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 Eressлa, the Lonely Isle, is reached by one sailing west.
There is a further element of repetition in the account of the gap in the Mountains of Valinor and the hill of Kфr at the head of the creek (p. 126), which have already been described earlier in this same tale (p. 122). The explanation of this repetition is almost certainly to be found in the two layers of composition in this tale (see note 8 above); for the first of these passages is in the revised portion and the second in the original, pencilled text. My father in his revision had, I think, simply taken in earlier the passage concerning the gap in the Mountains, the hill and the creek, and if he had continued the revision of the tale to its end the second passage would have been excised. This explanation may be suggested also for the repetition of the passage concerning the islands in the Great Sea and the coast of Valinor from the tale of The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor; but in that case the implication must be that the revision in ink over the original pencilled manuscript was carried out when the latter was already far ahead in the narrative.
In The Silmarillion the entire account of the making of gem-stones by the Noldoli has become compressed into these words (p. 60):
And it came to pass that the masons of the house of Finwл, quarrying in the hills after stone (for they delighted in the building of high towers), first discovered the earth-gems, and brought them forth in countless myriads; and they devised tools for the cutting and shaping of gems, and carved them in many forms. They hoarded them not, but gave them freely, and by their labour enriched all Valinor.
Thus the rhapsodic account at the end of this tale of the making of gems out of ‘magic’ materials—starlight, and ilwл, dews and petals, glassy substances dyed with the juice of flowers—was abandoned, and the Noldor became miners, skilful indeed, but mining only what was there to be found in the rocks of Valinor. On the other hand, in an earlier passage in The Silmarillion (p. 39), the old idea is retained: ‘The Noldor also it was who first achieved the making of gems.’ It need not be said that everything was to be gained by the discretion of the later writing; in this early narrative the Silmarils are not strongly marked out from the accumulated wonder of all the rest of the gems of the Noldoli’s making.
Features that remained are the generosity of the Noldor i1n the giving of their gems and the scattering of them on the shores (cf. The Silmarillion p. 61: ‘Many jewels the Noldor gave them [the Teleri], opals and diamonds and pale crystals, which they strewed upon the shores and scattered in the pools’); the pearls that the Teleri got from the sea (ibid.); the sapphires that the Noldor gave to Manwл (‘His sceptre was of sapphire, which the Noldor wrought for him’, ibid. p. 40); and, of course, Fлanor as the maker of the Silmarils—although, as will be seen in the next tale, Fлanor was not yet the son of Finwл (Nуlemл).
I conclude this commentary with another early poem that bears upon the matter of this tale. It is said in the tale (p. 119) that Men in Hisilуmл feared the Lost Elves, calling them the Shadow Folk, and that their name for the land was Aryador. The meaning of this is given in the early Gnomish word-list as ‘land or place of shadow’ (cf. the meanings of Hisilуmл and Dor Lуmin, p. 112).
The poem is called A Song of Aryador, and is extant in two copies; according to notes on these it was written in an army camp near Lichfield on September 12th, 1915. It was never, to my knowledge, printed. The first copy, in manuscript, has the title also in Old English: Бn lйoю Йargedores; the second, in typescript, has virtually no differences in the text, but it may be noted that the first word of the third verse, ‘She’, is an emendation from ‘He’ in both copies.
A Song of Aryador
In the vales of AryadorBy the wooded inland shoreGreen the lakeward bents and meadsSloping down to murmurous reedsThat whisper in the dusk o’er Aryador:‘Do you hear the many bellsOf the goats upon the fellsWhere the valley tumbles downward from the pines?
Do you hear the blue woods moanWhen the Sun has gone aloneTo hunt the mountain-shadows in the pines?
She is lost among the hillsAnd the upland slowly fillsWith the shadow-folk that murmur in the fern;
And still there are the bellsAnd the voices on the fellsWhile Eastward a few stars begin to burn.
Men are kindling tiny gleamsFar below by mountain-streamsWhere they dwell among the beechwoods near the shore,
But the great woods on the heightWatch the waning western lightAnd whisper to the wind of things of yore,
Wh1en the valley was unknown,And the waters roared alone,And the shadow-folk danced downward all the night,
When the Sun had fared abroadThrough great forests unexploredAnd the woods were full of wandering beams of light.
Then were voices on the fellsAnd a sound of ghostly bellsAnd a march of shadow-people o’er the height.
In the mountains by the shoreIn forgotten AryadorThere was dancing and was ringing;There were shadow-people singingAncient songs of olden gods in Aryador.’
VI
THE THEFT OF MELKO AND THE DARKENING OF VALINOR
This title is again taken from the cover of the book containing the text; the narrative, still written rapidly in pencil (see note 8 to the last chapter), with some emendations from the same time or later, continues without a break.
Now came Eriol home to the Cottage of Lost Play, and his love for all the things that he saw about him and his desire to understand them all became more deep. Continually did he thirst to know yet more of the history of the Eldar; nor did he ever fail to be among those who fared each evening to the Room of the Tale-fire; and so on a time when he had already sojourned some while as a guest of Vairл and Lindo it so passed that Lindo at his entreaty spake thus from his deep chair:
‘Listen then, O Eriol, if thou wouldst [know] how it so came that the loveliness of Valinor was abated, or the Elves might ever be constrained to leave the shores of Eldamar. It may well be that you know already that Melko dwelt in Valmar as a servant in the house of Tulkas in those days of the joy of the Eldaliл there did he nurse his hatred of the Gods, and his consuming jealousy of the Eldar, but it was his lust for the beauty of the gems for all his feigned indifference that in the end overbore his patience and caused him to design deep and evilly.
Now the Noldoli alone at those times had the art of fashioning these beautiful things, and despite their rich gifts to all whom they loved the treasure they possessed of them was beyond count the greatest, wherefore Melko whenever he may consorteth with them, speaking cunning words. In this way for long he sought to beg gifts of jewels for himself, and maybe also catching the unwary to learn something of their hidden art, but when none of these devices succeeded he sought to sow evil desires and discords among the Gnomes, telling them that lie concerning the Council when the Eldar were first bidden to Valinor.1 “Slaves are ye,” he would say, “or children, an you will, bidden play with toys and seek not to stray or know too much. Good days mayhap the Valar give you, as ye say; seek but to cross their walls and ye shall know the hardness of1 their hearts. Lo, they use your skill, and to your beauty they hold fast as an adornment of their realms. This is not love, but selfish desire—make test of it. Ask for your inheritance that Ilъvatar designed for you—the whole wide world to roam, with all its mysteries to explore, and all its substances to be material of such mighty crafts as never can be realised in these narrow gardens penned by the mountains, hemmed in by the impassable sea.”