The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [140]
Then was sung a song of ancient days that the Eldar made when they dwelt beneath the wing of Manwë and sang on the great road from Kôr to the city of the Gods (see p. 143–4).
It was now six months since Eriol went to visit Meril-i-Turinqi beseeching a draught of limpë (see p. 96–8), and that desire had for a time fallen from him; but on this night he said to Lindo: ‘Would I might drink with thee!’ To this Lindo replied that Eriol should not ‘think to overpass the bounds that Ilúvatar hath set’, but also that he should consider that ‘not yet hath Meril denied thee thy desire for ever’. Then Eriol was sad, for he guessed in his deepest heart that ‘the savour of limpë and the blessedness of the Elves might not be his for ever’.
The text ends with Ailios preparing to tell a tale:
‘I tell but as I may those things I have seen and known of very ancient days within the world when the Sun rose first, and there was travail and much sorrow, for Melko reigned unhampered and the power and strength that went forth from Angamandi reached almost to the ends of the great Earth.’
It is clear that no more was written. If it had been completed it would have led into the opening of Turambar cited above (‘When then Ailios had spoken his fill…’); and it would have been central to the history of the Great Lands, telling of the coming of the Noldoli from Valinor, the Awakening of Men, and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.
The text just described, linking The Hiding of Valinor to Ailios’ unwritten tale, was not struck out, and my father later wrote on it: ‘To come after the Tale of Eärendel and before Eriol fares to Tavrobel—after Tavrobel he drinks of limpë.’ This is puzzling, since he cannot have intended the story of the Coming of Men to follow that of Eärendel; but it may be that he intended only to use the substance of this short text, describing the Turuhalmë ceremonies, without its ending.
However this may be, he devised a new framework for the telling of these tales, though he did not carry it through, and the revised account of the arranging of the next tale-telling has appeared in the Tale of the Sun and Moon, where after Gilfanon’s interruption (p. 189) it was agreed that three nights after that on which The Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor were told by Lindo and Vairë there should be a more ceremonial occasion, on which Gilfanon should relate ‘the travail of the Noldoli and the coming of Mankind’.
Gilfanon’s tale follows on, with consecutive page-numbers, from the second version of Vairë’s tale of The Hiding of Valinor; but Gilfanon here tells it on the night following, not three days later. Unhappily Gilfanon was scarcely better served than Ailios had been, for if Ailios scarcely got started Gilfanon stops abruptly after a very few pages. What there is of his tale is very hastily written in pencil, and it is quite clear that it ends where it does because my father wrote no more of it. It was here that my father abandoned the Lost Tales—or, more accurately, abandoned those that still waited to be written; and the effects of this withdrawal never ceased to be felt throughout the history of ‘The Silmarillion’. The major stories to follow Gilfanon’s, those of Beren and Tinúviel, Túrin Turambar, the Fall of Gondolin, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, had been written and (in the first three cases) rewritten; and the last of these was to lead on to ‘the great tale of Eärendel’. But that was not even begun. Thus the Lost Tales lack their middle, and their end.
I give here the text of Gilfanon’s Tale so far as it goes.
Now when Vairë made an end, said Gilfanon: ‘Complain not if on the morrow I weave a long tale, for the things I tell of cover many years of time, and I have waited long to tell them,’ and Lindo laughed, saying he might tell to his heart’s desire all that he knew.
But on the morrow Gilfanon sat in