The Book of Lost Tales, Part One by J. R. R. Tolkien
Now Silmo begged to sail upon the oceans of the firmament therein, but he might not, for neither was he of the children of the air nor might he find a way to cleanse his being of its earthwardness as had Urwendi18 done, and little would it have availed to enter Faskalan had he dared essay it, for then would Rána have shrivelled before him. Manwë bade therefore Ilinsor, a spirit of the Súruli who loved the snows and the starlight and aided Varda in many of her works, to pilot this strange-gleaming boat, and with him went many another spirit of the air arrayed in robes of silver and white, or else of palest gold; but an aged Elf with hoary locks stepped upon the Moon unseen and hid him in the Rose, and there dwells he ever since and tends that flower, and a little white turret has he builded on the Moon where often he climbs and watches the heavens, or the world beneath, and that is Uolë Kúvion who sleepeth never. Some indeed have named him the Man in the Moon, but Ilinsor is it rather who hunts the stars.
Now is to tell how the plan that Lórien devised was changed, for the white radiance of Silpion is by no means so buoyant and ethereal as is the flame of Laurelin, nor virin so little weighty as the rind of the bright fruit of noon; and when the Gods laded the white ship with light and would launch it upon the heavens, behold, it would not rise above their heads. Moreover, behold, that living Rose continued to give forth a honey as of light that distills upon the isle of glass, and a dew of moonbeams glistens there, yet rather does this weigh the vessel than buoy it as did the increase of the Sunship’s flames. So is it that Ilinsor must return at times, and that overflowing radiance of the Rose is stored in Valinor against dark days—and it is to tell that such days come ever and anon, for then the white flower of the isle wanes and scarcely shines, and then must it be refreshed and watered with its silver dew, much as Silpion was wont of old to be.
Hence was it that a pool was builded hard by the dark southern wall of Valmar, and of silver and white marbles were its walls, but dark yews shut it in, being planted in a maze most intricate about it. There Lórien hoarded the pale dewy light of that fair Rose, and he named it the Lake Irtinsa.
So comes it that for fourteen nights men may see Rána’s bark float upon the airs, and for other fourteen the heavens know it not; while even on those fair nights when Rána fares abroad it showeth not ever the same aspect as doth Sári the glorious, for whereas that bright galleon voyageth even above Ilwë and beyond the stars and cleaveth a dazzling way blinding the heavens, highest of all things recking little of winds or motions of the airs, yet Ilinsor’s bark is heavier and less filled with magic and with power, and fareth never above the skies but saileth in the lower folds of Ilwë threading a white swathe among the stars. For this reason the high winds trouble it at times, tugging at its misty shrouds; and often are these torn and scattered, and the Gods renew them. At times too are the petals of the Rose ruffled, and its white flames blown hither and thither like a silver candle guttering in the wind. Then doth Rána heave and toss about the air, as often you may see him, and mark the slender curve of his bright keel, his prow now dipping, now his stern; and whiles again he sails serenely to the West, and up through the pure lucency of his frame the wide Rose of Silpion is seen, and some say the aged form of Uolë Kúvion beside.
Then indeed is the Ship of the Moon very fair to look upon, and the Earth is filled with slender lights and deep quick-moving shadows, and radiant dreams go with cool wings about the world, but Lórien has ruth amid his gladness, because his flower bears yet, and will for ever, the faint marks of its bruising and its fall; and all men can see them clearly.
But19 lo,’ saith Lindo, ‘I run on ahead, for yet have I only told that the silver ship is newly built, and Ilinsor yet but first stepped aboard—and now do the Gods draw that vessel once again up the steep sides of old Taniquetil singing as they go songs of Lórien’s folk that long have been dumb in Valinor. Slower was that wayfaring than the lifting of the Ship of Morn, and all the folk strain lustily at the ropes, until Oromë coming harnesses thereto a herd of wild white horses, and thus comes the vessel to the topmost place.
Then behold, the galleon of the Sun is seen afar beating golden from the East, and the Valar marvel to descry the glowing peaks of many a mountain far away, and isles glimmering green in seas once dark. Then cried Ossë: “Look, O Manwë, but the sea is blue, as blue wellnigh as Ilwë that thou lovest!” and “Nay,” said Manwë, “envy we not Ilwë, for the sea is not blue alone, but grey and green and purple, and most beauteous-flowered with foaming white. Nor jade nor amethyst nor porphyry set with diamonds and with pearls outrival the waters of the Great and little seas when the sunlight drenches them.”
So saying Manwë sent Fionwë his son, swiftest of all to move about the airs, and bade him say to Urwendi that the bark of the Sun come back awhile to Valinor, for the Gods have counsels for her ear; and Fionwë fled most readily, for he had conceived a great love for that bright maiden long ago, and her loveliness now, when bathed in fire she sate as the radiant mistress of the Sun, set him aflame with the eagerness of the Gods. So was it that Urwendi brought her ship unwilling above Valinor, and Oromë cast a noose of gold about it, and it was drawn slowly down upon the Earth, and behold, the woods upon Taniquetil glowed once more in the mingled light of silver and of gold, and all were minded of the ancient blending of the Trees; but Ilsaluntë paled before the galleon of the Sun till almost it seemed to burn no more. So ended the first day upon the world, and it was very long and full of many marvellous deeds that Gilfanon may tell; but now the Gods beheld the evening deepen over the world as the Sunship was drawn down and the glow upon the mountains faded, and the sparkle of the seas went out. Then the primeval darkness crept out again once more from many stealthy lairs, but Varda was glad to see the steady shining of the stars. Far upon the plain was Sári drawn, and when she was gone Ilsaluntë was haled upon the topmost peak so that his white lucency fell out thence over the wide world and the first night was come. Indeed in these days darkness is no more within the borders of the world, but only night, and night is another and a different thing, by reason of the Rose of Silpion.
Now however does Aulë fill the brimming vessel of that flower with white radiance, and many of the Súruli white-winged glide beneath and bear it slowly up and set it among the company of the stars. There does it swim slowly, a pale and glorious thing, and Ilinsor and his comrades sit them upon its rim and with shimmering oars urge it bravely through the sky; and Manwë breathed upon its bellying sails till it was wafted far away, and the beat of the unseen oars against the winds of night faded and grew faint.
Of this manner was the first rising of the Moon above Taniquetil, and Lórien rejoiced, but Ilinsor was jealous of the supremacy of the Sun, and he bade the starry mariners flee before him and the constellate lamps go out, but many would not, and often he set sail in chase of them, and the little ships of Varda fled before the huntsman of the firmament, and were not caught:—and that, said Lindo, ‘is all, methinks, I know to tell of the building of those marvellous ships and their launching on the air.’20
‘But,’ said Eriol, ‘nay, surely that is not so, for at the tale’s beginning methought you promised us words concerning the present courses of the Sun and Moon and their rising in the East, and I for one, by the leave of the others here present am not minded to release you of your word.’
Then quoth Lindo laughing, ‘Nay, I remember not the promise, and did I make it then it was rash indeed, for the things you ask are nowise easy to relate, and many matters concerning the deeds in those days in Valinor are hidden from all save only the Valar. Now however am I fain rather to listen, and thou Vairë perchance will take up the burden of the tale.’
Thereat did all rejoice, and the children clapped their hands, for dearly did they love those times when Vairë was the teller of the tale; but Vairë said:
‘Lo, tales I tell of the deep days, and the first is called The Hiding of Valinor.’
NOTES
1 The manuscript has here Gilfan a · Davrobel, but in t
2 See p. 24–5 on the relation of Tavrobel to the Staffordshire village of Great Haywood. At Great Haywood the river Sow joins the Trent.
3 In the rejected version of this ‘interlude’ Gilfanon’s history is differently recounted: ‘he was long before an Ilkorin and had dwelt ages back in Hisilómë’ ‘he came to Tol Eressëa after the great march [i.e. Inwë’s ‘march into the world’, the great expedition from Kôr, see p. 26], for he had adopted blood-kinship with the Noldoli.’—This is the first occurrence of the term Ilkorin, which refers to Elves who were ‘not of Kôr’ (cf. the later term Úmanyar, Elves ‘not of Aman’). Artanor is the precursor of Doriath.
4 Gilfanon, a Gnome, is here called the oldest of the fairies; see p. 51.
5 No explanation of ‘the House of the Hundred Chimneys’, near the bridge of Tavrobel, is known to me, but I have never visited Great Haywood, and it may be that there was (or is) a house there that gave rise to it.
6 The rejected form of the ‘interlude’ is quite different in its latter part:
Therefore said Lindo in answer to Eriol: ‘Behold, Gilfanon here can tell you much of such matters, but first of all must you be told of the deeds that were done in Valinor when Melko slew the Trees and the Gnomes marched away into the darkness. ’Tis a long tale but well worth the hearkening.’ For Lindo loved to tell such tales and sought often an occasion for recalling them; but Gilfanon said: ‘Speak on, my Lindo, but methinks the tale will not be told tonight or for many a night after, and I shall have fared long back to Tavrobel.’ ‘Nay,’ said Lindo, ‘I will not make the tale overlong, and tomorrow shall be all your own.’ And so saying Gilfanon sighed, but Lindo lifted up his voice…
7 ‘lest it be’: this curious expression is clear in the manuscript; the usage seems wholly unrecorded, but the meaning intended must be ‘unless it be’, i.e. ‘to him alone, unless also to Varda…’
8 On Telimpë as the name of the ‘Moon-cauldron’, rather than Silindrin, see p. 79 and 129 note 2.
9 See p. 73, 88. At previous occurrences the name is Urwen, not Urwendi.
10 ‘twixt Erumáni and the Sea’: i.e., the Outer Sea, Vai, the western bound of Valinor.
11 The passage beginning ‘For behold, he desired in this manner…’ on p. 182 and continuing to this point was added on a detached sheet and replaced a very much shorter passage in which Manwë briefly declared his plan, and nothing was said about the powers of the Valar. But I do not think that the replacement was composed significantly later than the body of the text.
12 The earlier reading here was: ‘Then did the Gods name that ship, and they called her Or which is the Sun’, etc.
13 The earlier reading here was: ‘and the Gnomes call her Aur the Sun, and Galmir the goldgleamer’, etc.
14 An isolated note refers to the coming forth of more wholesome creatures when the Sun arose (i.e. over the Great Lands), and says that ‘all the birds sang in the first dawn’.
15 The Aulenossë: see p. 176.
16 This is the first appearance of the Sons of Fëanor.
17 Earlier reading: ‘the silver rose’.
18 Urwendi: manuscript Urwandi, but I think that this was probably unintended.
19 From this point the text of the Tale of the Sun and Moon ceases to be written over an erased pencilled original, and from the same point the original text is extant in another book. In fact, to the end of the Tale of the Sun and Moon the differences are slight, no more than alterations of wording; but the original text does explain the fact that at the first occurrence of the name Gilfanon on p. 189 the original reading was Ailios. One would guess in any case that this was a slip, a reversion to an earlier name, and that this is so is shown by the first version, which has, for ‘many marvellous deeds that Gilfanon may tell’ (p. 194), ‘many marvellous deeds as Ailios shall tell’.
20 From this point the second version diverges sharply from the first. The first reads as follows:
And that is all, methinks,’ said Lindo, ‘that I know to tell of those fairest works of the Gods’ but Ailios said: ‘Little doth it cost thee to spin the tale, an it be of Valinor; it is a while since ye offered us a…..tale concerning the rising of the Sun and Moon in the East, and a flow of speech has poured from thee since then, but now art thou minded to [?tease], and no word of that promise.’ Of a truth Ailios beneath his roughness liked the words of Lindo as well as any, and he was eager to learn of the matter.
‘That is easy told,’ said Lindo…
What follows in the original version relates to the matter of the next chapter (see p. 220 note 2).
Ailios here claims that a promise made by Lindo has not been fulfilled, just as does Eriol, more politely, in the second version. The beginning of the tale in the first version is not extant, and perhaps as it was originally written Lindo did make this promise; but in the second he says no such thing (indeed Eriol’s question was ‘Whence be the Sun and Moon?’), and at the end of his tale denies that he had done so, when Eriol asserts it.
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.
Uolë Kúvion < Uolë Mikúmi, only at the second occurrence on p. 193; at the first occurrence, Uolë Mikúmi was left unchanged, though I have given Uolë Kúvion in the text.
Ship of Morning < Kalaventë (p. 190; i · Kalaventë ‘the Ship of Light’ occurs unemended in the text on p. 188).
the Sunship’s flames < the flames of Kalaventë (p. 193).
Sári < Kalavénë (p. 193, 195. Kalavénë 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 Aulë’s bitterness against them, of which nothing is said afterwards), and also the finality and absoluteness of their exclusion from Valinor. But the idea that some Gnomes remained in Valinor (the Aulenossë, 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 Aulë 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 Fëanor’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 Manwë (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 Ilúvatar (‘I have it in mi
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 Ilúvatar 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 physical limitation: none of the Valar, save Manwë 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 Manwë’, 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: