The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two

  Now at the bidding of the Man of the Sea do those islanders with great speed fashion a new ship for Ælfwine and his fellows, since he would fare no further in Orm’s ship; and its timbers were cut, as the ancient sailor had asked, from a grove of magic oaks far inland that grew about a high place of the Gods, sacred to Ulmo Lord of the Sea, and seldom were any of them felled. ‘A ship that is wrought of this wood,’ said the Man of the Sea, ‘may be lost, but those that sail in it shall not in that voyage lose their lives; yet may they perhaps be cast where they little think to come.’

  But when that ship was made ready that ancient sailor bid them climb aboard, and this they did, but with them went also Bior of the Ythlings, a man of mighty sea-craft for their aid, and one who above any of that strange folk was minded to sail at times far from the land of Eneadur to West or North or South. There stood many men of the Ythlings upon the shore beside that vessel; for they had builded her in a cove of the steep shore that looked to the West, and a bar of rock with but a narrow opening made here a sheltered pool and mooring place, and few like it were to be found in that island of sheer cliffs. Then the ancient one laid his hand upon her prow and spoke words of magic, giving her power to cleave uncloven waters and enter unentered harbours, and ride untrodden beaches. Twin rudder-paddles, one on either side, had she after the fashion of the Ythlings, and each of these he blessed, giving them skill to steer when the hands that held them failed, and to find lost courses, and to follow stars that were hid. Then he strode away, and the press of men parted before him, until climbing he came to a high pinnacle of the cliffs. Then leapt he far out and down and vanished with a mighty flurry of foam where the great breakers gathered to assault the towering shores.

  Ælfwine saw him no more, and he said in grief and amaze: ‘Why was he thus weary of life? My heart grieves that he is dead,’ but the Ythlings smiled, so that he questioned some that stood nigh, saying: ‘Who was that mighty man, for meseems ye know him well,’ and they answered him nothing. Then thrust they forth that vessel valiant-timbered37 out into the sea, for no longer would Ælfwine abide, though the sun was sinking to the Mountains of Valinor beyond the Western Walls. Soon was her white sail seen far away filled with a wind from off the land, and red-stained in the light of the half-sunken sun; and those aboard her sang old songs of the English folk that faded on the sailless waves of the Western Seas, and now no longer came any sound of them to the watchers on the shore. Then night shut down and none on Eneadur saw that strong ship ever more.38

  So began those mariners that long and strange and perilous voyage whose full tale has never yet been told. Nought of their adventures in the archipelagoes of the West, and the wonders and the dangers that they found in the Magic Isles and in seas and sound unknown, are here to tell, but of the ending of their voyage, how after a time of years sea-weary and sick of heart they found a grey and cheerless day. Little wind was there, and the clouds hung low overhead; while a grey rain fell, and nought could any of them descry before their vessel’s beak that moved now slow and uncertain over the long dead waves. That day had they trysted to be the last ere they turned their vessel homeward (if they might), save only if some wonder should betide or any sign of hope. For their heart was gone. Behind them lay the Magic Isles where three of their number slept upon dim strands in deadly sleep, and their heads were pillowed on white sand and they were clad in foam, wrapped about in the agelong spells of Eglavain. Fruitless had been all their journeys since, for ever the winds had cast them back without sight of the shores of the Island of the Elves.39 Then said Ælfheah40 who held the helm: ‘Now, O Ælfwine, is the trysted time! Let us do as the Gods and their winds have long desired—cease from our heart-weary quest for nothingness, a fable in the void, and get us back if the Gods will it seeking the hearths of our home.’ And Ælfwine yielded. Then fell the wind and no breath came from East or West, and night came slowly over the sea.

  Behold, at length a gentle breeze sprang up, and it came softly from the West; and even as they would fill their sails therewith for home, one of those shipmen on a sudden said: ‘Nay, but this is a strange air, and full of scented memories,’ and standing still they all breathed deep. The mists gave before that gentle wind, and a thin moon they might see riding in its tattered shreds, until behind it soon a thousand cool stars peered forth in the dark. ‘The night-flowers are opening in Faëry,’ said Ælfwine; ‘and behold,’ said Bior,41 ‘the Elves are kindling candles in their silver dusk,’ and all looked whither his long hand pointed over their dark stern. Then none spoke for wonder and amaze, seeing deep in the gloaming of the West a blue shadow, and in the blue shadow many glittering lights, and ever more and more of them came twinkling out, until ten thousand points of flickering radiance were splintered far away as if a dust of the jewels self-luminous that Fëanor made were scattered on the lap of the Ocean.

  ‘Then is that the Harbour of the Lights of Many Hues,’ said Ælfheah, ‘that many a little-heeded tale has told of in our homes.’ Then saying no more they shot out their oars and swung about their ship in haste, and pulled towards the never-dying shore. Near had they come to abandoning it when hardly won. Little did they make of that long pull, as they thrust the water strongly by them, and the long night of Faërie held on, and the horned moon of Elfinesse rode over them.

  Then came there music very gently over the waters and it was laden with unimagined longing, that Ælfwine and his comrades leant upon their oars and wept softly each for his heart’s half-remembered hurts, and memory of fair things long lost, and each for the thirst that is in every child of Men for the flawless loveliness they seek and do not find. And one said: ‘It is the harps that are thrumming, and the songs they are singing of fair things; and the windows that look upon the sea are full of light.’ And another said: ‘Their stringéd violins complain the ancient woes of the immortal folk of Earth, but there is a joy therein.’ ‘Ah me,’ said Ælfwine, ‘I hear the horns of the Fairies shimmering in magic woods—such music as I once dimly guessed long years ago beneath the elms of Mindon Gwar.’

  And lo! as they spoke thus musing the moon hid himself, and the stars were clouded, and the mists of time veiled the shore, and nothing could they see and nought more hear, save the sound of the surf of the seas in the far-off pebbles of the Lonely Isle; and soon the wind blew even that faint rustle far away. But Ælfwine stood forward with wide-open eyes unspeaking, and suddenly with a great cry he sprang forward into the dark sea, and the waters that filled him were warm, and a kindly death it seemed enveloped him. Then it seemed to the others that they awakened at his voice as from a dream; but the wind now suddenly grown fierce filled all their sails, and they saw him never again, but were driven back with hearts all broken with regret and longing. Pale elfin boats awhile they would see beating home, maybe, to the Haven of Many Hues, and they hailed them; but only faint echoes afar off were borne to their ears, and none led them ever to the land of their desire; who after a great time wound back all the mazy clue of their long tangled ways, until they cast anchor at last in the haven of Belerion, aged and wayworn men. And the things they had seen and heard seemed after to them a mirage, and a phantasy, born of hunger and sea-spells, save only to Bior of Eneadur of the Ship-folk of the West.

  Yet among the seed of these men has there been many a restless and wistful spirit thereafter, since they were dead and passed beyond the Rim of Earth without need of boat or sail. But never while life lasted did they leave their sea-faring, and their bodies are all covered by the sea.42

  The narrative ends here. There is no trace of any further continuation, though it seems likely that Ælfwine of England was to be the beginning of a complete rewriting of the Lost Tales. It would be interesting to know for certain when Ælfwine II was written. The handwriting of the manuscript is certainly changed from that of the rest of the Lost Tales; yet I am inclined to think that it followed Ælfwine I at no great interval, and the first version is unlikely to be much later than 1920 (see p. 312).

  At the
end of Ælfwine II my father jotted down two suggestions: (1) that Ælfwine should be made ‘an early pagan Englishman who fled to the West’ and (2) that ‘the Isle of the Old Man’ should be cut out and all should be shipwrecked on Eneadur, the Isle of the Ythlings. The latter would (astonishingly) have entailed the abandonment of the foundered ship, with the Man of the Sea thrusting it to shore on the incoming tide, and the dead Vikings ‘lying abottom gazing at the sky’.

  In this narrative—in which the ‘magic’ of the early Elves is most intensely conveyed, in the seamen’s vision of the Lonely Isle beneath ‘the horned moon of Elfinesse’—Ælfwine is still placed in the context of the figures of ancient English legend: his father is Déor the Minstrel. In the great Anglo-Saxon manuscript known as the Exeter Book there is a little poem of 42 lines to which the title of Déor is now given. It is an utterance of the minstrel Déor, who, as he tells, has lost his place and been supplanted in his lord’s favour by another bard, named Heorrenda; in the body of the poem Déor draws examples from among the great misfortunes recounted in the heroic legends, and is comforted by them, concluding each allusion with the fixed refrain pæs ofereode; þisses swa mæg, which has been variously translated; my father held that it meant ‘Time has passed since then, this too can pass’.43

  From this poem came both Déor and Heorrenda. In ‘the Eriol story’ Heorrenda was Eriol’s son born in Tol Eressëa of his wife Naimi (p. 290), and was associated with Hengest and Horsa in the conquest of the Lonely Isle (p. 291); his dwelling in England was at Tavrobel (p. 292). I do not think that my father’s Déor the Minstrel of Kortirion and Heorrenda of Tavrobel can be linked more closely to the Anglo-Saxon poem than in the names alone—though he did not take the names at random. He was moved by the glimpsed tale (even if, in the words of one of the poem’s editors, ‘the autobiographical element is purely fictitious, serving only as a pretext for the enumeration of the heroic stories’); and when lecturing on Beowulf at Oxford he sometimes gave the unknown poet a name, calling him Heorrenda.

  Nor, as I believe, can any more be made of the other Old English names in the narrative: Óswine prince of Gwar, Éadgifu, Ælfheah (though the names are doubtless in themselves ‘significant’: thus Óswine contains ós ‘god’ and wine ‘friend’, and Éadgifu éad ‘blessedness’ and gifu ‘gift’). The Forodwaith are of course Viking invaders from Norway or Denmark; the name Orm of the dead ship’s captain is well-known in Norse. But all this is a mise-en-scène that is historical only in its bearings, not in its structure.

  The idea of the seven invasions of Lúthien (Luthany) remained (p. 314), and that of the fading and westward flight of the Elves (which indeed was never finally lost),44 but whereas in the outlines the invasion of the Ingwaiwar (i.e. the Anglo-Saxons) was the seventh (see citations (20) and (22)), here the Viking invasions are portrayed as coming upon the English—‘nor was that the last of the takings of Lúthien by Men from Men’ (p. 314), obviously a reference to the Normans.

  There is much of interest in the ‘geographical’ references in the story. At the very beginning there is a curious statement about the breaking off of Ireland ‘in the warfare of the Gods’. Seeing that ‘the Ælfwine story’ does not include the idea of the drawing back of Tol Eressëa eastwards across the sea, this must refer to something quite other than the story in (5), p. 283, where the Isle of Íverin was broken off when Ossë tried to wrench back Tol Eressëa. What this was I do not know; but it seems conceivable that this is the first trace or hint of the great cataclysm at the end of the Elder Days, when Beleriand was drowned. (I have found no trace of any connection between the harbour of Belerion and the region of Beleriand.)

  Kortirion (Mindon Gwar) is in this tale of course ‘Kortirion the Old’, the original Elvish dwelling in Lúthien, after which Kortirion in Tol Eressëa was named (see pp. 308, 310); in the same way we must suppose that the name Alalminórë (p. 313) for the region about it (‘Warwickshire’) was given anew to the midmost region of Tol Eressëa.

  Turning to the question of the islands and archipelagoes in the Great Sea, what is said in Ælfwine of England may first be compared with the passages of geographical description in The Coming of the Valar (1.68) and The Coming of the Elves (I.125), which are closely similar the one to the other. From these passages we learn that there are many lands and islands in the Great Sea before the Magic Isles are reached; beyond the Magic Isles is Tol Eressëa; and beyond Tol Eressëa are the Shadowy Seas, ‘whereon there float the Twilit Isles’, the first of the Outer Lands. Tol Eressëa itself ‘is held neither of the Outer Lands or of the Great Lands’ (I.125); it is far out in mid-ocean, and ‘no land may be seen for many leagues’ sail from its cliffs’ (I.121). With this account Ælfwine of England agrees closely; but to it is added now the archipelago of the Harbourless Isles.

  As I have noted before (I.137), this progression from East to West of Harbourless Isles, Magic Isles, the Lonely Isle, and then the Shadowy Seas in which were the Twilit Isles, was afterwards changed, and it is said in The Silmarillion (p. 102) that at the time of the Hiding of Valinor

  the Enchanted Isles were set, and all the seas about them were filled with shadows and bewilderment. And these isles were strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south, before Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, is reached by one sailing west. Hardly might any vessel pass between them, for in the dangerous sounds the waves sighed for ever upon dark rocks shrouded in mist. And in the twilight a great weariness came upon mariners and a loathing of the sea; but all that ever set foot upon the islands were there entrapped, and slept until the Change of the World.

  As a conception, the Enchanted Isles are derived primarily from the old Magic Isles, set at the time of the Hiding of Valinor and described in that Tale (I.211): ‘Ossë set them in a great ring about the western limits of the mighty sea, so that they guarded the Bay of Faëry’, and

  all such as stepped thereon came never thence again, but being woven in the nets of Oinen’s hair the Lady of the Sea, and whelmed in agelong slumber that Lórien set there, lay upon the margin of the waves, as those do who being drowned are cast up once more by the movements of the sea; yet rather did these hapless ones sleep unfathomably and the dark waters laved their limbs…

  Here three of Ælfwine’s companions

  slept upon dim strands in deadly sleep, and their heads were pillowed on white sand and they were clad in foam, wrapped about in the agelong spells of Eglavain (p. 320).

  (I do not know the meaning of the name Eglavain, but since it clearly contains Egla (Gnomish, = Elda, see I.251) it perhaps meant ‘Elfinesse’.) But the Enchanted Isles derive also perhaps from the Twilit Isles, since the Enchanted Isles were likewise in twilight and were set in the Shadowy Seas (cf. I.224); and from the Harbourless Isles as well, which, as Ælfwine was told by the Man of the Sea (p. 317), were set at the time of the Hiding of Valinor—and indeed served the same purpose as did the Magic Isles, though lying far further to the East.

  Eneadur, the isle of the Ythlings (Old English ýð ‘wave’), whose life is so fully described in Ælfwine of England, seems never to have been mentioned again. Is there in Eneadur and the Shipmen of the West perhaps some faint foreshadowing of the early Númenóreans in their cliff-girt isle?

  The following passage (pp. 316–17) is not easy to interpret:

  Thence [i.e. from the Bay of Faëry] slopes the world steeply beyond the Rim of Things to Valinor, that is God-home, and to the Wall and to the edge of Nothingness whereon are sown the stars.

  In the Ambarkanta or ‘Shape of the World’ of the 1930s a map of the world shows the surface of the Outer Land sloping steeply westwards from the Mountains of Valinor. Conceivably it is to this slope that my father was referring here, and the Rim of Things is the great mountainwall; but this seems very improbable. There are also references in Ælfwine of England to ‘the Rim of Earth’, beyond which the dead pass (pp. 314, 322); and in an outline for the Tale of Eärendel (p. 260) Tuor’s boat ‘dips over the world??
?s rim’. More likely, I think, the expression refers to the rim of the horizon (‘the horizon of Men’s knowledge’, p. 313).

  The expression ‘the sun was sinking to the Mountains of Valinor beyond the Western Walls’ (p. 320) I am at a loss to explain according to what has been told in the Lost Tales. A possible, though scarcely convincing, interpretation is that the sun was sinking towards Valinor, whence it would pass ‘beyond the Western Walls’ (i.e. through the Door of Night, see I.215–16).

  Lastly, the suggestion (p. 313) is notable that the Elves sailing west from Lúthien might go beyond the Lonely Isle and reach even back to Valinor; on this matter see p. 280.

  Before ending, there remains to discuss briefly a matter of a general nature that has many times been mentioned in the texts, and especially in these last chapters: that of the ‘diminutiveness’ of the Elves.

  It is said several times in the Lost Tales that the Elves of the ancient days were of greater bodily stature than they afterwards became. Thus in The Fall of Gondolin (p. 159): ‘The fathers of the fathers of Men were of less stature than Men now are, and the children of Elfinesse of greater growth’ in an outline for the abandoned tale of Gilfanon (I.235) very similarly: ‘Men were almost of a stature at first with Elves, the fairies being far greater and Men smaller than now’ and in citation (4) in the present chapter: ‘Men and Elves were formerly of a size, though Men always larger.’ Other passages suggest that the ancient Elves were of their nature of at any rate somewhat slighter build (see pp. 142, 220).