What was Ailiosв™tale to have been? (for I think it certain that it was never written). The answer becomes clear from a separate short text, very rough, which continues on from the discussion at the end of The Hiding of Valinor, given above. This tells that at length the day of TuruhalmГ was come, and the company from Mar Vanwa TyaliГva went into the snowy woods to bring back firewood on sleighs. Never was the Tale-fire allowed to go out or to die into grey ash, but on the eve of TuruhalmГ it sank always to a smaller blaze until TuruhalmГ itself, when great logs were brought into the Room of the Tale-fire and being blessed by Lindo with ancient magic roared and flared anew upon the hearth. VairГ blessed the door and lintel of the hall and gave the key to RГmil, making him once again the Doorward, and to Littleheart was given the hammer of his gong. Then Lindo said, as he said each year:
вift up your voices, O Pipers of the Shore, and ye Elves of Kфr sing aloud; and all ye Noldoli and hidden fairies of the world dance ye and sing, sing and dance O little children of Men that the House of Memory resound with your voices…’
Then was sung a song of ancient days that the Eldar made when they dwelt beneath the wing of Manwл and sang on the great road from Kфr to the city of the Gods (see p. 143–4).
It was now six months since Eriol went to visit Meril-i-Turinqi beseeching a draught of limpл (see p. 96–8), and that desire had for a time fallen from him; but on this night he said to Lindo: ‘Would I might drink with thee!’ To this Lindo replied that Eriol should not ‘think to overpass the bounds that Ilъvatar hath set’, but also that he should consider that ‘not yet hath Meril denied thee thy desire for ever’. Then Eriol was sad, for he guessed in his deepest heart that ‘the savour of limpл and the blessedness of the Elves might not be his for ever’.
The text ends with Ailios preparing to tell a tale:
‘I tell but as I may those things I have seen and known of very ancient days within the world when the Sun rose first, and there was travail and much sorrow, for Melko reigned unhampered and the power and strength that went forth from Angamandi reached almost to the ends of the great Earth.’
It is clear that no more was written. If it had been completed it would have led into the opening of Turambar cited above (‘When then Ailios had spoken his fill…’); and it would have been central to the history of the Great Lands, telling of the coming of the Noldoli from Valinor, the Awakening of Men, and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.
The text just described, linking The Hiding of Valinor to Ailios’ unwritten tale, was not struck out, and my father later wrote on it: ‘To come after the Tale of Eдrendel and before Eriol fares to Tavrobel—after Tavrobel he drinks of limpл.’ This is puzzling, since he cannot have intended the story of the Coming of Men to follow that of Eдrendel; but it may be that he intended only to use the substance of this short text, describing the Turuhalmл ceremonies, without its ending.
However this may be, he devised a new framework for the telling of these tales, though he did not carry it through, and the revised account of the arranging of the next tale-telling has appeared in the Tale of the Sun and Moon, where after Gilfanon’s interruption (p. 189) it was agreed that three nights after that on which The Sun and Moon and The Hiding of Valinor were told by Lindo and Vairл there should be a more ceremonial occasion, on which Gilfanon should relate ‘the travail of the Noldoli and the coming of Mankind’.
Gilfanon’s tale follows on, with consecutive page-numbers, from the second version of Vairл’s tale of The Hiding of Valinor; but Gilfanon here tells it on the night following, not three days later. Unhappily Gilfanon was scarcely better served than Ailios had been, for if Ailios scarcely got started Gilfanon stops abruptly after a very few pages. What there is of his tale is very hastily written in pencil, and it is quite clear that it ends where it does because my father wrote no more of it. It was here that my father abandoned the Lost Tales—or, more accurately, abandoned those that still waited to be written; and the effects of this withdrawal never ceased to be felt th1roughout the history of ‘The Silmarillion’. The major stories to follow Gilfanon’s, those of Beren and Tinъviel, Tъrin Turambar, the Fall of Gondolin, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, had been written and (in the first three cases) rewritten; and the last of these was to lead on to ‘the great tale of Eдrendel’. But that was not even begun. Thus the Lost Tales lack their middle, and their end.
I give here the text of Gilfanon’s Tale so far as it goes.
Now when Vairл made an end, said Gilfanon: ‘Complain not if on the morrow I weave a long tale, for the things I tell of cover many years of time, and I have waited long to tell them,’ and Lindo laughed, saying he might tell to his heart’s desire all that he knew.
But on the morrow Gilfanon sat in the chair and in this wise he began:
‘Now many of the most ancient things of the Earth are forgotten, for they were lost in the darkness that was before the Sun, and no lore may recover them; yet mayhap this is new to the ears of many here that when the Teleri, the Noldoli, and the Solosimpi fared after Oromл and afterward found Valinor, yet was that not all of the race of the Eldaliл that marched from Palisor, and those who remained behind are they whom many call the Qendi, the lost fairies of the world, but ye Elves of Kфr name Ilkorins, the Elves that never saw the light of Kфr. Of these some fell out upon the way, or were lost in the trackless glooms of those days, being wildered and but newly awakened on the Earth, but the most were those who left not Palisor at all, and a long time they dwelt in the pinewoods of Palisor, or sat in silence gazing at the mirrored stars in the pale still Waters of Awakening. Such great ages fared over them that the coming of Nornorл among them faded to a distant legend, and they said one to another that their brethren had gone westward to the Shining Isles. There, said they, do the Gods dwell, and they called them the Great Folk of the West, and thought they dwelt on firelit islands in the sea; but many had not even seen the great waves of that mighty water.
Now the Eldar or Qendi had the gift of speech direct from Ilъvatar, and it is but the sunderance of their fates that has altered them and made them unlike; yet is none so little changed as the tongue of the Dark Elves of Palisor.2
Now the tale tells of a certain fay, and names him Tы the wizard, for he was more skilled in magics than any that have dwelt ever yet beyond the land of Valinor; and wandering about the world he found the…3 Elves and he drew them to him and taught them many deep things, and he became as a mighty king among them, and their tales name him the Lord of Gloaming and all the fairies of his realm Hisildi or the twilight people. Now the places about Koiviл-nйni the Waters of Awakening are rugged and full of mighty rocks, and the stream that feeds that water falls therein down a deep cleft…. a pale and slender thread, but the issue of the dark lake was beneath the earth into many endless caverns falling ever more deeply into the bosom of the world. There was the dwelling of Tы the wizard, and fathomless hollow are those places, but their doors have long been sealed and none know now the entry.
There was…. a pallid light of blue and silver flick1ering ever, and many strange spirits fared in and out beside the [?numbers] of the Elves. Now of those Elves there was one Nuin, and he was very wise, and he loved much to wander far abroad, for the eyes of the Hisildi were become exceeding keen, and they might follow very faint paths in those dim days. On a time did Nuin wander far to the east of Palisor, and few of his folk went with him, nor did Tы send them ever to those regions on his business, and strange tales were told concerning them; but now4 curiosity overcame Nuin, and journeying far he came to a strange and wonderful place the like of which he had not seen before. A mountainous wall rose up before him, and long time he sought a way thereover, till he came upon a passage, and it was very dark and narrow, piercing the great cliff and winding ever down. Now daring greatly he followed this slender way, until suddenly the walls dropped upon either hand and he saw that he had found entrance to a great bowl set in a ring of unbroken hills whose compass he could not determine in the gloom.