Question for the Sindarin experts: is Meril still valid?

[jallanite]

Since the second edition of the Lord of the Rings was first published by Ballantine in 1965 while Plotz’s interview with Tolkien occurred on November 1, 1966, indeed it more than “looks like Tolkien had already added his Note On The Shire Records (revised edition), which included that Bilbo’s Translations From The Elvish were ‘almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days’.”

Thanks for verifying that this was not just my theory.

Tolkien does refer to Ælfwine still in some texts written following The Lord of the Rings and so Tolkien did at least for a time consider some version of his Ælfwine story as still valid. Possibly he considered that Ælfwine was given the complete Thain’s Book version of the Red Book of Westmarch by Pengolodh in Tol Eressëa. (Also possibly not.)

Tolkien also in some writing imagines himself as in contact with present-day Hobbits. For example in the FOREWARD to the first edition, Tolkien writes:

To complete it some maps are given, including one of the Shire that has been approved as reasonably correct by those Hobbits that still concern themselves with ancient history.

The complications of a tale that required both Ælfwine and present-day Hobbits may be sufficient to explain Christopher Tolkien’s remarks on page 5 of The Book of Lost Tales Part I (HoME 1):

The original mode, that of The Book of Lost Tales, that in which a Man, Eriol, comes after a great voyage over the ocean to the island where the Elves dwell and learns their history from their own lips, had (by degrees) fallen away. […] I think that in the end he concluded that nothing would serve, and no more would be said beyond an explanation of how (within the imagined world) it came to be recorded.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The sheer abundancy of the mentions of Aelfwine and his teaching in the late writings, brings your claim to naught.

However, I am not aware of any text in which Aelfwine* appears that postdates the 1950s, probably the first half of the decade (that is, before the publication of the Lord of the Rings), and in no event later than, at the extreme, January 1960,** still well before the Revised Edition in 1965.


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*Sorry, JA, but for forum posts, chasing down off-keyboard lenitions isn't worth the bother

**The latest possible date for Dangweth Pengolodh

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

However, I am not aware of any text in which Aelfwine* appears that postdates the 1950s, probably the first half of the decade (that is, before the publication of the Lord of the Rings), and in no event later than, at the extreme, January 1960,** still well before the Revised Edition in 1965.

You are aware that Dangweth Pengolodh is dated by Christopher Tolkien as “cannot be later than the end of 1959,” that is, possibly written after “the first half of the decade.” And in The War of The Jewels (HoME 11) Ælfwine appears prominently in “The Annals of Aman”, “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (I)”, and “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (II)”, only the first of which Christoopher Tolkien dates even to the period before The Lord of the Riings was even fully published. Nothing you have put forward here disagrees with anything that either I or Arvegil145 has posted and it is inconsistent with itself.

*Sorry, JA, but for forum posts, chasing down off-keyboard lenitions isn't worth the bother

Lenitions‽ Do you even know what the word means? Apparently not. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenition.

Almost all forums available on the web allow access to Unicode which currently contains 120,520 graphic characters, more characters than were available to most professional publishers even 15 years ago. I very much enjoy this access and will ɴᴏᴛ give it up only because another poster feels it “isn’t worth the bother.”

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Almost all forums available on the web allow access to Unicode which currently contains 120,520 graphic characters, more characters than were available to most professional publishers even 15 years ago. I very much enjoy this access and will ɴᴏᴛ give it up only because another poster feels it “isn’t worth the bother.”

Come, come, jallanite, no one is asking you to give it up, but there probably isn't the need to correct people who may not be aware of or familiar with Unicode, or simply aren't sufficiently interested in going to the trouble of using it. It is fairly standard on this forum, I believe, for people to not always include Professor Tolkien's exact use of accent marks, for instance. I use them myself, but I can understand that many posters lack the inclination to use them.

I agree with you, however, that I personally do not see a role for Ælfwine later in the story in Professor Tolkien's later conceptions, for thematic reasons if nothing else. I like the idea to an extent, but I also feel like it makes the connection between the Primary and Secondary Worlds a little too strong.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

CT can date Dangweth Pengolodh no more precisely than to the 50s, not later than the Jan 1960 date of its newspaper wrapper, but thought it more probably from earlier in the decade than later. AAm and LQI both fall into the bracket 1950-53; LQII (if there is an Aelfwine reference in it; I can't find one) refers specifically to an amanuensis typescript which reflects the status of QS as emended between the earlier typescript and 1958- so, yes, that range extends past 1955, fine and so what. Nothing in "postdates the 1950s, probably the first half of the decade... and in no event later than, at the extreme, January 1960" is self-contradictory or in disagreement with what is known or deduced of the chronology, and certainly is in full accord with my point that there is no mention of Aelfwine which can be dated after or even within five years of the LR 2d Ed... and none which can with certainty be dated even to within a decade of it.

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Ligatures. Brain-poot. Sheesh!

Yes, Unicode is available; it's also a PITA for what is after all just casual messaging, not a matter for your professional publishers, past or present. It frankly was a bit pompous for you to insult a poster's command of English simply because he's not pedantic enough to go hunt down U+00C6 or Alt-0198 amongst all those tens of thopusands of available codes.

I find it even more inexplicable that you would jump all over my post made in support of your contention!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Back OT: I can't run it down, but somewhere there is a Tolkien statement, relatively late, of a tradition ascribing authorship of the Akallabeth to Elendil; this would represent a conscious change to the conception reflected in the text of Akallabeth itself, which was on its own terms expressly an Aelfwine-Pengolodh document.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

LQII (if there is an Aelfwine reference in it; I can't find one) refers specifically to an amanuensis typescript which reflects the status of QS as emended between the earlier typescript and 1958- so, yes, that range extends past 1955, fine and so what. Nothing in "postdates the 1950s, probably the first half of the decade... and in no event later than, at the extreme, January 1960" is self-contradictory or in disagreement with what is known or deduced of the chronology, and certainly is in full accord with my point that there is no mention of Aelfwine which can be dated after or even within five years of the LR 2d Ed... and none which can with certainty be dated even to within a decade of it.

See pages 208–09 for the mention of Ælfwine in Laws and Customs Among the Eldar which is in the chapter with the page heading “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (II)”. On page 225 occurs the notation, “So spoke Ælfwine.” On page 257 Tolkien in another later essay under the same page heading includes a footnote from Ælfwine about Míriel Sirende.

These references to Ælfwine are also written following publication of The Lord of the Rings and are what I was talking about.

You posted:

However, I am not aware of any text in which Aelfwine* appears that postdates the 1950s, probably the first half of the decade (that is, before the publication of the Lord of the Rings), …

The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes over the course of a year from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955. Christopher Tolkien dates all the material in the sections headed “The Later QUENTA SILMARILLION (I)” and “The Later QUENTA SILMARILLION (II)” as following this, not “before the publication of The Lord of the Rings.”

I recognize and agree with your intended “point”, but that was not what you posted.

Ligatures. Brain-poot. Sheesh!

Yes, Unicode is available; it's also a PITA for what is after all just casual messaging, not a matter for your professional publishers, past or present.

You ignore why Unicode is today essentially the sole set of protocols for language posting, universally. Casual messaging is hardly to be involved with numerous dead languages and minority languages, except in the sense that Unicode intends, in the future, to allow any language, no matter how much used or little-used it may be, to be printed.

It frankly was a bit pompous for you to insult a poster's command of English simply because he's not pedantic enough to go hunt down U+00C6 or Alt-0198 amongst all those tens of thopusands of available codes.

Gee whiz, I was only talking about one code, for ‘Æ’. And one hardly needs to hunt through tens of thousands of available codes, but only the codes used for producing the Latin script. Just look up ’Latin’ at http://www.unicode.org/charts/ or look up http://unicode.org/charts/collation/ for the characters in more-or-less normal order or look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_script_in_Unicode or many other sites.

If one realizes that ‘Æ’ and ‘æ’ were part of both the old MS-DOS Character set and the so-called Microsoft ANSI character set for Western Europe, and the original Apple-Macintosh character set one would realize that these two codes will be found early in the Unicode character set: so see http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf and http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf.

You are trying to make it seem hard to code ‘Æ’ and naturally failing when Arvegil145 seems to have no problems finding the vowels with diacritics. Nor do you. But you now think it smart to show that you could use Unicode but refuse to do so.

I find it even more inexplicable that you would jump all over my post made in support of your contention!

I found your post inaccurate for reasons I have explained. You believed that your post supported my contention, but it did not. What you posted was not in agreement with my contention.

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Come, come, jallanite, no one is asking you to give it up, but there probably isn't the need to correct people who may not be aware of or familiar with Unicode, or simply aren't sufficiently interested in going to the trouble of using it.

I normally do not remark on such things, when I even notice them.

However Arvegil145 in other places uses Tolkien’s diacritics properly, so it looks like he normally knows what he is doing in that area. As do most posters on this forum. I thought it somewhat amusing that a poster so concerned with what is proper Elvish should make such a silly error in Old English. I am sorry now that I commented on it

[Galin]

I found another reference from Hammond and Scull, this time in their Reader's Guide, companion to their volume titled Chronology:

"... that one of these was to be the Quenta Silmarillion. In support of this idea is a report by Dick Plotz that when he visited Tolkien on 1 November, 1966,

"he, half-heartedly I suppose, was thinking up schemes for rendering the Silmarillion publishable. So far, I think what he is doing is relating it to Bilbo's stay in Rivendell, which is what he said to me.

Now there is a hint of this somewhere in The Lord of the Rings.... But apparently when Bilbo went to Rivendell he was surrounded by Elves and all Elven records for seventeen years. Here was living history and he attempted to write it down, and this is what became the Silmarillion ["An Edited Transcript of Remarks at the December 1966 TSA [Tolkien Society of America] Meeting"; Niekas 19 (Spring 1967), p. 40]

Hammond and Scull, Reader's Guide

I would add that Rivendell contained Numenorean lore too. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was published in 1962, so before Tolkien revised the second edition of The Lord of the Rings and added his Note On The Shire Records. In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil we find the description, for example:

"These two pieces, therefore, are only re-handlings of Southern matter, though this may have reached Bilbo by way of Rivendell. No. 14 also depends upon the lore of Rivendell, Elvish and Numenorean, concerning the heroic days at the end of the First Age; it seems to contain echoes of the Numenorean tale of Turin and Mim the Dwarf."

This is partly why I think the "Bilbo transmission" and the "Numenorean transmission" can be the same tradition.

[jallanite]

I imagine the Silmarillion as something like Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid begins his work with a story of creation. But the story he tells is not based on any mythological account, but on more advanced philosophical speculations, principally on the speculations of Hērákleitos. This name was Latinized to Heraclitus and his teachings were particularly honored by the Stoics. Stoicism was the foremost popular philosophy among the educated elite in the Hellenistic world and the Roman Empire. After the 5th century ʙᴄᴇ, no Greek writer of repute thought the world was anything but round.

So Ovid here, following the science of his time, naturally imagines that his Earth is spherical in shape. See http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta01.htm.

Yet when telling the story of Phaéthōn, the son of the Sun god (see http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ovid/meta/meta02.htm), whose name Ovid Latiinizes as Phaeton, Earth is conceived of as flat and the Sun god is conceived of as dwelling, before sunrise, in a marvelous palace at the east of the flat earth.

Apparently, like Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or like Apollódōrus’ Bibliothḗkē (‘The Library’), the Silmarillion was conceived by Tolkien as a work of great prestige in Gondor, prestige that meant it continued to be copied although it was known that ‘the Wise of Númenor’ found many errors in it. It is not surprising that a least one copy, or many copies, would be found in the library at Rivendell for Bilbo to translate.

Tolkien writes, as published on page 374 of Morgoth’s Ring (HoME 10):

The cosmogonic myths are Númenórean, blending Elven-lore with human myth and imagination. A note should say that the Wise of Númenor recorded that the making of stars was not so, nor of Sun and Moon. For Sun and stars were all older than Arda. But the placing of Arda amidst stars and under the [?guard] of the Sun was due to Manwë and Varda before the assault of Melkor.

Tolkien does not indicate whether this note, and presumably other notes, was to be represented as a translation from the source written in Sindarin, as a note by Bilbo, or as a note by himself.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by jallanite

You posted:

However, I am not aware of any text in which Aelfwine* appears that postdates the 1950s, probably the first half of the decade (that is, before the publication of the Lord of the Rings), …

The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes over the course of a year from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955. Christopher Tolkien dates all the material in the sections headed “The Later QUENTA SILMARILLION (I)” and “The Later QUENTA SILMARILLION (II)” as following this, not “before the publication of The Lord of the Rings.”

I recognize and agree with your intended “point”, but that was not what you posted.

Yes, it is. I have no reason why you are being not only hostile, but hostile over your incorrect parsing not my error. Setting aside the reference in Laws and Customs, which I had overlooked, all of the A/P references after the writing of the Lord of the Rings are to be found in those writings dating from Tolkien's renewed work on the Elder days following the writing of the LR circa 1950-52* (which includes, contra your assertion, the material titled by CT "The Later Quenta Silmarillion I"), with the exception of Dangweth Pengolodh, which CT is "inclined" to place "earlier in the decade rather than later," and the aborted preface to the Narn, of uncertain date but seemingly related to the Grey Annals.

In other words, there is simply no basis for your complaint; there are no known Aelfwines after the 1950s, and all of those (but for the exception you raised) can either be firmly dated to the period before 1954, or probably date from that period.

* In fact, there are no A/P refs in GA; those few found in QS are "quoth Aelfwines" incorporated in the 1951 LQ1 typescript. A single "quoth" note in the AAm manuscript was struck out before the typescript was made. Ainulindale D is no later than 1951.

Gee whiz, I was only talking about one code, for ‘Æ’. And one hardly needs to hunt through tens of thousands of available codes, but only the codes used for producing the Latin script. Just look up ’Latin’ at http://www.unicode.org/charts/ or look up http://unicode.org/charts/collation/ for the characters in more-or-less normal order or look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_script_in_Unicode or many other sites.

[...]

You are trying to make it seem hard to code ‘Æ’ and naturally failing when Arvegil145 seems to have no problems finding the vowels with diacritics. Nor do you. But you now think it smart to show that you could use Unicode but refuse to do so.
it

Not hard, but inconvenient. You yourself admit one has to "look it up," even if it's not "hard" to do it. It's not on the keyboard, and thus for me (and the majority of others) a PITA for casual posting. Your presuming to insult another's intelligence or knowledge on that basis is the sort of thing that gives "pedantry" a bad name.

While you're at it, do you plan to jump on the Tolkiens père et fils for writing Hrothgar rather than Hroðgar?

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Yes, it is. I have no reason why you are being not only hostile, but hostile over your incorrect parsing not my error.

I pointed out what you posted. I will do so again:

However, I am not aware of any text in which Aelfwine* appears that postdates the 1950s, probably the first half of the decade (that is, before the publication of the Lord of the Rings), …

See http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...9&postcount=30.

First, the “the publication of The Lord of the Rings" occurred from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955. Your statement “probably the first half of the decade (that is, before the publication of the Lord of the Rings)” doesn’t even make sense in respect to the rest of your sentence.

But if I interpret your statement to mean that Ælfwine does not appear in any text postdating the publication of The Lord of the Rings, then the statement is simply wrong.

Setting aside the reference in Laws and Customs, which I had overlooked, …

One example of where you were wrong in your original post.

… all of the A/P references after the writing of the Lord of the Rings are to be found in those writings dating from Tolkien's renewed work on the Elder days following the writing of the LR circa 1950-52* (which includes, contra your assertion, the material titled by CT "The Later Quenta Silmarillion I"), with the exception of Dangweth Pengolodh, which CT is "inclined" to place "earlier in the decade rather than later," and the aborted preface to the Narn, of uncertain date but seemingly related to the Grey Annals.

I am aware of no “assertion” by me that is incorrect.

In other words, there is simply no basis for your complaint; there are no known Aelfwines after the 1950s, and all of those (but for the exception you raised) can either be firmly dated to the period before 1954, or probably date from that period.

On page 47 of Morgoth’s Ring Christopher Tolkien states:

This work [the Annals of Aman] undoubtedly belongs with the large development and recasting of the Matter of the Elder Days that my father undertook when The Lord of the Rings was finished (see p. 3).

On page 110 “Quoth Ælfwine” occurs. Christopher Tolkien notes on page 121:

This passage, from ‘But indeed a darker tale . . .’ and including the footnote, was struck out at a later time than the changes given in notes 5–7 and perhaps in revision of the text before the making of the typescript, in which it does not appear. The whole addition by Ælfwine is enclosed within brackets as originally written.

The removal of “Quoth Ælfwine” occurred in a later typescript and is discussed by Christopher Tolkien on page 127 §127.

On page 130 occurs the footnote: “* Marginal notes against Arien and Tilion: ‘dægred Æ’ and ‘hyrned Æ’.” I assume that “Æ” stands for Ælfwine and so does Christopher Tolkien on page 136 §172. Who else could be meant?

For “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (I)” Christopher Tolkien comments on page 191 his doubts on whether for the last three chapters of the Quenta Silmarillion his father was drawing on the Annals of Aman for the Quenta Silmarillion, or vice versa, and comes to the conclusion that all that can be proved is that they “were closely contemporary.” That is, these last chapters the Quenta Silmarillion was also being written following the publication of The Lord of the Rings. In chapter 6 occurs a footnote by Ælfwine mentioning Byrde Míriel.

* In fact, there are no A/P refs in GA; those few found in QS are "quoth Aelfwines" incorporated in the 1951 LQ1 typescript.

In fact, the last three chapters published in “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (I)” were not part of the 1951 typescript, but a later continuation of it in Tolkien’s handwriting, probably written about the same tine as The Annals of Aman. See page 184. I guess you missed that. Are you hoping that those reading will not recall the other examples I gave of the presence of Ælfwine in the chapter with the page heading “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (II)”?

A single "quoth" note in the AAm manuscript was struck out before the typescript was made.

Christopher Tolkien imagines this passage was struck out because his father changed his mind about the validity of this version of the origin of Elves. See page 123 §127. Since a footnote is later attributed to Æ and Ælfwine occurs in later texts, I very much don’t believe that the removal was, at this time, because Tolkien intended to remove Ælfwine from his mythology. I don’t see that this matters, as he still obviously did at least for a time consider Ælfwine valid following The Lord of the Rings, and following this removal.

Ainulindale D is no later than 1951.

Very true, but that has no relevance that I see. I never mentioned Ainulindale D in this thread.

What I originally posted at http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...6&postcount=31 was the following:

You are aware that Dangweth Pengolodh is dated by Christopher Tolkien as “cannot be later than the end of 1959,” that is, possibly written after “the first half of the decade.” And in The War of The Jewels (HoME 11) Ælfwine appears prominently in “The Annals of Aman”, “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (I)”, and “The Later Quenta Silmarillion (II)”, only the first of which Christoopher Tolkien dates even to the period before The Lord of the Riings was even fully published.

I admit the my mention of a year’s difference in dating for Dangweth Pengolodh was not worth mentioning but I still stand behind it and the rest of my statement, other than that my use of the word “prominently” is questionable. And I should have written “beginning of the first” instead of simply “first”and spelled Christoopher as Christopher.

Not hard, but inconvenient. You yourself admit one has to "look it up," even if it's not "hard" to do it.

Yes. And one may find oneself looking for a keyboard key that one seldom uses. I don’t see any difference. I do see that modern computers do not limit me to just the keyboard characters, so I choose not to be so limited. I find the vast number of characters I can use a delight, not an inconvenience.

It's not on the keyboard,and thus for me (and the majority of others) a PITA for casual posting. Your presuming to insult another's intelligence or knowledge on that basis is the sort of thing that gives "pedantry" a bad name.

Can you prove your word ‘majority’? No don’t bother. It doesn’t matter to me and I suspect doesn’t matter to anyone here who chooses to use diacritics which the forum ediitor allows, or chooses not to. Might as well think that anyone will be swayed in their spelling if someone could prove that either colour or color was the preferred spelling of the majority.

See near the end of this post, http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...ostcount=1post, for an example where Mister Underhill assumes that listing one method of producing non-keyboard characters will be an aid to users. You might post your own diatribe that anyone who uses non-keyboard characters is being stupid. Trouble is, that would make you look stupid. Those who use non-keyboard characters don’t find using non-keyboard characters stupid or we wouldn’t be doing it.

Of course Mister Underhill’s example assumes that the user is using a Windows keyboard set for English, and his examples will not necessarily work for other languages, nor will they work for those using a Macintosh or Linux machine. I also find this Alt-key method over-complex for my taste.

I have in the past used several methods at different times. The user can switch to different virtual keyboards. The user may customize any keyboard to behave as they wish it to behave. The user may use a utility which replaces output values to two or more values with one new wished-for extra value. See http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities.html for a list of various utilities.

Currently I usually use a free program WinCompose. See http://www.freewarefiles.com/WinComp...ram_98325.html. To include Æ one types ComposeKey A E. To include á one types ComposeKey a '. The ComposeKey is by default assigned to the right-Alt key.

It really does seem to bother you that I use utilities to type non-keyboard characters. That is not enough to make me stop. It bothers me that you don’t see that I was quite right in the presence of Ælfwine in three chapters in Morgoth’s Rings, but the mentions are there in the text, despite your attempts to claim that they aren’t. I did apologize for the presumed insult to Arvegil145. I do so again. I apologize to Arvegil145 for blaming him for not using an uppercase Æ in his spelling of Ælfwine.

But, I will not apologize for accurate statements. False claims that the forms aren’t there or were written earlier won’t make the forms go away.

While you're at it, do you plan to jump on the Tolkiens père et fils for writing Hrothgar rather than Hroðgar?

Certainly not! Why would I? That would be absurd, unless I were quoting a passage in which they themselves or someone else were using the form Hroðgar I probably wouldn’t use that form. Similarly I would not normally use the spelling Hꞃōðᵹāꞃ with real insular letters. Christopher Tolkien uses the spelling Ælfwine throughout and so I do. It seems to me to be silly not to do the same when the computer system allows it and it is so easy. And in real Old English æ and ae have different sounds, which is, I assume, why Christopher Tolkien, and I presume, his father, followed this distinction. Old English [æ] is pronounced as in Modern English cat. To pronounce the Old English ae as a diphthong I guess you would start with the [a] in father and end with the [ɛ] in let. But I’m no expert in Old English.

When typing ‘Ælfwine’, I suppose, unless Tolkien was using a special Varityper machine, he would have typed ‘AElfwine’.