The Moon! What Moon?!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Why (merely wondering about your reasons in more detail) do you state that the more correct flat-world legends are Elvish? because of the extant version of FN at the time of this note?

Well, at the time of the note (ca 1965) the documents contained in the wrapper were all much older: FNIII poss. 1937, DA 1946, Akallabeth early 50's.

Matching up the three texts to the three 'traditions' of the note follow logically. DA can only be Numenorean, Ak has to be the 'blended' version, and that leaves FN as the 'elvish' version.

In determining which version is 'true' we must be guided by the internal logic of the legendarium. Tolkien himself of course maintained that the Eldar would know "true astronomy," learned directly from the Valar. One would assume that such knowledge would also be found in the House of Elrond, where exiled Noldor, Wizards, and Glorfindel redivivus were available: and the Akallabeth, whether written by Elendil or a later Arnorian with access to Rivendell (and Lindon), deliberately corrects the portions it copies from DA back to an explicitly flat-world framework.

The point I suppose is that in the mid-Sixties Tolkien ratified the old Fall of Numenor as an 'elvish' account, rather than simply rejecting it as obsolete (as he did with the Tale of the Sun and Moon). If FN retained its canonicity in his mind, then we must, I think, accept it as the teaching of the Wise, and presumptively 'true' (whereas Mannish texts Tolkien always characterises as garbled or unreliable).


Of course there is also the unresolved issue of the Silmarillion's missing frame-story, or, if you like, its unknown provenance. Tolkien still trotted out Pengolodh and Aelfwine in pretty late writings. OTOH he explicitly stated in his last years that the Sil was a Numenorean text- and ofr course CT is convinced that Bilbo was the vector.

These last two, at least, can be reconciled, if we suppose that the library at Imladris where Bilbo worked also served as the archive and repository of the surviving lore of Arnor, and that Elvish historiography was of such a nature as to be confusing or alien to a mortal mind- so that Bilbo preferred to work from Dunedainic texts (written of course in Sindarin). It is certainly the case that the section on Turin was (internally) an abridgment of the Narn i Chin Hurin, written by a Man, Dirhavel.