Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [155]
At the end is written:
The Elessar was made in Gondolin by Celebrimbor, and so came to Idril and so to Ea¨rendil. But that passed away. But the second Elessar was made also by Celebrimbor in Eregion at the request of the Lady Galadriel (whom he loved), and it was not under the One, being made before Sauron rose again.
This narrative goes with ‘Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn’ in certain features, and was probably written at about the same time, or a little earlier. Celebrimbor is here again a jewel-smith of Gondolin, rather than one of the Fëanorians (cf. p. 304); and Galadriel is spoken of as being unwilling to forsake Middle-earth (cf. p. 302) – though the text was later emended and the conception of the ban introduced, and at a later point in the narrative she speaks of the pardon of the Valar.
Enerdhil appears in no other writing; and the concluding words of the text show that Celebrimbor was to displace him as the maker of the Elessar in Gondolin. Of Celebrimbor’s love for Galadriel there is no trace elsewhere. In ‘Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn’ the suggestion is that he came to Eregion with them (p. 302); but in that text, as in The Silmarillion, Galadriel met Celeborn in Doriath, and it is difficult to understand Celebrimbor’s words ‘though you turned to Celeborn of the Trees’. Obscure also is the reference to Galadriel’s dwelling ‘under the trees of Greenwood the Great’. This might be taken as a loose use (nowhere else evidenced) of the expression to include the woods of Lórien, on the other side of Anduin; but ‘the coming of the Shadow to the Forest’ undoubtedly refers to the arising of Sauron in Dol Guldur, which in Appendix A (III) to The Lord of the Rings is called ‘the Shadow in the Forest’. This may imply that Galadriel’s power at one time extended into the southern parts of Greenwood the Great; and support for this may be found in ‘Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn’, p. 305, where the realm of Lórinand (Lórien) is said to have ‘extended into the forests on both sides of the Great River, including the region where afterwards was Dol Guldur’. It is possible, also, that the same conception underlay the statement in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings, in the headnote to the Tale of Years of the Second Age, as it appeared in the first edition: ‘many of the Sindar passed eastward and established realms in the forests far away. The chief of these were Thranduil in the north of Greenwood the Great, and Celeborn in the south of the forest.’ In the revised edition this remark about Celeborn was omitted, and instead there appears a reference to his dwelling in Lindon (cited above, p. 294).
Lastly, it may be remarked that the healing power here ascribed to the Elessar at the Havens of Sirion is in The Silmaril-lion (p. 247) attributed to the Silmaril.
NOTES
1 See Appendix E, p. 346.
2 In a note in unpublished material the Elves of Harlindon, or Lindon south of the Lune, are said to have been largely of Sindarin origin, and the region to have been a fief under the rule of Celeborn. It is natural to associate this with the statement in Appendix B; but the reference may possibly be to a later period, for the movements and dwelling-places of Celeborn and Galadriel after the fall of Eregion in 1697 are extremely obscure.
3 Cf. The Fellowship of the Ring I 2: ‘The ancient East-West Road ran through the Shire to its end at the Grey Havens, and dwarves had always used it on their way to their mines in the Blue Mountains.’
4 It is said in Appendix A (III) to The Lord of the Rings that the ancient cities of Nogrod and Belegost were ruined in the breaking of Thangorodrim; but in the Tale of Years in Appendix B: ‘c. 40 Many Dwarves leaving their old cities in Ered Luin go to Moria and swell its numbers.’
5 In a note to the text it is explained that Lórinand was the Nandorin name of this region (afterwards called Lórien and Lothlórien),