About the World are the Ilurambar, or Walls of the World. They are as ice and glass and steel, being above all imagination of the Children of Earth cold, transparent, and hard. They cannot be seen, nor can they be passed, save by the Door of Night.
Within these walls the Earth is globed: above, below, and upon all sides is Vaiya, the Enfolding Ocean. But this is more like to sea below the Earth and more like to air above the Earth.
See further p. 86.
The Tale of QorinГmi (p. 215) was never in fact toldв”n the first version of the present tale (see note 15 above) it seems that VairГ would have liked to tell it, but felt the beady eye of the captious Ailios upon her. In the early Qenya word-list QorinГmi is defined as вhe name of the Sunв™ literally вrowned in the Seaв™ the name being a derivative from a root meaning вhoke, suffocate, drownв™ with this explanation: вhe Sun, after fleeing from the Moon, dived into the sea and wandered in the caverns of the Oaritsi.в™Oaritsi is not given in the word-list, but oaris = вermaidв™ Nothing is said in the Lost Tales of the Moon giving chase to the Sun; it was the stars of Varda that Ilinsor, вuntsman of the firmamentв™ pursued, and he was вealous of the supremacy of the Sunв™(p. 195).
The conclusion of VairГв™ tale, вhe Weaving of Days, Months, and Yearsв™ shows (as it seems to me) my father exploring a mode of mythical imagining that was for him a dead end. In its formal and explicit symbolism it stands quite apart from the general direction of his thought, and he excised it without trace. It raises, also, a strange question. In what possible sense were the Valar вutside Timeв™before the weavings of Danuin, Ranuin, and Fanuin? In The Music of the Ainur (p. 55) IlГvatar said: вven now the world unfolds and its history beginsв™in the final version (The Silmarillion p. 20) it is said that
The Great Music had been but the growth and flowering of thought in the Timeless Halls, and the Vision only a foreshowing; but now they had entered in at the beginning of Timeв¦/p>
(It is also said in The Silmarillion (p. 39) that when the Two Trees of Valinor began to shine there began the Count of Time; this refers to the beginning of the measurement of Time from the waxing and the waning of the Trees.)
In the present tale the works of Danuin, Ranuin, and Fanuin are said to be the cause of вhe subjection of all things within the world to time and changeв™ But the very notion of a history, a consecutive story, self-evidently implies time and change; how then can Valinor be said only now to come under the necessity of change, with the ordering of the motions of the Sun and Moon, when it has undergone vast changes in the course of the story of the Lost Tales? Moreover the Gods now know вhat hereafter even they should in counted time be subject to slow eld and their bright days to waningв™ But the very statement (for instance) that Гmar-Amillo was вhe youngest of the great Valarв™who entered the world (p. 67) is an assertion that the other Valar, older than he, were вubject to eldв™ вgeв™has of course for mortal beings two aspects, which draw always closer: time passes, and the body decays. But of the вaturalв™immortality of the Eldar it is said (p. 59): вor doth eld subdue their strength, unless it may be in ten thousand centuriesв™ Thus they вgeв™(so Gilfanon is вhe most aged that now dwelt in the isleв™and is вa href="#filepos250890">one of the oldest of the fairiesв™ p. 175), but they do not вgeв™(do not become enfeebled). Why then do the Gods know that вereafterв™they will be вubject to slow eldв™Ђwhich can only mean ageing in the latter sense? It may well be that there is a deeper thought here than I can fathom; but certainly I cannot explain it.
Finally, at the end of all the early writing concerning it, it may be remarked how major a place was taken in my fatherв™ original conception by the creation of the Sun and the Moon and the government of their motions: the astronomical myth is central to the whole. Afterwards it was steadily diminished, until in the end, perhaps, it would have disappeared altogether.
X
GILFANON в™ TALE: THE TRAVAIL OF THE NOLDOLI AND THE COMING OF MANKIND
The rejected draft text of The Hiding of Valinor continues a little way beyond the end of VairГв™ tale, thus:
Now after the telling of this tale no more was there of speaking for that night, but Lindo begged Ailios to consent to a tale-telling of ceremony to be held the next night or as soon as might be; but Ailios would not agree, pleading matters that he must needs journey to a distant village to settle. So was it that the tale-telling was fixed ere the candles of sleep were lit for a sevennight from that timeв”nd that was the day of TuruhalmГ1 or the Logdrawing. вTwill be a fitting day,в™saith Lindo, вor the sports of the morning in the snow and the gathering of the logs from the woods and the songs and drinking of TuruhalmГ will leave us of right mood to listen to old tales beside this fire.в™/p>
As I have noticed earlier (p. 204), the original form of the Tale of the Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor belonged to the phase before the entry of Gilfanon of Tavrobel, replacing Ailios.
Immediately following this rejected draft text, on the same manuscript page, the text in ink of the Tale of Turambar (TГrin) begins, with these words:
When then Ailios had spoken his fill the time for the lighting of candles was at hand, and so came the first day of TuruhalmГ to an end; but on the second night Ailios was not there, and being asked by Lindo one Eltas began a taleв¦/p>
What was Ailiosв™tale to have been? (for I think it certain that it was never written). The answer becomes clear from a separate short text, very rough, which continues on from the discussion at the end of The Hiding of Valinor, given above. This tells that at length the day of TuruhalmГ was come, and the company from Mar Vanwa TyaliГva went into the snowy woods to bring back firewood on sleighs. Never was the Tale-fire allowed to go out or to die into grey ash, but on the eve of TuruhalmГ it sank always to a smaller blaze until TuruhalmГ itself, when great logs were brought into the Room of the Tale-fire and being blessed by Lindo with ancient magic roared and flared anew upon the hearth. VairГ blessed the door and lintel of the hall and gave the key to RГmil, making him once again the Doorward, and to Littleheart was given the hammer of his gong. Then Lindo said, as he said each year:
вift up your voices, O Pipers of the Shore, and ye Elves of Kфr sing aloud; and all ye Noldoli and hidden fairies of the world dance ye and sing, sing and dance O little children of Men that the House of Memory resound with your voices…’
Then was sung a song of ancient days that the Eldar made when they dwelt beneath the wing of Manwл and sang on the great road from Kфr to the city of the Gods (see p. 143–4).
It was now six months since Eriol went to visit Meril-i-Turinqi beseeching a draught of limpл (see p. 96–8), and that desire had for a time fallen from him; but on this night he said to Lindo: ‘Would I might drink with thee!’ To this Lindo replied that Eriol should not ‘think to overpass the bounds that Ilъvatar hath set’, but also that he should consider that ‘not yet hath Meril denied thee thy desire for ever’. Then Eriol was sad, for he guessed in his deepest heart that ‘the savour of limpл and the blessedness of the Elves might not be his for ever’.
The text ends with Ailios preparing to tell a tale:
‘I tell but as I may those things I have seen and known of very ancient days within the world when the Sun rose first, and there was travail and much sorrow, for Melko reigned unhampered and the power and strength that went forth from Angamandi reached almost to the ends of the great Earth.’
It is clear that no more was written. If it had been completed it would have led into the opening of Turambar cited above (‘When then Ailios had spoken his fill…’); and it would have been central to the history of the Great Lands, telling of the coming of the Noldoli from Valinor, the Awakening of Men, and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.