Ottor W
Then sea-longing gripped Ottor W
Various things are told in these notes about Eriol’s sojourn in Tol Eressлa which do not appear in The Book of Lost Tales, but of these I need here only refer to the statements that ‘Eriol adopted the name of Angol’ and that he was named by the Gnomes (the later Noldor, see below p. 43) Angol ‘after the regions of his home’. This certainly refers to the ancient homeland of the ‘English’ before their migration across the North Sea to Britain: Old English Angel, Angul, modern German Angeln, the region of the Danish peninsula between the Flensburg fjord and the river Schlei, south of the modern Danish frontier. From the west coast of the peninsula it is no very great distance to the island of Heligoland.
In another place Angol is given as the Gnomish equivalent of Eriollo, which names are said to be those of ‘the region of the northern part of the Great Lands, “between the seas”, whence Eriol came’. (On these names see further under Eriol in the Appendix on Names.)
It is not to be thought that these notes represent in all respects the story of Eriol as my father conceived it when he wrote The Cottage of Lost Play—in any case, it is said expressly there that Eriol means ‘One who dreams alone’, and that ‘of his former names the story nowhere tells’ (p. 14). But what is important is that (according to the view that I have formed of the earliest conceptions, apparently the best explanation of the very difficult evidence) this was still the leading idea when it was written: Eriol came to Tol Eressлa from the lands to the East of the North Sea. He belongs to the period preceding the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain (as my father, for his purposes, wished to represent it).
Later, his name changed to Жlfwine (‘Elf-friend’), the mariner became an Englishman of the ‘Anglo-Saxon period’ of English history, who sailed west over sea to Tol Eressлa—he sailed from England out into the Atlantic Ocean; and from this later conception comes the very remarkable story of Жlfwine of England, which will be given at the end of the Lost Tales. But in the earliest conception he was not an Englishman of England: England in the sense of the land of the English did not yet exist; for the cardinal fact (made quite explicit in extant notes) of1 this conception is that the Elvish isle to which Eriol came was England—that is to say, Tol Eressлa would become England, the land of the English, at the end of the story. Koromas or Kortirion, the town in the centre of Tol Eressлa to which Eriol comes in The Cottage of Lost Play, would become in after days Warwick (and the elements Kor- and War- were etymologically connected);* Alalminуrл, the Land of Elms, would be Warwickshire; and Tavrobel, where Eriol sojourned for a while in Tol Eressлa, would afterwards be the Staffordshire village of Great Haywood.
None of this is explicit in the written Tales, and is only found in notes independent of them; but it seems certain that it was still present when The Cottage of Lost Play was written (and indeed, as I shall try to show later, underlies all the Tales). The fair copy that my mother made of it was dated February 1917. From 1913 until her marriage in March 1916 she lived in Warwick and my father visited her there from Oxford; after their marriage she lived for a while at Great Haywood (east of Stafford), since it was near the camp where my father was stationed, and after his return from France he was at Great Haywood in the winter of 1916–17. Thus the identification of Tol Eressлan Tavrobel with Great Haywood cannot be earlier than 1916, and the fair copy of The Cottage of Lost Play (and quite possibly the original composition of it) was actually done there.
In November 1915 my father wrote a poem entitled Kortirion among the Trees which was dedicated to Warwick.† To the first fair copy of the poem there is appended a prose introduction, as follows:
Now on a time the fairies dwelt in the Lonely Isle after the great wars with Melko and the ruin of Gondolin; and they builded a fair city amid-most of that island, and it was girt with trees. Now this city they called Kortirion, both in memory of their ancient dwelling of Kфr in Valinor, and because this city stood also upon a hill and had a great tower tall and grey that Ingil son of Inwл their lord let raise.
Very beautiful was Kortirion and the fairies loved it, and it became rich in song and poesy and the light of laughter; but on a time the great Faring Forth was made, and the fairies had rekindled once more the Magic Sun of Valinor but for the treason and faint hearts of Men. But so it is that the Magic Sun is dead and the Lonely Isle drawn back unto the confines of the Great Lands, and the fairies are scattered through all the wide unfriendly pathways of the world; and now Men dwell even on this faded isle, and care nought or know nought of its ancient days. Yet still there be some of the Eldar and the Noldoli‡ of old who linger in the island, and their songs are heard about the shores of the land that once was the fairest dwelling of the immortal folk.
And it seems to the fairies and it seems to me who know that town and have often trodden its disfigured ways that autumn and the falling of the leaf is the season of the year when maybe here or there a heart among Men may be open, and an eye perceive how is the world’s estate fallen from the laughter and the loveliness of old. Think on Kortirion and be sad—yet is there not hope?
Both h1ere and in The Cottage of Lost Play there are allusions to events still in the future when Eriol came to Tol Eressлa; and though the full exposition and discussion of them must wait until the end of the Tales it needs to be explained here that ‘the Faring Forth’ was a great expedition made from Tol Eressлa for the rescue of the Elves who were still wandering in the Great Lands—cf. Lindo’s words (p. 17): ‘until such time as they fare forth to find the lost families of the kindred’. At that time Tol Eressлa was uprooted, by the aid of Ulmo, from the sea-bottom and dragged near to the western shores of the Great Lands. In the battle that followed the Elves were defeated, and fled into hiding in Tol Eressлa; Men entered the isle, and the fading of the Elves began. The subsequent history of Tol Eressлa is the history of England; and Warwick is ‘disfigured Kortirion’, itself a memory of ancient Kфr (the later Tirion upon Tъna, city of the Elves in Aman; in the Lost Tales the name Kфr is used both of the city and the hill).
Inwл, referred to in The Cottage of Lost Play as ‘King of all the Eldar when they dwelt in Kфr’, is the forerunner of Ingwл King of the Vanyar Elves in The Silmarillion. In a story told later to Eriol in Tol Eressлa Inwл reappears as one of the three Elves who went first to Valinor after the Awakening, as was Ingwл in The Silmarillion; his kindred and descendants were the Inwir, of whom came Meril-i-Turinqi, the Lady of Tol Eressлa (see p. 50). Lindo’s references to Inwл’s hearing ‘the lament of the world’ (i.e. of the Great Lands) and to his leading the Eldar forth to the lands of Men (p. 16) are the germ of the story of the coming of the Hosts of the West to the assault on Thangorodrim: ‘The host of the Valar prepared for battle; and beneath their white banners marched the Vanyar, the people of Ingwл…’ (The Silmarillion, p. 251). Later in the Tales it is said to Eriol by Meril-i-Turinqi that ‘Inwл was the eldest of the Elves, and had lived yet in majesty had he not perished in that march into the world; but Ingil his son went long ago back to Valinor and is with Manwл’. In The Silmarillion, on the other hand, it is said of Ingwл that ‘he entered into Valinor [in the beginning of the days of the Elves] and sits at the feet of the Powers, and all Elves revere his name; but he came never back, nor looked again upon Middle-earth’ (p. 53).