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19 This concluding passage differs in several points from the original version. In that, Ailios appears again, for Gilfanon; the ‘great foreboding’ was spoken among the Gods ‘when they designed first to build the Door of Night’ and when Ilinsor has followed Urwendi through the Gates ‘Melko will destroy the Gates and raise the Eastern Wall beyond the [?skies] and Urwendi and Ilinsor shall be lost’.

Changes made to names in

The Hiding of Valinor

Vansamírin < Samirien’s road (Samírien occurs as the name of the Feast of Double Mirth, p. 143–4).

Kôr < Kortirion (p. 207). Afterwards, though Kôr was not struck out, my father wrote above it Tûn, with a query, and the same at the occurrence of Kôr on p. 210. This is the first appearance in the text of the Lost Tales of this name, which ultimately gave rise to Túna (the hill on which Tirion was built).

Ainairos Moritarnon, Tarn Fui The original draft of the tale has ‘Móritar or Tarna Fui’.

Sári The original draft has Kalavénë (see p. 198 and note 13 above). At the first occurrence of the names of the three Sons of Time the sequence of forms was:

Danuin < Danos < an illegible form Dan..

Ranuin < Ranos < Ranoth < Rôn

Fanuin < Lathos < Lathweg

Throughout the remainder of the passage: Danuin < Dana; Ranuin < Ranoth; Fanuin < Lathweg.

Aluin < Lúmin.

Commentary on

The Hiding of Valinor

The account of the Council of the Valar and Eldar in the opening of this tale (greatly developed from the preliminary draft given in note 2) is remarkable and important in the history of my father’s ideas concerning the Valar and their motives. In The Silmarillion (p. 102) the Hiding of Valinor sprang from the assault of Melkor on the steersman of the Moon:

But seeing the assault upon Tilion the Valar were in doubt, fearing what the malice and cunning of Morgoth might yet contrive against them. Being unwilling to make war upon him in Middle-earth, they remembered nonetheless the ruin of Almaren; and they resolved that the like should not befall Valinor.

A little earlier in The Silmarillion (p. 99) reasons are given for the unwillingness of the Valar to make war:

It is said indeed that, even as the Valar made war upon Melkor for the sake of the Quendi, so now for that time they forbore for the sake of the Hildor, the Aftercomers, the younger Children of Ilúvatar. For so grievous had been the hurts of Middle-earth in the war upon Utumno that the Valar feared lest even worse should now befall; whereas the Hildor should be mortal, and weaker than the Quendi to withstand fear and tumult. Moreover it was not revealed to Manwë where the beginning of Men should be, north, south, or east. Therefore the Valar sent forth light, but made strong the land of their dwelling.

In The Silmarillion there is no vestige of the tumultuous council, no suggestion of a disagreement among the Valar, with Manwë, Varda and Ulmo actively disapproving the work and holding aloof from it; no mention, equally, of any pleading for pity on the Noldor by Ulmo, nor of Manwë’s disgust. In the old story it was the hostility of some of the Eldar towards the Noldoli, led by an Elf of Kópas (Alqualondë)—who likewise disappeared utterly: in the later account there is never a word about the feelings of the Elves of Valinor for the exiled Noldor—that was the starting-point of the Hiding of Valinor; and it is most curious to observe that the action of the Valar here sprang essentially from indolence mixed with fear. Nowhere does my father’s early conception of the fainéant Gods appear more clearly. He held moreover quite explicitly that their failure to make war upon Melko then and there was a deep error, diminishing themselves, and (as it appears) irreparable. In his later writing the Hiding of Valinor remained indeed, but only as a great fact of mythological antiquity; there is no whisper of its condemnation.

The blocking-up and utter isolation of Valinor from the world without is perhaps even more strongly emphasized in the early