As once you danced upon the shining lawn 105
Of Elvenhome, before we were, before
You crossed wide seas unto this mortal shore.
Now are your trees, old grey Kortirion,
Through pallid mists seen rising tall and wan,
Like vessels vague that slowly drift afar
110
Out, out to empty seas beyond the bar
Of cloudy ports forlorn; Leaving behind for ever havens loud,
Wherein their crews a while held feasting proud
In lordly ease, they now like windy ghosts
115
Are wafted by cold airs to friendless coasts,
And silent down the tide are borne. Bare has your realm become, Kortirion,
Stripped of its raiment, and its splendour gone.
Like lighted tapers in a darkened fane
120
The funeral candles of the Silver Wain
Now flare above the fallen year. Winter is come. Beneath the barren sky
The Elves are silent. But they do not die!
Here waiting they endure the winter fell
125
And silence. Here I too will dwell;
Kortirion, I will meet the winter here. IV
Mettanyл*
I would not find the burning domes and sands
Where reigns the sun, nor dare the deadly snows, Nor seek in mountains dark the hidden lands
130
Of men long lost to whom no pathway goes; I heed no call of clamant bell that rings
Iron-tongued in the towers of earthly kings.
Here on the stones and trees there lies a spell Of unforgotten loss, of memory more blest
135
Than mortal wealth. Here undefeated dwell The Folk Immortal under withered elms,
Alalminуrл once in ancient realms.
I conclude this commentary with a note on my father’s use of the word Gnomes for the Noldor, who in the Lost Tales are called Noldoli. He continued to use it for many years, and it still appeared in earlier editions of The Hobbit.†
In a draft for the final paragraph of Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings he wrote:
I have sometimes (not in this book) used ‘Gnomes’ for Noldor and ‘Gnomish’ for Noldorin. This I did, for whatever Paracelsus may have thought (if indeed he invented the name) to some ‘Gnome’ will still suggest knowledge.* Now the High-elven name of this people, Noldor, signifies Those who Know; for of the three kindreds of the Eldar from their beginning the Noldor were ever distinguished both by their knowledge of things that are and were in this world, and by their desire to know more. Yet they in no way resembled the Gnomes either of learned theory or popular fancy; and I have now abandoned this rendering as too misleading. For the Noldor belonged to a race high and beautiful, the elder Children of the world, who now are gone. Tall they were, fair-skinned and grey-eyed, and their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod…
In the last paragraph of Appendix F as published the reference to ‘Gnomes’ was removed, and replaced by a passage explaining the use of the word Elves to translate Quendi and Eldar despite the diminishing of the English word. This passage—referring to the Quendi as a whole—continues however with the same words as in the draft: ‘They were a race high and beautiful, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who now are gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod…’ Thus these words describing characters of face and hair were actually written of the Noldor only, and not of all the Eldar: indeed the Vanyar had golden hair, and it was from Finarfin’s Vanyarin mother Indis that he, and Finrod Felagund and Galadriel his children, had their golden hair that marked them out among the princes of the Noldor. But I am unable to determine how this extraordinary perversion of meaning arose.†
II
THE MUSIC OF THE AINUR
In another notebook identical to that in which The Cottage of Lost Play was written out by my mother, there is a text in ink in my father’s hand (and all the other texts of the Lost Tales are in his hand, save for a fair copy of The Fall of Gondolin*) entitled: Link between Cottage of Lost Play and (Tale 2) Music of Ainur. This follows on directly from Vairл’s last words to Eriol on p. 20, and in turn links on directly to The Mus1ic of the Ainur (in a third notebook identical to the other two). The only indication of date for the Link and the Music (which were, I think, written at the same time) is a letter of my father’s of July 1964 (Letters p. 345), in which he said that while in Oxford ‘employed on the staff of the then still incomplete great Dictionary’ he ‘wrote a cosmogonical myth, “The Music of the Ainur”’. He took up the post on the Oxford Dictionary in November 1918 and relinquished it in the spring of 1920 (Biography pp. 99, 102). If his recollection was correct, and there is no evidence to set against it, some two years or more elapsed between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur.
The Link between the two exists in only one version, for the text in ink was written over a draft in pencil that was wholly erased. In this case I follow the Link with a brief commentary, before giving The Music of the Ainur.
‘But,’ said Eriol, ‘still are there many things that remain dark to me. Indeed I would fain know who be these Valar; are they the Gods?’
‘So be they,’ said Lindo, ‘though concerning them Men tell many strange and garbled tales that are far from the truth, and many strange names they call them that you will not hear here’ but Vairл said: ‘Nay then, Lindo, be not drawn into more tale-telling tonight, for the hour of rest is at hand, and for all his eagerness our guest is way-worn. Send now for the candles of sleep, and more tales to his head’s filling and his heart’s satisfying the wanderer shall have on the morrow.’ But to Eriol she said: ‘Think not that you must leave our house tomorrow of need; for none do so—nay, all may remain while a tale remains to tell which they desire to hear.’
Then said Eriol that all desire of faring abroad had left his heart and that to be a guest there a while seemed to him fairest of all things. Thereupon came in those that bore the candles of sleep, and each of that company took one, and two of the folk of the house bade Eriol follow them. One of these was the door-ward who had opened to his knocking before. He was old in appearance and grey of locks, and few of that folk were so; but the other had a weather-worn face and blue eyes of great merriment, and was very slender and small, nor might one say if he were fifty or ten thousand. Now that was Ilverin or Littleheart. These two guided him down the corridor of broidered stories to a great stair of oak, and up this he followed them. It wound up and round until it brought them to a passage lit by small pendent lamps of coloured glass, whose swaying cast a spatter of bright hues upon the floors and hangings.
In this passage the guides turned round a sudden corner, then going down a few dark steps flung open a door before him. Now bowing they wished him good sleep, and said Littleheart: ‘dreams of fair winds and good voyages in the great seas’, and then they left him; and he found that he stood in a chamber that was small, and had a bed of fairest linen and deep pillows set nigh the window—and here the night seemed warm and fragrant, although he had but now come from rejoicing in the blaze of the Tale-fire logs. Here was all the furniture of dark wood, and as his great candle flickered its soft rays worked a magic with the room, till it seemed to him that sleep was the best of all delights, but that fair chamber the best of all for sleep. Ere he laid him down however Eriol opened the window and scent of flowers gusted in therethrough, and a glimpse he caught of a shadow-filled garden that was full of trees, but its spaces were barred with silver lights and black shadows by reason of the moon; 1yet his window seemed very high indeed above those lawns below, and a nightingale sang suddenly in a tree nearby.
Then slept Eriol, and through his dreams there came a music thinner and more pure than any he heard before, and it was full of longing. Indeed it was as if pipes of silver or flutes of shape most slender-delicate uttered crystal notes and threadlike harmonies beneath the moon upon the lawns; and Eriol longed in his sleep for he knew not what.