• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1026 0

to Manwë, demanding that the Gods ferry them back to the Great Lands, was excised, and with it Manwë’s remarkable instruction to them concerning the coming of Men—and his expressed reluctance to have the Eldar return to ‘the world’ while Men were still in their infancy. No such idea is represented in The Silmarillion as being in Manwë’s mind (nor is there any suggestion that Manwë’s knowledge was so great); and indeed, where in the old story it was Manwë’s very description of Men and account of his policy with regard to them that gave rise to Fëanor’s rhetoric against them, and which gave strong colour to his assertion of the Valar’s true motive for bringing the Eldar to Valinor, in The Silmarillion (p. 68) these ideas are a part of the lies of Melkor (I have noticed above that in Melko’s persuasions of the Noldoli in the tale there is no reference to the coming of Men).

An otherwise unknown element in the Music of the Ainur is revealed in Manwë’s words: that the world shall come in the end for a great while under the sway of Men. In the original version there are several suggestions in reflective asides that all was fated: so here ‘the jealousy of Elves and Men’ is seen as perhaps a necessary part of the unfolding of the history of the world, and earlier in the tale (p. 142) it is asked: ‘Who shall say but that all these deeds, even the seeming needless evil of Melko, were but a portion of the destiny of old?’

But for all the radical changes in the narrative the characteristic note of Fëanor’s rhetoric remained; his speech to the Noldoli of Kôr rises in the same rhythms as his speech by torchlight to the Noldor of Tirion (The Silmarillion pp. 82–3).

In the story of Melko and Ungoliont it is seen that essential elements were present ab initio: the doubt as to her origin, her dwelling in the desolate regions in the south of the Outer Lands, her sucking in of light to bring forth webs of darkness; her alliance with Melko, his rewarding her with the gems stolen from the Noldoli (though this was differently treated later), the piercing of the Trees by Melko and Ungoliont’s sucking up the light; and the great hunt mounted by the Valar, which failed of its object through darkness and mist, allowing Melko to escape out of Valinor by the northward ways.

Within this structure there are as almost always a great many points of difference between the first story and the later versions. In The Silmarillion (p. 73) Melkor went to Avathar because he knew of Ungoliant’s dwelling there, whereas in the tale she found him wandering there seeking a way of escape. In the tale her origin is unknown, and though this element may be said to have remained in The Silmarillion (‘The Eldar know not whence she came’, ibid.), by the device of ‘Some have said…’ a clear explanation is in fact given: she was a being from ‘before the world’, perverted by Melkor, who had been her lord, though she denied him. The original idea of ‘the primeval spirit Móru’ (p. 151) is made explicit in an entry in the early word-list of the Gnomish language, where the name Muru is defined as ‘a name of the Primeval Night personified as Gwerlum or Gungliont’.*

The old story markedly lacks the quality of the description in The Silmarillion of the descent of Melkor and Ungoliant from Mount Hyarmentir into the plain of Valinor; and there too the great festival of the Valar and Eldar was in progress at the time: here it is long since over. In The Silmarillion the assault on the Trees came at the time of the mingling of the lights (p. 75), while here Silpion was in full bloom; and the detail of the account of the destruction of the Trees is rendered quite different through the presence of the Gnome Daurin, afterwards abandoned without trace. Thus in the old story it is not actually said that Ungoliont drank the light of Silpion, but only that the tree died from her poison on Daurin’s blade, with which Melko stabbed its trunk; and in The Silmarillion Ungoliant went to ‘the Wells of Varda’ and drank them dry also. It is puzzling that the Gnome was first named Fëanor, since he was