The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ of death, their dwelling-place in the far West the region to which the dead passed with their possessions.

      In ‘The Silmarillion’ the Gods are ‘physically’ present, because (whatever the actual mode of their own being) they inhabit the same physical world, the realm of the ‘seen’; if, after the Hiding of Valinor, they could not be reached by the voyages sent out in vain by Turgon of Gondolin, they were nonetheless reached by Eärendel, sailing from Middle-earth in his ship Wingelot, and their physical intervention of arms changed the world for ever through the physical destruction of the power of Morgoth. Thus it may be said that in ‘The Silmarillion’ there is no ‘religion’, because the Divine is present and has not been ‘displaced’; but with the physical removal of the Divine from the World Made Round a religion arose (as it had arisen in Númenor under the teachings of Thû concerning Morgoth, the banished and absent God), and the dead were despatched, for religious reasons, in burial ships on the shores of the Great Sea.

§12 ‘But upon the straight road only the Gods and the vanished Elves could walk, or such as the Gods summoned of the fading Elves of the round earth, who became diminished in substance as Men usurped the sun.’ Cf. the Quenta, IV. 100–1, as emended (a passage that goes back to the Sketch of the Mythology, IV. 21):

      In after days, when because of the triumph of Morgoth Elves and Men became estranged, as he most wished, those of the Eldalië that still lived in the world faded, and Men usurped the sunlight. Then the Eldar wandered in the lonelier places of the Outer Lands, and took to the moonlight and to the starlight, and to the woods and caves, and became as shadows, wraiths and memories, such as set not sail unto the West and vanished from the world.

      This passage survived very little changed in QS (§87).

I believe that the story of the flying ships built by the exiled Númenóreans, found already in the preliminary draft (p. 12), is the sole introduction of aerial craft in all my father’s works. No hint is given of the means by which they rose and were propelled; and the passage did not survive into the later legend.

§13 It is a curious feature of the original story of Númenor that there is no mention of what befell Thû at the Downfall (cf. the Akallabêth p. 280); but he reappears here as a master of temples (cf. the Lay of Leithian lines 2064–7), dwelling in a fortress (§14), an object of hatred to those of the survivors of Númenor who retained something of the ancient knowledge.

§14 In the Quenta (IV. 160–1) it is told that in the Great Battle

      the Northern regions of the Western world were rent and riven, and the sea roared in through many chasms, and there was confusion and great noise; and the rivers perished or found new paths, and the valleys were upheaved and the hills trod down, and Sirion was no more. Then Men fled away … and long was it ere they came back over the mountains to where Beleriand once had been.

      The last words of the earliest Annals of Beleriand (IV. 310) are ‘So ended the First Age of the World and Beleriand was no more.’ It is also said in the Quenta (IV. 162) that after the War was ended ‘there was a mighty building of ships on the shores of the Western Sea, and especially upon the great isles, which in the disruption of the Northern world were fashioned of ancient Beleriand.’

In FN a rather different conception is suggested. Though Beleriand had been ‘changed and broken’, it is spoken of as ‘that land’, it was still called Beleriand, and it was peopled by Men and Elves, able to form an alliance against Thû. I would suggest (though hesitantly) that with the emergence, here first glimpsed, of a Second Age of Middle-earth consequent on the legend of Númenor, the utter devastation of Beleriand, suitable to the finality of the conclusion of the earlier conception, had been diminished.^* Moreover it seems that at this time my father did not conceive of any further destruction of Beleriand at the time of the Downfall of Númenor, as he would do later (see p. 32).

At this stage there is no mention of a first and founder king of Númenor. Elrond was still the only child of Eärendel and Elwing; his brother Elros has appeared only in late additions to the text of Q (IV. 155), which were inserted after the Númenórean legend had begun to develop. In the oldest conception in the Sketch of the Mythology (IV. 38) Elrond ‘bound by his mortal half elects to stay on earth’ (i.e. in the Great Lands), and in Q (IV. 158) he ‘elected to remain, being bound by his mortal blood in love to those of the younger race’; see my remarks on the Choice of the Half-elven, IV. 70. Elrond is here, as it seems, a leader of the Elves of Beleriand, in alliance with Amroth, predecessor of Elendil. The Last Alliance leading to the overthrow of Thû is seen as the last intervention of the Elves in the affairs of the World of Men, in itself hastening their inevitable fading. The ‘dark forest’ to which Thû fled (cf. the ‘Iron-forest’ in the original outline) is doubtless Mirkwood. In The Hobbit all that had been told of the Necromancer was that he dwelt in a dark tower in the south of Mirkwood.^†

(iii)

       The second version of The Fall of Númenor

      FN II is a clear manuscript, made by my father with FN I before him and probably soon after it. It has many emendations made in the act of composition, and none that seem to have been made after any significant interval, apart from the title, which was inserted later in pencil, and the rejection of a sentence in §7. In contrast to my father’s common tendency to begin a new text keeping close to the antecedent but then to diverge ever more strongly as he proceeded, in this case the earlier part is much changed and expanded whereas the latter is scarcely altered, other than in very minor improvements to the run of sentences, until the end is reached. To give the whole of FN II is therefore unnecessary. Retaining the paragraph numbering of FN I, I give §§1–5 and 14 in full, and of the remainder only such short passages as were significantly altered.

      THE LAST TALE: THE FALL OF NÚMENOR

§1 In the Great Battle when Fionwë son of Manwë overthrew Morgoth and rescued the Exiles, the three houses of the Men of Beleriand fought against Morgoth. But most Men were allies of the Enemy; and after the victory of the Lords of the West those that were not destroyed fled eastward into Middle-earth; and the servants of Morgoth that escaped came to them, and enslaved them. For the Gods forsook for a time the Men of Middle-earth, because they had disobeyed their summons and hearkened to the Enemy. And Men were troubled by many evil things that Morgoth had made in the days of his dominion: demons and dragons and monsters, and Orcs, that are mockeries of the creatures of Ilúvatar; and their lot was unhappy. But Manwë put forth Morgoth, and shut him beyond the world in the Void without; and he cannot return again into the world, present and visible, while the Lords are enthroned. Yet his Will remaineth, and guideth his servants; and it moveth them ever to seek the overthrow of the Gods and the hurt of those that obey them.

      But when Morgoth was thrust forth, the Gods held council. The Elves were summoned to return into the West, and such as obeyed dwelt again in Eressëa, the Lonely Island, which was renamed Avallon: for it is hard by Valinor. But Men of the three faithful houses and such as had joined with them СКАЧАТЬ