The Shaping of Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien

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      5 Lúthien > Leithien (cf. §18 note 5).

Commentary on the ‘Sketch of the Mythology’

      While the ‘Sketch’ is a good and clear manuscript, as it had to be (since it was to be read by R. W. Reynolds), it will be apparent that my father composed it extremely rapidly: I think it quite possible and even probable that he wrote it without consulting the earlier prose tales.

      Very great advances have been made towards the form of the story as it appears in the published work; but there is no trace of a prose narrative even in fragmentary or note form that bridges the gap between the Lost Tales and this synopsis in the ‘Valinórean’ part of the mythology (i.e. to the flight of the Noldoli and the making of the Sun and Moon). This is not to say, of course, that none such ever existed, though the fact that my father did undoubtedly preserve a very high proportion of all that he ever wrote leads me to doubt it. I think it far more likely that while working on other things (during his time at Leeds) he had developed his ideas, especially on the ‘Valinórean’ part, without setting them to paper; and since the prose Tales had been set aside a good many years before, it may be that certain narrative shifts found in the ‘Sketch’ were less fully intended, less conscious, than such shifts in the later development of ‘The Silmarillion’, where he always worked on the basis of existing writings.

      It is in any case often extremely difficult, or impossible, to judge whether features in the Tales that are not present in the ‘Sketch’ were omitted simply for the sake of compression, or whether they had been definitively abandoned. Thus while Eriol – not Ælfwine, see II. 300 – is mentioned at the end, and his coming to Kortirion in Tol Eressëa, there is no trace of the Cottage of Lost Play: the entire narrative framework of the Lost Tales has disappeared. But this does not by any means demonstrate that my father had actually rejected it at this time.

      The Commentary that follows is divided according to the 19 sections into which I have divided the narrative.

      The ‘Sketch of the Mythology’ is referred to throughout the rest of this book by the abbreviation ‘S’.

1

      S (the ‘Sketch’), which makes no reference to the Creation and the Music of the Ainur, begins with the coming of the Nine Valar ‘for the governance of the world’: the Nine Valar have been referred to in the alliterative poem The Flight of the Noldoli (see III. 133, 137). There now appears the isle (later called Almaren) on which the Gods dwelt after the making of the Lamps, the origin of which is probably to be seen in the tale of The Coming of the Valar I. 69–70, where it is said that when the Lamps fell the Valar were gathered on the Twilit Isles, and that ‘that island whereon stood the Valar’ was dragged westward by Ossë. It might seem that the story of Melko’s making the pillars of the Lamps out of ice that melted had been abandoned, but it reappears again later, in the Ambarkanta (p. 238).

      The use of the word ‘plant’ of the Two Trees is curious, and might be dismissed simply as a hasty expression if it did not appear in the following version of ‘The Silmarillion’, the Quenta (p. 80). In the old tale, as in the published work, the Trees rose from the ground under the chanted spells of Yavanna. The silver undersides of the leaves of the White Tree now appear, and its flowers are likened to those of a cherry: Silpion is translated ‘Cherry-moon’ in the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin (II. 215). The mention of the White Tree first may imply that it had now become the Elder Tree, as it is explicitly in the Quenta.

      As S was first written the Trees had periods of twelve hours, as in the Lost Tales (see I. 88 and footnote), but with emendation from ‘six’ to ‘seven’ (allowing for the time of ‘mingled light’) the period becomes fourteen hours. This was a movement towards the formulation in The Silmarillion (p. 38), where each Tree ‘waxed to full and waned again to naught’ in seven hours; but in The Silmarillion ‘each day of the Valar in Aman contained twelve hours’, whereas in S each day was double that length.

      The Gnomish name of Varda, Bridhil, occurs in the alliterative Flight of the Noldoli (changed to Bredhil), the Lay of Leithian, and the early Gnomish dictionary (I. 273, entry Varda). On Timbrenting, Tindbrenting see III. 127, 139; Tengwethil (varying with Taingwethil) is found in the Lay of the Children of Húrin. For Ifan Belaurin see I. 273, entry Yavanna; in the Gnomish dictionary the Gnomish form is Ifon, Ivon.

2

      The description in S of the ‘Outer Lands’ (now used of the Great Lands, see III. 224), where growth was checked at the downfall of the Lamps, but where there are forests of dark trees in which Oromë goes hunting at times, moves the narrative at this point in one step to its structure in The Silmarillion; of the very different account in the Lost Tales I noticed in my commentary on The Chaining of Melko (I. 111): ‘In this earliest narrative there is no mention of the beginning of growth during the time when the Lamps shone, and the first trees and low plants appeared under Yavanna’s spells in the twilight after their overthrow.’

      Whereas in the Lost Tales the star-making of Varda took place after the awakening of the Elves (I. 113), here they awake ‘at the making of the stars’.

      In commenting on the Lost Tales I noticed (I. 111, 131) that the Gods sought out Melko on account of his renewed cosmic violence, before the awakening of the Elves and without respect to them in any way; and that the release of Melko from Mandos took place before the coming of the Eldar to Valinor, so that he played a part in the debate concerning their summons. In S the later story (that the discovery of the Elves led directly to the assault of the Valar on the fortress of Morgoth) is already present, and moreover a motive is ascribed to the intervention of the Valar that is not found in The Silmarillion: they are ‘reminded of their duty to the Earth, since they came thither knowing that their office was to govern it for the two races of Earth who should after come each in appointed time’. It seems clear also that the old story of the coming of the Elves being known to Manwë independently of their discovery by Oromë (see I. 131) had been abandoned.

      In the Lost Tales Melko’s first fortress was Utumna, and though it was not wholly destroyed to its foundations (I. 104) after his escape back into the Great Lands he was ‘busy making himself new dwellings’, as Sorontur told Manwë, for ‘never more will Utumna open unto him’ (I. 176). This second fortress was Angband (Angamandi). In S, on the other hand, the first fortress is Angband, and after his escape Morgoth is able to return to it (§4), for it was too strong for the Gods to destroy (§2). The name Utumna (Utumno) has thus disappeared.

      In the passage describing the three hosts of the Elves on the great march from Cuiviénen (which occurs, by emendation, in the Lay of the Children of Húrin, III. 18, 23) there appears the later use of Teleri for the third kindred (who however still retain the old name Solosimpi, the Shoreland Pipers), while the first kindred (the Teleri of the Lost Tales) now acquire the name Quendi (subsequently spelt in S both Quendi and Qendi). Thus:

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Lost Tales	‘Sketch’	The Silmarillion
Teleri	Q(u)endi	Vanyar