[Aiwendil]

Continuing to work through this slowly, as we now come to what I think may be the most difficult (or at least most contentious) bit.

Upon those shores Falman-Ossë met them and drew them across on a mighty raft whereon he himself sat in shimmering mail; but Ulmo Vailimo was far ahead roaring in his deep-sea car and trumpeting in wrath upon a horn of conches.

I’m unsure about “Falman” and “Vailimo”. I see that ArcusCalion emends “Vailimo” to “Vaiaro”, but what is the source for this?

Thus they passed the Mountains of Iron and {Hisilome}[Hithlum] that lies dim beyond, and came to the rivers and hills of ice. There {Melko}[Melkor] shook the earth beneath them, and he made snow-capped heights to belch forth flame, yet for the greatness of their array his vassals who infested all their ways availed nothing to hinder them on their journey.> Never did Melkor forget that this war was made on behalf of the Elves and that they were the cause of his downfall. Yet they had no part in those deeds; and little do they know of the riding of the power of the West against the North in the beginning of their days, and of the fire and tumult of the Battle of the {Gods}[Valar]. In those days the shape of Middle-earth was changed and broken and the seas were moved. CE-SL-36{ Tulkas it was who at the last wrestled with Melkor and overthrew him}CE-EX-36 <AAm
§48 Melkor met the onset of the Valar in the North-west of Middle-earth, and all that region was much broken. But this first victory of the hosts of the West was swift and easy, and the servants of Melkor fled before them to Utumno. Then the Valar marched over Middle-earth, and they set a guard over Kuivienen; and thereafter the Quendi knew naught of the Great War of the {Gods}[Valar], save that the Earth shook and groaned beneath them, and the waters were moved; and in the North there were lights as of mighty fires. But after two years the Valar passed into the far North and began the long siege of Utumno.
{ 1092-1100}
§49 That siege was long and grievous, and many battles were fought before its gates of which naught but the rumour is known to the Quendi. Middle-earth was sorely shaken in that time, and the Great Sea that sundered it from Aman grew wide and deep. And the lands of the far North were all made desolate in those days, and so have ever remained; for there Utumno was delved exceeding deep, and its pits and caverns reached out far beneath the earth, and they were filled with fires and with great hosts of the servants of Melkor.

Here I think we have some redundancy between LQ and AAm, and I also think that the “Never did Melkor forget . . .” passage from LQ is awkwardly placed, as it now interrupts the more vivid telling of the Valar’s march to war. The redundancy is that we describe the damage and geographical changes to the earth twice. I think we could either delete the interruption from LQ, or perhaps just delete the statement about Middle-earth being changed and broken, and change the paragraph divisions slightly:

Thus they passed the Mountains of Iron and {Hisilome}[Hithlum] that lies dim beyond, and came to the rivers and hills of ice. There {Melko}[Melkor] shook the earth beneath them, and he made snow-capped heights to belch forth flame, yet for the greatness of their array his vassals who infested all their ways availed nothing to hinder them on their journey.>
<LQ Never did Melkor forget that this war was made on behalf of the Elves and that they were the cause of his downfall. Yet they had no part in those deeds; and little do they know of the riding of the power of the West against the North in the beginning of their days, and of the fire and tumult of the Battle of the {Gods}[Valar]. CE-EX-35.5{In those days the shape of Middle-earth was changed and broken and the seas were moved.} CE-SL-36{ Tulkas it was who at the last wrestled with Melkor and overthrew him}>CE-EX-36 <AAm
§48 Melkor met the onset of the Valar in the North-west of Middle-earth, and all that region was much broken. But this first victory of the hosts of the West was swift and easy, and the servants of Melkor fled before them to Utumno. Then the Valar marched over Middle-earth, and they set a guard over Kuivienen; and thereafter the Quendi knew naught of the Great War of the {Gods}[Valar], save that the Earth shook and groaned beneath them, and the waters were moved; and in the North there were lights as of mighty fires. But after two years the Valar passed into the far North and began the long siege of Utumno.
{ 1092-1100}
§49 That siege was long and grievous, and many battles were fought before its gates of which naught but the rumour is known to the Quendi. Middle-earth was sorely shaken in that time, and the Great Sea that sundered it from Aman grew wide and deep. And the lands of the far North were all made desolate in those days, and so have ever remained; for there Utumno was delved exceeding deep, and its pits and caverns reached out far beneath the earth, and they were filled with fires and with great hosts of the servants of Melkor.

CE-EX-37: This addition from LT seems to me to contradict what has just been said (from AAm). In the LT account, the Valar come to the gates of Utumno and immediately break them open (by means of Oromë’s horn). But from AAm we have just said that there was a long and grievous siege, lasting two years, that involved many battles before the gates. One might try to save something of the LT account here by changing it so that after the long siege and battles, Oromë’s horn blast is what finally breaks down the gates, but that invites the question: if that’s all it took, why didn’t they do that right away? I think it’s safer to remove this addition from LT.

CE-EX-39: Now we come to what I’m sure will prove one of the real sticking points. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the story given in MT VI must be considered a projected change under principle 2b, that we cannot take up. That text does not constitute a narrative; it is a working note, in Tolkien's voice, on changes he intended to make to the story. To make it work as narrative, it is (as I think Findegil's draft shows) necessary to perform a lot of editorial work, and in the end the product is not really satisfactory.

Now, it is true that we have a long-established precedent of not worrying about style, and not worrying if two texts written in very different styles stand next to each other. But as far as I'm concerned, that is about narrative texts in different literary styles - mixing in texts clearly written from an 'external' point of view and in a distinctly non-literary style is something else entirely. Moreover, it's one thing to take a paragraph from one source and a paragraph from another, very different, one; it's again another thing entirely to take two texts that tell utterly different stories, one a full-scale narrative and the other an author's note to himself, and to mangle them together phrase by phrase.

So, I think we are more than justified under principle 2b in rejecting any elements of MT VI that cannot be adopted without butchering the text. The only question in my mind is whether any of it should be adopted, or whether the whole thing must be considered of a piece, and rejected entirely. As I see it, MT VI says the following things:

1. Melkor was, in origin, the greatest of the Valar
2. The Valar went to war with Melkor without any real hope of victory
3. Melkor had dispersed much of his power into his servants and into the very fabric of Arda
4. Manwë and Melkor both become aware of this change in Melkor when they encounter each other
5. Melkor submits, or pretends to submit, to the Valar (rather than being defeated and chained).

Point 1 presents no problem, and we've already incorporated it in chapter 1. Point 2 we have discussed here already, and it doesn't pose any problems for the storyline, though how to incorporate it without mangling the text is an open question. Similar considerations apply to points 3 and 4, I think - they are not problematic from a story point of view, but I think the current way they are incorporated into Findegil's draft is not good. Note that even if we decide that these points are valid, that does not necessarily mean that we must find some way of introducing them into the text - these could be considered simply an extra-textual analysis of the story. Point 5, though, contradicts the narrative texts of this section, and this is the point that I think must be regarded as an unworkable projected change.

So the questions for me are, first, whether we can really consider these separate points or must consider them as a whole and discard the whole thing, and second, if we decide on the former, whether points 2, 3, and 4 can be worked into the text in a reasonable way.