The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [25]
THE MUSIC OF THE AINUR
In another notebook identical to that in which The Cottage of Lost Play was written out by my mother, there is a text in ink in my father’s hand (and all the other texts of the Lost Tales are in his hand, save for a fair copy of The Fall of Gondolin*) entitled: Link between Cottage of Lost Play and (Tale 2) Music of Ainur. This follows on directly from Vairë’s last words to Eriol on p. 20, and in turn links on directly to The Music of the Ainur (in a third notebook identical to the other two). The only indication of date for the Link and the Music (which were, I think, written at the same time) is a letter of my father’s of July 1964 (Letters p. 345), in which he said that while in Oxford ‘employed on the staff of the then still incomplete great Dictionary’ he ‘wrote a cosmogonical myth, “The Music of the Ainur”’. He took up the post on the Oxford Dictionary in November 1918 and relinquished it in the spring of 1920 (Biography pp. 99, 102). If his recollection was correct, and there is no evidence to set against it, some two years or more elapsed between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur.
The Link between the two exists in only one version, for the text in ink was written over a draft in pencil that was wholly erased. In this case I follow the Link with a brief commentary, before giving The Music of the Ainur.
‘But,’ said Eriol, ‘still are there many things that remain dark to me. Indeed I would fain know who be these Valar; are they the Gods?’
‘So be they,’ said Lindo, ‘though concerning them Men tell many strange and garbled tales that are far from the truth, and many strange names they call them that you will not hear here’ but Vairë said: ‘Nay then, Lindo, be not drawn into more tale-telling tonight, for the hour of rest is at hand, and for all his eagerness our guest is way-worn. Send now for the candles of sleep, and more tales to his head’s filling and his heart’s satisfying the wanderer shall have on the morrow.’ But to Eriol she said: ‘Think not that you must leave our house tomorrow of need; for none do so—nay, all may remain while a tale remains to tell which they desire to hear.’
Then said Eriol that all desire of faring abroad had left his heart and that to be a guest there a while seemed to him fairest of all things. Thereupon came in those that bore the candles of sleep, and each of that company took one, and two of the folk of the house bade Eriol follow them. One of these was the door-ward who had opened to his knocking before. He was old in appearance and grey of locks, and few of that folk were so; but the other had a weather-worn face and blue eyes of great merriment, and was very slender and small, nor might one say if he were fifty or ten thousand. Now that was Ilverin or Littleheart. These two guided him down the corridor of broidered stories to a great stair of oak, and up this he followed them. It wound up and round until it brought them to a passage lit by small pendent lamps of coloured glass, whose swaying cast a spatter of bright hues upon the floors and hangings.
In this passage the guides turned round a sudden corner, then going down a few dark steps flung open a door before him. Now bowing they wished him good sleep, and said Littleheart: ‘dreams of fair winds and good voyages in the great seas’, and then they left him; and he found that he stood in a chamber that was small, and had a bed of fairest linen and deep pillows set nigh the window—and here the night seemed warm and fragrant, although he had but now come from rejoicing in the blaze of the Tale-fire logs. Here was all the furniture of dark wood, and as his great candle flickered its soft rays worked a magic with the room, till it seemed to him that sleep was the best of all delights, but that fair chamber the best of all for sleep. Ere he laid him down however Eriol opened the window and scent of flowers gusted in therethrough, and a glimpse he caught of a shadow-filled garden that was full of trees, but its spaces were barred with silver lights and black shadows by reason of the