The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

him. ‘The summons is at hand.’

      Then Alboin seemed to fall into a dark and a silence, deep and absolute. It was as if he had left the world completely, where all silence is on the edge of sound, and filled with echoes, and where all rest is but repose upon some greater motion. He had left the world and gone out. He was silent and at rest: a point.

      He was poised; but it was clear to him that he had only to will it, and he would move.

      ‘Whither?’ He perceived the question, but neither as a voice from outside, nor as one from within himself.

      ‘To whatever place is appointed. Where is Herendil?’

      ‘Waiting. The motion is yours.’

      ‘Let us move!’

      Audoin tramped on, keeping within sight of the sea as much as he could. He lunched at an inn, and then tramped on again, further than he had intended. He was enjoying the wind and the rain, yet he was filled with a curious disquiet. There had been something odd about his father this morning.

      ‘So disappointing,’ he said to himself. ‘I particularly wanted to have a long tramp with him to-day. We talk better walking, and I really must have a chance of telling him about the Dreams. I can talk about that sort of thing to my father, if we both get into the mood together. Not that he is usually at all difficult – seldom like to-day. He usually takes you as you mean it: joking or serious; doesn’t mix the two, or laugh in the wrong places. I have never known him so frosty.’

      He tramped on. ‘Dreams,’ he thought. ‘But not the usual sort, quite different: very vivid; and though never quite repeated, all gradually fitting into a story. But a sort of phantom story with no explanations. Just pictures, but not a sound, not a word. Ships coming to land. Towers on the shore. Battles, with swords glinting but silent. And there is that ominous picture: the great temple on the mountain, smoking like a volcano. And that awful vision of the chasm in the seas, a whole land slipping sideways, mountains rolling over; dark ships fleeing into the dark. I want to tell someone about it, and get some kind of sense into it. Father would help: we could make up a good yarn together out of it. If I knew even the name of the place, it would turn a nightmare into a story.’

      Darkness began to fall long before he got back. ‘I hope father will have had enough of himself and be chatty to-night,’ he thought. ‘The fireside is next best to a walk for discussing dreams.’ It was already night as he came up the path, and saw a light in the sitting-room.

      He found his father sitting by the fire. The room seemed very still, and quiet – and too hot after a day in the open. Alboin sat, his head rested on one arm. His eyes were closed. He seemed asleep. He made no sign.

      Audoin was creeping out of the room, heavy with disappointment. There was nothing for it but an early bed, and perhaps better luck tomorrow. As he reached the door, he thought he heard the chair creak, and then his father’s voice (far away and rather strange in tone) murmuring something: it sounded like herendil.

      He was used to odd words and names slipping out in a murmur from his father. Sometimes his father would spin a long tale round them. He turned back hopefully.

      ‘Good night!’ said Alboin. ‘Sleep well, Herendil! We start when the summons comes.’ Then his head fell back against the chair.

      ‘Dreaming,’ thought Audoin. ‘Good night!’

      And he went out, and stepped into sudden darkness.

       Commentary on Chapters I and II

      Alboin’s biography sketched in these chapters is in many respects closely modelled on my father’s own life – though Alboin was not an orphan, and my father was not a widower. Dates pencilled on the covering page of the manuscript reinforce the strongly biographical element: Alboin was born on February 4, (1891 >) 1890, two years earlier than my father. Audoin was born in September 1918.

      ‘Honour Mods.’ (i.e. ‘Honour Moderations’), referred to at the beginning of Chapter II, are the first of the two examinations taken in the Classical languages at Oxford, after two years (see Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, p. 62); ‘Schools’, in the same passage, is a name for the final Oxford examinations in all subjects.

Alboin’s father’s name Oswin is ‘significant’: ós ‘god’ and wine ‘friend’ (see IV. 208, 212); Elendil’s father was Valandil (p. 60). That Errol is to be associated in some way with Eriol (the Elves’ name for Ælfwine the mariner, IV. 206) must be allowed to be a possibility.^*

       The Lombardic legend

The Lombards (‘Long-beards’: Latin Langobardi, Old English Long-beardan) were a Germanic people renowned for their ferocity. From their ancient homes in Scandinavia they moved southwards, but very little is known of their history before the middle of the sixth century. At that time their king was Audoin, the form of his name in the Historia Langobardorum by the learned Paul the Deacon, who died about 790. Audoin and Old English Éadwine (later Edwin) show an exact correspondence, are historically the same name (Old English ēa derived from the original diphthong au). On the meaning of ēad see p. 46, and cf. Éadwine as a name in Old English of the Noldor, IV. 212.

Audoin’s son was Alboin, again corresponding exactly to Old English Ælfwine (Elwin). The story that Oswin Errol told his son (p. 37) is known from the work of Paul the Deacon. In the great battle between the Lombards and another Germanic people, the Gepids, Alboin son of Audoin slew Thurismod, son of the Gepid king Thurisind, in single combat; and when the Lombards returned home after their victory they asked Audoin to give his son the rank of a companion of his table, since it was by his valour that they had won the day. But this Audoin would not do, for, he said, ‘it is not the custom among us that the king’s son should sit down with his father before he has first received weapons from the king of some other people.’ When Alboin heard this he went with forty young men of the Lombards to king Thurisind to ask this honour from him. Thurisind welcomed him, invited him to the feast, and seated him at his right hand, where his dead son Thurismod used to sit.

      But as the feast went on Thurisind began to think of his son’s death, and seeing Alboin his slayer in his very place his grief burst forth in words: ‘Very pleasant to me is the seat,’ he said, ‘but hard is it to look upon him who sits in it.’ Roused by these words the king’s second son Cunimund began to revile the Lombard guests; insults were uttered on both sides, and swords were grasped. But on the very brink Thurisind leapt up from the table, thrust himself between the Gepids and the Lombards, and threatened to punish the first man who began the fight. Thus he allayed the quarrel; and taking the arms of his dead son he gave them to Alboin, and sent him back in safety to his father’s kingdom.

      It is agreed that behind this Latin prose tale of Paul the Deacon, as also behind his story of Alboin’s death, there lies a heroic lay: as early a vestige of such ancient Germanic poetry as we possess.

Audoin died some ten years after the battle, and Alboin became king of the Lombards in 565. A second battle was fought against the Gepids, in which Alboin slew their king Cunimund and took his daughter Rosamunda captive. At Easter 568 Alboin set out for the conquest of Italy; and in 572 he was murdered. In the story told by Paul the Deacon, at a banquet in Verona Alboin gave his queen Rosamunda wine to drink in a cup made from the skull of king Cunimund, and invited her to drink merrily with her father (‘and if this should seem to anyone impossible,’ wrote Paul, ‘I declare that I speak the truth in Christ: I have seen [Radgisl] the prince holding the very cup in his hand on a feastday and showing it to those who sat at the table with him.’)

      Here Oswin Errol ended the story, and did not tell his son how Rosamunda exacted