The outline in C continues and concludes thus (again with some very slight and insignificant editing):
(5) Longer ages elapse. Gilfanon is now the oldest and wisest Elf in Tol Eressлa, but is not of the Inwir—hence Meril-i-Turinqi is Lady of the Isle.
Eriol comes to Tol Eressлa. Sojourns at Kortirion. Goes to Tavrobel to see Gilfanon, and sojourns in the house of a hundred chimneys—for this is the last condition of his drinking limpл. Gilfanon bids him write down all he has heard before he drinks.
Eriol drinks limpл. Gilfanon tells him of things to be; that in his mind (although the fairies hope not) he believes that Tol Eressлa will become a dwelling of Men. Gilfanon also prophesies concerning the Great End, and of the Wrack of Things, and of Fionwл, Tulkas, and Melko and the last fight on the Plains of Valinor.
Eriol ends his life at Tavrobel but in his last days is consumed with longing for the black cliffs of his shores, even as Meril said.
The book lay untouched in the house of Gilfanon during many ages of Men.
The compiler of the Golden Book takes up the Tale: one of the children of the fathers of the fathers of Men. [Against this is written:] It may perhaps be much better to let Eriol himself see the last things and finish the book.
Rising of the Lost Elves against the Orcs and Nautar.6 The time is not ready for the Faring Forth, but the fairies judge it to be necessary. They obtain through Ulmo the help of Uin,7 and Tol Eressлa is uprooted and dragged near to the Great Lands, nigh to the promontory of Rфs. A magic bridge is cast across the intervening sound. Ossл is wroth at the breaking of the roots of the isle he set so long ago—and many of his rare sea-treasures grow about it—that he tries to wrench it back; and the western half breaks off, and is now the Isle of Нverin.
The Battle of Rфs: the Island-elves and the Lost Elves against Nautar, Gongs,8 Orcs, and a few evil Men. Defeat of the Elves. The fading Elves retire to Tol Eressлa and hide in the woods.
Men come to Tol Eressлa and also. Orcs, Dwarves, Gongs, Trolls, etc. After the Battle of Rфs the Elves faded with sorrow. They cannot live in air breathed by a number of Men equal to their own or greater; and 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 Gods now dwell in Valinor, and come scarcely ever to the world, being content with the restraining of the elements from utterly destroying Men. They grieve much at what they see; but Ilъvatar is over all.
On the page opposite the passage about the Battle of Rфs is written:
A great battle between Men at the Heath of the Sky-roof (now the Withered Heath), about a league from Tavrobel. The Elves and the Children flee over the Gruir and the Afros.
‘Even now do they approach and our great tale comes to its ending.’
The book found in the ruins of the house of a hundred chimneys.
That Gilfanon was the oldest of the Elves of Tol Eressлa, though Meril held the title of Lady of the Isle, is said also in the Tale of the Sun and Moon (I.175): but what is most notable is that Gilfanon (not Ailios, teller of the Tale of the Nauglafring, whom Gilfanon replaced, see I.197 note 19 and 229ff.) appears in this outline, which must therefore be late in the period of the composition of the Lost Tales.
Also noteworthy are the references to Eriol’s drinking limpл at Gilfanon’s ‘house of a hundred chimneys’. In The Cottage of Lost Play (I.17) Lindo told Eriol that he could not give him limpл to drink:
Turinqi only may give it to those not of the Eldar race, and those that drink must dwell always with the Eldar of the Island until such time as they fare forth to find the lost families of the kindred.
Meril-i-Turinqi herself, when Eriol besought her for a drink of limpл, was severe (I.98):
If you drink this drink…even at the Faring Forth, should Eldar and Men fall into war at the last, still must you stand by us against the children of your kith and kin, but until then never may you fare away home though longings gnaw you…
In the text described in I.229ff. Eriol bemoans to Lindo the refusal to grant him his desire, and Lindo, while warning him against ‘thinking to overpass the bounds that Ilъvatar hath set’, tells him that Meril has not irrevocably refused him. In a note to this text my father wrote: ‘…Eriol fares to Tavrobel—after Tavrobel he drinks of limpл.’
The statement in this passage of outline C that Eriol ‘in his last days is consumed with longing for the black cliffs of his shores, even as Meril said’ clearly refers to the passage in The Chaining of Melko from which I have cited above:
On a day of autumn will come the winds and a driven gull, maybe, will wail overhead, and lo! you will be filled with desire, remembering the black coasts of your home. (I.96).
Lindo’s reference, in the passage from The Cottage of Lost Play cited above, to the faring forth of the Eldar of Tol Eressлa ‘to find the lost families of the kindred’ must likewise relate to the mentions in (5) of the Faring Forth (though the time was not ripe), of the ‘rising of the Lost Elves against the Orcs and Nautar’, and of ‘the Island-elves and the Lost Elves’ at the Battle of Rфs. Precisely who are to be understood by the ‘Lost Elves’ is not clear; but in Gilfanon’s Tale (I.231) all Elves of the Great Lands ‘that never saw the light at Kфr’ (Ilkorins), whether or not they left the Waters of Awakening, are called ‘the lost fairies of the world’, and this seems likely to be the meaning here. It must then be supposed that there dwelt on Tol Eressлa only the Eldar of Kфr (the ‘Exiles’) and the Noldoli released from thraldom under Melko; the Faring Forth was to be the great expedition from Tol Eressлa for the rescue of those who had never departed from the Great Lands.
In (5) we meet the conception of the dragging of Tol Eressлa back eastwards across the Ocean to the geographical position of England—it becomes England (see I. 26); that the part which was torn off by Ossл, the Isle of Нverin, is Ireland is explicitly stated in the Qenya dictionary. The promontory of Rфs is perhaps Brittany.
Here also there is a clear definition of the ‘fading’ of the Elves, their physical diminution and increasing tenuity and transparency, so that they become invisible (and finally incredible) to gross Mankind. This is a central concept of the early mythology: the ‘fairies’, as now conceived by Men (in so far as they are rightly conceived), have become so. They were not always so. And perhaps most remarkable in this remarkable passage, there is the final and virtually complete withdrawal of the Gods (to whom the Eldar are ‘most like in nature’, I. 57) from the concerns of ‘the world’, the Great Lands across the Sea. They watch, it seems, since they grieve, and are therefore not wholly indifferent to what passes in the lands of Men; but they are henceforward utterly remote, hidden in the West.
Other features of (5), the Golden Book of Tavrobel, and the Battle of the Heath of the Sky-roof, will be explained shortly. I give next a separate passage found in the notebook C under the heading ‘Rekindling of the Magic Sun. Faring Forth.’
(6) The Elves’ prophecy is that one day they will fare forth from Tol Eressлa and on arriving in the world will gather all their fading kindred who still live in the world and march towards Valinor—through the southern lands. This they will only do with the help of Men. If Men aid them, the fairies will take Men to Valinor—those that wish to go—fight a great battle with Melko in Erumбni and open Valinor.9 Laurelin and Silpion will be rekindled, and the mountain wall being destroyed then soft radiance will spread over all the world, and the Sun and Moon will be recalled. If Men oppose them and aid Melko the Wrack of the Gods and the ending of the fairies will result—and maybe the Great End.