From a Gift in Death to the Gift of Death: Túrin and the Doom of Men

In The Book of Lost Tales death is not the Gift of Ilúvatar to Men, at least not in the sense we usually think of it, and perhaps not at all. The spirits of Men do not leave the world for points unknown outside the physical universe. They are just as bound to Arda as the Elves. Just as the Elves do, Men go to the Undying Lands upon their death. There Fui Nienna judges them based on their deeds while alive, and she sends them to various afterlives within time and space where they will remain until the world ends. While Nienna's role with Men is set up as parallel to Mandos' with the Elves, unlike the Elves, Men never return to life and the Great Lands (Middle-earth) as the Elves do.

With the Sketch of the Mythology first written in 1926 it becomes apparent that Tolkien's conception of death for Men has begun changing. The Sketch was meant to provide background for The Lay of the Children of Húrin, which allows us to conclude that the Lay would very likely have seen death in the same way. Now, Men depart the world entirely after a time spent in Mandos, which seems to house the spirits of both kindreds, though apart from each other. No role for Nienna is mentioned. No one knows where the spirits of Men go after Mandos or who has charge of them once they leave. It is the same in the Quenta Noldorinwa of 1930 and its successors later in the mid-1930s, the Ainulindalë and the Quenta Silmarillion of 1937.*

The Book of Lost Tales says that death is "one with this gift of power" given to Men by Ilúvatar. "This gift" has already been described earlier on the same page:

"But to Men I will give a new gift, and a greater," [said Ilúvatar]. Therefore he devised that Men should have a free virtue** whereby within the limits of the powers and substances and chances of the world they might fashion and design their life beyond even the original Music of the Ainur that is as fate to all things else. This he did that of their operations everything should in shape and deed be completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.

(LT I.59)

Now the Sketch and the Quenta Noldorinwa do not mention this, since their accounts of the Music are almost non-existent, but the Ainulindalë does, with a very interesting difference, which appears in bold:

"But to Men I will give a new gift," [said Ilúvatar].  

Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to fashion their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else. And of their operation everything should be, in shape and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.

(Lost Road 163).

By adding these words here Tolkien brings death to the fore and gives it (at least) equal weight with the power bestowed by Ilúvatar, which was previously not the case. He also binds the experience of the hearts of Men, which are within this world while yearning for another that is attainable only through death, to the astounding power or virtue he is giving them within this world. 

Without these new words here, the declaration later on in both texts that death is one with this power/virtue, death seems concomitant with the power or perhaps even a limit placed on it, as it does in "The Music of the Ainur." With these words, however, Men's power almost seems to proceed from their mortality and freedom from the circles of Arda. Indeed the word "freedom" is by far the most significant change in this latter sentence.

"The Music of the Ainur" in The Book of Lost Tales reads: "It is however of one with this gift of power that the Children of Men dwell only a short time in the world alive, yet do not perish utterly for ever..." (LT 59). 

The text of the 1930s Ainulindalë reads: "It is one with this gift of freedom that the children of Men dwell only a short space in the world alive, and yet are not bound to it, nor shall perish utterly for ever" (Lost Road 163).

The emphasis has shifted here. In "The Music of the Ainur," the power/virtue gifted to Men is of primary importance. Death comes along with or limits this power. In the Ainulindalë death is at least as important, and probably more so, because the power derives from the nature of Man's relationship to death.

Parallel with this development, as it were, we find the evolving story of Men. In The Book of Lost Tales Men are few and more often than not treacherous and hostile. The Elves, the Noldor in particular, look down on Men from the moment the Valar tell them that someday Men will exist (LT I.150). The stories of Túrin and Tuor play key roles in the narrative and are told at length, but The Book of Lost Tales belongs to the Elves even more than the Silmarillion does. That Men are meant to play a crucial part in the defeat of Melkor and the completion of Ilúvatar's plan for the world is equally clear. The elves telling the man, Eriol, these lost tales in the frame narrative know this, and Ulmo's attempts to bring Elves and Men together, especially in "The Fall of Gondolin," demonstrate it. Túrin's life is a catastrophe. Tuor fails to save Gondolin. And Tuor's son, Eärendil, also fails because he arrives too late. (If you are wondering why I've not mentioned Beren, it's because in The Book of Lost Tales he is an Elf, not a Man.)

Throughout the 1920s the significance of Men continues to grow, however. Tolkien spends the first half of the decade almost exclusively on Túrin and his family in The Lay of the Children of Húrin and the second half on The Lay of Leithian, in which the decision to recast Beren as a Man brings death into the story of Beren and Lúthien in a very different way than had been the case in The Book of Lost Tales where both Beren and Lúthien had been Elves. Eärendil now succeeds in his mission to persuade the Valar to rescue Middle-earth from Melkor. Perhaps most telling of all is the growth in importance of Túrin, not during his life -- which remains disastrously horrifying -- but after his death. His afterlife becomes a matter of apocalyptic prophecy. Beginning in The Book of Lost Tales it is prophesied that he will return at the end of time to fight in the Last Battle against Melkor. The Sketch develops this further, making him the one who will slay Melkor on that day, thus avenging himself and his family. The Quenta Noldorinwa and the Quenta Silmarillion go further still. Túrin will not only avenge himself and his family, but all Men.

It won't be surprising then to find that Men as a whole become more prominent in the background to the Great Tales. While the majority of Men in the wars of the First Age still side with Melkor, there is now more than one group of Men, the Men of Dor-Lómin, who prove loyal to the Elves. The House of Hador, from which both Túrin and Tuor (now first cousins) descend. The House of Bëor, to which Beren belongs, appears, as does the House of Haleth, which Túrin comes to lead before the end. These three groups become the Edain, "the Fathers of Men," and as a reward for their sufferings and their service against Melkor, the Valar create for them an island of their own called "Andor," which means "The Land of Gift," but which those who dwelt there came to call Númenor. Though the Númenóreans also receive greater lifespans than other Men, they have an increasingly difficult time accepting that death is a gift, or understanding it even though they do accept it. In both "The Fall of Númenor" and "The Lost Road," the texts of the 1930s in which Tolkien created Númenor and with it the Second Age, death comes to be explicitly spoken of as a gift, "which cometh to Men from Ilúvatar" (Lost Road 25). Even Elendil himself, who accepts that it is a gift, nevertheless seems at a loss to grasp how that is so:

"But Death is not decreed by the Lords: it is the gift of the One, and a gift which in the wearing of time even the Lords of the West shall envy. So the wise of old have said. And though we can perhaps no longer understand that word, at least we have wisdom enough to know that we cannot escape, unless to a worse fate."

(Lost Road 65)

Significantly, the power/virtue we have seen associated with death in earlier texts goes unmentioned. Yet another power receives attention. For Sauron -- also called Thû or Sûr in these texts -- promises the Númenóreans dominion over the earth and eternal life within the world. These he calls "the gifts of Morgoth," which he claims the Valar are keeping from them, but all Men need to do to get what is rightfully theirs is to conquer the Undying Lands (Lost Road 15). This goes rather badly. Númenor is destroyed utterly. Its king and army who "had set foot in the land of the Gods were buried under fallen hills, where legend saith that they lie imprisoned in the Forgotten Caves until the day of Doom and the Last Battle" (Lost Road 15).

This last detail recalls the fate of Men after death in The Book of Lost Tales. All except the most wicked are said to be waiting "in patience till the Great End come" (LT I.77). That they wait patiently suggests they are aware that they have something to do at the end. But what? This may refer to the Second Music in which all Men will participate (LT I.60; Lost Road 163). Yet there may be something else or something more. I would argue that they, too, are waiting for the Last Battle. It's certainly true, as we saw above, that after The Book of Lost Tales Men leave the world entirely after a time in Mandos. But if Túrin can return from Mandos for that battle, why not his fellow Men whom he is fighting to avenge? 

In The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, yet another text of the 1930s, Tolkien invents a prophecy that Sigurd, a character with a significant influence over the character of Túrin, will return from Valhalla at Ragnarök and slay the Midgard Serpent, thus saving the world. With him will come the einherjar, the mortal warriors chosen at death to fight alongside the gods at the Last Battle. As Christopher Tolkien observes, it is very difficult not to see Túrin now in Sigurd, since there is no such prophecy about him in Norse mythology and he does not return (S&G 53-54, 63-64, 184) The influence is now flowing from Túrin to Sigurd. And as we also saw above, the prophecy that Túrin will return to fight that day is present from the first telling of his tale in The Book of Lost Tales. Even when every other detail of Túrin's afterlife disappears after The Book of Lost Tales, the prophecy about the Last Battle not only remains, but is further elaborated and given greater significance, from his only being present at the battle in the first version to his being the avenger of all Men in the Quenta Noldorinwa and Quenta Silmarillion.*** 

Nor is this all. Túrin's replacement of Fionwë as the slayer of Melkor accomplishes much more than vengeance. For Fionwë, his prophecy says, "shall destroy the world to destroy his foe" (LT I.219). Túrin, however, saves the world. (Be honest. You never saw that coming.) In the same way, Tolkien's rewritten Sigurd saves the world. In fact, Túrin makes possible the healing of Arda. With Melkor dead, the Silmarils are recovered and returned to Fëanor, who, coming back from Mandos himself, unlocks them and allows Yavanna to use their light to revive the Two Trees. The world is remade.

If we look back now at the other details of Túrin's afterlife, which may not be as forgotten as they seem,**** we may perhaps descry the beginning of death becoming a gift. Túrin died with a great deal of blood on his hands. I am not speaking of those he killed in battle, but of those he should not have killed at all (Orgof/Saeros, Beleg, Brodda, Orlin, and Tamar/Brandir). He abandoned Finduilas. He committed incest and suicide. When he arrives in the afterlife, Nienna and Mandos will not allow him or his sister, Nienor, to enter their realm. Eventually, at the "prayers" of their parents, the Valar have "mercy" on the siblings, and purify them in a "Bath of Flame" in which "all their sorrows and stains were washed away," and they dwell happily among the Valar. Everything from the prayers of Húrin and Morwen to the final happiness of Túrin and Nienor is described in one sentence, but that is not the whole sentence. The first part of the sentence tells what has already happened, but the second shifts from past to future, briefly and powerfully delivering the prophecy of Túrin's return (LT II.116). And there the story ends, leaving the audience in silence.

Many will surely see in the prayers and mercy and the washing away of the effects of Túrin and Nienor's misdeeds and misfortunes in a bath of flame references to Christianity, and in particular to Matthew 3:11 and Luke 3:16 where John the Baptist speaks of one who will come after him and baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit instead of water. And I have no doubt that Tolkien means to invoke these ideas. But let's not be hasty. According to standard Catholic doctrine, once a person dies repentance is no longer possible. Nor, for that matter, do we see any sign of repentance. 

We may also reasonably think of Purgatory, but the cleansing of Túrin and Nienor is an exception if the only comparable event is the purification of (the Maia) Urwendi and her maidens so that they can survive sailing the Ship of the Sun. But it is quite interesting to note that their purification prepared them for something greater than they could do otherwise. In that sense it not only purified, but enhanced them. Also, since all the faithful who have not atoned fully for their sins before death go to Purgatory for a time, the cleansing by fire undergone there is not going to be exceptional, as it is here, but rather common. Túrin's "sins" -- note that Tolkien does not use this loaded word -- are by no means trivial or venial.

Even ignoring the Christian echoes in this account of his afterlife, Túrin is so stained that the gods of the dead, Nienna and Mandos, want nothing to do with him, or even with his far more sinned-against sister. Yet he shall return to fight beside Tulkas and Fionwë and to discomfit Melkor and his dragons in the Ragnarök-like battle on the world's last day. Even before his role evolves into being the slayer of Melkor and avenger of Men, it is not unreasonable to think that Túrin's purification in the Bath of Flame is more than a cleansing. As with Urwendi and her maidens, it is a preparation for something greater and more demanding.

By blending Christian imagery and ideas into this largely pagan afterlife, Tolkien evokes a greater sense of the divine than would have been the case otherwise. The cleansing of Túrin and Nienor is an unexpected act of mercy by the gods, which arises from pity in response to the prayers of Húrin and Morwen (or Úrin and Mavwin as The Book of Lost Tales calls them). Unexpected, too, is Túrin and Nienor's reversal of fortune in the afterlife, as the "doom of woe and death of sorrow" to which Melkor cursed them and their parents comes to an end with their deaths, and the tides of fate flow towards a reunion and a love that is pure and heroism of the sort to be expected from the son of Húrin and Morwen and the foster-son of Thingol and Melian (LT II.71,115-16). And maybe not from the son only. For an early, unincorporated note records that Nienor, too, will return for the Last Battle (LT II.138; she is there called Vainóni). 

It is true in The Book of Lost Tales, as it is later in the legendarium, that a destiny or fate exists which is prior to all the destinies, dooms, or curses pronounced by the Valar and Melkor, and which can shape even their actions (LT I.142, 147, 151, 209). The Valar collectively know much of things to come, but Ilúvatar did not reveal everything. Some things are hidden, some unnoticed, and some not understood because the Valar cannot understand all of Ilúvatar's mind and purpose. There are things that happen "not without the knowledge of Ilúvatar" and "not without the desire of Ilúvatar" (151, 180). He also at times prompts the Valar and Maiar in various ways, as he does Manwë, Aulë, and Urwendi to use the last of the light of the trees to build the Ship of the Sun and the Bath of Flame (180, 185, 187-88). This particular prompting is significant in two ways. First, as we know, Túrin and Nienor also enter the Bath of Flame. Second, the first rising of the sun is connected to the awakening of Men, "who were waiting for light" (237). Men, to whom Ilúvatar gave the  power to go beyond the Music, awaken with the sun's rising. Túrin, the man whose Great Tale is the first we come to in The Book of Lost Tales as well as being its most shockingly memorable, bears the brunt of the special enmity and the curse of Melkor. This dark and troubled character, who quite literally makes the worst of his fate, at least as far as Melkor's doom is concerned, is cleansed after death in the very Bath of Flame that prepared Urwendi to sail the Ship of the Sun and awaken Men. Cleansed, he will play a significant part in the Last Battle against Melkor at the end of the world. As the legendarium evolves, he will go on to be the slayer of Melkor and the avenger of all Men. His deeds that day will not heal Arda by themselves, but they will clear the way for Fëanor to return at last from Mandos and to devote his art, the gift Ilúvatar bestowed upon the Elves, to its proper end. 

Nothing Túrin did in his life merited the purification and enhancement he received after death. Quite the opposite in fact. (This is even truer of Fëanor who suffered far less except in his own opinion, but his role at the end of the world isn't in The Book of Lost Tales.) This unmerited purification is what Tolkien would call grace. "Every gift of grace raises [the recipient] to something that is above human nature," says Thomas Aquinas (ST 2-2.171.2 ad 3). We need to draw a distinction here. Aquinas identifies two different kinds of grace, that which sanctifies and that which he calls gratuitous. Sanctifying grace brings its recipient closer to God; gratuitous grace helps its recipient help others (ST 1-2.111.1c, 4c; SCG 3.155). As such, gratuitous grace may empower that recipient, though temporarily and without changing their nature, to perform miracles, to prophesy, and so on. Gratuitous grace is sometimes also called actual grace because it is directed to acts. It is this grace that better explains what happens with Túrin after his death, if we are to view it through the lens of Tolkien's faith. Even so, that same faith must note that Túrin never repents. However distraught he may become after killing Orgof/Saeros, Beleg, Brodda, Orlin, and Tamar/Brandir, he never changes except to become worse. That same faith must also note that after death repentance is impossible. So, while the idea of the grace of Ilúvatar offers a reasonable explanation for Túrin's cleansing and enhancement, the metaphysics of Arda are not the same as those of the primary world, where Tolkien practiced his faith. The grace of Ilúvatar is not the same as the grace of God as Roman Catholicism understands it.

In The Book of Lost Tales the death of Túrin and Nienor is not the catastrophic ending to The Tale of the Children of Húrin, full of pity and horror, that it later becomes, or seems to become. But because the story continues even unto the ending of the world, their death becomes a turning point not just in their story, but in the story of the world. For in it we can see the first signs of the gifts of Men: the power to go beyond the Music and help to complete Ilúvatar's design for the world; and the connection between this power and Death. As Túrin's role on the last day becomes more significant and central, the gift that he receives in death will become the Gift of Death.

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* Prior to the writing of the Ainulindalë as a separate text its story of creation appeared in the second chapter of The Book of Lost Tales, called "The Music of the Ainur." The Sketch and the Quenta Noldorinwa contained much less detailed accounts in their first chapters. This could indicate that Tolkien was planning to shift the story of the Music into its own text as early as the mid to late 1920s.

** Within the legendarium "virtue" almost always means "power." Think of the "virtue" lembas possesses to give Sam and Frodo the strength to go on. By contrast, within Tolkien's letters "virtue" almost always has its more common modern meanings, such as a superior quality or particular excellence of character.

*** In The Book of Lost Tales the killing of Melkor at the Last Battle is explicitly attributed to Fionwë, who is better known by his later name, Eonwë (LT I.219). While Túrin fights beside him and causes Melkor to rue his presence, he does not kill Melkor (LT II.116).

I am limiting my comments here to the story of Túrin and its various forms before Tolkien set the Silmarillion aside in late 1937 to write The Lord of the Rings. So, I do not address whether Christopher Tolkien was right or wrong to leave the Second Prophecy of Mandos, where Túrin's return is prophesied, out of the published Silmarillion. While I agree with Douglas Charles Kane's argument in Arda Reconstructed that Christopher made a mistake here, the evidence that Christopher uses to justify the omission of the prophecy dates from after Tolkien's return to the Silmarillion after 1949. 

**** Consider Christopher's comment on the difficulty of knowing whether his father's removal of something from a particular text meant it had been abandoned for good or only for the time being. 

"The wizard Tû and the Dark Elf Nuin disappeared from the mythology and never appear again, together with the marvellous story of Nuin’s coming upon the forms of the Fathers of Mankind still asleep in the Vale of Murmenalda—though from the nature of the work and the different degrees of attention that my father later gave to its different parts one cannot always distinguish between elements definitively abandoned and elements held in ‘indefinite abeyance’"

(LT I.233, italics added)

***** Gratuitous has had a sad time of it in recent times. Commonly now, at least in much of the US, it means uncalled for or unjustifiable, as in a gratuitous remark or criticism. Here, it means freely given without expectation of return. The phrase is the standard English translation of the Latin gratia gratis data, literally grace freely given.

Lúthien Unbound?

In his introduction to the Lay of Leithian in The Lays of Beleriand, Christopher Tolkien writes: 

My father never explained the name Leithian 'Release from Bondage', and we are left to choose, if we will, among various applications that can be seen in the poem. Nor did he leave any comment on the significance - if there is a significance - of the likeness of Leithian to Leithien 'England'. In the tale of Ælfwine of England the Elvish name of England is Lúthien (which was earlier the name of Ælfwine himself, England being Luthany), but at the first occurrence (only) of this name the word Leithian was pencilled above it (II. 330, note 20). In the 'Sketch of the Mythology' England was still Lúthien (and at that time Thingol's daughter was also Lúthien), but this was emended to Leithien, and this is the form in the 1930 version of 'The Silmarillion'. I cannot say (i) what connection if any there was between the two significances of Lúthien, nor (ii) whether Leithien (once Leithian) 'England' is or was related to Leithian 'Release from Bondage'. The only evidence of an etymological nature that I have found is a hasty note, impossible to date, which refers to the stem leth- 'set free', with leithia 'release', and compares Lay of Leithian.

(Lays 188-89)

In September of 1978 I was a freshman at NYU taking my first class in Ancient Greek. One of the first verbs a student becomes acquainted with is the verb λύω/lúo. It's a common verb, meaning "set free, release, undo, let loose," and it is very regular in the way it's conjugated. There's nothing exceptional or odd about it. So it's a good verb to practice with. Now in English verbs have three principal parts, that is, forms which allow you to make all the other forms. So "sing, sang, sung" or "walk, walked, walked" supply the building blocks. In Greek regular verbs commonly have six principal parts, and there's a discernible pattern to them which makes learning them easier. The principal parts of λύω are λύω, λύσω, ἔλυσα, λέλυκα, λέλυμαι, ἐλύθην/lúo, lúso, élusa, léluka, lélumai, elúthēn. 

Did that last principal part--ἐλύθην/elúthēn--catch your eye? Or maybe your ear? Because it sure caught mine 46 years ago. The Silmarillion had come out a year before and I was reading The Lord of the Rings two or three times a year at that point. So the combination of form and meaning-- a standard translation of ἐλύθην/elúthēn would be "I was set free" or "I was released"--fairly leaped off the page at me. All I could think of was Lúthien and the long poem about her and Beren called The Lay of Leithian and that leithian means "release from bondage."* λύω is the verb you use if you are talking about freeing slaves or prisoners.

I asked my Greek teacher about ἐλύθην/elúthēn after class. Her name was Stephanie and she was probably the best teacher I ever had. She was so good at making things clear, at correcting you without making you feel like an idiot, and she so obviously loved teaching Ancient Greek. I know how she felt. It was later my favorite course to teach as well, but I didn't do it anywhere near as well as she did. In any event in 1978 Tolkien was still largely looked down on in academic circles. As I recall, she said she supposed a connection between this verb and the words Lúthien and leithian was possible, but I could also tell she wasn't really keen on having a prolonged discussion about it.  

As we worked our way through the truly immense verbal system of Ancient Greek, we learned more and more forms of this and other verbs. When we came to the form λυθεῖεν, once again my eye was caught because this form can be transliterated in several ways, that is, we can change the word letter by letter from the Greek alphabet into our own. The Greek letter upsilon, |υ|, is commonly represented in English with |y|, as in analysis for the Greek ἀνάλυσις -- and yes, that derives ultimately from the same root. But as the English spelling upsilon attests, |υ| is not always represented by |y|. The diphthong |ει| -- pronounced like |ay| in day in Attic Greek (think Plato) or |ee| in Koine Greek (think the Gospels) -- can be transliterated as |ei| or |i|. So λυθεῖεν could be transliterated lytheien, lythien, lutheien, or luthien. As we can see, Lúthien sounds like it could have its origin here. 

How should λυθεῖεν be translated? By form it is the third person plural aorist optative passive. The aorist tense often refers to past time, like a simple past, but not necessarily. It can also refer to something that happens suddenly. So, for example, the form ἐδάκρυσε/edakruse can mean "he wept" but is often better taken as "he burst into tears." And what's the optative? It's like the subjunctive, only more so. It doesn't refer to facts but to possibilities, intentions, hopes, and fears, to things that have not yet become real and may never become real. So λυθεῖεν by itself could be translated as a wish: "May they be set free" or "I wish that they be set free." Which of course would be a very significant name for a character like Lúthien, who comes by this name as Tolkien makes her more powerful and able to release or set free from bondage more things and people. As Clare Moore has shown in her article on Lúthien in Mallorn 62 (2021), with each successive version of her tale, Lúthien's power and importance grow.

Tolkien was keen on the sound of words. He specifically cited Ancient Greek as a tongue that gave him "'phonaesthetic' pleasure" (Letters #144 p. 265).** It may have been hard to resist the combination of sound and meaning to be found in Lúthien.

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I hope that the list I've created below helps to clarify the name changes Christopher Tolkien refers to in the quoted passage to start this post. I use > to indicate "becomes" or "changes into"

1. The Tale of Tinúviel in The Book of Lost Tales, vol. II (1917-18)

• The daughter of Thingol and Melian is named Tinúviel, and never called Lúthien. 

2. Ælfwine of England in The Book of Lost Tales, vol. II (1917-1918)

• Lúthien = Ælfwine > Ælfwine = Ælfwine 
• Luthany*** = England > Lúthien = England ("Leithian" pencilled above 1st use of Lúthien for England)

3. The Lay of the Children of Húrin in The Lays of Beleriand (1918-1925)

• The daughter of Thingol and Melian is named Lúthien. Beren, not knowing her name, calls her  Tinúviel.

4. The Lay of Leithian in The Lays of Beleriand (1925-1931)

• The daughter of Thingol and Melian is named Lúthien. Beren, not knowing her name, calls her  Tinúviel.

4. The Sketch of the Mythology (1926) in The Shaping of Middle-earth.

• Lúthien = Lúthien, daughter of Thingol and Melian
• Lúthien = England > Leithien = England

5. Quenta Noldorinwa (the 1930 Silmarillion) in The Shaping of Middle-earth.

• Lúthien = Lúthien, daughter of Thingol and Melian
• Leithien (Leithian 1x) = England

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*Yes, I know that we only had very small snippets of the Lay at that time, but we knew that within Middle-earth at least such a poem existed and what it was called.

** John R. Holmes has suggested that Tolkien coined the word "phonaesthetic," either in the cited letter or at around the same time ("'Inside a Song': Tolkien's Phonaesthetics," in B. L. Eden, Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien 2010 p. 30). While Tolkien clearly could have coined such a word, the word already existed thanks to the linguist J. R. Firth, who appears to have coined it in his 1930 book Speech (Oxford University Press, p. 52). The word also appears in a 1950 article in the journal Essays and Studies. Tolkien knew the journal if not the article. His Homercoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son first appeared there in 1953, plus he owned a couple of issues of the journal from previous years (See Oronzo Cilli, Tolkien's Library, 103, 367). A google ngram search shows that the word suddenly came into much wider use (among linguists, that is) in the late 1940s and peaked in the 1970s.

*** 'Luthany' seems to come from a poem called "The Mistress of Vision," written by Francis Thompson, a poet of whom Tolkien was quite fond:

The Lady of fair weeping,
      At the garden’s core,
      Sang a song of sweet and sore
      And the after-sleeping;
In the land of Luthany, and the tracts of Elenore.

It's interesting to learn -- thanks to Andrew Higgins's paper, 'O World Invisible We View Thee' The Syncretic Nature of Francis Thompson's Visionary Poems,' which is available here -- that in 1968 George Carter suggested in an unpublished PhD dissertation that Carter suggested that "Thompson constructed 'Luthany' by anglicizing the Ancient Greek aorist passive infinitive of 'luo' – 'luthenai', which means 'to be broken' (Carter 1968, p. 62)."

In translating λυθῆναι/luthēnai as 'to be broken' Carter is thinking of another line in Thompson's poem -- "Pass the gates of Luthany" -- and arguing that this means "Pass the gates when they are broken." In the absence of other evidence, this translation and interpretation seem quite forced. "Unlocked" or "open" seem more plausible translations. λύω can be used of opening doors or gates, but, as far as I can tell, not of breaking them. I can see the resemblance between the English and the Greek here, but not more than that. 

The Death of Melkor and the Life of the Elves

Thus spake Mandos in prophecy, when the Gods sat in judgement in Valinor, and the rumour of his words was whispered among all the Elves of the West. When the world is old and the Powers grow weary, then Morgoth, seeing that the guard sleepeth, shall come back through the Door of Night out of the Timeless Void; and he shall destroy the Sun and Moon. But Eärendel shall descend upon him as a white and searing flame and drive him from the airs. Then shall the Last Battle be gathered on the fields of Valinor. In that day Tulkas shall strive with Morgoth, and on his right hand shall be Fionwë, and on his left Túrin Turambar, son of Húrin, coming from the halls of Mandos; and the black sword of Túrin shall deal unto Morgoth his death and final end; and so shall the children of Húrin and all Men be avenged.

            (The Lost Road 333) 

I have always taken great pleasure in the story that in the final battle at the end of time Túrin will return from Death to kill Melkor, avenging his family and all Men. Nor am I alone in this. The prophecy of Túrin's return rings so true with so many because in it we hear the Final Chord of Ilúvatar resounding on the Fields of Time. Yet when composing The Silmarillion for publication, Christopher Tolkien chose to leave it out because he felt that, when writing the Valaquenta in 1958, his father had abandoned the so-called 'Second Prophecy of Mandos' in which this claim appeared (LR 333; Morgoth 204). He points out that his father had crossed it out in the manuscript. For this decision Douglas Charles Kane in his book Arda Reconstructed has faulted him (236-238). Kane argues, quite reasonably, that Tolkien did not cross out the entire Second Prophecy, and that he left the part which pertains to Túrin. Thus, Kane believes, the story of his returing and killing Melkor should have been preserved and printed in The Silmarillion. 

I can't really disagree with Kane's argument, but I believe there may be another, more metaphysical, reason for why Tolkien might have chosen to shelve the Second Prophecy. A letter of Tolkien's, which also comes from 1958, provides a clue:

That Sauron was not himself destroyed in the anger of the One [at the drowning of Númenor] is not my fault: the problem of evil, and its apparent toleration, is a permanent one for all who concern themselves with our world. The indestructibility of spirits with free wills, even by the Creator of them, is also an inevitable feature, if one either believes in their existence, or feigns it in a story.

            Letters no. 158 p. 280

This is consistent with something Tolkien wrote in The Book of Lost Tales a generation earlier. There the narrator explains that, when Melko (as he's called early in the legendarium) was taken captive by the Valar to protect the newly awakened Elves from him, he could not be put to death because "the great Gods may not yet be slain" (LT I 104). Notice that word "yet," which seems to suggest that a time may come when they might be slain? Well, that word wasn't there in the original text (LT I 104 n. 4). Tolkien added it, perhaps because he was anticipating the story that in the final battle Melko would in fact be slain. Not by Túrin, however, though he is present (LT I 219; LT II 281-282). So, it seems that Tolkien initially had an opnion resembling what he says in the 1958 letter, but changed his mind. Killing Melko was just too appealing an idea at the time, and even more so when Tolkien decided that Túrin really ought to be the one to do it. 

Yet by the 1950s, right about when Tolkien crossed out some, but not all, of the Second Prophecy of Mandos, Tolkien appears to hold an opinion that clashes with the part of the Second Prophecy he did not cross out. But if even God cannot destroy spirits possessing free will, what does that mean for the Elves, whose lives are said to end when Arda ends? One way out is to argue, as some have done, that Elves do not have free will. Or perhaps it means, as Finrod speculates -- prophesies even -- in the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth that the Elves will somehow survive the end of Arda. He also foresees that Eru himself will one day enter Arda to heal its hurts, which at least at first glance does not harmonize well with the vengeance of Túrin. The Athrabeth is of course also a work of the mid to late 1950s, when Tolkien wrote the letter quoted above and crossed out some of the Second Prophecy. Did he cross out all he meant to at that moment? Or did he allow metaphysics to trump myth hereafter?

Why Does the Roaring of the Sea Disquiet the Valar?

The Sea -- Copyright © Ted Nasmith. All rights reserved.

A well known theme that runs throughout Tolkien's legendarium is that longing or unquiet which the Sea causes in Elves and Men.  Many will recall Legolas speaking of it in The Last Debate:

'Look!' he cried. 'Gulls! They are flying far inland. A wonder they are to me and a trouble to my heart. Never in all my life had I met them, until we came to Pelargir, and there I heard them crying in the air as we rode to the battle of the ships. Then I stood still, forgetting war in Middle-earth; for their wailing voices spoke to me of the Sea. The Sea! Alas! I have not yet beheld it. But deep in the hearts of all my kindred lies the sea-longing, which it is perilous to stir. Alas! for the gulls. No peace shall I have again under beech or under elm.'  

(RK 5.ix.873)

This passage clarifies the 'dark words' which Galadriel had sent to Legolas through Gandalf:

Legolas Greenleaf long under tree
In joy hast thou lived. Beware of the Sea!
If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore,
Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more.

(TT 3.v.503)

But Legolas is not the first character on whom the sound of the Sea has a disquieting effect. For even before the hobbits have left The Shire Frodo had a dream:

Then he heard a noise in the distance. At first he thought it was a great wind coming over the leaves of the forest. Then he knew that it was not leaves, but the sound of the Sea far-off; a sound he had never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams. Suddenly he found he was out in the open. There were no trees after all. He was on a dark heath, and there was a strange salt smell in the air. Looking up he saw before him a tall white tower, standing alone on a high ridge. A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea. He started to struggle up the ridge towards the tower: but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a noise of thunder.

(FR 1.v.108)

We can trace this troublous longing, this Sehnsucht, all the way back to the beginning of Tolkien's works, to the longing of Eriol and Ælfwine for the Sea and to the earliest version of The Music of the Ainur in The Book of Lost Tales. It is particularly prominent in Tuor from his beginning in The Fall of Gondolin and the bones of The Tale of Eärendel within The Book of Lost Tales, through the earliest versions of The Quenta Silmarillion and Annals of Beleriand, to Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin in Unfinished Tales, and in the end to The  Grey Annals, to The Tale of Years, and to the published Silmarillion.¹ And while the term 'The Unquiet of Ulmo' seems coined almost especially for him, it would apply equally well to Aldarion in The Tale of Aldarion and Erendis (UT 175-76, 178, 185).  There is even the hint that it may have affected Hobbits, including one and perhaps two Took uncles of Bilbo (FR Pr. 7; RK App. C 1103 [Isengar and Hildifons]; The Hobbit 11, 13-14).

As we can easily see, the sea-longing is not something particular to Elves.  Mortal and Immortal alike feel it.  If we turn next to a passage from The Ainulindalë, we shall see that the longing and disquiet caused by the Sea is fundamental in the profoundest sense. Ilúvatar grants the Ainur a vision of the Music they have just sung:

But the other Ainur looked upon this habitation set within the vast spaces of the World, which the Elves call Arda, the Earth; and their hearts rejoiced in light, and their eyes beholding many colours were filled with gladness; but because of the roaring of the sea they felt a great unquiet. And they observed the winds and the air, and the matters of which Arda was made, of iron and stone and silver and gold and many substances: but of all these water they most greatly praised. And it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the

Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.

(The Silmarillion, 19)

What's most curious here is the reaction of the Ainur to the sound of the Sea, which causes them 'a great unquiet.'  We are used to thinking of Elves and Men, the Children of Ilúvatar, as beset by such disquiet and longing, but not the Valar themselves. Since the Valar have not yet entered Arda, which so far exists only in thought (20), the sea's effect extends beyond 'the circles of the world' and suggests that all sentient beings, whether of flesh or of spirit, are within its reach. That this is so even in a vision attests the power of what they have seen, or, to be more precise, what they have heard, because that is clearly the avenue through which the unquiet and longing come to them.

But why? What is it about the 'voices of the Sea' that is so poignant? '[T]hat in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur' is not a sufficient answer in itself, since it does not explain why the Valar find this reminder of their own music disquieting.  Two clues may help us here.  The first is that Elves and Men do not recognize what they hear, but presumably the Valar do. The second is that Ulmo -- 'of all [the Valar] most deeply was he instructed by Ilúvatar in music' (19) -- has a conversation with Ilúvatar even as the music was being envisioned before them, in which Ilúvatar demonstrates to him that the worst efforts of Melkor have but made water and the world more beautiful than Ulmo had imagined in his music. This harks back to Ilúvatar's statement to Melkor that 'no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall but prove mine instrument in devising things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined' (17).

If the themes which the Ainur elaborated in making their music come from Ilúvatar, then it is the voice of Ilúvatar that Valar, Elves, and Men all hear in the 'voices of the sea.' The Valar recognize this. Elves and Men, who have not seen Ilúvatar face to face, as it were, do not.  But all who hearken long for the creator from whom the world divides them, or, in the case of the Valar who are about to enter into Arda and be bound there until the end, will divide them.²

What would the echo of God's voice evoke if not longing?

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¹ Eriol and Ælfwine (BoLT 1.46; 2.6, 314); The Music of the Ainur (BoLT 1.56); Tuor (BoLT 2.151-52, 156, 196, 254); The Quenta Silmarillion and The Annals of Beleriand  (HoME IV.37, 142-43, 145, 149, 151-52, 214, 308); Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin (UT 24-25, 34); The Grey Annals and The Tale of Years (HoME XI.90-91, 348, 352);  Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin (The Silmarillion 238, 244-45; cf. 246).

² To be strictly accurate the Valar are a subset of the Ainur who entered the world after the Music:

Thus it came to pass that of the Ainur some abode still with Ilúvatar beyond the confines of the World; but others, and among them many of the greatest and most fair, took the leave of Ilúvatar and descended into it. But this condition Ilúvatar made, or it is the necessity of their love, that their power should thenceforward be contained and bounded in the World, to be within it for ever, until it is complete, so that they are its life and it is theirs. And therefore they are named the Valar, the Powers of the World. 

(Silmarillion 20)

Is That An Allusion To Ulmo and Tuor in "The Great River" (FR 2.ix.380-81)?

... they let the River bear them on at its own pace, having no desire to hasten towards the perils that lay beyond, whichever course they took in the end. Aragorn let them drift with the stream as they wished, husbanding their strength against weariness to come. But he insisted that at least they should start early each day and journey on far into the evening; for he felt in his heart that time was pressing, and he feared that the Dark Lord had not been idle while they lingered in Lorien. 

Nonetheless they saw no sign of an enemy that day, nor the next. The dull grey hours passed without event. As the third day of their voyage wore on the lands changed slowly: the trees thinned and then failed altogether. On the eastern bank to their left they saw long formless slopes stretching up and away toward the sky; brown and withered they looked, as if fire had passed over them, leaving no living blade of green: an unfriendly waste without even a broken tree or a bold stone to relieve the emptiness. They had come to the Brown Lands that lay, vast and desolate, between Southern Mirkwood and the hills of the Emyn Muil. What pestilence or war or evil deed of the Enemy had so blasted all that region even Aragorn could not tell.

Upon the west to their right the land was treeless also, but it was flat, and in many places green with wide plains of grass. On this side of the River they passed forests of great reeds, so tall that they shut out all view to the west, as the little boats went rustling by along their fluttering borders. Their dark withered plumes bent and tossed in the light cold airs, hissing softly and sadly. Here and there through openings Frodo could catch sudden glimpses of rolling meads, and far beyond them hills in the sunset, and away on the edge of sight a dark line, where marched the southernmost ranks of the Misty Mountains. 

There was no sign of living moving things, save birds. Of these there were many: small fowl whistling and piping in the reeds, but they were seldom seen. Once or twice the travellers heard the rush and whine of swan-wings, and looking up they saw a great phalanx streaming along the sky.

'Swans!' said Sam. 'And mighty big ones too!' 

'Yes,' said Aragorn, 'and they are black swans.'

(FR 2.ix.380-81)

The Valar and Ilúvatar are famously obscure in The Lord of the Rings.  While the Dark Power, Sauron, is named and identified as a present actor in the affairs of this world from near the very beginning (FR 1.ii.47, 51), the other Powers are much harder to descry. The best example is of course Elbereth.  She is mentioned by Frodo as early as Three's Company (FR 1.iii.79) as someone whom the High Elves greatly revere. Clearly she is a godlike figure of great power -- she made the stars themselves -- but neither here nor later is she identified as one of the Valar, and it is not suggested that she is anything more than a source of inspiration or illumination to the Elves of Middle-Earth. She is sung of, sung to, invoked (with varying effect), and her name is even used as a password, but, within The Lord of the Rings itself, she is never explained.¹ Manwë, her spouse and ruler of the Valar, receives notice only from Bilbo in a single mention of the 'Elder King' in the poem Eärendil (FR 2.i.235);

Moreover, Frodo's ability in Three's Company to recognize the Elves he meets as High Elves because they call Elbereth's name reveals almost nothing.  Even an atheist, for example, could recognize as Roman Catholic someone heard reciting the Hail Mary, and could know that devout Catholics honor the Virgin Mary with a special reverence, but that does not imply any greater knowledge of the Virgin Mary or Roman Catholicism on the part of the atheist.²

It is likely, moreover, that Frodo knows little or nothing about the Valar in general or Elbereth in particular at this point -- not to mention Eru Ilúvatar -- since he is rather mystified when Gandalf hints at the intervention of Providence within time:

‘There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable:  Bilbo from the Shire! 

‘Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that maybe an encouraging thought.' 

‘It is not,’ said Frodo.  'Though I am not sure that I understand you.' 

(FR 1.ii.56, emphasis original)

One could well regard Frodo's lack of knowledge and clarity here as typical, at least for the hobbits, by whom and from whose viewpoint the Tale is told.  When, for example, Gildor invokes Elbereth's protection for Frodo, his instant response is hardly one of faith and understanding, and not at all unlike his reply to Gandalf: 'But where shall I find courage?... That is what I chiefly need' (FR 1.iii.84).

Another example of this comes in Henneth Annûn.  Faramir and the other Dunedain of Gondor turn to the West for a moment of silence before they eat, as they 'look towards Númenor that was, and beyond that to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be' (TT 4.v.676), but this custom is unknown to the hobbits, who are left 'feeling strangely rustic and untutored' (TT 4.v.676).  Here again the Valar are alluded to quite vaguely, not even named, not even in a periphrasis of the kind Elrond had used when he said that 'they who dwell beyond the Sea would not take' the Ring (FR 2.ii.266).  Here reference is buried in an allusion to a nameless land, remote and eternal.

Indeed the word Valar appears only three times in The Lord of the Rings. In Ithilien a soldier of Gondor calls upon them for protection from the Mûmak (TT 4.iv.661). At Aragorn's coronation Gandalf wishes that the days of the King may 'be blessed for as long as the thrones of the Valar endure' (RK 6.v.968).³ And finally in a moment that is as shining and evocative as it is mysterious, the narrator likens Théoden to 'Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young' (RK 5.v.838).

Yet the Valar and Ilúvatar are involved, exerting a subtle but important influence on events from afar that may be detected through seeming coincidence.  Gandalf suggests (but cannot openly say) as much in his remarks to an uncomprehending Frodo in The Shadow of the Past. In the same conversation the wizard also points out that Frodo was 'chosen,' but without saying by whom (FR 1.ii.61), and that '[i]t was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far: Bilbo's arrival just at that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark' (FR 1.ii.55-56).⁴ Gildor says of his meeting the hobbits that '[i]n this meeting there may be more than chance' (FR 1.iii.84). Bombadil remarks: 'Just chance brought me then, if chance you call it. It was no plan of mine....' (FR 1.vii.126). And finally Elrond states at the beginning of the Council:

'...The Ring! What shall we do with the Ring, the least of rings, the trifle that Sauron fancies? That is the doom that we must deem. 

'That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, I say. though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.' 

(FR 2.ii.242)

'Tuor is Led by the Swans to Vinyamar'© Ted Nasmith

We needn't labor this point. It is long established and well understood, and obvious to every attentive reader. What is not so obvious is what looks like an allusion to the Vala Ulmo, the Lord of Waters -- of lakes, streams, and rivers as well as seas -- and to Tuor, an important forefather of Aragorn, an allusion so subtly made and so quickly passed by that I've only just caught it after over four decades of reading The Lord of the Rings. Though I had at times wondered about Aragorn's comment about the swans when I encountered it, I had never given it any further thought in all the years I had known it.

Elsewhere in Tolkien, in works ranging across his entire career of work on the legendarium -- in The Book of Lost Tales, in Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin, and in The Silmarillion -- Ulmo is the Vala who most openly involves himself in the affairs of Elves and Men in their war against Morgoth.⁵ And not just then, it would appear: '[n]or has he ever forsaken Middle-earth, and whatsoever may have since befallen of ruin or of change has not ceased to take thought for it, and will not until the end of days' (Silmarillion, 40). So not only did Tolkien continue to cherish the links between Ulmo and Tuor and the swans as important elements in his tales, but he asserts that Ulmo's concern for Middle-earth never ended; and the intertextuality between The Lord of the Rings and the versions of Tuor's tale quoted below harmonizes nicely with Ulmo's ongoing devotion to the affairs of Middle-earth.  Let's turn to those other works for a moment.

One morning while casting his eye along the shore -- and it was then the latest days of summer -- Tuor saw three swans flying high and strong from the northward.  Now these birds he had not before seen in these regions, and he took them for a sign, and said: "Long has my heart been set on a journey far from here; lo! now at length I will follow these swans." Behold, the swans dropped into the water of his cove and there swimming thrice about rose again and winged slowly south along the coast, and Tuor bearing his harp and spear followed them. 

(BoLT 2.152)

Then Ulmo arose and spake to him.... And Ulmo said: 'O Tuor of the lonely heart, I will not that thou dwell for ever in fair places of birds and flowers.... But fare now on thy destined journey and tarry not, for far from hence is thy weird set.  Now thou must seek through the lands for the city of [Gondolin]....

(BoLT 2.155) 

And, maybe, from afar birds saw the fell winter that was to come; for those that were want to go south gathered early to depart, and others that used to dwell in the North came from their homes to Nevrast.  And one day, as Tuor sat upon the shore, he heard the rush and whine of great wings, and he looked up and saw seven white swans flying in a swift wedge southward.  But as they came above him they wheeled and flew suddenly down, and alighted with a great plash and churning of water. 

Now Tuor loved swans, which he knew on the grey pools of Mithrim; and the swan moreover had been the token of Annael and his foster-folk. He rose therefore to greet the birds, and called to them, marvelling to behold that they were greater and prouder than any of their kind that he had seen before; but they beat their wings and uttered harsh cries, as if they were wroth with him and would drive him from the shore.  Then with a great noise they rose again from the water and flew above his head, so that the rush of their wings blew upon him as a whistling wind; and wheeling in a wide circle they ascended into the high air and went away south.

Then Tuor cried aloud: 'Here now comes another sign that I have tarried too long!' And straightaway he climbed to the cliff-top, and there beheld the swans still wheeling on high; but when he turned southward and set out to follow them, they flew swiftly away. 

(Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin, in UT, 25-26)

And Tuor came into Nevrast, and looking upon Belegaer the Great Sea he was enamoured of it, and the sound of it and the longing for it were ever in his heart and ear, and an unquiet was on him that took him at last into the depths of the realms of Ulmo. Then he dwelt in Nevrast alone, and the summer of that year passed, and the doom of Nargothrond drew near; but when the autumn came he saw seven great swans flying south, and he knew them for a sign that he had tarried overlong, and he followed their flight along the shores of the sea. Thus he came at length to the deserted halls of Vinyamar beneath Mount Taras, and he entered in, and found there the shield and hauberk, and the sword and helm, that Turgon had left there by the command of Ulmo long before; and he arrayed himself in those arms, and went down to the shore. But there came a great storm out of the west, and out of that storm Ulmo the Lord of Waters arose in majesty and spoke to Tuor as he stood beside the sea. And Ulmo bade him depart from that place and seek out the hidden kingdom of Gondolin; and he gave Tuor a great cloak, to mantle him in shadow from the eyes of his enemies.  

(Silmarillion, 238-39)

While the presence of the swans alone clinches the allusion, I think, there's more here to link these passages than that. The swans in The Lord of the Rings seem to be flying south, just as Tuor's were. For the members of the fellowship detect them only when they hear the whirring of their wings, which suggests that the swans came up from behind them. In both cases they are also of a remarkable size, large even for swans. And like his distant ancestor Tuor, Aragorn has an errand to a white city that is nearly the last bastion of defense against the evil of its age, and the names of their destinations echo each other by sound and etymology: Gondor and Gondolin. Moreover, one of the names of Gondolin in The Book of Lost Tales is Gwarestrin, which means Tower of the Guard, just like Minas Tirith (BoLT 2.158).  Both Tuor and Aragorn feel that they have tarried on their errand.

But why black swans?  It seems too trite to think that Tolkien is here playing with the belief popular from antiquity to the 18th century that black swans did not exist -- the very source of the phrase rara avis -- or with the superstition that associated black animals with evil. Aragorn does not react to them as he did to the spying crows in Hollin (FR 2.iii.284-86). If anything, he seems surprised and pleased by the sight of them. Clearly he regards their color as noteworthy, neither common, which would call for less comment, nor unheard of, which would call for more. But what makes it noteworthy?

In Tolkien swans are most commonly identified or associated with ships, and in a lengthy scene, almost the last before this one, Galadriel comes in a swanship to bid farewell to the company, who have already embarked in their boats.

They turned a sharp bend in the river, and there, sailing proudly down the stream toward them, they saw a swan of great size. The water rippled on either side of the white breast beneath its curving neck. Its beak shone like burnished gold, and its eyes glinted like jet set in yellow stones; its huge white wings were half lifted. A music came down the river as it drew nearer; and suddenly they perceived that it was a ship, wrought and carved with elven-skill in the likeness of a bird. 

(FR 2.viii.372)

But if swans mean ships, then black swans mean black ships. What of that? Again in a scene during the company's sojourn in Lothlórien, in the powerful and memorable vision Frodo sees in Galadriel's mirror, we find black ships:

The mist cleared and he saw a sight which he had never seen before but knew at once: the Sea. Darkness fell. The sea rose and raged in a great storm. Then he saw against the Sun, sinking blood-red into a wrack of clouds, the black outline of a tall ship with torn sails riding up out of the West. Then a wide river flowing through a populous city. Then a white fortress with seven towers. And then again a ship with black sails, but now it was morning again, and the water rippled with light, and a banner bearing the emblem of a white tree shone in the sun. A smoke as of fire and battle arose, and again the sun went down in a burning red that faded into a grey mist; and into the mist a small ship passed away, twinkling with lights. 

(FR 2.vii.364)

The first black ship here is that of Elendil, whose heir Aragorn is, and who is also a descendant of Tuor.  Like Tuor, Elendil escaped from the destruction of his homeland to found a new hope. The second is the ship captured from the Corsairs of Umbar in which Aragorn arrives at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, just in time to turn the tide of battle and save Minas Tirith.

For this allusion to have weight for us, we need to know all this.  That is not so for Aragorn, however. Nothing suggests that he knew of Frodo's vision, but he did not need such knowledge to recall the story of Tuor and Ulmo and the swans here, and therefore to see in them an omen for himself. How much more he might have seen here is debatable.  He was familiar with the Corsairs of Umbar and the danger they posed to Gondor from the time of his service there decades earlier (RK App. A 1055), and black sails appear to have been an identifying characteristic of their ships (RK 5.vi.846-47; vii.853).  Both Galadriel and Elrond subsequently direct his attention that way, as if reminding him of something he already knows (TT 3.v.503; RK 5.ii.775, 781); and once he takes control of the palantír of Orthanc he sees the threat from the Corsairs and their black-sailed ships (RK 5.ii.780-81).

Of the allusion alone can we be sure. As for the rest we can only speculate. Yet I would not find it surprising if Tolkien, whose attention to detail in such matters is a constant revelation, left such an interpretation of this omen there to be found, just as he left the allusion to the tale of Tuor and Ulmo and the swans hanging by a single clue, Aragorn's remark upon their color.

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¹ I am attending here to only those mentions of the Valar and Eru contained in The Lord of the Rings proper, not the appendices, which within the conceit of authorship are represented in the Prologue as later additions (FR 14-16). Elbereth invoked: FR 1.xi.195, xii.198, 214; sung to: FR 1.iii.79; 2.i.238, TT 4.x.729 (perhaps also an invocation), RK 6.ix.1028; sung of FR 2.i.236, viii.377-78; password: RK 6.i.912-13.

At FR 1.xii.198 Aragorn states that Frodo's invocation of Elbereth on Weathertop (1.xi.195-96) had some effect on the Witch-king, but when Frodo does it again at the Ford of Bruinen it appears to have none at all (1.xii.214).  The resolution of this seeming contradiction probably lies in the greater desperation of the Nazgûl to retake the Ring before it reaches the comparative safety of Rivendell. This harmonizes with Aragorn's earlier description of their methods: they will not attack openly themselves, 'not until they are desperate, not while all the long leagues of Eriador lie before us' (FR 1.x.174).  On this showing Strider's 'leagues' could be those between Bree and Rivendell.

² I do not suggest here any connection between Elbereth and the Virgin Mary, except perhaps in the degree of reverence the Elves show her. The example means to indicate that the ability to identify someone as belonging to a certain group because of a reference that person makes does not entail any greater familiarity with that person's beliefs.

³ It is interesting to note that the word Valar is used in Gondor and by the people of Gondor. This contrasts with Elrond's avoidance of the word. Without more evidence it is difficult to say much, but this may reflect a difference in human and elven attitudes towards the Valar.

⁴ Gandalf then goes on to say: 'There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master.... So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!' We appear to have here an example of what Ilúvatar tells Melkor in the Ainulindalë: 

'And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

(Silmarillion, 17)

⁵ The Silmarillion, 26-27, 40, 103, 114-15, 125-26, 155, 158, 196, 209, 212, 238-41, 243-44, 247, 249.

From the Bliss of the Gods to a Jewel Shining in the Darkness -- What Tolkien's Kilbride Dedication Can Show Us

The sale at Sotheby's in London on 4 June 2015 of a first edition of The Hobbit for £137,000 has certainly drawn its share of attention, for having nearly tripled the last previous auction price of such a volume, and for Sotheby's misidentifying as Elvish a dedication which Tolkien had inscribed to Katherine Kilbride in Old English.¹ Here is an image from the page in the Sotheby's catalog:

We may transcribe the verses at the bottom of the page

 as follows:

Fela bið on westwegum werum uncuðra,
wundra and wihta, wlitescyne lond,
eardgeard ylfa, eorclanstanas
on dunscrafum digle scninað.

And translate them:

There's many a thing on westward ways unknown to men,
Wonders and creatures, a land of splendor,
The homeland of the Elves; precious stones
In mountain caves secretly shine.

The first thing we must note is that the last word, scninað, is a rather surprising scribal error by Tolkien.  There is no such verb in Old English as 'scninan.' Clearly it should be scinað, which means 'shine.'  Professor Susan Irvine of University College London, whom The Guardian consulted for its article, has also rightly pointed out that the last line and a half of this poem -- from eorclanstanas to the end -- diverges from a similar poem found in Tolkien's The Lost Road (44):

Thus cwæth Ælfwine Widlást:

Fela bith on Westwegum werum uncúthra,
wundra and wihta, wlitescéne land,
eardgeard elfa, and esa bliss.
Lyt ænig wat hwylc his longath sie
tham the eftsithes eldo getwæfeth.

Which Tolkien himself renders in prose as:

Thus said Ælfwine the far-travelled: "There's many a thing in the West-regions unknown to men, marvels and strange beings, a land fair and lovely, the homeland of the Elves, and the bliss of the Gods. Little doth any man know what longing is his whom old age cutteth off from return."

(LR 44)

Now Tolkien had been working on The Lost Road in the year or so just before The Hobbit appeared (21 September 1937), and it's entirely reasonable to think that as he was casting about for some verses to inscribe in this presentation copy his mind came to rest upon the lines from The Lost Road.  These verses, however, have a much darker tone, which Tolkien perhaps judged inappropriate for his former student, Katherine Kilbride, who was an invalid.  So, he removed the grim bits and wrote new lines that he deemed more fitting for the occasion and for the nature of the gift he was giving.

This much is prologue, I would argue.  For to describe these two poems as 'similar' and to say that the poem in The Hobbit 'diverges' or 'varies' from the poem in The Lost Road is quite an understatement.  As Tolkien himself famously remarked in On Fairy-stories:² 

... to take the extreme case of Red Riding Hood: it is of merely secondary interest that the retold version of this story, in which the little girl is saved by wood-cutters, is directly derived from Perrault's story in which she was eaten by the wolf. The really important thing is that the later version has a happy ending (more or less, and if we do not mourn the grandmother overmuch), and that Perrault's version had not. And that is a very profound difference....

A 'variation', a 'divergence', would be Bilbo's 'eager feet' (FR 1.i.35) and Frodo's 'weary feet' (FR 1.iii.73) in The Road Goes Ever On.  There a small change of the sort that Tolkien was so good at alters the tenor of the poem, and thereby the characterization of the speakers, suggesting something about their views of the roads they were about to set out upon.  We may also say the same of the last version of the The Road Goes Ever On (RK 6.vi.987), which in a few new lines reveals yet another road and the speaker's attitude toward it. These changes are improving variations on a theme. Each is linked to the next, each reflects the story that is, and hints at the journey to come, just as the very first version of this poem, sung by Bilbo at the end of The Hobbit (313), relishes looking back down that road as part of the joy of returning home. He knows where he is going, and what he has escaped.

But we have nothing like these variations, these evolutions, in the poems we are considering here. The verses in the Kilbride dedication and from The Lost Road differ from each other as much as Errantry and Bilbo's Song of Eärendil in Rivendell (FR 2.i.233-36). For all the similarities of word and rhyme and meter in Errantry and Eärendil, for all that both tell of a mariner who sets out on a journey to convey a message, the two are different poems.  For the tale told in Errantry is silly and funny and the message slips the easily distracted mariner's mind, compelling him to start all over again, which is part of the humor of the poem. Eärendil, by contrast, is about the tragedy and triumph of a determined messenger who saves the world by delivering his message at great cost to himself.  The same is true here.  We have distinct poems that share part of a sentence.

Let's look first at those shared lines, ignoring the orthographic variations.

Fela bið on westwegum werum uncuðra,
wundra and wihta, wlitescyne lond,
eardgeard ylfa,

As so often in Tolkien, going all the way back to the early poems Goblin Feet and You and Me and the Cottage of Lost Play (The Book of Lost Tales 1.27-32) there is the image of a road and a journey. Westwegum, literally 'westways,' places the end of this road in eardgeard ylfa, the shining homeland of the elves: Elvenhome. This suggests not only the West beyond the sea in Middle-earth, but also -- and this is especially true for those unacquainted with Tolkien's legendarium in 1937, which is to say, for almost everyone -- conjures the other mythic western lands of the great sea, from the Isles of the Blessed to Tír na nÓg, from Atlantis to the unknown destination of Scyld's funeral ship (Beowulf 26-52). We can also likely detect a connection to England itself in this word, since, as Tolkien would have known, vestr-vegir, the cognate phrase in Old Icelandic, referred to the British Isles themselves; and of course Tolkien once meant to make England itself the homeland of the Elves (BoLT 1.22-27).

In The Lost Road the wonder and splendor to be revealed in the West reaches yet higher. Not only will we men find Elvenhome, but we will glimpse esa bliss, the bliss of the gods. Though not for long, it seems. Esa bliss slips quickly away, beyond our grasp.  We are left only with longing and old age.  The wonder and beauty of the first lines turn dark because we cannot attain such bliss. It is not for us.  Even the sight of it awakens a longing we can neither turn from nor satisfy. The divide between us and them could not be more clear.

These lines, moreover, are 'laden with the sadness of Mortal Men,' as Legolas puts it after hearing Aragorn recite a poem of the Rohirrim in their own language (TT 4.vi.508).  As such they touch upon themes of 'Death and the desire for deathlessness' which Tolkien later said lay at the heart of The Lord of the Rings.³ Not only does The Lost Road employ these lines with immediate personal relevance to the characters speaking and hearing them, a son and his aged, failing father, but it affords them a wider application.  For with this work begins the Tale of Númenor, the island where men reject the fate of death and try to seize immortality and the 'bliss of the gods' by force, with cataclysmic results. Tolkien continued to develop this story for decades (as was his wont), in The Lord of the Rings, in The Notion Club Papers, in Akallabêth, and finally in Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth, which depicts men as already embittered about their 'swift fate' before the First Age had ended.⁴ The verses in The Lost Road may be said to contain within them the seeds, and perhaps the summary, of these themes. In the end, every man knows the longing for the bliss of the gods from which old age and death cut him off.

How different is the world the Kilbride dedication depicts. So far from an elegy of loss and longing, here a treasure shines secretly before us in the mountain caverns of Elvenhome. This is of course quite apropos in a presentation copy of The Hobbit, as is Tolkien's use of eorclanstanas, another form of which, eorcanstan, in the singular gives us arkenstone.  But eorcanstan itself brims with allusion, as this marvelous post by Dr Eleanor Parker makes clear, most prominently to Sigurd and to Christ, both of whom are likened to precious jewels using this word -- for Sigurd it's the Old Norse cognate jarknasteinn -- and both of whom fight dragons. 'And,' as Dr Parker points out,

'there's not as big a gap as you might think between Sigurðr and Christ; the scene of Sigurðr killing the dragon appears on early carvings in a Christian context, which are difficult to interpret but may show Sigurðr's triumph being cast as a battle between good and evil.'

And in Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, which he was also working in the 1930s, there exists for Sigurd, though dead, the promise of bliss after death and the world's ending.

In the day of Doom
he shall deathless stand
who death tasted
and dies no more,
the serpent-slayer,
seed of Óðin:
not all shall end,
nor Earth perish.

On his head the Helm,
in his hand lightning,
afire his spirit,
in his face splendour.
When war passeth
in world rebuilt,
bliss shall they drink
who the bitter tasted.

(Völsungkviða en Nýja ix.80-81)

This mention of bliss here is interesting because even the possibility of it seemed to be denied to men in The Lost Road verses, and the defeat of old age and its sequel appeared quite final.  As above, it is not so difficult to see what Sigurd has to do with Christ: bliss beyond the ending of this world in a new heaven and a new earth. Others words, too, in the Kilbride dedication provide a link to Christ and his ancient enemy, the dragon. For the words 'on dunscrafum digle' allude to the bestiary poem The Panther* in the collection Physiologus.

Just as the common lines of both Tolkien poems begin by enumerating how 'many are' (fela bið) the wonders and creatures of the world, before narrowing the focus down to the homeland of the Elves, The Panther also begins by stating how 'many are' (monge sindon) the different kinds of creatures across the wide world, before drawing our attention to one single animal,the panther, who is the most wondrous of them all. He guards a far land and dwells æfter dunscrafum (12), 'among mountain caves.' Kind to all other creatures, he has but one enemy, the dragon, to whom he does all the harm he can (15-18).⁵  Twice he is described in terms familiar from the common lines of Tolkien's verses (19: wundrum scine; and 26-27: scinra / wundrum). And again after further descriptions of his beauty that dazzles the eye, with each of his hues more lovely than the last (19-30), and of his mild and moderate character, except when it comes to the dragon (30-34), we are told he retires to sleep for three days digle stowe under dunscrafum 'in a secret place beneath the mountain caves' (36-37). In the latter half of the poem (38-74), the panther is explicitly identified with Christ, now risen from the secret places of the earth (dīgle ārās, 62), and the poet ends with a formula like that with which he began:

monigfealde sind geond middangeard
god ungnyðe  þe ūs tō giefe dǣleð
and tō feorhnere Fæder ælmihtig,
and se ānga Hyht ealra gesceafta
uppe ge niþre. 

Many are the good things across middle-earth,
Abundant goods which the Almighty Father
Assigns us for grace and for salvation,
And he the only Hope of all creatures
Above and below.

So clearly points of contact exist between these texts, which help Tolkien to create the more hopeful tenor of the Kilbride dedication. For even if the reader of The Hobbit soon learns that the arkenstone glittering in secret beneath the mountain halls is guarded by a dragon, heroes, whether Sigurd or Christ, can also shine like a jewel in the darkness and defeat that venomous, ancient enemy (33-34: þām āttorsceaþan, his fyrngeflitan). And given his faith and his words on the wonders of far off Elvenhome, it is rather tempting to think that in the words geond middangeard Tolkien saw the meaning 'beyond Middle-earth.' However that may be, the allusive links are not to be doubted, even if in 1937 only C.S. Lewis and perhaps a few others could have felt their full import.

Within these two distinct poems -- for that is what they are -- we can see Tolkien working masterfully to create opposite effects through the 'divergence' of his materials. In The Lost Road we find elegy, in the Kilbride dedication to The Hobbit hope. And the difference that this makes suits the Tales he is telling in each work.  For The Hobbit is a Tale of hope and happy endings, of renewal and return. In The Lost Road the Tale of Númenor could only have ended in cataclysm, with the great green wave sweeping across the land and a world lost forever, just as it does in Akallabêth:

In an hour unlooked for by Men this doom befell, on the nine and thirtieth day since the passing of the fleets. Then suddenly fire burst from the Meneltarma, and there came a mighty wind and a tumult of the earth, and the sky reeled, and the hills slid, and Númenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud; and all its gardens and its halls and its towers, its tombs and its riches, and its jewels and its webs and its things painted and carven, and its lore: they vanished for ever. And last of all the mounting wave, green and cold and plumed with foam, climbing over the land, took to its bosom Tar-Míriel the Queen, fairer than silver or ivory or pearls. Too late she strove to ascend the steep ways of the Meneltarma to the holy place; for the waters overtook her, and her cry was lost in the roaring of the wind.

(Silmarillion, 279)

_________________________________

*Before anything else I would like to express my thanks to Dr Eleanor Parker for her gracious conversation and correspondence on the verses discussed above. It was she who brought The Panther to my attention. Any errors of translation or interpretation are entirely my own.

_________________________

¹The initial error in the Sotheby's catalog is doubly wrong, first as to the language of the dedicatory lines, and second in seeming to name John Rateliff as the source of that attribution: 'Rateliff identifies the Elvish verse as an extract from Tolkien's The Lost Road.' But in Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit (second edition, 2011) appendix v, which Sotheby's cites, Rateliff makes no mention of the language in which the verse is written. It is possible that Sotheby's did not intend the sentence to be read that way.

² On Fairy-stories has appeared in print and on the internet so many times that referring to a page number in any one edition is almost unfair. I shall follow the practice adopted by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson in their Tolkien on Fairy-stories (2014), where they number the paragraphs. The quotation in the text above is from paragraph number 24.

³ See letter 203 (Letters 1981): 'But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!' And also 211: 'It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the "escapes": serial longevity, and hoarding memory.' These letters date from 1957 and 1958, respectively.

⁴ The Athrabeth, or The Debate of Finrod and Andreth, seems to date from 1959 or a little earlier. See Morgoth's Ring (New York 1993) 303-304. The bitterness about their brief lives compared to the Eldar and the resentment men felt over it runs throughout the Athrabeth (303-366), appearing within the first page of the dialogue (307-308):

'More than a hundred years it is now,' said Andreth, 'since we came over the Mountains; and Bëor and Baran and Boron each lived beyond his ninetieth year.  Our passing was swifter before we found this land.'

'Then are you content here?' said Finrod. 

'Content?' said Andreth. 'No heart of Man is content.  All passing and dying is a grief to it; but if the withering is less soon then that is some amendment, a little lifting of the Shadow.' 

'What mean you by that?' said Finrod. 

'Surely you know well!' said Andreth. 'The darkness that is now confined to the North, but once'; and here she paused and her eyes darkled, as if he mind were gone back into black years best forgot. 'But once lay upon all Middle-earth, while ye dwelt in your bliss.' 

'It was not concerning the Shadow that I asked,' said Finrod. 'What mean you, I would say, by the lifting of it? Or how is the swift fate of men concerned with it?  Ye also, we hold (being instructed by the Great who know), are Children of Eru, and your fate and nature is from Him.' 

'I see,' said Andreth, 'that in this ye of the High-elves do not differ from your lesser kindred whom we have met in the world, though they have never dwelt in the Light.  All ye Elves deem that we die swiftly by our true kind.  That we are brittle and brief, and ye are strong and lasting.  We may be "Children of Eru", as ye say in your lore; but we are children to you also: to be loved a little maybe, and yet creatures of less worth, upon whom ye may look down from the height of your power and your knowledge, with a smile, or with pity, or with a shaking of heads.'

⁵ I find it impossible not to think of Aslan while reading of the panther, but it seems equally impossible that no one has never noted that before.