• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1059 0

Still are there the lost bands too that dwell wandering sadly in the Great Lands, and maybe they speak very strangely now, for it was ages gone that that march was made from Kôr, and as I hold ’twas but the long wandering of the Noldoli about the Earth and the black ages of their thraldom while their kin dwelt yet in Valinor that caused the deep sundering of their speech. Akin nonetheless be assuredly Gnome-speech and Elfin of the Eldar, as my lore teacheth me—but lo! I weary you again. Never have I found another ear yet in the world that grew not tired ere long of such discourse. “Tongues and speeches,” they will say, “one is enough for me”—and thus said Littleheart the Gong-warden once upon a time: “Gnome-speech,” said he, “is enough for me—did not that one Eärendel and Tuor and Bronweg my father (that mincingly ye miscall Voronwë) speak it and no other?” Yet he had to learn the Elfin in the end, or be doomed either to silence or to leave Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva—and neither fate would his heart suffer. Lo! now he is chirping Eldar like a lady of the Inwir, even Meril-i-Turinqi our queen herself—Manwë care for her. But even these be not all—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. Much of it I learnt in Kôr, a lifetime gone, of the goodness of Aulë, and thereby I know many matters: very many matters.’

‘Then,’ quoth Eriol, ‘maybe you can tell me of things that I greatly desire to know since the words by the Tale-fire yester-eve. Who be the Valar—Manwë, Aulë, and the ones ye name—and wherefore came ye Eldar from that home of loveliness in Valinor?’

Now came those two to a green arbour and the sun was up and warm, and the birds sang mightily, but the lawns were spread with gold. Then Rúmil sat upon a seat there of carven stone grown with moss, and said he: ‘Very mighty are the things that you ask, and their true answer delves beyond the uttermost confines of the wastes of time, whither even the sight of Rúmil the aged of the Noldoli may not see; and all the tales of the Valar and the Elves are so knit together that one may scarce expound any one without needing to set forth the whole of their great history.’

‘Yet’, said Eriol, ‘tell me, Rúmil, I beg, some of what you know even of the first beginnings, that I may begin to understand those things that are told me in this isle.’

But Rúmil said: ‘Ilüvatar was the first beginning, and beyond that no wisdom of the Valar or of Eldar or of Men can go.’

‘Who was Ilúvatar?’ said Eriol. ‘Was he of the Gods?’

‘Nay,’ said Rúmil, ‘that he was not, for he made them. Ilúvatar is the Lord for Always who dwells beyond the world; who made it and is not of it or in it, but loves it.’

‘This have I never heard elsewhere,’ said Eriol.

‘That may be,’ said Rúmil, ‘for ’tis early days in the world of Men as yet, nor is the Music of the Ainur much spoken of.’

‘Tell me,’ said Eriol, ‘for I long to learn, what was the Music of the Ainur?’

Commentary on the Link between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur

Thus it was that the Ainulindalë was first to be heard by mortal ears, as Eriol sat in a sunlit garden in Tol Eressëa. Even after Eriol (or Ælfwine) had fallen away, Rúmil remained, the great Noldorin sage of Tirion ‘who first achieved fitting signs for the recording of speech and song’ (The Silmarillion p. 63), and The Music of the Ainur continued to be ascribed to him, though invested with the gravity of a remote time he moved far away from the garrulous and whimsical philologist of Kortirion. It is to be noted that in this account Rúmil had been a slave under Melko.

Here the Exile of the Noldor from Valinor appears, for it is to this that Rúmil’s words about the march from Kôr undoubtedly refer, rather than to Inwë’s ‘march into the world’ (pp. 16, 26); and something is said also of the languages, and of those who spoke them.

In this