Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [152]
Late and fragmentary notes go some way to explaining these references. Thus in a discussion of linguistic and political interrelations in Middle-earth (dating from 1969 or later) there is a passing reference to the fact that in the days of the earlier settlements of Númenor the shores of the Bay of Belfalas were still mainly desolate ‘except for a haven and small settlement of Elves at the south of the confluence of Morthond and Ringló’ (i.e. just north of Dol Amroth).
This, according to the traditions of Dol Amroth, had been established by seafaring Sindar from the west havens of Beleriand who fled in three small ships when the power of Morgoth overwhelmed the Eldar and the Atani; but it was later increased by adventurers of the Silvan Elves seeking for the sea who came down Anduin.
The Silvan Elves (it is remarked here) ‘were never wholly free of an unquiet and a yearning for the Sea which at times drove some of them to wander from their homes’. To relate this story of the ‘three small ships’ to the traditions recorded in The Silmarillion we would probably have to assume that they escaped from Brithombar or Eglarest (the Havens of the Falas on the west coast of Beleriand) when they were destroyed in the year after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (The Silmarillion p. 196), but that whereas Círdan and Gil-galad made a refuge on the Isle of Balar these three ships’ companies sailed far further south down the coasts, to Belfalas.
But a quite different account, making the establishment of the Elvish haven later, is given in an unfinished scrap on the origin of the name Belfalas. It is said here that while the element Bel is certainly derived from a pre-Númenórean name, its source was in fact Sindarin. The note peters out before any further information is given about Bel -, but the reason given for its Sindarin origin is that ‘there was one small but important element in Gondor of quite exceptional kind: an Eldarin settlement’. After the breaking of Thangorodrim the Elves of Beleriand, if they did not take ship over the Great Sea or remain in Lindon, wandered east over the Blue Mountains into Eriador; but there appears nonetheless to have been a group of Sindar who in the beginning of the Second Age went south. They were a remnant of the people of Doriath who harboured still their grudge against the Noldor; and having remained a while at the Grey Havens, where they learned the craft of shipbuilding, ‘they went in the course of years seeking a place for lives of their own, and at last they settled at the mouth of the Morthond. There was already a primitive harbour there of fisherfolk, but these in fear of the Eldar fled into the mountains.’ 18
In a note written in December 1972 or later, and among the last writings of my father’s on the subject of Middle-earth, there is a discussion of the Elvish strain in Men, as to its being observable in the beardlessness of those who were so descended (it was a characteristic of all Elves to be beardless); and it is here noted in connection with the princely house of Dol Amroth that ‘this line had a special Elvish strain, according to its own legends’ (with a reference to the speeches between Legolas and Imrahil in The Return of the King V 9, cited above).
As Legolas’ mention of Nimrodel shows, there was an ancient Elvish port near Dol Amroth, and a small settlement of Silvan Elves there from Lórien. The legend of the prince’s line was that one of their earliest fathers had wedded an Elf-maiden: in some versions it was indeed (evidently improbably) said to