And Vairл said that ’twas like to be that one of his kindred had found the rocks of Eldamar in those old days.
NOTES
1 Gnomes: the Second Kindred, the Noldoli (later Noldor). For the use of the word Gnomes see p. 43; and for the linguistic distinction made here see pp. 50–1.
2 The ‘Great Lands’ are the lands East of the Great Sea. The term ‘Middle-earth’ is never used in the Lost Tales, and in fact does not appear until writings of the 1930s.
3 In both MSS the words ‘of all the Eldar’ are followed by: ‘for of most noble there were none, seeing that to be of the blood of the Eldar is equal and sufficient’ but this was struck out in the second MS.
4 The original reading was ‘the great Tirion’, changed to ‘the great tower’.
5 This sentence, from ‘a son meseems…’, replaced in the original MS an earlier reading: ‘shall it be of Eдrendel the wanderer, who alone of the sons of Men has had great traffic with the Valar and Elves, who alone of their kindred has seen beyond Taniquetil, even he who sails for ever in the firmament?’
6 The original reading was ‘before the days of’, changed to ‘in the first days of’, and then to the reading given.
7 This last phrase was an addition to the second MS.
Changes made to names in
The Cottage of Lost Play
The names were at this time in a very fluid state, reflecting in part the rapid development of the languages that was then taking place. Changes were made to the original text, and further changes, at different times, to the second text, but it seems unnecessary in the following notes to go into the detail of when and where the changes were made. The names are given in the order of their occurrence in the tale. The signs > and < are used to mean ‘changed to’ and ‘changed from’.
Dor Faidwen The Gnomish name of Tol Eressлa was changed many times: Gar Eglos > Dor Edloth > Dor Usgwen > Dor Uswen > Dor Faidwen.
Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva In the original text a space was left for the Elvish name, subsequently filled in as Mar Vanwa Taliйva.
Great Lands Throughout the tale Great Lands is an emendation of Outer Lands, when the latter was given a different meaning (lands West of the Great Sea).
Wingilot < Wingelot.
Gar Lossion < Losgar.
Koromas < Kormas.
Meril-i-Turinqi The first text has only Turinqi, with in one place a space left for a personal name.
Inwл < Ing at each occurrence.
Inwithiel < Gim Githil, which was in turn < Githil.
Ingil < Ingilmo.
Valwл < Manwл. It seems possible that Manwл as the name of Lindo’s father was a mere slip.
Noldorin The original reading was Noldorin whom the Gnomes name Goldriel; Goldriel was changed to Golthadriel, and then the reference to the Gnomish name was struck out, leaving only Noldorin.
Tulkastor < Tulkassл < Turenbor.
Solosimpi < Solosimpл at each occurrence.
Lindelos < Lindeloksл < Lindeloktл Singing Cluster (Glingol).
Telelli < Telellл.
Arvalin < Harmalin < Harwalin.
Commentary on
The Cottage of Lost Play
The story of Eriol the mariner was central to my father’s original conception of the mythology. In those days, as he recounted long after in a letter to his friend Milton Waldman,* the primary intention of his work was to satisfy his desire for a specifically and recognizably English literature of ‘faerie’:
I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandinavian, and Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing English, save impoverished chap-book stuff.
In his earliest writings the mythology was anchored in the ancient legendary history of England; and more than that, it was peculiarly associated with certain places in England.
Eriol, himself close kin of famous figures in the legends of North-western Europe, came at last on a voyage westward over the ocean to Tol Eressлa, the Lonely Isle, where Elves dwelt; and from them he learned ‘The Lost Tales of Elfinesse’. But his rфle was at first to be more important in the structure of the work than (what it afterwards became) simply that of a man of later days who came to ‘the land of the Fairies’ and there acquired lost or hidden knowledge, which he afterwards reported in his own tongue: at first, Eriol was to be an important element in the fairy-history itself—the witness of the ruin of Elvish Tol Eressлa. The element of ancient English history or ‘historical legend’ was at first not merely a framework, isolated from the great tales that afterwards constituted ‘The Silmarillion’, but an integral part of their ending. The elucidation of all this (so far as elucidation is possible) must necessarily be postponed to the end of the Tales; but here something at least must be said of the history of Eriol up to the time of his coming to Tol Eressлa, and of the original significance of the Lonely Isle.
The ‘Eriol-story’ is in fact among the knottiest and most obscure matters in the whole history of Middle-earth and Aman. My father abandoned the writing of the Lost Tales before he reached their end, and when he abandoned them he had also abandoned his original ideas for their conclusion. Those ideas can indeed be discerned from his notes; but the notes were for the most part pencilled at furious speed, the writing now rubbed and faint and in places after long study scarcely decipherable, on little slips of paper, disordered and dateless, or in a little notebook in which, during the years when he was composing the Lost Tales, he jotted down thoughts and suggestions (see p. 171). The common form of these notes on the ‘Eriol’ or ‘English’ element is that of short outlines, in which salient narrative features, often without clear connection between them, are set down in the manner of a list; and they vary constantly among themselves.
In what must be, at any rate, among the very earliest of these outlines, found in this little pocket-book, and headed ‘Story of Eriol’s Life’, the mariner who came to Tol Eressлa is brought into relation with the tradition of the invasion of Britain by Hengest and Horsa in the fifth century A.D. This was a matter to which my father gave much time and thought; he lectured on it at Oxford and developed certain original theories, especially in connection with the appearance of Hengest in Beowulf.*
From these jottings we learn that Eriol’s original name was Ottor, but that he called himself W