter of a general nature that has many times been mentioned in the texts, and especially in these last chapters: that of the ‘diminutiveness’ of the Elves.
It is said several times in the Lost Tales that the Elves of the ancient days were of greater bodily stature than they afterwards became. Thus in The Fall of Gondolin (p. 159): ‘The fathers of the fathers of Men were of less stature than Men now are, and the children of Elfinesse of greater growth’ in an outline for the abandoned tale of Gilfanon (I.235) very similarly: ‘Men were almost of a stature at first with Elves, the fairies being far greater and Men smaller than now’ and in citation (4) in the present chapter: ‘Men and Elves were formerly of a size, though Men always larger.’ Other passages suggest that the ancient Elves were of their nature of at any rate somewhat slighter build (see pp. 142, 220).
The diminishing in the stature of the Elves of later times is very explicitly related to the coming of Men. Thus in (4) above: ‘Men spread and thrive, and the Elves of the Great Lands fade. As Men’s stature grows theirs diminishes’ and in (5): ‘ever as Men wax more powerful and numerous so the fairies fade and grow small and tenuous, filmy and transparent, but Men larger and more dense and gross. At last Men, or almost all, can no longer see the fairies.’ The clearest picture that survives of the Elves when they have ‘faded’ altogether is given in the Epilogue (p. 289):
Like strands of wind, like mystic half-transparencies, Gilfanon Lord of Tavrobel rides out tonight amid his folk, and hunts the elfin deer beneath the paling sky. A music of forgotten feet, a gleam of leaves, a sudden bending of the grass, and wistful voices murmuring on the bridge, and they are gone.
But according to the passages bearing on the later ‘Ælfwine’ version, the Elves of Tol Eressëa who had left Luthany were unfaded, or had ceased to fade. Thus in (15): ‘Tol Eressëa, whither most of the unfaded Elves have retired from the noise, war, and clamour of Men’ and (16): ‘Tol Eressëa, whither most of the fading Elves have withdrawn from the world, and there fade now no more’ also in Ælfwine of England (p. 313): ‘the unfaded Elves beyond the waters of Garsecg’.
On the other hand, when Eriol came to the Cottage of Lost Play the doorward said to him (I.14):
Small is the dwelling, but smaller still are they that dwell here—for all who enter must be very small indeed, or of their own good wish become as very little folk even as they