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This poem, and this entry in the word-list, offer a rare and very suggestive glimpse of the mythic conception in its earliest phase; for here ideas that are drawn from Christian theology are explicitly present. It is disconcerting to perceive that they are still present in this tale. For in the tale there is an account of the fates of dead Men after judgement in the black hall of Fui Nienna. Some (‘and these are the many’) are ferried by the death-ship to (Habbanan) Eruman, where they wander in the dusk and wait in patience till the Great End; some are seized by Melko and tormented in Angamandi ‘the Hells of Iron’ and some few go to dwell with the Gods in Valinor. Taken with the poem and the evidence of the early ‘dictionaries’, can this be other than a reflection of Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven?

This becomes all the more extraordinary if we refer to the concluding passage of the tale of The Music of the Ainur (p. 59), where Ilúvatar said: ‘To Men I will give a new gift and a greater’, the gift that they might ‘fashion and design their life beyond even the original Music of the Ainur that is as fate to all things else’, and where it is said that ‘it is one with this gift of power that the Children of Men dwell only for a short time in the world alive, yet do not perish utterly for ever…’ In the final form given in The Silmarillion pp. 41–2 this passage was not very greatly changed. The early version does not, it is true, have the sentences:

But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.

Even so, it seems clear that this central idea, the Gift of Death, was already present.

This matter I must leave, as a conundrum that I cannot solve. The most obvious explanation of the conflict of ideas within these tales would be to suppose The Music of the Ainur later than The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor; but as I have said (p. 61) all the appearances are to the contrary.

Lastly may be noticed the characteristic linguistic irony whereby Eruman ultimately became Araman. For Arvalin meant simply ‘near Valinor’, and it was the other name Eruman that had associations with spirits of the dead; but Araman almost certainly simply means ‘beside Aman’. And yet the same element man- ‘good’ remains, for Aman was derived from it (‘the Unmarred State’).

Two minor matters in the conclusion of the tale remain to be noticed. Here Nornorë is the Herald of the Gods; afterwards this was Fionwë (later Eonwë), see p. 63. And in the reference to ‘that low place amid the hills where Valinor may just be glimpsed’, near to Taniquetil, we have the first mention of the gap in the Mountains of Valinor where was the hill of the city of the Elves.

On blank pages near the end of the text of this tale my father wrote a list of secondary names of the Valar (as Manwë Súlimo, etc.). Some of these names appear in the text of the Tales; those that do not are given in the Appendix on Names under the primary names. It emerges from this list that Ómar-Amillo is the twin of Salmar-Noldorin (they are named as brothers in the tale, p. 75); that Nielíqui (p. 75) is the daughter of Oromë and Vána; and that Melko has a son (‘by Ulbandi’) called Kosomot: this, it will emerge later, was Gothmog Lord of Balrogs, whom Ecthelion slew in Gondolin.

IV

THE CHAINING OF MELKO

Following the end of Rúmil’s tale of The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor there is a long interlude before the next one, though the manuscript continues without even interrupting the paragraph. But on the cover of the notebook The Chaining of Melko is given as a separate title, and I have adopted this. The text continues in ink over an erased pencil manuscript.

That night Eriol heard again in his sleep the music that had so moved him on the first night; and the next morning he went again into the gardens early. There he met Vairë, and she called him Eriol: