The Peoples of Middle-earth (29 page)

I take this to be a further movement in the story struggling to emerge, in which my father was considering a different treatment of Pharazon's intrusion into the relationship of Miriel and Elentir (who are now said to be betrothed); but the sketch is so rapid, and so much is indecipherable, that the actual course of the story is obscure.

(c)

A brief, clearly written text is the third of these papers associated with the rider inserted into the text of the Akallabeth.

For Pharazon son of Gimilkhad had become even more restless and eager for wealth and power than his father. He was a man of great beauty and stature, in the likeness of the first kings of men; and indeed in his youth he was not unlike the Edain of old in mind also, though he had courage and strength of will rather than of wisdom, as after appeared, when he was corrupted by the counsels of his father, and the acclaim of the people. In his earlier days he had a close friendship with Amandil son of Numendil, Lord of Andunie, and he loved the people of that House, with whom he himself had kinship (through Inzilbeth his father's mother). With them he was often a guest, and there also his cousin, daughter of Inziladun, was often to be found. For Elentir Amandil's brother loved her, and she had turned her heart to him, and it was known that soon they would be betrothed.

In this my father was closely following the opening of text (a), but the last sentence of the text, before it was abandoned, turns away, with the mention of the approaching betrothal of Elentir and Zimrahil, and was perhaps about to take a different course.

(d)

Finally, my father wrote the following passage in the margin of the inserted rider against $37, though without indication of its placing: most probably at the end of the paragraph ('... and the name of his queen he changed to Ar-Zimrahil').

And he persecuted the Faithful, and deprived the Lords of Andunie of their lordship, since they had aided Tar-Palantir and supported his daughter. Andunie he took then and made it the chief harbour of the king's ships, and Amandil the Lord he commanded to dwell in Romenna. Yet he did not otherwise molest him, nor dismiss him yet from his Council. For in the days of his youth (ere his father corrupted him) Amandil had been his dear friend.

This is very closely related to the end of text (a), p. 160, 'Therefore Ar-Pharazon persecuted the Faithful ...'; on the other hand, it seems clear from the words 'and supported his daughter' that the story of Zimrahil's love for Pharazon is not present.

It is not perfectly clear to me how the textual puzzle presented by these writings is to be resolved, but I am inclined to think that, contrary to appearance, the texts (a), (b), and (c) in fact followed the writing of the long rider to the Akallabeth, and that they represent the emergence of a doubt in my father's mind whether the marriage of Pharazon and Zimrahil was indeed 'against her will', and the sketch-ing of a new story on the subject. The close agreement of phrases in (a) with those in the rider (see pp. 160 - 1) must then be interpreted as simple repetition of what was already present there, rather than as drafting for it. Finally, on this view, he abandoned the new story, and returned to that already present in $37. Amandil's brother Elentir was lost, at any rate in the recorded tradition.

It may be noted that the youthful friendship of Pharazon and Amandil is referred to in SA $47 (Then Ar-Pharazon the King turned back ..., p. 272), and this indeed goes back to the original manuscript of the Akallabeth: 'In the days of their youth together Valandil [> Amandil] had been dear to Ar-Pharazon, and though he was of the Elf-friends he remained in his council until the coming of Sauron.'

NOTES.

1. I think now that such slight evidence as there is points rather to about 1960 as the date of these works.

2. In $1 I altered the original 'yet they came at last to the lands that look upon the Sea. These are indeed that folk of whom thou hast heard that came into Beleriand in the days of the war of the Noldor and Morgoth' in order to remove the italicised words (the alteration of the last sentence to 'entered Beleriand in the days of the War of the Jewels' was a very late change, one of the very few that my father made to the typescript C). In $2, similarly, I changed 'and thou hast heard how at the last' to 'and in the Lay of Earendil it is told how at the last'.

3. The Line of Elros ends with the words (Unfinished Tales p. 224):

'Of the deeds of Ar-Pharazon, of his glory and his folly, more is told in the tale of the Downfall of Numenor, which Elendil wrote, and which was preserved in Gondor.'

4. In A my father added a footnote here, omitted in B: 'Rothinzil is a name in the Numenorean tongue, and it has the same meaning as Vingilot, which is Foamflower.'

5. It is true that in the opening sentence of the Tale of Years my father substituted in the final typescript 'The First Age ended with the Great Battle, in which the Host of Valinor broke Thangorodrim and overthrew Morgoth', replacing a reference to 'Fionwe and the sons of the Valar' of preceding versions (see pp. 172 - 3); but he may not have removed the name Fionwe (Eonwe) for the same reason as I did in the Akallabeth.

6. The manuscript A had 'called', which became 'call' in B.

7. Cf. Elrond's words in The Council of Elrond (FR p. 257): 'There in the courts of the King [in Minas Anor] grew a white tree, from the seed of that tree which Isildur brought over the deep waters, and the seed of that tree before came from Eressea, and before that out of the Uttermost West in the Day before days when the world was young.'

8. 'Tar-Atanamir' was struck out in A and does not appear in B, but this seems to have been due only to my father's wish to postpone the naming of the king to $24.

9. Nimruzirim: Nimruzir is the name of Elendil in The Drowning of Anadune.

10. In The Drowning of Anadune (IX.363, $20) 'seven kings had ruled ... between Indilzar [Elros] and Ar-Pharazon', but 'seven'

was changed to 'twelve' (IX.381).

11. Other footnotes (on the inscription of the Quenya name Herunu-men of Ar-Adunakhor in the Scroll of Kings, $31, and on the explanation of the name Tar-Palantir, $35, with which cf. The Line of Elros in Unfinished Tales p. 223) were incorporated into the body of the text in SA. At the end of $35 I extended the words of the original text 'the ancient tower of King Minastir upon Oromet' to '... upon the hill of Oromet nigh to Andunie', this being taken from The Line of Elros, p. 220; and in $37 after

'Miriel' I added the words 'in the Elven-tongue'.

12. Before the second of these passages was struck out (and so before the insertion of the rider) my father went through it and all the remainder of the typescript B and replaced Ar-Pharazon by Tar-Kalion (in the rejected passage, p. 153, he cut out the words

'whom men called Ar-Pharazon', thus leaving 'Tar-Calion the Golden'). His intention, presumably, was to use Elvish names exclusively; nonetheless, in the inserted rider he named the king Ar-Pharazon. The typist of C therefore moved from one name to the other; and seeing this my father began on C to change Tar-Kalion back to Ar-Pharazon, but soon wearied of it. In SA I adopted Ar-Pharazon.

13. Throughout this concluding part of the Akallabeth I substituted the name Ar-Pharazon for Tar-Kalion, as explained in note 12.

Arminaleth was changed to Armenelos on B, and this was taken up in SA.

14. The following is written in the margin here: '3rd in line from Earendur and 18th from Valandil the First Lord of Andunie .

15. Above 'he went away' is written '[?Pharazon] went to the wars'; cf. SA $36 (Now Gimilkhad died ...): He [Pharazon] had fared often abroad, as a leader in the wars that the Numenoreans made then in the coastlands of Middle-earth'.

16. At this point in the manuscript stands the following: 'And his love therefore of the Lords of Andunie turned to hate, since they alone were powerful or wise enough to restrain him and give counsel against his desires.' A second version following this was struck out, and no doubt my father intended the rejection of the first also.

17. In The Line of Elros Ar-Pharazon was born in 3118, and Tar-Miriel in 3117 (Unfinished Tales p. 224)-

18. The word I have given as 'older' is scarcely interpretable at all as it stands, but 'older' or 'elder' seems inevitable, since Elentir is called the heir of Numendil, Lord of Andunie, apparently displacing Amandil.

19. 'From a distance' presumably refers back to the words 'his eyes and heart were turned to her'.

VI.

THE TALE OF YEARS OF

THE SECOND AGE.

The chronology of the Second Age can be traced back to its origin in two small half-sheets of paper. That these are not only the first written record of such a chronology, but represent the actual moment of its establishment, seems certain from the obviously experimental nature of the calculations. I will refer to the various texts of the Tale of Years by the letter T, and call the first of these pages, given below, T(a) to indicate its primary nature. The rejected figures, being overwritten, are in some cases hard to make out, but I believe this to be a substantially correct representation of the text as it was first written; following it, I give the subsequent changes.

Time Scheme.

'Ages' last about 3000 years.

The 'Black Years' or the age between the Great Battle and defeat of Morgoth, and the Fall of Numenor and the overthrow of Sauron lasted about 3500.

Thus:

Great Battle

Judgement of Fionwe and establishment of Numenor 10

Reign of Elros 410

11 other kings averaging 240 each 2640

Last 13th king 220

-----

3280

Elendil (very long-lived) was [many rejected figures] 200 years old at Fall of Numenor, and Isildur 100. The new realms lasted 100 years before Sauron opened war. 100

The gathering of Alliance 3 years, the Siege 7 10

3390

The Third Age was 'drawing to its end' in Frodo's time. So that Loss of Ring was about 3000 years ago. For 500 years Sauron remained quiet and then began slowly to grow in Mirkwood -

that stirred events and wakened the Ring to come back.

So Smeagol and Deagol's finding occurred about 600 years after Isildur's death. Gollum therefore had the Ring near[ly] 2400

years.

Average life of a Numenorean 210 years (3 X 70)

Average life of royal house 350 years (5 X 70)

A King of Numenor usually acceded when about 100-120 and ruled about 250 years.

These dates seem to have been changed in this order. First, the dur-ation of the new realms before Sauron assailed them was changed from 100 to 110 years, giving a total of 3400 (and at the beginning of the text the figure of 'about 3500' for the length of the Black Years, i.e.

the Second Age, was changed to 'about 3400', and not subsequently altered). Then the establishment of Numenor was changed from 10 to 50, giving the date 3320 for the Fall of Numenor, and a total of 3440

years in the Second Age.

Sauron's 'remaining quiet' (in the Third Age) was changed from 500

to 1000 years, the finding of the Ring in the Anduin from 600 to 1100

years after Isildur's death, and Gollum's possession of it from 2400 to 1900 years.

A pencilled note, very probably of the same time, on this page reads: 'In character Aragorn was a hardened man of say 45. He was actually 90, and would live at least another 50 (probably 70) years.

Aragorn was a Numenorean of pure blood but the span had dwindled to double life.'

The second of these two primary pages, unquestionably written at the same time as the first (as is shown by the paper used), is headed

'The Second Age and the Black Years', and gives dates from 'B.Y.' 0

(the end of the Great Battle) to the loss of the One Ring and the end of the Second Age, the date of which (3440 in T(a)) now becomes 3441, which was never changed. This page, being the earliest version of an actual 'Tale of Years', I will call T 1. In its earlier part T 1 was so much corrected and reworked as my father proceeded that it is scarcely possible to analyse the successive stages of its endlessly changed chronology; but in a subsequent text he followed the final form of T 1 so closely that it can be given in its place. The chief point to notice in it is the entry 'Foundation of Tarkilion', which was changed (probably at once) to 'Foundation of Artheden (Dunhirion) and Gondor'. The name Dunhirion is also found, but not so far as I know elsewhere, in a late text of the chapter The Council of Elrond, where it was corrected to Annuminas; while Tarkilion is found in the original manuscript of Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, likewise corrected to Annuminas, and likewise apparently not found elsewhere. Artheden is clearly the first appearance of Arthedain, though not with its later significance.

The page T 1 (in its final form) was followed so closely by the next text that it seems probable that no long interval had elapsed. This is a clearly written manuscript on two sides of a single sheet; I will refer to it as T 2. A few changes were made to it in red ink, but they were made after the subsequent version had been written (since the same changes were made to that, also in red ink), and I do not notice them here.