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

Автор книги: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

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Changes made to names in

The Tale of the Sun and Moon

Amnor < Amnos (Amnos is the form in The Flight of the Noldoli, < Emnon; the form Amnon also occurs, see p. 172).

For changes in the passage on the names of the Sun see notes 12 and 13.

Gilfanon < Ailios (p. 189, at the first occurrence only, see note 19).

Minethlos < Mainlos.

Uolл Kъvion < Uolл Mikъmi, only at the second occurrence on p. 193; at the first occurrence, Uolл Mikъmi was left unchanged, though I have given Uolл Kъvion in the text.

Ship of Morning < Kalaventл (p. 190; i · Kalaventл ‘the Ship of Light’ occurs unemended in the text on p. 188).

the Sunship’s flames < the flames of Kalaventл (p. 193).

Sбri < Kalavйnл (p. 193, 195. Kalavйnл is the form in the original version, see note 19).

Commentary on

The Tale of the Sun and Moon

The effect of the opening of this tale is undoubtedly to emphasize more strongly than in the later accounts the horror aroused by the deeds of the Noldoli (notable is Aulл’s bitterness against them, of which nothing is said afterwards), and also the finality and 1absoluteness of their exclusion from Valinor. But the idea that some Gnomes remained in Valinor (the Aulenossл, p. 176) survived; cf. The Silmarillion p. 84:

And of all the Noldor in Valinor, who were grown now to a great people, but one tithe refused to take the road: some for the love that they bore to the Valar (and to Aulл not least), some for the love of Tirion and the many things that they had made; none for fear of peril by the way.

Sorontur’s mission and the tidings that he brought back were to be abandoned. Very striking is his account of the empty ships drifting, of which ‘some were burning with bright fires’: the origin of Fлanor’s burning of the ships of the Teleri at Losgar in The Silmarillion (p. 90), where however there is a more evident reason for doing so. That Melko’s second dwelling-place in the Great Lands was distinct from Utumna is here expressly stated, as also that it was in the Iron Mountains (cf. p. 149, 158); the name Angamandi ‘Hells of Iron’ has occurred once in the Lost Tales, in the very strange account of the fate of Men after death (p. 77). In later accounts Angband was built on the site of Utumno, but finally they were separated again, and in The Silmarillion Angband had existed from ancient days before the captivity of Melkor (p. 47). It is not explained in the present tale why ‘never more will Utumna open to him’ (p. 176), but doubtless it was because Tulkas and Ulmo broke its gates and piled hills of stone upon them (p. 104).

In the next part of the tale (p. 177 ff.) much light is cast on my father’s early conception of the powers and limitations of the great Valar. Thus Yavanna and Manwл (brought to this realization by Yavanna?) are shown to believe that the Valar have done ill, or at least failed to achieve the wider designs of Ilъvatar (‘I have it in mind that this [time of darkness] is not without the desire of Ilъvatar’): the idea of ‘selfish’, inward-looking Gods is plainly expressed, Gods content to tend their gardens and devise their devisings behind their mountains, leaving ‘the world’ to shape itself as it may. And this realization is an essential element in their conceiving the making of the Sun and Moon, which are to be such bodies as may light not only ‘the blessed realms’ (an expression which occurs here for the first time, p. 182) but all the rest of the dark Earth. Of all this there is only a trace in The Silmarillion (p. 99):

These things the Valar did, recalling in their twilight the darkness of the lands of Arda; and they resolved now to illumine Middle-earth and with light to hinder the deeds of Melkor.

Of much interest also is the ‘theological’ statement in the early narrative concerning the binding of the Valar to the World as the condition of their entering it (p. 182); cf. The Silmarillion p. 20:

But this condition Ilъvatar made, or it is the necessity of their love, that their power should thenceforward be contained and bounded in the World, to be within it for ever, until it is complete, so that they are its life and it is theirs.

In the tale this condition is an express physical1 limitation: none of the Valar, save Manwл and Varda and their attendant spirits, could pass into the higher airs above Vilna, though they could move at great speed within the lowest air.

From the passage on p. 178, where it is said that Ulmo, despite his love for the Solosimpi and grief at the Kinslaying, was yet not filled with anger against the Noldoli, for he ‘was foreknowing more than all the Gods, even than great Manwл’, it is seen that Ulmo’s peculiar concern for the exiled Eldar—which plays such an important if mysterious part in the development of the story—was there from the beginning; as also was Yavanna’s thought, expressed in The Silmarillion p. 78:

Even for those who are mightiest under Ilъvatar there is some work that they may accomplish once, and once only. The Light of the Trees I brought into being, and within Eд I can do so never again.

Yavanna’s reference to the Magic Sun and its relighting (which has appeared in the toast drunk in the evening in the Cottage of Lost Play, p. 17, 65) is obviously intended to be obscure at this stage.

There is no later reference to the story of the wastage of light by Lуrien and Vбna, pouring it over the roots of the Trees unavailingly.

Turning to Lindo’s account of the stars (p. 181–2), Morwinyon has appeared in an earlier tale (p. 114), with the story that Varda dropped it ‘as she fared in great haste back to Valinor’, and that it ‘blazes above the world’s edge in the west’ in the present tale Morwinyon (which according to both the Qenya and Gnomish word-lists is Arcturus) is again strangely represented as being a luminary always of the western sky. It is said here that while some of the stars were guided by the Mбnir and the Sъruli ‘on mazy courses’, others, including Morwinyon and Nielluin, ‘abode where they hung and moved not’. Is the explanation of this that in the ancient myths of the Elves there was a time when the regular apparent movement of all the heavenly bodies from East to West had not yet begun? This movement is nowhere explained mythically in my father’s cosmology.

Nielluin (‘Blue Bee’) is Sirius (in The Silmarillion called Helluin), and this star had a place in the legend of Telimektar son of Tulkas, though the story of his conversion into the constellation of Orion was never clearly told (cf. Telumehtar ‘Orion’ in The Lord of the Rings Appendix E, I). Nielluin was Inwл’s son Ingil, who followed Telimektar ‘in the likeness of a great bee bearing honey of flame’ (see the Appendix on Names under Ingil and Telimektar).

The course of the Sun and Moon between East and West (rather than in some other direction) is here given a rationale, and the reason for avoiding the South is Ungweliant’s presence there. This seems to give Ungweliant a great importance and also a vast area subject to her power of absorbing light. It is not made clear in the tale of The Darkening of Valinor where her dwelling was. It is said (p. 151) that Melko wandered ‘the dark plains of Eruman, and farther south than anyone yet had penetrated he found a region of the deepest gloom’—the region where he found the cavern of Un1gweliant, which had ‘a subterranean outlet on the sea’ and after the destruction of the Trees Ungweliant ‘gets her gone southward and over the mountains to her home’ (p. 154). It is impossible to tell from the vague lines on the little map (p. 81) what was at this time the configuration of the southern lands and seas.

In comparison with the last part of the tale, concerning the last fruit of Laurelin and the last flower of Silpion, the making from them of the Sun and Moon, and the launching of their vessels (p. 183–95), Chapter XI of The Silmarillion (constituted from two later versions not greatly dissimilar the one from the other) is extremely brief. Despite many differences the later versions read in places almost as summaries of the early story, but it is often hard to say whether the shortening depends rather on my father’s feeling (certainly present, see p. 174) that the description was too long, was taking too large a place in the total structure, or an actual rejection of some of the ideas it contains, and a desire to diminish the extreme ‘concreteness’ of its images. Certainly there is here a revelling in materials of ‘magic’ property, gold, silver, crystal, glass, and above all light conceived as a liquid element, or as dew, as honey, an element that can be bathed in and gathered into vessels, that has quite largely disappeared from The Silmarillion (although, of course, the idea of light as liquid, dripping down, poured and hoarded, sucked up by Ungoliant, remained essential to the conception of the Trees, this idea becomes in the later writing less palpable and the divine operations are given less ‘physical’ explanation and justification).

As a result of this fullness and intensity of description, the origin of the Sun and Moon in the last fruit and last flower of the Trees has less of mystery than in the succinct and beautiful language of The Silmarillion; but also much is said here to emphasize the great size of the ‘Fruit of Noon’, and the increase in the heat and brilliance of the Sunship after its launching, so that the reflection rises less readily that if the Sun that brilliantly illumines the whole Earth was but one fruit of Laurelin then Valinor must have been painfully bright and hot in the days of the Trees. In the early story the last outpourings of life from the dying Trees are utterly strange and ‘enormous’, those of Laurelin portentous, even ominous; the Sun is astoundingly bright and hot even to the Valar, who are awestruck and disquieted by what has been done (the Gods knew ‘that they had done a greater thing than they at first knew’, p. 190); and the anger and distress of certain of the Valar at the burning light of the Sun enforces the feeling that in the last fruit of Laurelin a terrible and unforeseen power has been released. This distress does indeed survive in The Silmarillion (p. 100), in the reference to ‘the prayers of Lуrien and Estл, who said that sleep and rest had been banished from the Earth, and the stars were hidden’ but in the tale the blasting power of the new Sun is intensely conveyed in the images of ‘the heat dancing above the trees’ in the gardens of Lуrien, the silent nightingales, the withered poppies and the drooping evening flowers.

In the old story there is a mythical explanation of the Moon’s phases (though not of eclipses), and of the markings on its face through the story of the breaking of the withered bough of Silpion and the fall of the Moonflower—a story altogether at variance with the explanation given in The Silmarillion (1ibid.). In the tale the fruit of Laurelin also fell to the ground, when Aulл stumbled and its weight was too great for Tulkas to bear alone: the significance of this event is not made perfectly clear, but it seems that, had the Fruit of Noon not burst asunder, Aulл would not have understood its structure and conceived that of the Sunship.

To whatever extent the great differences between the versions in this part of the Mythology may be due to later compression, there remain a good many actual contradictions, of which I note here only some of the more important, in addition to that concerning the markings on the Moon already mentioned. Thus in The Silmarillion the Moon rose first, ‘and was the elder of the new lights as was Telperion of the Trees’ (ibid.); in the old story the reverse is true both of the Trees and of the new lights. Again, in The Silmarillion it is Varda who decides their motions, and she changes these from her first plan at the plea of Lуrien and Estл, whereas here it is Lуrien’s very distress at the coming of Sunlight that leads to the last blossoming of Silpion and the making of the Moon. The Valar indeed play different roles throughout; and here far greater importance attaches to the acts of Vбna and Lуrien, whose relations with the Sun and Moon are at once deeper and more explicit than they afterwards became, as they had been with the Trees (see p. 71); in The Silmarillion it was Nienna who watered the Trees with her tears (p. 98). In The Silmarillion the Sun and Moon move nearer to Arda than ‘the ancient stars’ (p. 99), but here they move at quite different levels in the firmament.

But a feature in which later compression can be certainly discerned is the elaborate description in the tale of the Moon as ‘an island of pure glass’, ‘a shimmering isle’, with little lakes of the light from Telimpл bordered with shining flowers and a crystalline cup amidmost in which was set the Moonflower; only from this is explicable the reference in The Silmarillion to Tilion’s steering ‘the island of the Moon’. The aged Elf Uolл Kъvion (whom ‘some indeed have named the Man in the Moon’) seems almost to have strayed in from another conception; his presence gives difficulty in any case, since we have just been told (p. 192) that Silmo could not sail in the Moonship because he was not of the children of the air and could not ‘cleanse his being of its earthwardness’.—An isolated heading ‘Uolл and Erinti’ in the little pocket-book used among things for suggestions of stories to be told (see p. 171) no doubt implies that a tale was preparing on the subject of Uolл cf. the Tale of Qorinуrmi concerning Urwendi and Erinti’s brother Fionwл (p. 215). No traces of these tales are to be found and they were presumably never written. Another note in the pocket-book calls Uolл Mikъmi (the earlier name of Uolл Kъvion, see p. 198) ‘King of the Moon’ and a third refers to a poem ‘The Man in the Moon’ which is to be sung by Eriol, ‘who says he will sing them a song of a legend touching Uolл Mikъmi as Men have it’. My father wrote a poem about the Man in the Moon in March 1915, but if it was this that he was thinking of including it would have startled the company of Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva—and he would have had to change its references to places in England which were not yet in existence. Although it is very probable that he had something quite different in mind, I think it may be of interest to give this poem in an early form (see p. 204).

As the mythology evolved and changed, the Making of the Sun and Moon became the element of greatest difficulty; and in the published Silmarillion this chapter does not seem of a piece with much of the rest of the work, and could not be made to be so. Towards the end of his life my father was indeed prepared to dismantle much of what he had built, in the attempt to solve what he undoubtedly felt to be a fundamental problem.

Note on the order of the Tales

The development of the Lost Tales is here in fact extremely complex. After the concluding words of The Flight of the Noldoli, ‘the story of the darkening of Valinor was at an end’ (p. 169), my father wrote: ‘See on beyond in other books’, but in fact he added subsequently the short dialogue between Lindo and Eriol (‘Great was the power of Melko for ill…’) which is given at the end of The Flight of the Noldoli.

The page-numbering of the notebooks shows that the next tale was to be the Tale of Tinъviel, which is written in another book. This long story (to be given in Part II), the oldest extant version of ‘Beren and Lъthien’, begins with a long Link passage; and the curious thing is that this Link begins with the very dialogue between Lindo and Eriol just referred to, in almost identical wording, and this can be seen to be its original place; but here it was struck through.

I have mentioned earlier (p. 45) that in a letter written by my father in 1964 he said that he wrote The Music of the Ainur while working in Oxford on the staff of the Dictionary, a post that he took up in November 1918 and relinquished in the spring of 1920. In the same letter he said that he wrote ‘“The Fall of Gondolin” during sick-leave from the army in 1917’, and ‘the original version of the “Tale of Lъthien Tinъviel and Beren” later in the same year’. There is nothing in the manuscripts to suggest that the tales that follow The Music of the Ainur to the point we have now reached were not written consecutively and continuously from The Music, while my father was still in Oxford.

At first sight, then, there is a hopeless contradiction in the evidence: for the Link in question refers explicitly to the Darkening of Valinor, a tale written after his appointment in Oxford at the end of 1918, but is a link to the Tale of Tinъviel, which he said that he wrote in 1917. But the Tale of Tinъviel (and the Link that precedes it) is in fact a text in ink written over an erased pencilled original. It is, I think, certain that this rewriting of Tinъviel was considerably later. It was linked to The Flight of the Noldoli by the speeches of Lindo and Eriol (the link-passage is integral and continuous with the Tale of Tinъviel that follows it, and was not added afterwards). At this stage my father must have felt that the Tales need not necessarily be told in the actual sequence of the narrative (for Tinъviel belongs of course to the time after the making of the Sun and Moon).

The rewritten Tinъviel was followed with no break by a first form of the ‘interlude’ introducing Gilfanon of Tavrobel as a guest in the house, and this led into the Tale of the Sun and Moon. But subsequently my father changed his mind, and so struck out the dialogue of Lindo and Eriol from the beginning of the Link to Tinъviel, which was not now to follow The Flight of the Noldoli, and wrote it out again in the other book at the end of that tale. At the same time he rewrote the Gilfanon ‘interlude’ in an extended form, and placed it 1at the end of The Flight of the Noldoli. Thus:

Flight of the Noldoli

Words of Lindo and Eriol

Tale of Tinъviel

Gilfanon ‘interlude’

Tale of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor

Flight of the Noldoli

Words of Lindo and Eriol

Gilfanon ‘interlude’ (rewritten)

Tale of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor

That the rewriting of Tinъviel was one of the latest elements in the composition of the Lost Tales seems clear from the fact that it is followed by the first form of the Gilfanon ‘interlude’, written at the same time: for Gilfanon replaced Ailios, and Ailios, not Gilfanon, is the guest in the house in the earlier versions of the Tale of the Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor, and is the teller of the Tale of the Nauglafring.

The poem about the Man in the Moon exists in many texts, and was published at Leeds in 1923;* long after and much changed it was included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962). I give it here in a form close to the earlier published version, but with a few (mostly very minor) alterations made subsequently. The 1923 version was only a little retouched from the earliest workings—where it has the title ‘Why the Man in the Moon came down too soon: an East Anglian phantasy’ in the first finished text the title is ‘A Faлrie: Why the Man in the Moon came down too soon’, together with one in Old English: Se Mуncyning.

Why the Man in the Moon

came down too soon

The Man in the Moon had silver shoonAnd his beard was of silver thread;He was girt with pale gold and inaureoledWith gold about his head.4Clad in silken robe in his great white globeHe opened an ivory doorWith a crystal key, and in secrecyHe stole o’er a shadowy floor;8

Down a filigree stair of spidery hairHe slipped in gleaming haste,And laughing with glee to be merry and freeHe swiftly earthward raced.12He was tired of his pearls and diamond twirls;Of his pallid minaretDizzy and white at its lunar heightIn a world of silver set;16

And adventured this peril for ruby and berylAnd emerald and sapphire,And all lustrous gems for new diadems,Or to blazon his pale attire.20He was lonely too with nothing to doBut to stare at the golden world,Or strain for the hum that would distantly comeAs it gaily past him whirled;24

And at plenilune in his argent moonHe had wearily longed for Fire—Not the limpid lights of wan selenites,But a red terrestrial pyre28With impurpurate glows of crimson and roseAnd leaping orange tongue;For great seas of blues and the passionate huesWhen a dancing dawn is young;32

For the meadowy ways like chrysopraseBy winding Yare and Nen.How he longed for the mirth of the populous EarthAnd the sanguine blood of men;36And coveted song and laughter longAnd viands hot and wine,Eating pearly cakes of light snowflakesAnd drinking thin moonshine.40

He twinkled his feet as he thought of the meat,Of the punch and the peppery brew,Till he tripped unaware on his slanting stair,And fell like meteors do;44As the whickering sparks in splashing arcsOf stars blown down like rainFrom his laddery path took a foaming bathIn the Ocean of Almain;48

And began to think, lest he melt and stink,What in the moon to do,When a Yarmouth boat found him far afloat,To the mazement of the crew52Caught in their net all shimmering wetIn a phosphorescent sheenOf bluey whites and opal lightsAnd delicate liquid green.56

With the morning fish—’twas his regal wish—They packed him to Norwich town,To get warm on gin in a Norfolk inn,And dry his watery gown.60Though Saint Peter’s knell waked many a bellIn the city’s ringing towersTo shout the news of his lunatic cruiseIn the early morning hours,64

No hearths were laid, not a breakfast made,And no one would sell him gems;He found ashes for fire, and his gay desireFor chorus and brave anthems68Met snores instead with all Norfolk abed,And his round heart nearly broke,More empty and cold than above of old,Till he bartered his fairy cloak72

With a half-waked cook for a kitchen nook,And his belt of gold for a smile,And a priceless jewel for a bowl of gruel,A sample cold and vile76Of the proud plum-porridge of Anglian Norwich—He arrived so much too soonFor unusual guests on adventurous questsFrom the Mountains of the Moon.80

It seems very possible that the ‘pallid minaret’ reappears in the ‘little white turret’ which Uolл Kъvion built on the Moon, ‘where often he climbs and watches the heavens, or the world beneath’. The minaret of the Man in the Moon survives in the final version.

The Ocean of Almain is the North Sea (Almain or Almany was a name of Germany in earlier English); the Yare is a Norfolk river which falls into the sea at Yarmouth, and the Nene (pronounced also with a short vowel) flows into the Wash.

IX

THE HIDING OF VALINOR

The link to this tale, which is told by Vairл, has been given at the end of the last (p. 195). The manuscript continues as in the latter part of The Tale of the Sun and Moon (see p. 197 note 19), with an earlier draft also extant, to which reference is made in the notes.

‘Lo, tales I tell of the deep days, and the first is called The Hiding of Valinor.

Already have ye heard,’ said she, ‘of the setting forth of the Sun and Moon upon their wayward journeyings, and many things are there to tell concerning the awakening of the Earth beneath their light; but hear now of the thoughts and deeds of the dwellers in Valinor in those mighty days.

Now is it to tell that so wide were the wanderings of those boats of light that the Gods found it no easy thing to govern all their comings and their goings as they had purposed at the first, and Ilinsor was loath to yield the heaven to Urwendi, and Urwendi set sail often before Ilinsor’s due return, being eager and hot of mood. Wherefore were both vessels often far afloat at one and the same time, and the glory of them sailing most nigh to the very bosom of the Earth, as often they did at that time, was very great and very terrible to see.

Then did a vague uneasiness begin to stir anew in Valinor, and the hearts of the Gods were troubled, and the Eldar spake one to another, and this was their thought.

“Lo, all the world is grown clear as the courtyards of the Gods, straight to walk upon as are the avenues of Vansamнrin or the terraces of Kфr; and Valinor no longer is safe, for Melko hates us without ceasing, and he holds the world without and many and wild are his allies there”—and herein in their hearts they¹ numbered even the Noldoli, and wronged them in their thought unwittingly, nor did they forget Men, against whom Melko had lied of old. Indeed in the joy of the last burgeoning of the Trees and the great and glad labour of that fashioning of ships the fear of Melko had been laid aside, and the bitterness of those last evil days and of the Gnomefolk’s flight was fallen into slumber—but now when Valinor had peace once more and its lands and gardens were mended of their hurts memory awoke their anger and their grief again.

Indeed if the Gods forgot not the folly of the Noldoli and hardened their hearts, yet more wroth were the Elves, and the Solosimpi were full of bitterness against their kin, desiring never more to see their faces in the pathways of their home. Of these the chief were those whose kin had perished at the Haven of the Swans, and their leader was one Ainairos who had escaped from that fray leaving his brother dead; and he sought unceasingly with his words to persuade the Elves to greater bitterness of heart.

Now this was a grief to Manwл, yet did he see that as yet his design was not complete, and that the wisdom of the Valar must needs be bent once more to the more perfect government of the Sun and Moon. Wherefore he summoned the Gods and Elves in conclave, that their counsel might better his design, and moreover he hoped with soft words of wisdom to calm their anger and uneasiness ere evil came of it. For clearly he saw herein the poison of Melko’s lies that live and multiply wherever he may cast th1em more fruitfully than any seed that is sown upon the Earth; and already it was reported to him that the ancient murmuring of the Elves was begun anew concerning their freedom, and that pride made some full of folly, so that they might not endure the thought of the coming of Mankind.

Now then sat Manwл in heavy mood before Kulullin and looked searchingly upon the Valar gathered nigh and upon the Eldar about his knees, but he opened not his full mind, saying to them only that he had called them in council once more to determine the courses of the Sun and Moon and devise an order and wisdom in their paths. Then straightway spake Ainairos before him saying that other matters were deeper in their hearts than this, and he laid before the Gods the mind of the Elves concerning the Noldoli and of the nakedness of the land of Valinor toward the world beyond. Thereat arose much tumult and many of the Valar and their folk supported him loudly, and some others of the Eldar cried out that Manwл and Varda had caused their kindred to dwell in Valinor promising them unfailing joy therein—now let the Gods see to it that their gladness was not minished to a little thing, seeing that Melko held the world and they dared not fare forth to the places of their awakening even an they would. The most of the Valar moreover were fain of their ancient ease and desired only peace, wishing neither rumour of Melko and his violence nor murmur of the restless Gnomes to come ever again among them to disturb their happiness; and for such reasons they also clamoured for the concealment of the land. Not the least among these were Vбna and Nessa, albeit most even of the great Gods were of one mind. In vain did Ulmo of his foreknowing plead before them for pity and pardon on the Noldoli, or Manwл unfold the secrets of the Music of the Ainur and the purpose of the world; and long and very full of that noise was that council, and more filled with bitterness and burning words than any that had been; wherefore did Manwл Sъlimo depart at length from among them, saying that no walls or bulwarks might now fend Melko’s evil from them which lived already among them and clouded all their minds.

So came it that the enemies of the Gnomes carried the council of the Gods and the blood of Kуpas began already its fell work; for now began that which is named the Hiding of Valinor, and Manwл and Varda and Ulmo of the Seas had no part therein, but none others of the Valar or the Elves held aloof therefrom, albeit Yavanna and Oromл her son were uneasy in their hearts.

Now Lуrien and Vбna led the Gods and Aulл lent his skill and Tulkas his strength, and the Valar went not at that time forth to conquer Melko, and the greatest ruth was that to them thereafter, and yet is; for the great glory of the Valar by reason of that error came not to its fullness in many ages of the Earth, and still doth the world await it.²

In those days however they were unwitting of these things, and they set them to new and mighty labours such as had not been seen among them since the days of the first building of Valinor. The encircling mountains did they make more utterly impassable of their eastern side than ever were they before, and such earth-magics did Kйmi weave about their precipices and inaccessible peaks that of all the dread and terrible places in the mighty Earth was that rampart of the Gods that looked upon Eruman the most dire and perilous, and not Utumna nor the places of Melko in the Hills of Iron were so filled with insuperable fear. Moreover even upon the plains about their 1eastward…³ were heaped those impenetrable webs of clinging dark that Ungweliantл sloughed in Valinor at the Trees’ destroying. Now did the Gods cast them forth from their bright land, that they might entangle utterly the steps of all who fared that way, and they flowed and spread both far and wide, lying even upon the bosom of the Shadowy Seas until the Bay of Faлry grew dim and no radiance of Valinor filtered there, and the twinkling of the lamps of Kфr died or ever it passed the jewelled shores. From North to South marched the enchantments and inaccessible magic of the Gods, yet were they not content; and they said: Behold, we will cause all the paths that fare to Valinor both known and secret to fade utterly from the world, or wander treacherously into blind confusion.