Morgoth's Ring (2 page)

Lastly, I should mention that after the text of this book was in print I added a discussion of the significance of the star-names that appear on p. 160 to the head-note to the Index.

AINULINDALË

MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË - 3

AINULINDALË

The evidence is clear that when
The Lord of the Rings
was at last completed my father returned with great energy to the legends of the Elder Days. He was working on the new version of the
Lay of Leithian
in 1950 (III.330); and he noted (V.294) that he had revised the
Quenta Silmarillion
as far as the end of the tale of Beren and Luthien on 10 May 1951. The last page of the later
Tale of Tuor
, where the manuscript is reduced to notes before finally breaking off (
Unfinished
Tales
p. 56), is written on a page from an engagement calendar bearing the date September 1951, and the same calendar, with dates in September, October, and November 195l, was used for riders to
Tuor
and the
Grey Annals
(the last version of the
Annals of Beleriand
and a close companion work to the
Annals of Aman
, the last version of the
Annals of Valinor
). The account, some ten thousand words long, of the 'cycles' of the legends, written to Milton Waldman of the London publisher Collins and given in part in
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
(no.131), was very probably written towards the end of that year.

Until recently I had assumed without question that every element in the new work on the Elder Days belonged to the years 1950 and 1951; but I have now discovered unambiguous evidence that my father had in fact turned again to the
Ainulindalë
some years before he finished
The Lord of the Rings
. As will be seen, this is no mere matter of getting the textual history right, but is of great significance.

I had long been aware of extremely puzzling facts in the history of the rewriting of the
Ainulindalë
. The fine pre-
Lord of the Rings
manuscript, lettered '
B
', was described and printed in V.155 ff.; as I noted there (p. 156) 'the manuscript became the vehicle of massive rewriting many years later, when great changes in the cosmological conception had entered.' So drastic was the revision (with a great deal of new material written on the blank verso pages) that in the result two distinct texts of the work, wholly divergent in essential respects, exist physically in the same manuscript. This new text I shall distinguish as '
C
'.

But there is another text, a typescript made by my father, that was also directly based on
Ainulindalë
B of the 1930s; and in this there appears a much more radical - one might say a devastating - change in the cosmology: for in this version the Sun is already in existence from the beginning of Arda. I shall refer to this typescript as '
C*
'.

A peculiarity of C* is that for a long stretch it proceeds in very close relationship to C, but yet constantly differs from it, though always in MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË - 4

quite insignificant ways. In many cases my father later
wrote in the C reading
on the typescript. I will illustrate this by a single example, a passage in §25 (p. 15). Here C*, as typed, has:

But when they clad themselves the Valar arrayed themselves in the form and temper some as of male and some as of female; and the choice that they made herein proceeded, doubtless, from that temper that each had from their uttermost beginning; for male and female are not matters only of the body any more than of the raiment.

The C text has here:

But when they clad themselves the Valar arrayed them in the form some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice; even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment, but is not made thereby.

Now in C this passage was written at the same time as what precedes it and what follows it - it is all of a piece; whereas in C* the original typed passage was struck through and the C text substituted in pencil.

There seemed no other explanation possible but that C* preceded C; yet it seemed extraordinary, even incredible, that my father should have
first
made a clear new typescript version from' the old B manuscript and
then
returned to that manuscript to cover it somewhat chaotically with new writing - the more so since C* and C are for much of their length closely similar.

When working on
The Notion Club Papers
I found among rough notes and jottings on the Adûnaic language a torn half-sheet of the same paper as carries a passage from the
Ainulindalë
, written in pencil in my father's most rapid hand.

While not proof that he was working on the
Ainulindalë
so early as 1946 (the year to which I ascribe the development of Adunaic, when
The Lord of the Rings
had been long halted and
The Return of the King
no more than begun: see IX.12-13, 147) this strongly suggested it; and as will be seen in a moment there is certain evidence that the text C* was in existence by 1948. Moreover in a main structural feature C* follows this bit of text, as C does not (see p. 42); it seemed very probable therefore that C* was typed from a very rough text of which the torn half-sheet is all that remains.

Here it must be mentioned that on the first page of C* my father wrote later

'Round World Version', and (obviously at the same time) on the title-page of B/C he wrote 'Old Flat World Version' - the word 'Old' being a subsequent addition. It would obviously be very interesting to know when he labelled them thus; and the answer is provided by the following evidences. The first is a draft for a letter, undated and with no indication of whom he was addressing: MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË - 5

These tales are feigned to be translated from the preserved works of Ælfwine of England (c.900 A.D.), called by the Elves Eriol, who being blown west from Ireland eventually came upon the 'Straight Road' and found Tol Eressëa the Lonely Isle.

He brought back copies and translations of many works. I do not trouble you with the Anglo-Saxon forms. (The only trace of these is the use of
c
for
k
as in
Celeb
- beside
Keleb
-.) All these histories are told by Elves and are not primarily concerned with Men.

I have ventured to include 2 others.

(1) A 'Round World' version of the 'Music of the Ainur'

(2) A 'Man's' version of the
Fall of Numenor
told from men's point of view, and with names in a non-Elvish tongue. 'The Drowning of Anadune'. This also is 'Round World'.'

The Elvish myths are 'Flat World'. A pity really but it is too integral to change it.

On the back of the paper he wrote: 'For the moment I cannot find the Tale called
The Rings of Power
' , and referred again in much the same terms to 'two other tales'

that he was 'enclosing'.

There is another draft for this letter which, while again undated, was written from Merton College and addressed to Mrs. Katherine Farrer, the wife of Dr.

Austin Farrer, theologian and at that time Chaplain of Trinity College: Dear Mrs. Farrer,

These tales are feigned (I do not include their slender framework) to be translated from the preserved work of Ælfwine of England (c.900 A.D.), who being blown west from Ireland eventually came upon the 'straight road'

and found the Lonely Isle, Tol Eressëa, beyond the seas.

There he learned ancient lore, and brought back translations and excerpts from works of Elvish lore. The specimen of the 'Anglo-Saxon'

original is not included.

NB
All these histories are told by the Elves, and are not primarily concerned with Men.

I have ventured to include, besides the 'Silmarillion' or main chronicle, one or two other connected 'myths': 'The Music of the Ainur', the 2

Beginning; and the Later Tales: 'The Rings of Power', and 'The Fall of Númenor', which link up with Hobbit-lore of the later or 'Third Age'.

Yours

JRRT

The end of this, from 'and the Later Tales', was struck out and marked 'not included'.

It cannot be doubted that these were drafts for the undated letter to MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË - 6

Katherine Farrer which is printed as no.115 in
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
, for through there is not much left from these drafts in that form of it, it contains the words 'I am distressed (for myself) to be unable to find the "Rings of Power", which with the "Fall of Numenor" is the link between the
Silmarillion
and the Hobbit world.'

My father said in the first of the two drafts given above that he was including in the materials to be lent to Katherine Farrer 'two others', one of which was 'a "Round World" version of the "Music of Ainur"'; and this can be taken to mean that he was giving her two versions, 'Flat World' and 'Round World'. Now there is preserved a portion of a letter to him from Katherine Farrer, and on this my father pencilled a date: 'October 1948'. She had by this time received and read what he had given to her, and in the course of her illuminating and deeply enthusiastic remarks she said: 'I like the Flat Earth versions best. The hope of Heaven is the only thing which makes modern astronomy tolerable: otherwise there must be an East and a West and Walls: aims and choices and not an endless circle of wandering.'

It must have been when he was preparing the texts for her that he wrote the words 'Flat World Version' and 'Round World Version' on the texts B/C and C* of the
Ainulindalë
. Beyond this one can only go by guesswork; but my guess is that the

'Flat World Version' was the old B manuscript
before
it had been covered with the revisions and new elements that constitute version C. It may be that Katherine Farrer's opinion had some influence on my father in his decision to make this new version C on the old manuscript - deriving much of it from C*, and emending C* in conformity with new readings. Thus:

-
Ainulindalë
B, a manuscript of the 1930s. When lending this to Katherine Farrer in 1948 he wrote on it 'Flat World Version'.

- A new version, lost apart from a single torn sheet, written in 1946.

- A typescript,
Ainulindalë
C* , based on this text. When lending this in 1948 he wrote on it 'Round World Version'.

-
Ainulindalë
C, made after the return of the texts by covering the old B

manuscript with new writing, and removing certain radically innovative elements present in C*.

It would in this way be entirely explicable how it came about that the typescript C*
preceded
the complicated and confusing revision (C) on the old manuscript - this being the precursor of the last version of the work that my father wrote,
Ainulindalë
'D', made in all probability not long after C.

Ainulindalë
C* was thus an experiment, conceived and composed, as it appears, before the writing of
The Return of the King
, and certainly before
The Lord
of the Rings
was finished. It was set aside; but as will appear later in this book, it was by no means entirely forgotten.

C* should therefore in strict chronology be given first; but in view MORGOTH`S RING - AINULINDALË - 7

of its peculiarities it cannot be made the base text. It is necessary therefore to change the chronological order, and I give first version C in full, following it with a full account of the development in the final text D, and postponing consideration of C*

to the end of Part One.

Before giving the text of C, however, there is another brief document that has value for dating: this is a brief, isolated list of names and their definitions 3

headed
Alterations in last revision 1951
.

Atani
N[oldorin]
Edain
= Western Men or Fathers of Men
Pengoloð
4

Aman
name of land beyond Pelóri or mountains of Valinor, of which Valinor is part

Melkor
5

Arda
Elvish name of Earth = our world. Also
Kingdom of Arda
=

fenced region. Field of Arda.

Illuin
Lamp of North =
Helkar
6

Ormal
Lamp of South =
Ringil
6

Isle of Almaren
in the Great Lake

Valaróma
= Horn of Oromë

Eru
= Ilúvatar

Ëa
= Universe of that which Is

Not all these names were newly devised at this time, of course: thus
Eru
and
Arda
go back to my father's work on
The Notion Club Papers
and
The Drowning of
Anadûnê
, as also does
Aman
(where however it was the Adûnaic name of Manwë).

In
Ainulindalë
C appear
Arda
,
Melkor
, and
Pelóri
, but the Lamps are called
Foros
and
Hyaras
, not
Illuin
and
Ormal
, and the Isle in the Great Lake is
Almar
, not
Almaren
. The final text D, as originally written, has
Atani
,
Almaren
and
Aman
, but
Aman
did not mean the Blessed Realm; the Lamps are named
Forontë
and
Hyarantë
, and the Horn of Oromë is
Rombaras
. These differences from the '1951

list' show that
Ainulindalë
D was made before that time.

I give now the text of
Ainulindalë
C in full. Since despite radical changes in the structure and the addition of much new material a good deal of the old form does survive, it is not really necessary to do so, but to give it partly in the form of textual notes would make the development very difficult to follow; and
Ainulindalë
C is an important document in the history of the mythological conception of the created Universe. The remodelling that constituted C out of B was in fact done at different times, and is in places chaotic, full of changes and substitutions; I do not attempt to disentangle the different layers, but give the final form after all changes, with a few developments that took place while C was in the making recorded in the notes that follow the text (p. 22). I have numbered the paragraphs as a convenient means of reference subsequently.