Текст книги "The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two"

Автор книги: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

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He made numerous revisions and recastings of the principal stories in the cycle, deciding to abandon the original sea-voyager ‘Eriol’ to whom the stories were told, and instead renaming him ‘Жlfwine’ or ‘elf-friend’.

That Eriol was (for a time) displaced by Жlfwine is certain. But while it may well be that at the time of the texts now to be considered the name Eriol had actually been rejected, in the first version of ‘The Silmarillion’ proper, written in 1926, Eriol reappears, while in the earliest Annals of Valinor, written in the 1930s, it is said that they were translated in Tol Eressлa ‘by Eriol of Leithien, that is Жlfwine of the Angelcynn’. On the other hand, at this earlier period it seems entirely justifiable on the evidence to treat the two names as indicative of different narrative projections—‘the Eriol story’ and ‘the Жlfwine story’.

‘Жlfwine’, then, is associated with a new conception, subsequent to the writing of the Lost Tales. The mariner is Жlfwine, not Eriol, in the second ‘Scheme’ for the Tales, which I have called ‘an unrealised project for the revision of the whole work’ (see I.234). The essential difference may be made clear now, before citing the difficult evidence: Tol Eressлa is now in no way identified with England, and the story of the drawing back of the Lonely Island across the sea has been abandoned. England is indeed still at the heart of this later conception, and is named Luthany.¹⁴ The mariner, Жlfwine, is an Englishman sailing westward from the coast of Britain; and his role is diminished. For whereas in the writings studied thus far he comes to Tol Eressлa before the dйnouement and disaster of the Faring Forth, and either he himself or his descendants witness the devastation of Tol Eressлa by the invasion of Men and their evil allies (in one line of development he was even to be responsible for it, p. 294), in the later narrative outlines he does not arrive until all the grievous history is done. His part is only to learn and to record.¹⁵

I turn now to a number of short and very oblique passages, written on separate slips, but found together and clearly dating from much the same time.

(15) Жlfwine of England dwelt in the South-west; he was of the kin of Ing, King of Luthany. His mother and father were slain by the sea-pirates and he was made captive.

He had always loved the fairies: his father had told him many things (of the tradition of Ing). He escapes. He beats about the northern and western waters. He meets the Ancient Mariner—and seeks for Tol Eressлa (seo unwemmede нeg), whither most of the unfaded Elves have retired from the noise, war, and clamour of Men.

The Elves greet him, and the more so when they learn of him who he is. They call him Lъthien the man of Luthany. He finds his own tongue, the ancient English tongue, is spoken in the isle.

The ‘Ancient Mariner’ has appeared in the story that Eriol told to Vлannл (pp. 5, 7), and much more will be told of him subsequently.

(16) Жlfwine of Englaland, [added later: driven by the Normans,] arrives in Tol Eressлa, whither most of the fading Elves have withdrawn from the world, and there fade now no more.

Description of the harbour of the southern shore. The fairies greet him well hearing he is from Englaland. He is surprised to hear them speak the speech of Жlfred of Wessex, though to one another they spoke a sweet and unknown tongue.

The Elves name him Lъthien for he is come from Luthany, as they call it (‘friend’ and ‘friendship’). Eldaros or Жlfhвm. He is sped to Rфs their capital. There he finds the Cottage of Lost Play, and Lindo and Vairл.

He tells who he is and whence, and why he has long sought for the isle (by reason of traditions in the kin of Ing), and he begs the Elves to come back to Englaland.

Here begins (as an explanation of why they cannot) the series of stories called the Book of Lost Tales.

In this passage (16) Жlfwine becomes more firmly rooted in English history: he is apparently a man of eleventh-century Wessex—but as in (15) he is of ‘the kin of Ing’. The capital of the Elves of Tol Eressлa is not Kortirion but Rфs, a name now used in a quite different application from that in citation (5), where it was a promontory of the Great Lands.

I have been unable to find any trace of the process whereby the name Lъthien came to be so differently applied afterwards (Lъthien Tinъviel). Another note of this period explains the name quite otherwise: ‘Lъthien or Lъsion was son of Telumaith (Telumektar). Жlfwine loved the sign of Orion, and made the sign, hence the fairies called him Lъthien (Wanderer).’ There is no other mention of Жlfwine’s peculiar association with Orion nor of this interpretation of the name Lъthien; and this seems to be a development that my father did not pursue.

It is convenient to give here the opening passage from the second Scheme for the Lost Tales, referred to above; this plainly belongs to the same time as the rest of these ‘Жlfwine’ notes, when the Tales had been written so far as they ever went within their first framework.

(17) Жlfwine awakens upon a sandy beach. He listens to the sea, which is far out. The tide is low and has left him.

Жlfwine meets the Elves of Rфs; finds they speak the speech of the English, beside their own sweet tongue. Why they do so—the dwelling of Elves in Luthany and their faring thence and back. They clothe him and feed him, and he sets forth to walk along the island’s flowery ways.

The scheme goes on to say that on a summer evening Жlfwine came to Kortirion, and thus differs from (16), where he goes to ‘Rфs their capital’, in which he finds the Cottage of Lost Play. The name Rфs seems to be used here in yet another sense—possibly a name for Tol Eressлa.

(18) He is sped to Жlfhвm (Elfhome) Eldos where Lindo and Vairл tell him many things: of the making and ancient fashion of the world: of the Gods: of the Elves of Valinor: of Lost Elves and Men: of the Travail of the Gnomes: of Eдrendel: of the Faring Forth and the Loss of Valinor: of the disaster of the Faring Forth and the war with evil Men. The retreat to Luthany where Ingwл was king. Of the home-thirst of the Elves and how the greater number sought back to Valinor. The loss of Elwing. How a new home was made by the Solosimpi and others in Tol Eressлa. How the Elves continually sadly leave the world and fare thither.

For the interpretation of this passage it is essential to realise (the key indeed to the understanding of this projected history) that ‘the Faring Forth’ does not here refer to the Faring Forth in the sense in which it has been used hitherto—that from Tol Eressлa for the Rekindling of the Magic Sun, which ended in ruin, but to the March of the Elves of Kфr and the ‘Loss of Valinor’ that the March incurred (see pp. 253, 257, 280). It is not indeed clear why it is here called a ‘disaster’: but this is evidently to be associated with ‘the war with evil Men’, and war between Elves and Men at the time of the March from Kфr is referred to in citations (1) and (3).

In ‘the Eriol story’ it is explicit that after the March from Kфr the Elves departed from the Great Lands to Tol Eressлa; here on the other hand ‘the war with evil Men’ is followed by ‘the retreat to Luthany where Ingwл was king’. The (partial) departure to Tol Eressлa is from Luthany; the loss of Elwing seems to take place on one of these voyages. As will be seen, the ‘Faring Forth’ of ‘the Eriol story’ has disappeared as an event of Elvish history, and is only mentioned as a prophecy and a hope.

Schematically the essential divergence of the two narrative structures can be shown thus:

(Eriol story)

(Жlfwine story)

March of the Elves of Kфr to the Great Lands

March of the Elves of Kфr to the Great Lands (called ‘the Faring Forth’)

War with Men in the Great Lands

War with Men in the Great Lands

Retreat of the Elves to Tol Eressлa (loss of Elwing)

Retreat of the Elves to Luthany (> England) ruled by Ingwл

Departure of many Elves to Tol Eressлa (loss of Elwing)

Eriol sails from the East (North Sea region) to Tol Eressлa

Жlfwine sails from England to Tol Eressлa

The Faring Forth, drawing of Tol Eressлa to the Great Lands; ultimately Tol Eressлa > England

This is of course by no means a full statement of the Жlfwine story, and is merely set out to indicate the radical difference of structure. Lacking from it is the history of Luthany, which emerges from the passages that now follow.

(19) Luthany means ‘friendship’, Lъthien ‘friend’. Luthany the only land where Men and Elves once dwelt an age in peace and love.

How for a while after the coming of the sons of Ing the Elves throve again and ceased to fare away to Tol Eressлa.

How Old English became the sole mortal language which an Elf will speak to a mortal that knows no Elfin.

(20) Жlfwine of England (whose father and mother were slain by the fierce Men of the Sea who knew not the Elves) was a great lover of the Elves, especially of the shoreland Elves that lingered in the land. He seeks for Tol Eressлa whither the fairies are said to have retired.

He reaches it. The fairies call him Lъthien. He learns of the making of the world,…….of Gods and Elves, of Elves and Men, down to the departure to Tol Eressлa.

How the Faring Forth came to nought, and the fairies took refuge in Albion or Luthany (the Isle of Friendship).

Seven invasions.

Of the coming of Men to Luthany, how each race quarrelled, and the fairies faded, until [?the most] set sail, after the coming of the Rъmhoth, for the West. Why the Men of the seventh invasion, the Ingwaiwar, are more friendly.

Ingwл and Eдrendel who dwelt in Luthany before it was an isle and was [sic] driven east by Ossл to found the Ingwaiwar.

(21) All the descendants of Ing were well disposed to Elves; hence the remaining Elves of Luthany spoke to [?them] in the ancient tongue of the English, and since some have fared…..to Tol Eressлa that tongue is there understood, and all who wish to speak to the Elves, if they know not and have no means of learning Elfin speeches, must converse in the ancient tongue of the English.

In (20) the term ‘Faring Forth’ must again be used as it is in (18), of the March from Kфr. There it was called a ‘disaster’ (see p. 303), and here it is said that it ‘came to nought’: it must be admitted that it is hard to see how that can be said, if it led to the binding of Melko and the release of the enslaved Noldoli (see (1) and (3)).

Also in (20) is the first appearance of the idea of the Seven Invasions of Luthany. One of these was that of the Rъmhoth (mentioned also in (14)) or Romans; and the seventh was that of the Ingwaiwar, who were not hostile to the Elves.

Here something must be said of the name Ing (Ingwл, Ingwaiar) in these passages. As with the introduction of Hengest and Horsa, the association of the mythology with ancient English legend is manifest. But it would serve no purpose, I believe, to enter here into the obscure and speculative scholarship of English and Scandinavian origins: the Roman writers’ term Inguaeones for the Baltic maritime peoples from whom the English came; the name Ingwine (interpretable either as Ing-wine ‘the friends of Ing’ or as containing the same Ingw- seen in Inguaeones); or the mysterious personage Ing who appears in the Old English Runic Poem:

Ing wжs жrest   mid East-Denum

gesewen secgum   oю he siююan east

ofer wжg gewat;   wжn жfter ran

–which may be translated: ‘Ing was first seen by men among the East Danes, until he departed eastwards over the waves; his car sped after him.’ It would serve no purpose, because although the connection of my father’s Ing, Ingwл with the shadowy Ing (Ingw-) of northern historical legend is certain and indeed obvious he seems to have been intending no more than an association of his mythology with known traditions (though the words of the Runic Poem were clearly influential). The matter is made particularly obscure by the fact that in these notes the names Ing and Ingwл intertwine with each other, but are never expressly differentiated or identified.

Thus Жlfwine was ‘of the kin of Ing, King of Luthany’ (15, 16), but the Elves retreated ‘to Luthany where Ingwл was king’ (18). The Elves of Luthany throve again ‘after the coming of the sons of Ing’ (19), and the Ingwaiwar, seventh of the invaders of Luthany, were more friendly to the Elves (20), while Ingwл ‘founded’ the Ingwaiwar (20). This name is certainly to be equated with Inguaeones (see above), and the invasion of the Ingwaiwar (or ‘Sons of Ing’) equally certainly represents the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ invasion of Britain. Can Ing, Ingwл be equated? So far as this present material is concerned, I hardly see how they can not be. Whether this ancestor-founder is to be equated with Inwл (whose son was Ingil) of the Lost Tales is another question. It is hard to believe that there is no connection (especially since Inwл in The Cottage of Lost Play is emended from Ing, I.22), yet it is equally difficult to see what that connection could be, since Inwл of the Lost Tales is an Elda of Kфr (Ingwл Lord of the Vanyar in The Silmarillion) while Ing(wл) of ‘the Жlfwine story’ is a Man, the King of Luthany and Жlfwine’s ancestor. (In outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale it is said that Ing King of Luthany was descended from Ermon, or from Ermon and Elmir (the first Men, I. 236–7).)

The following outlines tell some more concerning Ing(wл) and the Ingwaiwar:

(22) How Ing sailed away at eld [i.e. in old age] into the twilight, and Men say he came to the Gods, but he dwells on Tol Eressлa, and will guide the fairies one day back to Luthany when the Faring Forth takes place.*

How he prophesied that his kin should fare back again and possess Luthany until the days of the coming of the Elves.

How the land of Luthany was seven times invaded by Men, until at the seventh the children of the children of Ing came back to their own.

How at each new war and invasion the Elves faded, and each loved the Elves less, until the Rъmhoth came—and they did not even believe they existed, and the Elves all fled, so that save for a few the isle was empty of the Elves for three hundred years.

(23) How Ingwл drank limpл at the hands of the Elves and reigned ages in Luthany.

How Eдrendel came to Luthany to find the Elves gone.

How Ingwл aided him, but was not suffered to go with him. Eдrendel blessed all his progeny as the mightiest sea-rovers of the world.¹⁶

How Ossл made war upon Ingwл because of Eдrendel, and Ing longing for the Elves set sail, and all were wrecked after being driven far east.

How Ing the immortal came among the Dani OroDбni Urdainoth East Danes.

How he became the half-divine king of the Ingwaiwar, and taught them many things of Elves and Gods, so that some true knowledge of the Gods and Elves lingered in that folk alone.

Part of another outline that does not belong with the foregoing passages but covers the same part of the narrative as (23) may be given here:

(24) Eдrendel takes refuge with [Ingwл] from the wrath of Ossл, and gives him a draught of limpл (enough to assure immortality). He gives him news of the Elves and the dwelling on Tol Eressлa.

Ingwл and a host of his folk set sail to find Tol Eressлa, but Ossл blows them back east. They are utterly wrecked. Only Ingwл rescued on a raft. He becomes king of the Angali, Euti, Saksani, and Firisandi,* who adopt the title of Ingwaiwar. He teaches them much magic and first sets men’s hearts to seafaring westward……

After a great [?age of rule] Ingwл sets sail in a little boat and is heard of no more.

It is clear that the intrusion of Luthany, and Ing(wл), into the conception has caused a movement in the story of Eдrendel: whereas in the older version he went to Tol Eressлa after the departure of the Eldar and Noldoli from the Great Lands (pp. 253, 255), now he goes to Luthany; and the idea of Ossл’s enmity towards Eдrendel (pp. 254, 263) is retained but brought into association with the origin of the Ingwaiwar.

It is clear that the narrative structure is:

– Ing(wл) King of Luthany.

– Eдrendel seeks refuge with him (after [many of] the Elves have departed to Tol Eressлa).

– Ing(wл) seeks Tol Eressлa but is driven into the East.

– Seven invasions of Luthany.

– The people of Ing(wл) are the Ingwaiwar, and they ‘come back to their own’ when they invade Luthany from across the North Sea.

(25) Luthany was where the tribes first embarked in the Lonely Isle for Valinor, and whence they landed for the Faring Forth,* whence [also] many sailed with Elwing to find Tol Eressлa.

That Luthany was where the Elves, at the end of the great journey from Palisor, embarked on the Lonely Isle for the Ferrying to Valinor, is probably to be connected with the statement in (20) that ‘Ingwл and Eдrendel dwelt in Luthany before it was an isle’.

(26) There are other references to the channel separating Luthany from the Great Lands: in rough jottings in notebook C there is mention of an isthmus being cut by the Elves, ‘fearing Men now that Ingwл has gone’, and ‘to the white cliffs where the silver spades of the Teleri worked’ also in the next citation.

(27) The Elves tell Жlfwine of the ancient manner of Luthany, of Kortirion or Gwarthyryn (Caer Gwвr),¹⁷ of Tavrobel.

How the fairies dwelt there a hundred ages before Men had the skill to build boats to cross the channel—so that magic lingers yet mightily in its woods and hills.

How they renamed many a place in Tol Eressлa after their home in Luthany. Of the Second Faring Forth and the fairies’ hope to reign in Luthany and replant there the magic trees—and it depends most on the temper of the Men of Luthany (since they first must come there) whether all goes well.

Notable here is the reference to ‘the Second Faring Forth’, which strongly supports my interpretation of the expression ‘Faring Forth’ in (18), (20), and (25); but the prophecy or hope of the Elves concerning the Faring Forth has been greatly changed from its nature in citation (6): here, the Trees are to be replanted in Luthany.

(28) How Жlfwine lands in Tol Eressлa and it seems to him like his own land made…….clad in the beauty of a happy dream. How the folk comprehended [his speech] and learn whence he is come by the favour of Ulmo. How he is sped to Kortirion.

With these two passages it is interesting to compare (9), the prose preface to Kortirion among the Trees, according to which Kortirion was a city built by the Elves in Tol Eressлa; and when Tol Eressлa was brought across the sea, becoming England, Kortirion was renamed in the tongue of the English Warwick (13). In the new story, Kortirion is likewise an ancient dwelling of the Elves, but with the change in the fundamental conception it is in Luthany; and the Kortirion to which Жlfwine comes in Tol Eressлa is the second of the name (being called ‘after their home in Luthany’). There has thus been a very curious transference, which may be rendered schematically thus:

(I) Kortirion, Elvish dwelling in Tol Eressлa.

Tol Eressлa England.

Kortirion = Warwick.

(II) Kortirion, Elvish dwelling in Luthany (> England).

Elves Tol Eressлa.

Kortirion (2) in Tol Eressлa named after Kortirion (1) in Luthany.

On the basis of the foregoing passages, (15) to (28), we may attempt to construct a narrative taking account of all the essential features:

– March of the Elves of Kфr (called ‘the Faring Forth’, or (by implication in 27) ‘the First Faring Forth’) into the Great Lands, landing in Luthany (25), and the Loss of Valinor (18).

– War with evil Men in the Great Lands (18).

– The Elves retreated to Luthany (not yet an island) where Ing(wл) was king (18, 20).

– Many [but by no means all] of the Elves of Luthany sought back west over the sea and settled in Tol Eressлa; but Elwing was lost (18, 25).

– Places in Tol Eressлa were named after places in Luthany (27).

– Eдrendel came to Luthany, taking refuge with Ing(wл) from the hostility of Ossл (20, 23, 24).

– Eдrendel gave Ing(wл) limpл to drink (24), or Ing(wл) received limpл from the Elves before Eдrendel came (23).

– Eдrendel blessed the progeny of Ing(wл) before his departure (23).

– Ossл’s hostility to Eдrendel pursued Ing(wл) also (23, 24).

– Ing(wл) set sail (with many of his people, 24) to find Tol Eressлa (23, 24).

– Ing(wл)’s voyage, through the enmity of Ossл, ended in shipwreck, but Ing(wл) survived, and far to the East [i.e. after being driven across the North Sea] he became King of the Ingwaiwar the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain (23, 24).

– Ing(wл) instructed the Ingwaiwar in true knowledge of the Gods and Elves (23) and turned their hearts to seafaring westwards (24). He prophesied that his kin should one day return again to Luthany (22).

– Ing(wл) at length departed in a boat (22, 24), and was heard of no more (24), or came to Tol Eressлa (22).

– After Ing(wл)’s departure from Luthany a channel was made so that Luthany became an isle (26); but Men crossed the channel in boats (27).

– Seven successive invasions took place, including that of the Rъmhoth or Romans, and at each new war more of the remaining Elves of Luthany fled over the sea (20, 22).

– The seventh invasion, that of the Ingwaiwar, was however not hostile to the Elves (20, 21); and these invaders were ‘coming back to their own’ (22), since they were the people of Ing(wл).

– The Elves of Luthany (now England) throve again and ceased to leave Luthany for Tol Eressлa (19), and they spoke to the Ingwaiwar in their own language, Old English (21).

– Жlfwine was an Englishman of the Anglo-Saxon period, a descendant of Ing(wл), who had derived a knowledge of and love of the Elves from the tradition of his family (15, 16).

– Жlfwine came to Tol Eressлa, found that Old English was spoken there, and was called by the Elves Lъthien ‘friend’, the Man of Luthany (the Isle of Friendship) (15, 16, 19).

I claim no more for this than that it seems to me to be the only way in which these disjecta membra can be set together into a comprehensive narrative scheme. It must be admitted even so that it requires some forcing of the evidence to secure apparent agreement. For example, there seem to be different views of the relation of the Ingwaiwar to Ing(wл): they are ‘the sons of Ing’ (19), ‘his kin’ (22), ‘the children of the children of Ing’ (22), yet he seems to have become the king and teacher of North Sea peoples who had no connection with Luthany or the Elves (23, 24). (Over whom did he rule when the Elves first retreated to Luthany (18, 23)?) Again, it is very difficult to fit the ‘hundred ages’ during which the Elves dwelt in Luthany before the invasions of Men began (27) to the rest of the scheme. Doubtless in these jottings my father was thinking with his pen, exploring independent narrative paths; one gets the impression of a ferment of ideas and possibilities rapidly displacing one another, from which no one stable narrative core can be extracted. A complete ‘solution’ is therefore in all probability an unreal aim, and this reconstruction no doubt as artificial as that attempted earlier for ‘the Eriol story’ (see p. 293). But here as there I believe that this outline shows as well as can be the direction of my father’s thought at that time.

There is very little to indicate the further course of ‘the Жlfwine story’ after his sojourn in Tol Eressлa (as I have remarked, p. 301, the part of the mariner is only to learn and record tales out of the past); and virtually all that can be learned from these notes is found on a slip that reads:

(29) How Жlfwine drank of limpл but thirsted for his home, and went back to Luthany; and thirsted then unquenchably for the Elves, and went back to Tavrobel the Old and dwelt in the House of the Hundred Chimneys (where grows still the child of the child of the Pine of Belawryn) and wrote the Golden Book.

Associated with this is a title-page:

(30)

The Book of Lost Tales

and the History of the Elves of Luthany

[?being]

The Golden Book of Tavrobel

the same that Жlfwine wrote and laid in the House of a Hundred

Chimneys at Tavrobel, where it lieth still to read for such as may.

These are very curious. Tavrobel the Old must be the original Tavrobel in Luthany (after which Tavrobel in Tol Eressлa was named, just as Kortirion in Tol Eressлa was named after Kortirion = Warwick in Luthany); and the House of the Hundred Chimneys (as also the Pine of Belawryn, on which see p. 281 and note 4) was to be displaced from Tol Eressлa to Luthany. Presumably my father intended to rewrite those passages in the ‘framework’ of the Lost Tales where the House of a Hundred Chimneys in Tavrobel is referred to; unless there was to be another House of a Hundred Chimneys in Tavrobel the New in Tol Eressлa.

Lastly, an interesting entry in the Qenya dictionary may be mentioned here: Parma Kuluinen ‘the Golden Book—the collected book of legends, especially of Ing and Eдrendel’.

In the event, of all these projections my father only developed the story of Жlfwine’s youth and his voyage to Tol Eressлa to a full and polished form, and to this work I now turn; but first it is convenient to collect the passages previously considered that bear on it.

In the opening Link to the Tale of Tinъvie1 Eriol said that ‘many years agone’, when he was a child, his home was ‘in an old town of Men girt with a wall now crumbled and broken, and a river ran thereby over which a castle with a great tower hung’.

My father came of a coastward folk, and the love of the sea that I had never seen was in my bones, and my father whetted my desire, for he told me tales that his father had told him before. Now my mother died in a cruel and hungry siege of that old town, and my father was slain in bitter fight about the walls, and in the end I Eriol escaped to the shoreland of the Western Sea.

Eriol told then of

his wanderings about the western havens,…of how he was wrecked upon far western islands until at last upon one lonely one he came upon an ancient sailor who gave him shelter, and over a fire within his lonely cabin told him strange tales of things beyond the Western Seas, of the Magic Isles and that most lonely one that lay beyond….

‘Ever after,’ said Eriol, ‘did I sail more curiously about the western isles seeking more stories of the kind, and thus it is indeed that after many great voyages I came myself by the blessing of the Gods to Tol Eressлa in the end…’

In the typescript version of this Link it is further told that in the town where Eriol’s parents lived and died

there dwelt a mighty duke, and did he gaze from the topmost battlements never might he see the bounds of his wide domain, save where far to east the blue shapes of the great mountains lay—yet was that tower held the most lofty that stood in the lands of Men.

The siege and sack of the town were the work of ‘the wild men from the Mountains of the East’.

At the end of the typescript version the boy Ausir assured Eriol that ‘that ancient mariner beside the lonely sea was none other than Ulmo’s self, who appeareth not seldom thus to those voyagers whom he loves’ but Eriol did not believe him.

I have given above (pp. 294–5) reasons for thinking that in ‘the Eriol story’ this tale of his youth was not set in England.

Turning to the passages concerned with the later, Жlfwine story, we learn from (15) that Жlfwine dwelt in the South-west of England and that his mother and father were slain by ‘the sea-pirates’, and from (20) that they were slain by ‘the fierce Men of the Sea’ from (16) that he was ‘driven by the Normans’. In (15) there is a mention of his meeting with ‘the Ancient Mariner’ during his voyages. In (16) he comes to ‘the harbour of the southern shore’ of Tol Eressлa; and in (17) he ‘awakens upon a sandy beach’ at low tide.

I come now to the narrative that finally emerged. It will be observed, perhaps with relief, that Ing, Ingwл, and the Ingwaiwar have totally disappeared.

ЖLFWINE OF ENGLAND

There are three versions of this short work. One is a plot-outline of less than 500 words, which for convenience of reference I shall call. ‘Жlfwine A; but the second is a much more substantial narrative bearing the title Жlfwine of England. This was written in 1920 or later: demonstrably not earlier, for my father used for it scraps of paper pinned together, and some of these are letters to him, all dated in February 1920.¹⁸ The third text no doubt began as a fair copy in ink of the second, to which it is indeed very close at first, but became as it proceeded a complete rewriting at several points, with the introduction of much new matter, and it was further emended after it had been completed. It bears no title in the manuscript, but must obviously be called Жlfwine of England likewise.

For convenience I shall refer to the first fully-written version as Жlfwine I and to its rewriting as Жlfwine II. The relation of Жlfwine A to these is hard to determine, since it agrees in some respects with the one and in some with the other. It is obvious that my father had Жlfwine I in front of him when he wrote Жlfwine II, but it seems likely that he drew on Жlfwine A at the same time.

I give here the full text of Жlfwine II in its final form, with all noteworthy emendations and all important differences from the other texts in the notes (differences in names, and changes to names, are listed separately).

There was a land called England, and it was an island of the West, and before it was broken in the warfare of the Gods it was westernmost of all the Northern lands, and looked upon the Great Sea that Men of old called Garsecg;¹⁹ but that part that was broken was called Ireland and many names besides, and its dwellers come not into these tales.

All that land the Elves named Lъthien²⁰ and do so yet. In Lъthien alone dwelt still the most part of the Fading Companies, the Holy Fairies that have not yet sailed away from the world, beyond the horizon of Men’s knowledge, to the Lonely Island, or even to the Hill of Tыn²¹ upon the Bay of Faлry that washes the western shores of the kingdom of the Gods. Therefore is Lъthien even yet a holy land, and a magic that is not otherwise lingers still in many places of that isle.