Читать книгу The Shaping of Middle-earth онлайн | страница 49

In the account of the northward journey of the Noldoli after the battle of Swanhaven it seems that all the host was embarked in the ships of the Teleri, since Mandos’ emissary hails them from a high cliff ‘as they sail by’; but this may be merely due to compression, since in the Tale (I. 166) some marched along the shore while ‘the fleet coasted beside them not far out to sea’, and the same is told in The Silmarillion (‘some by ship and some by land’, p. 87). The storm raised by Uinen is not mentioned.

It is curious that the curse upon the Gnomes, that they should suffer from treachery and the fear of treachery among their own kindred, is separated from the Prophecy of Mandos; but it is not said by whom this curse was pronounced. Nothing is told in S as originally written of the content of the Prophecy of Mandos, save that it concerned ‘the fate of after days’, but my father subsequently added that it told of ‘the curse of war against one another because of Swanhaven’, thus bringing the ‘curse’ into the content of the ‘Prophecy’, as in The Silmarillion. There is no trace of the old prophecies concerning Turgon and Gondolin (I. 167, 172), but nor is there any suggestion of the nature of the doom of the Noldor as it is stated in The Silmarillion.

For the original story of the crossing of the Grinding Ice by the Gnomes, where there is no element of treachery (though the blaming of Fëanor was already present), see I. 167–9.

ssss1

The making of the Sun and Moon is here compressed into a couple of phrases. Virtually all of the extremely elaborate account in the old Tale of the Sun and Moon has disappeared: the tears of Vána leading to the last fruit of Laurelin, the breaking of the ‘Fruit of Noon’, the Bath of the Setting Sun where the Sun-maiden and her ship were drawn on coming out of the East, the song of Lórien leading to the last flower of Silpion, the fall of the ‘Rose of Silpion’ which caused the markings on the Moon, the refusal to allow Silmo to steer the ship of the Moon and the task given instead to Ilinsor, a spirit of the Súruli, Lake Irtinsa where the ship of the Moon was refreshed, and much else. But while it is impossible to say how much of all this my father had ‘privately’ rejected at this time (see my remarks, I. 200), some elements at least were suppressed for the purposes of this ‘Sketch’, which is after all only an outline, for they will reappear.