10 ‘truce’: earlier reading ‘compromise’. It is notable how Manwл is portrayed as primus inter pares rather than as ruler over the other Valar.
11 On the Trees of Kфr see p. 123, 135.
12 See p. 200.
13 Sбri is here (and subsequently) the name as written, not an emendation from Kalavйnл, the name in the draft texts of The Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor (see p. 198). The reading of the draft in this place is ‘the Sunship’, itself an alteration from ‘the ships’, for my father first wrote that neither ship could safely be drawn beneath the Earth.
14 The Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl is named in The Cottage of Lost Play, p. 15. The song of the sleeper is virtually certainly the poem The Happy Mariners, originally written in 1915 and published in 1923 (see Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, Appendix C, p. 269); this will be given in two versions in connection with the materials for the Tale of Eдrendel in the second part of the Lost Tales. The poem contains a reference to the boats that pass the Tower of Pearl, piled ‘with hoarded sparks of orient fire / that divers won in waters of the unknown Sun’.
15 The original draft has here: ‘but that is the tale of Qorinуmi and I dare not tell it here, for friend Ailios is watching me’ (see p. 197, notes 19 and 20).
16 The draft text had here at first: ‘and the galleon of the Sun goes out into the dark, and coming behind the world finds the East again, but there there is no door and the Wall of Things is lower; and filled with the lightness of the morning Kalavйnл rides above it and dawn is split upon the Eastern hills and falls upon the eyes of Men.’ Part of this, from ‘but there there is no door’, was bracketed, and the passage about the great arch in the East and the Gates of Morn introduced. In the following sentence, the draft had ‘back over the Eastern Wall’, changed to the reading of the second text, ‘back unto the Eastern Wall’. For the name Kalavйnл see p. 198.
17 I.e., until the Sunship issues forth, through the Door of Night, into the outer dark; as the Sunship leaves, the shooting stars pass back into the sky.
18 The second version of this part of Vairл’s tale, ‘The Haven of the Sun’, follows the original draft (as emended) fairly closely, with no differences of any substance; but the part of her tale that now follows, ‘The Weaving of the Days and Months and Years’, is wholly absent from the draft text.
19 This concluding passage differs in several points from the original version. In that, Ailios appears again, for Gilfanon; the ‘great foreboding’ was spoken among the Gods ‘when they designed first to build the Door of Night’ and when Ilinsor has followed Urwendi through the Gates ‘Melko will destroy the Gates and raise the Eastern Wall beyond the [?skies] and Urwendi and Ilinsor shall be lost’.
Changes made to names in
The Hiding of Valinor
Vansamнrin < Samirien’s road (Samнrien occurs as the name of the Feast of Double Mirth, p. 143–4).
Kфr < Kortirion (p. 207). Afterwards, though Kфr was not struck out, my father wrote above it Tыn, with a query, and the same at the occurrence of Kфr on p. 210. This is the first appearance in the text of the Lost Tales of this name, which ultimately gave rise to Tъna (the hill on which Tirion was built).
Ainairos <Oivбrin.
Moritarnon, Tarn Fui The original draft of the tale has ‘Mуritar or Tarna Fui’.
Sбri The original draft has Kalavйnл (see p. 198 and note 13 above). At the first occurrence of the names of the three Sons of Time the sequence of forms was:
Danuin < Danos < an illegible form Dan..
Ranuin < Ranos < Ranoth < R ф n
Fanuin < Lathos < Lathweg
Throughout the remainder of the passage: Danuin < Dana; Ranuin < Ranoth; Fanuin < Lathweg.
Aluin < Lъmin.
Commentary on
The Hiding of Valinor
The account of the Council of the Valar and Eldar in the opening of this tale (greatly developed from the preliminary draft given in note 2) is remarkable and important in the history of my father’s ideas concerning the Valar and their motives. In The Silmarillion (p. 102) the Hiding of Valinor sprang from the assault of Melkor on the steersman of the Moon:
But seeing the assault upon Tilion the Valar were in doubt, fearing what the malice and cunning of Morgoth might yet contrive against them. Being unwilling to make war upon him in Middle-earth, they remembered nonetheless the ruin of Almaren; and they resolved that the like should not befall Valinor.
A little earlier in The Silmarillion (p. 99) reasons are given for the unwillingness of the Valar to make war:
It is said indeed that, even as the Valar made war upon Melkor for the sake of the Quendi, so now for that time they forbore for the sake of the Hildor, the Aftercomers, the younger Children of Ilъvatar. For so grievous had been the hurts of Middle-earth in the war upon Utumno that the Valar feared lest even worse should now befall; whereas the Hildor should be mortal, and weaker than the Quendi to withstand fear and tumult. Moreover it was not revealed to Manwл where the beginning of Men should be, north, south, or east. Therefore the Valar sent forth light, but made strong the land of their dwelling.
In The Silmarillion there is no vestige of the tumultuous council, no suggestion of a disagreement among the Valar, with Manwл, Varda and Ulmo actively disapproving the work and holding aloof from it; no mention, equally, of any pleading for pity on the Noldor by Ulmo, nor of Manwл’s disgust. In the old story it was the hostility of some of the Eldar towards the Noldoli, led by an Elf of Kуpas (Alqualondл)—who likewise disappeared utterly: in the later account there is never a word about the feelings of the Elves of Valinor for the exiled Noldor—that was the starting-point of the Hiding of Valinor; and it is most curious to observe that the action of the Valar here sprang essentially from indolence mixed with fear. Nowhere does my father’s early conception of the fainйant Gods appear more clearly. He held moreover quite explicitly that their failure to make war upon Melko then and there was a deep error, diminishing themselves, and (as it appears) irreparable. In his later writing the Hiding of Valinor remained indeed, but only as a great fact of mythological antiquity; there is no whisper of its condemnation.
The blocking-up and utter isolation of Valinor from the world without is perhaps even more strongly emphasized in the early narrative. The cast-off webs of Ungweliant and the use to which the Valar put them disappeared in the later story. Most notable is the different explanation of the fact that the gap in the encircling heights (later named the Calacirya) was not blocked up. In The Silmarillion (p. 102) it is said that the pass was not closed
because of the Eldar that were faithful, and in the city of Tirion upon the green hill Finarfin yet ruled the remnant of the Noldor in the deep cleft of the mountains. For all those of elven-race, even the Vanyar and Ingwл their lord, must breathe at times the outer air and the wind that comes over the sea from the lands of their birth; and the Valar would not sunder the Teleri wholly from their kin.