The text just described, linking The Hiding of Valinor to Ailios’ unwritten tale, was not struck out, and my father later wrote on it: ‘To come after the Tale of Eдrendel and before Eriol fares to Tavrobel—after Tavrobel he drinks of limpл.’ This is puzzling, since he cannot have intended the story of the Coming of Men to follow that of Eдrendel; but it may be that he intended only to use the substance of this short text, describing the Turuhalmл ceremonies, without its ending.
However this may be, he devised a new framework for the telling of these tales, though he did not carry it through, and the revised account of the arranging of the next tale-telling has appeared in the Tale of the Sun and Moon, where after Gilfanon’s interruption (p. 189) it was agreed that three nights after that on which The Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor were told by Lindo and Vairл there should be a more ceremonial occasion, on which Gilfanon should relate ‘the travail of the Noldoli and the coming of Mankind’.
Gilfanon’s tale follows on, with consecutive page-numbers, from the second version of Vairл’s tale of The Hiding of Valinor; but Gilfanon here tells it on the night following, not three days later. Unhappily Gilfanon was scarcely better served than Ailios had been, for if Ailios scarcely got started Gilfanon stops abruptly after a very few pages. What there is of his tale is very hastily written in pencil, and it is quite clear that it ends where it does because my father wrote no more of it. It was here that my father abandoned the Lost Tales—or, more accurately, abandoned those that still waited to be written; and the effects of this withdrawal never ceased to be felt th1roughout the history of ‘The Silmarillion’. The major stories to follow Gilfanon’s, those of Beren and Tinъviel, Tъrin Turambar, the Fall of Gondolin, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, had been written and (in the first three cases) rewritten; and the last of these was to lead on to ‘the great tale of Eдrendel’. But that was not even begun. Thus the Lost Tales lack their middle, and their end.
I give here the text of Gilfanon’s Tale so far as it goes.
Now when Vairл made an end, said Gilfanon: ‘Complain not if on the morrow I weave a long tale, for the things I tell of cover many years of time, and I have waited long to tell them,’ and Lindo laughed, saying he might tell to his heart’s desire all that he knew.
But on the morrow Gilfanon sat in the chair and in this wise he began:
‘Now many of the most ancient things of the Earth are forgotten, for they were lost in the darkness that was before the Sun, and no lore may recover them; yet mayhap this is new to the ears of many here that when the Teleri, the Noldoli, and the Solosimpi fared after Oromл and afterward found Valinor, yet was that not all of the race of the Eldaliл that marched from Palisor, and those who remained behind are they whom many call the Qendi, the lost fairies of the world, but ye Elves of Kфr name Ilkorins, the Elves that never saw the light of Kфr. Of these some fell out upon the way, or were lost in the trackless glooms of those days, being wildered and but newly awakened on the Earth, but the most were those who left not Palisor at all, and a long time they dwelt in the pinewoods of Palisor, or sat in silence gazing at the mirrored stars in the pale still Waters of Awakening. Such great ages fared over them that the coming of Nornorл among them faded to a distant legend, and they said one to another that their brethren had gone westward to the Shining Isles. There, said they, do the Gods dwell, and they called them the Great Folk of the West, and thought they dwelt on firelit islands in the sea; but many had not even seen the great waves of that mighty water.
Now the Eldar or Qendi had the gift of speech direct from Ilъvatar, and it is but the sunderance of their fates that has altered them and made them unlike; yet is none so little changed as the tongue of the Dark Elves of Palisor.2
Now the tale tells of a certain fay, and names him Tы the wizard, for he was more skilled in magics than any that have dwelt ever yet beyond the land of Valinor; and wandering about the world he found the…3 Elves and he drew them to him and taught them many deep things, and he became as a mighty king among them, and their tales name him the Lord of Gloaming and all the fairies of his realm Hisildi or the twilight people. Now the places about Koiviл-nйni the Waters of Awakening are rugged and full of mighty rocks, and the stream that feeds that water falls therein down a deep cleft…. a pale and slender thread, but the issue of the dark lake was beneath the earth into many endless caverns falling ever more deeply into the bosom of the world. There was the dwelling of Tы the wizard, and fathomless hollow are those places, but their doors have long been sealed and none know now the entry.
There was…. a pallid light of blue and silver flick1ering ever, and many strange spirits fared in and out beside the [?numbers] of the Elves. Now of those Elves there was one Nuin, and he was very wise, and he loved much to wander far abroad, for the eyes of the Hisildi were become exceeding keen, and they might follow very faint paths in those dim days. On a time did Nuin wander far to the east of Palisor, and few of his folk went with him, nor did Tы send them ever to those regions on his business, and strange tales were told concerning them; but now4 curiosity overcame Nuin, and journeying far he came to a strange and wonderful place the like of which he had not seen before. A mountainous wall rose up before him, and long time he sought a way thereover, till he came upon a passage, and it was very dark and narrow, piercing the great cliff and winding ever down. Now daring greatly he followed this slender way, until suddenly the walls dropped upon either hand and he saw that he had found entrance to a great bowl set in a ring of unbroken hills whose compass he could not determine in the gloom.
Suddenly about him there gushed the sweetest odours of the Earth—nor were more lovely fragrances ever upon the airs of Valinor, and he stood drinking in the scents with deep delight, and amid the fragrance of [?evening] flowers came the deep odours that many pines loosen upon the midnight airs.
Suddenly afar off down in the dark woods that lay above the valley’s bottom a nightingale sang, and others answered palely afar off, and Nuin well-nigh swooned at the loveliness of that dreaming place, and he knew that he had trespassed upon Murmenalda or the “Vale of Sleep”, where it is ever the time of first quiet dark beneath young stars, and no wind blows.
Now did Nuin descend deeper into the vale, treading softly by reason of some unknown wonder that possessed him, and lo, beneath the trees he saw the warm dusk full of sleeping forms, and some were twined each in the other’s arms, and some lay sleeping gently all alone, and Nuin stood and marvelled, scarce breathing.
Then seized with a sudden fear he turned and stole from that hallowed place, and coming again by the passage through the mountain he sped back to the abode of Tы and coming before that oldest of wizards he said unto him that he was new come from the Eastward Lands, and Tы was little pleased thereat; nor any the more when Nuin made an end of his tale, telling of all he there saw—“and me-thought,” said he, “that all who slumbered there were children, yet was their stature that of the greatest of the Elves.”
Then did Tы fall into fear of Manwл, nay even of Ilъvatar the Lord of All, and he said to Nuin:
Here Gilfanon’s Tale breaks off. The wizard Tы and the Dark Elf Nuin disappeared from the mythology and never appear again, together with the marvellous story of Nuin’s coming upon the forms of the Fathers of Mankind still asleep in the Vale of Murmenalda—though from the nature of the work and the different degrees of attention that my father later gave to its different parts one cannot always distinguish between elements definitively abandoned and elements held in ‘indefinite abeyance’. And unhappy though it is that this tale should have been abandoned, we are nonetheless by no means entirely in the dark as to how the narrative would have proceeded.
I have referred earlier (p. 107, note 3) to the 1existence of two ‘schemes’ or outlines setting out the plan of the Lost Tales; and I have said that one of these is a rйsumй of the Tales as they are extant, while the other is divergent, a project for a revision that was never undertaken. There is no doubt that the former of these, which for the purposes of this chapter I will call ‘B’, was composed when the Lost Tales had reached their furthest point of development, as represented by the latest texts and arrangements given in this book. Now when this outline comes to the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale it becomes at once very much fuller, but then contracts again to cursory references for the tales of Tinъviel, Tъrin, Tuor, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, and once more becomes fuller for the tale of Eдrendel. It is clear, therefore, that B is the preliminary form, according to the method that my father regularly used in those days, of Gilfanon’s Tale, and indeed the part of the tale that was written as a proper narrative is obviously following the outline quite closely, while substantially expanding it.