The page-numbering of the notebooks shows that the next tale was to be the Tale of Tinъviel, which is written in another book. This long story (to be given in Part II), the oldest extant version of ‘Beren and Lъthien’, begins with a long Link passage; and the curious thing is that this Link begins with the very dialogue between Lindo and Eriol just referred to, in almost identical wording, and this can be seen to be its original place; but here it was struck through.
I have mentioned earlier (p. 45) that in a letter written by my father in 1964 he said that he wrote The Music of the Ainur while working in Oxford on the staff of the Dictionary, a post that he took up in November 1918 and relinquished in the spring of 1920. In the same letter he said that he wrote ‘“The Fall of Gondolin” during sick-leave from the army in 1917’, and ‘the original version of the “Tale of Lъthien Tinъviel and Beren” later in the same year’. There is nothing in the manuscripts to suggest that the tales that follow The Music of the Ainur to the point we have now reached were not written consecutively and continuously from The Music, while my father was still in Oxford.
At first sight, then, there is a hopeless contradiction in the evidence: for the Link in question refers explicitly to the Darkening of Valinor, a tale written after his appointment in Oxford at the end of 1918, but is a link to the Tale of Tinъviel, which he said that he wrote in 1917. But the Tale of Tinъviel (and the Link that precedes it) is in fact a text in ink written over an erased pencilled original. It is, I think, certain that this rewriting of Tinъviel was considerably later. It was linked to The Flight of the Noldoli by the speeches of Lindo and Eriol (the link-passage is integral and continuous with the Tale of Tinъviel that follows it, and was not added afterwards). At this stage my father must have felt that the Tales need not necessarily be told in the actual sequence of the narrative (for Tinъviel belongs of course to the time after the making of the Sun and Moon).
The rewritten Tinъviel was followed with no break by a first form of the ‘interlude’ introducing Gilfanon of Tavrobel as a guest in the house, and this led into the Tale of the Sun and Moon. But subsequently my father changed his mind, and so struck out the dialogue of Lindo and Eriol from the beginning of the Link to Tinъviel, which was not now to follow The Flight of the Noldoli, and wrote it out again in the other book at the end of that tale. At the same time he rewrote the Gilfanon ‘interlude’ in an extended form, and placed it 1at the end of The Flight of the Noldoli. Thus:
Flight of the Noldoli
Words of Lindo and Eriol
Tale of Tinъviel
Gilfanon ‘interlude’
Tale of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor
Flight of the Noldoli
Words of Lindo and Eriol
Gilfanon ‘interlude’ (rewritten)
Tale of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor
That the rewriting of Tinъviel was one of the latest elements in the composition of the Lost Tales seems clear from the fact that it is followed by the first form of the Gilfanon ‘interlude’, written at the same time: for Gilfanon replaced Ailios, and Ailios, not Gilfanon, is the guest in the house in the earlier versions of the Tale of the Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor, and is the teller of the Tale of the Nauglafring.
The poem about the Man in the Moon exists in many texts, and was published at Leeds in 1923;* long after and much changed it was included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962). I give it here in a form close to the earlier published version, but with a few (mostly very minor) alterations made subsequently. The 1923 version was only a little retouched from the earliest workings—where it has the title ‘Why the Man in the Moon came down too soon: an East Anglian phantasy’ in the first finished text the title is ‘A Faлrie: Why the Man in the Moon came down too soon’, together with one in Old English: Se Mуncyning.
Why the Man in the Moon
came down too soon
The Man in the Moon had silver shoonAnd his beard was of silver thread;He was girt with pale gold and inaureoledWith gold about his head.4Clad in silken robe in his great white globeHe opened an ivory doorWith a crystal key, and in secrecyHe stole o’er a shadowy floor;8
Down a filigree stair of spidery hairHe slipped in gleaming haste,And laughing with glee to be merry and freeHe swiftly earthward raced.12He was tired of his pearls and diamond twirls;Of his pallid minaretDizzy and white at its lunar heightIn a world of silver set;16
And adventured this peril for ruby and berylAnd emerald and sapphire,And all lustrous gems for new diadems,Or to blazon his pale attire.20He was lonely too with nothing to doBut to stare at the golden world,Or strain for the hum that would distantly comeAs it gaily past him whirled;24
And at plenilune in his argent moonHe had wearily longed for Fire—Not the limpid lights of wan selenites,But a red terrestrial pyre28With impurpurate glows of crimson and roseAnd leaping orange tongue;For great seas of blues and the passionate huesWhen a dancing dawn is young;32
For the meadowy ways like chrysopraseBy winding Yare and Nen.How he longed for the mirth of the populous EarthAnd the sanguine blood of men;36And coveted song and laughter longAnd viands hot and wine,Eating pearly cakes of light snowflakesAnd drinking thin moonshine.40
He twinkled his feet as he thought of the meat,Of the punch and the peppery brew,Till he tripped unaware on his slanting stair,And fell like meteors do;44As the whickering sparks in splashing arcsOf stars blown down like rainFrom his laddery path took a foaming bathIn the Ocean of Almain;48
And began to think, lest he melt and stink,What in the moon to do,When a Yarmouth boat found him far afloat,To the mazement of the crew52Caught in their net all shimmering wetIn a phosphorescent sheenOf bluey whites and opal lightsAnd delicate liquid green.56
With the morning fish—’twas his regal wish—They packed him to Norwich town,To get warm on gin in a Norfolk inn,And dry his watery gown.60Though Saint Peter’s knell waked many a bellIn the city’s ringing towersTo shout the news of his lunatic cruiseIn the early morning hours,64
No hearths were laid, not a breakfast made,And no one would sell him gems;He found ashes for fire, and his gay desireFor chorus and brave anthems68Met snores instead with all Norfolk abed,And his round heart nearly broke,More empty and cold than above of old,Till he bartered his fairy cloak72
With a half-waked cook for a kitchen nook,And his belt of gold for a smile,And a priceless jewel for a bowl of gruel,A sample cold and vile76Of the proud plum-porridge of Anglian Norwich—He arrived so much too soonFor unusual guests on adventurous questsFrom the Mountains of the Moon.80
It seems very possible that the ‘pallid minaret’ reappears in the ‘little white turret’ which Uolл Kъvion built on the Moon, ‘where often he climbs and watches the heavens, or the world beneath’. The minaret of the Man in the Moon survives in the final version.
The Ocean of Almain is the North Sea (Almain or Almany was a name of Germany in earlier English); the Yare is a Norfolk river which falls into the sea at Yarmouth, and the Nene (pronounced also with a short vowel) flows into the Wash.
IX
THE HIDING OF VALINOR
The link to this tale, which is told by Vairл, has been given at the end of the last (p. 195). The manuscript continues as in the latter part of The Tale of the Sun and Moon (see p. 197 note 19), with an earlier draft also extant, to which reference is made in the notes.