The War of the Jewels Read Free

pointed out that the name Byrde given to Finwe s first wife Miriel in the Annals of Aman (Morgoth s Ring, pp. 92, 185) is not, as I said (p. 103), an Old English word meaning 'broideress', for that is not found in Old English. The name actually depends on an argument advanced (on very good evidence) by my father that the word byrde 'broideress' must in fact have existed in the old language, and that it survived in the Middle English burde 'lady, damsel', its original specific sense faded and forgotten. His discussion is found in his article Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (The Review of English Studies 1.2, April 1925).

    I am very grateful to Dr Judith Priestman for her generous help in providing me with copies of texts and maps in the Bodleian Library. The accuracy of the intricate text of this book has been much improved by the labour of Mr Charles Noad, unstintedly given and greatly appreciated. He has read the first proof with extreme care and with critical understanding, and has made many improvements; among these is an interpretation of the way in which the narrow path, followed by Turin and afterwards by Brandir the Lame, went down through the woods above the Taeglin to Cabed-en-Aras: an interpretation that justifies expressions of my father's that I had taken to be merely erroneous (pp. 157, 159).

    There remain a number of writings of my father's, other than those that are expressly philological, that I think should be included in this History of Middle-earth, and I hope to be able to publish a further volume in two years' time.

    PART ONE.

    THE
    GREY ANNALS.
    THE GREY ANNALS.

    The history of the Annals of Beleriand began about 1930, when my father wrote the earliest version ('AB 1') together with that of the Annals of Valinor ('AV 1'). These were printed in Vol.IV, The Shaping of Middle-earth; I remarked there that 'the Annals began, perhaps, in parallel with the Quenta as a convenient way of driving abreast, and keeping track of, the different elements in the ever more complex narrative web.' Second versions of both sets of Annals were composed later in the 1930s, as part of a group of texts comprising also the Lhammas or Account of Tongues, a new version of the Ainulindale, and the central work of that time: a new version of 'The Silmarillion'
    proper, the unfinished Quenta Silmarillion ('QS'). These second versions, together with the other texts of that period, were printed in Vol.V, The Lost Road and Other Writings, under the titles The Later Annals of Valinor ('AV 2') and The Later Annals of Beleriand ('AB 2').
    When my father turned again, in 1950-1, to the Matter of the Elder Days after the completion of The Lord of the Rings, he began new work on the Annals by taking up the AV 2 and AB 2 manuscripts from some 15 years earlier and using them as vehicles for revision and new writing. In the case of AV 2, correction of the old text was limited to the opening annals, and the beginnings of a new version written on the blank verso pages of this manuscript likewise petered out very quickly, so that there was no need to take much account of this preliminary work (X.47). In AB 2, on the other hand, the preparatory stages were much more extensive and substantial.
    In the first place, revision of the original AB 2 text continues much further - although in practice this can be largely passed over, since the content of the revision appears in subsequent texts. (In some cases, as noted in V.124, it is not easy to separate 'early' (pre-Lord of the Rings) revisions and additions from 'late' (those of the early 1950s).) In the second place, the beginning of a new and much fuller version of the Annals of Beleriand on the blank verso pages of AB 2 extends for a considerable distance (13 manuscript pages) - and the first part of this is written in such a careful script, before it begins to degenerate, that it may be thought that my father did not at first intend it as a draft. This is entitled 'The Annals of