The Peoples of Middle-earth (63 page)

Now it is told how Feanor stole the ships of the Teleri, and breaking faith with Fingolfin and with those faithful to him sailed away in them to Middle-earth, leaving the rest of his host to make their way on foot with great travail and loss. The ships were anchored off the shore, in the Firth of Drengist, and all the host of Feanor went on land and camped there.

In the night Feanor, filled with malice, aroused Curufin, and with him and a few of those most close to Feanor in obedience he went to the ships and set them all aflame; and the dark sky was red as with a terrible dawn. All the camp was roused, and Feanor returning said: 'Now at least I am certain that no faint-heart or traitor among you will be able to take back even one ship to the succour of Fingolfin and his folk.' But all save few were dismayed, because there were many things still aboard that they had not yet brought ashore, and the ships would have been useful for further journeying. They were still far north and had purposed to sail southward to some better haven.

In the morning the host was mustered, but of Feanor's seven sons only six were to be found. Then Ambarussa (6) went pale with fear. 'Did you not then rouse Ambarussa my brother (whom you called Ambarto)?' he said. 'He would not come ashore to sleep (he said) in discomfort.' But it is thought (and no doubt Feanor guessed this also) that it was in the mind of Ambarto to sail his ship back [?afterwards] and rejoin Nerdanel; for he had been much [?shocked](63) by the deed of his father.(64)

'That ship I destroyed first,' said Feanor (hiding his own dismay). 'Then rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children,' said Ambarussa, 'and Umbarto "the Fated" was its true form. Fell and fey are you become.' And after that no one dared speak again to Feanor of this matter.(65)

For the mention, in a note on the typescript of the Annals of Aman, of the story of the death of one of the twin-brothers in the burning of the ships at Losgar see X.128, $162; and for the account of Nerdanel and her estrangement from Feanor in late rewriting of the Quenta Silmarillion see X.272-3, 279.

The material concerning the names of the twin brothers is confused and confusing, clearly because it was only as my father worked on them that the strange and sinister story emerged. It seems to me very probable that when he gave the mother-names (6) Ambarto and (7) Ambarussa it had not yet arisen, nor yet when he began the note that follows the list of the mother-names, saying that 'the first and last of Nerdanel's children had the reddish hair of her kin' - that is Maedros with his nickname Russandol and the younger of the twins Ambarussa (Amras).

The story first emerged, I think, with the words 'The most authentic seems to be thus: The two twins were both red-haired. Nerdanel gave them both the name Ambarussa ...' It was then, no doubt, that my father changed the name Ambarto to Umbarto in the list and reversed the names of the twin brothers (see note 62), so that Ambarussa becomes the elder of the two and Ambarto/Umbarto the youngest of Feanor's children, as he is in the legend told here.

At the head of the first page of this text concerning the names of the Sons of Feanor my father wrote, when the story was now in being: All the sons save Curufin preferred their mother-names and were ever afterwards remembered by them. The twins called each other Ambarussa. The name Ambarto/Umbarto was used by [?no one].

The twins remained alike, but the elder grew darker in hair, and was more dear to his father. After childhood they [?were not to be]

confused....

Thus in the legend 'Ambarussa (6)' asked Feanor whether he had not roused 'Ambarussa my brother' before setting fire to the ships.

NOTES.

1. [This heading is derived from the opening sentence of the essay, which is in fact 'The case of p > s is more difficult.' I have not been able to discover the reference of this. The typescript is extant as a separate whole, paginated consecutively from A to T.) 2. Few of these can have been carried from Valinor, and fewer still can have survived the journey to Middle-earth; but the memory of the loremasters was prodigious and accurate.

3. [The term Ingwi seems not to have been used since the Lhammas of the 1930s, where Ingwelindar or Ingwi' appears as the name of the house and people of Ingwe, chief among the First Kindred of the Elves (then called the Lindar), V.171. For the much later application of the term Lindar see XI.381-2.]

4. Without special study. But many of the Noldor could speak Telerin and vice versa. There were in fact some borrowings from one to another; of which the most notable was the general use of the Telerin form telpe 'silver' for pure Quenya tyelpe. [For the substitution of telpe see Unfinished Tales p. 266.]

5. They continued to deplore it, and were able to insist later that the distinction between older p and s should at least always be preserved in writing.

6. [See the Note on Mother-names at the end of the essay, p. 339. It is not stated elsewhere that Serinde was Miriel's 'mother-name'.]

7. [It had been said several times in the later Quenta Silmarillion texts that Feanaro was a 'name of insight' given to him by Miriel at his birth; moreover in the story of Miriel when it first appeared her spirit passed to Mandos soon after Feanor was born, and it is expressly said in Laws and Customs among the Eldar that he never saw his mother (X.217). The story has now been altogether changed in this aspect: Miriel named him with this name 'in recognition of his impetuous character'; 'while she lived she did much with gentle counsel to soften and restrain him'; and subsequently 'her weariness she had endured until he was full grown, but she could endure it no longer'. After Miriel's 'death'

or departure 'for a while he also had kept vigil by his mother's body, but soon he became wholly absorbed again in his own works and devices' (p. 335).]

8. [A full account of other texts bearing on this matter is given in X.205-7, 225 - 7, 233 - 71. These texts are substantially earlier than the present essay (see X.300), which is by no means entirely congruent with them.]

9. [Elsewhere Ezellohar is the name not of the plain but of the Green Mound on which grew the Two Trees (X.69, etc.); while in Quendi and Eldar (XI.399, 401) Korollaire is said to be a translation of the Valarin name Ezellohar, of which the first element ezel, ezella meant 'green'. But perhaps by 'the plain of Ezellohar' my father meant 'the plain in which stood the mound of Ezellohar'.]

10. Doubting that the test of a few years could show that the will of any one of the Children was fixed immovably; and foreboding that breaking the law would have evil consequences.

11. Death by free will, such as Miriel's, was beyond his thought.

Death by violence he thought impossible in Aman; though as is recorded in The Silmarillion this proved otherwise.

12. [With a necessary change in the opening sentence, the following passage, as far as 'and passing the last test departed from Middle-earth for ever' on p. 338, was printed in Unfinished Tales, pp.

229-31 - since it is of great importance in the history of Galadriel

- but with no indication of its context: it seems desirable therefore to give it again here.]

13. [Elwe's name Pindikollo (elsewhere Sindikollo, Sindicollo) was omitted from the text in Unfinished Tales.]

14. Who together with the greatest of all the Eldar, Luthien Tinuviel, daughter of Elu Thingol, are the chief matter of the legends and histories of the Elves.

15. It is not even certain that all Feanor's sons continued to use p after his death and the healing of the feud by the renowned deed of Fingon son of Fingolfin in rescuing Maedhros [> Maedros]

from the torments of Morgoth.

16. [The wholly different account of 'Chosen Names' in Laws and Customs among the Eldar (X.214-15) appears to have been abandoned.)

17. As is seen in The Silmarillion. This is not an Eldarin title or work.

It is a compilation, probably made in Numenor, which includes (in prose) the four great tales or lays of the heroes of the Atani, of which 'The Children of Hurin' was probably composed already in Beleriand in the First Age, but necessarily is preceded by an account of Feanor and his making of the Silmarils. All however are 'Mannish' works. [With this cf. X.373 and p. 390, note 17 in this book.]

18. Notably in Manu e, the Quenya name of the 'Elder King', the chief of the Valar. This is said to have been of the same age as the names Ingwe, etc., and to contain the Valarin element aman, man

'blessed, holy' learned from Orome, and of course unconnected with the Eldarin interrogative element ma, man. [See XI.399.]

19. He had black hair, but brilliant grey-blue eyes.

20. Connexion with Telerin vola 'a roller, long wave', which was sometimes made by the Teleri themselves, was not a serious

'etymology' but a kind of pun; for the king's name was not normally Volwe (Common Eldarin *wolwe) but Olwe in Telerin as in Quenya, and w was not lost before o in Telerin as it was in Quenya. Also the connexion of the Teleri with sea-faring developed long after the naming of Olwe.

21. It was otherwise in written histories (which were by the Noldor in any case mostly composed in Quenya). Also the names of

'foreign persons' who did not dwell in Beleriand and were seldom mentioned in daily speech were usually left unaltered. Thus the names of the Valar which they had devised in Valinor were not as a rule changed, whether they fitted Sindarin style or not. The Sindar knew little of the Valar and had no names for any of them, save Orome (whom all the Eldar had seen and known); and Manwe and Varda of whose eminence they had been instructed by Orome; and the Great Enemy whom the Noldor called Melkor. For Orome a name had been made in Primitive Eldarin (recalling the sound of his great horn) of which Orome was the Quenya form, though in Sindarin it had become Araw, and by the Sindar he was later more often called (Aran) Tauron 'the (king) forester'. Manwe and Varda they knew only by the names 'Elder King' and 'Star-queen': Aran Einior and Elbereth. Melkor they called Morgoth 'the Black Enemy', refusing to use the Sindarin form of Melkor: Belegur 'he that arises in might', save (but rarely) in a deliberately altered form Belegurth 'Great Death'.

These names Tauron, Aran Einior, Elbereth, and Morgoth the Noldor adopted and used when speaking Sindarin.

[For the association of the name Orome' with that of his great horn see XI.400 - 1. - The names Belegur, Belegurth have been mentioned in the index to the published Silmarillion, which here derives from the present note. Very many years before, the name Belegor is found as an ephemeral name of Morgoth in The Lay of the Children of Hurin (III.21, note 22).]

22. His sons were too occupied in war and feuds to pay attention to such matters, save Maglor who was a poet, and Curufin, his fourth and favourite son to whom he gave his own name; but Curufin was most interested in the alien language of the Dwarves, being the only one of the Noldor to win their friendship. It was from him that the loremasters obtained such knowledge as they could of the Khuzdul.

23. Nor were the 'loremasters' a separate guild of gentle scribes, soon burned by the Orks of Angband upon pyres of books. They were mostly even as Feanor, the greatest, kings, princes and warriors, such as the valiant captains of Gondolin, or Finrod of Nargothrond and Rodothir [> Arothir] his kinsman and steward. [For Arothir see the note on the parentage of Gil-galad, pp. 349-51.]

24. And as some insurance against their own death. For books were made only in strong places at a time when death in battle was likely to befall any of the Eldar, but it was not yet believed that Morgoth could ever capture or destroy their fortresses.

25. [In an addition to the Annals of Aman Feanor's first name is given as 'Minyon First-begotten' (X.87); in Laws and Customs among the Eldar his first name was Finwe, in the second version Finwion (X.217 and note 20). For previous references to Kurufinwe see the index to Vol.X (Curufinwe); and with the mention here of the form Faenor cf. X.217, footnote.]

26. [In The War of the Jewels I referred to a set of Elvish genealogies with a clear resemblance to those of the Edain given in that book: see XI.229, where I noted that the former are followed by notes expressly relating to them and dated December 1959. These genealogies are almost exclusively concerned with the descendants of Finwe, and are set out in four separate tables, all apparently belonging to much the same time, and showing the same sort of development in stages as is seen in those of the houses of the Edain. At least eight years and probably more divide them from the present 'excursus', whose date is fixed as not earlier than February 1968; but my father clearly had them in front of him when he wrote this, and alterations made to the latest of the four agree with statements made in it. In all these tables there are still three daughters of Finwe and Indis: Findis, Faniel, and Irime (see X.207, 238, and also X.262, where Finvain appears for Irime), and no correction was made. In the excursus Faniel has disappeared, and the younger daughter appears both as Irime and Irien (see note 28).]