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Pile o' Bones
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Re: Principles of editing the Silmarillion
It is generally recognized that there are errors in LR, some internal, and some revealed from examination of material published after JRRT's death.
Errors in respect to the Silmarillion tradition:
The Genealogy of Nimloth
In LR, "The Steward and the King", Gandalf states:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Verily this is a sapling of the line of Nimloth the fair; and that was a seedling of Galathilion, and that a fruit of Telperion of many names, Eldest of Trees.<hr></blockquote>Christopher Tolkien discusses this in
The People of Middle-earth (HoME 12) in "The History of the Akallabêth", §12.
It appears to me that the White Tree of Túna/Tirion (which existed in BoLT) has been dropped accidently in the early Akallabêth account with which LR agrees. There Galathilion is the tree of the Lonely Isle. But in other accounts, which were written
between the completion and publication of LR, Galathilion is the tree of Túna/Tirion and its offspring, the tree of Eressëa is named Celeborn. Considering the timing of these specification of the genealogy of Nimloth and the apparent missing link in the LR/Akallabêth A genealogy it would appear that JRRT definitely established the Nimloth line that his son included in QS77 before LR was published.
Tolkien established the lineage of Nimloth after the writing and before the publication of LR and never changed it after. The current text in LR is best explained as text that should have been revised but was missed.
2. The List of the Kings and Queens of Númenor
In Appendix A there are only 19 rulers of Númenor listed, but the last king, Ar-Pharazôn, is later said to be the twentieth. Christopher Tolkien covers this in Note 11 to "The Line of Elros' in UT. Tar-Ardamin was accidently omitted in the list in LR.
3. The Accession date of Tar-Atanamir
In Appendix B this is given as 2251. In "The Line of Elros", UT, Note 10, Christopher Tolkien states that 2251 was actually the death date of Tar-Atanamir this and other sources (though then emended in "The Line of Elros" to 2221. He then continues:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Thus the same year appears in different texts as both the date of his accession and the date of his death; and the whole structure of the chronology shows clearly that the former must be wrong.<hr></blockquote>It does indeed. The LR reference is wrong. Christopher Tolkien adds:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> I have little doubt therefore that the enty in the Tale of Years is in error for a correct reading: 2251 Death of Tar-Atanamir. Tar-Ancalimon takes the sceptre. Rebellion and division of the Númenoreans begins.<hr></blockquote>
4. Eldarin Hair Color
The account in Appendix F is very specific:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> They were a race high and beautiful, the older Children of the world, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who now are gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin;<hr></blockquote>So Glorfindel and Thranduil (who is golden-haired) in
The Hobbit must be of the golden house of Finarfin as only in that house were there Eldar who did not have dark locks. That is what LR clearly says. Círdan and Celeborn are puzzles. An explanation often suggested before
The Silmarillion appeared was that, as in humans, possibly age in Elves affected hair color, though Elves did not age in other ways, except eventually fading. Tolkien says "their locks
were dark[/i]".
So no silver-haired Míriel and no golden-haired Vanyar by this clear statement in Appendix F, no light locks among
any pure-bred Eldar except for golden hair in the House of Finarfin. (The brown, dark-red locks among the Fëanorean might be allowed however, as being still in the category of "dark locks", at least as compared to golden-haired and silver-haired.) And Glorfindel and Thranduil must be either of the House of Finrod or not of the Eldar, or possibly a half-breed with the East Elves who
might have other hair colorings.
Tar Elenion is right enough on his comments on this passage, but we need a principle that recognizes that rightness, since we are generally going to squeeze every drop of meaning that we can out of every word, and want as much as possible to avoid anything arbitrary. The only reason Tar Elenion believes Tolkien is generalizing here is that he accepts the
Silmarillion and HoME data on the House of Finarfin and hair color against what the LR text clearly
says, which is just what we are not normally supposed to do.
Actually at
every level of canon we must be able to discard what can be reasonably shown to be errors, mistakes made by Tolkien in copying or in writing one name when he meant another and so forth.
This passage, as Christopher Tolkien explains at the end of "The Cottage of Lost Play" in BoLT 1 and almost at the end of "The Appendix on Languages" in
The People of Middle-Earth (HoME 12), was in the draft originally written about the Gnomes only, and in expanding and revising it something that applied properly to the Noldor (though only if you don't take it strictly) became applied to all the Eldar where, because of the entire kindred of the Vanyar, it is just wrong. But even when applied to the Noldor only the passage is flawed. Glorfindel is not explained properly, for example. It is not until "Quendi and Eldar" under
Vanyar that Tolkien indicates there are other golden-haired Noldor from intermarriage with the Vanyar besides the House of Finarfin.
One remembers the Appendices were produced under great pressure.
There may be other statements in LR that should not stand. It would be perverse to insist on following any statements in LR that are simple errors in the text or overstatements that clearly do not mean what they seems to mean. This somehow needs to be stated in the principles. That Christopher Tolkien has not produced an edition of LR that corrects these is irrelevant. If his example matters, then use the precedent he has set in rightly ignoring these erroneous LR statements in QS77.
Major LR conflicts with all Silmarillion tradition
1. Durin awakes after the first rising of the Moon.
From "A Journey in the Dark":<blockquote>
Quote:<hr>
The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.<hr></blockquote>
This could be interpreted to mean no stain was yet seen on the Moon because no Moon was yet seen, but such forced interpretation does not convince and is surely not what Tolkien intended. Rather we have here an MT version of the tale, fitting in with Tolkien's removal of the mention of the "raising of the Sun and Moon" from
The Hobbit and the change of "twilight" to "twilight of our Sun and Moon" referring to the East Elves who did not go to Faërie.
2. Treebeard's account of the Morgoth and the Elves
From "Treebeard":<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learning their tree-talk. They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did. But then the Great Darkness came, and they passed away over the Sea, or fled into far valleys and hid themselves, and made songs about days that would never come again.<hr></blockquote>This doesn't fit with any other account. First come the Elves, they are interrupted in their creative activity by the Great Darkness, and some flee overseas and other to far valleys. Treebeard later remarks:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun;<hr></blockquote>When speaking of the Entwives he says:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Then when the Darkness came in the North, the Entwives crossed the Great River, and made new gardens, and tilled new fields, and we saw them more seldom. After the Darkness was overthrown ...<hr></blockquote>This all seems MT stuff, though not quite the same as the material actually appearing in
Morgoth's Ring (HoME 10).
You can try to write your own
Silmarillion using this as a basis, or ignore it. But the picture here doesn't fit with anything else.
Something in the principles must allow us to deal with these oddities, even if it is only a list of such material to be disregarded as too much at odds with the actual
Silmarillion material.
Further thoughts:
Change 2(a) from:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> contradict the rest of the legendarium in an incontractible way<hr></blockquote>to<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> are proposed changes that do not clearly indicate the exact details that must be changed and how they are to be changed<hr></blockquote>This now covers both cosmological issues and smaller items like changing Sador to a Drûg. One doesn't want to be forced to jettison whole sections of the work because one late sentence indicates they would have to be rewritten to fit a new concept, and one doesn't want to introduce a concept on the surface that really doesn't fit.
For example, adding a note that Sador was a Drûg when he first appears would fully make the change in one sense. But we recognize that Tolkien intended to change Sador's words and behavior to fit a Drûg also, and need a principle that allows us to avoid the silliness of calling him a Drûg (because Tolkien intended to make him one) but not having him speak or act like one because we have no grounds for making any particular necessary change in his words or actions. In fact, we would probably have to drop almost all of him for that reason, the words and behavior of the old Sador no longer properly fit the new conception.
Change 4(a) from:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> they are changed only to bring them into agreement with established canon<hr></blockquote>to<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> they are minimally changed to agree with statements elsewhere in the canon recongized as of greater validity<hr></blockquote>My thought in including Christopher Tolkien's writing and editorial changes as lowest level canon was that this would be the normal way of break a tie when there is no obvious reason to go with one wording or another in material already published in the QS77 or when he is summarizing material rather than representing it literally. Christopher Tolkien's rendition becomes the slightly preferred wording. This does not mean that there is any
pressure to use his Fall of Doriath compilation or anything else attributed to him, but parts of his invention
can be used if desired and should be if nothing better emerges. His summaries of his father's rough notes, such his account of Celebrimbor remaining behind in Nargothrond, is as reasonable a way as any to include some material. So recognize his work as lowest level canon, but do not necessarily accept in every instance the decisions he made that lie behind it. In some cases, as in UT where Christopher Tolkien merely remarks that he has done editorial work on his father's manuscripts, we have to accept his work.
It is possible that we would be better with one set of principles for selecting from varying concepts and another for selecting from varying wordings. I would hope not, but ...
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