Authors: J. R. R. Tolkien

The War of the Jewels (92 page)

BOOK: The War of the Jewels

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-light: the adjective light here means "bright, clear".'

Lastly, it remains to mention the etymology of Maeglin found among these papers.

mik pierce: *mikra sharp-pointed (Q mixa, S *megr): strong adjective' maika sharp, penetrating, going deep in - often in transferred sense (as Q hendumaika sharp-eye, S maegheneb > maecheneb).

glim gleam, glint (usually of fine slender but bright shafts of light}.

Particularly applied to light of eyes; not Q. S glintha- glance (at), glinn.

From these two is derived the name Maeglin, since Maeglin had, even more than his father, very bright eyes, and was both physically very keen-sighted and mentally very penetrant, and quick to interpret the looks and gestures of people, and perceive their thoughts and purposes. The name was only given to him in boyhood, when these characteristics were recognized. His father till then was contented to call him Ion, son. (His mother secretly gave him a N. Quenya name Lomion 'son of twilight'; and taught Maeglin the Quenya tongue, though Eol had forbidden it.) This development of the story of Maeglin from the form in which he had written it twenty years before seems to have been the last concentrated work that my father did on the actual narratives of the Elder Days. Why he should have turned to this legend in particular I do not know; but one sees, in his minute consideration of the possibilities of the story, from the motives of the actors to the detail of the terrain, of roads, of the speed and endurance of riders, how the focus of his vision of the old tales had changed.

NOTES.

1. The words 'read (71) Dor-na-Daerachas' were added to the primary map later: see p. 187, $30, and note 6 below.

2. In another passage among these papers the Ford(s) of Aros are called Arossiach; this name was adopted on the map accompanying The Silmarillion and introduced into the text.

3. The text has 'at the S.W. corner', but this was a slip of the pen. It is stated elsewhere in these papers that the dwelling of Curufin and Celegorm was on a low hill at the S.E. corner of the Pass of Aglond, and on the photocopy map Curufin is marked with a circle on the most westerly of the lower heights about the Hill of Himring (p. 331, square D 11). - The form Aglond occurs in the discussion of the motives of Celegorm and Curufin (p. 328), beside Aglon in the interpolated narrative of Eol's encounter with Curufin. On the map the name is written Aglon(d, which I retained on my redrawing (V.409) of the map as first made and lettered, in the belief that the variant lond was an original element. Although it looks to be so, it may be that the (d was added much later.

4. My father noted here: 'In spite of what Eol said, it had in fact not been inhabited by Sindar before the coming of the Noldor'; and also that the name 'cool-plain' derived from the fact that 'it was higher in its middle part and felt often the chill northern airs through Aglon. It had no trees except in its southern part near the rivers.' In another place it is said that 'Himlad rose to a swelling highland at its centre (some 300 feet high at its flat top)'.

5. For the first mention of Dor Dinen (so spelt, as also on the map, not Dor Dhinen) see p. 194.

6. The primary map had no crossing marked on the Aros when the photocopy was made. The word Ford was put in after, or at the same time as, Fords of Aros was entered on the photocopy.

7. The name Iant Iaur was adopted from this text in The Silmarillion, both on the map and in a mention of 'the stone bridge of Iant Iaur' in Chapter 14, Of Beleriand and its Realms, p. 121 (for the original passage see p. 194).

8. The falls in Gelion below Sarn Athrad have not been referred to before, and indeed in QS Chapter 9 Of Beleriand and its Realms (V.262-3, $113; The Silmarillion p. 122) their existence is denied:

'Gelion had neither fall nor rapids throughout his course'.

9. On another page the following names are proposed as replacements for Sarn Athrad: 'Athrad i-Nogoth [> Negyth] or Athrad Dhaer, "Ford of the Dwarves" or "Great Ford" '.

10. The fact that the note on the primary map (p. 191) saying that the names Celon and Gelion need to be changed bears (like the addition of Dor-na-Daerachas, p. 187, $30) the number '71', clearly meaning the year 1971, suggests that all the late work on Maeglin belongs to that year. My father died two years later.

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