The Nature of Middle-earth Read online

  I have supplied a brief discussion of various metaphysical and theological concepts and themes encountered in these texts, as Appendix I, linked to key points of relevance in the texts. A glossary and index of forms from Tolkien’s invented languages that are important to clarifying the meaning of various not-specifically-linguistic passages encountered in the texts in this book, and that can be used for further topical cross-referencing, are included in the editorial Glossary and Index of Quenya Terms as Appendix II.

  Familiarity with at least The Silmarillion as published in 1977 is assumed. Ready access to Unfinished Tales and volumes X–XII of The History of Middle-earth will further aid in understanding the texts included here.

  ABBREVIATIONS & CONVENTIONS

  AUTHORIAL

  AY Awakening Year(s) (i.e., löar since the Awakening of the Elves)

  Bel. Year(s) of Beleriand (i.e., since the arrival of the Exiles in Middle-earth)

  DB Days of Bliss

  FA First Age

  4A Fourth Age

  Gen(s). Generation(s)

  GY Growth Year(s) (i.e., multiples of 12 löar between the birth and maturity of the Elves)

  LY Life Year(s)

  MY Middle-earth/Mortal Year(s) (= 1 löa)

  NB Nota Bene (‘note well’)

  SA Second Age

  SY Sun Year (i.e. löa)

  TA Third Age

  TY The Tale of Years (cf. X:49)

  VY Valian Year(s) (variously = 100 or 144 löar)

  YS Year(s) of the Sun

  YT Year(s) of the Trees (approximately 10 löar)

  I The Fellowship of the Ring

  II The Two Towers

  III The Return of the King

  BIBLIOGRAPHIC

  AAm The Annals of Aman (in Morgoth’s Ring pp. 47–138) of c. 1951–2, with revisions in 1958

  DN A Description of the Island of Númenor (in Unfinished Tales pp. 165–72) of c. 1965.

  GA The Grey Annals (in War of the Jewels pp. 3–170) of c. 1951–2, with revisions in 1958

  HoMe The History of Middle-earth (in 12 vols.)

  I–XII Individual volumes of HoMe, esp. V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, IX: Sauron Defeated; X: Morgoth’s Ring; XI: The War of the Jewels; XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth

  L The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

  LR The Lord of the Rings

  LRRC The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, by Hammond and Scull, 2014.

  OED The Oxford English Dictionary

  PE Parma Eldalamberon (journal)

  RotK The Return of the King

  S The Silmarillion

  TCG The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, vols. I, II, III. Ed. Scull and Hammond, 2017.

  UT Unfinished Tales

  VT Vinyar Tengwar (journal)

  EDITORIAL

  […] Editorial insertion/addition (except where otherwise noted)

  [? …] Uncertain reading

  {…} Deleted by Tolkien

  >> Changed by Tolkien to

  App. Appendix

  chap(s). Chapter(s)

  esp. Especially

  fn. Footnote

  MS(S) Manuscript(s)

  n. Note

  TS Typescript

  LANGUAGES

  C.E. Common Eldarin

  P.E. Primitive Eldarin

  Q. Quenya

  S. Sindarin

  T. Telerin

  LINGUISTICS

  √ Root/stem form

  * Primitive or reconstructed form

  < Arose by phonological development from

  > Became by phonological development

  † Poetic

  fem. Feminine

  intr. Intransitive

  lit. Literally

  n. Noun

  pa.t. Past tense

  pl. Plural

  tr. Transitive

  PART ONE

  TIME AND AGEING

  INTRODUCTION

  Among the large collection of (mostly) manuscript pages that Christopher Tolkien dubbed the “Time and Ageing” file are two half-sheets of Merton College stationery, on which two related but distinct texts – presented here as chap. I, “The Valian Year” – were written some six years apart. These two texts conveniently demonstrate that, sometime between 1951 and 1957, Tolkien made two decisions that would have far-reaching effects on his legendarium. While the first of these decisions – namely, to make the Sun and Moon coëval with Arda, the inhabited world – and its ramifications in and for Tolkien’s subsequent writings and revisions have already been documented and considered by Christopher Tolkien in the final three volumes of his monumental History of Middle-earth (and particularly in the section titled “Myths Transformed” in volume X, Morgoth’s Ring), the second transformative decision and its ramifications have not before been presented.

  As the second of these two texts shows, Tolkien had by 1957 decided that the number of sun-years (SY) in a Year of the Trees, or Valian Year (VY), should be greatly increased, from the previous rate of 10 SY = 1 VY to a new rate of 144 SY = 1 VY, and thus vastly expanded the length of time in sun-years of the events recorded in the Annals of Valinor and subsequent chronologies dated in Valian Years. Much of the “Time and Ageing” file, whose texts are presented here, is concerned with working out the (perhaps surprisingly) complex ramifications of this decision, not only for the chronology of the First Age – in particular for the Awakening of the Elves (including even just who were the First Elves to awaken), the Great March, and the return of both Morgoth and the Exiles to Middle-earth – but also for the periods of time occupied by the begetting, growth, maturity, and ageing of Elves.

  Tolkien’s preoccupation with some of these matters in the late 1950s, particularly Elvish begetting, maturation, and ageing relative to Men, has already been glimpsed, in the opening of the c. 1958 text known as Laws and Customs among the Eldar (X:209–10):

  The Eldar grew in bodily form slower than Men, but in mind more swiftly. They learned to speak before they were one year old; and in the same time they learned to walk and to dance, for their wills came soon to the mastery of their bodies. Nonetheless there was less difference between the two Kindreds, Elves and Men, in early youth; and a man who watched elf-children at play might well have believed that they were the children of Men, of some fair and happy people …

  This same watcher might indeed have wondered at the small limbs and stature of these children, judging their age by their skill in words and grace in motion. For at the end of the third year mortal children began to outstrip the Elves, hastening on to a full stature while the Elves lingered in the first spring of childhood. Children of Men might reach their full height while Eldar of the same age were still in body like to mortals of no more than seven years. Not until the fiftieth year did the Eldar attain the stature and shape in which their lives would afterwards endure, and for some a hundred years would pass before they were full-grown.

  The Eldar wedded for the most part in their youth and soon after their fiftieth year. They had few children, but these were very dear to them. Their families, or houses, were held together by love and a deep feeling for kinship in mind and body; and the children needed little governing or teaching. There were seldom more than four children in any house, and the number grew less as ages passed; but even in days of old, while the Eldar were still few and eager to increase their kind, Fëanor was renowned as the father of seven sons, and the histories record none that surpassed him.

  And further (X:212–13):

  As for the begetting and bearing of children: a year passes between the begetting and the birth of an elf-child, so that the days of both are the same or nearly so, and it is the day of begetting that is remembered year by year. For the most part these days come in the Spring. It might be thought that, since the Eldar do not (as Men deem) grow old in body, they may bring forth children at any time in the ages of their lives. But this is not so. For the Eldar do indeed grow older, even if slowly: the limit of their lives is the life of Arda, which though
long beyond the reckoning of Men is not endless, and ages also. Moreover their body and spirit are not separated but coherent. As the weight of the years, with all their changes of desire and thought, gathers upon the spirit of the Eldar, so do the impulses and moods of their bodies change. This the Eldar mean when they speak of their spirits consuming them; and they say that ere Arda ends the Eldalië on earth will have become as spirits invisible to mortal eyes, unless they will to be seen by some among Men into whose minds they may enter directly.

  Also the Eldar say that in the begetting, and still more in the bearing of children, greater share and strength of their being, in mind and in body, goes forth than in the making of mortal children. For these reasons it came to pass that the Eldar brought forth few children; and also that their time of generation was in their youth or earlier life, unless strange and hard fates befell them. But at whatever age they married, their children were born within a short space of years after their wedding. (Short as the Eldar reckoned time. In mortal count there was often a long interval between the wedding and the first child-birth, and even longer between child and child.) For with regard to generation the power and the will are not among the Eldar distinguishable. Doubtless they would retain for many ages the power of generation, if the will and desire were not satisfied; but with the exercise of the power the desire soon ceases, and the mind turns to other things. The union of love is indeed to them great delight and joy, and the ‘days of the children’, as they call them, remain in their memory as the most merry in life; but they have many other powers of body and mind which their nature urges them to fulfil.

  It is evident that the bulk of the texts in the “Time and Ageing” file are later than Laws and Customs, as shown by the use of the Quenya word hröa for ‘body’ (nearly) everywhere in these texts, ab initio – while in Laws and Customs as first written/typed, the form was hrondo, before subsequent correction to hröa. It will thus be seen that the extensive “Time and Ageing” file is a series of elaborations and reconsiderations of the matters of Elvish gestation, maturation, and ageing raised in Laws and Customs, and related matters, in light of the great increase in time spanned by the tally of Valian Years.

  On the subject of dating the individual “Time and Ageing” texts, most of which are clearly of a piece, in order to reduce repetition in justifying a probable date for most of them, if I simply flatly state that a text is “c. 1959” without further evidence, then the date is based on one or more of the following considerations:

  1.The text uses the Quenya word hröa (plural hröar), meaning ‘body’ ab initio. There is no independent evidence that that word was in use until after the typescript text B of Laws and Customs among the Eldar was made in c. 1958 (see X:141–3, 209, 304).

  2.The text employs the name Ingar for the people of Ingwë, which otherwise occurs only in Text A of Laws and Customs among the Eldar (cf. X:230 n.22) and in Text 2 of Of Finwë and Míriel (cf. X:265 n.10), both of which belong to what Christopher Tolkien identifies as the “second phase” in the development of The Later Quenta Silmarillion, which he in turn dates to “the late 1950s” (cf. X:199, 300).

  3.The manuscript in appearance and the text in character and content is consistent with most of the other writings in the “Time and Ageing” file, including those that can be dated more certainly to c. 1959 by other internal or external evidence.

  The texts presented here for the most part fall into one of three stages, based on an apparent conceptional progression in the period of Elvish gestation in the womb: the first, in which Elves gestate for 8 or (more usually) 9 löar (as the solar year is called in Quenya); the second, in which they gestate for 1 löa; and the third and last, in which they gestate for 3 löar. The first two of these stages are exhibited in texts that either firmly or most likely date from c. 1959 or 1960; the third is found in a single document that dates from 1965.

  Finally, while I provide a glossary of terms in App. II, there are certain Quenya words that occur in “Time and Ageing” so frequently that I gloss them here as well for ease of reference for the reader:

  hröa, pl. hröar ‘body’.

  fëa, pl. fëar ‘spirit’

  löa, pl. löar ‘year (of the Sun)’, lit. ‘growth’.

  yên, pl yéni ‘long-year’ = 144 löar.

  I

  THE VALIAN YEAR

  These two brief texts are written in black nib-pen on two torn half-sheets of two (different) Merton College weekly battels bills. Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. The portion of the bill bearing the first text does not have the date field, but that bearing the second text does, and is dated 27 June 1957.

  The first (very hastily written) text shows that when he wrote it, Tolkien had decided that the world must be round and coëval with the Sun and Moon, and so it must post-date the “Round World” version (C*) of the Ainulindalë that Tolkien made in 1948 (X:3). It most likely precedes, however, the revisions to the c. 1951 version of the Annals of Aman by which the length of a Valian Year was reduced from exactly 10 sun-years (as in the first text) to 9.582 sun-years (X:50, and see X:57–8 n.17 and 59–60 §§5–10).

  TEXT 1

  The yên, which is merely a mode of reckoning, has nothing to do with the life of the Elves. In Aman this depended on the years of the Trees, or really on the days of the Trees; in Middle-earth on the cycles of growth, Spring to Spring, or löar. In Middle-earth, one löa aged an Elf as much as a year of the Trees, but these were in fact 10 times as long.

  A Year of the Trees had 1,000 days of 12 hours = 12,000 [Tree] hours. A year of 365.250 days of 24 hours has 8,766 hours. Tree-years have 87,660. If 12,000 [Tree] hours = 10 Middle-earth years each Tree-hour = about 7.3 Sun-hours = 7 hours 18 secs.[1]

  How are we to arrange for the Sun and Moon?

  Elves do not know how Arda was established or the companions of Anar made or their [?companies]. For it is to the life of Arda (not Eä) which they are bound, and all their love is for Arda. Though [?of Lore] they may consider [?the matter] and having amazing sight they can see in the heavens things we cannot [?for need of] instruments.

  TEXT 2

  Time

  There are twelve Tree-hours in each Valian Day, 144 Days in each Valian Year. But each Valian Year = 144 Mortal Years; therefore 1 Valian Day = 1 mortal year, and 1 Tree-hour = approximately 1 mortal month. Time is recorded (for Mortal purposes) during the days of the Trees thus: VY 100 V.Day 136 V.Hour 9 = the 9th month of the 136th [sun-]year of the 100th Valian Year.[2]

  In Middle-earth originally the Quendi appreciated and aged in 144 MY (or yên) as [mortals] in 1 MY. Therefore when they went to Aman they felt no change – but those who remained soon felt the necessary rate of “mortality” in ageing. After the death of the Trees and the ruin of Beleriand the rate was about 12 years = 1 MY.

  The Elves awoke in VY 1050 and reached Aman in 1133 after 83 VY, which felt as 83 years to them but was 11,952 MY. Men awoke in VY 1150 or 100 VY later = 14,400 MY.[3]

  It can be seen then that by c. 1957 Tolkien had introduced a new correspondence of 1 Valian Year = 144 sun-years (the length of the Elvish yên or ‘long year’), and so vastly expanded the length of time in sun-years of the events recorded in the Annals of Valinor and subsequent chronologies dated in Valian Years.

  II

  VALINORIAN TIME-DIVISIONS

  This text occupies eight sides of four sheets of unlined paper. It is written in a clear hand in black nib-pen, with additions and some revisions made in blue ball-point pen. The versos of most sheets are filled with attendant calculations, not represented here. It dates to c. 1959.

  In a revised scheme – in which the Sun and Moon are a primeval part of Arda, established before Arda was inhabitable – the basic time, even in Aman, must be the Sun-year, since this governs all growth, be it slow, normal, or quick. But the sun-day need not be observed, since Valinor was domed over.[1]

  Hence the basic equivalent of Valia
n Time and Middle-earth Time (VT and MT) will be:

  1 Valian Day (or Tree-day) = 1 Sun-year

  All multiplications or divisions of this were by 12. Hence the Valian Month had 12 Valian Days = 12 years, the Valian Year (a yén) had 12 Valian Months = 144 years.

  These equivalences are exact; since the Valian Day was maintained always at the length of the Elvish löa or Sun-year (whether that varied or lengthened or not).[fn1]

  In the Days of the Trees: The Valian Day was divided into 12 Valian Hours, which were arranged evidently to occupy exactly 1⁄12 each of whatever was the length of the Sun-year. (This is held to have varied and to have lengthened.) At present Sun-year length a Valian Hour is therefore approximately 1 month of 30 (or nearly 30½) days.[fn2]

  Since the Valar and Eldar only grow or age slowly, but do not live, act, go, or perceive slowly (on the contrary) for local use in Aman the Valian Hour was further subdivided in repetitive 12s.

  A Solar Year contains 365d. 5h. 48m. 46s. = 365d. 20,926 secs. or 365.242199074 days.

  1 day has 86,400 secs. ¼ day therefore has 21,600 secs. The Year is thus 674 secs. (11m. 14secs) short of 365¼ days.

  Or very nearly. At true value this would be 35,831,807.9581 … minims in a year.

  Tolkien then wrote “actual value” and calculated the fractional part of the relation of a minim to solar seconds to approximately 360 decimal places, noting where values started to repeat. On the next page he adds a sext before the minim, thus shortening the minim by a further 12th.

  1 Valian Day exactly equalled 1 löa or Sun-year. This was divided into 12 Hours of the Trees. Each of these therefore equalled 1⁄12 Year. All subsequent subdivisions of the Valian Hour were also by 12, and ran from Prime through Second, Terce, Quart, Quint, Sext (or first, second, etc. subdivision of the Hour) to the Minim, which was 1⁄127 part of the Valian Hour and approximately 1/14 of our seconds.