Sauron Defeated (60 page)

$46 And none can tell the tale of their fate, for none ever returned. And whether they came ever in truth to that haven which of old men thought that they could descry; or whether they found it not or came to some other land and there assailed the Avalai, who shall say, for none know. For the world was changed in that time, and the memory of all that went before is become dim and unsure.

$47 But those that are wisest in discernment aver that the fleets of the Numenoreans came indeed to Avallonde and encompassed it about, but that the Avalai made no sign. But Manawe being grieved sought the counsel at the last of Eru, and the Avalai laid down their governance of Earth. And Eru overthrew its shape, and a great chasm was opened in the sea between Numenor and Avallonde and the seas poured in, and into that abyss fell all the fleets of the Numenoreans and were swallowed in oblivion. But Avallonde and Numenore that stood on either side of the great rent were also destroyed; and they foundered and are no more. And the Avalai thereafter had no local habitation on earth, nor is there any place more where memory of an earth without evil is preserved; and the Avalai dwell in secret or have faded to shadows, and their power is minished.

$48 But Numenor went down into the sea, and all its children and fair maidens and its ladies, and even Tar-Ilien the Queen, and all its gardens and halls and towers and riches, its jewels and its webs and its things painted and carven, and its laughter and its mirth and its music and its wisdom and its speech, vanished for ever.

$49 Save only the very top of Meneltyula, for that was a holy place and never defiled, and that maybe is still above the waves, as a lonely isle somewhere in the great waters, if haply a mariner should come upon it. And many indeed after sought it, because it was said among the remnant of Numenor that those with holy sight had been able from the top of Meneltyula to see the haven of Avallonde, which otherwise only those could see who sailed far westward. And the hearts of the Numenoreans even after their ruin were still set westward.

$50 And though they knew that Numenor and Avallonde were no more they said: 'Avallonde is no more and Numenor is not; yet they were, and not in this present darkness; yet they were, and therefore still are in true being and in the whole shape of the world.' And the Numenoreans held that men so blessed might look upon other times than those of their body's life, and they longed ever to escape from the darkness of exile and see in some fashion the light that was of old. 'But all the ways are now crooked,' they said, 'that once were straight.'

$51 And in this way it came to pass that any were spared from the downfall of Numenore; and maybe that was the answer to the errand of Amardil. For those that were spared were all of his house and kin. For Elendil had remained behind, refusing the King's summons when he set out to war, and he went aboard ship, and abode there riding out the storm in the shelter of the eastern shore. And being protected by the land from the great draught of the sea that drew all down into the abyss, he escaped from death in that time. And a mighty wind arose such as had not before been, and it came out of the West, and it blew the sea into great hills; and fleeing before it Elendil and his sons in seven ships were carried far away, borne up on the crests of great waves like mountains of Middle-earth, and they were cast at length up far inland in Middle-earth.

$52 But all the coasts and seaward lands of Middle-earth suffered great ruin and change in that time. For the earth was sorely shaken, and the seas climbed over the lands and shores foundered, and ancient isles were drowned and new were uplifted, and hills crumbled and rivers were turned to strange courses.

$53 And here ends the tale to speak of Elendil and his sons who after founded many kingdoms in Middle-earth, and though their lore and craft was but an echo of that which had been ere Sauron came to Numenor, yet did it seem very great to the men of the wild.

$54 And it is said that Sauron himself was filled with terror at the fury of the wrath of the Avalai and the doom of Eru, for it was greater far than any that he had looked for, hoping only for the death of the Numenoreans and the defeat of their proud king. But he himself sitting in his black seat in the midst of his temple laughed when he heard the trumpets of Tarkalion sound for battle; and he laughed yet again when he heard afar the noise of the thunder; and a third time even as he laughed at his own thought (thinking what he would do now in Middle-earth, being rid of the Eruhil for ever) he was caught in the midst of his mirth, and his temple and his seat fell into the abyss.

$55 [Rejected at once: It was long before he appeared in visible form upon the earth again] But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed of that form in which he had wrought evil for so long, as Zigur the great, yet ere long he devised another; and he came back unto Middle-earth and troubled the sons of Elendil and all men beside. But that cometh not into the tale of the Downfall of Numenor, Atalante the downfallen, as the exiles ever after named her whom they had lost, the land of Gift in the midst of the Sea.

There are two definitive clues to the date of this text. One is that at the foot of one of its pages are typed the words 'Ramer discusses the feeling of lost significance' (see pp. 183, 189); and the other is that the name of the Pillar of Heaven in Numenor is Meneltyula, which appears as a pencilled correction of the original name Menelminda in the manuscript E of Part Two of The Notion Club Papers (p. 302), while the next text of the Papers (the typescript F 1) has Menel-tubel, changed to Menel-tubil. It is thus certain that this first draft of The Drowning of Anadune was written in the course of work on Part Two of The Notion Club Papers, and can indeed be placed, presumably, precisely between the manuscript E and the typescript F 1.

Comparison with the text of the third version of The Fall of Numenor (FN III) given on pp. 331 ff. will show that this is an entirely new work, an altogether richer conception, and with many remarkable differences. But comparison with the much later Akallabeth (in the published Silmarillion, pp. 259 - 82) will also show that it is the direct ancestor of that work, to a much greater extent than The Fall of Numenor, although that also was used in the Akallabeth.

One of the most extraordinary features of this text lies in the conception of the Balai, whom I shall call rather the Avalai, since this name superseded the other before the typing of DA I was completed.

At the beginning ($1) this is a name, 'in the earliest recorded tongue', of the Eru-beni, 'servants of God', who 'governed Earth'; 'some were lesser and some greater', and 'the mightiest and the chieftain of them all was Meleko, brother of Manawe (see V.164, note 4). In $4 it is told that certain of the fathers of Men who repented, and who were named Eruhil 'Children of God', made war on Meleko in concert with the Avalai and cast him down; but ($5) in grief at the evil works of Men the Avalai withdrew ever westwards ('or if they did not so they faded and became secret voices and shadows of the days of old'), and the most part of the Eruhil followed them. And when they came to the shores of the Great Sea ($6) the Avalai 'for the most part passed over the sea seeking the realm of Manawe', but the Eruhil of the western coasts were taught by the Avalai the craft of ship-building.

After the coming of the Eruhil to Numenor 'they took the language of the Avalai and forsook their own' ($14); and the Avalai 'forbade them to sail westward out of sight of the western shores of Numenor'

($15). The Avalai dwelt somewhere in the West unknown to Men, who called that land Avallonde, translated 'the Haven of the Gods', for at times they could see a distant city far off in the West; and 'to Numenor the Avalai came ever and anon, the children and the lesser ones of the Deathless Folk, sometimes in oarless boats, sometimes as birds flying, sometimes in other fair shapes' ($16). Avalai came to Numenor and attempted to persuade the Eruhil of the error of their thoughts ($$23 - 5); and when the fleets of Numenor came to Avallonde the Avalai 'laid down their governance of Earth' ($47). At the Cataclysm Avallonde and Numenore were overwhelmed and swallowed up, 'and the Avalai thereafter had no local habitation on earth

... and [they] dwell in secret or have faded to shadows, and their power is minished' ($47).

Who then are the Avalai? Looking no further than the present text, the name must be said to represent the whole 'order' of deathless beings who, before the coming of Men, were empowered to govern the world within a great range or hierarchy of powers and purposes.

Looking at it in relation to the earlier narrative, The Fall of Numenor, the distinction between 'Gods' and 'Elves' is here lost. In that work, after the Great Battle in which Morgoth was overthrown, 'the Elves were summoned to return into the West; and those that obeyed dwelt once more in Eressea, the Lonely Isle; and that land was named anew Avallon: for it is hard by Valinor ...' (FN III $1, p. 332); and 'the speech of Numenor was the speech of the Eldar of the Blessed Realm, and the Numenoreans conversed with the Elves, and were permitted to look upon Valinor from afar; for their ships went often to Avallon, and there their mariners were suffered to dwell for a while' (FN III $2, p. 333). The Fall of Numenor was a vital and far-reaching extension of the legends embodied in the Quenta Silmarillion, but it was congruent with them. This earliest text of The Drowning of Anadune, in which the Elves are not distinctly represented, and Valinor and Eressea are confused, is not.

Even more startling perhaps is the loss in this narrative of the conception that the world was made round at the Downfall of Numenor. Here, the Avalai, coming to Numenor and attempting to teach the Eruhil 'of the fashion and fate of the world', declared to them 'that the world was round, and that if they sailed into the utmost West, yet would they but come back again to the East and so to the places of their setting out, and the world would seem to them but a prison' ($23); but when Sauron came to Numenor he 'gainsaid all that the Avalai had taught. And he bade them think that the world was not a closed circle' ($31). Most striking is a hastily pencilled passage written alongside $$49 - 50, which was not taken up in the following text: 'For they believed still the lies of Sauron that the world was plain

['flat'; see footnote to p. 392], until their fleets had encompassed all he world seeking for Meneltyula, and they knew that it was round.

Then they said that the world was bent, and that the road to Avallonde could not be found, for it led straight on.' No direction is given for the insertion of this; but I think that it was intended to replace the sentence at the end of $50: '"But all the ways are now crooked," they said, "that once were straight." '

In this connection the earlier version of the Old English text (the single preserved leaf of Edwin Lowdham's book) that accompanied the manuscript E of The Notion Club Papers (pp. 313 - 15) is interesting. In the Old English it was the Eldar who forbade the Numenoreans to land on Eresse (whereas in The Fall of Numenor it was the Gods who imposed the ban on sailing beyond Tol Eressea, $4), because they were mortal, although it was 'the Powers' (Wealdend) who had granted them long life; and very remarkably Sauron declared to Tarkalion that 'the Eldar refused to him the gift of everlasting life'.

The Numenoreans are here said to have 'sent out in secret spies to Avallon to explore the hidden knowledge of the Eldar' (a reminiscence of FN $4: 'they sent spies to seek hidden lore in Avallon'). The reference of Avallon is not explained in the Old English text, but it is surely the same as Eresse (in FN $1 Eressea was renamed Avallon); yet Tarkalion determined to invade Avallon, because Sauron said that the Eldar had denied him everlasting life (whereas in FN $6 the fleets of

'the Numenoreans, having 'encompassed Avallon', 'assailed the shores of Valinor').

This Old English version came in point of composition between the completion of manuscript E of the Papers and the writing of DA 1.(4) There is thus a development from a text in which both 'the Powers'

and 'the Eldar' appear, but in which the Eldar have powers far greater and of a different order than could properly be ascribed to them, to a text (DA I) in which 'the Powers' (Valar) and 'the Eldar' are confused under the single term Avalai; and in the Old English the name Avallon seems to be used confusedly (in contrast to the earlier Fall of Numenor), while in DA I Avallonde is a vague term, related to the vagueness of the name Avalai.

The further development and the significance of these extraordinary departures is discussed later: see pp. 391 ff. and 405 ff.

In this text DA I there are many other important developments in the legend of Numenor which were retained in the later story. The Ban now becomes more severe, for the Numenoreans are not permitted 'to sail westward out of sight of the western shores of Numenor' ($15); the importance of the eastward voyages emerges, the coming of 'the Men out of the Sea' at first as teachers and enlighteners of the men of Middle-earth ($17), but afterwards as oppressors and enslavers ($34); and the 'Avalai' are remembered as coming out of the West to Numenor, and attempting to avert the growing hostility to the Ban.