The Book of Lost Tales Part I: A Readthrough

[Mithalwen]

I am not sure Tolkien would have thought we were overanalysing. He was a philologist and I don't suppose many authors were more knowledgeable about their raw material. He was both an artist and an architect of language . His word use isn't just for aesthetic effect, the mechanics have to work. You can see how much he cared by cases such as "the ptoblem of -ros".

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I am not sure Tolkien would have thought we were overanalysing. He was a philologist and I don't suppose many authors were more knowledgeable about their raw material. He was both an artist and an architect of language . His word use isn't just for aesthetic effect, the mechanics have to work. You can see how much he cared by cases such as "the ptoblem of -ros".

That may be so, but Tolkien probably wouldn't have thought about every single word he used, probably just a few, or the important ones. Word choice is incredibly important when writing a song, or poem, or a heroic monologue, but not so much with generally less important things, like Treebeard walking slowly.

[Puddleglum]

I was struck by the extra emphasis Tolkien gave to the meaning of the "Creation" in "Music of the Ainur" as opposed to what made it into Silmarillion's "Ainulindale". It's not that he changed his meaning, only how he expressed it.

In Ainilindale, he refers to "a mightly theme" and "a Great Music" - but in BoLT's "Music of the Ainur" he is more clear and explicit that the intent is to write a story which shall be most worth reading and living and bring the greatest glory on it's author.

Upon a time Ilúvatar propounded a mighty design of his heart to the Ainur, unfolding a history whose vastness and majesty has never been equalled by aught that he had related before, and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were speechless.

Then said Ilúvatar: “The story that I have laid before you, and that great region of beauty that I have described unto you as the place where all that history might be unfolded and enacted, is related only as it were in outline. I have not filled in all the empty spaces, neither have I recounted to you all the adornments and things of loveliness and delicacy whereof my mind is full.

For me, part of the beauty of what Tolkien created is that it pictures (as few, if any, other works of Fiction do) how our real world may actually be better (in the end) for the evil that lives in it. It touches on the age-old question "How can evil exist in a world ruled by a good God" while accepting the Catholic (and historical Christian) belief - which Tolkien held to - that God really is both Good, Omnisicient (all knowing), and soveriegn.

Thou Melko shalt see that no theme can be played save it come in the end of Iluvatar’s self, nor can any alter the music in Iluvatar’s despite. He that attempts this finds himself in the end but aiding me in devising a thing of still greater grandeur and more complex wonder: –

for lo! through Melko have terror as fire, and sorrow like dark waters, wrath like thunder, and evil as far from my light as the depths of the uttermost dark places, come into the design that I laid before you. Through him has pain and misery been made in the clash of overwhelming musics; and with confusion of sound have cruelty, and ravening, and darkness, loathly mire and all putrescence of thought or thing, foul mists and violent flame, cold without mercy, been born, and death without hope.

Yet is this through him and not by him; and he shall see, and ye all likewise,

and even shall those beings, who must now dwell among his evil and endure through Melko misery and sorrow, terror and wickedness, declare in the end that it redoundeth only to my greater glory, and doth but make the theme more worth the hearing, Life more worth the living, and the World so much more the wonderful and marvellous, that of all the deeds of Iluvatar it shall be called his mightiest and his loveliest.

Not everyone will accept or hold to Tolkien's underlying beliefs, and that's ok. What Tolkien does is write a story which contains application to serious feelings and aches within our our real, primary world while at the same time being a Story capable of being enjoyed on it's own plane even WITHOUT reference to application.

A story which contains application to serious questions within our real world - without requiring anyone to consider those questions (in a word, without being preachy).

I would dare to suggest that the ability to encapsulate both of these (both a great story plus application to deep feelings readers have within their real world) are two of the key hallmarks of all great Classics of literature - whether from Homer, Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen ... or even Tolkien.

------------------

p.s. A key phrase in this is declare in the end. Most great stories wouldn't be called "great" if they stopped in the middle - it's the "Dénouement", the resolution or catastrophe (or eucatastrophe) - which provides the reason why the "story" is "good", in spite of (or because of) all the pain and evil experienced by characters within the story.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Tar-Jêx

That may be so, but Tolkien probably wouldn't have thought about every single word he used, probably just a few, or the important ones. Word choice is incredibly important when writing a song, or poem, or a heroic monologue, but not so much with generally less important things, like Treebeard walking slowly.

It strikes me as just a trifle ironic to find an argument on a thread about the HoME suggesting that Tolkien didn't niggle over words; the HoME, especially once you get to the LotR volumes, is full of evidence that Tolkien niggled over details like words.

Now, I want to be quite clear, lest I come across as trying to defend my own over-thinking with regards to this thread thus far: I do not think, with regards to "the wastes of time," that Tolkien agonized a long time over this choice of words, nor do I think that by choosing it he was indicating all the connotations that I, as the reader, found them to open up. There is a very real difference between a (usually limited) meaning directly intended by the author and (all sorts of) the musings that can be extracted from it by a reader.

That said, Tolkien was a known niggler over details. What is more, details like word choice and and the choice of word order are things that define an author. After long practice, they flow from the pen almost without thought, but that "almost" is important--there IS thought and the vocabulary and style they convey are the fingerprint of the author.

I don't think there's any doubt here that Tolkien's style is something we can't discuss as his fans--indeed, as the fans of his writing, we ought to be able to discuss his writing! To do this, we can't just talk about his style or his vocabulary as broad things; you can only talk about them broadly if you've already looked at the individual choices.

And I think this is especially true when we're discussing The Book of Lost Tales, because Tolkien's prose is a major difference between it and the later legendarium. Discussing it here allows us to show how he was a versatile writer, since allows us to add another style to the ones we know from The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and elsewhere. It allows us, possibly, to draw conclusions about his development, because even if the BoLT is a different genre and intended to convey different things than the Silmarillion would, he is speaking of many of the same things in both of them, and his word choice reveals different nuances as he developed as a writer.

In sum, words are the DNA of a text. You have to put them under a microscope to get anything out of them, and in doing so you CAN magnify them out of proportion--but that does not mean it is not worth doing if you wish to study the subject.

[Tar-Jêx]

While reading page 150 of The Fall of Arthur, and it was also probably in HoME, I saw that Tolkien was indeed writing a time travel story, where the protagonist would end up drowning with Númenor, or something along the lines of that.

This is the first time I have read, quoted directly from Tolkien, that he was writing a time travel story.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

1. Rúmil's speech seems to be littered with a bit more Elfin than what is reported of the others (who are all supposed to be speaking Elfin anyway...): "when tirípti lirilla here comes a bird, an imp of Melko" and he speaks of Mar Vanya Tyaliéva rather than the Cottage of Lost Play. It gives him a distinct character but its an inconsistent application of the translator conceit, I think.

But the only words not translated in Rúmil’s speech (except for the expletive tirípti lirilla) are names of people and places, which one should not expect to be translated, even when a translated version of the name might make sense in English. The same practice of not translating personal names and place names is the normal practice in written tales set in non-English environments. A story set in France would refer to the city of l’Havre, not to a city called The Harbour, to the Jardin des Plantes, not to the Garden of Plants, to François and Pierre rather than to Frank and Peter. Tolkien is here following normal practice used by translators.

2. "Gods" could (should?) probably join the discussion of "fairies" and "Gnomes" regarding words used in the BoLT and not much in the later works.

The word Gods is used less than here in later works by Tolkien, but still used, whereas fairy is used only once in The Hobbit and gnome not at all. Douglas Charles Kane in his Arda Reconsidered, page 251, writes:

With a few small exceptions, Christopher [Tolkien] eliminates all reference to the Valar as “gods,” although that terminology remained common in the later versions of both the Quenta and the Annals.

3. … it's still a valid connection to make anyway, because we know Tolkien was a reader of sci-fi (at least a decade later).

Agreed. There is also a letter from Tolkien to Richard Lupoff which admits to Tolkien having read earlier Martian Books by Edgar Rice Burroughs but declares a distaste for Burroughs’ Tarzan character. See http://books.google.ca/books?id=B0lo...page&q&f=false .

Originally Posted by Tar-Jêx

The transition between the Silmarillion and BoLT is often quite difficult, as the name are all different, very few the same.

Hardly so. Most of the major characters have exactly the same names as in versions written later: Ilúvatar, Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna, Oromë, Mandos, Tulkas, Fëanor, Barahir, Beren, Lúthien, Beleg, Tuor, Huor, Turgon, Idril, Glorfindel, and Elwing, for example. A few characters have smaller changes of name: Melco later becomes Melcor, Ungweliantë later becomes Ungoliant, Tinwë Linto later becomes Thingol, Dairon later becomes Daeron, Meglin later becomes Maeglin, Eärendel later becomes Eärendil, Sorontur later becomes Thorondor, Glorund later becomes Glaurung, Kosomot later becomes Gothmog and so forth.

In contrast very few characters have totally different names. Melian is one of these, being variously named as Gwedheling, Gwendelin(g), Gwenthlin, and Gwenniel. And notoriously Sauron is replaced by Tevildo, King of Cats, or rather the opposite is true. The other such renamed characters are minor characters.

You seem not to recall much of the work. I suggest trying to reread it before commenting on it. There are indeed many changes of names and of style and of plot in respect to the published Silmarillion. If this bothers you then you are missing one of the main reasons for interest in any author’s early version of a work: the differences from the later version or versions.

I recall when this volume first appeared. Christopher Tolkien had already published Unfinished Tales and one hoped for more. That he now intended to publish early versions of all his father’s work was totally unexpected, considering earlier remarks which had suggested no such course.

The work was for me a delightful surprise.

On page 4 of this volume Christopher Tolkien writes: “We do not actually see the Silmarils as we see the Ring.” That seems to me to be a flaw in The Silmarillion, perhaps a necessary flaw considering that The Silmarillion was supposed to be a summary of imagined fuller accounts.

But The Book of Lost Tales, while incomplete and in disagreement with later conceptions told its tale in full. The reader sees the growth of the Two Trees in Tolkien’s only full description of them. The reader sees the city of the Valar with the only descriptions of the dwellings of the Valar, internal and external. One sees the Silmarils themselves as Fëanor creates them. One sees Rúmil himself, not as a vaguely imagined ancient elven sage responsible for an early writing system but as an eccentric, old codger, enraged at meeting with a bird whose speech he cannot understand, and then blaming the no-doubt innocent bird for the sage’s ignorance.

The story, though incomplete, is most enjoyable.

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Hardly so. Most of the major characters have exactly the same names as in versions written later: Ilúvatar, Manwë, Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna, Oromë, Mandos, Tulkas, Fëanor, Barahir, Beren, Lúthien, Beleg, Tuor, Huor, Turgon, Idril, Glorfindel, and Elwing, for example. A few characters have smaller changes of name: Melco later becomes Melcor, Ungweliantë later becomes Ungoliant, Tinwë Linto later becomes Thingol, Dairon later becomes Daeron, Meglin later becomes Maeglin, Eärendel later becomes Eärendil, Sorontur later becomes Thorondor, Glorund later becomes Glaurung, Kosomot later becomes Gothmog and so forth.

I was more talking about places and things, not characters. However, some of the Valar did undergo name changes. Mandos was Vefantur, Nienna was Fui. I know a number of people who actually skip pages (despicable) and they find themselves lost, because you only get told once who these people are.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Tar-Jêx

I was more talking about places and things, not characters.

Your original post does not indicate this. But I still fail to take your point. Fomendacil, quite rightly, in my opinion, indicates that Tolkien’s change of Teleri from the first kindred of the Eldar to the third, combined with his change of the names of the other two kindreds, is potentially confusing to a reader familiar with the published Silmarillion.

But such switches are rare. Indeed I think that this switch in the meanings to Teleri is almost unique in Tolkien’s writing.

However, some of the Valar did undergo name changes. Mandos was Vefantur, Nienna was Fui.

The word some indicates more than two or three in most people’s idiolect. And the so-called name changes are not complete name changes.

The Vala Mandos, is first introduced on page 66 of The Book of Lost Tales, Book One, in the statement:

… and those brethren the Fánturi, Fantur of Dreams who is Lórien Olofántur, and Fantur of Death, who is Véfantur Mandos, …

Thereafter in the The Book of Lost Tales he is mostly called Mandos, as normally he is in the published Silmarillion, though in a few places in The Book of Lost Tales he is simply Véfantur. The corresponding statement in the published Silmarillion is somewhat longer and clearer:

The Fëanturi, masters of spirits, are brethren, and they are called most often Mandos and Lórien. Yet these are rightly the names of the places of their dwellings, and their true names are Námo and Irmo.

Nienna is also introduced for the first time on page 66 of The Book of Lost Tales, Part One as Fui Nienna. Admittedly the name Fui by itself, explained as properly the name of her dwelling, is more commonly used in the Book of Lost Tales and not used at all in the published Silmarillion. And in the Book of Lost Tales Fui/Nienna is the wife of Mandos, not his sister as she is in the published Silmarillion. But otherwise they are almost the same character.

This is, in my opinion, less confusing than the various names of the Hobbits who take part in the Quest for the Ring in early versions of the Lord of the Rings. And there is an index of names to help the reader who needs it.

Mandos and Nienna are indeed called Mandos and Nienna in the Book of Lost Tales. The change in names for Mandos is from Véfantur to Námo and Nienna has only an additional name of Fui which is later dropped.

I believe totally that the Book of Lost Tales confused you but can’t figure out what you found so confusing when the Book of Lost Tales was presented as an earlier version of Tolkien’s Silmarillion and Christopher Tolkien continually in his notes points out the differences. That the work was different from the published Silmarillion was the main reason for its being published. What you find confusing is to those who like it one of the main reasons for being delighted with the work being published.

I know a number of people who actually skip pages (despicable) and they find themselves lost, because you only get told once who these people are.

That Tolkien does not explain everything fully is a persistent complaint about The Lord of the Rings also. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings early introduces dozens of hobbits, most of whom are never mentioned again. Some find the geographic names frightful. The reader is apparently expected to remember them all, when any of them are encountered later.

When I find myself confused in similar fashion, say in a book of Irish mythology or history that is unfamiliar to me, I might also shut the book. But I don’t blame the book for my ignorance, as Tolkien presents Rúmil as enraged when a bird happens to sing a song he does not already know.

[Findegil]

jallanite, I second your point that it is normally not very difficult to recognise the characters even so some names are slightly changed. But nonetheless you should moderate your tone as long as you does not have your own facts straight: the later Hour, Tuor's father has a different name in the Lost Tales: Peleg.

Respectfully
Findegil

P.S.: Sorry, I couldn't resist to point that out, even so I think the discussion is worthless. The point should be taken on both sides: The names bear some potential for confusion, but it is less the changes made compared to later versions than the pure number of them.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Findegil

But nonetheless you should moderate your tone as long as you does not have your own facts straight: the later Hour, Tuor's father has a different name in the Lost Tales: Peleg.

Indeed, my list of names that are the same in The Book of Lost Tales and The Silmarillion was wrong in three places, because I simply put down forms that I remembered as being the same in both, and did not actually check, which is just asking for trouble.

I think my addition of Huor instead of Peleg was a stupid slip when I should have posted Túrin (and also possibly have posted other names from the chapter “Turambar and the Foalóke”, namely Brodda and Mîm, though I was not intending to list every name that was the same in the Book of Lost Tales and the published Silmarillion). But I don’t really know how Huor wrongly slipped in. I fully admit this as an inexcusable error.

Another error was my listing of Barahir in the list where Christopher Tolkien quite clearly states that Barahir only appears as a change in a late retelling of the “The Tale of Tinúviel”. In the main account Beren’s father is named Egnor.

Also, the form Tinwë Linto which I gave for Thingol is a rare variant. The most common name for the character in the Book of Lost Tales is Tinwelint.

Sorry, I couldn't resist to point that out, even so I think the discussion is worthless. The point should be taken on both sides: The names bear some potential for confusion, but it is less the changes made compared to later versions than the pure number of them.

Here I very much disagree. Tar-Jêx originally posted: “… the name are all different, very few the same.” The names are not all different from those in the published Silmarillion. Most of them are the same or at least very close to the versions which appear in the published Silmarillion, unless Tar-Jêx is possibly including forms that appear only very seldom in the Book of Lost Tales and were soon changed by Tolkien to more familiar forms within the Book of Lost Tales.

I do not take Tar-Jêx’s point, because I do not see the point. Tar-Jêx excused himself by claiming that he “… was more talking about places and things, not characters.” But he does not explain by indicating what persons and places in the Book of Lost Tales so confused him, instead pointing out two supposed personal name changes and he gets that wrong also.

My own suspicion is that Tar-Jêx does not now clearly recall what turned him off the Book of Lost Tales, only vaguely that some of the changes in the nomenclature were involved. But this has led him to statements that are quite untrue concerning the extent of the name changes.

The name changes he claims are mostly either non-existent, or very minor. They are at least no more than one might expect in a work published as an early version of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. One surely ought to expect some differences in plot and names from the published Silmarillion.

To complain that differences between the Book of Lost Tales and the Silmarillion are confusing to the point that the reader finds the works unreadable suggests to me that that reader must be very easily confused.

I fully admit Tar-Jêx’s right not to like the Book of Lost Tales but the reasons he presents for doing to do not make sense to me.

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by jallanite

The name changes he claims are mostly either non-existent, or very minor. They are at least no more than one might expect in a work published as an early version of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. One surely ought to expect some differences in plot and names from the published Silmarillion.

To complain that differences between the Book of Lost Tales and the Silmarillion are confusing to the point that the reader finds the works unreadable suggests to me that that reader must be very easily confused.

I fully admit Tar-Jêx’s right not to like the Book of Lost Tales but the reasons he presents for doing to do not make sense to me.

While I admit that I was wrong in saying that all of the names were different, there are still a great deal, and some of the more important ones. The renaming of the Solosimpi and Teleri can be quite a confusing one. After going back through the book, scanning for name changes, I noticed with the Valar that after the initial name changes, they still don't have just one name. Many of them have multiple different forms of their name, or just multiple names entirely. Melkor is an example. He was Melko, then Melkor, also known as Morgoth, Bauglir, Morgoth Bauglir, the Dark Lord, and other various 'evil' titles. This is also true for what I was referring to, the places. A great deal of them don't undergo name changes, but are called different things every other page.

We seem to have a misunderstanding, though, as I personally really enjoy BoLT. I was stating that a reader can be turned off and become disinterested when every place or item is being referred to by a different name every second page. A number of people I know that have tried to read BoLT found the name switching to be confusing, and never knew what was being referred to.

[Formendacil]

Time to move the discussion on! Well, time to post something for the next chapter, anyway. The topic of shifting names remains a major on-display feature of Chapter III, which picks up immediately from Chapter II (CT notes there is no textual break between the two and their Links). Compared with the later, published Silmarillion, this chapter is part "Valaquenta," part "Of the Beginning of Days," and 100% unlike both of them.

The Link:

The Link here is short and CT does not separate it, as he did the longer on in "The Music of the Ainur" from the main tale. This is again told by Rúmil, though we're back in the Hall of Fire.

Originally Posted by Of the Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor

"Then [said Rúmil] with the leave of Lindo and of Vairë I will begin the tale, else will you go on asking for ever; and may the company have pardon if they hear old tales again." But Vairë said that those words concerning the oldest things were far from stale yet in the ears of the Eldar.

I quote this because this could almost be the Downs' motto: "I will discuss the topic, else will you go on asking forever, and may the company pardon if they heard old tales again." But, said the Downers, those words concerning Tolkien things were far from stale yet.

There's a lot going on in this chapter, but the thing that stood out for me first and foremost--possibly because of the ongoing discussion in this thread--is all the information revealed about the Valar. The names and how much they've stayed the same (though there HAVE been some changes) leap immediately to mind, but there's more than that. The comparison to the Valaquenta is apt, because we have more than one "list of the Valar" here--we have about three, I'd say: an initial one, when they enter the world, an update as they go through the earliest days, and finally--and most extensively--the list of their houses.

The Maiar have yet to appear--at least named as such. There are countless spirits in the train of the Valar and there is no clear distinction between the great Valar and their followers--and in the cases of Ossë and Ónen (Uinen) and Salmar, figures who would later be Maiar are here clearly called Valar. But the big difference from the later legendarium--at least if you want my opinion--is that, in the BoLT conception, the Valar could have children. Most importantly, Oromë is the son of Yavanna and Aulë. (He clearly takes after his mother, it seems.)

On this last point, it says of Oromë and his lands in Valinor: "Much indeed he loves those realms yet is he very often in the world without; more often even than Ossë and as often as Palúrien." The special care that Oromë and Yavanna had for the Great Lands would persist into the published Silmarillion, where they seemed to be somewhat randomly chosen to have similar interests. We see here, though, why they originally had such closely related concerns: the god of hunting was the son of the goddess of nature.

And speaking of gods and goddesses, the Valar having children is but one feature demonstrating how the BoLT version of the Valar feels more like the real-world pantheons they represent. Unlike the more clinical (or is it compressed?) Valar of the later Silm, the list here trails off a bit more (what do we really know about Omar, the youngest of the Valar?), includes more rogues (Makar and Meássë), and more generations. To me, this made the entire chapter feel a lot like Hesiod's "Theogony," and I noted in the margins that the halls of Makar and Meássë seemed to remind me more of Valhalla than anything in the later Silm--though Tolkien does not glorify it at all.

We get more geography in this chapter, and although Tolkien would not create a map of the kind we fans grew familiar with from The Hobbit, the LotR, etc, there's a clear geography here on the large scale: Valinor and the Great Lands with the Magic Isles and the Twilit Isles set between--and in the ancillary information in the commentary, CT reproduces two "maps" in a looser sense, showing his father's conceptions of the cosmological structure of the world, as it then stood. The terminology shifted a bit and elements were refined, but this is the germ of early Silmarillion-contemporary "Ambarkanta." In other words, this is already close to the cosmology of the published Silmarillion.

(But with a caveat! Tolkien did not ever manage to rework the Silm so that it was "always round Earth," but he did want to.)

Even so, the information given here is more detailed and precise than most of what comes in the published Silm, and at least when I first read it--before I encountered the Ambarkanta a few volumes later--it seemed to fill in some of the questions the later text prompted.

To give an idea of how much is covered here, in his commentary, CT breaks down the chapter into sections for discussion, and I will list them off:

I. The Coming of the Valar and their encounter with Melko
II. The earliest conception of the Western Lands, and the Oceans
III. The Lamps
IV. The Two Trees
V. The Dwellings of the Valar
VI. The Gods of Death and the Fates of Elves and Men

Some minor notes I made, more or less in the order I encountered them:

1. "[The Valar] chose certain of their number to seek out the wrongdoer, and these were Mandos and Tulkas, Mandos for that of his dread aspect was Melko more in fear than of aught else save it were the strength of Tulkas' arm, and Tulkas was the other."

Melkor's special bitterness for Tulkas would remain, but I can't remember another reference to having a concern or fear where Mandos was concerned. It's the sort of thing that would be in-character, not least given the later imprisonment he would suffer in the halls of Mandos, but I can't recall the later Melkor ever giving the Doomsman of the Valar second pause.

2. A case of inconsistent characterization? "It was the rede of Aulë and of his wife Palúrien, for they were the most grieved by the mischief of Melko's turmoils and trusted his promises not at all," it says of them on the bottom of page 68 in my text, and then halfway through page 69, it says "Aulë suaded Melko to build two towers to the North and South," setting up Melko's ice-as-"an imperishable substance of great strength" deception.

3. "Then Ossë, for Ulmo was not there, gathered to him the Oarni, and putting forth their might they dragged that island whereupon stood the Valar westward from the waters till they came to Eruman"--why would Ulmo object? I know he and Ossë never see eye-to-eye, but did I miss what the difference of philosophy was in this matter?

4. Lórien and Vána share more of the glory with Yavanna here for the creation of the Two Trees and this how things roll in the BoLT--they will also play a more prominent role in the BoLT creation of the sun and moon.

5. On page 73, Tolkien calls Palúrien "mother of magic." I wonder what Sam and Galadriel would make of this--though Lothlórien does feel like somewhere Yavanna would be held in high regard.

6. Regarding the Two Trees, one of the most intriguing differences between the BoLT and the later legendarium is the order of the Trees' creation. Later, the silver tree would come first and the moon like it; here, it was Laurelin first and also the sun. The change to the later version predates The Lord of the Rings and thus predates the famous "consciously Catholic in the revision" moment Tolkien claimed to have had with that text; nonetheless, I note that change makes the legendarium more congruent with the Bible: "there was evening and there was morning"--in that order. I am not going to argue that there's enough evidence to say Tolkien was making the legendarium more Catholic-congruent, but it would track with the more "pagan" feel of the BoLT giving way to the more "angelic" Valar of the later legends, who are not "gods."

Finally, this chapter comes with a poem included in the commentary: "Habbanan beneath the Stars." My sole comment here is wonderment at the third line: "There is a sound of faint guitars."

The only mention of guitars in all the matter of Middle-earth? I certainly cannot think of another. Maybe it's just me, but I find it a bit jarring.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Tar-Jêx

He was Melko, then Melkor, also known as Morgoth, Bauglir, Morgoth Bauglir, the Dark Lord, and other various 'evil' titles. This is also true for what I was referring to, the places. A great deal of them don't undergo name changes, but are called different things every other page.

Yes the same person is called Melko in The Book of Lost Tales, and other names in later works, principally Melkor and Morgoth. But the name Melko is very close to the name Melkor and the name Morgoth is only mentioned once in The Book of Lost Tales (other than in Christopher Tolkien’s commentary), which should make the Book of Lost Tales less confusing than the published Silmarillion. The forms Dark Lord and Bauglir do not even appear in The Book of Lost Tales. You would seem to indicate that the published Silmarillion is more confusing than Book of Lost Tales, which I do not think was your intention.

As to place names, name even one place name in The Book of Lost Tales, that is “called different things every other page.” Name even a single name that is mentioned “every second page” throughout the work. Gross exaggeration does not convince me.

We seem to have a misunderstanding, though, as I personally really enjoy BoLT.

The misunderstanding, if it is a misunderstanding, comes from you own statement: “I will admit, I did close my book gently, but firmly, in frustration of these ‘silent changes’”. Is this true?

I was stating that a reader can be turned off and become disinterested when every place or item is being referred to by a different name every second page. A number of people I know that have tried to read BoLT found the name switching to be confusing, and never knew what was being referred to.

Name a single case in The Book of Lost Tales where “every place or item is being referred to by a different name every second page”.

I have less understanding of what you are talking about the more you try to explain. I can understand a reader being slightly confused on occasion by differences in the Book of Lost Tales and the published Silmarillion, or in either book by itself, but I see place names changing only sometimes, not “every second page” throughout the Book of Lost Tales.

Continual use of gross exaggeration undercuts the points you are trying to explain, suggesting to me that you cannot support your points by simple statements, either because you are clumsy in your writing or because you simply can’t support them at all.

Yes, the Book of Lost Tales is sometimes confusing in its changing of names. Any stronger statement is gross exaggeration, in the same way the a complaint that the published Silmarillion is sometimes confusing with its similar names: Finwë, Fingolfin, Finarfin, Fingon, and Finrod. This is true. Possibly the changes in the Book of Lost Tales can be even more confusing to some people. Personally, I find it somewhat less confusing. Neither work is so confusing that I closed either book gently, but firmly. Both books were interesting enough that I read them in enjoyment, despite occasional confusion, as with many books.

[Tar-Jêx]

Apparently the use of exaggeration makes my points completely invalid.

I think I was quite clear that I was exaggerating. I never said that I didn't enjoy BoLT, rather that I was slightly frustrated at one point. It's like marriage. Anyway, this is basically just getting off topic and stupid. Abort this now meaningless discussion.

Formendacil, in the Silmarillion, it is stated multiple times that Melkor only feared Tulkas, for his physical strength was unmatched. I think Mandos was cut from the podium because of the similarities between him and Melkor. Melkor struck fear and doom into the hearts of many, so why would he fear one who did the same thing?

I believe the Silmarillion removed reference to solely Mandos and Tulkas being sent to seek out Melkor, and just had the whole crew go instead. Manwe came to his door and asked to come in, and Melkor allowed them, but was not pleased with Tulkas' presence. Nothing was mentioned of Mandos, and so he was basically removed from the event, while still being present.

[jallanite]

To continue with the main subject of this thread, I note particularly the discussion of the Valar.

We have Tolkien describing the actual arrival of the Valar and their people in the world, whereas in the published Silmarillion in the chapter “Of the Beginning of Days” this is just assumed to have occurred in a distant time, perhaps because Tolkien wished later to imagine a longer length of time during which the Earth existed. The Valar may have arrived at different times, but we are only specifically told that Tulkas came late, seemingly the last of the Valar to come, and was sufficient to supply the strength and power which drove Melkor from Middle-earth. But in this early account Tulkas is merely described among the others who have newly arrived and there is no early war between the Valar and Melko(r) before the destruction of the two lamps.

The Valar are mostly the same named in Tolkien’s later list of the Valar and Maiar with no distinction made between them here. Vaire is missing, though her name is applied to another, Eriol’s hostess, who is not much like the later Valier. Mandos’ wife is Fui Nienna who later accounts make instead to be the sister of Mandos and Lórien. Estë, the wife of Lórien, is not mentioned at all in the Book of Lost Tales. Nessa, the wife of Tulkas and brother to Oromë, is also not mentioned now, perhaps missed by a slip of Tolkien since she will become important in details at the end of this chapter and later.

Four more Valar are named in this chapter and also later in the book: the fierce brother-and-sister war deities Makar and Meássë; the youngest of the great Valar, Ómar, a singer and a linguist, later identified as the twin brother of Salmar; and Nornorë, the herald of the gods. None of these personages reappear outside the Book of Lost Tales.

Fiönwë and Erinti, son and daughter of Manwë and Varda, are not mentioned in this chapter, though both have been mentioned earlier on page 58, and both will also be mentioned later. By the published Silmarillion, Fiönwë will have become Ëonwë, herald of Manwë, and Eriniti will have become Ilmarë the handmaid of Varda. Eriniti is listed on page 251 with reference to vanished tales where it appears she was at one time the sister of “Noldorin and Amillo”, that is sister of Salmar and Ómar. The maiden Nielíqui is only mentioned once at the end of this chapter on page 72 and is only later identified as the daughter of Oromë and Vána. Telimehtar in later chapters is to be named as the son of Tulkas and Nessa.

Later still more beings appear in connection with the Sun and Moon. There is Urwen(di), the sun-maiden, who in the published Silmarillion becomes Árien. There is also Tilion who is perhaps the same as Silimo who long tended the silver tree. However, unlike the published Silmarillion where Tilion becomes steersman of the moon, in this account the moon is governed by a different being named Iinsor; and in the moon is yet another wight, Uolë Kúvion, by some named the Old Man of the Moon. These are more likely to be only people of some of the Valar rather than Valar themselves. The same may be true of some others mentioned because Tolkien, in this state in his writing, makes no firm distinction between classes of supernatural beings, though he probably made distinctions which he did not write down here.

Melian the Maia of the published Silmarillion is here definitely not a Vala but is called a sprite or a fay.

Tolkien gives many names to the peoples of the Valar and there are many different sorts. Manwë and Varda are accompanied by “the Mánir and the Súruli, the sylphs of the airs and of the winds.” Yavanna is accompanied by “the Nermir and the Tavari, Nandini and Orossi, brownies, fays, pixies, leprawns”. And so it goes for other Valar. This gives a greater zest to Tolkien’s world than does the later version, or so I think.

I particularly like the Book of Lost Tales account of the first coming of Melko to earth:

Now swiftly as they fared, Melko was there before them, having rushed headlong flaming through the airs in the impetuosity of his speed, and there was a tumult of the sea where he had dived and the mountains above him spouted flames and the earth gaped and rocked; and Manwë beholding this was wroth.

[Formendacil]

Not so much discussion this past week--if the comparison to Hesiod's Theogony holds, that doesn't surprise me. The list of the gods is important, but not always exciting...

I am a micron shy of being absolutely certain here, but it definitely seems to me that Christopher Tolkien has abridged the text at the start of the Link here, picking up after some recap with "And a marvel of wizardry liveth...". And unless I absolutely missed it somewhere, CT does not explain why he's done it. I assume it's because the text rambles or isn't up to his father's usual standards or SOMETHING. I'm going with the theory that everything it contains will be repeated later in the same Link, which is rather long. It's an odd lacuna, regardless, given the thoroughness with which CT usually presents new texts. In later volumes, it is true, he will often omit passages or texts that are substantially the same as later or earlier versions printed elsewhere, but there's no other.

In the midst of this redacted passage, Eriol hears the music of Tinfang Warble, a character I really don't know how to introduce other than to say "he's the Book of Lost Tales' closest parallel to Tom Bombadil." It's not a perfect parallel, obviously. Tinfang Warble is not an intentional enigma, though the way Vairë describes him at first does not seem that far removed from some of theories out there about Tom:

Originally Posted by The Book of Lost Tales

"There be none," said Vairë, "not even of the Solosimpi, who can rival him therein, albeit those same pipers claim him as their kin; yet 'tis said everywhere that this same spirit is neither wholly of the Valar nor of the Eldar, but is half a fay of the woods and dells, one of the great companies of the children of Palúrien, and half a Gnome or Shoreland Piper.

This half-blood lineage sounds a lot like Thingol and Melian, and in a footnote here, CT shows that Tolkien add to the text to suggest just that--but then he struck it through, removing the reference to Tinwë Linto and Wendelin. Of course, whether Tolkien removed it because it was inconsistent with how he wanted to present the story at that time, or whether because he'd decided against Tinfang Warble being the sibling of Tinúviel, is another matter.

Tinfang Warble fascinates me because he is emblematic to me of the differences between the BoLT and the later legendarium. From his name to his improbable ability to come and go between the Lonely Isle and the Great Lands to his eerie, "fairy" quality, he is nearly impossible to imagine in the later legendarium. But that's where he reminds me of Tom Bombadil--because if you read the Silmarillion and then told me that a singing genius loci in yellow boots would make a major, three chapter contribution to the tale of the War of the Ring, it'd be equally hard to imagine.

Anyway, Tinfang's music leads to Eriol's desire to satiate the longing that music brings, by drinking limpë, and for this he has go into Kortirion and get the lady's permission.

The queen is a descendant of Ingil son of Inwë (making the Royal House of the first company of the Eldar considerably larger than it will later become), and this relation to In(g)wë is not the most important way she has parallels to the later character of Galadriel (Galadriel's father, Finarfin, was the son of Indis, a Vanya of Ingwë's family--the exact relationship is not one Tolkien expressed consistently--and the source of her golden hair.) Like Galadriel, Meril is held in deep reverence by her people and her role in the story is to probe the hearts and desires of the protagonists.

In short, Meril tells Eriol that he can never become an elf and that he doesn't even know what he's asking without knowing the history of the Elves. And thus we get another story (though in a potential revision, Tolkien was going to have Eriol return to the Cottage of Lost Play empty-handed and have Rúmil tell the story instead of Meril-i-Turinqui).

In the process, we've learned a lot about limpë and its effects. Comments?

"Melko's Chains" has the same main plot elements as the later story in the Silmarillion: the Valar decide something must be done about Melko(r), they go to war, and bring him back from Utumn(o/a) in chains--but with one major difference. In the Silmarillion, this campaign is done completely out of consideration for the Elves; in the Book of Lost Tales, the Elves aren't even mentioned in connection with the matter until Melko is being judged, when Palúrien's counsel runs, "Take heed, O Valar, that both Elves and Men be not devoid of all solace whenso the times come for them to find the Earth."

This is a major difference in motivation and plotting, but it seems like an almost trivial difference to me, compared with the drastic stylistic differences between the earlier and later versions.

Some notes I made as I was reading:

1. "But Meril said, 'friendship is possible, maybe, but kinship not so.'" It's worth noting, in the Lost Tales, that Beren is an Elf and there's no suggestion that Tuor would share Idril's fate. The changes-of-fate Lúthien and Tuor undergo is a product of the later legendarium.

2. " 'Nay,' said she, 'on a day of autumn will come the winds and a driven gull, maybe, will wail overhead, and lo! you will be filled with desire, remembering the black coasts of your home.' " Ironically, since Meril is trying to argue Eriol away from tying himself to the fate of the Elves, this longing of his Mannish heritage as a son of Eárendel sounds a lot like the doom of Eldar that Legolas suffers in The Lord of the Rings.

3. To continue with one of my points from last chapter, Oromë's participation in the creation of the first forests with his mother, a participation he lacks in the later legendarium, sheds light on the later tales nonetheless--we are told, after all, that one of his names is "Tauron"--lord of the forests. It makes even more sense in this context, where the first hunter is the son of the mother of the forests.

4. "Full of evil and unwholesome were they; luring and restlessness and horror they brought, turning the dark into an ill and fearful thing, which it was not before." This is one of Tolkien's favourite themes with the Elves, right down to Midsummer Eve in Minas Tirith after the War of the Ring.

5. "Tilkal." It's improbable name aside, its existence puts mithril into a tradition of invented metals. Also, the footnote calls ilsa and laurë the "magic names" of gold and silver. I don't know about "magic," but I'm reminded of "argent" and "or" as heraldic names of the same.

6. Telimektar son of Tulkas gets his first mention.

7. Mandos and Lórien riding together on the same chariot, in addition to being a more evocative image than the later text provides, is another reminder they are brethren.

8. Aulë and his long-handled war-hammer. Shades of mjölnir, anyone? (He's really more of a Hephaestion/Vulcan, but still...)

9. "In sooth Manwë hoped even to end for peace and amity." Is Manwë to be considered super-naïve or is he a paragon of goodness?

10. "yet the shellfish and oysters no-one of the Valar or of Elves knows whence they are, for they gaped in the silent waters or ever Melko lunged therein from on high, and pearls there were before the Eldar thought or dreamed of any gem." Forget Tinfang Warble! Here's the real parallel to Tom Bombadil. Is Bombadil an oyster?


There are two poems in the Commentary, both included for their connection to Tinfang Warble. The first, called "Tinfang Warble," reached its centenary this year (so you can drink to that if you're lacking in Tolkien toasts) and I'd be lying if I said that it didn't remind me of "tra-la-la-lally." "Over the Hills and Far Away" is, to my mind, much the better of the two. Both were still around in 1927--well past the Lost Tales era and into the beginning of the Silmarillion tradition (though not necessarily connected with it--but a reminder nonetheless that the Silm began and essentially remained an annalistic compendium of the stories in the BoLT). That was the year "Tinfang Warble" saw publication and "Over the Hills and Far Away" was rewritten.

Finally, CT admits he's taken advantage of an interjection by Eriol and reminder of him and Meril-i-Turinqui to separate "Melko's Chains" from the following chapter. Perhaps moreso than the foregoing chapters, we have an artificial division here, one that seems all the more natural given the division of this same section of the Silmarillion into multiple chapters.

[jallanite]

Tinfang Warble also has a vague origin, being either, in a crossed-out passage, the son of the Elfin King Tinwelint by the twilight spirit Wendelin and brother to Lúthen Tinúviel or son of an unidentified Gnome or Shoreland Piper by an unidentified fay who was one of the followers of Palúrien.

The metal tilkal created by Aulë is said by Tolkien to be an amalgam of six metals: copper, silver, tin, lead, iron, and gold. Traditionally there were seven metals to match the seven planets and seven days of the week, but when the metal electrum was recognized as a alloy of gold and silver, after the first centuries, electrum ceased to be considered a planetary metal. The planet Jupiter was then associated with tin and the planet Mercury, which had previously been associated with tin, was now associated instead with the metal mercury. Tolkien, limiting his metals to six, avoids including both the amalgam of electrum and the new addition of mercury.

The war against Melko is somewhat disappointing. First, the male Valar and their male children take part, but not the female Valar; not even the war goddess Méassë, so far as is told. And there is not really a war. Instead Melko is just tricked into becoming a prisoner. In The Lord of the Rings Faramir will later say:

But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.

In the published Silmarillion Melkor is defeated only after many untold battles and great devastation of the environment, and is defeated in a fair single combat against Tulkas, one on one. Yet Tolkien expresses a dislike of such punishment in his essay “On Fairy Stories”. Tolkien writes:

Yet it is not clear that ‘fair fight’ is less cruel than ‘fair judgement’; or that piercing a dwarf with a sword is more just than the execution of wicked kings and evil stepmothers – which Lang abjures.

On page 108 of the Book of Lost Tales, Part One, Christopher Tolkien states that the earliest version of his father’s poem on Tinfang Warble, Over Old Hills and Far Away, has a subtitle in Old English with the same meaning: Ʒeond fyrne beorgas 7 heonan feor.

The letters Ʒ and 7 are here somewhat rough, seemingly written by hand, rather than being from an italic font like the other letters. Possibly they did not have these characters in their fonts.

The letter 7 represents a capital version of the Latin word et ‘and’ in the shorthand writing system created by Cicero’s scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes . The lowercase symbol ⁊ is available in Unicode as symbol U+204A, but its rarer use as a non-standard uppercase symbol is not, and so the Arabic number 7 may be used in Unicode as a substitute when uppercase is desired. These symbols were commonly used in the Old English language approximately between the years 450 and 1150. The normal lowercase symbol ⁊ is still used in Irish and in Scots Gaelic. See https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2014...alway-ireland/ .

In Old English the letter G/g is written in what is called insular form as ᵹ, but is normally produced as a normal G/g in current style in printed editions of Old English text. The letter G/g had four distinct pronunciations in Old English:

Hard g as in get [ɡɛt]
The fricative sound [ɣ], related to [ɡ] as the Scottish ch in loch is related to k
The modern English soft sound [dʒ], as in gem [dʒɛm]
Minimal sound [j] as in the first letter in you [juː]

Usually these pronunciations are distinguished in modern spelling of Old English by using the dotted form Ġ/ġ for the latter two sounds. More rarely the Middle English letter yogh is used instead. Yogh is in origin derived from the English insular G/g written as ᵹ. Tolkien uses a capital yogh as the first letter in this subtitle.

Yogh is printed as Ȝ/ȝ or as Ʒ/ʒ, the latter form being the more modern use. But this form is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the letter ezh, as in measure [mɛʒuɹ]. Unicode accordingly now distinguishes ezh, which is always printed as Ʒ/ʒ, from yogh which may be printed either as Ȝ/ȝ or as Ʒ/ʒ, but in most computer fonts appears as the distinct form Ȝ/ȝ. See the article http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/ezhyogh.html , one of many, many articles by the amazing Michael Everson. This article led to Unicode adding yogh as a letter in Unicode version 3.0.0 in September 1999 to be differentiated from IPA ezh. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Everson .

Michael Everson is since 2012 also publisher of the Irish translation of An Hobad (The Hobbit). See http://www.evertype.com/books/hobad.html .

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Nienna is also introduced for the first time on page 66 of The Book of Lost Tales, Part One as Fui Nienna. Admittedly the name Fui by itself, explained as properly the name of her dwelling, is more commonly used in the Book of Lost Tales and not used at all in the published Silmarillion. And in the Book of Lost Tales Fui/Nienna is the wife of Mandos, not his sister as she is in the published Silmarillion. But otherwise they are almost the same character.

Sorry, but no..... no two characters could be further apart from each other than Fui Nienna from the BOLT and Nienna from the Silmarillion.

Fui Nienna is a spirit of death and despair, almost evil: she is Qualme-Tari, the Queen of Death and Heskil, who brings winter. She judges the souls of dead men ( humans) in her dark hall and throws those she finds wanting to Melco to be his slaves in Angamandi. She weaves dark clouds that float into the world and descend upon people as grief and suffering and unspeakable despair. She and Mandos are explicitly said to "have no warm feelings for any living thing"
In this phase she was the crone, the life-taker in complete opposite to her (back then) sister Vana, Tári- Laisi the Mistress of Life and goddess of spring and sunlight (who was a far mightier entity than Vana the Everyoung in the Silmarillion, CT explicitly points out in the BOLT how Vana lost importance in the later legendarium, while Nienna gained it)

Nienna in the Silmarillion? She is the incarnation of Compassion and wisdom gained from great suffering. Her tears are life giving, as she waters the hill upon which Yavanna grows the two trees with them and later weeps upon the dead stumps to clean them of Morgoth's and Ungoliant's corruption.
She was Gandalf's teacher from whom he learned much wisdom and compassion and she is so gentle and soft hearted that she even speaks in favour of Melkor's appeal, even while she is weeping over every ill he has ever done and every hurt he has ever caused. She often journeys to Mandos to counsel the spirits of the dead Elves there, helping them to turn their pain and suffering into wisdom.

Fui Nienna and "our" Nienna are complete opposites!

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

Sorry, but no..... no two characters could be further apart from each other than Fui Nienna from the BOLT and Nienna from the Silmarillion.

Do you mean that Fui Nienna in The Book of Lost Tales is more evil than Melko, or Ungweliantë, or Tevildo King of Cats, or than many Orcs and Balrogs? Then I disagree. That Fui Nienna is “almost evil” is not I think, ever said by Tolkien. As a critical reader I therefore may not accept at its face value what seems to me to be gross exaggeration.

Fui Nienna is indeed the spirit of death (of Men) in The Book of Lost Tales, but is she indeed totally the spirit of despair? Neil Gaiman’s endless who is called Despair, in his series The Sandman, seems to me a far grimmer and darker being, while Neil Gaiman’s endless Death is, as a person, far more cheerful and understanding. Even in The Book of Lost Tales Mandos and Fui Nienna remain ranked among the Valar, and while relating what might be thought to be dreadful things of them, he voices no criticism. Both remain among the Valar in Tolkien’s later writing whereas the war deities Makar and Meássë are to some degree sneered at by Tolkien and neither is mentioned beyond The Book of Lost Tales.

In this phase she was the crone, …

Tolkien himself says nothing about this. Vui Nienna’s counterpart in Norse myth would be the godess Hel, whose apparent age is not mentioned in existent texts. Similarly in the Sumerian/Babylonian tales the death goddess is Ereskigal, the elder sister of Inanna/Ishtar, who corresponds most closely to Tolkien’s Vána, but otherwise there is no mention of Ereshkigal’s apparent age. In the Norse Prose Edda the god Thor is defeated by the allegorical figure of Old Age (Elli), who appears in the guise of an old woman. This is the closest I can come to fitting a mythological pattern to your interpretation of Tolkien.

Yet, when I posted, “otherwise they are almost the same character”, I overspoke. I ought perhaps to have posted something like, “but even the Nienna of the published Silmarillion is in some of her features still relatable to the Fui Nienna of The Book of Lost Tales.

Fui Nienna and "our" Nienna are complete opposites!

This is where I find you exaggerating. What does complete opposite mean? Both Fui Nienna and the later Nienna are of the same species. They are Valar. They are of the same gender, female. Both bare the same name. Both are connected with weeping and sorrow. Both are connected with Mandos. They seem to me to not be complete opposites.

Perhaps one ought to ignore species, in which case one my find counterparts among the Ainur in Arda. If one does not ignore gender, then Melkor is arguably the counterpart to Varda, otherwise he is the counterpart to Manwë. But who would be the counterpart to Ulmo, some spirit of the dry dessert? Who would be the counterpart to Oromë? Some non-riding, non-archer, spirit of sloth? Who would be the counterpart of Aulë or Yavanna or Lórien or Estë?

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Do you mean that Fui Nienna in The Book of Lost Tales is more evil than Melko, or Ungweliantë, or Tevildo King of Cats, or than many Orcs and Balrogs? Then I disagree. That Fui Nienna is “almost evil” is not I think, ever said by Tolkien. As a critical reader I therefore may not accept at its face value what seems to me to be gross exaggeration.

Declaring them to be basically the same character seems to me a gross exaggeration.

Okay I might have oversimplified, you might have oversimplified, I will explain how I came to my conclusions.

I should have called her perhaps sinister, but she does have elements in her character that can be interpreted as evil (I'll explain later). The difference between characters like Fui, Makrar and Measse (thanks for bringing them up) is that their "evil" is still worked within the dominion of Manwe, they never rebel against him whearas Melko and his ilk did.
How did you conclude that I said Fui was more evil than Melko? Do you suggest that Nienna from the Silmarillion is "more good" than Morgoth is evil? Then you should see how far removed she is from Fui.

Fui Nienna is indeed the spirit of death (of Men) in The Book of Lost Tales, but is she indeed totally the spirit of despair? Neil Gaiman’s endless who is called Despair, in his series The Sandman, seems to me a far grimmer and darker being, while Neil Gaiman’s endless Death is, as a person, far more cheerful and understanding.

Fui Nienna is a spirit of despair, she weaves dark clouds that settle upon the world as "despairs and hopeless mourning, sorrows and blind grief" settling upon people like "lightless webs" (BOLT Part 1, Chapter she creates these things, not Melko and is responsible for them.
In this early stage the idea of salvation (or even of Arda Marred) has not yet entered the mythology and the world of BOLT is a much darker place than Arda would eventually become.

Neil Gaiman's Death and Despair have no relevance to the discussion, a completely different mythology, a completely different writer. I know you wanted to make the point "Spirit of Death does not necessarily equal Spirit of Despair" but in this case Fui Nienna is both the Goddess of Despair and the judge of dead mortals.

Mandos and Fui Nienna remain ranked among the Valar, and while relating what might be thought to be dreadful things of them, he voices no criticism. Both remain among the Valar in Tolkien’s later writing whereas the war deities Makar and Meássë are to some degree sneered at by Tolkien and neither is mentioned beyond The Book of Lost Tales.

Makar and Measse I think were an experiment by Tolkien that did not work out, especially not with the later mythology.
Fui Nienna doesn't really do anything in the story, she never takes action, she just sits in her hall unleashing the emotions of despair and sorrow upon the world. She would not have worked in the later mythology either
She did remain a Vala, but only after being completely overhauled by Tolkien, can you imagine Silmarillion Nienna sitting in a hall with a ceiling made of bat wings, sending the souls of men to be tortured by Morgoth and then unleashing her black nets of despair upon Middle Earth?
And on a similar note, can you imagine Gandalf learning wisdom and compassion from a hag like Fui?

She had to be turned into the exact opposite direction to work in the new mythology.
Tolkien could have easily done that with Makar and Measse, making them guardians and heroic slayers of Melkor's creations, but chose not to do so, possibly because the Valar already "noble" warriors in the form of Tulkas and Orome.

Compare the whole transformation process with characters like Yavanna, Orome, Tulkas or even Varda, who changed much less in the transition.

Tolkien himself says nothing about this. Vui Nienna’s counterpart in Norse myth would be the godess Hel, whose apparent age is not mentioned in existent texts. Similarly in the Sumerian/Babylonian tales the death goddess is Ereskigal, the elder sister of Inanna/Ishtar, who corresponds most closely to Tolkien’s Vána, but otherwise there is no mention of Ereshkigal’s apparent age. In the Norse Prose Edda the god Thor is defeated by the allegorical figure of Old Age (Elli), who appears in the guise of an old woman. This is the closest I can come to fitting a mythological pattern to your interpretation of Tolkien.

Hell is a good counterpart to Fui Nienna and when I read the tet the first time I assumed she was the inspiration for her.

Ereskigal and Inanna/Ishtar are not very good counterparts to Fui Nienna and Vana. Especially the comparison Inanna=Vana does not work. Inanna/Ishtar was the goddess of love and war, a self-indulgent, petty Goddess of Sex who most likely served as inspiration for Aphrodite.
Vana is life and youth incarnate, and the Goddess of Spring, just as Fui Nienna is the Goddess of Winter ("Heskil who breedeth winter")
I admit that jumping from Vana being the goddess of youth and Fui "breeding winter" to the conclusion that Fui is "a crone" was a bit of interpretation. But it is easy to see Tari-Laisi and Qualme Tari as the incarnations of beginnings (birth, spring, youth, joy) and end (death, winter, old age, despair)
She is metaphorically, if not necessarily literally "the Crone" among the primitive Valar, just as Vana is "the Maiden"

Rather than Hell or Elli I was also thinking of Annis the Celtic crone goddess, I know Celtic mythology was not a primary inspiration of Tolkien, still the crone had by that time become part of our collective well of stories.

Yet, when I posted, “otherwise they are almost the same character”, I overspoke. I ought perhaps to have posted something like, “but even the Nienna of the published Silmarillion is in some of her features still relatable to the Fui Nienna of The Book of Lost Tales.

This is where I find you exaggerating. What does complete opposite mean? Both Fui Nienna and the later Nienna are of the same species. They are Valar. They are of the same gender, female. Both bare the same name. Both are connected with weeping and sorrow. Both are connected with Mandos. They seem to me to not be complete opposites.


Perhaps one ought to ignore species, in which case one my find counterparts among the Ainur in Arda. If one does not ignore gender, then Melkor is arguably the counterpart to Varda, otherwise he is the counterpart to Manwë. But who would be the counterpart to Ulmo, some spirit of the dry dessert? Who would be the counterpart to Oromë? Some non-riding, non-archer, spirit of sloth? Who would be the counterpart of Aulë or Yavanna or Lórien or Estë?

Those are the only things they share; being Valar a female gender, a connection to Mandos (however it is wife vs. sister, very different) and a connection to sorrow (however the exact opposite)

You are splitting hairs with that, a opposite to a female character does not necessarily have to be a male (Fui Nienna and Vana were opposites in the primitive mythology after all)

But Neinna and Fui Nienna are opposites in the way that Fui Nienna causes and creates despair and sorrow, which she then inflicts upon others, is connected to death and has "cold to the Eldar as to all else"

Nienna (from the Silmarillion) however is the mourner who takes it upon herself to grieve over every hurt and every wrong in the world out of the compassion of her heart. She helps others (the spirits of the Elves in Mandos) overcome their sorrow with wise counsel and symbolizes the Christian principle that from suffering can come great wisdom.
She even supports Morgoth's pleas for an appeal (as the only of the Valar) and her tears help bring forth the two trees as well as the sun and the moon.

to sum it up

Fui:

Creates sorrow and despair
Inflicts these emotions on others
Begets winter and death
Is cold to all beings
Robs people of the sanity with her lightless nets of blind grief and hopeless sorrow

Nienna:
Turns sorrow and despair into wisdom
Takes it upon herself to mourn all hurts and evil of the world
Helps to create light from dark, joy from sorrow
Is compassionate towards even Melkor
Imparts wisdom and compassion into all that are willing to learn from her, such as Gandalf

Those are some pretty heavy, irreconcilable differences.

Whereas the similarities

Both female (so are Varda, Galadriel, Lobelia Sackville-Baggings and Ungoliant)
Both are Valar (so are Vana, Orome, Manwe and Ulmo)
Both share a name (so do Vaire the Elf and Vaire the Valie)
Both have a connection to Mandos and his halls (however wife and judge vs. sister and counselor)
Both have a connection to sorrow (however, the exact opposite, inflicter vs. healer)

are more common place or only very superficial.

I don't know how sincere you were with your question about the counterparts of the Valar. In general I think Morgoth would be the counterpart to all Valar in the sense creation/healing/stewardship vs. destruction/corruption/rebellion.

[Tar-Jêx]

When reading through BoLT, Fui Nienna seemed grim, but not evil. The Nienna in the Silmarillion is of a much more cheerful kind, but I don't believe they are opposite at all.

I would explain the difference as a man at a funeral, compared to a man at a park. At the funeral, the man is grim, as someone has died, but he is still the same person as the one at the park, just feeling different emotions.

All that Tolkien seemed to have changed was the attitude and level of grimness.

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by Tar-Jêx

When reading through BoLT, Fui Nienna seemed grim, but not evil. The Nienna in the Silmarillion is of a much more cheerful kind, but I don't believe they are opposite at all.

I would explain the difference as a man at a funeral, compared to a man at a park. At the funeral, the man is grim, as someone has died, but he is still the same person as the one at the park, just feeling different emotions.

All that Tolkien seemed to have changed was the attitude and level of grimness.

Perhaps the difference is really the Pagan idea of suffering against the Christianized idea of suffering.

Pagan suffering, especially in the Germanic/Nordic sphere: a hurt, something 100% negative, something that has been inflicted on you and can never be healed expect maybe through revenge.

Christian or at least Catholic suffering: Still negative but more in the way of growing pains as you gain wisdom from it. According at least to the doctrine of the Catholic School I went to as a kid it was only because of Satan/the fallen state of the world that suffering caused us pain and despair.

Same thing, but I'd say 100% opposite way of looking at it.

I wouldn't call Nienna in the Silmarillion cheerful, but good.

As I wrote, Fui Nienna creates suffering, Silmarillion Nienna dispels it and helps turning it into wisdom.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

Declaring them to be basically the same character seems to me a gross exaggeration.

I never posted that. I posted only that “otherwise they are almost the same character” and later withdrew it as overspeaking.

Neil Gaiman's Death and Despair have no relevance to the discussion, a completely different mythology, a completely different writer. I know you wanted to make the point "Spirit of Death does not necessarily equal Spirit of Despair" but in this case Fui Nienna is both the Goddess of Despair and the judge of dead mortals.

They have as much relevance as Hel, Ereshkigal, and Elli. I wished to point out the differences of Despair and Death in a different mythology. So, point out where Tolkien actually calls Fui Nienna the “Goddess of Despair”. Fui Nienna sets many of her mortal prisoners free to dwell in Arvalin to the sound of their guitars to await the Great End. A smaller number she turns over to Nornorë, to dwell with the Valar until the Great End. So Fui Nienna is not only a Goddess of Despair. Blackening Fui Nienna by ignoring what Tolkien does say about her and exaggerating what he does not say is unconvincing.

And on a similar note, can you imagine Gandalf learning wisdom and compassion from a hag like Fui?

Gandalf took on the earthly form of an old man. Why should it matter if his teacher had the fana of an old woman? Tolkien makes no comments, so far as I am aware, on what appearance Fui Nienna or Nienna took?

Especially the comparison Inanna=Vana does not work. Inanna/Ishtar was the goddess of love and war, a self-indulgent, petty Goddess of Sex who most likely served as inspiration for Aphrodite.

Yes Ishtar/Inanna corresponds to the Greek Aphrodite, the Latin Venus, and the Norse Freyja, more or less. Tolkien naturally removes the self-indulgent and petty and adulterous qualities from his Vána. The name itself may reflect theories that the Norse Vanir were etymologically related to the Latin goddess Venus. In short, I thank Inanna/Ishtar/Aphrodite/Venus/Freyja=Vána works better than other comparisons with real mythological figures that I can think of. Inanna is the cloest counterpart to Tolkien Vána in Sumerian mythology. Most of Tolkien’s Valar are based mainly on divine figures from real mythologies, but modified to his own tastes.

I admit that jumping from Vana being the goddess of youth and Fui "breeding winter" to the conclusion that Fui is "a crone" was a bit of interpretation.

It is an interpretation not indicated by anything that Tolkien wrote.

Rather than Hell or Elli I was also thinking of Annis the Celtic crone goddess, I know Celtic mythology was not a primary inspiration of Tolkien, still the crone had by that time become part of our collective well of stories.

Stories of Annis are not part of my collective well of stories. You posted our. See http://www.merciangathering.com/black_annis.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Annis for what is available on the web, mostly a folktale and disputed theories.

You are splitting hairs with that, a opposite to a female character does not necessarily have to be a male (Fui Nienna and Vana were opposites in the primitive mythology after all)

Fui Nienna and Vána were sisters, not opposites necessarily. Many mythologies have characters that are in part opposites, but not complete opposites. Do not use a term that you have to struggle so hard to defend,

For example, Tom Bombadil is closer to a complete opposite of Fui Nienna than Nienna. I cannot really imagine a complete opposite of any of Tolkien’s characters. You can quite easily demonstrate that Fui Nienna and Nienna are different, without such a troublesome idea as complete opposite. You say that two characters could be further apart from each other than Fui Nienna from the BOLT and Nienna from the Silmarillion. This puts you in the absurd position have having to prove that Treebeard is not so far apart from Fui Nienna as is Nienna, or that Saruman is somehow closer to Gandalf than Fui Nienna to Nienna.

Any similarity that is undeniable you try to avoid by calling superficial. You have defined a position with which I mostly agree, but wrapped it in an envelope which makes it impossible for me to accept your whole package.

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by jallanite

They have as much relevance as Hel, Ereshkigal, and Elli. I wished to point out the differences of Despair and Death in a different mythology. So, point out where Tolkien actually calls Fui Nienna the “Goddess of Despair”. Fui Nienna sets many of her mortal prisoners free to dwell in Arvalin to the sound of their guitars to await the Great End. A smaller number she turns over to Nornorë, to dwell with the Valar until the Great End. So Fui Nienna is not only a Goddess of Despair. Blackening Fui Nienna by ignoring what Tolkien does say about her and exaggerating what he does not say is unconvincing.

of course she does, I corrected myself to say sinister instead of evil. I just wanted to point out that she is also the bringer/creator of despair.

Gandalf took on the earthly form of an old man. Why should it matter if his teacher had the fana of an old woman? Tolkien makes no comments, so far as I am aware, on what appearance Fui Nienna or Nienna took?

Sorry I wrote that bad. I mean here that Fui Nienna had "only cold feelings" for other beings and spent much of her time creating sorrow and despair, so she would have been not as good a teacher as Gandals as Silmarillion Nienna who is pure compassion. I did not mean to comment on Fui Nienna's appearance here, but on her character/modus operandi (both of which we only get the vaguest clues of in the BOLT, I'm actually surprised how much prominence Nienna gained later in comparison to Fui Nienna)

Yes Ishtar/Inanna corresponds to the Greek Aphrodite, the Latin Venus, and the Norse Freyja, more or less. Tolkien naturally removes the self-indulgent and petty and adulterous qualities from his Vána. The name itself may reflect theories that the Norse Vanir were etymologically related to the Latin goddess Venus. In short, I thank Inanna/Ishtar/Aphrodite/Venus/Freyja=Vána works better than other comparisons with real mythological figures that I can think of. Inanna is the cloest counterpart to Tolkien Vána in Sumerian mythology. Most of Tolkien’s Valar are based mainly on divine figures from real mythologies, but modified to his own tastes.

No, no I meant the theories that the cult of Aphrodite (not Venus who has a very different history) entered Greece through the Phoenicians and that she originally was Innana/Ishtar and that both goddesses had a very capricious character.
About Frejya I think we don't know enough to really reconstruct her character most of what we know about the Germanic deities comes after all from either Latin or already Christianized (and thus Roman influenced) sources.
I would place Vana closer to spring/youth goddesses like Flora and Idun, though Vana from the primitive mythology does have a certain childishness/self-indulgence which she displays during the hiding of Valinor before she redeemed herself by sacrificing her hair for the creation of the sun ship.

It is an interpretation not indicated by anything that Tolkien wrote.

Stories of Annis are not part of my collective well of stories. You posted our. See http://www.merciangathering.com/black_annis.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Annis for what is available on the web, mostly a folktale and disputed theories.

That's why I admitted the interpretation and repented.

The crone is part of folktales, and to me folktales are part of the collective well of stories, and since Tolkien adapted so much of Germanic mythology I made the mistake of translating too literal.

Fui Nienna and Vána were sisters, not opposites necessarily. Many mythologies have characters that are in part opposites, but not complete opposites. Do not use a term that you have to struggle so hard to defend,

They are in many ways opposites and you can be sisters and opposites.
Mistress of Life -Mistress of Death
Bringer of Joy - Bringer of Sorrow
Bringer of Spring -Bringer of Winter

For example, Tom Bombadil is closer to a complete opposite of Fui Nienna than Nienna. I cannot really imagine a complete opposite of any of Tolkien’s characters. You can quite easily demonstrate that Fui Nienna and Nienna are different, without such a troublesome idea as complete opposite. You say that two characters could be further apart from each other than Fui Nienna from the BOLT and Nienna from the Silmarillion. This puts you in the absurd position have having to prove that Treebeard is not so far apart from Fui Nienna as is Nienna, or that Saruman is somehow closer to Gandalf than Fui Nienna to Nienna.

Any similarity that is undeniable you try to avoid by calling superficial. You have defined a position with which I mostly agree, but wrapped it in an envelope which makes it impossible for me to accept your whole package.

Complete opposite was strong.
But you understand that I want to express that they have almost opposite roles in their relation to suffering? Inflicter and healer.
The idea of a being that has no compassion whatsoever and one that is compassion incarnate are very far from each other. In that aspect, which is however the whole being of Nienna in the Silmarillion, they are opposites, that's what I meant and phased it very unlucky.

[jallanite]

A post which solves the main difference between Orphalesion and myself.

The term complete opposite, when used in describing characters in fiction, is normally use to compare normal mortals and is really a short form for diametric opposite in many ways. Since Orphalesion was describing what could be described as two different versions in subsequent texts of the same character, an immortal who might be ascribed many characteristics not attributable to morals at all, I took the phrase complete opposite more literally than Orphalesion intended.

Orphalesion was not, I believe, even thinking of comparing beings like Varda, Manwë, Ulmo, Vána, Tom Bombadil, or Gandalf with either Fui Nienna or Nienna. Yet such comparisons immediately sprang to my mind. The number of beings comparable in some sense to both Fui Nienna and Nienna is far greater in Tolkien’s legendarium than would be so in most novels, in which characters comparable to Fui Nienna or Nienna don’t exist at all.

So when Orphalesion posted, “Sorry, but no..... no two characters could be further apart from each other than Fui Nienna from the BOLT and Nienna from the Silmarillion,” I immediately thought of various figures in Tolkien’s legendarium who were more different from each other than Fui Nienna and Nienna.

Similarly when Orphalesion posted, “Fui Nienna and ‘our’ Nienna are complete opposites!”, I immediately thought of other beings who could also be described as complete opposites of Fui Nienna, if one wished to think in such terms. For example, Vána and Tom Bombadil.

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

I would place Vana closer to spring/youth goddesses like Flora and Idun, though Vana from the primitive mythology does have a certain childishness/self-indulgence which she displays during the hiding of Valinor before she redeemed herself by sacrificing her hair for the creation of the sun ship.

My identification was based on Vána being the chief goddess of what one might call female sexuality among Tolkien’s Valar, not on theories of the origins of the comparable characters. The Sumerian goddess Inanna, for example, is often imagined, I think rightly, to have earlier been mainly a granary goddess. I did not include the Egyptian Hathor because, although identified with Aphrodite and Venus in classical times, she originally seems to have been identified with the Semitic Asherah/Athirat rather than with Ashtarte/Athtart, which makes her originally closer to Hera/Juno.

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by jallanite

A post which solves the main difference between Orphalesion and myself.

The term complete opposite, when used in describing characters in fiction, is normally use to compare normal mortals and is really a short form for diametric opposite in many ways. Since Orphalesion was describing what could be described as two different versions in subsequent texts of the same character, an immortal who might be ascribed many characteristics not attributable to morals at all, I took the phrase complete opposite more literally than Orphalesion intended.

Orphalesion was not, I believe, even thinking of comparing beings like Varda, Manwë, Ulmo, Vána, Tom Bombadil, or Gandalf with either Fui Nienna or Nienna. Yet such comparisons immediately sprang to my mind. The number of beings comparable in some sense to both Fui Nienna and Nienna is far greater in Tolkien’s legendarium than would be so in most novels, in which characters comparable to Fui Nienna or Nienna don’t exist at all.

So when Orphalesion posted, “Sorry, but no..... no two characters could be further apart from each other than Fui Nienna from the BOLT and Nienna from the Silmarillion,” I immediately thought of various figures in Tolkien’s legendarium who were more different from each other than Fui Nienna and Nienna.

Similarly when Orphalesion posted, “Fui Nienna and ‘our’ Nienna are complete opposites!”, I immediately thought of other beings who could also be described as complete opposites of Fui Nienna, if one wished to think in such terms. For example, Vána and Tom Bombadil.

Yes, perfectly worded. That was the crux of the discussion

My identification was based on Vána being the chief goddess of what one might call female sexuality among Tolkien’s Valar, not on theories of the origins of the comparable characters. The Sumerian goddess Inanna, for example, is often imagined, I think rightly, to have earlier been mainly a granary goddess. I did not include the Egyptian Hathor because, although identified with Aphrodite and Venus in classical times, she originally seems to have been identified with the Semitic Asherah/Athirat rather than with Ashtarte/Athtart, which makes her originally closer to Hera/Juno.

I don't know enough about Inanna to confirm or deny this, but Venus definitely is often thought to originally have been a goddess of fields and gardens.
Interesting that you would connect (at least primitive) Vana to feminine sexuality. I never saw that and actually always thought that a "Love Goddess" was oddly lacking among the primitive Vala.
Though apparently in an even earlier, now lost phase before the BOLT, (still alluded to in the Gnomish dictionary at the end of the book) Eirinty was the Goddess of "love, beauty and music" and had the role later given to Meril-i-Turinqui. Though Tolkien in that early state seemed fond of mixing the tropes of mythological love and spring goddesses creating Erinti, Vana and Nessa out of basically the same cloth(CT even points out that in the Gnomish dictionary they share some of their epitomes)
However linking Vana to female sexuality (while valid) is as much interpretation as linking Fui Nienna to the archetype of the crone. And in a later phase of the mythology we briefly have Vana the Everyoung, Nessa the Ever-Maid (now not married to Tulkas) and Leah, the Young (temporarily replacing Nessa as Tulkas' wife)
So many goddesses/Valier of youth and associated with flowers and springtime, but never do we get a Valier known simply as "the Beautiful" or, more explicit, "the Lover", probably because Tolkien would have never included a traditional spirit of female sexuality in his work. A Freyja/Inanna/Aprhodite type character would have been as out of place as Makar and Measse and would have disappeared just as quickly (and perhaps has, if Eirinty was supposed to fill that role)

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

So many goddesses/Valier of youth are associated with flowers and springtime, but never do we get a Valier known simply as "the Beautiful" …

Except for Vána, significantly.

In the published Silmarillion, in the Index of Names, Christopher Tolkien notes under the entry Vanyar: “The name (singular Vanya) means ‘the fair’, referring to the golden hair of the Vanyar ….”

In the Book of Lost Tales, Part One, he states in the “Appendix: Names in the Lost Tales – Part 1” under the entry Vána (bolding by me):

   A derivative of the QL root vᴀɴᴀ, together with vanë ‘fair’, vanessë ‘beauty’, vanima ‘proper, right, fair’, úvanimo ‘monster’ (ú-=‘not’), etc. Here also are given Vanar and Vani=Valar, Vali, with the note: ‘cf. Gnomish Ban-’. See Valar.
   Vána’s name in Gnomish was Gwân or Gwani (changed later to Gwann or Gwannuin); gwant, gwandra ‘beautiful’, gwanthi ‘beauty’.

Both the Norse Vanir and the goddess Venus are by some believed to derive from PIE root wan/wen* ‘beautiful’. The Norse goddess Freyja is called Vanadís in the Skjáldskaparmál, meaning ‘dís of the Vanir’.

Nessa I consider to be derived by Tolkien from Artemis, Nessa being sister of the archer god, connected with deer, and as you point out, at one later stage in Morgoth’s Ring is distinguished from the wife of Tulkas and called “the ever-maid”. She remains quite distinct from Vána, save in being young and beautiful.

Erinti/Ilmarë, daughter to Manwë and Varda, I see as derived from both the Greek Hebe, daughter of Zeus by Hera, and her Latin counterpart, Juventas, the goddess of youth, daughter of Jupiter by Juno.

But it is part of Tolkien’s game, as you point out, that none of Tolkien’s Valar exactly correspond to any deity taken from a real mythology.

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Except for Vána, significantly.

In the published Silmarillion, in the Index of Names, Christopher Tolkien notes under the entry Vanyar: “The name (singular Vanya) means ‘the fair’, referring to the golden hair of the Vanyar ….”

In the Book of Lost Tales, Part One, he states in the “Appendix: Names in the Lost Tales – Part 1” under the entry Vána (bolding by me):

   A derivative of the QL root vᴀɴᴀ, together with vanë ‘fair’, vanessë ‘beauty’, vanima ‘proper, right, fair’, úvanimo ‘monster’ (ú-=‘not’), etc. Here also are given Vanar and Vani=Valar, Vali, with the note: ‘cf. Gnomish Ban-’. See Valar.
   Vána’s name in Gnomish was Gwân or Gwani (changed later to Gwann or Gwannuin); gwant, gwandra ‘beautiful’, gwanthi ‘beauty’.

Both the Norse Vanir and the goddess Venus are by some believed to derive from PIE root wan/wen* ‘beautiful’. The Norse goddess Freyja is called Vanadís in the Skjáldskaparmál, meaning ‘dís of the Vanir’.

I meant in the epithet, and going by that it is: Vana the Everyoung, not Vana the Beautiful. From the translation of the name, you are of course correct.

However I can never remember if the word used for the Vanyar had "blonde/pale coloured" as its primary meaning and beauty as its second or the other way around. I remember that Tolkien explained it was equivalent to the English word "fair" but that one of those words had beauty as its primary meaning and blonde/paleness as secondary meaning and the while the other had the primary and secondary meaning reversed.
But considering that Aragorm calls Arwen vanimelda I assume the Elvish one had beauty as its primary meaning (or at least had acquired it by the Third Age), since Arwen is very beautiful, but not blonde.
So much for that fanon theory (which I personally always disagreed with) that Celegorm had blonde hair only because he was "the Fair"

Of course Nessa's name seems to be Quenya for "the Young" so we have if we translate completely:

"The Fair", the Ever-Youg and "The Young", the Dancer.

Yeah Vanadis is my favorite name of Freyja, I always found it be a very beautiful name in its sound as well as its written form. I did not know that Vanir was thought to derive from an ancient word for beautiful, thanks

Nessa I consider to be derived by Tolkien from Artemis, Nessa being sister of the archer god, connected with deer, and as you point out, at one later stage in Morgoth’s Ring is distinguished from the wife of Tulkas and called “the ever-maid”. She remains quite distinct from Vána, save in being young and beautiful.

Good catch! Didn't see the Artemis connection in the ever-maid. She is very much the Helenised Artemis when her primeval aspects had been lost and she became this eternal, youthful maiden goddess who wandered the woods in her short tunic.

Erinti/Ilmarë, daughter to Manwë and Varda, I see as derived from both the Greek Hebe, daughter of Zeus by Hera, and her Latin counterpart, Juventas, the goddess of youth, daughter of Jupiter by Juno.

But it is part of Tolkien’s game, as you point out, that none of Tolkien’s Valar exactly correspond to any deity taken from a real mythology.

See I would link Vana to Hebe, Juventas and Flora and Eirinti with Aphrodite, but I of course see that Tolkien mixed and matched here and Eirinti was a non-entity anyway. Ilmare however is again very different, from her name she doesn't seem to be associated with love and music like Eirinti was.

To Ilmare I have a question that has bugged me for a while now. In the "Complete Guide to Middle Earth" (I know) David Day makes a reference to her "throwing spears of light from the night sky" is that based on anything in Tolkien's writing at all, or did Mr. Day just make things up? I mean the edition I have (from 2001) also claims the "Age of Starlight" (Awakening of the Elves - Death of the Two Trees) lasted ten millennia and that seems to be contradicted by the HoME....

This actually quite nicely parallels the Norse goddesses in the Edda who all seem vaguely, to different degrees to be associated with fertility "seiðr" (magic, precognition) to the point that there are still theories on how many goddesses really existed in the pagan Norse and Germanic believe systems and how many just were alternate names of the same deity.

[jallanite]

[quote=Orphalesion;695632]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

However I can never remember if the word used for the Vanyar had "blonde/pale coloured" as its primary meaning and beauty as its second or the other way around. I remember that Tolkien explained it was equivalent to the English word "fair" but that one of those words had beauty as its primary meaning and blonde/paleness as secondary meaning and the while the other had the primary and secondary meaning reversed.

From Tolkien’s The War of the Jewels, page 383:

Vanyar thus comes from an adjectival derivative *wanjā from the stem *wᴀɴ. Its primary sense seems to have been very similar to English (modern) use of ‘fair’ with reference to hair and complexion; although its actual development was the reverse of the English: it meant ‘pale, light-coloured, not brown or dark’, and its implication of beauty was secondary. In English the meaning ‘beautiful’ is primary. From the stem was derived the name given in Quenya to the Valie Vána wife of Orome.

Of course Tolkien might have thought beauty to be the primary meaning of *wanjā when he wrote the Book of Lost Tales, or not.

So much for that fanon theory (which I personally always disagreed with) that Celegorm had blonde hair only because he was "the Fair".

The name is translated into Old English by Tolkien as Cynegrim Fægerfeax in The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoME 4). Fægerfeax in modern English is ‘Fairfax’, that is ‘Blond-hair’. Tolkien may have imagined Celegorm to have a rather dark blond hair, to be an ash blond, that is to possess hair-color which might count as fair among the dark-haired Noldor. Tolkien may rather have later changed his mind on Celegorm’s hair-color when he came to consider Noldorin genetics. On the other hand he may have thought that Celegorm merely had particularly beautiful hair. Perhaps Fægerfeax should be translated as ‘Gleaming hair’.

To Ilmare I have a question that has bugged me for a while now. In the "Complete Guide to Middle Earth" (I know) David Day makes a reference to her "throwing spears of light from the night sky" is that based on anything in Tolkien's writing at all, or did Mr. Day just make things up? I mean the edition I have (from 2001) also claims the "Age of Starlight" (Awakening of the Elves - Death of the Two Trees) lasted ten millennia and that seems to be contradicted by the HoME....

I think these are two of the inventions for which David Day is notorious. See the discussion of Ilmarë at http://valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/...are/Ilmare.htm . See the comments on David Day by Steuard Jensen at http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/DayBooks.html . See also the general discussion of David Day at http://www.lotrplaza.com/archives/in...0Age&TID=83477 .

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

I think these are two of the inventions for which David Day is notorious.

I had the misfortune of being given a David Day book as a child before I'd properly read The Silmarillion (I found it tough going at ten years old) and unfortunately it coloured my perceptions of things for a while.

While Day's style and method are interesting (trying to convey an 'in-universe' perspective, for instance) the assumptions he makes are a step too far. He more or less states outright that Bombadil is a Maia, among other things.

As a result his books are part of, and contribute to, a general culture which has stood in the way of intellectualizing Professor Tolkien's work for years.

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

I had the misfortune of being given a David Day book as a child before I'd properly read The Silmarillion (I found it tough going at ten years old) and unfortunately it coloured my perceptions of things for a while.

While Day's style and method are interesting (trying to convey an 'in-universe' perspective, for instance) the assumptions he makes are a step too far. He more or less states outright that Bombadil is a Maia, among other things.

As a result his books are part of, and contribute to, a general culture which has stood in the way of intellectualizing Professor Tolkien's work for years.

Similar story here got the guide when I was 10 and reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time. It makes a lot of funny claims, almost as if the author tried to make the book appear thicker on the shelf. And as the link Jallanite posted states, he has a very evocative writing style, like that image of Ilmare "throwing spears of light from the night skies" is very beautiful and gives us more about her than we ever get from Tolkien's work, so I held onto it longer than the rest and really hoped that it was from some obscure part of the HoME.

It's also funny how David Day at the same time writes how Lothlorien was founded by Amdir AND by Galadriel and Celeborn (not together apparently, he just writes under their respective entries that each of them founded Lorien) who both reigned in the forest....somehow....at the same time.

He also eirdly neglects parts of the story, for Gondolin he writes "its people perished" no mention of Idril's escape route and the refugees. And apparently Middle Earth has vampires.

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

He also eirdly neglects parts of the story, for Gondolin he writes "its people perished" no mention of Idril's escape route and the refugees. And apparently Middle Earth has vampires.

It had 'vampires', at one point, in The Lay of Leythian, as Luthien dressed up as one to get close to Melkor as part of their master plan.
However, David Day was just making up nonsense, and probably had no idea about The Lay of Leythian.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Orphalesion

And apparently Middle Earth has vampires.

From “Of Beren and Lúthien” in the published Silmarillion (italics mine):

Then Sauron yielded himself, and Lúthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there; and Huan released him. And immediately he took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees, and came to Taur-nu-Fuin, and dwelt there, filling it with horror.

Also …

He [Huan] turned therefore at Sauron’s isle, as they ran northward again, and he took thence the ghastly wolf-hame of Draugluin, and the bat-fell of Thuringwethil. She was the messenger of Sauron, and was wont to fly in vampire’s form to Angband; and her great fingered wings were barbed at each joint’s end with an iron claw.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

in vampire’s form

Indeed, which of course shows that Day isn't always purely inventing. I think a good way of describing it might be that he regularly extrapolates without stating it. All "in vampire's form" tells us really is that the idea of vampires existed in Middle-earth, more than there are any real vampires. I think it's tempting for people to imagine Thuringwethil as, say, part of a cadre of Maia-vampires serving Morgoth but really that seems to be more the kind of thing that is used to extrapolate monsters for a role-playing game (Games Workshop seemingly thought so) than something that can be argued as definitely existing in the narrative.

One of the more egregious to my mind is Day's assertion that the Watcher in the Water was a "Kraken," giving "Kraken" its own entry in one of the books and claiming something along the lines of "Krakens were bred by Morgoth in the First Age."

I think one of the best ways to describing it would be if you took speculation from a forum like the downs ("Was the Watcher a sea monster bred by Morgoth?") stating it as categorical fact and then putting it in a book to be sold to people who didn't know any better. That's what it feels like - published speculation.

[Orphalesion]

I know about Luthien, but I always had the impression that those vampires were meant to be large, monstrous vampire bats not what we understand as vampires today, as in blood craving, humanoid reanimated corpses that propagate through infecting others.

But looking at the Silmarillion again, Thuringwethil's appearance is pretty vague, just that she "was wont to fly in Vampire's form to Angband; and her great fingered wings were barbed at each joint's end with an iron claw." That could mean a lot, it could mean a humanoid with bat-wings, a monstrous humanoid with bat wings, or a large bat, with the added possibility that she changed shape while at Tol Sirion and Angband.
Likewise when Sauron's vampire shape there was"blood dripping from his throat upon the trees" but to me it seems that might have been a wound from his battle with Huan.

Of course, since Sauron was involved it is possible that Necromancy played a role in the creation of these Werewolves and Vampires. But that is speculation again...

BTW I'm sorry if we take over the thread. Tell us to shut up whenever needed.

[Formendacil]

It's been a couple weeks, which has either given people a chance to catch up or to forget this project completely, but with Thanksgiving passed, let's put another chapter up--"The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr," which is a direct continuation of "The Chaining of Melko" and told by the same teller, Meril-i-Turinqui.

The basic bones of this tale are much the same as the later version of the tale, though with the big context-changer introduced in "The Chaining of Melko": the fact that the Elves waken AFTER Melko's imprisonment. This changes the context of their arrival and allows Tolkien to make it seem more surprising and wonderful to the Valar. Perhaps it's the season, but this reminded me a little bit of Christmas, with the Valar playing the roles of both the choirs of angels AND the inhabitants of the world, to whom the Eldar (collectively the "Son of God") are born.

And the dual role of the Valar has a parallel in the dual revelation of the Elves' coming: the direct knowledge granted to Manwë and the "discovery" made by Palúrien and Oromë. Christopher Tolkien thinks this a deficiency: he says in his commentary "The story of Oromë's coming upon the newly awakened Elves is seen to go back to the beginnings ... but its singular beauty and force is the less for the fact of their coming being known independently to Manwë, so that the great Valar did not need to be told of it by Oromë." I'm not entirely sure I agree with this assessment, but it does highlight a couple of things:

1. Tolkien is being careful to safeguard the preeminence of Manwë. Like All-seeing Zeus or Odin-who-has-drunk-of-the-well-of-wisdom, Manwë's knowledge must be superior to the rest of the Valar. Perhaps this is the real element that counterbalances Manwë against Melko: Melko may have the power, but he lacks the knowledge.

2. CT is certainly right, whether or not it's weakened by Manwë's independent knowledge, to say that there is singular beauty and force to Oromë's discovery of the Elves--at least in my opinion. The excitement that courses through Valinor (including the second star-making) is palpable and much stronger than in the more clinical version seen later. The celebration is underlining with a touch of foreboding in the detail that this is day Melko is released from Angaino--a detail not possible in the later story, when Melkor's imprisonment follows a different timeline, and his release is changed to darken the years of the Eldar in Aman.

The major change--other than the immediacy of the tale--that I note is the fact that the earlier story lacks the "genealogical" detail of the later text--for good reason. Finwë has yet to acquire any descendent other than Turgon, Tinwë (the later Elwë) has no Olwë--though In(g)wë's family, as I've noted before is actually fuller in the original version--and the later multiple divisions of the Teleri into Nandor and Falathrim and Sindar have not yet arisen for the Solosimpi--at least not in as formal a matter. This is a common element of the Lost Tales: a shorter list of names than the later versions, counterbalancing a lusher descriptiveness.

Things to consider:

1.) Why does Ilúvatar wipe the Elves' memories of what came before? Or, rather, what I'm trying to get at: what is there to wipe? Why did they have a prior existence and where was it?

2.) The detail of imagery given about the Kôr is greater here than in any later text, reminding me of CT's comment somewhere in HoME III The Lays of Beleriand, about Nargothrond, where he compares it to Gondolin in the BoLT--and I paraphrase here: "only once, it seems, did my father visit either of these cities in up-close detail." If this is true of Kôr also, is it fair to say that Tolkien seems to have had single-impulse creative motivations regarding his fictional cities?

3.) "Indeed, war had been but held off by the Gods, who desired peace and would not suffer Ulmo to gather the folk of the Valar and assail Ossë." Wait, war? War! Ulmo and Ossë certainly do not care for each other in the later texts, but the idea that the Valar could go to war against anyone other than Melko(r) is really hard to wrap my mind around, even as unrealised possibility.

4.) CT points out in the commentary that the Lonely Isle was much lonelier in the earlier conception, far out to sea between the Great Lands and Valinor, not (as in the later conception) within the Bay of Eldamar. I feel like this SHOULD colour my impression of Eriol's own story--not only has the sundering of the Earth post-Númenor not even been conceived of yet, but reaching the Lonely Isle is not quite the Eärendil-like endeavour I'm defaulting to imagining as a result of my knowledge of the later legendarium.



There are two poems included in the commentary: "Kôr," a poem picturing that city as it was (probably) at the time of Eárendel's arrival, and "A Song of Aryador," recalling those lost on the Great March.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

One of the most interesting things about the poem Kor is that (in its first form) it predates the Lost Tales; I'm fascinated by the hints and glimpses of Tolkien's conception ca 1914-16 as revealed in the early poems and lexicons.

The poem does show that one of the very earliest images was that of the mariner wandering through a great but abandoned city- an image T stuck with to the end, even though eventually he needed a different explanation (the Noldor were all at a festival on Taniquetil).

[Orphalesion]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

3.) "Indeed, war had been but held off by the Gods, who desired peace and would not suffer Ulmo to gather the folk of the Valar and assail Ossë." Wait, war? War! Ulmo and Ossë certainly do not care for each other in the later texts, but the idea that the Valar could go to war against anyone other than Melko(r) is really hard to wrap my mind around, even as unrealised possibility.

Well that brings us back to the point were the Valar back then were still much more like the Aesir and Vanir who were also prone to fight and quarrel. Back then Osse often opposed Ulmo directly and this element never completely vanished. Even later he is mentioned to have briefly turned to Melkor int he beginning.

Originally Posted by Formendacil

There are two poems included in the commentary: "Kôr," a poem picturing that city as it was (probably) at the time of Eárendel's arrival, and "A Song of Aryador," recalling those lost on the Great March.

I love the Song of Aryador. First of all I always loved the name Aryador, it sounds very beautiful and the "Lost Elves", very romantic in a way.

It's interesting how perilous the journey of the Elves was in the earlier conceptions. Later all Eldar who stay in Endor turn away from the journey willingly (for one reason or the other), but in this early stage many simply got lost.
The shadow folk of Hisilome is (at this point) even considered to have been Teleri (Vanyar) who got lost in the dark woods of Hisilome when marching to board Tol Eressea.
Hisilome was a strange place in this early phase, does anybody else get the idea that at some, probably very early stage it was meant to mean Scandinavia? (at the time when Tol Eressea still later became the British Isles and Earendel had to cross the "wildernesses of Europe") Hilisome back then meant "land of shadows" and Scandinavia is sometimes thought to be related to old Gemanic words for shadow.

And I love the description of the "Peace of Arda" in which the Elves were born. How, without Melkor frost and cold withdrew into the outermost North and all of Arda was in eternal summer. Even the seas were so calm that plants could grow to the very edge of the ocean. It seems a very beautiful world.

And am I the only one who likes the early description of the Solosimpi better than what the Teleri/Falmari became in the Silmarillion? Their dancing and piping along the beaches, their grotto like houses and especially the picture of them preforming dances around pools which they have filled with the gems given to them by the Noldoli.

However what I don't like too much is the idea that all gems, in the whole world were created by the Noldoli of Valinor. Soehow this element seems a bit too fairly tale like and I'm glad Tolkien later changed it to have the Noldor be miners who only occasionally created "magical" gems.

[Belegorn]

Originally Posted by IxnaY AintsaY

Ok, yeah, that last bit was snark-in-cheek, but the general thrust is accurate enough. Still, I can't deny the possibility that this opinion I formed perhaps 20 years ago might be unfair, so I'm happy to see a thread like this.

You prefer Sauron to Tevildo Prince of Cats?

[Belegorn]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

I otherwise treat them as reference more than a pleasure read .. unlike UT which is possibly my favourite single volume, though of course it is rather dependent on the ealrlier published works

I think Unfinished Tales and The Lays of Beleriand are tops for me. Both are pleasurable, but UT is definitely first on my list.