In the old story there is a mythical explanation of the Moon’s phases (though not of eclipses), and of the markings on its face through the story of the breaking of the withered bough of Silpion and the fall of the Moonflower—a story altogether at variance with the explanation given in The Silmarillion (1ibid.). In the tale the fruit of Laurelin also fell to the ground, when Aulл stumbled and its weight was too great for Tulkas to bear alone: the significance of this event is not made perfectly clear, but it seems that, had the Fruit of Noon not burst asunder, Aulл would not have understood its structure and conceived that of the Sunship.

To whatever extent the great differences between the versions in this part of the Mythology may be due to later compression, there remain a good many actual contradictions, of which I note here only some of the more important, in addition to that concerning the markings on the Moon already mentioned. Thus in The Silmarillion the Moon rose first, ‘and was the elder of the new lights as was Telperion of the Trees’ (ibid.); in the old story the reverse is true both of the Trees and of the new lights. Again, in The Silmarillion it is Varda who decides their motions, and she changes these from her first plan at the plea of Lуrien and Estл, whereas here it is Lуrien’s very distress at the coming of Sunlight that leads to the last blossoming of Silpion and the making of the Moon. The Valar indeed play different roles throughout; and here far greater importance attaches to the acts of Vбna and Lуrien, whose relations with the Sun and Moon are at once deeper and more explicit than they afterwards became, as they had been with the Trees (see p. 71); in The Silmarillion it was Nienna who watered the Trees with her tears (p. 98). In The Silmarillion the Sun and Moon move nearer to Arda than ‘the ancient stars’ (p. 99), but here they move at quite different levels in the firmament.

But a feature in which later compression can be certainly discerned is the elaborate description in the tale of the Moon as ‘an island of pure glass’, ‘a shimmering isle’, with little lakes of the light from Telimpл bordered with shining flowers and a crystalline cup amidmost in which was set the Moonflower; only from this is explicable the reference in The Silmarillion to Tilion’s steering ‘the island of the Moon’. The aged Elf Uolл Kъvion (whom ‘some indeed have named the Man in the Moon’) seems almost to have strayed in from another conception; his presence gives difficulty in any case, since we have just been told (p. 192) that Silmo could not sail in the Moonship because he was not of the children of the air and could not ‘cleanse his being of its earthwardness’.—An isolated heading ‘Uolл and Erinti’ in the little pocket-book used among things for suggestions of stories to be told (see p. 171) no doubt implies that a tale was preparing on the subject of Uolл cf. the Tale of Qorinуrmi concerning Urwendi and Erinti’s brother Fionwл (p. 215). No traces of these tales are to be found and they were presumably never written. Another note in the pocket-book calls Uolл Mikъmi (the earlier name of Uolл Kъvion, see p. 198) ‘King of the Moon’ and a third refers to a poem ‘The Man in the Moon’ which is to be sung by Eriol, ‘who says he will sing them a song of a legend touching Uolл Mikъmi as Men have it’. My father wrote a poem about the Man in the Moon in March 1915, but if it was this that he was thinking of including it would have startled the company of Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva—and he would have had to change its references to places in England which were not yet in existence. Although it is very probable that he had something quite different in mind, I think it may be of interest to give this poem in an early form (see p. 204).

As the mythology evolved and changed, the Making of the Sun and Moon became the element of greatest difficulty; and in the published Silmarillion this chapter does not seem of a piece with much of the rest of the work, and could not be made to be so. Towards the end of his life my father was indeed prepared to dismantle much of what he had built, in the attempt to solve what he undoubtedly felt to be a fundamental problem.

Note on the order of the Tales

The development of the Lost Tales is here in fact extremely complex. After the concluding words of The Flight of the Noldoli, ‘the story of the darkening of Valinor was at an end’ (p. 169), my father wrote: ‘See on beyond in other books’, but in fact he added subsequently the short dialogue between Lindo and Eriol (‘Great was the power of Melko for ill…’) which is given at the end of The Flight of the Noldoli.

The page-numbering of the notebooks shows that the next tale was to be the Tale of Tinъviel, which is written in another book. This long story (to be given in Part II), the oldest extant version of ‘Beren and Lъthien’, begins with a long Link passage; and the curious thing is that this Link begins with the very dialogue between Lindo and Eriol just referred to, in almost identical wording, and this can be seen to be its original place; but here it was struck through.

I have mentioned earlier (p. 45) that in a letter written by my father in 1964 he said that he wrote The Music of the Ainur while working in Oxford on the staff of the Dictionary, a post that he took up in November 1918 and relinquished in the spring of 1920. In the same letter he said that he wrote ‘“The Fall of Gondolin” during sick-leave from the army in 1917’, and ‘the original version of the “Tale of Lъthien Tinъviel and Beren” later in the same year’. There is nothing in the manuscripts to suggest that the tales that follow The Music of the Ainur to the point we have now reached were not written consecutively and continuously from The Music, while my father was still in Oxford.

At first sight, then, there is a hopeless contradiction in the evidence: for the Link in question refers explicitly to the Darkening of Valinor, a tale written after his appointment in Oxford at the end of 1918, but is a link to the Tale of Tinъviel, which he said that he wrote in 1917. But the Tale of Tinъviel (and the Link that precedes it) is in fact a text in ink written over an erased pencilled original. It is, I think, certain that this rewriting of Tinъviel was considerably later. It was linked to The Flight of the Noldoli by the speeches of Lindo and Eriol (the link-passage is integral and continuous with the Tale of Tinъviel that follows it, and was not added afterwards). At this stage my father must have felt that the Tales need not necessarily be told in the actual sequence of the narrative (for Tinъviel belongs of course to the time after the making of the Sun and Moon).

The rewritten Tinъviel was followed with no break by a first form of the ‘interlude’ introducing Gilfanon of Tavrobel as a guest in the house, and this led into the Tale of the Sun and Moon. But subsequently my father changed his mind, and so struck out the dialogue of Lindo and Eriol from the beginning of the Link to Tinъviel, which was not now to follow The Flight of the Noldoli, and wrote it out again in the other book at the end of that tale. At the same time he rewrote the Gilfanon ‘interlude’ in an extended form, and placed it 1at the end of The Flight of the Noldoli. Thus:

Flight of the Noldoli

Words of Lindo and Eriol

Tale of Tinъviel

Gilfanon ‘interlude’

Tale of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor

Flight of the Noldoli

Words of Lindo and Eriol

Gilfanon ‘interlude’ (rewritten)