The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

The Lost Road and Other Writings - Christopher  Tolkien


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and endowed their buried kings with unavailing treasure. For their wise men hoped ever to discover the secret of prolonging life and maybe the recalling of it. But it is said that the span of their lives, which had of old been greater than that of lesser races, dwindled slowly, and they achieved only the art of preserving uncorrupt for many ages the dead flesh of men. Wherefore the kingdoms upon the west shores of the Old World became a place of tombs, and filled with ghosts. And in the fantasy of their hearts, and the confusion of legends half-forgotten concerning that which had been, they made for their thought a land of shades, filled with the wraiths of the things of mortal earth. And many deemed this land was in the West, and ruled by the Gods, and in shadow the dead, bearing the shadows of their possessions, should come there, who could no more find the true West in the body. For which reason in after days many of their descendants, or men taught by them, buried their dead in ships and set them in pomp upon the sea by the west coasts of the Old World.

       Commentary on the first version of The Fall of Númenor

      And it is said that all that were left of the three Houses of the Fathers of Men fought for Fionwë, and to them were joined some of the Men of Hithlum who repenting of their evil servitude did deeds of valour … But most Men, and especially those new come out of the East, were on the side of the Enemy.

      This is very close to, and no doubt belongs in fact to the same time as, the corresponding passage in the following version of ‘The Silmarillion’ (QS*, p. 328 §16), which however omits the reference to the Men of Hithlum. I have little doubt that this development came in with the emergence of Númenor.

      After the words enriched by Yavanna the passage concerning names was early replaced as follows:


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