Miscellaneous stuff in the Appendices

[Arvegil145]

Should we create a sort of 'miscellaneous' part of the Appendices? Dealing with lore that otherwise has no place otherwise.

Several things come to mind:


1) The Description of Tol Eressea: while Aelfwine/Eriol (and more so the Cottage of Lost Play, limpe, human children visiting Eressea, Faring Forth, etc.) were abandoned, that doesn't really mean that many details of Eressea, nowhere else to be found, were abandoned too:

Let's start with settlements:

a) Tathrobel: references to Tathrobel still appear in the 1950's (Morgoth's Ring, 'Second Phase', pp. 199-200), though the name itself is not mentioned - but the preamble mentioned there is almost completely unchanged from the one in The Lost Road, p. 203:

These histories were written by Pengolod the Wise of Gondolin, both in that city before its fall, and afterwards at Tathrobel in the Lonely Isle, Toleressëa, after the return unto the West.

b) Cortirion: references to Cortirion still appear in the 1937 (The Lost Road), p. 334:

Of whom was Eriol one, that men named Ælfwine, and he alone returned and brought tidings of Cortirion to the Hither Lands.

HOWEVER - in his cursory emendations to the Silmarillion in 1958, which CT doesn't give in full, there's this line from The War of the Jewels, p. 246:

The corrections to the manuscript, carried out as it appears in two stages (before and after the making of the typescript), are mostly fairly minor, and a few so slight as not to be worth recording. I refer to the numbered paragraphs in V.324-34.

What CT is referencing here is the 1937 'Silmarillion', which I gave above - noteworthy in all of this is that there is no mention of 'Cortirion' being excised among the paragraphs mentioned in the quote.


And before someone inevitably points out that Avallone was the chief and easternmost city in Aman (which is true) - Cortirion was demoted to a mere 'town' in some of the writings in The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 41:

...and remembered things he had heard in Cortirion, the town of the Elves in Tol Eressëa.

Besides, I find it extremely unlikely that there weren't other settlements in Eressea other than Avallone.


2) Poems dealing with Eressea (which should be edited of course to reflect the later mythos):

a) Kortirion among the Trees (which was updated in the '60s I believe)

b) An Evening in Tavrobel

c) Over Old Hills and Far Away

d) Tinfang Warble


3) Which leaves all the other Eressean regions and settlements, and their decriptions, applicable to our project. For example:

a) the settlement of Estirin
b) the settlement of Celbaros
c) the settlement at Fladweth Amrod
d) town of Taruithorn
e) region of Alalminore
f) Pine of Tavrobel
g) island of Tol Withernon
h) bridge of Tram Nybol
i) the House of the Hundred Chimneys
j) heath of the Sky-roof
k) the rivers Afros, Gruir, Gliding Water and the Brook of Glass
l) Falasse Numea, the western shore of Eressea
m) meads of Dorwinion

All of these have beautiful descriptions that it would be a pity to omit.

Heck, maybe even Meril as the Lady of Tol Eressea could be kept, in her korin of elms (other than her interactions with Eriol, of course) - perhaps even Littleheart, son of Voronwe.




Tl;dr we have so little information about Eressea, and none of which I mentioned above contradicts the later legendarium (except perhaps some of the names) - so I vote to keep it.

Likewise, my intention isn't to copy/paste everything from the mostly early descriptions of Eressea - it's simply to 'update' it to the best of our abilities: in the same manner as, say, 'The Fall of Gondolin' or 'The Nauglafring', and make it in a sense similar to The Description of Numenor.

P.S. There is also additional information from Parma Eldalamberon issues (mostly dealing with demographics of Eressea, and the geographical distribution of the various factions of the Elves; as well as their tongues), but my hands are already hurting from typing. Besides, I've got many such weird texts in mind.