(13)     There follow in the notebook C some jottings that make precise identifications of places in Tol Eressлa with places in England.

First the name Kortirion is explained. The element Kфr is derived from an earlier Qor , yet earlier Guor ; but from Guor was also derived (i.e. in Gnomish) the form Gwвr. (This formulation agrees with that in the Gnomish dictionary, see I.257). Thus Kфr = Gwвr, and Kortirion = *Gwarmindon, (the asterisk implying a hypothetical, unrecorded form). The name that was actually used in Gnomish had the elements reversed, Mindon-Gwar. (Mindon, like Tirion, meant, and continued always to mean, ‘tower’. The meaning of Kфr/Gwвr is not given here, but both in the tale of The Coming of the Elves (I.122) and in the Gnomish dictionary (I.257) the name is explained as referring to the roundness of the hill of Kфr.)

The note continues (using Old English forms): ‘In Wнelisc Caergwвr, in Englise Warwнc.’ Thus the element War- in Warwick is derived from the same Elvish source as Kor-in Kortirion and Gwar in Mindon-Gwar.¹² Lastly, it is said that ‘Hengest’s capital was Warwick’.

Next, Horsa (Hengest’s brother) is associated with Oxenaford (Old English: Oxford), which is given the equivalents Q[enya] Taruktarna and Gnomish *Taruithorn (see the Appendix on Names, p. 347).

The third of Eriol’s sons, Heorrenda, is said to have had his ‘capital’ at Great Haywood (the Staffordshire village where my parents lived in 1916–17, see I.25); and this is given the Qenya equivalents Tavaros(sл) and Taurossл, and the Gnomish Tavrobel and Tavrost; also ‘Englise [i.e. Old English Hжgwudu se grйata, Grйata Hжgwudu’)¹³

These notes conclude with the statement that ‘Heorrenda called Kфr or Gwвr “Tыn”.’ In the context of these conceptions, this is obviously the Old English word tъn, an enclosed dwelling, from which has developed the modern word town and the place-name ending -ton. Tыn has appeared several times in the Lost Tales as a later correction, or alternative to Kфr, changes no doubt dating from or anticipating the later situation where the city was Tыn and the name Kфr was restricted to the hill on which it stood. Later still Tъn became Tiriona, and then when the city of the Elves was named Tirion the hill became Timna, as it is in The Silmarillion; by then it had ceased to have any connotation of ‘dwelling-place’ and had cut free from all connection with its actual origin, as we see it here, in Old English tъn, Heorrenda’s ‘town’.

Can all these materials be brought together to form a coherent narrative? I believe that they can (granting that there are certain irreconcilable differences concerning Eriol’s life), and would reconstruct it thus:

– The Eldar and the rescued Noldoli departed from the Great Lands and came to Tol Eressлa.

– In Tol Eressлa they built many towns and villages, and in Alalminуrл, the central region of the island, Ingil son of Inwл built the town of Koromas, ‘the Resting of the Exiles of Kфr’ (‘Exiles’, because they could not return to Valinor); and the great tower of Ingil gave the town its name Kortinon. (See I.16.)

– Ottor W

fre came from Heligoland to Tol Eressлa and dwelt in the Cottage of Lost Play in Kortirion; the Elves named him Eriol or Angol after the ‘iron cliffs’ of his home.

– After a time, and greatly instructed in the ancient history of Gods, Elves, and Men, Eriol went to visit Gilfanon in the village of Tavrobel, and there he wrote down what he had learnt; there also he at last drank limpл.

– In Tol Eressлa Eriol was wedded and had a son named Heorrenda (Half-elven!). (According to (5) Eriol died at Tavrobel, consumed with longing for ‘the black cliffs of his shores’ but according to (8), certainly later, he lived to see the Battle of the Heath of the Sky-roof.)

– The Lost Elves of the Great Lands rose against the dominion of the servants of Melko; and the untimely Faring Forth took place, at which time Tol Eressлa was drawn east back across the Ocean and anchored off the coasts of the Great Lands. The western half broke off when Ossл tried to drag the island back, and it became the Isle of Нverin (= Ireland).

– Tol Eressлa was now in the geographical position of England.

– The great battle of Rфs ended in the defeat of the Elves, who retreated into hiding in Tol Eressлa.

– Evil men entered Tol Eressлa, accompanied by Orcs and other hostile beings.

– The Battle of the Heath of the Sky-roof took place not far from Tavrobel, and (according to (8)) was witnessed by Eriol, who completed the Golden Book.

– The Elves faded and became invisible to the eyes of almost all Men.

– The sons of Eriol, Hengest, Horsa, and Heorrenda, conquered the island and it became ‘England’. They were not hostile to the Elves, and from them the English have ‘the true tradition of the fairies’.

– Kortirion, ancient dwelling of the fairies, came to be known in the tongue of the English as Warwick; Hengest dwelt there, while Horsa dwelt at Taruithorn (Oxford) and Heorrenda at Tavrobel (Great Haywood). (According to (11) Heorrenda completed the Golden Book.)

This reconstruction may not be ‘correct’ in all its parts: indeed, it may be that any such attempt is artificial, treating all the notes and jottings as of equal weight and all the ideas as strictly contemporaneous and relatable to each other. Nonetheless I believe that it shows rightly in essentials how my father was thinking of ordering the narrative in which the Lost Tales were to be set; and I believe also that this was the conception that still underlay the Tales as they arc extant and have been given in these books.

For convenience later I shall refer to this narrative as ‘the Eriol story’. Its most remarkable features, in contrast to the later story, are the transformation of Tol Eressлa into England, and the early appearance of the mariner (in relation to the whole history) and his importance.

In fact, my father was exploring (before he decided on a radical transformation of the whole conception) ideas whereby his importance would be greatly increased.

(14)     From very rough jottings it can be made out that Eriol was to be so tormented with home longing that he set sail from Tol Eressлa with his son Heorrenda, against the command of Meril-i-Turinqi (see the passage cited on p. 284 from The Chaining of Melko); but his purpose in doing so was also ‘to hasten the Faring Forth’, which he ‘preached’ in the lands of the East. Tol Eressлa was drawn back to the confines of the Great Lands, but at once hostile peoples named the Guiрlin and the Brithonin (and in one of these notes also the Rъmhoth, Romans) invaded the island. Eriol died, but his sons Hengest and Horsa conquered the Guiрlin. But because of Eriol’s disobedience to the command of Meril, in going back before the time for the Faring Forth was ripe, ‘all was cursed’ and the Elves faded before the noise and evil of war. An isolated sentence refers to ‘a strange prophecy that a man of good will, yet through longing after the things of Men, may bring the Faring Forth to nought’.

Thus the part of Eriol was to become cardinal in the history of the Elves; but there is no sign that these ideas ever got beyond this exploratory stage.

I have said that I think that the reconstruction given above (‘the Eriol story’) is in essentials the conception underlying the framework of the Lost Tales. This is both for positive and negative reasons: positive, because he is there still named Eriol (see p. 300), and also because Gilfanon, who enters (replacing Ailios) late in the development of the Tales, appears also in citation (5) above, which is one of the main contributors to this reconstruction; negative, because there is really nothing to contradict what is much the easiest assumption. There is no explicit statement anywhere in the Lost Tales that Eriol came from England. At the beginning (I.13) he is only ‘a traveller from far countries’ and the fact that the story he told to Vлannл of his earlier life (pp. 4–7) agrees well with other accounts where his home is explicitly in England does no more than show that the story remained while the geography altered—just as the ‘black coasts’ of his home survived in later writing to become the western coasts of Britain, whereas the earliest reference to them is the etymology of Angol ‘iron cliffs’ (his own name, = Eriol, from the land ‘between the seas’, Angeln in the Danish peninsula, whence he came: see I.252). There is in fact a very early, rejected, sketch of Eriol’s life in which essential features of the same story are outlined—the attack on his father’s dwelling (in this case the destruction of Eoh’s castle by his brother Beorn, see citation (10)), Eriol’s captivity and escape—and in this note it is said that Eriol afterwards ‘wandered over the wilds of the Central Lands to the Inland Sea, Wendelsж [Old English, the Mediterranean], and hence to the shores of the Western Sea’, whence his father had originally come. The mention in the typescript text of the Link to the Tale of Tinъiel (p. 6) of wild men out of the Mountains of the East, which the duke could see from his tower, seems likewise to imply that at this time Eriol’s original home was placed in some ‘continental’ region.