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

Автор книги: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

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So fair were these abodes and so g1reat the brilliance of the trees of Valinor that Vefбntur and Fui his wife of tears might not endure to stay there long, but fared away far to the northward of those regions, where beneath the roots of the most cold and northerly of the Mountains of Valinor, that rise here again almost to their height nigh Arvalin, they begged Aulл to delve them a hall. Wherefore, that all the Gods might be housed to their liking, he did so, and they and all their shadowy folk aided him. Very vast were those caverns that they made stretching even down under the Shadowy Seas, and they are full of gloom and filled with echoes, and all that deep abode is known to Gods and Elves as Mandos. There in a sable hall sat Vefбntur, and he called that hall with his own name Vк. It was lit only with a single vessel placed in the centre, wherein there lay some gleaming drops of the pale dew of Silpion: it was draped with dark vapours and its floors and columns were of jet. Thither in after days fared the Elves of all the clans who were by illhap slain with weapons or did die of grief for those that were slain—and only so might the Eldar die, and then it was only for a while. There Mandos spake their doom, and there they waited in the darkness, dreaming of their past deeds, until such time as he appointed when they might again be born into their children, and go forth to laugh and sing again. To Vк Fui came not much, for she laboured rather at the distilling of salt humours whereof are tears, and black clouds she wove and floated up that they were caught in the winds and went about the world, and their lightless webs settled ever and anon upon those that dwelt therein. Now these tissues were despairs and hopeless mourning, sorrows and blind grief. The hall that she loved best was one yet wider and more dark than Vк, and she too named it with her own name, calling it Fui. Therein before her black chair burnt a brazier with a single flickering coal, and the roof was of bats’ wings, and the pillars that upheld it and the walls about were made of basalt. Thither came the sons of Men to hear their doom, and thither are they brought by all the multitude of ills that Melko’s evil music set within the world. Slaughters and fires, hungers and mishaps, diseases and blows dealt in the dark, cruelty and bitter cold and anguish and their own folly bring them here; and Fui reads their hearts. Some then she keeps in Mandos beneath the mountains and some she drives forth beyond the hills and Melko seizes them and bears them to Angamandi, or the Hells of Iron, where they have evil days. Some too, and these are the many, she sends aboard the black ship Morniл, who lieth ever and anon in a dark harbour of the North awaiting those times when the sad pomp winds to the beach down slow rugged paths from Mandos.

Then, when she is laden, of her own accord she spreads her sable sails and before a slow wind coasts down those shores. Then do all aboard as they come South cast looks of utter longing and regret to that low place amid the hills where Valinor may just be glimpsed upon the far off plain; and that opening is nigh Taniquetil where is the strand of Eldamar. No more do they ever see of that bright place, but borne away dwell after on the wide plains of Arvalin. There do they wander in the dusk, camping as they may, yet are they not utterly without song, and they can see the stars, and wait in patience till the Great End come.

Few are they and happy indeed for whom at a season doth Nornorл the herald of the Gods set out. Then ride they with him in chariots or upon good horses down into the vale of Valinor and feast in the halls of Valmar, dwelling in the houses o1f the Gods until the Great End come. Far away are they from the black mountains of the North or the misty plains of Arvalin, and music and fair light is theirs, and joy.

And lo! Now have I recounted the manner of the dwellings of all the great Gods which Aulл of his craftsmanship raised in Valinor, but Makar and his fierce sister Meбssл built them a dwelling of themselves, aided only by their own folk, and a grim hall it was.

Upon the confines of the Outer Lands did it stand, nor was it very far from Mandos. Of iron was it made, and unadorned. There fought the vassals of Makar clad in armour, and a clash there was and a shouting and a braying of trumps, but Meбssл fared among the warriors and egged them to more blows, or revived the fainting with strong wine that they might battle still; and her arms were reddened to the elbow dabbling in that welter. None of the Gods fared ever there, save Tulkas, and did they seek to visit Mandos they went thither by circuitous paths to avoid passing nigh to that clamorous hall; but Tulkas would at times wrestle there with Makar or deal sledge-blows among the fighters, and this he did that he might not grow soft in his fair living, for he loved not that company nor in sooth did they love him and his great unangered strength. Now the battle of the courts of Makar was waged unceasingly save when men gathered in the halls for feasting, or at those times when Makar and Meбssл were far abroad hunting together in the black mountains wolves and bears. But that house was full of weapons of battle in great array, and shields of great size and brightness of polish were on the walls. It was lit with torches, and fierce songs of victory, of sack and harrying, were there sung, and the torches’ red light was reflected in the blades of naked swords. There sit often Makar and his sister listening to the songs, and Makar has a huge bill across his knees and Meбssл holds a spear. But in those days ere the closing of Valinor did these twain fare mostly about the Earth and were often far from the land, for they loved the unbridled turmoils which Melko roused throughout the world.

Therefore is Valinor now built, and there is great peace there, and the Gods in joy, for those quarrelsome spirits dwell not much among them, and Melko comes not nigh.’

Then said a child among the company, a great drinker-in of both tales and poesies: ‘And would that he had never come there since, and would that I might have seen that land still gleaming new as Aulл left it.’ Now she had heard Rъmil tell his tale before and was much in thought of it, but to the most of the company it was new, even as it was to Eriol, and they sat amazed. Then said Eriol: ‘Very mighty and glorious are the Valar, and I would fain hear yet more of those oldest days, did I not see the glimmer of the Candles of Sleep that fare now hither’ but another child spoke from a cushion nigh Lindo’s chair and said: ‘Nay, ’tis in the halls of Makar I would fain be, and get perchance a sword or knife to wear; yet in Valmar methinks ’twould be good to be a guest of Oromл’, and Lindo laughing said: ’Twould be good indeed,’ and thereat he arose, and the tale-telling was over for that night.

NOTES

Changes made to names in

The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor

Уnen < уwen (at the first occurrence only; subsequently Уnen is the name as first written).

Eruman and Arvalin The names of this region were originally written Habbanan and Harmalin, but were emended throughout the tale (except in two cases where Habbanan was overlooked) to Eruman (once Erumбni, p. 70) and Arvalin. (In the last three occurrences Habbanan > Arvalin, whereas in the earlier ones Habbanan > Eruman; but the difference is presumably without significance, since the names Habbanan / Harmalin and later Eruman / Arvalin were interchangeable.) In The Cottage of Lost Play the changes were Harwalin > Harmalin > Arvalin (p. 22). Lomendбnar < Lome Danar.

Silindrin < Telimpл (Silindrin) (at the first occurrence only; subsequently Silindrin is the name as first written).

Lindeloksл < Lindelуtл (cf. p. 22).

Commentary on

The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor

The abundant instruction provided by Rъmil on this occasion is best discussed in sections, and I begin with:

(i) The Coming of the Valar and their encounter with Melko (pp. 65–7)

The description of the entry of the Valar into the world was not retained, though the account of them in this passage is the ultimate origin of that in the Valaquenta (The Silmarillion pp. 25–9): not, however, by continuous manuscript progression. The passage is of much interest, for here appear all at once many figures of the mythology who were to endure, beside others who were not. It is remarkable how many of the names of the Valar in the earliest writings were never afterwards displaced or reshaped: Yavanna, Tulkas, Lуrien, Nienna, Oromл, Aldaron, Vбna, Nessa, first appearing in this tale, and Manwл, Sъlimo, Varda, Ulmo, Aulл, Mandos, Ossл, Salmar, who have appeared previously. Some were retained in a modified form: Melkor for Melko, Uinen (which appears already later in the Lost Tales) for Уnen, Fлanturi for Fбnturi; while yet others, as Yavanna Palъrien and Tulkas Poldуrлa, survived long in the ‘Silmarillion’ tradition before being displaced by Kementбri (but cf. Kйmi ‘Earth-lady’ in this tale) and Astaldo. But some of these early Valar had disappeared by the next stage or phase after the Lost Tales: Уmar-Amillo, and the barbaric war-gods Makar and Meбssл.

Here appear also certain relations that survived to the latest form. Thus Lуrien and Mandos were from the beginning ‘brethren’, each with his special association, of ‘dreams’ and ‘death’ and Nienna stood from the beginning in a close relationship with them, here as ‘the spouse of Mandos’, though afterwards as the sister of the Fлanturi. The original 1conception of Nienna was indeed darker and more fearful, a death-goddess in close association with Mandos, than it afterwards became. Ossл’s uncertain relations with Ulmo are seen to go back to the beginnings; but Ulmo’s haughtiness and aloofness subsequently disappeared, at least as a feature of his divine ‘character’ explicitly described. Vбna was already the spouse of Oromл, but Oromл was the son of Aulл and (Yavanna) Palуrien; in the later evolution of the myths Vбna sank down in relation to Nienna, whereas Oromл rose, becoming finally one of the great Valar, the Aratar.

Particularly interesting is the passage concerning the host of lesser spirits who accompanied Aulл and Palъrien, from which one sees how old is the conception of the Eldar as quite dissimilar in essential nature from ‘brownies, fays, pixies, leprawns’, since the Eldar are ‘of the world’ and bound to it, whereas those others are beings from before the world’s making. In the later work there is no trace of any such explanation of the ‘pixie’ element in the world’s population: the Maiar are little referred to, and certainly not said to include such beings as ‘sing amid the grass at morning and chant among the standing corn at eve’.*

Salmar, companion of Ulmo, who has appeared in The Music of the Ainur (p. 58), is now identified with Noldorin, who was mentioned by Vairл in The Cottage of Lost Play (p. 16); such of his story as can be discerned will appear later. Subsequent writings say nothing of him save that he came with Ulmo and made his horns (The Silmarillion p. 40).

In the later development of this narrative there is no mention of Tulkas (or Mandos!) going off to round up Melkor at the very outset of the history of the Valar in Arda. In The Silmarillion we learn rather of the great war between the Valar and Melkor ‘before Arda was full-shaped’, and how it was the coming of Tulkas from ‘the far heaven’ that routed him, so that he fled from Arda and ‘brooded in the outer darkness’.

(ii) The earliest conception of the Western Lands, and the Oceans

The earliest map

In The Cottage of Lost Play the expression ‘Outer Lands’ was used of the lands to the east of the Great Sea, later Middle-earth; this was then changed to ‘Great Lands’ (p. 21). The ‘Outer Lands’ are now defined as the Twilit Isles, Eruman (or Arvalin), and Valinor (p. 68). A curious usage, which often appears in the Lost Tales, is the equation of ‘the world’ with the Great Lands, or with the whole surface of the earth east of the Outer Lands; so the mountains ‘towered mightily between Valinor and the world’ (p. 70), and King Inwл heard ‘the lament of the world’ (p. 16).

It is convenient to reproduce here a map (p. 81), which actually appears in the text of a later tale (that of The Theft of Melko and the Darkening of Valinor). This map,1 drawn on a manuscript page with the text written round it, is no more than a quick scribble, in soft pencil, now rubbed and faded, and in many features difficult or impossible to interpret. The redrawing is as accurate as I can make it, the only feature lost being some indecipherable letters (beginning with M) preceding the word Ice. I have added the letters a, b, c, etc. to make the discussion easier to follow.

Utumna (later Utumno) is placed in the extreme North, north of the lamp-pillar Ringil; the position of the southern pillar seems from this map to have been still undecided. The square marked a is obviously Valmar, and I take the two dots marked b to be the Two Trees, which are stated later to have been to the north of the city of the Gods. The dot marked c is fairly clearly the domain of Mandos (cf. p. 76, where it is said that Vefбntur Mandos and Fui Nienna begged Aulл to delve them a hall ‘beneath the roots of the most cold and northerly of the Mountains of Valinor’);* the dot to the south of this can hardly represent the hall of Makar and Meбssл, since it is said (pp. 77–8) that though it was not very far from Mandos it stood ‘upon the confines of the Outer Lands’.

The area which I have marked h is Eruman / Arvalin (which ultimately came to be named Avathar), earlier Habbanan / Harmalin (Harwalin), which are simple alternatives (see p. 79).

Later, in a map of the world made in the 1930s, the western shore of the Great Sea bends in a gentle and regular curve westward from north to south, while the Mountains of Valinor bend in virtually the reverse of the same curve eastward,)(; where the two curves come together at their midpoints are Tъna, and Taniquetil. Two areas of land in the shape of elongated Vs thus extend northward and southward from the midpoint, between the Mountains and the Sea, which draw steadily away from each other; and these are named Eruman (to the northward) and Arvalin (to the southward).

In the little primitive map the line of the mountains is already thus, and it is described in the text as ‘a great ring curving westward’ (the curve is westward if the extremities are considered rather than the central portion) But the curve of the coast is different. Unhappily the little map is here very obscure, for there are several lines (marked j) extending northwards from Kфr (marked d), and it is impossible to make out whether marks on them are directions for erasure or whether they represent parallel mountain-chains. But I think that in fact these lines merely represent variant ideas for the curve of the Mountains of Valinor in the north; and I have little doubt that at this time my father had no conception of a region of ‘waste’ north of Kфr and east of the mountains. This interpretation of the map agrees well with what is said in the tale (p. 68): ‘the Shadowy Seas to north of Eruman bend a vast bay inwards, so that waves beat even upon the feet of the great cliffs, and the Mountains stand beside the sea’, and ‘Taniquetil looks from the bay’s head southward across Eruman and northward across the Bay of Faлry’. On this view the name Eruman (later Araman), at first an alternative to Arvalin, was taken over for the northern waste when the plan of the coastal regions became more symmetrical.

It is said in the tale (p. 68) that ‘in that vast water of the West are many smaller lands and isles, ere the lonely seas are found whose waves whisper about the Magic Isles’. The little circles on the map (marked k) are evidently a schematic representation of these archipelagoes (of the Magic Isles more will be told later). The Shadowy Seas, as will emerge more clearly later, were a region of the Great Sea west of Tol Eressлa. The other letters on the map refer to features that have not yet entered the narrative.

In this tale we meet the important cosmological idea of the Three Airs, Vaitya, Ilwл, and Vilna, and of the Outer Ocean, tideless, cold, and ‘thin’. It has been said in The Music of the Ainur (p. 58) that Ulmo dwells in the Outer Ocean and that he gave to Ossл and Onen ‘control of the waves and lesser seas’ he is there called ‘the ancient one of Vai’ (emended from Ulmonan). It is now seen that Ulmonan is the name of his halls in the Outer Ocean, and also that the ‘lesser seas’ controlled by Ossл and Уnen include the Great Sea (p. 68).

There exists a very early and very remarkable drawing, in which the world is seen in section, and is presented as a huge ‘Viking’ ship, with mast arising from the highest point of the Great Lands, single sail on which are the Sun and Moon, sailropes fastened to Taniquetil and to a great mountain in the extreme East, and curved prow (the black marks on the sail are an ink-blot). This drawing was done fairly rapidly in soft pencil on a small sheet; and it is closely associated with the cosmology of the Lost Tales.

I give here a list of the names and words written on the drawing with, so far as possible, their meanings (but without any etymological detail, for which see the Appendix on Names, where names and words occurring only on this drawing are given separate entries).

I Vene Kemen This is clearly the title of the drawing; it might mean ‘The Shape of the Earth’ or ‘The Vessel of the Earth’ (see the Appendix on Names, entry Glorvent).

Nme ‘West’.

Valinor; Taniquetil (The vast height of Taniquetil, even granting the formalisation of this drawing, is noteworthy: it is described in the tale as being so high that ‘the throngs about westward havens in the lands of Men could be seen therefrom’ (p. 68). Its fantastic height is conveyed in my father’s painting, dating from 1927–8 (Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, no. 31).)

Harmalin Earlier name of Arvalin (see p. 79).

i aldas ‘The Trees’ (standing to the west of Taniquetil).

Toros valinoriva Toros is obscure, but in any case the first letter of the first word, if it is a T, is a very uncharacteristic one. The reference seems to be to the Mountains of Valinor.

Tolli Kimpelear These must be the Twilit Isles, but I have found no other occurrence of Kimpelear or anything similar.

Tol Eressлa ‘The Lo1nely Isle’.

I Tolli Kuruvar ‘The Magic Isles’.

Haloisi Velike ‘The Great Sea’.

Ф ‘The Sea’. (What is the structure at the sea-bottom shown below the name Ф? It must surely be the dwelling of Ossл beneath the Great Sea that is referred to in the next tale (p. 106.)

I Nori Landar Probably means ‘The Great Lands’.

Koivienйni The precursor of Cuiviйnen, the Waters of Awakening.

Palisor The land where the Elves awoke.

Sil ‘Moon’.

Ыr ‘Sun’.

Luvier ‘Clouds’.

Oronto ‘East’.

Vaitya, Ilwл, and Vilna appear in the three layers described in the tale (p. 65), and Vilna reappears in the bottom right-hand corner of the drawing. There is nothing said in the Lost Tales to explain this last feature, nor is it at all evident what is represented by the curled lines in the same place (see p. 86).

Ulmonan The halls of Ulmo.

Uin The Great Whale, who appears later in the Tales.

Vai The Outer Ocean.

Neni Erщmear ‘Outermost Waters’= Vai.

It is seen from the drawing that the world floats in and upon Vai. This is indeed how Ulmo himself describes it to the Valar in a later tale (p. 214):

Lo, there is but one Ocean, and that is Vai, for those that Ossл esteemeth as oceans are but seas, waters that lie in the hollows of the rock…In this vast water floateth the wide Earth upheld by the word of Ilъvatar…

In the same passage Ulmo speaks of the islands in the seas, and says that (‘save some few that swim still unfettered’) they ‘stand now like pinnacles from their weedy depths’, as is also well seen in the drawing.

It might seem a plausible idea that there was some connection (physical as well as etymological) between Vai and Vaitya, the outermost of the Three Airs, ‘wrapped dark and sluggish about the world and without it’ (at a later point in the Tales, p. 181, there is a reference to ‘the dark and tenuous realm of Vaitya that is outside a1ll’). In the next ‘phase’ of the mythical cosmology (dating from the 1930s, and very clearly and fully documented and illustrated in a work called Ambarkanta, The Shape of the World) the whole world is contained within Vaiya, a word meaning ‘fold, envelope’ Vaiya ‘is more like to sea below the Earth and more like to air above the Earth’ (which chimes with the description of the waters of Vai (p. 68) as very ‘thin’, so that no boat can sail on them nor fish swim in them, save the enchanted fish of Ulmo and his car); and in Vaiya below the Earth dwells Ulmo. Thus Vaiya is partly a development of Vaitya and partly of Vai.

Now since in the earliest word-list of the Qenya tongue (see the Appendix on Names) both Vaitya (‘the outermost air beyond the world’) and Vai (‘the outer ocean’) are derived from a root vaya– ‘enfold’, and since Vaitya in the present tale is said to be ‘wrapped about the world and without it’, one might think that Vaitya-Vai already in the early cosmology was a continuous enfolding substance, and that the later cosmology, in this point, only makes explicit what was present but unexpressed in the Lost Tales. But there is certainly no actual suggestion of this idea in any early writing; and when we look again at the drawing it seems untenable. For Vai is obviously not continuous with Vaitya; and if the appearance of Vilna in the bottom of the drawing is taken to mean that the Earth, and the ocean Vai in and on which it floats, were contained within the Three Airs, of which we see the reappearance of the innermost (Vilna) below the earth and Vai, then the suggestion that Vaitya—Vai were continuous is still more emphatically confounded.

There remains the baffling question of the representation of the world as a ship. In only one place is there a suggestion that my father conceived the world in such a way: the passage that I have cited above, in which Ulmo addresses the Valar on the subject of Vai, concludes:

O Valar, ye know not all wonders, and many secret things are there beneath the Earth’s dark keel, even where I have my mighty halls of Ulmonan, that ye have never dreamed on.

But in the drawing Ulmonan is not beneath the ship’s keel, it is within the ship’s hull; and I am inclined to think that Ulmo’s words ‘beneath the Earth’s dark keel’ refer to the shape of the Earth itself, which is certainly ship-like. Moreover, close examination of the original drawing strongly suggests to me that the mast and sail, and still more clearly the curved prow, were added afterwards. Can it be that the shape of the Earth and of Vai as he had drawn them—with the appearance of a ship’s hull—prompted my father to add mast, sail, and prow as a jeu d’esprit, without deeper significance? That seems uncharacteristic and unlikely, but I have no other explanation to offer.*

(iii) The Lamps (pp. 69–70)

In this part of the narrative the tale differs remarkably from the later versions. Here there is no mention of the dwelling of the Valar on the Isle of Almaren after the making of the Lamps (The Silmarillion p. 35), nor of course of the return of Melko from ‘outside’—because here Melko not only did not leave the world after entering it, but actually himself made the pillars of the Lamps. In this story, though Melko was distrusted by some, his guileful co-operation (even to the extent of co1ntributing names for the pillars) was accepted, whereas in the later story his hostility and malice were known and manifest to the Valar, even though they did not know of his return to Arda and the building of Utumno until too late. In the present tale there is a tricksiness, a low cunning, in Melko’s behaviour that could not survive (yet the story of his deceitful making of the pillars out of ice survived into the versions of the 1930s).

Later, it was the Lamps themselves that were named (ultimately, after intervening forms had been devised and discarded, Iluin the northern Lamp and Ormal the southern). In The Silmarillion Ringil (containing ring ‘cold’) survived only as the name of Fingolfin’s sword, but Helcar is that of the Inland Sea which ‘stood where aforetime the roots of the mountain of Illuin had been’ (p. 49). In the present tale Helkar was the name of the southern, not the northern, pillar. Now helkar meant ‘utter cold’ (see the Appendix on Names), which shows that Helkar was originally in the extreme south (as it is in one of the two positions given for it on the little map, p. 81), just as Ringil was in the extreme north. In the tale there is no mention of the formation of Inland Seas at the fall of the Lamps; this idea appeared later, but it seems virtually certain that it arose from the story of the melting pillars of ice.

There is no later reference to the building of the Mountains of Valinor from great rocks gathered in Eruman / Arvalin, so that the region became flat and stoneless.

(iv) The Two Trees (pp. 71–3)

This earliest account of the uprising of the Two Trees illuminates some elements of later versions more concentrated in expression. The enduring feature that the ground beneath Silpion (Telperion) was ‘dappled with the shadows of his fluttering leaves’ (The Silmarillion p. 38) is seen to have had its origin in the ‘throbbing of the tree’s heart’. The conception of light as a liquid substance that ‘splashed upon the ground’, that ran in rivers and was poured in cauldrons, though not lost in the published work (pp. 38–9), is here more strongly and physically expressed. Some features were never changed, as the clustered flowers of Laurelin and the shining edges of its leaves.

On the other hand there are notable differences between this and the later accounts: above all perhaps that Laurelin was in origin the Eldar Tree. The Two Trees had here periods of twelve hours, not as later seven;* and the preparations of the Valar for the birth of the Trees, with all their detail of physical ‘magic’, were afterwards abandoned. The two great ‘cauldrons’ Kulullin and Silindrin survived in the ‘great vats like shining lakes’ in which Varda hoarded ‘the dews of Telperion and the rain that fell from Laurelin’ (ibid. p. 39), though the names disappeared, as did the need to ‘water’ the Trees with the light gathered in the vats or cauldrons—or at any rate it is not mentioned later. Urwen (‘Sun-maiden’) was the forebear of Arien, Maia of the Sun; and Tilion, steersman of the Moon in The Silmarillion, who ‘lay in dreams by the pools of Estл [Lуrien’s wife], in Telperion’s flickering beams’, perhaps owes something to the figure of Silmo, whom Lуrien loved.

As I noted earlier, ‘in the later evolution of the myths Vбna sank down in relation to Nienna’, and here it is Vбna and (Yavanna) Palъrien who are the midwives of the birth of the Trees, not as afterwards Yavanna and Nienna.1

As regards the names of the Trees, Silpion was for long the name of the White Tree; Telperion did not appear till long after, and even then Silpion was retained and is mentioned in The Silmarillion (p. 38) as one of its names. Laurelin goes back to the beginning and was never changed, but its other name in the Lost Tales, Lindeloksл and other similar forms, was not retained.

(v) The Dwellings of the Valar (pp. 73 ff.)

This account of the mansions of the Valar was very largely lost in the subsequent versions. In the published work nothing is told of Manwл’s dwelling, save the bare fact that his halls were ‘above the everlasting snow, upon Oiolossл, the uttermost tower of Taniquetil’ (p. 26). Here now appears Sorontur King of Eagles, a visitor to Manwл’s halls (cf. The Silmarillion p. 110: ‘For Manwл to whom all birds are dear, and to whom they bring news upon Taniquetil from Middle-earth, had sent forth the race of Eagles’); he had in fact appeared already in the tale of The Fall of Gondolin, as ‘Thorndor [the Gnomish name] King of Eagles whom the Eldar name Ramandur’, Ramandur being subsequently emended to Sorontur.

Of Valmar and the dwellings of the Valar in the city scarcely anything survived in later writing, and there remain only phrases here and there (the ‘golden streets’ and ‘silver domes’ of Valmar, ‘Valmar of many bells’) to suggest the solidity of the original description, where Tulkas’ house of many storeys had a tower of bronze and Oromл’s halls were upheld by living trees with trophies and antlers hung upon their trunks. This is not to say that all such imagining was definitively abandoned: as I have said in the Foreword, the Lost Tales were followed by a version so compressed as to be no more than a rйsumй (as was its purpose), and the later development of the mythology proceeded from that—a process of re-expansion. Many things never referred to again after the Lost Tales may have continued to exist in a state of suspension, as it were. Valmar certainly remained a city, with gates, streets, and dwellings. But in the context of the later work one could hardly conceive of the tempestuous Ossл being possessed of a house in Valmar, even if its floor were of seawater and its roof of foam; and of course the hall of Makar and Meбssл (where the life described owes something to the myths of the Unending Battle in ancient Scandinavia) disappeared with the disappearance of those divinities—a ‘Melko-faction’ in Valinor that was bound to prove an embarrassment.

Several features of the original descriptions endured: the rarity of Ulmo’s visits to Valmar (cf. The Silmarillion p. 40), the frequency with which Palъrien and Oromл visit ‘the world without’ (ibid. pp. 29, 41, 47), the association of the gardens of Lуrien with Silpion and of the gardens of Vбna with Laurelin (ibid. p. 99); and much that is said here of the divine ‘characters’ can be seen to have remained, even if differently expressed. Here also appears Nessa, already as the wife of Tulkas and the sister of Oromл, excelling in the dance; and Уmar-Amillo is now named the brother of Noldorin-Salmar. It appears elsewhere (see p. 93) that Nielнqui was the daughter of Oromл and Vбna.