The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

§14 The rewriting of the passage concerning Beleriand reinforces the suggestion in FN I that it remained a country less destroyed after the Great Battle than is described in the other texts: it was ‘still in a measure blessed’ – and moreover the Elves who remained in Middle-earth ‘abode mostly in Beleriand’. Here Elendil ‘Elf-friend’ appears, displacing Amroth of FN I. It might be thought from the words ‘in Beleriand there arose a king, who was of Númenórean race’ that he was not a survivor of the Downfall; but this is clearly not the case. In The Lost Road, closely connected with FN II, Elendil (the father in the Númenórean incarnation of ‘Elwin-Edwin’) is a resolute foe of Sauron and his dominance in Númenor; and though The Lost Road breaks off before the sailing of Tar-kalion’s fleet, Elendil must have been among those who ‘sat in their ships upon the east coast of the land’ (FN §9) and so escaped the Downfall.

      Here is certainly the first appearance of Gil-galad, the Elf-king in Beleriand, descended from Fëanor (it would be interesting to know his parentage), and the story of the Last Alliance moves a stage further; and there seems no question but that it was in this manuscript that the name Mordor, the Black Country, first emerged in narrative.

(iv)

       The further development of The Fall of Númenor

      FN II was followed by a typescript made on my father’s typewriter of that period, but not typed by him. This is seen from its being an exact copy of FN II after all corrections had been made to it, and from two or three misreadings of the manuscript. I have no doubt that the typescript was made soon afterwards. In itself it has no textual value, but my father used it as the basis for certain further changes.

      Associated with it is a loose manuscript page bearing passages that relate closely to changes made to the typescript. There is here a textual development that has important bearings on the dating in general.

Two passages are in question. The first concerns §8 (which had remained unchanged from FN I, apart from the omission in FN II of the concluding sentence). The loose page has here two forms of a new version of the paragraph, of which the first, which was struck through, reads as follows:

Then Ilúvatar cast back the Great Sea west of Middle-earth and the Barren Land east of Middle-earth and made new lands and new seas where aforetime nought had been but the paths of the Sun and Moon. And the world was diminished; for Valinor and Eressëa were taken into the Realm of Hidden Things, and thereafter however far a man might sail he could never again reach the True West. For all lands old and new were equally distant from the centre of the earth. There was [flood and great confusion of waters, and seas covered what once was dry, and lands appeared where there had been deep seas,] and Beleriand fell into the sea in that time, all save the land where Beren and Lúthien had dwelt for a while, the land of Lindon beneath the western feet of the [struck out: Ered] Lunoronti.

      (The section enclosed in square brackets is represented in the manuscript by a mark of omission, obviously meaning that the existing text was to be followed.) Here the words ‘[the Gods] bent back the edges of the Middle-earth’ have disappeared; it is the Great Sea in the West and ‘the Barren Land’ in the East that are ‘cast back’ by Ilúvatar. It is now said that the new lands and new seas came into being ‘where aforetime nought had been but the paths of the Sun and Moon’ (i.e. at the roots of the world, see the Ambarkanta diagrams IV. 243, 245). This was in turn lost in the further rewriting (below), where the final and very brief statement found in the Akallabêth (p. 279) is reached.

This passage is very notable, since the drowning of all Beleriand west of Lindon is here ascribed to the cataclysm of the Downfall of Númenor; see the commentaries on FN I and II, §14. The name Lunoronti of the Blue Mountains has not occurred previously (but see the Etymologies, stem LUG²); and this is perhaps the first occurrence of the name Lindon for the ancient Ossiriand, or such of it as remained above the sea (see the commentary on QS §108).

      The second form of this revised version of §8 follows immediately in the manuscript:

      Then Ilúvatar cast back the Great Sea west of Middle-earth, and the Empty Land east of it, and new lands and new seas were made; and the world was diminished: for Valinor and Eressëa were taken from it into the realm of hidden things. And thereafter however a man might sail, he could never again reach the True West, but would come back weary at last to the place of his beginning; for all lands and seas were equally distant from the centre of the earth, and all roads were bent. There was flood and great confusion of waters in that time, and sea covered much that in the Elder Days had been dry, both in the West and East of Middle-earth.

      Thus the passage concerning the drowning of Beleriand at the time of the Númenórean cataclysm and the survival of Lindon was again removed. In this form my father then copied it onto the typescript, with change of Empty Land to Empty Lands. (If this region, called in the first version the Barren Land, is to be related to the Ambarkanta map V (IV. 251) it must be what is there called the Burnt Land of the Sun; perhaps also the Dark Land, which is there shown as a new continent, formed from the southern part of Pelmar or Middle-earth (map IV) after the vast extension of the former inland sea of Ringil at the time of the breaking of Utumno). – The expression Elder Days is not found in any writing of my father’s before this.

The second passage is the concluding paragraph in FN II §14, concerning Beleriand and the Last Alliance. Here a few pencilled changes were made to the typescript: Thû was changed to Sauron except in the sentence ‘that is in the Gnomish tongue named Thû’, where Thû > Gorthû (see p. 338); ‘in Beleriand there arose a king’ > ‘in Lindon …’; and Gil-galad is descended from Finrod, not Fëanor. The passage in the typescript was then struck through, with a direction to introduce a substitute. This substitute is found on the reverse of the loose page giving the two forms of the rewriting of §8, and was obviously written at the same time as those. It reads as follows:

But there remains a legend of Beleriand. Now that land had been broken in the Great Battle with Morgoth; and at the fall of Númenor and the change of the fashion of the world it perished; for the sea covered all that was left save some of the mountains that remained as islands, even up to the feet of Eredlindon. But that land where Lúthien had dwelt remained, and was called Lindon. A gulf of the sea came through it, and a gap was made in the Mountains through which the River Lhûn flowed out. But in the land that was left north and south of the gulf the Elves remained, and Gil-galad son of Felagund son of Finrod was their king. And they made Havens in the Gulf of Lhûn whence any of their people, or any other of the Elves that fled from the darkness and sorrow of Middle-earth, could sail into the True West and return no more. In Lindon Sauron had as yet no dominion. And it is said that the brethren Elendil and Valandil escaping from the fall of Númenor came at last to the mouths of the rivers that flowed into the Western Sea. And Elendil (that is Elf-friend), who had aforetime loved the folk of Eressëa, came to Lindon and dwelt there a while, and passed into Middle-earth and established a realm in the North. But Valandil sailed up the Great River Anduin and established another realm far to the South. But Sauron dwelt in Mordor the Black Country, and that was not very distant from Ondor the realm of Valandil; and Sauron made war against all Elves and all Men of Westernesse or others that aided them, and Valandil was hard pressed. Therefore Elendil and Gil-galad seeing that unless some stand were made Sauron would