The old motive of the Solosimpi (> Teleri) wishing this to be done (sufficiently strange, for did the Shoreland Pipers wish to abandon the shores?) disappeared in the general excision of their bitter resentment against the Noldoli, as did Ulmo’s refusal to aid them, and Ossл’s willingness to do so in Ulmo’s despite. The passage concerning the Magic Isles, made by Osse, is the origin of the conclusion of Chapter XI of The Silmarillion:
And in that time, which songs call Nurtalл Valinorйva, the Hiding of Valinor, the Enchanted Isles were set, and all the seas about them were filled with shadows and bewilderment. And these isles were strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south, before Tol Eressлa, the Lonely Isle, is reached by one sailing west. Hardly might any vessel pass between them, for in the dangerous sounds the waves sighed for ever upon dark rocks shrouded in mist. And in the twilight a great weariness came upon mariners and a loathing of the sea; but all that ever set foot upon the islands were there entrapped, and slept until the Change of the World.
It is clear from this passage in the tale that the Magic Isles were set to the east of the Shadowy Seas, though ‘the huge glooms…. stretched forth tongues of darkness towards them’ while in an earlier passage (p. 125) it is said that beyond Tol Eressлa (which was itself beyond the Magic Isles) ‘is the misty wall and those great sea-glooms beneath which lie the Shadowy Seas’. The later ‘Enchanted Isles’ certainly owe much as a conception to the Magic Isles, but in the passage just cited from The Silmarillion they were set in the Shadowy Seas and were in twilight. It is possible therefore that the Enchanted Isles derive also from the Twilit Isles (p. 68, 125).
The account of the works of Tulkas and Aulл in the northern regions (p. 210) does not read as perfectly in accord with what has been said previously, though a real contradiction is unlikely. On p. 166–7 it is plainly stated that there was a strip of water (Qerkaringa, the Chill Gulf) between the tip of the ‘Icefang’ (Helkaraksл) and the Great Lands at the time of the crossing of the Noldoli. In this same passage the Icefang is referred to as ‘a narrow neck, which the Gods after destroyed’. The Noldoli were able to cross over to the Great Lands despite ‘that gap at the far end’ (p. 168) because in the great cold the sound had become filled with unmoving ice. The meaning of the present passage may be, however, that by the destruction of the Icefang a much wider gap was made, so that there was now no possibility of any crossing by that route.
Of the three ‘roads’ made by Lуrien, Oromл, and Mandos there is no vestige in my father’s later writing. The Rainbow is never mentioned, nor is there ever any hint of an explanation of how Men and Elves pass to the halls of Mandos. But it is difficult to interpret this conception of the ‘roads’—to know to what extent there was a purely figurative content in the idea.
For the road of Lуrien, Olуre Mallл the Path of Dreams, which is d1escribed by VairГ in The Cottage of Lost Play, see p. 18, 27 ff. There VairГ told that OlГre MallГ came from the lands of Men, that it was в lane of deep banks and great overhanging hedges, beyond which stood many tall trees wherein a perpetual whisper seemed to liveв™ and that from this lane a high gate led to the Cottage of the Children or of the Play of Sleep. This was not far from KГr, and to it came вhe children of the fathers of the fathers of Menв™the Eldar guided them into the Cottage and its garden if they could, вest they strayed into KГr and became enamoured of the glory of Valinorв™ The accounts in the two tales seem to be in general agreement, though it is difficult to understand the words in the present passage вt ran past the Cottage of the Children of the Earth and thence down the вњane of whispering elmsвuntil it reached the seaв™ It is very notable that still at this stage in the development of the mythology, when so much more had been written since the coming of Eriol to Tol EressГa, the conception of the children of Men coming in sleep by a mysterious вoadв™to a cottage in Valinor had by no means fallen away.
In the account of OromГв™ making of the Rainbow-bridge, the noose that he cast caught on the summit of the great mountain KalormГ (вunrising-hillв™ in the remotest East. This mountain is seen on the вorld-Shipв™drawing, p. 84.
The story that VairГ named вhe Haven of the Sunв™(p. 213 ff.) provides the fullest picture of the structure of the world that is to be found in the earliest phase of the mythology. The Valar, to be sure, seem strangely ignorant on this subjectв”he nature of the world that came into being so largely from their own devising, if they needed Ulmo to acquaint them with such fundamental truths. A possible explanation of this ignorance may be found in the radical difference in the treatment of the Creation of the World between the early and later forms of The Music of the Ainur. I have remarked earlier (p. 62) that originally the Ainurв™ first sight of the world was already in its actuality, and IlГvatar said to them: вven now the world unfolds and its history beginsв™whereas in the developed form it was a vision that was taken away from them, and only given existence in the word of IlГvatar: EГ! Let these things Be! It is said in The Silmarillion (p. 20) that
when the Valar entered into EГ they were at first astounded and at a loss, for it was as if naught was yet made which they had seen in vision, and all was but on point to begin and yet unshapedв¦/p>
and there follows (p. 21в“) an account of the vast labours of the Valar in the actual вonstructionв™of the world:
They built lands and Melkor destroyed them; valleys they delved and Melkor raised them up; mountains they carved and Melkor threw them down; seas they hollowed and Melkor spilled themв¦/p>
In the old version there is none of this, and one gains the impression (though nothing is explicit) that the Valar came into a world that was already вadeв™ and unknown to them (вhe Gods stalked north and south and could see little; indeed in the deepest of these regions they found great cold and solitudeв¦Ђ, p. 69). Although the conception of the world was indeed derived in large measure from their own playing in the Music, its reality came from the creative act of IlГvatar (вe would have the guarding of those fair things of our dreams, which of thy might have now attained to realityв™ p. 57); and the knowledge possessed by the Valar of the actual properties and dimensions of their habitation was correspondingly smaller (so we may perhaps assume) than it was afterwards conceived to be.
But this is to lean rather heavily on the matter. More probably, the ignorance of the Valar is to be attributed to their curious collective isolation and indifference to the world beyond their mountains that is so much emphasized in this tale.
However this may be, Ulmo at this time informed the Valar that the whole world is an Ocean, Vai, on which the Earth floats, вpheld by the word of IlГvatarв™and all the seas of the Earth, even that which divides Valinor from the Great Lands, are hollows in the Earthв™ surface, and are thus distinct from Vai, which is of another nature. All this we have already seen (p. 84 ff.); and in an earlier tale something has been said (p. 68) of the nature of the upholding waters:
Beyond Valinor I have never seen or heard, save that of a surety there are the dark waters of the Outer Seas, that have no tides, and they are very cool and thin, that no boat can sail upon their bosom or fish swim within their depths, save the enchanted fish of Ulmo and his magic car.
So here Ulmo says that neither fish nor boat will swim in its waters вo whom I have not spoken the great word that IlГvatar said to me and bound them with the spellв™
At the outer edge of Vai stands the Wall of Things, which is described as вa href="#filepos793483">deep-blueв™(p. 215). Valinor is nearer to the Wall of Things than is the eastern shore of the Great Lands, which must mean that Vai is narrower in the West than in the East. In the Wall of Things the Gods at this time made two entrances, in the West the Door of Night and in the East the Gates of Morn; and what lies beyond these entrances in the Wall is called вhe starless vastв™and вhe outer darkв™ It is not made clear how the outer air (вa href="#filepos358666">the dark and tenuous realm of Vaitya that is outside allв™ p. 181) is to be related to the conception of the Wall of Things or the Outer Dark. In the rejected preliminary text of this tale my father wrote at first (see note 16 above) that in the East вa href="#filepos807962">the Wall of Things is lowerв™ so that when the Sun returns from the Outer Dark it does not enter the eastern sky by a door but вides aboveв™the Wall. This was then changed, and the idea of the Door in the Eastern Wall, the Gates of Morn, introduced; but the implication seems clear that the Walls were originally conceived like the walls of terrestrial cities, or gardensв”alls with a top a вing-fenceв™ In the cosmological essay of the 1930s, the Ambarkanta, the Walls are quite other: