The Shaping of Middle-earth by Christopher Tolkien J. R. R. Tolkien

Author:Christopher Tolkien J. R. R. Tolkien [J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780345400437
Published: 2001-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

The pencilled addition 'Finrod returned' (note 8) indicates the later story, according to which Finarfin (Finrod) left the march of the Noldor after hearing the Prophecy of the North (The Silmarillion p. 88); in S as emended (note 9) and in Q Finrod only came up with Fingolfin after the burning of the ships by the Feanorians, and only after that did Finrod return to Valinor.

Helkarakse reappears in Q from the Lost Tales, but is now rendered 'the Strait of the Grinding Ice', whereas its original meaning was 'Icefang', and referred to the narrow neck of land which 'ran out from the western land almost to the eastern shores' and was separated from the Great Lands by the Qerkaringa or Chill Gulf (I. 166 - 7 and note 5).

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If there ever was a 'song of the Sun and Moon' (called in The Silmarillion p, 99 by an Elvish name, Narsilion) it has disappeared. The account in Q scarcely expands the extremely cursory passage in S; but the reason now given for the change in the divine plan is not that the Gods 'find it safer' to send the Sun and Moon beneath the Earth: rather it is changed on account of 'the waywardness of Tilion and his rivalry with Urien', and still more because of the complaints of Lorien and Nienna against the unceasing light. This element re-emerges from the Tale of the Sun and Moon (I. 189 - 90), where the Valar who protested were Mandos and Fui Nienna, Lorien, and Vana. Likewise the names Rana and Ur given by the Gods to the Moon and Sun go back to the old story, where however Ur is said to be the Elvish name: the Gods named the Sun Sari (I. 186 - 7).

The Sun-maiden is now named Urien, emended to Arien (her name in The Silmarillion), replacing Urwendi (< Urwen); she is said to have 'tended the golden flowers in the gardens of Vana', which clearly derives from the tending of Laurelin by Urwen(di) in the Lost Tales (1. 73). Tilion, the hunter with the silver bow from the company of Orome, not Ilinsor, is now the steersman of the Moon; but as I noted in I. 88, Tilion, who in The Silmarillion 'lay in dreams by the pools of Este [Lorien's wife] in Telperion's flickering beams', perhaps owes something to the figure of Silmo in the Lost Tales, the youth whom Lorien loved and who was given the task of 'watering' Silpion. The words of Q concerning Tilion, *often he wandered from his course pursuing the stars upon the heavenly fields', and the reference to his rivalry with Urien (Arien), clearly derive from the passage in the old tale (I. 195) where it is told of Ilinsor that he was 'jealous of the supremacy of the Sun' and that 'often he set sail in chase of [the stars]'.

A trace of the old conception of the Moon survives in the reference to 'the floating island of the Moon', a phrase still found in The Silmarillion (see I.

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