The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [80]
In the old story it is made very clear that Tol Eressëa was made fast far out in the mid-ocean, and ‘no land may be seen for many leagues’ sail from its cliffs’. That was indeed the reason for its name, which was diminished when the Lonely Isle came to be set in the Bay of Eldamar. But the words used of Tol Eressëa, ‘the Lonely Isle, that looks both west and east’, in the last chapter of The Silmarillion (relatively very little worked on and revised), undoubtedly derive from the old story; in the tale of Ælfwine of England is seen the origin of this phrase: ‘the Lonely Island looking East to the Magic Archipelago and to the lands of Men beyond it, and West into the Shadows beyond which afar off is glimpsed the Outer Land, the kingdom of the Gods’. The deep sundering of the speech of the Solosimpi from that of the other kindreds, referred to in this tale (p. 121), is preserved in The Silmarillion, but the idea arose in the days when Tol Eressëa was far further removed from Valinor.
As is very often to be observed in the evolution of these myths, an early idea survived in a wholly altered context: here, the growth of trees and plants on the westward slopes of the floating island began with its twice lying in the Bay of Faëry and catching the light of the Trees when the Teleri and Noldoli disembarked, and its greater beauty and fertility remained from those times after it was anchored far away from Valinor in the midst of the ocean; afterwards, this idea survived in the context of the light of the Trees passing through the Calacirya and falling on Tol Eressëa near at hand in the Bay of Eldamar. Similarly, it seems that Ulmo’s instruction of the Solosimpi in music and sea-lore while sitting ‘upon a headland’ of Tol Eressëa after its binding to the sea-bottom was shifted to Ossë’s instruction of the Teleri ‘in all manner of sea-lore and sea-music’ sitting on a rock off the coast of Middle-earth (The Silmarillion p. 58).
Very noteworthy is the account given here of the gap in the Mountains of Valinor. In The Silmarillion the Valar made this gap, the Calacirya or Pass of Light, only after the coming of the Eldar to Aman, for ‘even among the radiant flowers of the Tree-lit gardens of Valinor they [the Vanyar and Noldor] longed still at times to see the stars’ (p. 59); whereas in this tale it was a ‘natural’ feature, associated with a long creek thrust in from the sea.
From the account of the coming of the Elves to the shores of the Great Lands it is seen (p. 118) that Hisilómë was a region bordering the Great Sea, agreeing with its identification as the region marked g on the earliest map, see pp. 81, 112; and most remarkably we meet here the idea that Men were shut in Hisilómë by Melko, an idea that survived right through to the final form in which the Easterling Men were rewarded after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad for their treacherous service to Morgoth by being confined in Hithlum (The Silmarillion p. 195).
In the description of the hill and city of Kôr appear several features that were never lost in the later accounts of Tirion upon Túna. Cf. The Silmarillion p. 59:
Upon the crown of Túna the city of the Elves was built, the white walls and terraces of Tirion; and the highest of the towers of that city was the Tower of Ingwë, Mindon Eldaliéva, whose silver lamp shone far out into the mists of the sea.
The dust of gold and ‘magic metals’ that Aulë piled about the feet of Kôr powdered the shoes and clothing of Eärendil when he climbed the ‘long white stairs’ of Tirion (ibid. p.