How would you know?

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Galin

Tolkien had changed the game a bit if Elfwine dropped out, for then he had Old English to help him with the Silmarillion.

Is Old English certainly out? Ach my memory...


I know the runes and letters in The Lord of the Rings explain that JRRT translated the Red Book of Westmarch, but I would have to look at Appendix F more carefully to see if it's explicit that the translation went from actual Westron (and the ancient scripts) to modern English, with no help from an Old English translation.

I don't remember any Old English version mentioned in the context of the later 'Numenorean transmission' (or 'Imladris tradition' or whatever one might call it compared to the Elfwine transmission in general), but I mean is there something explicit enough that certainly rules out an Anglo-Saxon copy at some point?

I'll refresh my memory but someone will probably beat me to checking that out

I think I recall someone (Verlyn Flieger? Charles Noad?) speculating that Elfwine could still play a part in the later transmission, at some point anyway, despite that he seemed to fall away, or ultimately seemed to give way to the Imladris and Bilbo notion.

I can't recall any mention of a preceding Old English translation in Appendix F; and since it gives the 'underlying' Westron forms of some Englished names (like Meriadoc Brandybuck = Kalimac Brandagamba or Rivendell = Karningul), the impression is that the Red Book was translated directly from the original Westron (not Adûnaic, as I said in my last post - sorry for the mix-up.)

On the other hand, the Dangweth Pengolod (written between 1951 and 1959, according to Christopher) is still explicitly addressed to Ælfwine - so apparently he wasn't dropped for good immediately after LotR was written, maybe not even after it was published; Eru only knows how long he continued to haunt the back of Tolkien's head, and how the Prof meant to reconcile him with the Imladris/Númenórean tradition. (Interestingly, it concludes with the words Sin quente Quendingoldo Elendilenna "Thus spoke Pengolod to Elendil". Now probably Elendil is in this context just Ælfwine's name translated into Quenya (both meaning 'Elf-friend'), but it still makes me wonder whether Tolkien may have left open a back door to replacing Ælfwine of England with Elendil of Númenor as the transmittor of this text - do you remember whether the Eldar of Tol Eressëa still visited Númenor in Elendil's lifetime?)

morwen, you should definitely write that story! But I'd reconsider about the book being made up - it could be disappointing to the reader to find out that your protagonist was fooled by a hoax. Alternatively, he could start with the assumption that it's all made up and translate it with the sole intention of mining it for future novel ideas, and in the end find out (how?) that it's genuine. I'd find that more interesting than the other way round, but that's only because I dislike it when a character I've sympathized with is made to look stupid. But it's your story, so that's up to you, of course.