On 28 November 1962 Tolkien wrote to *Stanley Unwin that he had seen the reviews in The Listener and the Times Literary Supplement and ‘was agreeably surprised: I expected remarks far more snooty and patronizing. Also I was rather pleased, since it seemed that the reviewers had both started out not wanting to be amused, but had failed to maintain their Victorian dignity intact’ (Letters, p. 322). On 19 December 1962 he remarked to his son *Michael that sales of Tom Bombadil were so good that Allen & Unwin had made him an advance, and that, ‘even on a minute initial royalty, means more than is at all usual for anyone but [popular poet John] Betjeman to make on verse!’ (Letters, p. 322).
Ae Adar Nín. Partial translation by Tolkien into Sindarin (*Languages, Invented) of the Lord’s Prayer, edited with notes and analysis by Bill Welden, published in Vinyar Tengwar 44 (June 2002), pp. 21–30, 38.
Tolkien wrote Ae Adar Nín during the 1950s on the verso of a postcard containing one of his Quenya (*Languages, Invented) translations of the Lord’s Prayer (*‘Words of Joy’). The manuscript is reproduced on p. 23 of the Vinyar Tengwar article.
Ælfwine of England see Eriol and Ælfwine
Ainulindalë. The first component of *The Silmarillion (1977), pp. 15–22, and the final version of Tolkien’s tale of Creation, first told in The Music of the Ainur in *The Book of Lost Tales.
SYNOPSIS
Tolkien described The Music of the Ainur as
a cosmogonical myth … defining the relation of The One, the transcendental Creator, to the Valar, the ‘Powers’, the angelical First-created, and their part in ordering and carrying out the Primeval Design. It was also told how it came about that Eru, the One, made an addition to the Design: introducing the themes of the Eruhîn, the Children of God, The First-born (Elves) and the Successors (Men), whom the Valar were forbidden to try and dominate by fear or force. [letter to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July 1964, Letters, p. 345]
The tale is told to Eriol the mariner (*Eriol and Ælfwine) by Rúmil in the garden of the Cottage of Lost Play. Ilúvatar (Eru) describes to the Ainur (the First-created), whom he has sung into being, a design for the creation of a world and its history, and invites them to embellish it through their own music. They begin splendidly, with ‘the harpists, and the lutanists, the flautists and the pipers, the organs and the countless choirs of the Ainur’ fashioning ‘the theme of Ilúvatar into great music; and a sound arose of mighty melodies changing and interchanging, mingling and dissolving amid the thunder of harmonies greater than the roar of the great seas …’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 53). But one of the greatest of the Ainur, Melko, introduces ideas which destroy the harmony of the Music.
Twice Ilúvatar begins new themes, and twice Melko brings about discord. Ilúvatar stops the Music and informs the Ainur that he has given shape and reality to all that they played and sang, and that even the discords introduced by Melko will in the end add to Ilúvatar’s glory. Ilúvatar alone is responsible for the theme which introduces Elves and Men, ‘nor, for they comprehended not fully when Ilúvatar first propounded their being, did any of the Ainur dare in their music to add anything to their fashion; and these races are for that reason named rightly the Children of Ilúvatar’ (p. 57).
Ilúvatar then shows the Ainur the world they have helped to create, set in the void, and tells them: ‘even now the world unfolds and its history begins as did my theme in your hands. Each one herein will find contained within the design that is mine the adornments and embellishments that he himself devised. … One thing only have I added, the fire that giveth Life and Reality’ (p. 55).
As the Ainur watch the world they have a vision of the beginning of its history, and many become so enthralled that they seek and are granted permission to dwell in the world, to guard its beauties and to instruct the Children. Among those who choose to do so, whom the Elves call the Valar, are Manwë and his spouse Varda, Aulë and Ulmo, and even Melko, who pretends that he wants to heal the ills he introduced into the Music, but secretly plans to seize power from the other Ainur and to make war on the Children. From their participation in the Music and their vision of the beginning of the world’s history, the Valar know much, but not all of the future. In telling this story to Eriol, Rúmil ends by reporting words concerning Elves and Men spoken by Ilúvatar after the departure of the Valar (see *‘Of the Beginning of Days’, in which this material appears in The Silmarillion).
HISTORY
The Creation is not mentioned in the *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926); it is summarized in one paragraph in the *Quenta Noldorinwa (c. 1930), and in one sentence in both the ‘earliest’ and ‘later’ *Annals of Valinor (early and mid-1930s respectively). But at some time in the mid-1930s, with The Music of the Ainur before him, Tolkien made a draft, followed by a fair copy, of a new version as a separate work with the title Ainulindalë (Quenya ‘music of the Ainur’). For this he made extensive changes in word and phrase, and some additions, such as that the Valar took the shape and form of the Children, but the story remained close to that in The Music of the Ainur. This new version was published in *The Lost Road and Other Writings, presented as if a transcription or translation of a document written by Rúmil of Tûn.
In 1946 Tolkien made a draft (now lost) and then a typescript of a radical new version of the Ainulindalë. In this Ilúvatar shows the Ainur only a vision of what their music had created, but aware of their desire for what they see he speaks, and by his words gives being to their vision. In earlier versions the Valar enter the world together and find it fully formed by the Music; now Melkor arrives before the others, who find the world unshaped and labour in it for ages to accomplish their vision. An account of the first conflicts in Arda between Melkor and the other Valar, which had appeared in a later part of The Book of Lost Tales, was now placed in the Ainulindalë (see ‘Of the Beginning of Days’). Another significant change was to the cosmology: unlike the earlier version, the Sun exists from the beginning and the Moon is made by Morgoth from a piece of the Earth, from which he observes what happens below until he is cast out by the Valar. *Christopher Tolkien has called this a ‘de-mythologizing’ of the Sun and Moon ‘by removal from all association with the Two Trees’ (again see *‘Of the Beginning of Days’), and comments that ‘it seems strange indeed that my father was prepared to conceive of the Moon – the Moon, that cherishes the memory of the Elves … – as a dead and blasted survival of the hatred of Melkor, however beautiful its light’ (*Morgoth’s Ring, p. 43). Also the world (now called Arda) inhabited by the Valar and the Children was now only part of a much greater Creation.
By this time Tolkien had begun to doubt if his invented cosmology should be contrary to scientific reality. In summer 1948 he lent to *Katharine Farrer the mid-1930s manuscript of the Ainulindalë, on which he wrote ‘Flat World Version’, and the 1946 typescript, on which he wrote ‘Round World Version’. In a letter written to Tolkien probably in October 1948, Mrs Farrer said that she preferred the ‘Flat World’ version, and between then and 1951 Tolkien extensively revised that manuscript and wrote much new material on blank versos. Although this was again a ‘Flat World’, without the Sun in existence from the beginning, he incorporated with revision much of the 1946 text, including the Ainur being shown a vision and not reality and Arda only a small part of Creation, and he removed Melkor’s earlier arrival in Arda and his making of the Moon. An added ‘title-page’ changed the work’s history: it was now ‘written by Rúmil of Túna and was told to Ælfwine in Eressëa (as he records) by Pengoloð the Sage’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 8).
From this now complex document Tolkien wrote a beautiful manuscript with illuminated capitals. It begins by following its predecessor closely, but diverges more in its later parts; and Tolkien introduces the word Ea to mean the whole of Creation, the universe which Ilúvatar brings into reality with the words ‘Ea! Let these things Be!’ (Morgoth’s Ring, p. 31). The 1946 and later texts were published, in whole or in part, in Morgoth’s Ring (1993).
The