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

Автор книги: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

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Then Tulkas angered smote them thunderously with his great fist, and they rang and stirred not, but Oromл alighting grasped his horn and blew such a blast thereon that they fled open instantly, and Manwл raised his immeasurable voice and bade Melko come forth.

But though deep down within those halls Melko heard him and was in doubt, he would not come, but sent Langon his servant and said by him that “Behold, he was rejoiced and in wonder to see the Gods before his gates. Now would he gladly welcome them, yet for the poverty of his abode not more than two of them could he fitly entertain; and he begged that neither Manwл nor Tulkas be of the two, for the one merited and the other demanded hospitality of great cost and richness. Should this not be to their mind then would he fain hearken to Manwл’s herald and learn what it were the Gods so greatly desired that they must leave their soft couches and indolence of Valinor for the bleak places where Melko laboured humbly and did his toilsome work.”

Then Manwл and Ulmo and all the Gods were exceeding wroth at the subtlety and fawning insolence of his words, and Tulkas would have started straightway raging down the narrow stairs that descended out of sight beyond the gates, but the others withheld him, and Aulл gave counsel that it was clear from Melko’s words that he was awake and wary in this matter, and it could most plainly be seen which of the Gods he was most in fear of and desired least to see standing in his halls—“therefore,” said he, “let us devise how these twain may come upon him unawares and how fear may perchance drive him into betterment of ways.” To this Manwл assented, saying that all their force might scarce dig Melko from his stronghold, whereas that deceit must be very cunningly woven that would ensnare the master of guile. “Only by his pride is Melko assailable,” quoth Manwл, “or by such a struggle as would rend the earth and bring evil upon us all,” and Manwл sought to avoid all strife twixt Ainur and Ainur. When therefore the Gods had concerted a plan to catch Melko in his overweening pride they wove cunning words purporting to come from Manwл himself, and these they put in the mouth of Nornorл, who descended and spoke them before the seat of Melko. “Behold,” said he, “the Gods be come to ask the pardon of Melko, for seeing his great anger and the rending of the world beneath his rage they have said one to another: ‘Lo! wherefore is Melko displeased?’ and one to another have answered beholding the tumults of his power: ‘Is he not then the greatest among us—why dwells not the mightiest of the Valar in Valinor? Of a surety he has cause for indignation. Let us get us to Utumna and beseech him to dwell in Valinor that Valmar be not empty of his presence.’ To this,” said he, “Tulkas alone would not assent, but Manwл bowed to the common voice (this the Gods said knowing the rancour that Melko had for Poldуrлa) and now have they co1me constraining Tulkas with violence to beg thee to pardon them each one and to fare home with them and complete their glory, dwelling, if it be thy pleasure, in the halls of Makar, until such time as Aulл can build thee a great house; and its towers shall overtop Taniquetil.” To this did Melko answer eagerly, for already his boundless pride surged up and drowned his cunning.

“At last do the Gods speak fair words and just, but ere I grant their boon my heart must be appeased for old affronts. Therefore must they come putting aside their weapons at the gate, and do homage to me in these my deep halls of Utumna:—but lo! Tulkas I will not see, and if I come to Valinor then will I thrust him out.” These things did Nornorл report, and Tulkas smote his hands in wrath, but Manwл returned answer that the Gods would do as Melko’s heart desired, yet would Tulkas come and that in chains and be given to Melko’s power and pleasure; and this was Melko eager to grant for the humiliation of the Valar, and the chaining of Tulkas gave him great mirth.

Then the Valar laid aside their weapons at the gates, setting however folk to guard them, and placed the chain Angaino about the neck and arms of Tulkas, and even he might scarce support its great weight alone; and now they follow Manwл and his herald into the caverns of the North. There sat Melko in his chair, and that chamber was lit with flaming braziers and full of evil magic, and strange shapes moved with feverish movement in and out, but snakes of great size curled and uncurled without rest about the pillars that upheld that lofty roof. Then said Manwл: “Behold, we have come and salute you here in your own halls; come now and be in Valinor.”

But Melko might not thus easily forgo his sport. “Nay first,” said he, “wilt thou come Manwл and kneel before me, and after you all the Valar; but last shall come Tulkas and kiss my foot, for I have in mind something for which I owe Poldуrлa no great love.” Now he purposed to spurn Tulkas in the mouth in payment of that buffet long ago, but the Valar had foreseen something of this and did but make play of humiliation that Melko might thereby be lured from his stronghold of Utumna. In sooth Manwл hoped even to the end for peace and amity, and the Gods would at his bidding indeed have received Melko into Valinor under truce and pledges of friendship, had not his pride been insatiate and his obstinacy in evil unconquerable. Now however was scant mercy left for him within their hearts, seeing that he abode in his demand that Manwл should do homage and Tulkas bend to those ruthless feet; nonetheless the Lord of Gods and Elves approaches now the chair of Melko and makes to kneel, for such was their plan the more to ensnare that evil one; but lo, so fiercely did wrath blaze up in the hearts of Tulkas and Aulл at that sight that Tulkas leapt across the hall at a bound despite Angaino, and Aulл was behind him and Oromл followed his father and the hall was full of tumult. Then Melko sprang to his feet shouting in a loud voice and his folk came through all those dismal passages to his aid. Then lashed he at Manwл with an iron flail he bore, but Manwл breathed gently upon it and its iron tassels were blown backward, and thereupon Tulkas smote Melko full in his teeth with his fist of iron, and he and Aulл grappled with him, and straight he was wrapped thirty times in the fathoms of Angaino.

Then said Oromл: “Would that he might be slain”—and it would have been well indeed, but the great Gods may not yet be slain.⁴ Now is Melko held in dire bondage and beaten to his knees, and he is constrained to command all his vassa1lage that they molest not the Valar—and indeed the most of these, affrighted at the binding of their lord, fled away to the darkest places.

Tulkas indeed dragged Melko out before the gates, and there Aulл set upon each wrist one of the Vorotemnar and upon each ankle twain of the Ilterendi, and tilkal went red at the touch of Melko, and those bands have never since been loosened from his hands and feet. Then the chain is smithied to each of these and Melko borne thus helpless away, while Tulkas and Ulmo break the gates of Utumna and pile hills of stone upon them. And the saps and cavernous places beneath the surface of the earth are full yet of the dark spirits that were prisoned that day when Melko was taken, and yet many are the ways whereby they find the outer world from time to time—from fissures where they shriek with the voices of the tide on rocky coasts, down dark water-ways that wind unseen for many leagues, or out of the blue arches where the glaciers of Melko find their end.

After these things did the Gods return to Valmar by long ways and dark, guarding Melko every moment, and he gnawed his consuming rage. His lip was split and his face has had a strange leer upon it since that buffet dealt him by Tulkas, who even of policy could not endure to see the majesty of Manwл bow before the accursed one.

Now is a court set upon the slopes of Taniquetil and Melko arraigned before all the Vali⁵ great and small, lying bound before the silver chair of Manwл. Against him speaketh Ossл, and Oromл, and Ulmo in deep ire, and Vбna in abhorrence, proclaiming his deeds of cruelty and violence; yet Makar still spake for him, although not warmly, for said he: “’Twere an ill thing if peace were for always: already no blow echoes ever in the eternal quietude of Valinor, wherefore, if one might neither see deed of battle nor riotous joy even in the world without, then ’twould be irksome indeed, and I for one long not for such times!” Thereat arose Palъrien in sorrow and tears, and told of the plight of Earth and of the great beauty of her designs and of those things she desired dearly to bring forth; of all the wealth of flower and herbage, of tree and fruit and grain that the world might bear if it had but peace. “Take heed, O Valar, that both Elves and Men be not devoid of all solace whenso the times come for them to find the Earth” but Melko writhed in rage at the name of Eldar and of Men and at his own impotence.

Now Aulл mightily backed her in this and after him many else of the Gods, yet Mandos and Lуrien held their peace, nor do they ever speak much at the councils of the Valar or indeed at other times, but Tulkas arose angrily from the midst of the assembly and went from among them, for he could not endure parleying where he thought the guilt to be clear. Liever would he have unchained Melko and fought him then and there alone upon the plain of Valinor, giving him many a sore buffet in meed of his illdoings, rather than making high debate of them. Howbeit Manwл sate and listened and was moved by the speech of Palъrien, yet was it his thought that Melko was an Ainu and powerful beyond measure for the future good or evil of the world; wherefore he put away harshness and his doom was this. For three ages during the displeasure of the Gods should Melko be chained in a vault of Mandos by that chain Angaino, and thereafter should he fare into the light of the Two Trees, but only so that he might for four ages yet dwell as a servant in the house of Tulkas, and obey him in requital of his ancient malice. “Thus,” 1said Manwл, “and yet but hardly, mayst thou win favour again sufficient that the Gods suffer thee to abide thereafter in an house of thine own and to have some slight estate among them as befitteth a Vala and a lord of the Ainur.”

Such was the doom of Manwл, and even to Makar and Meбssл it seemed good, albeit Tulkas and Palъrien thought it merciful to peril. Now doth Valinor enter upon its greatest time of peace, and all the earth beside, while Melko bideth in the deepest vaults of Mandos and his heart grows black within him.

Behold the tumults of the sea abate slowly, and the fires beneath the mountains die; the earth quakes no more and the fierceness of the cold and the stubbornness of the hills and rivers of ice is melted to the uttermost North and to the deepest South, even to the regions about Ringil and Helkar. Then Palъrien goes once more out over the Earth, and the forests multiply and spread, and often is Oromл’s horn heard behind her in the dimness: now do nightshade and bryony begin to creep about the brakes, and holly and ilex are seen upon the earth. Even the faces of the cliffs are grown with ivies and trailing plants for the calm of the winds and the quietude of the sea, and all the caverns and the shores are festooned with weeds, and great sea-growths come to life swaying gently when Ossл moves the waters.

Now came that Vala and sat upon a headland of the Great Lands, having leisure in the stillness of his realm, and he saw how Palъrien was filling the quiet dusk of the Earth with flitting shapes. Bats and owls whom Vefбntur set free from Mandos swooped about the sky, and nightingales sent by Lуrien from Valinor trilled beside still waters. Far away a nightjar croaked, and in dark places snakes that slipped from Utumna when Melko was bound moved noiselessly about; a frog croaked upon a bare pool’s border.

Then he sent word to Ulmo of the new things that were done, and Ulmo desired not that the waters of the inner seas be longer unpeopled, but came forth seeking Palъrien, and she gave him spells, and the seas began to gleam with fish or strange creatures crawled at bottom; yet the shellfish and the oysters no-one of Valar or of Elves knows whence they are, for already they gaped in the silent waters or ever Melko plunged therein from on high, and pearls there were before the Eldar thought or dreamed of any gem.

Three great fish luminous in the dark of the sunless days went ever with Ulmo, and the roof of Ossл’s dwelling beneath the Great Sea shone with phosphorescent scales. Behold that was a time of great peace and quiet, and life struck deep roots into the new-made soils of Earth, and seeds were sown that waited only for the light to come, and it is known and praised as the age of “Melko’s Chains”.’

NOTES

1 The following passage was added here, apparently very soon after the writing of the text, but was later firmly struck through:

The truth is that he is a son of Linwл Tinto King of the Pipers who was lost of old upon the great march from Palisor, and wandering in Hisilуmл found the lonely twilight spirit (Tindriel) Wendelin dancing in a glade of beeches. Loving her he was content to leave his folk and dance for ever in the shadows, bu1t his children Timpinen and Tinъviel long after joined the Eldar again, and tales there are concerning them both, though they are seldom told.

The name Tindriel stood alone in the manuscript as written, but it was then bracketed and Wendelin added in the margin. These are the first references in the consecutive narrative to Thingol (Linwл Tinto), Hithlum (Hisilуmл), Melian (Tindriel, Wendelin), and Lъthien Tinъviel; but I postpone discussion of these allusions.

2 Cf. the explanation of the names Eriol and Angol as ‘ironcliffs’ referred to in the Appendix on Names (entry Eriol).

3 Associated with the story of the sojourn of Eriol (Жlfwine) in Tol Eressлa, and the ‘Lost Tales’ that he heard there, are two ‘schemes’ or synopses setting out the plan of the work. One of these is, for much of its length, a rйsumй of the Tales as they are extant; the other, certainly the later, is divergent. In this second scheme, in which the voyager is called Жlfwine, the tale on the second night by the Tale-fire is given to ‘Evromord the Door-ward’, though the narrative-content was to be the same (The Coming of the Gods; the World-fashioning and the Building of Valinor; the Planting of the Two Trees). After this is written (a later addition): ‘Жlfwine goes to beg limpл of Meril; she sends him back.’ The third night by the Tale-fire is thus described:

The Door-ward continues of the Primeval Twilight. The Furies of Melko. Melko’s Chains and the awakening of the Elves. (How Fankil and many dark shapes escape into the world.) [Given to Meril but to be placed as here and much abridged.]

It seems certain that this was a revision in intention only, never achieved. It is notable that in the actual text, as also in the first of these two ‘schemes’, Rъmil’s function in the house is that of door-ward—and Rъmil, not Evromord, was the name that was preserved long after as the recounter of The Music of the Ainur.

4 The text as originally written read: ‘but the great Gods may not be slain, though their children may and all those lesser people of the Vali, albeit only at the hands of some one of the Valar.’

5 Vali is an emendation from Valar. Cf. Rъmil’s words (p. 58): ‘they whom we now call the Valar (or Vali, it matters not).’

Commentary on

The Chaining of Melko

In the interlude between this tale and the last we encounter the figure of Timpinen or Tinfang. This being had existed in my father’s mind for some years, and there are two poems about him. The first is en1titled Tinfang Warble; it is very brief, but exists in three versions. According to a note by my father the original was written at Oxford in 1914, and it was rewritten at Leeds in ‘1920–23’. It was finally published in 1927 in a further altered form, which I give here.*

Tinfang Warble

O the hoot! O the hoot!

How he trillups on his flute!

O the hoot of Tinfang Warble!

Dancing all alone,

Hopping on a stone,

Flitting like a fawn,

In the twilight on the lawn,

And his name is Tinfang Warble!

The first star has shown

And its lamp is blown

to a flame of flickering blue.

He pipes not to me,

He pipes not to thee,

He whistles for none of you.

His music is his own,

The tunes of Tinfang Warble!

In the earliest version Tinfang is called a ‘leprawn’, and in the early glossary of the Gnomish speech he is a ‘fay’.

The second poem is entitled Over Old Hills and Far Away. This exists in five texts, of which the earliest bears an Old English title as well (of the same meaning): eond fyrne beorgas heonan feor. Notes by my father state that it was written at Brocton Camp in Staffordshire between December 1915 and February 1916, and rewritten at Oxford in 1927. The final version given here differs in many details of wording and in places whole lines from earlier versions, from which I note at the end a few interesting readings.

Over Old Hills and Far Away

It was early and still in the night of June,

And few were the stars, and far was the moon,

The drowsy trees drooping, and silently creeping

Shadows woke under them while they were sleeping.

5

I stole to the window with stealthy tread

Leaving my white and unpressed bed;

And something allurin1g, aloof and queer,

Like perfume of flowers from the shores of the mere

That in Elvenhome lies, and in starlit rains

10

Twinkles and flashes, came up to the panes

Of my high lattice-window. Or was it a sound?

I listened and marvelled with eyes on the ground.

For there came from afar a filtered note

Enchanting sweet, now clear, now remote,

15

As clear as a star in a pool by the reeds,

As faint as the glimmer of dew on the weeds.

Then I left the window and followed the call

Down the creaking stairs and across the hall

Out through a door that swung tall and grey,

20

And over the lawn, and away, away!

It was Tinfang Warble that was dancing there,

Fluting and tossing his old white hair,

Till it sparkled like frost in a winter moon;

And the stars were about him, and blinked to his tune

25

Shimmering blue like sparks in a haze,

As always they shimmer and shake when he plays.

My feet only made there the ghost of a sound

On the shining white pebbles that ringed him round,

Where his little feet flashed on a circle of sand,

30

And the fingers were white on his flickering hand.

In the wink of a star he had leapt in the air

With his fluttering cap and his glistening hair;

And had cast his long flute right over his back,

Where it hung by a ribbon of silver and black.

35

His slim little body went fine as a shade,

And he slipped through the reeds like a mist in the glade;

And he laughed like thin silver, and piped a thin note,

As he flapped in the shadows his shadowy coat.

O! the toes of his slippers were twisted and curled,

40

But he danced like a wind out into the world.

He is gone, and the valley is empty and bare

Where lonely I stand and lonely I stare.

Then suddenly out in the meadows beyond,

Then back in the reeds by the shimmering pond,

45 Then afar from a copse where the mosses are thick

A few little notes came trillaping quick.

I leapt o’er the stream and I sped from the glade,

For Tinfang Warble it was that played;

I must follow the hoot of his twilight flute

50

Over reed, over rush, under branch, over root,

And over dim fields, and through rustling grasses

That murmur and nod as the old elf passes,

Over old hills and far away

Where the harps of the Elvenfolk softly play.

Earlier readings:

1–2 ’Twas a very quiet evening once in June—

And I thought that stars had grown bright too soon—

Cf. the prose text, p. 94: ‘The Noldoli say that [the stars] come out too soon if Tinfang Warble plays’.

8 from the shores of the mere] by the fairies’ mere

9 Elvenhome] emendation made on the text of the final version, replacing ‘Fairyland’.

24 Till the stars came out, as it seemed, too soon.

Cf. the note to line 2.

25–6 They always come out when he warbles and plays,

And they shine bright blue as long as he stays.

Cf. the prose text, p. 95: ‘or will he play beneath a goodly moon and the stars go bright and blue.’

54 Elvenfolk] emend1ation made on the text of the final version, replacing ‘fairies’.

The first part of this story of The Chaining of Melko came to have a very different form in later versions, where (The Silmarillion p. 35) it was during the sojourn of the Valar on the Isle of Almaren, under the light of the Two Lamps, that ‘the seeds that Yavanna had sown began swiftly to sprout and to burgeon, and there arose a multitude of growing things great and small, mosses and grasses and great ferns, and trees whose tops were crowned with cloud’ and that ‘beasts came forth and dwelt in the grassy plains, or in the rivers and the lakes, or walked in the shadows of the woods’. This was the Spring of Arda; but after the coming of Melkor and the delving of Utumno ‘green things fell sick and rotted, and rivers were choked with weeds and slime, and fens were made, rank and poisonous, the breeding place of flies; and forests grew dark and perilous, the haunts of fear; and beasts became monsters of horn and ivory and dyed the earth with blood’. Then came the fall of the Lamps, and ‘thus ended the Spring of Arda’ (p. 37). After the building of Valinor and the arising of the Two Trees ‘Middle-earth lay in a twilight beneath the stars’ (p. 39), and Yavanna and Oromл alone of the Valar returned there at times: ‘Yavanna would walk there in the shadows, grieving because the growth and promise of the Spring of Arda was stayed. And she set a sleep upon many things that had arisen in the Spring, so that they should not age, but should wait for a time of awakening that yet should be’ (p. 47). ‘But already the oldest living things had arisen: in the seas the great weeds, and on earth the shadow of great trees; and in the valleys of the night-clad hills there were dark creatures old and strong.’

In this earliest narrative, on the other hand, there is no mention of the beginning of growth during the time when the Lamps shone (see p. 69), and the first trees and low plants appeared under Yavanna’s spells in the twilight after their overthrow. Moreover in the last sentence of this tale ‘seeds were sown’, in that time of ‘quiet dusk’ while Melko was chained, ‘that waited only for the light to come’. Thus in the early story Yavanna sows in the dark with a view (it seems) to growth and flowering in later days of sunlight, whereas in all the subsequent versions the goddess in the time of darkness sows no more, but rather lays a sleep on many things that had arisen beneath the light of the Lamps in the Spring of Arda. But both in the early tale and in The Silmarillion there is a suggestion that Yavanna foresees that light will come in the end to the Great Lands, to Middle-earth.

The conception of a flowing, liquid light in the airs of Earth is again very marked, and it seems that in the original idea the twilight ages of the world east of the sea were still illumined by the traces of this light (‘Seldom now falls the shimmering rain as it was used, and there reigns a gloom lit with pale streaks’, p. 98) as well as by the stars of Varda, even though ‘the Gods have gathered so much of that light that had before flowed about the airs’ (ibid.).

The renewed cosmic violence is conceivably the precursor of the great Battle of the Powers in the later mythology (The Silmarillion p. 51); but in this earliest tale Melko’s upheavals are the cause of the Valar’s visitation, whereas the Battle of the Powers, in which the shape of Middle-earth was changed, resulted from it. In The Silmarillion it was the discovery of the newly-awakened Elves by Oromл that led the Valar to the assault on Utumno.

In its rich narrative detail, as in its ‘primitive’ air, the tale told by Meril-i-Turinqi of the capture of Melko bears little relation to the later narrative; while the tone of the encounter at Utumna, and the treacherous shifts of the Valar to ensnare him, is foreign to it likewise. But some elements survived: the chain Angainor forged by Aulл (if not the marvellous metal tilkal with its most uncharacteristically derived name), the wrestling of Tulkas with Melko, his imprisonment in Mandos for ‘three ages’, and the idea that his fortress was not destroyed to its foundations. It emerges too that the clement and trustful character of Manwл was early defined; while the reference to Mandos’ seldom speaking is possibly a foreshadowing of his pronouncing his judgements only at the bidding of Manwл (see p. 90). The origin of nightingales in the domain of Lуrien in Valinor is already present.

Lastly, it may seem from the account of the journey of the Valar in this tale that Hisilуmл (which survived without any further change as the Quenya name of Hithlum) was here a quite distinct region from the later Hithlum, since it is placed beyond the Mountains of Iron: in The Silmarillion the Mountains of Iron are said to have been reared by Melkor ‘as a fence to his citadel of Utumno’: ‘they stood upon the borders of the regions of everlasting cold, in a great curve from east to west’ (p. 118). But in fact the ‘Mountains of Iron’ here correspond to the later ‘Mountains of Shadow’ (Ered Wethrin). In an annotated list of names accompanying the tale of The Fall of Gondolin the name Dor Lуmin is thus defined:

Dor Lуmin or the ‘Land of Shadow’ was that region named of the Eldar Hisilуmл (and this means ‘Shadowy Twilights’)…and it is so called by reason of the scanty sun which peeps little over the Iron Mountains to the east and south of it.

On the little map given on p. 81 the line of peaks which I have marked f almost certainly represents these mountains, and the region to the north of them, marked g, is then Hisilуmл.

The manuscript continues, from the point where I have ended the text in this chapter, with no break; but this point is the end of a section in the mythological narrative (with a brief interruption by Eriol), and the remainder of Meril-i-Turinqi’s tale is reserved to the next chapter. Thus I make two tales of one.

V

THE COMING OF THE ELVES AND THE MAKING OF K Ф R

I take this title from the cover of the book (which adds also ‘How the Elves did fashion Gems’), for as I have already remarked the narrative continues without a new heading.

Then said Eriol: ‘Sad was the unchaining of Melko, methinks, even did it seem merciful and just—but how came the Gods to do this thing?’

Then Meril^11small> continuing said:

‘Upon a time thereafter was the third period of Melko’s prisonment beneath the halls of Mandos come nearly to its ending. Manwл sat upon the top of the mountain and gazed with his piercing eyes into the shades beyond Valinor, and hawks flew to him and from him bearing many great tidings, but Varda was singing a song and looking upon the plain of Valinor. Silpion was at that time glimmering and the roofs of Valmar below were black and silver beneath its rays; and Varda was joyous, but on a sudden Manwл spake, saying: “Behold, there is a gleam of gold beneath the pine-trees, and the deepest gloaming of the world is full of a patter of feet. The Eldar have come, O Taniquetil!” Then Varda arose swiftly and stretched her arms out North and South, and unbraided her long hair, and lifted up the Song of the Valar, and Ilwл was filled with the loveliness of her voice.

Then did she descend to Valmar and to the abode of Aulл and he was making vessels of silver for Lуrien. A bason filled with the radiance of Telimpл² was by his side, and this he used cunningly in his craft, but now Varda stood before him and said: “The Eldar have come!” and Aulл flung down his hammer saying: “Then Ilъvatar hath sent them at last,” and the hammer striking some ingots of silver upon the floor did of its magic smite silver sparks to life, that flashed from his windows out into the heavens. Varda seeing this took of that radiance in the bason and mingled it with molten silver to make it more stable, and fared upon her wings of speed, and set stars about the firmament in very great profusion, so that the skies grew marvellously fair and their glory was doubled; and those stars that she then fashioned have a power of slumbers, for the silver of their bodies came of the treasury of Lуrien and their radiance had lain in Telimpл long time in his garden.

Some have said that the Seven Stars were set at that time by Varda to commemorate the coming of the Eldar, and that Morwinyon who blazes above the world’s edge in the west was dropped by her as she fared in great haste back to Valinor. Now this is indeed the true beginning of Morwinyon and his beauty, yet the Seven Stars were not set by Varda, being indeed the sparks from Aulл’s forge whose brightness in the ancient heavens urged Varda to make their rivals; yet this did she never achieve.

But now even as Varda is engaged in this great work, behold, Oromл pricks over the plain, and drawing rein he shouts aloud so that all the ears in Valmar may hear him: “Tulielto! Tulielto! They have come—they have come!” Then he stands midway between the Two Trees and winds his horn, and the gates of Valmar are opened, and the Vali troop into the plain, for they guess that tidings of wonder have come into the world. Then spake Oromл: “Behold the woods of the Great Lands, even in Palisor the midmost region where the pinewoods murmur unceasingly, are full of a strange noise. There did I wander, and lo! ’twas as if folk arose betimes beneath the latest stars. There was a stir among the distant trees and words were spoken suddenly, and feet went to and fro. Then did I say what is this deed that Palъrien my mother has wrought in secret, and I sought her out and questioned her, and she answered: ‘This is no work of mine, but the hand of one far greater did this. Ilъvatar hath awakened his children at the last—ride home to Valinor and tell the Gods tha1t the Eldar have come indeed!’”