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There is a good deal of uncertainty, expressed by queries, in the formulation of the roots, and in the ascription of words to one root or another, as my father moved among different etymological ideas; and in some cases it seems clear that the word was ‘there’, so to speak, but its etymology remained to be certainly defined, and not vice versa. The roots themselves are often difficult to represent, since certain consonants carry diacritic marks that are not defined. The notes on names that follow inevitably give a slightly more positive impression than does the book itself.

The other book is a dictionary of the Gnomish language, Goldogrin, and I shall refer to this as ‘GL’ (Goldogrin, or Gnomish, Lexicon). This is not arranged historically, by roots (though occasionally roots are given), but rather, in plan at least, as a conventional dictionary; and it contains a remarkable number of words. The book is entitled i·Lam na·Ngoldathon (i.e. ‘the tongue of the Gnomes’): Goldogrin, with a date: 1917. Written beneath the title is Eriol Sarothron (i.e. ‘Eriol the Voyager’), who else is called Angol but in his own folk Ottor Wfre (see p. 23).*

The great difficulty in this case is the intensity with which my father used this diminutive book, emending, rejecting, adding, in layer upon layer, so that in places it has become very hard to interpret. Moreover later changes to the forms in one entry were not necessarily made in related entries; thus the stages of a rapidly expanding linguistic conception are very confused in their representation. These little books were working materials, by no means the setting-out of finished ideas (it is indeed quite clear that GL in particular closely accompanied the actual composition of the Tales). Further, the languages changed even while the first ‘layer’ was being entered in GL; for example, the word mô ‘sheep’ was changed later to moth, but later in the dictionary uimoth ‘sheep of the waves’ was the form first written.

It is immediately obvious that an already extremely sophisticated and phonetically intricate historical structure lies behind the languages at this stage; but it seems that (unhappily and frustratingly) very little indeed in the way of phonological or grammatical description now survives from those days. I have found nothing, for instance, that sets out even in the sketchiest way the phonological relations between the two languages. Some early phonological description does exist for Qenya, but this became through later alterations and substitutions such a baffling muddle (while the material is in any case intrinsically extremely complex) that I have been unable to make use of it.

To attempt to use later materials for the elucidation of the linguistic ideas of the earliest period would in this book be quite impractical. But the perusal of these two vocabularies shows in the clearest possible way how deeply involved were the developments in the mythology and in the languages, and it would be seriously misleading to publish the Lost Tales without some attempt to show the etymological connections of the names that appear in them. I give therefore as much information, derived from these books, as is possible, but without any speculation beyond them. It is evident, for instance, that a prime element in the etymological constructions was slight variation in ancient ‘roots’ (caused especially by differences in the formation of consonants) that in the course of ages yielded very complex semantic situations; or again, that an old vocalic ‘ablaut’ (variation, in length or quality, of vowels in series) was present; but I have thought it best merely to try to present the content of the dictionaries as clearly as I can.

It is noteworthy that my father introduced a kind of ‘historical punning’ here and there: so for instance the root SAHA ‘be hot’ yields (beside saiwa ‘hot’ or sára ‘fiery’) Sahóra ‘the South’, and from NENE ‘flow’ come nen ‘river’, nénu ‘yellow water-lily’, and nénuvar ‘pool