In the Lost Tales the name given to the Sea-elves afterwards called the Teleriв”he third of the three вribesв™Ђis Solosimpi (вhoreland Pipersв™. It must now be explained that, confusingly enough, the first of the tribes, that led by King InwГ, were called the Teleri (the Vanyar of The Silmarillion). Who then were the Inwir? Eriol was told later by Meril-i-Turinqi (p. 115) that the Teleri were those that followed InwГ, вut his kindred and descendants are that royal folk the Inwir of whose blood I am.в™The Inwir were then a вoyalв™clan within the Teleri; and the relation between the old conception and that of The Silmarillion can be shown thus:
Lost Tales .. .. .. .. The Silmarillion I Teleri .. .. .. .. Vanyar (including Inwir) II Noldoli .. .. .. .. Noldor (Gnomes) III Solosimpi .. .. .. .. Teleri
In this link-passage Rьmil seems to say that the ‘Eldar’ are distinct from the ‘Gnomes’—‘akin nonetheless be assuredly Gnome-speech and Elfin of the Eldar’ and ‘Eldar’ and ‘Noldoli’ are opposed in the prose preamble to Kortirion among the Trees (p. 25). Elsewhere ‘Elfin’, as a language, is used in opposition to ‘Gnomish’, and ‘Eldar’ is used of a word of form in contradistinction to ‘Gnomish’. It is in fact made quite explicit in the Lost Tales that the Gnomes were themselves Eldar—for instance, ‘the Noldoli, who were the sages of the Eldar’ (p. 8); but on the other hand we read that after the Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor Aulл ‘gave still his love to those few faithful Gnomes who remained still about his halls, yet did he name them thereafter “Eldar”’ (p. 176). This is not so purely contradictory as appears at first sight. It seems that (on the one hand) the opposition of ‘Eldar’ or ‘Elfin’ to ‘Gnomish’ arose because Gnomish had become a language apart; and while the Gnomes were certainly themselves Eldar, their language was not. But (on the other hand) the Gnomes had long ago left Kфr, and thus came to be seen as not ‘Koreldar’, and therefore not ‘Eldar’. The word Eldar had thus narrowed its meaning, but might at any moment be expanded again to the older sense in which the Noldoli were ‘Eldar’.
If this is so, the narrowed sense of Eldar reflects the situation in after days in Tol Eressлa; and indeed, in the tales that follow, where the narrative is concerned with the time before the rebellion of the Noldoli and their departure from Valinor, they are firmly ‘Eldar’. After the rebellion, in the passage cited above, Aulл would not call the Noldoli who remained in Valinor by that name—and, by implication, he would not call those who had departed ‘Eldar’.
The same ambiguity is present in the words Elves and Elfin. Rъmil here calls the language of1 the Eldar ‘Elfin’ in opposition to ‘Gnomish’ the teller of the Tale of Tinъviel says: ‘This is my tale, and ’tis a tale of the Gnomes, wherefore I beg that thou fill not Eriol’s ear with thy Elfin names’, and in the same passage ‘Elves’ are specifically opposed to ‘Gnomes’. But, again, in the tales that follow in this book, Elves and Eldar and Eldaliл are used interchangeably of the Three Kindreds (see for instance the account of the debate of the Valar concerning the summoning of the Elves to Valinor, pp. 116–18). And finally, an apparently similar variation is seen in the word ‘fairy’ thus Tol Eressлa is the name ‘in the fairy speech’, while ‘the Gnomes call it Dor Faidwen’ (p. 13), but on the other hand Gilfanon, a Gnome, is called ‘one of the oldest of the fairies’ (p. 175).
It will be seen from Rъmil’s remarks that the ‘deep sundering’ of the speech of the Elves into two branches was at this time given an historical basis wholly different from that which afterwards caused the division. Here, Rъmil ascribes it to ‘the long wandering of the Noldoli about the Earth and the black ages of their thraldom while their kin dwelt yet in Valinor’—in later terms, ‘the Exile of the Noldor’. In The Silmarillion (see especially pp. 113, 129) the Noldor brought the Valinуrean tongue to Middle-earth but abandoned it (save among themselves), and adopted instead the language of Beleriand, Sindarin of the Grey-elves, who had never been to Valinor: Quenya and Sindarin were of common origin, but their ‘deep sundering’ had been brought about through vast ages of separation. In the Lost Tales, on the other hand, the Noldor still brought the Elvish speech of Valinor to the Great Lands, but they retained it, and there it itself changed and became wholly different. In other words, in the original conception the ‘second tongue’ only split off from the parent speech through the departure of the Gnomes from Valinor into the Great Lands; whereas afterwards the ‘second tongue’ separated from the ‘first tongue’ near the very beginning of Elvish existence in the world. Nonetheless, Gnomish is Sindarin, in the sense that Gnomish is the actual language that ultimately, as the whole conception evolved, became that of the Grey-elves of Beleriand.
With Rъmil’s remarks about the secret tongue which the Valar use and in which the Eldar once wrote poetry and books of wisdom, but few of them now know it, cf. the following note found in the little Lost Tales pocket-book referred to on p. 23:
The Gods understood the language of the Elves but used it not among themselves. The wiser of the Elves learned much of the speech of the Gods and long treasured that knowledge among both Teleri and Noldoli, but by the time of the coming to Tol Eressлa none knew it save the Inwir, and now that knowledge is dead save in Meril’s house.
Some new persons appear in this passage. Уmar the Vala ‘who knows all tongues’ did not survive the Lost Tales; a little more is heard of him subsequently, but he is a divinity without much substance. Tuor and Bronweg appear from the tale of The Fall of Gondolin, which was already written; Bronweg is the Gnomish form of Voronwл, that same Voronwл who accompanied Tuor from Vinyamar to Gondolin in the later legend. Tevildo Prin1ce of Cats was a demonic servant of Melko and the remote forerunner of Sauron; he is a principal actor in the original story of Beren and Tinъviel, which was also already written (the Tale of Tinъviel).
Littleheart the Gong-warden, son of Bronweg, now receives an Elvish name, Ilverin (an emendation from Elwenildo).
The Music of the Ainur
The original hastily pencilled and much emended draft text of The Music of the Ainur is still extant, on loose sheets placed inside the cover of the notebook that contains a fuller and much more finished text written in ink. This second version was however closely based on the first, and changed it chiefly by additions. The text given here is the second, but some passages where the two differ notably are annotated (few of the differences between the two texts are in my opinion of much significance). It will be seen from passages of the first draft given in the notes that the plural was originally Ainu, not Ainur, and that Ilъvatar was originally Ilu (but Ilъvatar also occurs in the draft).
Then said Rъmiclass="underline"
‘Hear now things that have not been heard among Men, and the Elves speak seldom of them; yet did Manwл Sъlimo, Lord of Elves and Men, whisper them to the fathers of my father in the deeps of time.1 Behold, Ilъvatar dwelt alone. Before all things he sang into being the Ainur first, and greatest is their power and glory of all his creatures within the world and without. Thereafter he fashioned them dwellings in the void, and dwelt among them, teaching them all manner of things, and the greatest of these was music.
Now he would speak propounding to them themes of song and joyous hymn, revealing many of the great and wonderful things that he devised ever in his mind and heart, and now they would make music unto him, and the voices of their instruments rise in splendour about his throne.
Upon a time Ilъvatar propounded a mighty design of his heart to the Ainur, unfolding a history whose vastness and majesty had never been equalled by aught that he had related before, and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilъvatar and were speechless.