Tolkien,J R R - The History of Middle-Earth

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In volumes 10 and 11 of The History of Middle-earth

Christopher Tolkien recounts from the original texts

the evolution of his father's work on The Silmarillion,

the legendary history of the Elder Days or First Age,

from the completion of The Lord of the Rings in 1949

until his death. In Volume 10, Morgoth's Ring, the nar-

rative was taken only so far as the natural dividing-

point in the whole, when Morgoth destroyed the Trees

of Light and fled from Valinor bearing the stolen

Silmarils. In The War of the Jewels the story returns to

Middle-earth, and the ruinous conflict of the High

Elves and the Men who were their allies with the

power of the Dark Lord. With the publication in this

book of all J.R.R. Tolkien's later narrative writing con-

cerned with the last centuries of the First Age, the long

history of The Silmarillion, from its beginnings in The

Book of Lost Tales, is completed; and the enigmatic

state of the work at his death can be understood.

A chief element in The War of the Jewels is a major

story of Middle-earth now published for the first time,

a continuation of the great 'saga' of Turin Turambar

and his sister Nienor, the children of Hurin the

Steadfast: this is the tale of the disaster that overtook

the forest people of Brethil when Hurin came among

them after his release from long years of captivity in

Angband, the fortress of Morgoth. The uncompleted

text of the Grey Annals, the primary record of the War

of the Jewels, is given in full; the geography of

Beleriand is studied in detail, with redrawings of the

final state of the map; and a long essay on the names

and relations of all the peoples shows more clearly then

any writing published hitherto the closeness of the con-

nection between language and history in Tolkien's

world, and provides much new information, including

some knowledge of the language of the divine powers,

the Valar.

J.R.R. TOLKIEN.

THE WAR OF THE JEWELS.

The Later Silmarillion.

Part Two.

The Legends of Beleriand.

Edited by Christopher Tolkien.

HarperCollinsRblishers.

HarperCollinsPublishers.

77 - 85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB.

This paperback edition 1995

987654321.

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers 1994.

Copyright (C) HarperCollinsPublishers 1994.

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and Christopher Reuel Tolkien,

executors of the Estate of the late

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

ISBN 0 261 10324 5.

Set in Sabon.

Printed in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow.

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or

otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it

is published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

CONTENTS.

Foreword. page ix

PART ONE.

THE GREY ANNALS.

PART TWO.

THE LATER QUENTA SILMARILLION.

9.Of Men 173

10.Of the Siege of Angband 175

11.Of Beleriand and its Realms 180

12.Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin 198

13.Concerning the Dwarves 201

14.Of the Coming of Men into the West 215

15.Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin 238

The Last Chapters 243

PART THREE.

THE WANDERINGS OF HURIN

AND OTHER WRITINGS NOT FORMING PART OF

THE QUENTA SILMARILLION.

I.The Wanderings of Hurin 251

II.AElfwine and Dirhaval 311

III.Maeglin 316

IV. Of the Enis and the Eagles 340

V. The Tale of Years 342

PART FOUR.

QUENDI AND ELDAR 357

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Index 425

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FOREWORD.

The War of the Jewels is a companion to and continuation of

Morgoth's Ring, Volume 10 in The History of Middle-earth. As

I explained in that book, the two together contain virtually all

of my father's narrative writing on the subject of the Elder Days

in the years after The Lord of the Rings, but the division into

two is made 'transversely': between the first part of 'The

Silmarillion' ('the Legends of Aman') and the second ('the

Legends of Beleriand'). I use the term 'Silmarillion', of course, in

a very wide sense: this though potentially confusing is imposed

by the extremely complex relationship of the different 'works' -

especially but not only that of the Quenta Silmarillion and the

Annals; and my father himself employed the name in this way.

The division of the whole corpus into two parts is indeed a

natural one: the Great Sea divides them. The title of this second

part, The War of the Jewels, is an expression that my father

often used of the last six centuries of the First Age: the history of

Beleriand after the return of Morgoth to Middle-earth and the

coming of the Noldor, until its end.

In the foreword to Morgoth's Ring I emphasised the distinc-

tion between the first period of writing that followed in the

early 1950s the actual completion of The Lord of the Rings, and

the later work that followed its publication; in this book also,

therefore, two distinct 'phases' are documented.

The number of new works that my father embarked upon in

that first 'phase', highly creative but all too brief, is astonishing.

There were the new Lay of Leithian, of which all that he wrote

before he abandoned it was published in The Lays of Beleriand;

the Annals of Aman and new versions of the Ainulindale; the

Grey Annals, abandoned at the end of the tale of Turin; the new

Tale of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin (published in Unfinished

Tales), abandoned before Tuor actually entered the city; and all

the new tale of Turin and Nienor from Turin's return to

Dor-lomin to their deaths in Brethil (see p. 144 in this book).

There were also an abandoned prose saga of Beren and Luthien

(see V.295); the story of Maeglin; and an extensive revision of

the Quenta Silmarillion, the central work of the last period

before The Lord of the Rings, interrupted near the beginning of

the tale of Turin in 1937 and never concluded.

I expressed the view in the foreword to Morgoth's Ring that

'despair of publication, at least in the form that he regarded as

essential' (i.e. the conjunction of The Silmarillion and The Lord

of the Rings in a single work) was the fundamental cause of the

collapse of this new endeavour; and that this break destroyed all

prospect that what may be called 'the older Silmarillion' would

ever be completed. In Morgoth's Ring I have documented the

massive upheaval, in the years that followed, in his conception

of the old myths: an upheaval that never issued in new and

secure form. But we come now to the last epoch of the Elder

Days, when the scene shifts to Middle-earth and the mythical

element recedes: the High-elves return across the Great Sea to

make war upon Morgoth, Dwarves and Men come over the

mountains into Beleriand, and bound up with this history of the

movement of peoples, of the policies of kingdoms, of moment-

ous battles and ruinous defeats, are the heroic tales of Beren

One-hand and Turin Turambar. Yet in The War of the Jewels

the record is completed of all my father's further work on that

history in the years following the publication of The Lord of

the Rings; and even with all the labour that went into the

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elaboration of parts of 'the Saga of Turin' it is obvious that this

bears no comparison with his aims or indeed his achievements

in the early 1950s.

In Part Two of this book it will be seen that in this later phase

of his work the Quenta Silmarillion underwent scarcely any

further significant rewriting or addition, other than the intro-

duction of the new chapter Of the Coming of Men into the

West with the radically altered earlier history of the Edain in

Beleriand; and that (the most remarkable fact in the whole

history of The Silmarillion) the last chapters (the tale of Hurin

and the dragon-gold of Nargothrond, the Necklace of the

Dwarves, the ruin of Doriath, the fall of Gondolin, the Kin-

slayings) remained in the form of the Quenta Noldorinwa of

1930 and were never touched again. Only some meagre hints

are found in later writings.

For this there can be no simple explanation, but it seems to

me that an important element was the centrality that my father

accorded to the story of Hurin and Morwen and their children,

Turin Turambar and Nienor Niniel. This became for him, I

believe, the dominant and absorbing story of the end of the

Elder Days, in which complexity of motive and character,

trapped in the mysterious workings of Morgoth's curse, sets it

altogether apart. He never finally achieved important passages

of Turin's life; but he extended the 'great saga' (as he justly

called it) into 'the Wanderings of Hurin', following the old story

that Hurin was released by Morgoth from his imprisonment in

Angband after the deaths of his children, and went first to the

ruined halls of Nargothrond. The dominance of the underlying

theme led to a new story, a new dimension to the ruin that

Hurin's release would bring: his catastrophic entry into the land

of the People of Haleth, the Forest of Brethil. There were no

antecedents whatsoever to this tale; but antecedents to the

manner of its telling are found in parts of the prose 'saga' of the

Children of Hurin (Narn i Chin Hurin, given in Unfinished

Tales), of which 'Hurin in Brethil' is a further extension. That

'saga' went back to the foundations in The Book of Lost Tales,

but its great elaboration belongs largely to the period after the

publication of The Lord of the Rings; and in its later develop-

ment there entered an immediacy in the telling and a fullness in

the recording of event and dialogue that must be described as a

new narrative impulse: in relation to the mode of the 'Quenta',

it is as if the focus of the glass by which the remote ages were

viewed had been sharply changed.

But with Hurin's grim and even it may seem sardonic

departure from the ruin of Brethil and dying Manthor this

impulse ceased - as it appears. Hurin never came back to

Nargothrond and Doriath; and we are denied an account, in

this mode of story-telling, of what should be the culminating

moment of the saga after the deaths of his children and his wife-

his confrontation of Thingol and Melian in the Thousand Caves.

It might be, then, that my father had no inclination to return

to the Quenta Silmarillion, and its characteristic mode, until he

had told on an ample scale, and with the same immediacy as

that of his sojourn in Brethil, the full tale of Hurin's tragic and

destructive 'wanderings' - and their aftermath also: for it is to

be remembered that his bringing of the treasure of Nargothrond

to Doriath would lead to the slaying of Thingol by the Dwarves,

the sack of Menegroth, and all the train of events that issued in

the attack of the Feanorians on Dior Thingol's heir in Doriath

and, at the last, the destruction of the Havens of Sirion. If my

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father had done this, then out of it might have come, I suppose,

new chapters of the Quenta Silmarillion, and a return to that

quality in the older writing that I attempted to describe in my

foreword to The Book of Lost Tales: 'The compendious or

epitomising form and manner of The Silmarillion, with its

suggestion of ages of poetry and "lore" behind it, strongly

evokes a sense of "untold tales", even in the telling of them

There is no narrative urgency, the pressure and fear of the

immediate and unknown event. We do not actually see the

Silmarils as we see the Ring.'

But this is entirely speculative, because none of it came about:

neither the 'great saga' nor the Quenta Silmarillion were

concluded. Freely as my father often wrote of his work, he never

so much as hinted at his larger intentions for the structure of the

whole. I think that it must be said that we are left, finally, in

the dark.

'The Silmarillion', again in the widest sense, is very evidently

a literary entity of a singular nature. I would say that it can only

be defined in terms of its history; and that history is with this

book largely completed ('largely', because I have not entered

further into the complexities of the tale of Turin in those parts

that my father left in confusion and uncertainty, as explained

in Unfinished Tales, p. 6). It is indeed the only 'completion'

possible, because it was always 'in progress'; the published

work is not in any way a completion, but a construction devised

out of the existing materials. Those materials are now made

available, save only in a few details and in the matter of 'Turin'

just mentioned; and with them a criticism of the 'constructed'

Silmarillion becomes possible. I shall not enter into that

question; although it will be apparent in this book that there are

aspects of the work that I view with regret.

In The War of the Jewels I have included, as Part Four, a long

essay of a very different nature: Quendi and Eldar. While there

was no possibility of making The History of Middle-earth a

history of the languages as well, I have not wished to eschew

them altogether even when not essential to the narrative (as

Adunaic is in The Notion Club Papers); I have wished to give at

least some indication at different stages of the presence of this

vital and evolving element, especially in regard to the meaning

of names - thus the appendices to The Book of Lost Tales and

the Etymologies in The Lost Road. Quendi and Eldar illustrates

perhaps more than any other writing of my father's the sig-

nificance of names, and of linguistic change affecting names, in

his histories. It gives also an account of many things found

nowhere else, such as the gesture-language of the Dwarves, and

all that will ever be known, I believe, of Valarin, the language of

the Valar.

I take this opportunity to give the correct text of a passage in

Morgoth's Ring. Through an error that entered at a late stage

and was not observed a line was dropped and a line repeated in

note 16 on page 327; the text should read:

There have been suggestions earlier in the Athrabeth that

Andreth was looking much further back in time to the

awakening of Men (thus she speaks of 'legends of days when

death came less swiftly and our span was still far longer',

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p. 313); in her words here, 'a rumour that has come down

through years uncounted', a profound alteration in the

conception seems plain.

I have received a communication from Mr Patrick Wynne

concerning Volume IX, Sauron Defeated, which I would like to

record here. He has pointed out that several of the names in

Michael Ramer's account of his experiences to the Notion Club

are 'not just Hungarian in style but actual Hungarian words'

(Ramer was born and spent his early childhood in Hungary, and

he refers to the influence of Magyar on his 'linguistic taste',

Sauron Defeated pp. 159, 201). Thus the world of the story that

he wrote and read to the Club was first named Gyonyoru (ibid.

p. 214, note 28), which means 'lovely'. His name for the planet

Saturn was first given as Gyuruchill (p. 221, note 60), derived

from Hungarian gyuru 'ring' and csillag 'star' (where cs is

pronounced as English ch in church); Gyuruchill was then

changed to Shomoru, probably from Hungarian szomoru 'sad'

(though that is pronounced 'somoru'), and if so, an allusion to

the astrological belief in the cold and gloomy temperament of

those born under the influence of that planet. Subsequently

these names were replaced by others (Emberu, and Enekol for

Saturn) that cannot be so explained.

In this connection, Mr Carl F. Hostetter has observed that the

Elvish star-name Lumbar ascribed to Saturn (whether or not my

father always so intended it, see Morgoth's Ring pp. 434 - 5) can

be explained in the same way as Ramer's Shomoru, in view of

the Quenya word lumbe, 'gloom, shadow', recorded in the

Elvish Etymologies (The Lost Road and Other Writings,

p. 170).

Mr Hostetter has also pointed out that the name Byrde given

to Finwe s first wife Miriel in the Annals of Aman (Morgoth s

Ring, pp. 92, 185) is not, as I said (p. 103), an Old English word

meaning 'broideress', for that is not found in Old English. The

name actually depends on an argument advanced (on very good

evidence) by my father that the word byrde 'broideress' must in

fact have existed in the old language, and that it survived in the

Middle English burde 'lady, damsel', its original specific sense

faded and forgotten. His discussion is found in his article Some

Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (The Review of

English Studies 1.2, April 1925).

I am very grateful to Dr Judith Priestman for her generous

help in providing me with copies of texts and maps in the

Bodleian Library. The accuracy of the intricate text of this book

has been much improved by the labour of Mr Charles Noad,

unstintedly given and greatly appreciated. He has read the first

proof with extreme care and with critical understanding, and

has made many improvements; among these is an interpretation

of the way in which the narrow path, followed by Turin and

afterwards by Brandir the Lame, went down through the woods

above the Taeglin to Cabed-en-Aras: an interpretation that

justifies expressions of my father's that I had taken to be merely

erroneous (pp. 157, 159).

There remain a number of writings of my father's, other than

those that are expressly philological, that I think should be

included in this History of Middle-earth, and I hope to be able

to publish a further volume in two years' time.

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PART ONE.

THE

GREY ANNALS.

THE GREY ANNALS.

The history of the Annals of Beleriand began about 1930, when my

father wrote the earliest version ('AB 1') together with that of the

Annals of Valinor ('AV 1'). These were printed in Vol.IV, The Shaping

of Middle-earth; I remarked there that 'the Annals began, perhaps, in

parallel with the Quenta as a convenient way of driving abreast, and

keeping track of, the different elements in the ever more complex

narrative web.' Second versions of both sets of Annals were composed

later in the 1930s, as part of a group of texts comprising also the

Lhammas or Account of Tongues, a new version of the Ainulindale,

and the central work of that time: a new version of 'The Silmarillion'

proper, the unfinished Quenta Silmarillion ('QS'). These second

versions, together with the other texts of that period, were printed in

Vol.V, The Lost Road and Other Writings, under the titles The Later

Annals of Valinor ('AV 2') and The Later Annals of Beleriand ('AB 2').

When my father turned again, in 1950-1, to the Matter of the Elder

Days after the completion of The Lord of the Rings, he began new

work on the Annals by taking up the AV 2 and AB 2 manuscripts from

some 15 years earlier and using them as vehicles for revision and new

writing. In the case of AV 2, correction of the old text was limited to

the opening annals, and the beginnings of a new version written on the

blank verso pages of this manuscript likewise petered out very quickly,

so that there was no need to take much account of this preliminary

work (X.47). In AB 2, on the other hand, the preparatory stages were

much more extensive and substantial.

In the first place, revision of the original AB 2 text continues much

further - although in practice this can be largely passed over, since the

content of the revision appears in subsequent texts. (In some cases, as

noted in V.124, it is not easy to separate 'early' (pre-Lord of the Rings)

revisions and additions from 'late' (those of the early 1950s).) In the

second place, the beginning of a new and much fuller version of the

Annals of Beleriand on the blank verso pages of AB 2 extends for a

considerable distance (13 manuscript pages) - and the first part of this

is written in such a careful script, before it begins to degenerate, that it

may be thought that my father did not at first intend it as a draft. This

is entitled 'The Annals of Beleriand', and could on that account be

referred to as 'AB 3', but I shall in fact call it 'GA 1' (see below).

The final text is a good clear manuscript bearing the title 'The

Annals of Beleriand or the Grey Annals'. I have chosen to call this

work the Grey Annals, abbreviated 'GA', in order to mark its

distinctive nature in relation to the earlier forms of the Annals of

Beleriand and its close association with the Annals of Aman ('AAm'),

which also bears a title different from that of its predecessors. The

abandoned first version just mentioned is then more suitably called

'GA 1' than 'AB 3', since for most of its length it was followed very

closely in the final text, and is to be regarded as a slightly earlier

variant: it will be necessary to refer to it, and to cite passages from

it, but there is no need to give it in full. Where it is necessary to

distinguish the final text from the aborted version I shall call the

former 'GA 2'.

There is some evidence that the Grey Annals followed the Annals of

Aman (in its primary form), but the two works were, I feel certain,

closely associated in time of composition. For the structure of the

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history of Beleriand the Grey Annals constitutes the primary text, and

although much of the latter part of the work was used in the published

Silmarillion with little change I give it in full. This is really essential on

practical grounds, but is also in keeping with my intention in this

'History', in which I have traced the development of the Matter of the

Elder Days from its beginning to its end within the compass of my

father's actual writings: from this point of view the published work is

not its end, and I do not treat his later writing primarily in relation to

what was used, or how it was used, in 'The Silmarillion'. - It is a most

unhappy fact that he abandoned the Grey Annals at the death of Turin

- although, as will be seen subsequently (pp. 251 ff.), he added

elements of a continuation at some later time.

I have not, as I did in the case of the Annals of Aman, divided the

Grey Annals into sections, and the commentary, referenced to the

numbered paragraphs, follows the end of the text (p. 103). Subsequent

changes to the manuscript, which in places were heavy, are indicated

as such.

At the top of the first page of the old AB 2 text, no doubt before he

began work on the enormously enlarged new version, my father

scribbled these notes: 'Make these the Sindarin Annals of Doriath and

leave out most of the...' (there are here two words that probably read

'Nold[orin] stuff'); and 'Put in notes about Denethor, Thingol, etc.

from AV'.

Two other elements in the complex of papers constituting the Grey

Annals remain to be mentioned. There are a number of disconnected

rough pages bearing the words 'Old material of Grey Annals' (see p.

29); and there is an amanuensis typescript in top copy and carbon that

clearly belongs with that of the Annals of Aman, which I tentatively

dated to 1958 (X.47).

THE ANNALS OF BELERIAND

OR

THE GREY ANNALS.

$1. These are the Annals of Beleriand as they were made by

the Sindar, the Grey Elves of Doriath and the Havens, and

enlarged from the records and memories of the remnant of the

Noldor of Nargothrond and Gondolin at the Mouths of Sirion,

whence they were brought back into the West.

$2. Beleriand is the name of the country that lay upon either

side of the great river Sirion ere the Elder Days were ended. This

name it bears in the oldest records that survive, and it is here

retained in that form, though now it is called Belerian. The

name signifies in the language of that land: the country of Balar.

For this name the Sindar gave to Osse, who came often to those

coasts, and there befriended them. At first, therefore, this name

was given to the land of the shores, on either side of Sirion's

mouths, that face the Isle of Balar, but it spread until it included

all the ancient coast of the North-west of Middle-earth south of

the Firth of Drengist and all the inner land south of Hithlum up

to the feet of Eryd Luin (the Blue Mountains). But south of the

mouths of Sirion it had no sure boundaries; for there were

pathless forests in those days between the unpeopled shores and

the lower waters of Gelion.

VY 1050.

$3. Hither, it is said, at this time came Melian the Maia from

Valinor, when Varda made the great stars. In this same time the

Quendi awoke by Kuivienen, as is told in the Chronicle of

Aman.

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1080

$4. About this time the spies of Melkor discovered the

Quendi and afflicted them.

1085

$5. In this year Orome found the Quendi, and befriended

them.

1090

$6. At this time the Valar came hither from Aman for their

assault upon Melkor, whose stronghold was in the North

beyond Eryd Engrin (the Iron Mountains). In these regions,

therefore, were fought the first battles of the Powers of the West

and the North, and all this land was much broken, and it took

then that shape which it had until the coming of Fionwe. For the

Great Sea broke in upon the coasts and made a deep gulf to the

southward, and many lesser bays were made between the Great

Gulf and Helkaraxe far in the North, where Middle-earth and

Aman came nigh together. Of these bays the Bay of Balar was

the chief; and into it the mighty river Sirion flowed down from

the new-raised highlands northwards: Dorthonion and the

mountains about Hithlum. At first these lands upon either side

of Sirion were ruinous and desolate because of the War of the

Powers, but soon growth began there, while most of Middle-

earth slept in the Sleep of Yavanna, because the Valar of the

Blessed Realm had set foot there; and there were young woods

under the bright stars. These Melian the Maia fostered; and she

dwelt most in the glades of Nan Elmoth beside the River Celon.

There also dwelt her nightingales.

1102-5.

$7 Ingwe, Finwe, and Elwe were brought to Valinor by

Orome as ambassadors of the Quendi; and they looked upon

the Light of the Trees and yearned for it. Returning they

counselled the Eldar to go to the Land of Aman, at the summons

of the Valar.

1115.

$8. Even as the Valar had come first to Beleriand as they

went eastward, so later Orome leading the hosts of the Eldar

westwards towards Aman brought them to the shores of

Beleriand. For there the Great Sea was less wide and yet free

from the perils of the ice that lay further north. In this year of

the Valar, therefore, the foremost companies of the Vanyar and

Noldor passed through the vale of Sirion and came to the

sea-coast between Drengist and the Bay of Balar. But because of

their fear of the Sea, which they had before neither seen nor

imagined, the Eldar drew back into the woods and highlands.

And Orome departed and went to Valinor and left them there

for a time.

1128.

$9. In this year the Teleri, who had lingered on the road,

came also at last over Eryd Luin into northern Beleriand. There

they halted and dwelt a while between the River Gelion and

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Tolkien, J R R - The History of Middle-Earth - 11

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