The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

The Lost Road and Other Writings - Christopher  Tolkien


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and lightly made, since they all appear in the typescript. From this point there is no external evidence to show when the pencilled emendations were made; but I continue to take these up into the text as before.

       He spoke of the rebellion of Melko [later > Alkar and subsequently], mightiest of the Powers, that began at the making of the World; and of his rejection by the Lords of the West after he had wrought evil in the Blessed Realm and caused the exile of the Eldar, the firstborn of the earth, who dwelt now in Eressëa. He told of Melko’s tyranny in Middle-earth, and how he had enslaved Men; of the wars which the Eldar waged with him, and were defeated, and of the Fathers of Men that had aided them; how Eärendel brought their prayer to the Lords, and Melko was overthrown and thrust forth beyond the confines of the World.

       Elendil paused and looked down on Herendil. He did not move or make a sign. Therefore Elendil went on. ‘Dost thou not perceive then, Herendil, that Morgoth is a begetter of evil, and brought sorrow upon our fathers? We owe him no allegiance except by fear. For his share of the governance of the World was forfeit long ago. Nor need we hope in him: the fathers of our race were his enemies; wherefore we can look for no love from him or any of his servants. Morgoth doth not forgive. But he cannot return into the World in present power and form while the Lords are enthroned. He is in the Void, though his Will remaineth and guideth his servants. And his will is to overthrow the Lords, and return, and wield dominion, and have vengeance on those who obey the Lords.

      16 In QS §10 it is said that Melko was ‘coëval with Manwë’. The name Alkar ‘the Radiant’ of Melko occurs, I believe, nowhere outside this text.

      20 The words ‘a gift which in the wearing of time even the Lords of the West shall envy’ were a pencilled addition to the text, and are the first appearance of this idea: a closely similar phrase is found in a text of the Ainulindalë written years later (cf. The Silmarillion p. 42: ‘Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.’)

      24 The name Moriondë occurs, I think, nowhere else. This eastern haven is no doubt the forerunner of Rómenna.

      27 On Eressëan (‘Elf-latin’, Qenya), the common speech of all Elves, see p. 56. The present passage is the first appearance of the idea of a linguistic component in the attack by the Númenórean ‘government’ on Eressëan culture and influence; cf. The Line of Elros in Unfinished Tales (p. 222), of Ar-Adûnakhôr, the twentieth ruler of Númenor: ‘He was the first King to take the sceptre with a title in the Adûnaic tongue … In this reign the Elven-tongues were no longer used, nor permitted to be taught, but were maintained in secret by the Faithful’; and of Ar-Gimilzôr, the twenty-third ruler: ‘he forbade utterly the use of the Eldarin tongues’ (very similarly in the Akallabêth, pp. 267–8). But of course at the time of The Lost Road the idea of Adûnaic as one of the languages of Númenor had not emerged, and the proposal is only that ‘the ancestral speech of Men’ should be ‘revived’.

      There are several pages of notes that give some idea of my father’s thoughts – at a certain stage – for the continuation of the story beyond the point where he abandoned it. These are in places quite illegible, and in any case were the concomitant of rapidly changing ideas: they are the vestiges of thoughts, not statements of formulated conceptions. More important, some at least of these notes clearly preceded the actual narrative that was written and were taken up into it, or replaced by something different, and it may very well be that this is true of them


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