Sauron Defeated (50 page)

32. Rosamund: see V.54.

33. O Horsefriend of Macedon! A Lowdham joke on Frankley's first name (of which one is reminded immediately above), referring to King Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great (Greek phil-ippos 'horse-loving').

34. a star-name for Orion, or for Rigel: see p. 301 and note 6.

35. the glosses: translations into Anglo-Saxon of individual words in Latin manuscripts. See my father's (draft) letter written in August 1967 to a correspondent known only as Mr. Rang (Letters no. 297), in which he gave a long account of the relation between Anglo-Saxon Earendel and the Earendil of his mythology. The relevant part of this letter is reprinted in II.266, but without the footnote to the words 'To my mind the Anglo-Saxon uses seem plainly to indicate that it was a star presaging the dawn (at any rate in English tradition)': Its earliest recorded A-S form is earendil (oer-), later earendel, eorendel. Mostly in glosses on jubar = leoma; also on aurora.

But also in Blickling Homilies 163, se niwa eorendel applied to St John the Baptist; and most notably Crist 104, eala!

earendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended.

Often supposed to refer to Christ (or Mary), but comparison with Blickling Homilies suggests that it refers to the Baptist.

The lines refer to a herald, and divine messenger, clearly not the sodfaesta sunnan leoma = Christ.

The last words of this note refer to the following lines in the poem Crist:

Eala Earendel engla beorhtast

ofer middangeard monnum sended,

ond sodfaesta sunnan leoma,

torht ofer tunglas - pu tida gehwane.

of sylfum pe symle inlihtes.

'... and true radiance of the sun, bright above the stars - thou of thy very self illuminest for ever every season.' - The Blickling Homilies are a collection of Old English sermons preserved in a manuscript at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.

36. E has 'what Cynewulf meant'. Of Cynewulf, author of the Crist and other poems, nothing is certainly known beyond his name, which he preserved by setting the runic letters composing it into short passages in the body of his poems, so that the actual names of the runes (as for example the W-rune was called wynn

'joy') have a meaning in the context.

37. From this point to the end of Night 66 there are not two but three texts to be considered (as already noted, p. 147), for this part of the typescript F was rejected and replaced by a new version, while both typescript versions differ radically from E in respect of Lowdham's linguistic discoveries. The divergences have many notable features, and the superseded versions are given separately, pp. 299 ff.

38. 'That breaks my dream' was an expression of my mother's, meaning that something in waking life had suddenly reminded her of a passage in a dream. In the original version of Night 66

(p. 303) Jeremy says 'That breaks my dream!' when Lowdham's words suddenly recall to his mind the place where, in his dream, he had found the reference to Numenor. - The Oxford English Dictionary does not give the expression, and the only place that I have found it is in the English Dialect Dictionary, ed. Joseph Wright, Break 27 (3), with a reference to West Yorkshire.

39. Yozayan: this Adunaic name occurs in Aldarion and Erendis (Unfinished Tales p. 184): 'Do you not love the Yozayan?'

40. The term Elf-latin (also Elven-latin) occurs frequently in The Lost Road and The Lhammas: see the Index to Vol.V. Alboin Errol called the first language ('Eressean') that 'came through'

to him Elf-latin, but it is not explained why he did so.

41. Tiwas: Tiw was the name in Old English of the Germanic god equated with Mars (whence Tuesday, based on Latin dies Martis; French Mardi), and known in Old Norse as Tyr. The name is generally derived from an earlier * Tiwaz, cognate with Latin deus (< 'deiwos), and so meaning originally 'god'; in Old Norse the plural Twar 'gods' is found, of which Tiwas (=

'Valar') is the unrecorded Old English equivalent that 'came through' to Lowdham.

42. Nowendaland: derived from the recorded Old English word nowend 'shipmaster, mariner'. For another occurrence of Nowendaland see p. 317.

43. Freafiras: this word is found elsewhere (see p. 317) as a translation of the word turkildi in Lowdham's Fragment I (p. 246), which he translated 'lordly men' (p. 248): Old English frea

'lord', often found also as the first element of compounds, and firas 'men', a word used in Old English poetry (cf. IV.206, 208, 211-12).

44. Regeneard: this was no doubt used in reference to Valinor. In Old English the element regn- occurs in compounds with an intensive force ('greatness, power'), and also in proper names (as Regenweald, revived as Reginald). In the ancient Norse poems Regin, plural, meant the gods, the rulers of the world, and occurs in Ragna-rok 'the doom of the gods' (mistakenly transformed into 'the twilight of the gods' by confusion with the word rokr 'twilight'). Old English eard 'land, country, dwelling, home'; thus Regeneard 'God-home', Valinor.

45. Midswipen: a word midja-sweipains is found in Gothic, apparently meaning 'cataclysm, flood of the middle(-earth)', midja being a reduced form of midjun- as in Gothic midjun-gards (the inhabited world of men, 'Middle-earth'). This is clearly the basis of Lowdham's unrecorded Old English Midswipen.

46. hebaensuil: in later spelling heofonsyl; cf. the Old English text given on p. 314. frumaeldi: 'First Age'. I cannot certainly interpret Wihawinia.

47. In The Lost Road (V.43) Oswin Errol tells Alboin: 'But you'll get into trouble, if you let your cats out of the bag among the philologists - unless, of course, they back up the authorities.'

Like Edwin Lowdham, Oswin Errol had studied Old English (V.44).

48. westra lage wegas rehtas, wraikwas nu isti: the line 'came through' also to Alboin Errol in The Lost Road (V.43), but ending nu isti sa wraithas; see p. 304.

49. Onomasticon: alphabetic list of proper names, especially of persons.

50. In The Lost Road AElfwine chanted a form of these lines in the hall before King Edward the Elder (V.84), where they are not given in an archaic form but in the spelling of the manuscript of The Seafarer (see V.85):

Monad modes lust mid mereflode

ford to feran, paet ic feor heonan

ofer hean holmas, ofer hwaeles edel

elpeodigra eard gesece.

Nis me to hearpan hyge ne to hringpege

ne to wife wyn ne to worulde hyht

ne ymb owiht elles nefne ymb yda gewealc.

A prose translation is given (whereas Lowdham translates into alliterative verse): 'The desire of my spirit urges me to journey forth over the flowing sea, that far hence across the hills of water and the whale's country I may seek the land of strangers.

No mind have I for harp, nor gift of ring, nor delight in women, nor joy in the world, nor concern with aught else save the rolling of the waves.'

In The Seafarer the text is somewhat different: monad modes lust maela gehwylce

ferd to feran, paet ic feor heonan

elpeodigra eard gesece

(which is then followed by five lines omitted in AElfwine's version); maela gehwylce 'on every occasion', ferd (ferhd) 'heart, spirit', i.e. literally 'the desire of my spirit urges my heart on every occasion to journey'. These alterations reappear in Lowdham's version here, and they depend, I imagine, on my father's judgement that the preserved text of The Seafarer is corrupt.

The third line in The Lost Road text, ofer hean holmas, ofer hwaeles edel, not found in The Seafarer, is replaced in Lowdham's version by the less banal ofer garsecges grimme holmas (writing it in later spelling), 'over the grim waves of Garsecg (the ocean)'; for Garsecg see the references given in V.82.

The fourth line of Lowdham's version differs, as he points out, from that in The Seafarer in the reading aelbuuina eard (= later aelfwina eard) 'land of the Elf-friends' for elpeodigra eard 'land of strangers, aliens'; the substitution of aelfwina for elpeodigra requires the presence of the word uut (ut) for metrical reasons.

The text of The Lost Road follows The Seafarer.

In The Notion Club Papers AElfwine's chant before the king (p. 272) is exactly as Lowdham's version here, but given in later spelling; see also p. 304.

51. These lines Alboin Errol recited to his father in The Lost Road (V.44) in precisely the same form, except that AElfwine is not there called Eadwines sunu. For other appearances of these lines see V.55. In the translation the words 'a land lovely to look on'

(wlitescene land) have been added from the first typescript (see note 37): they were inadvertently omitted in the second.

52. Lowdham concludes his lecture in the manner of the ending of a medieval minstrel's romance, and with a swipe at Frankley. or I ende: 'before I end.'

53. From Night 67 onwards there are again only the manuscript E

and the typescript F, the latter being the continuation of the revised typescript (see p. 147 and note 37 above).

54. 0 Lover of Horses: see note 33.

55. Lowdham's 'fragments' are inserted into the typescript on separate sheets. They are in two forms: a typescript, printed here, and a manuscript of two pages, reproduced as frontispieces to this book, representing Lowdham's copies 'in a big bold hand, done with one of the great thick-nibbed pens Lowdham is fond of', with 'glosses in red ink': for unglossed words there are however (unlike what Lowdham said of his copies, p. 248) no query marks. In the typescript text of the fragments the Avallonian and Adunaic words are given all in capital letters, but I print them here in italic, capitalising according to the manuscript version.

56. Comparison of the typescript text of the fragments printed here with the manuscript version reproduced as frontispieces will show that the only differences in actual word-forms are manuscript hikalba 'she fell' in I (B), where the typescript has hikallaba; manuscript katha 'all' in II, where the typescript has katha; and manuscript ido 'now' at all three occurrences in II, but idon at the last two in the typescript, with the gloss 'now (is)'. There are many minor differences in Lowdham's glosses.

The typescript text of the fragments was no doubt made to accompany the final typescript F of the narrative, but it is not clear to me whether it preceded or followed the manuscript pages. Earlier forms of these pages are given on pp. 311 - 12. For the form of the fragments in E see p. 309.

57. Plato's dialogue Timaeus is the source (together with the long unfinished dialogue Critias) of the legend of Atlantis, the great island empire in the western ocean which, expanding aggressive-ly against the peoples of the Mediterranean, was defeated by the Athenians, and was swallowed up 'in a single day and night' by the sea, leaving a vast shoal of mud that rendered the waters impassable in the region where Atlantis had been. According to Plato, the story was told (about the beginning of the sixth century B.C.) by an Egyptian priest to Solon the Athenian, and it came down thence by several intermediaries to Critias, a relative of Plato's, who tells the story in the two dialogues. In the Critias a long and extremely detailed account of Atlantis is given, of its great city, the temple of Poseidon with its colossal statue of the god, the wealth of the land in all resources of minerals, animals, timber, flowers and fruits, the horse-racing, the bull-sacrifice, the laws governing the realm. At the end of this account the narrator tells that the men of Atlantis fell away from the justice, wisdom and virtue of earlier generations, and that Zeus, perceiving their debasement and corruption, and wishing to punish them, called all the gods together and spoke to them; but at this point the Critias breaks off unfinished. The story of the war with the Greeks and the downfall of Atlantis is told, very briefly, in the other dialogue, the Timaeus.

The eldest child of Poseidon (tutelary god of Atlantis) by a mortal woman became the first king, and Poseidon named him Atlas, 'and after him the whole island and ocean were called Atlantis.'

Ultimately the name Atlas is that of the Titan who upheld the heavens on his head and his hands, according to Hesiod in the far western regions of the earth, near the dwelling of the Hesperides. He was the father of the Pleiades, and also, in Homer, of Calypso, on whose island Ogygia Odysseus was shipwrecked.

58. Cf. The Lost Road, where Audoin Errol, son of Alboin, speaks to himself of his dreams (V.52): 'Just pictures, but not a sound, not a word. Ships coming to land. Towers on the shore. Battles, with swords glinting but silent. And there is that ominous picture: the great temple on the mountain, smoking like a volcano.'

59. E has here: ' "... But I've done what I can. Sauron and nahamna remain to be solved." "Sauron!" said Jeremy in a strange voice.'

Lowdham refers only to unknown Quenya words because, as will be seen more fully later, in E there was no Adunaic element in the fragments he received. The word nahamna preceded nukumna 'humbled' of the later text of the Quenya fragment (p. 246), and was uninterpretable also by Alboin Errol in The Lost Road (V.47).