The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [16]
Very beautiful was Kortirion and the fairies loved it, and it became rich in song and poesy and the light of laughter; but on a time the great Faring Forth was made, and the fairies had rekindled once more the Magic Sun of Valinor but for the treason and faint hearts of Men. But so it is that the Magic Sun is dead and the Lonely Isle drawn back unto the confines of the Great Lands, and the fairies are scattered through all the wide unfriendly pathways of the world; and now Men dwell even on this faded isle, and care nought or know nought of its ancient days. Yet still there be some of the Eldar and the Noldoli‡ of old who linger in the island, and their songs are heard about the shores of the land that once was the fairest dwelling of the immortal folk.
And it seems to the fairies and it seems to me who know that town and have often trodden its disfigured ways that autumn and the falling of the leaf is the season of the year when maybe here or there a heart among Men may be open, and an eye perceive how is the world’s estate fallen from the laughter and the loveliness of old. Think on Kortirion and be sad—yet is there not hope?
Both here and in The Cottage of Lost Play there are allusions to events still in the future when Eriol came to Tol Eressëa; and though the full exposition and discussion of them must wait until the end of the Tales it needs to be explained here that ‘the Faring Forth’ was a great expedition made from Tol Eressëa for the rescue of the Elves who were still wandering in the Great Lands—cf. Lindo’s words (p. 17): ‘until such time as they fare forth to find the lost families of the kindred’. At that time Tol Eressëa was uprooted, by the aid of Ulmo, from the sea-bottom and dragged near to the western shores of the Great Lands. In the battle that followed the Elves were defeated, and fled into hiding in Tol Eressëa; Men entered the isle, and the fading of the Elves began. The subsequent history of Tol Eressëa is the history of England; and Warwick is ‘disfigured Kortirion’, itself a memory of ancient Kôr (the later Tirion upon Túna, city of the Elves in Aman; in the Lost Tales the name Kôr is used both of the city and the hill).
Inwë, referred to in The Cottage of Lost Play as ‘King of all the Eldar when they dwelt in Kôr’, is the forerunner of Ingwë King of the Vanyar Elves in The Silmarillion. In a story told later to Eriol in Tol Eressëa Inwë reappears as one of the three Elves who went first to Valinor after the Awakening, as was Ingwë in The Silmarillion; his kindred and descendants were the Inwir, of whom came Meril-i-Turinqi, the Lady of Tol Eressëa (see p. 50). Lindo’s references to Inwë’s hearing ‘the lament of the world’ (i.e. of the Great Lands) and to his leading the Eldar forth to the lands of Men (p. 16) are the germ of the story of the coming of the Hosts of the West to the assault on Thangorodrim: ‘The host of the Valar prepared for battle; and beneath their white banners marched the Vanyar, the people of Ingwë…’ (The Silmarillion, p. 251). Later in the Tales it is said to Eriol by Meril-i-Turinqi that ‘Inwë was the eldest of the Elves, and had lived yet in majesty had he not perished in that march into the world; but Ingil his son went long ago back to Valinor and is with Manwë’. In The Silmarillion, on the other hand, it is said of Ingwë that ‘he entered into Valinor [in the beginning of the days of the Elves] and sits at the feet of the Powers, and all Elves revere his name; but he came never back, nor looked again upon Middle-earth’ (p. 53).
Lindo’s words about the sojourn of Ingil in Tol Eressëa ‘after many days’, and the interpretation of the name of his town Koromas as ‘the Resting of the Exiles of Kôr’, refer to the return of the Eldar from the Great Lands after the war on Melko (Melkor, Morgoth) for the deliverance of the enslaved Noldoli. His words about his father Valwë ‘who went with Noldorin to find the Gnomes’ refer to an element in this story