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):
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.