The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [79]
The lord of the Teleri (afterwards the Vanyar) was (Ing >) Inwë, here called Isil Inwë, named in Gnomish (Gim-githil >) Inwithiel. His son, who built the great tower of Kortirion, was (Ingilmo >) Ingil. The ‘royal clan’ of the Teleri were the Inwir. Thus:
In The Silmarillion (p. 48) is described the second star-making of Varda before and in preparation for the coming of the Elves:
Then Varda went forth from the council, and she looked out from the height of Taniquetil, and beheld the darkness of Middle-earth beneath the innumerable stars, faint and far. Then she began a great labour, greatest of all the works of the Valar since their coming into Arda. She took the silver dews from the vats of Telperion, and therewith she made new stars and brighter against the coming of the First-born…
In the earliest version we see the conception already present that the stars were created in two separate acts—that a new star-making by Varda celebrated the coming of the Elves, even though here the Elves were already awakened; and that the new stars were derived from the liquid light fallen from the Moon-tree, Silpion. The passage just cited from The Silmarillion goes on to tell that it was at the time of the second star-making that Varda ‘high in the north as a challenge to Melkor set the crown of seven mighty stars to swing, Valacirca, the Sickle of the Valar and sign of doom’ but here this is denied, and a special origin is claimed for the Great Bear, whose stars were not of Varda’s contriving but were sparks that escaped from Aulë’s forge. In the little notebook mentioned on p. 23, which is full of disjointed jottings and hastily noted projects, a different form of this myth appears:
The Silver Sickle
The seven butterflies
Aulë was making a silver sickle. Melko interrupted his work telling him a lie concerning the lady Palúrien. Aulë so wroth that he broke the sickle with a blow. Seven sparks leapt up and winged into the heavens. Varda caught them and gave them a place in the heavens as a sign of Palúrien’s honour. They fly now ever in the shape of a sickle round and round the pole.
There can be no doubt, I think, that this note is earlier than the present text.
The star Morwinyon, ‘who blazes above the world’s edge in the west’, is Arcturus; see the Appendix on Names. It is nowhere explained why Morwinyon-Arcturus is mythically conceived to be always in the west.
Turning now to the Great March and the crossing of the ocean, the origin of Tol Eressëa in the island on which Ossë drew the Gods to the western lands at the time of the fall of the Lamps (see p. 70) was necessarily lost afterwards with the loss of that story, and Ossë ceased to have any proprietary right upon it. The idea that the Eldar came to the shores of the Great Lands in three large and separated companies (in the order Teleri—Noldori—Solosimpi, as later Vanyar—Noldor—Teleri) goes back to the beginning; but here the first people and the second people each crossed the ocean alone, whereas afterwards they crossed together.
In The Silmarillion (p. 58) ‘many years’ elapsed before Ulmo returned for the last of the three kindreds, the Teleri, so long a time that they came to love the coasts of Middle-earth, and Ossë was able to persuade some of them to remain (Círdan the Shipwright and the Elves of the Falas, with their havens at Brithombar and Eglarest). Of this there is no trace in the earliest account, though the germ of the idea of the long wait of the lastcomers for Ulmo’s return is present. In the published version the cause of Ossë’s rage against the transportation of the Eldar on the floating island has disappeared, and his motive for anchoring the island in the ocean is wholly different: indeed he did this at the bidding of Ulmo (ibid. p. 59), who was opposed to the summoning of the Eldar to Valinor in any case.