Most important in the passage concerning Mandos is the clear statement about the fate of Elves who die: that they wait in the halls of Mandos until Vefбntur decrees their release, to be reborn in their own children. This latter idea has already appeared in the tale of The Music of the Ainur (p. 59), and it remained my father’s unchanged conception of Elvish ‘immortality’ for many years; indeed the idea that the Elves might die only from the wounds of weapons or from grief was never changed—it also has appeared in The Music of the Ainur (ibid.): ‘the Eldar dwell till the Great End unless they be slain or waste in grief’, a passage that survived with little alteration in The Silmarillion (p. 42).

With the account of Fui Nienna, however, we come upon ideas in deep contradiction to the central thought of the later mythology (and in this passage, also, there is a strain of another kind of mythic conception, in the ‘conceits’ of ‘the distilling of salt humours whereof are tears’, and the black clouds woven by Nienna which settle on the world as ‘despairs and hopeless mourning, sorrows and blind grief’). Here we learn that Nienna is the judge of Men in her halls named Fui after her own name; and some she keeps in the region of Mandos (where is her hall), while the greater number board the black ship Morniл—which does no more than ferry these dead down the coast to Arvalin, where they wander in the dusk until the end of the world. But yet others are driven forth to be seized by Melko and taken to endure ‘evil days’ in Angamandi (in what sense are they dead, or mortal?); and (most extraordinary of all) there are a very few who go to dwell among the Gods in Valinor. We are far away here from the Gift of Ilъvatar, whereby Men are not bound to the world, but leave it, none know where;* and this is the true meaning of Death (for the death of the Elves is a ‘seeming death’, The Silmarillion p. 42): the final and inescapable exit.

But a little illumination, if of a very misty kind, can be shed on the idea of Men, after death, wandering in the dusk of Arvalin, where they ‘camp as they may’ and ‘wait in patienc1e till the Great End’. I must refer here to the details of the changed names of this region, which have been given on p. 79. It is clear from the early word-lists or dictionaries of the two languages (for which see the Appendix on Names) that the meaning of Harwalin and Arvalin (and probably Habbanan also) was ‘nigh Valinor’ or ‘nigh the Valar’. From the Gnomish dictionary it emerges that the meaning of Eruman was ‘beyond the abode of the Mбnir’ (i.e. south of Taniquetil, where dwelt Manwл’s spirits of the air), and this dictionary also makes it clear that the word Mбnir was related to Gnomish manos, defined as ‘a spirit that has gone to the Valar or to Erumбni’, and mani ‘good, holy’. The significance of these etymological connections is very unclear.

But there is also a very early poem on the subject of this region. This, according to my father’s notes, was written at Brocton Camp, Staffordshire, in December 1915 or at Йtaples in June 1916; and it is entitled Habbanan beneath the Stars. In one of the three texts (in which there are no variants) there is a title in Old English: pa

gebletsode [‘blessed’] felda under pa m steorrum, and in two of them Habbanan in the title was emended to Eruman; in the third Eruman stood from the first. The poem is preceded by a short prose preamble.

Habbanan beneath the Stars

Now Habbanan is that region where one draws nigh to the places that are not of Men. There is the air very sweet and the sky very great by reason of the broadness of the Earth.In Habbanan beneath the skies

Where all roads end however long

There is a sound of faint guitars

And distant echoes of a song,

For there men gather into rings

Round their red fires while one voice sings—

And all about is night.

Not night as ours, unhappy folk,

Where nigh the Earth in hazy bars,

A mist about the springing of the stars,

There trails a thin and wandering smoke

Obscuring with its veil half-seen

The great abysmal still Serene.

A globe of dark glass faceted with light

Wherein the splendid winds have dusky flight;

Untrodden spaces of an odorous plain

That watches for the moon that long has lain

And caught the meteors’ fiery rain—

Such there is night.

There on a sudden did my heart perceive

That they who sang about the Eve,

Who answered the bright-shining stars

With gleaming music of their strange guitars,

These were His wandering happy sons

Encamped upon those aлry leas

Wh1ere God’s unsullied garment runs

In glory down His mighty knees.

A final evidence comes from the early Qenya word-list. The original layer of entries in this list dates (as I believe, see the Appendix on Names) from 1915, and among these original entries, under a root mana (from which Manwл is derived), is given a word manimo which means a soul who is in manimuine ‘Purgatory’.

This poem, and this entry in the word-list, offer a rare and very suggestive glimpse of the mythic conception in its earliest phase; for here ideas that are drawn from Christian theology are explicitly present. It is disconcerting to perceive that they are still present in this tale. For in the tale there is an account of the fates of dead Men after judgement in the black hall of Fui Nienna. Some (‘and these are the many’) are ferried by the death-ship to (Habbanan) Eruman, where they wander in the dusk and wait in patience till the Great End; some are seized by Melko and tormented in Angamandi ‘the Hells of Iron’ and some few go to dwell with the Gods in Valinor. Taken with the poem and the evidence of the early ‘dictionaries’, can this be other than a reflection of Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven?

This becomes all the more extraordinary if we refer to the concluding passage of the tale of The Music of the Ainur (p. 59), where Ilъvatar said: ‘To Men I will give a new gift and a greater’, the gift that they might ‘fashion and design their life beyond even the original Music of the Ainur that is as fate to all things else’, and where it is said that ‘it is one with this gift of power that the Children of Men dwell only for a short time in the world alive, yet do not perish utterly for ever…’ In the final form given in The Silmarillion pp. 41–2 this passage was not very greatly changed. The early version does not, it is true, have the sentences:

But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilъvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.

Even so, it seems clear that this central idea, the Gift of Death, was already present.

This matter I must leave, as a conundrum that I cannot solve. The most obvious explanation of the conflict of ideas within these tales would be to suppose The Music of the Ainur later than The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor; but as I have said (p. 61) all the appearances are to the contrary.

Lastly may be noticed the characteristic linguistic irony whereby Eruman ultimately became Araman. For Arvalin meant simply ‘near Valinor’, and it was the other name Eruman that had associations with spirits of the dead; but Araman almost certainly simply means ‘beside Aman’. And yet the same element man- ‘good’ remains, for Aman was derived from it (‘the Unmarred State’).