The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ this point there is no external evidence to show when the pencilled emendations were made; but I continue to take these up into the text as before.

15 Elendil’s long tale to Herendil of the ancient history, from ‘There is Ilúvatar, the One’ to ‘and ruin (if he might) Avallon and Valinor’ on p. 65, is a replacement of the original much briefer passage. This replacement must be later than the submission of The Lost Road to Allen and Unwin, for Morgoth is here called Alkar as the text was first written, not Melko, whereas in the song sung by Fíriel in the previous chapter Melko was only changed in pencil to Alkar, and this was not taken up into the typescript. The original passage read thus:

       He spoke of the rebellion of Melko [later > Alkar and subsequently], mightiest of the Powers, that began at the making of the World; and of his rejection by the Lords of the West after he had wrought evil in the Blessed Realm and caused the exile of the Eldar, the firstborn of the earth, who dwelt now in Eressëa. He told of Melko’s tyranny in Middle-earth, and how he had enslaved Men; of the wars which the Eldar waged with him, and were defeated, and of the Fathers of Men that had aided them; how Eärendel brought their prayer to the Lords, and Melko was overthrown and thrust forth beyond the confines of the World.

       Elendil paused and looked down on Herendil. He did not move or make a sign. Therefore Elendil went on. ‘Dost thou not perceive then, Herendil, that Morgoth is a begetter of evil, and brought sorrow upon our fathers? We owe him no allegiance except by fear. For his share of the governance of the World was forfeit long ago. Nor need we hope in him: the fathers of our race were his enemies; wherefore we can look for no love from him or any of his servants. Morgoth doth not forgive. But he cannot return into the World in present power and form while the Lords are enthroned. He is in the Void, though his Will remaineth and guideth his servants. And his will is to overthrow the Lords, and return, and wield dominion, and have vengeance on those who obey the Lords.

‘But why should we be deceived …’ (&c. as on p. 65).

The closing sentences (‘But he cannot return into the World …’) closely echo, or perhaps rather are closely echoed by (see note 25) a passage in FN II (§1).

      16 In QS §10 it is said that Melko was ‘coëval with Manwë’. The name Alkar ‘the Radiant’ of Melko occurs, I believe, nowhere outside this text.

17 See note 8. The reference to Eärendel’s child shows that Elros had not yet emerged, as he had not in FN II (p. 34).

18 ‘mockeries of the creatures of Ilúvatar’: cf. FN II §1 and commentary.

19 Here the long replacement passage ends (see note 15), though as written it continued in much the same words as did the earlier form (‘For Morgoth cannot return into the World while the Lords are enthroned …’); this passage was afterwards struck out.

      20 The words ‘a gift which in the wearing of time even the Lords of the West shall envy’ were a pencilled addition to the text, and are the first appearance of this idea: a closely similar phrase is found in a text of the Ainulindalë written years later (cf. The Silmarillion p. 42: ‘Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.’)

21 Cf. FN II §5: ‘Some said that he was a king greater than the King of Númenor; some said that he was one of the Gods or their sons set to govern Middle-earth. A few reported that he was an evil spirit, perchance Morgoth himself returned. But this was held to be only a foolish fable of the wild Men.’

22 This duodecimal computation is found in the text as written; see note 10.

23 Cf. FN II §5: ‘for [the Lords] said that Sauron would work evil if he came; but he could not come to Númenor unless he was summoned and guided by the king’s messengers.’

      24 The name Moriondë occurs, I think, nowhere else. This eastern haven is no doubt the forerunner of Rómenna.

25 This is the story of the coming of Sauron to Númenor found in FN II §5, which was replaced soon after by a version in which the lifting up of the ships by a great wave and the casting of them far inland was removed; see pp. 9, 26–7. In the first FN II version the sea rose like a mountain, the ship that carried Sauron was set upon a hill, and Sauron stood upon the hill to preach his message to the Númenóreans. In The Lost Road the sea rose like a hill, changed in pencil to mountain, Sauron’s ship was cast upon a high rock, changed in pencil to hill, and Sauron spoke standing on the rock (left unchanged). This is the best evidence I can see that of these two companion works (see notes 15, 21, 23) The Lost Road was written first.

26 Alkar: pencilled alteration of Melko: see note 15.

      27 On Eressëan (‘Elf-latin’, Qenya), the common speech of all Elves, see p. 56. The present passage is the first appearance of the idea of a linguistic component in the attack by the Númenórean ‘government’ on Eressëan culture and influence; cf. The Line of Elros in Unfinished Tales (p. 222), of Ar-Adûnakhôr, the twentieth ruler of Númenor: ‘He was the first King to take the sceptre with a title in the Adûnaic tongue … In this reign the Elven-tongues were no longer used, nor permitted to be taught, but were maintained in secret by the Faithful’; and of Ar-Gimilzôr, the twenty-third ruler: ‘he forbade utterly the use of the Eldarin tongues’ (very similarly in the Akallabêth, pp. 267–8). But of course at the time of The Lost Road the idea of Adûnaic as one of the languages of Númenor had not emerged, and the proposal is only that ‘the ancestral speech of Men’ should be ‘revived’.

28 This goes back to FN I §6: ‘Sûr said that the gifts of Morgoth were withheld by the Gods, and that to obtain plenitude of power and undying life he [the king Angor] must be master of the West.’

      There are several pages of notes that give some idea of my father’s thoughts – at a certain stage – for the continuation of the story beyond the point where he abandoned it. These are in places quite illegible, and in any case were the concomitant of rapidly changing ideas: they are the vestiges of thoughts, not statements of formulated conceptions. More important, some at least of these notes clearly preceded the actual narrative that was written and were СКАЧАТЬ