Then Meril the Queen ceased her long tale, but Eriol said nought, gazing at the long radiance of the westering sun gleaming through the apple boles, and dreaming of Faлry. At length said Mericlass="underline" ‘Fare now home, for the afternoon has waned, and the telling of the tale has set a weight of desire in my heart and in thine. But be in patience and bide yet ere ye seek fellowship with that sad kindred of the Island Elves.’
But Eriol said: ‘Even now I know not and it passes my heart to guess how all that loveliness came to fading, or the Elves might be prevailed to depart from Eldamar.’
But Meril said: ‘Nay, I have lengthened the tale too much for love of those days, and many great things lie between the making of the gems and the coming back to Tol Eressлa: but these things many know as well as I, and Lindo or Rъmil of Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva would tell them more skilfully than I.’ Then did she and Eriol fare back to the house of flowers, and Eriol took his leave ere the western face of Ingil’s tower was yet grown grey with dusk.
NOTES
1 The manuscript has Vairл, but this can only be a slip.
2 The occurrence of the name Telimpл here, and again later in the tale, as also in that of The Sun and Moon, is curious; in the tale of The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor the name was changed at its first appearance from Telimpл (Silindrin) to Silindrin, and at subsequent occurrences Silindrin was written from the first (p. 79).
3 The manuscript has Linwл here, and again below; see under Tinwл Linto in ‘Changes made to names’ at the end of these notes.
4 This sentence, from ‘and beguiled…’, was added after, though not to all appearance much after, the writing of the text.
5 This sentence, from ‘and one Ellu…’, was added at the same time as that referred to in note 4.
6 The first occurrence of the form Uinen, and so written at the time of composition (i.e. not corrected from Уnen).
7 Arvalin: thus written at the time of composition, not emended from Habbanan or Harmalin as previously.
8 When my father wrote these texts, he wrote first in pencil, and then subsequently wrote over the top of it in ink, erasing the pencilled text—of which bits can be read here and there, and from which one can see that he altered the pencilled original somewhat as he went along. At the words ‘glistened wondrously’, however, he abandoned the writing of the new text in ink, and from this point we have only the original pencilled manuscript, which is in places exceedingly difficult to read, being more hasty, and also soft and smudged in the course of time. In deciphering this text I have been in places defeated, and I use brackets and question-marks to indicate uncertain readings, and rows of dots to show roughly the length of illegible words.
It is to be emphasized therefore that from here on there is only a first draft, and one written very rapidly, dashed onto the page.
9 Arvalin: here and subsequently emended from Habbanan; see note 7. The explanation is clearly that the name Arvalin came in at or before the time of the rewriting in ink over the pencilled text; though further on in the narrative we are here at an earlier stage of composition.
10 The word might be read as ‘wizardous’.
11 Other forms (beginning Sigm-) preceded Silubrilthin which cannot be read with certainty. Meril speaks as if the Gnomish name was the form used in Tol Eressлa, but it is not clear why.
12 ‘my grandsire’s sire’: the original reading was ‘my grandsire’.
Changes made to names in
The Coming of the Elves and the Making of K ф r
Tinwл Linto < Linwл Tinto (this latter is the form of the name in an interpolated passage in the preceding tale, see p. 106 note 1). At two subsequent occurrences of Linwл (see note 3 above) the name was not changed, clearly through oversight; in the two added passages where th1e name occurs (see notes 4 and 5 above) the form is Tinwл (Linto).
Inwithiel < Gim-githil (the same change in The Cottage of Lost Play, see p. 22).
Tinwelint < Tintoglin.
Wendelin < Tindriel (cf. the interpolated passage in the previous tale, p. 106 note 1).
Arvalin < Habbanan throughout the tale except once, where the name was written Arvalin from the first; see notes 7 and 9 above.
Lindeloksл < Lindelуtл (the same change in The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor, see p. 79).
Erumбni < Harwalin.
Commentary on
The Coming of the Elves and the Making of K ф r
I have already (p. 111) touched on the great difference in the structure of the narrative at the beginning of this tale, namely that here the Elves awoke during Melko’s captivity in Valinor, whereas in the later story it was the very fact of the Awakening that brought the Valar to make war on Melkor, which led to his imprisonment in Mandos. Thus the ultimately very important matter of the capture of the Elves about Cuiviйnen by Melkor (The Silmarillion pp. 49–50) is necessarily entirely absent. The release of Melko from Mandos here takes place far earlier, before the coming of the Elvish ‘ambassadors’ to Valinor, and Melko plays a part in the debate concerning the summons.
The story of Oromл’s coming upon the newly-awakened Elves is seen to go back to the beginnings (though here Yavanna Palъrien was also present, as it appears), but its singular beauty and force is the less for the fact of their coming being known independently to Manwл, so that the great Valar did not need to be told of it by Oromл. The name Eldar was already in existence in Valinor before the Awakening, and the story of its being given by Oromл (‘the People of the Stars’) had not arisen—as will be seen from the Appendix on Names, Eldar had a quite different etymology at this time. The later distinction between the Eldar who followed Oromл on the westward journey to the ocean and the Avari, the Unwilling, who would not heed the summons of the Valar, is not present, and indeed in this tale there is no suggestion that any Elves who heard the summons refused it; there were however, according to another (later) tale, Elves who never left Palisor (pp. 231, 234).
Here it is Nornorл, Herald of the Gods, not Oromл, who brought the three Elves to Valinor and afterwards returned them to the Waters of Awakening (and it is notable that even in this earliest version, given more than the later to ‘explanations’, there is no hint of how they passed from the distant parts of the Earth to Valinor, when afterwards the Great March was only achieved with such difficulty). The story of the questioning of the three Elves b1y Manwл concerning the nature of their coming into the world, and their loss of all memory of what preceded their awakening, did not survive the Lost Tales. A further important shift in the structure is seen in Ulmo’s eager support of the party favouring the summoning of the Elves to Valinor; in The Silmarillion (p. 52) Ulmo was the chief of those who ‘held that the Quendi should be left free to walk as they would in Middle-earth’.
I set out here the early history of the names of the chief Eldar.