The War of the Jewels Read Free Page A

Beleriand', and could on that account be referred to as 'AB 3', but I shall in fact call it 'GA 1' (see below).
    The final text is a good clear manuscript bearing the title 'The Annals of Beleriand or the Grey Annals'. I have chosen to call this work the Grey Annals, abbreviated 'GA', in order to mark its distinctive nature in relation to the earlier forms of the Annals of Beleriand and its close association with the Annals of Aman ('AAm'), which also bears a title different from that of its predecessors. The abandoned first version just mentioned is then more suitably called
    'GA 1' than 'AB 3', since for most of its length it was followed very closely in the final text, and is to be regarded as a slightly earlier variant: it will be necessary to refer to it, and to cite passages from it, but there is no need to give it in full. Where it is necessary to distinguish the final text from the aborted version I shall call the former 'GA 2'.
    There is some evidence that the Grey Annals followed the Annals of Aman (in its primary form), but the two works were, I feel certain, closely associated in time of composition. For the structure of the history of Beleriand the Grey Annals constitutes the primary text, and although much of the latter part of the work was used in the published Silmarillion with little change I give it in full. This is really essential on practical grounds, but is also in keeping with my intention in this
    'History', in which I have traced the development of the Matter of the Elder Days from its beginning to its end within the compass of my father's actual writings: from this point of view the published work is not its end, and I do not treat his later writing primarily in relation to what was used, or how it was used, in 'The Silmarillion'. - It is a most unhappy fact that he abandoned the Grey Annals at the death of Turin
    - although, as will be seen subsequently (pp. 251 ff.), he added elements of a continuation at some later time.
    I have not, as I did in the case of the Annals of Aman, divided the Grey Annals into sections, and the commentary, referenced to the numbered paragraphs, follows the end of the text (p. 103). Subsequent changes to the manuscript, which in places were heavy, are indicated as such.
    At the top of the first page of the old AB 2 text, no doubt before he began work on the enormously enlarged new version, my father scribbled these notes: 'Make these the Sindarin Annals of Doriath and leave out most of the...' (there are here two words that probably read
    'Nold[orin] stuff'); and 'Put in notes about Denethor, Thingol, etc.
    from AV'.
    Two other elements in the complex of papers constituting the Grey Annals remain to be mentioned. There are a number of disconnected rough pages bearing the words 'Old material of Grey Annals' (see p.
    29); and there is an amanuensis typescript in top copy and carbon that clearly belongs with that of the Annals of Aman, which I tentatively dated to 1958 (X.47).
    THE ANNALS OF BELERIAND
    OR
    THE GREY ANNALS.

    $1. These are the Annals of Beleriand as they were made by the Sindar, the Grey Elves of Doriath and the Havens, and enlarged from the records and memories of the remnant of the Noldor of Nargothrond and Gondolin at the Mouths of Sirion, whence they were brought back into the West.
    $2. Beleriand is the name of the country that lay upon either side of the great river Sirion ere the Elder Days were ended. This name it bears in the oldest records that survive, and it is here retained in that form, though now it is called Belerian. The name signifies in the language of that land: the country of Balar.
    For this name the Sindar gave to Osse, who came often to those coasts, and there befriended them. At first, therefore, this name was given to the land of the shores, on either side of Sirion's mouths, that face the Isle of Balar, but it spread until it included all the ancient coast of the North-west of Middle-earth south of the Firth of Drengist and all the