• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1080 0

to the central thought of the later mythology (and in this passage, also, there is a strain of another kind of mythic conception, in the ‘conceits’ of ‘the distilling of salt humours whereof are tears’, and the black clouds woven by Nienna which settle on the world as ‘despairs and hopeless mourning, sorrows and blind grief’). Here we learn that Nienna is the judge of Men in her halls named Fui after her own name; and some she keeps in the region of Mandos (where is her hall), while the greater number board the black ship Mornië—which does no more than ferry these dead down the coast to Arvalin, where they wander in the dusk until the end of the world. But yet others are driven forth to be seized by Melko and taken to endure ‘evil days’ in Angamandi (in what sense are they dead, or mortal?); and (most extraordinary of all) there are a very few who go to dwell among the Gods in Valinor. We are far away here from the Gift of Ilúvatar, whereby Men are not bound to the world, but leave it, none know where;* and this is the true meaning of Death (for the death of the Elves is a ‘seeming death’, The Silmarillion p. 42): the final and inescapable exit.

But a little illumination, if of a very misty kind, can be shed on the idea of Men, after death, wandering in the dusk of Arvalin, where they ‘camp as they may’ and ‘wait in patience till the Great End’. I must refer here to the details of the changed names of this region, which have been given on p. 79. It is clear from the early word-lists or dictionaries of the two languages (for which see the Appendix on Names) that the meaning of Harwalin and Arvalin (and probably Habbanan also) was ‘nigh Valinor’ or ‘nigh the Valar’. From the Gnomish dictionary it emerges that the meaning of Eruman was ‘beyond the abode of the Mánir’ (i.e. south of Taniquetil, where dwelt Manwë’s spirits of the air), and this dictionary also makes it clear that the word Mánir was related to Gnomish manos, defined as ‘a spirit that has gone to the Valar or to Erumáni’, and mani ‘good, holy’. The significance of these etymological connections is very unclear.

But there is also a very early poem on the subject of this region. This, according to my father’s notes, was written at Brocton Camp, Staffordshire, in December 1915 or at Étaples in June 1916; and it is entitled Habbanan beneath the Stars. In one of the three texts (in which there are no variants) there is a title in Old English: pa gebletsode [‘blessed’] felda under pam steorrum, and in two of them Habbanan in the title was emended to Eruman; in the third Eruman stood from the first. The poem is preceded by a short prose preamble.

Habbanan beneath the Stars

Now Habbanan is that region where one draws nigh to the places that are not of Men. There is the air very sweet and the sky very great by reason of the broadness of the Earth.

In Habbanan beneath the skies

Where all roads end however long

There is a sound of faint guitars

And distant echoes of a song,

For there men gather into rings

Round their red fires while one voice sings—

And all about is night.

Not night as ours, unhappy folk,

Where nigh the Earth in hazy bars,

A mist about the springing of the stars,

There trails a thin and wandering smoke

Obscuring with its veil half-seen

The great abysmal still Serene.

A globe of dark glass faceted with light

Wherein the splendid winds have dusky flight;

Untrodden spaces of an odorous plain

That watches for the moon that long has lain

And caught the meteors’ fiery rain—

Such there is night.

There on a sudden did my heart perceive

That they who sang about the Eve,

Who answered the bright-shining stars

With gleaming music of their strange guitars,

These were His wandering happy sons

Encamped upon those aëry leas

Where God’s unsullied garment runs

In glory down His mighty knees.

A final evidence comes from the early Qenya word-list. The original layer of entries in this list dates (as I believe, see the Appendix on Names) from 1915, and among these original entries, under a root mana (from which Manwë is derived), is given a