Elu Thingol (Quenya Elwл Singollo) began as Linwл Tinto (also simply Linwл); this was changed to Tinwл Linto (Tinwл). His Gnomish name was at first Tintoglin, then Tinwelint. He was the leader of the Solosimpi (the later Teleri) on the Great Journey, but he was beguiled in Hisilуmл by the ‘fay’ (Tindriel >) Wendelin (later Melian), who came from the gardens of Lуrien in Valinor; he became lord of the Elves of Hisilуmл, and their daughter was Tinъviel. The leader of the Solosimpi in his place was, confusingly, Ellu (afterwards Olwл, brother of Elwл).
The lord of the Noldoli was Finwл Nуlemл (also Nуlemл Finwл, and most commonly simply Nуlemл); the name Finwл remained throughout the history. In the Gnomish speech he was Golfinweg. His son was Turondo, in Gnomish Turgon (later Turgon became Finwл’s grandson, being the son of Finwл’s son Fingolfin).
The lord of the Teleri (afterwards the Vanyar) was (Ing >) Inwл, here called Isil Inwл, named in Gnomish (Gim-githil >) Inwithiel. His son, who built the great tower of Kortirion, was (Ingilmo >) Ingil. The ‘royal clan’ of the Teleri were the Inwir. Thus:
In The Silmarillion (p. 48) is described the second star-making of Varda before and in preparation for the coming of the Elves:
Then Varda went forth from the council, and she looked out from the height of Taniquetil, and beheld the darkness of Middle-earth beneath the innumerable stars, faint and far. Then she began a great labour, greatest of all the works of the Valar since their coming into Arda. She took the silver dews from the vats of Telperion, and therewith she made new stars and brighter against the coming of the First-born…
In the earliest version we see the conception already present that the stars were created in two separate acts—that a new star-making by Varda celebrated the coming of the Elves, even though here the Elves were already awakened; and that the new stars were derived from the liquid light fallen from the Moon-tree, Silpion. The passage just cited from The Silmarillion goes on to tell that it was at the time of the second star-making that Varda ‘high in the north as a challenge to Melkor set the crown of seven mighty stars to swing, Valacirca, the Sickle of the Valar and sign of doom’ but here this is denied, and a special origin is claimed for the Great Bear, whose stars were not of Varda’s contriving but were sparks that escaped from Aulл’s forge. In the little notebook mentioned on p. 23, which is full of disjointed jottings and hastily noted projects, a different form of this myth appears:
The Silver Sickle
The seven butterflies
Aulл was making a silver sickle. Melko interrupted his work telling him a lie concerning the lady Palъrien. Aulл so wroth that he broke the sickle with a blow. Seven sparks leapt up and winged into the heavens. Varda caught them and gave them a place in the heavens as a sign of Palъrien’s honour. They fly now ever in the shape of a sickle round and round the pole.
There can be no doubt, I think, that this note is earlier than the present text.
The star Morwinyon, ‘who blazes above the world’s edge in the west’, is Arcturus; see the Appendix on Names. It is nowhere explained why Morwinyon-Arcturus is mythically conceived to be always in the west.
Turning now to the Great March and the crossing of the ocean, the origin of Tol Eressлa in the island on which Ossл drew the Gods to the western lands at the time of the fall of the Lamps (see p. 70) was necessarily lost afterwards with the loss of that story, and Ossл ceased to have any proprietary right upon it. The idea that the Eldar came to the shores of the Great Lands in three large and separated companies (in the order Teleri—Noldori—Solosimpi, as later Vanyar—Noldor—Teleri) goes back to the beginning; but here the first people and the second people each crossed the ocean alone, whereas afterwards they crossed together.
In The Silmarillion (p. 58) ‘many years’ elapsed before Ulmo returned for the last of the three kindreds, the Teleri, so long a time that they came to love the coasts of Middle-earth, and Ossл was able to persuade some of them to remain (Cнrdan the Shipwright and the Elves of the Falas, with their havens at Brithombar and Eglarest). Of this there is no trace in the earliest account, though the germ of the idea of the long wait of the lastcomers for Ulmo’s return is present. In the published version the cause of Ossл’s rage against the transportation of the Eldar on the floating island has disappeared, and his motive for anchoring the island in the ocean is wholly different: indeed he did this at the bidding of Ulmo (ibid. p. 59), who was opposed to the summoning of the Eldar to Valinor in any case. But the anchoring of Tol Eressлa as a rebellious act of Ossл’s long remained an element in the story. It is not made clear what other ‘scattered islands of his domain’ (p. 121) Ossл anchored to the sea-bottom; but since on the drawing of the World-Ship the Lonely Isle, the Magic Isles, and the Twilit Isles are all shown in the same way as ‘standing like pinnacles from the weedy depths’ (see pp. 84–6) it was probably these that Ossл now established (though Rъmil and Meril still speak of the Twilit Isles as ‘floating’ on the Shadowy Seas, pp. 68, 125).
In the old story it is made very clear that Tol Eressлa was made fast far out in the mid-ocean, and ‘no land may be seen for many leagues’ sail from its cliffs’. That was indeed the reason for its name, which was diminished when the Lonely Isle came to be set in the Bay of Eldamar. But the words used of Tol Eressлa, ‘the Lonely Isle, that looks both west and east’, in the last chapter of The Silmarillion (relatively very little worked on and revised), undoubtedly derive from the old story; in the tale of Жlfwine of England is seen the origin of this phrase: ‘the Lonely Island looking East to the Magic Archipelago and to the lands of Men beyond it, and West into the Shadows beyond whic1h afar off is glimpsed the Outer Land, the kingdom of the Gods’. The deep sundering of the speech of the Solosimpi from that of the other kindreds, referred to in this tale (p. 121), is preserved in The Silmarillion, but the idea arose in the days when Tol Eressлa was far further removed from Valinor.
As is very often to be observed in the evolution of these myths, an early idea survived in a wholly altered context: here, the growth of trees and plants on the westward slopes of the floating island began with its twice lying in the Bay of Faлry and catching the light of the Trees when the Teleri and Noldoli disembarked, and its greater beauty and fertility remained from those times after it was anchored far away from Valinor in the midst of the ocean; afterwards, this idea survived in the context of the light of the Trees passing through the Calacirya and falling on Tol Eressлa near at hand in the Bay of Eldamar. Similarly, it seems that Ulmo’s instruction of the Solosimpi in music and sea-lore while sitting ‘upon a headland’ of Tol Eressлa after its binding to the sea-bottom was shifted to Ossл’s instruction of the Teleri ‘in all manner of sea-lore and sea-music’ sitting on a rock off the coast of Middle-earth (The Silmarillion p. 58).
Very noteworthy is the account given here of the gap in the Mountains of Valinor. In The Silmarillion the Valar made this gap, the Calacirya or Pass of Light, only after the coming of the Eldar to Aman, for ‘even among the radiant flowers of the Tree-lit gardens of Valinor they [the Vanyar and Noldor] longed still at times to see the stars’ (p. 59); whereas in this tale it was a ‘natural’ feature, associated with a long creek thrust in from the sea.