As I have noted before (I.137), this progression from East to West of Harbourless Isles, Magic Isles, the Lonely Isle, and then the Shadowy Seas in which were the Twilit Isles, was afterwards changed, and it is said in The Silmarillion (p. 102) that at the time of the Hiding of Valinor

the Enchanted Isles were set, and all the seas about them were filled with shadows and bewilderment. And these isles were strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south, before Tol Eressлa, the Lonely Isle, is reached by one sailing west. Hardly might any vessel pass between them, for in the dangerous sounds the waves sighed for ever upon dark rocks shrouded in mist. And in the twilight a great weariness came upon mariners and a loathing of the sea; but all that ever set foot upon the islands were there entrapped, and slept until the Change of the World.

As a conception, the Enchanted Isles are derived primarily from the old Magic Isles, set at the time of the Hiding of Valinor and described in that Tale (I.211): ‘Ossл set them in a great ring about the western limits of the mighty sea, so that they guarded the Bay of Faлry’, and

all such as stepped thereon came never thence again, but being woven in the nets of Oinen’s hair the Lady of the Sea, and whelmed in agelong slumber that Lуrien set there, lay upon the margin of the waves, as those do who being drowned are cast up once more by the movements of the sea; yet rather did these hapless ones sleep unfathomably and the dark waters laved their limbs…

Here three of Жlfwine’s companions

slept upon dim strands in deadly sleep, and their heads were pillowed on white sand and they were clad in foam, wrapped about in the agelong spells of Eglavain (p. 320).

(I do not know the meaning of the name Eglavain, but since it clearly contains Egla (Gnomish, = Elda, see I.251) it perhaps meant ‘Elfinesse’.) But the Enchanted Isles derive also perhaps from the Twilit Isles, since the Enchanted Isles were likewise in twilight and were set in the Shadowy Seas (cf. I.224); and from the Harbourless Isles as well, which, as Жlfwine was told by the Man of the Sea (p. 317), were set at the time of the Hiding of Valinor—and indeed served the same purpose as did the Magic Isles, though lying far further to the East.

Eneadur, the isle of the Ythlings (Old English эр ‘wave’), whose life is so fully described in Жlfwine of England, seems never to have been mentioned again. Is there in Eneadur and the Shipmen of the West perhaps some faint foreshadowing of the early Nъmenуreans in their cliff-girt isle?

The following passage (pp. 316–17) is not easy to interpret:

Thence [i.e. from the Bay of Faлry] slopes the world steeply beyond the Rim of Things to Valinor, that is God-home, and to the Wall and to the edge of Nothingness whereon are sown the stars.

In the Ambarkanta or ‘Shape of the World’ of the 1930s a map of the world shows the surface of the Outer Land sloping steeply westwards from the Mountains of Valinor. Conceivably it is to this slope that my father was referring here, and the Rim of Things is the great mountainwall; but this seems very improbable. There are also references in Жlfwine of England to ‘the Rim of Earth’, beyond which the dead pass (pp. 314, 322); and in an outline for the Tale of Eдrendel (p. 260) Tuor’s boat ‘dips over the world’s rim’. More likely, I think, the expression refers to the rim of the horizon (‘the horizon of Men’s knowledge’, p. 313).

The expression ‘the sun was sinking to the Mountains of Valinor beyond the Western Walls’ (p. 320) I am at a loss to explain according to what has been told in the Lost Tales. A possible, though scarcely convincing, interpretation is that the sun was sinking towards Valinor, whence it would pass ‘beyond the Western Walls’ (i.e. through the Door of Night, see I.215–16).

Lastly, the suggestion (p. 313) is notable that the Elves sailing west from Lъthien might go beyond the Lonely Isle and reach even back to Valinor; on this matter see p. 280.

Before ending, there remains to discuss briefly a matter of a general nature that has many times been mentioned in the texts, and especially in these last chapters: that of the ‘diminutiveness’ of the Elves.

It is said several times in the Lost Tales that the Elves of the ancient days were of greater bodily stature than they afterwards became. Thus in The Fall of Gondolin (p. 159): ‘The fathers of the fathers of Men were of less stature than Men now are, and the children of Elfinesse of greater growth’ in an outline for the abandoned tale of Gilfanon (I.235) very similarly: ‘Men were almost of a stature at first with Elves, the fairies being far greater and Men smaller than now’ and in citation (4) in the present chapter: ‘Men and Elves were formerly of a size, though Men always larger.’ Other passages suggest that the ancient Elves were of their nature of at any rate somewhat slighter build (see pp. 142, 220).

The diminishing in the stature of the Elves of later times is very explicitly related to the coming of Men. Thus in (4) above: ‘Men spread and thrive, and the Elves of the Great Lands fade. As Men’s stature grows theirs diminishes’ and in (5): ‘ever as Men wax more powerful and numerous so the fairies fade and grow small and tenuous, filmy and transparent, but Men larger and more dense and gross. At last Men, or almost all, can no longer see the fairies.’ The clearest picture that survives of the Elves when they have ‘faded’ altogether is given in the Epilogue (p. 289):

Like strands of wind, like mystic half-transparencies, Gilfanon Lord of Tavrobel rides out tonight amid his folk, and hunts the elfin deer beneath the paling sky. A music of forgotten feet, a gleam of leaves, a sudden bending of the grass, and wistful voices murmuring on the bridge, and they are gone.

But according to the passages bearing on the later ‘Жlfwine’ version, the Elves of Tol Eressлa who had left Luthany were unfaded, or had ceased to fade. Thus in (15): ‘Tol Eressлa, whither most of the unfaded Elves have retired from the noise, war, and clamour of Men’ and (16): ‘Tol Eressлa, whither most of the fading Elves have withdrawn from the world, and there fade now no more’ also in Жlfwine of England (p. 313): ‘the unfaded Elves beyond the waters of Garsecg’.

On the other hand, when Eriol came to the Cottage of Lost Play the doorward said to him (I.14):

Small is the dwelling, but smaller still are they that dwell here—for all who enter must be very small indeed, or of their own good wish become as very little folk even as they stand upon the threshold.

I have commented earlier (I.32) on the oddity of the idea that the Cottage and its inhabitants were peculiarly small, in an island entirely inhabited by Elves. But my father, if he had ever rewritten The Cottage of Lost Play, would doubtless have abandoned this; and it may well be that he was in any case turning away already at the time of Жlfwine II from the idea that the ‘faded’ Elves were diminutive, as is suggested by his rejection of the word ‘little’ in ‘little folk’, ‘little ships’ (see note 27).

Ultimately, of course, the Elves shed all associations and qualities that would be now commonly considered ‘fairylike’, and those who remained in the Great Lands in Ages of the world at this time unconceived were to grow greatly in stature and in power: there was nothing filmy or transparent about the heroic or majestic Eldar of the Third Age of Middle-earth. Long afterwards my father would write, in a wrathful comment on a ‘pretty’ or ‘ladylike’ pictorial rendering of Legolas:

He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgыl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.