• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 982 0

on the other hand to combine them all into one would be both inaccurate and confusing. But since A and B are very close they can be readily combined into one; and I follow this account by that of D, with C in so far as it adds anything of note, And since in the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale the outlines are clearly divided into two parts, the Awakening of Men and the history of the Gnomes in the Great Lands, I treat the narrative in each case in these two parts, separately.

There is no need to give the material of the outlines in the opening passage of Gilfanon’s Tale that was actually written, but there are some points of difference between the outlines and the tale to be noted.

A and B call the wizard-king Túvo, not Tû in C he is not named, and in D he is Tû ‘the fay’, as in the tale. Evil associations of this being appear in A: ‘Melko meets with Túvo in the halls of Mandos during his enchainment. He teaches Túvo much black magic.’ This was struck out, and nothing else is said of the matter; but both A and B say that it was after the escape of Melko and the ruin of the Trees that Túvo entered the world and ‘set up a wizard kingship in the middle lands’.

In A, only, the Elves who remained behind in Palisor are said to have been of the people of the Teleri (the later Vanyar). This passage of Gilfanon’s Tale is the first indication we have had that there were any such Elves (see p. 131); and I incline to think that the conception of the Dark Elves (the later Avari) who never undertook the journey from the Waters of Awakening only emerged in the course of the composition of the Lost Tales. But the name Qendi, which here first appears in the early narratives, is used somewhat ambiguously. In the fragment of the written tale, the words ‘those who remained behind are they whom many call the Qendi, the lost fairies of the world,5 but ye Elves of Kôr name Ilkorins’ seem an altogether explicit statement that Qendirr="Dark" Elves; but a little later Gilfanon speaks of ‘the Eldar or Qendi’, and in the outline B it is said that ‘a number of the original folk called Qendi (the name Eldar being given by the Gods) remained in Palisor’. These latter statements seem to show equally clearly that Qendi was intended as a term for all Elves.

The contradiction is however only apparent. Qendi was indeed the original name of all the Elves, and Eldar the name given by the Gods and adopted by the Elves of Valinor; those who remained behind preserved the old name Qendi. The early word-list of the Gnomish tongue states explicitly that the name Elda was given to the ‘fairies’ by the Valar and was ‘adopted largely by them; the Ilkorins still preserved the old name Qendi, and this was adopted as the name of the reunited clans in Tol Eressëa’.6

In both A and B it is added that ‘the Gods spoke not among themselves the tongues of the Eldalië, but could do so, and they comprehended all tongues. The wiser of the Elves learned the secret speech of the Gods and long treasured it, but after the coming to Tol Eressëa none remembered it save the Inwir, and now that knowledge has died save in the house of Meril.’ With this compare Rúmil’s remarks to Eriol, p. 48: ‘There is beside the secret tongue in which the Eldar wrote many poesies and books of wisdom and histories of old and earliest things, and yet speak not. This tongue do only the Valar use in their high counsels, and not many of the Eldar of these days may read it or solve its characters.’

Nuin’s words to Tû on the stature of the sleepers in the Vale of Murmenalda are curious. In A is added: ‘Men were almost of a stature at first with Elves, the fairies being far greater and Men smaller than now. As the power of Men has grown the fairies have dwindled and Men waxed somewhat.’ Other early statements indicate that Men and Elves were originally of very similar stature, and that the diminishing in that of the Elves was closely related to the coming of, and the dominance of, Men. Nuin’s words are therefore puzzling, especially since in A they immediately precede the comment on the original similarity of size;