The Peoples of Middle-earth (69 page)

Then, it is said, he stood forlorn looking out to sea, and it was night, but far away he could see a glimmer of light upon Eressea ere it vanished into the West. Then he cried aloud: 'I will follow that light, alone if none will come with me, for the ship that I have been building is now almost ready.' But even as he said this he received in his heart a message, which he knew to come from the Valar, though in his mind it was remembered as a voice speaking in his own tongue. And the voice warned him not to attempt this peril; for his strength and skill would not be able to build any ship able to dare the winds and waves of the Great Sea for many long years yet. 'Abide now that time, for when it comes then will your work be of utmost worth, and it will be remembered in song for many ages after.' 'I obey,' Cirdan answered, and then it seemed to him that he saw (in a vision maybe) a shape like a white boat, shining above him, that sailed west through the air, and as it dwindled in the distance it looked like a star of so great a brilliance that it cast a shadow of Cirdan upon the strand where he stood.

As we now perceive, this was a foretelling of the ship (37) which after apprenticeship to Cirdan, and ever with his advice and help, Earendil built, and in which at last he reached the shores of Valinor. From that night onwards Cirdan received a foresight touching all matters of importance, beyond the measure of all other Elves upon Middle-earth.

This text is remarkable in that on the one hand nothing is said of the history and importance of Cirdan as it appears elsewhere, while on the other hand almost everything that is told here is unique. In the Grey Annals it was said (XI.8, $14):

Osse therefore persuaded many to remain in Beleriand, and when King Olwe and his host were embarked upon the isle and passed over the Sea they abode still by the shore; and Osse returned to them, and continued in friendship with them. And he taught to them the craft of shipbuilding and of sailing; and they became a folk of mariners, the first in Middle-earth ...

But of Osse there is now no mention; shipbuilding on the coasts of Beleriand is said to have begun in the long years during which the Teleri awaited Ulmo's return, and is indeed spoken of (see note 29) as the further evolution of a craft already developed among the Teleri during the Great Journey.

Other features of this account that appear nowhere else (in addition of course to the story of Cirdan's desire to cross the Sea to Valinor, and his vision of the white ship passing westward through the night above him) are that the Teleri delayed long on the shores of the Sea of Rhun on the Great Journey (note 29; cf. p. 373, note 13); that Cirdan was the leader of those who sought for Elwe Thingol, his kinsman; and that Earendil was 'apprenticed' to Cirdan, who aided him in the building of Vingilot.

NOTES.

1. It may be noted that Galdor is another name of similar sort and period of origin, but he appears as a messenger from Cirdan and is called Galdor of the Havens. Galdor also appeared in The Fall of Gondolin, but the name is of a more simple and usual form

[than Glorfindel] and might be repeated. But unless he is said in The Fall of Gondolin to have been slain, he can reasonably be supposed to be the same person, one of the Noldor who escaped from the siege and destruction, but fled west to the Havens, and not southwards to the mouths of Sirion, as did most of the remnant of the people of Gondolin together with Tuor, Idril, and Earendil. He is represented in The Council of Elrond as less powerful and much less wise than Glorfindel; and so evidently had not returned to Valinor, and been purged, and reincarnated.

[See note 3. - The words 'the name [Galdor] is of a more simple and usual form [than Glorfindel] and might be repeated' show that on the lost first page my father had discussed (as he would do in the following text) the possibility that there were two distinct persons named Glorfindel, and had concluded that it was too improbable to be entertained. - 'But unless he is said in The Fall of Gondolin to have been slain': my father would probably have been hard put to it to lay his hand on The Fall of Gondolin, and without consulting it he could not say for certain what had been Galdor's fate (this, I take it, is his meaning). In fact, Galdor was not slain, but led the fugitives over the pass of Cristhorn while Glorfindel came up at the rear (II.191 - 2), and in the

'Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin' (II.215) it is said that he went to Sirion's mouth, and that 'he dwelleth yet in Tol Eressea'. He was the lord of the people of the Tree in Gondolin, and of him it was said in the old tale that he 'was held the most valiant of all the Gondothlim save Turgon alone' (II.173).]

2. That angelic order to which Gandalf originally belonged: lesser in power and authority than the Valar, but of the same nature: members of the first order of created rational beings, who if they appeared in visible forms ('humane' or of other kind) were self-incarnated, or given their forms by the Valar [added later: and who could move/travel simply by an act of will when not arrayed in a body - which they could assume when they reached the places that ... (illegible).]

3. Galdor in contrast, even in the brief glimpses we have in the Council, is seen clearly as an inferior person, and much less wise.

He, whether he appears in The Silmarillion or not, must be either (as his name suggests) a Sindarin Elf who had never left Middle-earth and seen the Blessed Realm, or one of the Noldor who had been exiled for rebellion, and had also remained in Middle-earth, and had not, or not yet, accepted the pardon of the Valar and returned to the home prepared for them in the West, in reward for their valour against Melkor. [The view of Galdor expressed in this note and in note 1 seems hardly justified by the report of his contributions to the Council of Elrond; and if he were indeed Galdor of Gondolin he had had long ages in which to acquire wisdom in the hard world of Middle-earth. But there is no reason to suppose that when my father wrote the chapter The Council of Elrond he associated Galdor of the Havens with Galdor of Gondolin.]

4. [For the original etymology of Glorfindel, and the etymological connections of the elements of the name, see II.341.]

5. [In the Annals of Aman (X.112, $135) it is told that following the Oath of the Feanorians 'Fingolfin, and his son Turgon, therefore spoke against Feanor, and fierce words awoke'; but later (X.118, $156), when it is told that even after the utterance of the Prophecy of the North 'all Fingolfin's folk went forward still', it is said that 'Fingon and Turgon were bold and fiery of heart and loath to abandon any task to which they had put their hands until the bitter end, if bitter it must be.']

6. [The original conception that Gondolin was peopled entirely by Noldor was changed in many alterations to the text of the Grey Annals (see the Index to The War of the Jewels, entry Gondolin, references under 'population'): it is stated indeed (XI.45, $113) that when Turgon sent all his people forth from Nivrost to Gondolin they constituted 'a third part of the Noldor of Fingolfin's House, and a yet greater host of the Sindar'. The statement here that Gondolin was 'occupied by a people of almost entirely Noldorin origin' obviously runs entirely counter to that conception.]

7. [In the margin of the page my father asked subsequently: 'Why not?' The question seems to be answered, however, in the following sentence of the text - where the emphasis is of course on the word 'Elvish': 'no other major character in the Elvish legends

... has a name borne by another Elvish person of importance.'

It would indeed have been open to him to change the name of Glorfindel of Gondolin, who had appeared in no published writing, but he did not mention.this possibility.]

8. Or in gravest cases (such as that of Feanor) withheld and referred to the One.

9. Though he [Glorfindel] is not yet named in the unrevised part of The Silmarillion treating of this matter, it is recorded that many of the Noldor of Turgon's following were in fact grieved by the decision of their king, and dreaded that evil would soon result from it. In the Third Host, that of Finarfin, so many were of this mind that when Finarfin heard the final doom of Mandos and repented, the greater part of that host returned to Valinor. Yet Finrod son of Finarfin, noblest of all the Noldor in the tales of Beleriand, also went away, for Turgon had been elected supreme lord of the Noldorin hosts.

[In the Annals of Aman (X.113, $138) there was no suggestion that Finrod (= Finarfin) led a separate 'Third Host': 'Thus at the last the Noldor set forth divided in two hosts. Feanor and his following were in the van; but the greater host came behind under Fingolfin'; and the same was said in the Quenta Silmarillion (V.235, $68, not changed later). But this note carries an extreme departure from the tradition, in the entire omission of Fingolfin.

This has in fact been encountered before, in my father's very late work - of this same period - on the story of Maeglin, where relationships are distorted on account of a defective genealogy making Turgon the son of Finwe (XI.327); but here, in a central story of The Silmarillion, Turgon is called 'king', and 'supreme lord of the Noldorin hosts', and Fingolfin disappears. Of course it is not to be thought that my father actually intended such a catastrophic disruption of the narrative structure as this would bring about; and it is reassuring to see that in a reference elsewhere in these papers Fingolfin reappears.]

10. [In the margin, and written at the same time as the text, my father noted: 'The duel of Glorfindel and the Demon may need revision.']

11. This is one of the main matters of The Silmarillion and need not here be explained. But in that part of The Silmarillion as so far composed it should not be left to appear that Ulmo, chiefly concerned in the coming of Tuor to Gondolin, in any way acted contrary to the Ban, against Manwe or without his knowledge.

[My father perhaps had in mind Ulmo's words to Tuor on the shore at Vinyamar, Unfinished Tales p. 29.]

12. This implies that Glorfindel was natively an Elda of great bodily and spiritual stature, a noble character, and that his guilt had been small: sc. that he owed allegiance to Turgon and loved his own kindred, and these were his only reasons for remaining with them, although he was grieved by their obstinacy, and feared the doom of Mandos.

13. [Cf. the Valaquenta (The Silmarillion, p. 31): 'In later days he was the friend of all the Children of Iluvatar, and took pity on their sorrows ...']

14. No doubt because Gil-galad had by then discovered that Sauron was busy in Eregion, but had secretly begun the making of a stronghold in Mordor. (Maybe already an Elvish name for that region, because of its volcano Orodruin and its eruptions - which were not made by Sauron but were a relic of the devastating works of Melkor in the long First Age.) [See note 15.]

15. [This passage concerning Gil-galad and Sauron in the year 1200

of the Second Age, with the express statement that 'Sauron came in person to Lindon', seems to conflict with what is said in Of the Rings of Power (The Silmarillion p. 287), that 'Only to Lindon he did not come, for Gil-galad and Elrond doubted him and his fair-seeming', and would not admit him to the land.]

16. For the Valar were open to the hearing of the prayers of those in Middle-earth, as ever before, save only that in the dark days of the Ban they would listen to one prayer only from the Noldor: a repentant prayer pleading for pardon.

17. [My father here discussed again the idea that Elvish reincarnation might be achieved by 'rebirth' as a child, and rejected it as em-phatically as he had done in the discussion called 'Reincarnation of Elves', X.363-4; here as there the physical and psychological difficulties were addressed. He wrote here that the idea 'must be abandoned, or at least noted as a false notion, e.g. probably of Mannish origin, since nearly all the matter of The Silmarillion is contained in myths and legends that have passed through Men's hands and minds, and are (in many points) plainly influenced by contact and confusion with the myths, theories, and legends of Men' (cf. p. 357, note 17).

My discussion of this matter in X.364 must be corrected. I said there that the idea that the 'houseless' fea was enabled to rebuild its hroa from its memory became my father's 'firm and stable view of the matter', 'as appears from very late writing on the subject of the reincarnation of Glorfindel of Gondolin'. This is erroneous. This last discussion of Elvish reincarnation refers only to the 'restoration' or 'reconstitution' of the former body by the Valar, and makes no mention of the idea that it could be achieved by the 'houseless fea' operating of itself.]

18. [The 'false notion' is that of Elvish rebirth as a child: see note 17.]

19. ['Durin VII &c Last' is shown in the genealogical table in Appendix A, III as a descendant of Dain Ironfoot. Nothing is said of him in that Appendix; but see p. 278 in this book.]

20. Yet it is said that their memories were clearer and fuller of the far-off days.

21. That the Elves ever came to know so much (though only at a time when the vigour of both their races was declining) is thought to be due to the strange and unique friendship which arose between Gimli and Legolas. Indeed most of the references to Dwarvish history in Elvish records are marked with 'so said Legolas'.