The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [150]
2 This paragraph is marked with queries.
3 The word may be read equally well as ‘dim’ or ‘dun’.
4 The original reading here was: ‘and few of his folk went with him, and this Tû forbade to his folk, fearing the wrath of Ilúvatar and Manwë yet did’ (sc. curiosity overcome Nuin, etc.).
5 Earlier in the Tales, ‘the Lost Elves’ are those who were lost from the great journey and wandered in Hisilómë (see p. 118).
6 In the tale the ‘fairies’ of Tû’s dominion (i.e. the Dark Elves) are given the name Hisildi, the twilight people; in outlines A and B, in addition to Hisildi, other names are given: Humarni, Kaliondi, Lómëarni.
7 Cf. also Sador’s words to Túrin in his boyhood (Unfinished Tales p. 61): ‘A darkness lies behind us, and out of it few tales have come. The fathers of our fathers may have had things to tell, but they did not tell them. Even their names are forgotten. The Mountains stand between us and the life that they came from, flying from no man now knows what.’
8 Cf. The Silmarillion p. 104: ‘It is told that ere long they met Dark Elves in many places, and were befriended by them; and Men became the companions and disciples in their childhood of these ancient folk, wanderers of the Elven-race who never set out upon the paths to Valinor, and knew of the Valar only as a rumour and a distant name.’
9 Above Ermon is written, to all appearance, the Old English word Æsc (‘ash’). It seems conceivable that this is an anglicizing of Old Norse Askr (‘ash’), in the northern mythology the name of the first man, who with the first woman (Embla) were made by the Gods out of two trees that they found on the seashore (Völuspá strophe 17; Snorra Edda, Gylfaginning §8).
10 The text has here the bracketed word ‘(Gongs)’. This might be thought to be a name for the Kaukareldar or ‘false-fairies’, but in the Gnomish word-list Gong is defined as ‘one of a tribe of the Orcs, a goblin’.
11 The cutting out of Nólemë’s heart by the Orcs, and its recapture by Turgon his son, is referred to in an isolated early note, which says also that Turgon encased it in gold; and the emblem of the King’s Folk in Gondolin, the Scarlet Heart, is mentioned in the tale of The Fall of Gondolin.
12 Cf. p. 167: ‘Turondo son of Nólemë was not yet upon the Earth.’ Turgon was the Gnomish name of Turondo (p. 115). In the later story Turgon was a leader of the Noldor from Valinor.
13 After the story was changed, and the founding of Gondolin was placed far earlier, the concluding part of The Silmarillion was never brought into harmony; and this was a main source of difficulty in the preparation of the published work.
APPENDIX
NAMES IN THE LOST TALES-PART I
There exist two small books, contemporary with the Lost Tales, which contain the first ‘lexicons’ of the Elvish languages; and both of them are very difficult documents.
One is concerned with the language called, in the book, Qenya, and I shall refer to this book as ‘QL’ (Qenya Lexicon). A good proportion of the entries in the first half of the alphabet were made at one time, when the work was first begun; these were very carefully written, though the pencil is now faint. Among these original entries is this group:
Lemin ‘five’
Lempe ‘ten’
Leminkainen ‘23’
The choice of ‘23’ suggests that this was my father’s age at the time, and that the book was begun therefore in 1915. This is supported by some of the statements made in the first layer of entries about certain figures of the mythology, statements that are at odds with everything that is said elsewhere, and which give glimpses of a stage even earlier than the Lost Tales.
The book naturally continued in use, and many entries (virtually all of those in the second part of the alphabet) are later than this first layer, though nothing more definite can be said than that all entries belong to the period of (or not long preceding) the Lost Tales.
The words in QL are arranged according to ‘roots’, and a note at the beginning states:
Roots are in capitals, and are not words in use at