Читать книгу The Shaping of Middle-earth онлайн | страница 21

At the rising of the first Sun the younger children of earth awoke in the far East. No god came to guide them, but the messages of Ylmir little understood came at whiles to them. They meet Ilkorindi and learn speech and other things of them, and become great friends of the Eldalië. They spread through the earth, wandering West and North.

1 Ylmir foretells changed at the time of writing from Bridhil foretells

2 Added here (hastily in pencil):

and the flight and ingratitude of the Gnomes

3 Added here:

Thus the many emissaries of the Gnomes in after days never reach Valinor.

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Now begins the time of the great wars of the powers of the North (Morgoth and his hosts against Men, Ilkorins, and the Gnomes from Valinor). Morgoth’s cunning and lies, and the curse of Swanhaven (as well as the oaths of the sons of Fëanor who swore the unbreakable oath by Timbrenting to treat all as foes who had the Silmarils in keeping) in these wars do the greatest injury to Men and Elves.

These stories only tell a part of the deeds of those days, especially such as relate to the Gnomes and the Silmarils, and the mortals who became entangled in their fates. In the early days Eldar and Men were of nearly equal stature and power of body, but the Eldar were blessed with greater wit, skill, and beauty; and those (the Gnomes) who had dwelt in Côr (Koreldar) as much surpassed the Ilkorins as they surpassed mortals. Only in the realm of Doriath, whose queen was of divine race, did the Ilkorins equal the Koreldar. The Elves were immortal, and free from all sickness.¹ But they might be slain with weapons in those days,² and then their spirits went back to the halls of Mandos and awaited a thousand years, or the pleasure of the Gods, before they were recalled to free life.³ Men from the first though slightly bigger were more frail, more easily slain, subject to ills, and grew old and died, if not slain. What happened to their spirits was not known to the Eldalië. They did not go to the halls of Mandos, and many thought their fate was not in the hands of the Valar after death. Though many, associating with Eldar, believed that their spirits went to the western land, this was not true. Men were not born again.⁴