The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

and endowed their buried kings with unavailing treasure. For their wise men hoped ever to discover the secret of prolonging life and maybe the recalling of it. But it is said that the span of their lives, which had of old been greater than that of lesser races, dwindled slowly, and they achieved only the art of preserving uncorrupt for many ages the dead flesh of men. Wherefore the kingdoms upon the west shores of the Old World became a place of tombs, and filled with ghosts. And in the fantasy of their hearts, and the confusion of legends half-forgotten concerning that which had been, they made for their thought a land of shades, filled with the wraiths of the things of mortal earth. And many deemed this land was in the West, and ruled by the Gods, and in shadow the dead, bearing the shadows of their possessions, should come there, who could no more find the true West in the body. For which reason in after days many of their descendants, or men taught by them, buried their dead in ships and set them in pomp upon the sea by the west coasts of the Old World.

§11 For the blood of the Númenóreans was most among the men of those lands and coasts, and the memory of the primeval world remained most strongly there, where the old paths to the West had of old set out from Middle-earth. And the spell that lay there was not wholly vain. For the old line of the world remained in the mind of the Gods and in the memory of the world as a shape and a plan that has been changed, but endures. And it has been likened to a plain of air, or to a straight vision that bends not to the hidden curving of the earth, or to a level bridge that rises imperceptibly but surely above the heavy air of earth. And of old many of the Númenóreans could see or half see the paths to the True West, and believed that at times from a high place they could descry the peaks of Taniquetil at the end of the straight road, high above the world.

§12 But the most, that could not see this, scorned them, and trusted in ships upon the water. But they came only to the lands of the New World, and found them to be as those of the Old; and they reported that the world was round. But upon the straight road only the Gods and the vanished Elves could walk, or such as the Gods summoned of the fading Elves of the round earth, who became diminished in substance as Men usurped the sun. For the Plain of the Gods being straight, whereas the surface of the world was bent, and the seas that lay upon it, and the heavy airs that lay above, cut through the air of breath and flight, and traversed Ilmen, in which no flesh can endure. And it is said that even those of the Númenóreans of old who had the straight vision did not all comprehend this, and they tried to devise ships that would rise above the waters of the world and hold to the imagined seas. But they achieved only ships that would sail in the air of breath. And these ships flying came also to the lands of the New World and to the East of the Old World; and they reported that the world was round. And many abandoned the Gods, and put them out of their legends, and even out of their dreams. But Men of Middle-earth looked on them with wonder and great fear, and took them to be gods; and many were content that this should be so.

§13 But not all the hearts of the Númenóreans were crooked; and the lore of the old days descending from the Fathers of Men, and the Elf-friends, and those instructed by Fionwë, was preserved among some. And they knew that the fate of Men was not bounded by the round path of the world, nor destined for the straight path. For the round is crooked and has no end but no escape; and the straight is true, but has an end within the world, and that is the fate of the Elves. But the fate of Men, they said, is neither round nor ended, and is not within the world. And they remembered from whence the ruin came, and the cutting off of Men from their just portion of the straight path; and they avoided the shadow of Morgoth according to their power, and hated Thû. And they assailed his temples and their servants, and there were wars of allegiance among the mighty of this world, of which only the echoes remain.

§14 But there remains still a legend of Beleriand: for that land in the West of the Old World, although changed and broken, held still in ancient days to the name it had in the days of the Gnomes. And it is said that Amroth was King of Beleriand; and he took counsel with Elrond son of Eärendel, and with such of the Elves as remained in the West; and they passed the mountains and came into inner lands far from the sea, and they assailed the fortress of Thû. And Amroth wrestled with Thû and was slain; but Thû was brought to his knees, and his servants were dispelled; and the peoples of Beleriand destroyed his dwellings, and drove him forth, and he fled to a dark forest, and hid himself. And it is said that the war with Thû hastened the fading of the Eldar, for he had power beyond their measure, as Felagund King of Nargothrond had found in the earliest days; and they expended their strength and substance in the assault upon him. And this was the last of the services of the older race to Men, and it is held the last of the deeds of alliance before the fading of the Elves and the estrangement of the Two Kindreds. And here the tale of the ancient world, as the Elves keep it, comes to an end.

       Commentary on the first version of The Fall of Númenor

§1 As Q §18 was first written (IV. 158), it was permitted by Fionwë that ‘with the Elves should those of the race of Hador and Bëor alone be suffered to depart, if they would. But of these only Elrond was now left …’ On this extremely puzzling passage see the commentary, IV. 200, where I suggested that obscure as it is it represents ‘the first germ of the story of the departure of the Elf-friends to Númenor.’ It was removed in the rewriting, Q II §18, where there appears a reference to Men of Hithlum who ‘repentant of their evil servitude did deeds of valour, and many beside of Men new come out of the East’, but now no mention of the Elf-friends. A final hasty revision of the passage (IV. 163, notes 2 and 3) gave:

      And it is said that all that were left of the three Houses of the Fathers of Men fought for Fionwë, and to them were joined some of the Men of Hithlum who repenting of their evil servitude did deeds of valour … But most Men, and especially those new come out of the East, were on the side of the Enemy.

      This is very close to, and no doubt belongs in fact to the same time as, the corresponding passage in the following version of ‘The Silmarillion’ (QS^*, p. 328 §16), which however omits the reference to the Men of Hithlum. I have little doubt that this development came in with the emergence of Númenor.

§2 Here first appear the names Andúnië (but as a name of the island, translated ‘the Sunsetland’), and Númenor itself (which does not occur in the preliminary outline, though the people are there called Númenórië and Númenóreans). The chief city is called Númar or Númenos, which in the outline were the names of the land. The name Belegar was emended later, here and in §7, to Belegaer.

      After the words enriched by Yavanna the passage concerning names was early replaced as follows:

It was called by the Gods Andor, the Land of Gift, but by its own folk Vinya, the Young; but when the men of that land spake of it to the men of Middle-earth they named it Númenor, that is Westernesse, for it lay west of all lands inhabited by mortals. Yet it was not in the true West, for there was the land of the Gods. The chief city of Númenor was in the midmost of its western coasts, and in the days of its might it was called Andúnië, because it faced the sunset; but after its fall it was named in the legends of those that fled from it Atalantë the Downfall.

Here first appears Andor, Land of Gift, and also the name given to the land by the Númenóreans, Vinya, the Young, which did not survive in the later legend (cf. Vinyamar,