The Book of Lost Tales 2

Chapter Twenty-Six

  The City of Present Sorrow. There is a city that far distant lies And a vale outcarven in forgotten days -- There wider was the grass, and lofty elms more rare; The river-sense was heavy in the lowland air. There many willows changed the aspect of the earth and skies Where feeding brooks wound in by sluggish ways, And down the margin of the sailing Thames Around his broad old bosom their old stems Were bowed, and subtle shades lay on his streams Where their grey leaves adroop o'er silver pools Did knit a coverlet like shimmering jewels Of blue and misty green and filtering gleams. * 0 aged city of an all too brief sojourn, I see thy clustered windows each one burn With lamps and candles of departed men. The misty stars thy crown, the night thy dress, Most peerless-magical thou dost possess My heart, and old days come to life again; Old mornings dawn, or darkened evenings bring The same old twilight noises from the town. Thou hast the very core of longing and delight, To thee my spirit dances oft in sleep Along thy great grey streets, or down A little lamplit alley-way at night -- Thinking no more of other cities it has known, Forgetting for a while the tree-girt keep, And town of dreams, where men no longer sing. For thy heart knows, and thou shedst many tears For all the sorrow of these evil years. Thy thousand pinnacles and fretted spires Are lit with echoes and the lambent fires Of many companies of bells that ring Rousing pale visions of majestic days The windy years have strewn down distant ways; And in thy halls still doth thy spirit sing Songs of old memory amid thy present tears, Or hope of days to come half-sad with many fears. Lo! though along thy paths no laughter runs While war untimely takes thy many sons, No tide of evil can thy glory drown Robed in sad majesty, the stars thy crown.

  In addition, there are two texts in which a part of The City of Present Sorrow is treated as a separate entity. This begins with '0 aged city of an all too brief sojourn', and is briefer: after the line 'Thinking no more of other cities it has known' it ends: Forgetting for a while that all men weep It strays there happy and to thee it sings 'No tide of evil can thy glory drown, Robed in sad majesty, the stars thy crown! ' This was first called The Sorrowful City, but the title was then changed to Winsele weste, windge reste rete berofene (Beowulf lines 2456 -- 7, very slightly adapted, the hall of feasting empty, the resting places swept by the wind, robbed of laughter'). There are also two manuscripts in which The Town of Dreams is treated as a separate poem, with a subtitle An old town revisited; in one of these the primary title was later changed to The Town of Dead Days. Lastly, there is a poem in two parts called The Song of Eriol. This is found in three manuscripts, the later ones incorporating minor changes made to the predecessor (but the third has only the second part of the poem).

  The Song of Eriol Eriol made a song in the Room of the Tale-fire telling how his feet were . set to wandering, so that in the end he found the Lonely Isle and that fairest town Kortirion. In unknown days my fathers' sires Came, and from son to son took root Among the orchards and the river-meads And the long grasses of the fragrant plain: Many a summer saw they kindle yellow fires Of flaglilies among the bowing reeds, And many a sea of blossom turn to golden fruit In walled gardens of the great champain. There daffodils among the ordered trees Did nod in spring, and men laughed deep and long Singing as they laboured happy lays And lighting even with a drinking-song. There sleep came easy for the drone of bees Thronging about cottage gardens heaped with flowers; In love of sunlit goodliness of days There richly flowed their lives in settled hours -- But that was long ago, And now no more they sing, nor reap, nor sow; And I perforce in many a town about this isle Unsettled wanderer have dwelt awhile. Wars of great kings and clash of armouries, Whose swords no man could tell, whose spears Were numerous as a wheatfield's ears, Rolled over all the Great Lands; and the Seas Were loud with navies; their devouring fires Behind the armies burned both fields and towns; And sacked and crumbled or to flaming pyres Were cities made, where treasuries and crowns, Kings and their folk, their wives and tender maids Were all consumed.

  Now silent are those courts, Ruined the towers, whose old shape slowly fades, And no feet pass beneath their broken ports. There fell my father on a field of blood, And in a hungry siege my mother died, And I, a captive, heard the great seas' Rood Calling and calling, that my spirit cried For the dark western shores whence long ago had come Sires of my mother, and I broke my bonds, Faring o'er wasted valleys and dead lands Until my feet were moistened by the western sea, Until my ears were deafened by the hum, The splash, and roaring of the western sea -- But that was long ago And now the dark bays and unknown waves I know, The twilight capes, the misty archipelago, And all the perilous sounds and salt wastes 'tween this isle Of magic and the coasts I knew awhile.

  One of the manuscripts of The Song of Eriol bears a later note: 'Easington 19I7 -- 18' (Easington on the estuary of the Humber, see Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, p. 97). It may be that the second part of ?he Song of Eriol was written at Easington and added to the first part (formerly the Prelude) already in existence. Little can be derived from this poem of a strictly narrative nature, save the lineaments of the same tale: Eriol's father fell 'on a field of blood', when 'wars of great kings. . . rolled over all the Great Lands', and his mother died 'in a hungry siege' (the same phrase is used in the Link to the Tale of Tinuviel, pp. 5 -- 6); he himself was made a captive, but escaped, and came at last to the shores of the Western Sea (whence his mother's people had come).

  The fact that the first part of The Song of Eriol is also found as the Prelude to a poem of which the subjects are Warwick and Oxford might make one suspect that the castle with a great tower overhanging a river in the story told by Eriol to Veanne was once again Warwick. But I do not think that this is so. There remains in any case the objection that it would be difficult to accommodate the attack on it by men out of the Mountains of the East which the duke could see from his tower; but also I think it is plain that the original tripartite poem had been dissevered, and the Prelude given a new bearing: my father's 'fathers' sires' became Eriol's 'fathers' sires'. At the same time, certain powerful images were at once dominant and fluid, and the great tower of Eriol's home was indeed to become the tower of Kortirion or Warwick, when (as will be seen shortly) the structure of the story of the mariner was radically changed. And nothing could show more clearly than does the evolution of this poem the complex root from which the story rose. Humphrey Carpenter, writing in his Biography of my father's life after he returned to Oxford in 1925, says (p. 169): He made numerous revisions and recastings of the principal stories in the cycle, deciding to abandon the original sea-voyager 'Eriol' to whom the stories were told, and instead renaming him 'AElfwine' or 'elf-friend'.

  That Eriol was (for a time) displaced by AElfawine is certain. But while it may well be that at the time of the texts now to be considered the name Eriol had actually been rejected, in the first version of 'The Silmarillion' proper, written in 1926, Eriol reappears, while in the earliest Annals of Valinor, written in the 1930s, it is said that they were translated in Tol Eressea 'by Eriol of Leithien, that is AElfwine of the Angelcynn'. On the other hand, at this earlier period it seems entirely justifiable on the evidence to treat the two names as indicative of different narrative pro- jections -- 'the Eriol story' and 'the AEfwine story'.

  'AElfwine', then, is associated with a new conception, subsequent to the writing of the Lost Tales. The mariner is AElfwine, not Eriol, in the second 'Scheme' for the Tales, which I have called 'an unrealised project for the revision of the whole work' (see I. 234). The essential difference may be made clear now, before citing the difficult evidence: Tol Eressea is now in no may identified with England, and the story of the drawing back of the Lonely Island across the sea has been abandoned. England is indeed still at the heart of this later conception, and is named Luthany. ~ The mariner, AElfwine, is an Englishman sailing westward from the coast of Britain; and his role is diminished. For whereas in the writings studied thus far he comes to Tol Eressea before the denouement and disaster of the Faring Forth, and either he hims
elf or his descendants witness the devastation of Tol Eressea by the invasion of Men and their evil allies (in one line of development he was even to be responsible for it, p. 294), in the later narrative outlines he does not arrive until all the grievous history is done.

  His part is only to learn and to record. ~ I turn now to a number of short and very oblique passages, written on separate slips, but found together and clearly dating from much the same time. (15) AElfwine of England dwelt in the South-west; he was of the kin of Ing, King of Luthany. His mother and father were slain by the sea-pirates and he was made captive. He had always loved the fairies: his father had told him many things (of the tradition of Ing). He escapes. He beats about the northern and western waters. He meets the Ancient Mariner -- and seeks for Tol Eressea (seo unwemmede ieg), whither most of the unfaded Elves have retired from the noise, war, and clamour of Men. The Elves greet him, and the more so when they learn of him who he is. They call him Luthien the man of Luthany. He finds his own tongue, the ancient English tongue, is spoken in the isle. .

  The 'Ancient Mariner' has appeared in the story that Eriol told to Veanne {pp. 5, 7), and much more will be told of him subsequently. (16) AElfwine of Englaland, [added later: driven by the Normans,] arrives in Tol Eressea, whither most of the fading Elves have withdrawn from the world, and there fade now no more. Description of the harbour of the southern shore. The fairies greet him well hearing he is from Englaland. He is surprised to hear them speak the speech of AElfred of Wessex, though to one another they spoke a sweet and unknown tongue. The Elves name him Luthien for he is come from Luthany, as they call it ('friend' and 'friendship'). Eldaros or AElfham. He is sped to Ros their capital.

  There he finds the Cottage of Lost Play, and Lindo and Vaire. He tells who he is and whence, and why he has long sought for the isle (by reason of traditions in the kin of Ing), and he begs the Elves to come back to Englaland. Here begins (as an explanation of why they cannot) the series of stories called the Book of Lost Tales. In this passage (16) AElfwine becomes more firmly rooted in English history: he is apparently a man of eleventh-century Wessex -- but as in (15) he is of 'the kin of Ing'. The capital of the Elves of Tol Eressea is not Kortirion but Ros, a name now used in a quite different application from that in citation (5), where it was a promontory of the Great Lands. I have been unable to find any trace of the process whereby the name Luthien came to be so differently applied afterwards (Luthien Tinuviel). Another note of this period explains the name quite otherwise: 'Luthien or Lusion was son of Telumaith (Telumektar). AElfwine loved the sign of Orion, and made the sign, hence the fairies called him Luthien (Wanderer). ' There is no other mention of AElfwine's peculiar association with Orion nor of this interpretation of the name Luthien; and this seems to be a development that my father did not pursue.

  It is convenient to give here the opening passage from the second Scheme for the Lost Tales, referred to above; this plainly belongs to the same time as the rest of these 'AElfwine' notes, when the Tales had been written so far as they ever went within their first framework. (17) AElfwine awakens upon a sandy beach. He listens to the sea, which is far out. The tide is low and has left him. AElfwine meets the Elves of Ros; finds they speak the speech of the English, beside their own sweet tongue. Why they do so -- the dwelling of Elves in Luthany and their faring thence and back. They clothe him and feed him, and he sets forth to walk along the island's flowery ways. The scheme goes on to say that on a summer evening AElfwine came to Kortirion, and thus differs from (16), where he goes to 'Ros their capital', in which he finds the Cottage of Lost Play. The name Ros seems to be used here in yet another sense -- possibly a name for Tol Eressea. (18) He is sped to AElfham (Elfhome) Eldos where Lindo and Vaire tell him many things: of the making and ancient fashion of the world: of the Gods: of the Elves of Valinor: of Lost Elves and Men: of the Travail of the Gnomes: of Earendel: of the Faring Forth and the Loss of Valinor: of the disaster of the Faring Forth and the war with evil Men. The retreat to Luthany where Ingwe was king.

  Of the home-thirst of the Elves and how the greater number sought back to Valinor; The loss of Elwing. How a new home was made by the Solosimpi and others in Tol Eressea. How the Elves continually sadly leave the world and fare thither. For the interpretation of this passage it is essential to realise (the key indeed to the understanding of this projected history) that 'the Faring Forth' does not here refer to the Faring Forth in the sense in which it has been used hitherto -- that from Tol Eressea for the Rekindling of the Magic Sun, which ended in ruin, but to the March of the Elves of Kor and the 'Loss of Valinor' that the March incurred (see pp. 253, 257, 280). It is not indeed clear why it is here called a 'disaster': but this is evidently to be associated with 'the war with evil Men', and war between Elves and Men at the time of the March from Kor is referred to in citations (1) and (3). In 'the Eriol story' it is explicit that after the March from Kor the Elves departed from the Great Lands to Tol Eressea; here on the other hand 'the war with evil Men' is followed by 'the retreat to Luthany where Ingwe was king'.

  The (partial) departure to Tol Eressea is from Luthany; the loss of Elwing seems to take place on one of these voyages. As will be seen, the 'Faring Forth' of 'the Eriol story' has disappeared as an event of Elvish history, and is only mentioned as a prophecy and a hope. Schematically the essential divergence of the two narrative structures can be shown thus:

  (Eriol story). March of the Elves of Kor to the Great Lands War with Men in the Great Lands Retreat of the Elves to Tol Eressea (loss of Elwing) Eriol sails from the East (North Sea region) to Tol Eressea The Faring Forth, drawing of Tol Eressea to the Great Lands; ul- timately Tol Eressea > England (AElfsvine story). March of the Elves of Kor to the Great Lands (called 'the Faring Forth') War with Men in the Great Lands Retreat of the Elves to Luthany (> England) ruled by Ingwe Departure of many Elves to Tol Eressea (loss of Elwing) AElfwine sails from England to Tol Eressea This is of course by no means a full statement of the AElfwine story, and is merely set out to indicate the radical difference of structure. Lacking from it is the history of Luthany, which emerges from the passages that now follow.

  (19) Luthany means 'friendship', Luthien 'friend'. Luthany the only land where Men and Elves once dwelt an age in peace and love. How for a while after the coming of the sons of Ing the Elves throve again and ceased to fare away to Tol Eressea. How Old English became the sole mortal language which an Elf will speak to a mortal that knows no Elfin. (20) AElfwine of England (whose father and mother were slain by the fierce Men of the Sea who knew not the Elves) was a great lover of the Elves, especially of the shoreland Elves that lingered in the land. He seeks for Tol Eressea whither the fairies are said to have retired. He reaches it. The fairies call him Luthien. He learns of the making of the world,. . . . . . . of Gods and Elves, of Elves and Men, down to the departure to Tol Eressea. How the Faring Forth came to nought, and the fairies took refuge in Albion or Luthany (the Isle of Friendship). Seven invasions. Of the coming of Men to Luthany, how each race quarrelled, and the fairies faded, until [? the most] set sail, after the coming of the Rumhoth, for the West. Why the Men of the seventh invasion, the Ingwaiwar, are more friendly. Ingwe and Earendel who dwelt in Luthany before it was an isle and was [sic] driven east by Osse to found the Ingwaiwar. (21) All the descendants of Ing were well disposed to Elves; hence the remaining Elves of Luthany spoke to [?them] in the ancient tongue of the English, and since some have fared. . . . . to Tol Eressea that tongue is there understood, and all who wish to speak to the Elves, if they know not and have no means of learning Elfin speeches, must converse in the ancient tongue of the English.

  In (20) the term 'Faring Forth' must again be used as it is in (18), of the March from Kor. There it was called a 'disaster' (see p. 303), and here it is said that it 'came to nought': it must be admitted that it is hard to see how that can be said, if it led to the binding of Melko and the release of the enslaved Noldoli (see (1) and (3)). Also in (20) is the first appearance of th
e idea of the Seven Invasions of Luthany. One of these was that of the Rumhoth (mentioned also in (14)) or Romans; and the seventh was that of the Ingwaiwar, who were not hostile to the Elves. Here something must be said of the name Ing (Ingwe, Ingwaiar) in these passages. As with the introduction of Hengest and Horsa, the association of the mythology with ancient English legend is manifest. But it would serve no purpose, I believe, to enter here into the obscure . and speculative scholarship of English and Scandinavian origins: the Roman writers' term Inguaeones for the Baltic maritime peoples from whom the English came; the name Ingwine (interpretable either as Ing-wine 'the friends of Ing' or as containing the same Ingw-seen in Inguaeones); or the mysterious personage Ing who appears in the Old English Runic Poem: Ing waes aerest mid East-Denum gesewen secgum op he sippaneast ofer waeg gewat; waen after ran -- which may be translated: 'Ing was first seen by men among the East Danes, until he departed eastwards over the waves; his car sped after him. '

  It would serve no purpose, because although the connection of my father's Ing, Ingwe with the shadowy Ing (Ingw-) of northern historical legend is certain and indeed obvious he seems to have been intending no more than an association of his mythology with known traditions (though the words of the Runie Poem were clearly influential). The matter is made particularly obscure by the fact that in these notes the names Ing and Ingwe intertwine with each other, but are never expressly differentiated or identified. Thus AElfwine was 'of the kin of Ing, King of Luthany' (15, 16), but the Elves retreated 'to Luthany where Ingwe was king' (18). The Elves of Luthany throve again 'after the coming of the sons of Ing' (19), and the Ingwaiwar, seventh of the invaders of Luthany, were more friendly to the Elves (20), while Ingwe 'founded' the Ingwaiwar (20). This name is certainly to be equated with Inguaeones (see above), and the invasion of the Ingwaiwar (or 'sons of Ing') equally certainly represents the 'Anglo- Saxon' invasion of Britain.

  Can Ing, Ingwe be equated? So far as this present material is concerned, I hardly see how they can not be. Whether this ancestor-founder is to be equated with Inwe' (whose son was Ingil) of the Lost Tales is another question. It is hard to believe that there is no connection (especially since Inwe' in The Cottage of Lost Play is emended from Ing, I. 22), yet it is equally difficult to see what that connection could be, since Inwe of the Lost Tales is an Elda of Kor (Ingwe Lord of the Vanyar in The Silmarillion) while Ing(we) of 'the AElfwine story' is a Man, the King of Luthany and AElfwine's ancestor. (In outlines for Gilfanon's Tale it is said that Ing King of Luthany was descended from Ermon, or from Ermon and Elmir (the first Men, I. 236-7). ) The following outlines tell some more concerning Ing(we) and the Ingwaiwar: (22) How Ing sailed away at eld [i. e. in old age] into the twilight, and Men say he came to the Gods, but he dwells on Tol Eressea, and will guide the fairies one day back to Luthany when the Faring Forth takes place.

  (* The term 'Faring Forth' is used here in a prophetic sense, not as it is in (18) and (20). )

  How he prophesied that his kin should fare back again and possess Luthany until the days of the coming of the Elves. How the land of Luthany was seven times invaded by Men, until at the seventh the children of the children of Ing came back to their own. How at each new war and invasion the Elves faded, and each loved the Elves less, until the Rumhoth came -- and they did not even believe they existed, and the Elves all fled, so that save for a few the isle was empty of the Elves for three hundred years. (23) How Ingwe drank limpe at the hands of the Elves and reigned ages in Luthany. How Earendel came to Luthany to find the Elves gone. How Ingwe aided him, but was not suffered to go with him. Earendel blessed all his progeny as the mightiest sea-rovers of the world. ~ How Osse made war upon Ingwe because of Earendel, and Ing longing for the Elves set sail, and all were wrecked after being driven far east. How Ing the immortal came among the Dani OroDani Urdainoth East Danes. How he became the half-divine king of the Ingwaiwar, and taught them many things of Elves and Gods, so that some true knowledge of the Gods and Elves lingered in that folk alone.

  Part of another outline that does not belong with the foregoing passages but covers the same part of the narrative as (23) may be given here: (24) Earendel takes refuge with [Ingwe] from the wrath of Osse, and gives him a draught of limpe (enough to assure immortality). He gives him news of the Elves and the dwelling on Tol Eressea. Ingwe and a host of his folk set sail to find Tol Eressea, but Osse blows them back east. They are utterly wrecked. Only Ingwe rescued on a raft. He becomes king of the Angali, Euti, Saksani, and Firisandi,* who adopt the title of Ingwaiwar. He teaches them much magic and first sets men's hearts to seafaring west- ward. . . . . . After a great [? age of rule] Ingwe sets sail in a little boat and is heard of no more. It is clear that the intrusion of Luthany, and Ing(we), into the conception has caused a movement in the story of Earendel: whereas in the older version he went to Tol Eressea after the departure of the Eldar and Noldoli from the Great Lands (pp. 253, 255), now he goes to (* Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians. )

  Luthany; and the idea of Osse's enmity towards Earendel (pp. 254, 263) is retained but brought into association with the origin of the Ingwaiwar. It is clear that the narrative structure is: Ing(we) King of Luthany. Earendel seeks refuge with him (after [many of] the Elves have departed to Tol Eressea). Ing(we) seeks Tol Eressea but is driven into the East. Seven invasions of Luthany. The people of Ing(we) are the Ingwaiwar, and they 'come back to their own' when they invade Luthany from across the North Sea. (25) Luthany was where the tribes first embarked in the Lonely Isle for Valinor, and whence they landed for the Faring Forth,* whence [also] many sailed with Elwing to find Tol Eressea. That Luthany was where the Elves, at the end of the great journey from Palisor, embarked on the Lonely Isle for the Ferrying to Valinor, is probably to be connected with the statement in (20) that 'Ingwe and Earendel dwelt in Luthany before it was an isle'. (26) There are other references to the channel separating Luthany from the Great Lands: in rough jottings in notebook C there is mention of an isthmus being cut by the Elves, 'fearing Men now that Ingwe has gone', and 'to the white cliffs where the silver spades of the Teleri worked . , also in the next citation. (27) The Elves tell AElfwine of the ancient manner of Luthany, of Kortirion or Gwarthyryn (Caer Gwar)," of Tavrobel.

  How the fairies dwelt there a hundred ages before Men had the skill to build boats to cross the channel -- so that magic lingers yet mightily in its woods and hills. How they renamed many a place in Tol Eressea after their home in Luthany. Of the Second Faring Forth and the fairies' hope to reign in Luthany and replant there the magic trees -- and it depends most on the temper of the Men of Luthany (since they first must come there) whether all goes well. Notable here is the reference to 'the Second Faring Forth', which strongly supports my interpretation of the expression 'Faring Forth' in (18), (20), and (25); but the prophecy or hope of the Elves concerning (* In the sense of the March of the Elves from Kor, as in (18) and (20). ) the Faring Forth has been greatly changed from its nature in citation (6): here, the Trees are to be replanted in Luthany. (28) How AElfwine lands in Tol Eressea and it seems to him like his own land made. . . . . . . clad in the beauty of a happy dream. How the folk comprehended [his speech] and learn whence he is come by the favour of Ulmo. How he is sped to Kortirion. With these two passages it is interesting to compare (9), the prose preface to Kortirion among the Trees, according to which Kortirion was a city built by the Elves in Tol Eressea; and when Tol Eressea was brought across the sea, becoming England, Kortirion was renamed in the tongue of the English Warwick (13).

  In the new story, Kortirion is likewise an ancient dwelling of the Elves, but with the change in the fundamental conception it-is in Luthany; and the Kortirion to which AElfwine comes in Tol Eressea is the second of the name (being called 'after their home in Luthany'). There has thus been a very curious transference, which may be rendered schematically thus: (I) Kortirion, Elvish dwelling in Tol Eressea. Tol Eressea -- + England. Kortirion = Warwick. (II) Kortirion, Elvish dwelling in Luthany (> England).
Elves --> Tol Eressea. Kortirion (2) in Tol Eressea named after Kortirion (t) in Luthany.

  On the basis of the foregoing passages, (15) to (28), we may attempt to construct a narrative taking account of all the essential features: