‘Of the Beginning of Days’. The first chapter of the *‘Quenta Silmarillion’, published in *The Silmarillion (1977), pp. 35–42.
SYNOPSIS
The chapter is divided roughly into three sections, concerning early events in Arda; comments on the greatest of the Valar and their relationship with the Elves; and the words concerning Elves and Men spoken by Ilúvatar after the departure of the Ainur who chose to enter Arda. In the first section, the attempts of the Valar to shape Arda are hindered by Melkor until Tulkas comes to their aid, and Melkor is driven out of Arda for a time. To give light to Middle-earth Aulë builds two great lamps on pillars, one in the north and one in the south, and in their light many growing things flourish (including trees, but not flowers), and beasts (but not birds) come forth. The Valar dwell on the Isle of Almaren in the midmost part where the light of the Lamps meets. There they rest from their labours and hold a great feast at which Tulkas and Nessa are wed. While they are thus occupied, Melkor looks down in envy and hatred on the Spring of Arda. He returns in secret with spirits he has perverted to his service, and begins to excavate a vast fortress, Utumno, under mountains in the north. The Valar are unaware of his return until they see the blight of his hatred on growing things, and beasts turning into monsters. They seek for his hiding place, but before they find it Melkor throws down the pillars and in their fall not only are the lamps broken, but the lands and seas rise in upheaval. Melkor escapes to Utumno, and the Valar need all their strength to restrain the tumult and save what they can of their labours. Once this is achieved, they fear to rend the Earth in pursuit of Melkor, since they do not know where the Children of Ilúvatar are sleeping.
The Isle of Almaren having been destroyed, the Valar establish new dwellings in Aman in the West across the Sea, in Valinor behind the protection of the mountains of the Pelóri which they raise on the eastern shore. Valinor becomes even more beautiful than Middle-earth in the Spring of Arda. It is blessed and holy because the Valar live there. Nothing fades or withers, and living things suffer no corruption or sickness. When Valinor is full-wrought, the Valar gather around a green mound which Nienna waters with her tears, and Yavanna sings into being the Two Trees, Telperion the elder, from whose flowers fall ‘a dew of silver light’, and Laurelin from whose clustered flowers spills ‘a golden rain’. Each in turn ‘waxed to full and waned again to naught; and ‘twice every day there came a gentle hour of softer light when both trees were faint and their gold and silver beams were mingled’ (p. 38). The Valar reckon time by this waxing and waning.
In the second section, the Valar, with the exception of Yavanna and Oromë, give little thought to Middle-earth, which lies in darkness. Then follow descriptions of Aulë, his spheres of devising and making, and his later friendship with the Noldor; of Manwë, his powers, and his later love of the Vanyar; and of Ulmo and his music which runs through all the waters of the world.
In the third section, after the Ainur depart to Arda, Ilúvatar declares that the Elves ‘shall be the fairest of all earthly creatures, and they shall have and shall conceive and bring forth more beauty than all my Children; and they shall have the greater bliss in this world’. But to Men he gives a different gift: ‘that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else; and of their operation everything should be, in form and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest’ (pp. 41–2). He knows that Men will often stray, but prophesies that nevertheless all they do will redound to his glory. Elves have a greater love of the Earth and are fated not to die unless slain or wasted in grief, but to live on the Earth until the end of days. If slain, they may in time return. Men are short-lived: they die and ‘depart soon whither the Elves know not’ (p. 42). The Valar tell the Elves that Men will join in a second Music of the Ainur, but they do not know the fate of the Elves after the World’s End.
HISTORY
Much of the content of the first section of this chapter was already present in the earliest version in The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor in *The Book of Lost Tales (c. 1919): there Melko reaches Arda before the other Ainur, causing tumult in the air and sea with his speed, and soon begins to delve for himself a stronghold, Utumna, in the North. There is no mention of where the Ainur dwell in Middle-earth. Melko is brought before the other Ainur but ingratiates himself with most of them, and at the request of Aulë builds two tall pillars on which Aulë places lamps to illuminate the earth, one with silver light, the other with gold. But Melko makes the pillars of ice, so that they melt from the heat of the lamps, which fall to the ground, causing floods and fires. The Ainur take refuge from the floods on an island which Ossë and water spirits draw across the Sea to a land in the west. There they create a secure dwelling place protected by mountains for themselves in the far West, which they call Valinor.
This first version of the creation of the Two Trees was much more elaborate than later texts, and less mythical, involving ‘sympathetic magic’. In the pit where Silpion (Telperion) would grow
they cast three huge pearls … and a small star … and they covered it with foams and white mists and thereafter sprinkled lightly earth upon it, but Lórien who loved twilights and flittering shadows, and sweet scents borne upon the evening winds, who is the lord of dreams and imaginings, sat nigh and whispered swift noiseless words, while his sprites played half-heard tunes beside him like music stealing out into the dark from distant dwellings. [*The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 71]
Laurelin, not Telperion, is there the elder tree. The chapter also includes lengthy description of the dwellings and mansions that Aulë built for each of the Valar, not carried forward into later texts.
The texts of the 1920s and 1930s are much shorter, and the absence of any element of the story does not necessarily mean that it had been rejected, but rather merely omitted. In none of these versions is Melko, now usually referred to as Morgoth, said to have arrived before the other Valar. The *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926), the *Quenta Noldorinwa (c. 1930), and the first version of the *Quenta Silmarillion (begun mid-1930s) do not mention Morgoth as having any part in the making of the pillars, stating only that he overthrew the lamps, which implies physical action. Yet Tolkien evidently had not abandoned the old story, for in both the ‘earliest’ and ‘later’ versions of the *Annals of Valinor (early and mid-1930s) Morgoth is said to have destroyed the lamps by deceit, and in the *Ambarkanta it is said that ‘the pillars were made with deceit, being wrought of ice’ (*The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 238). The Sketch of the Mythology says that when the lamps fall the (unnamed) isle where the Valar live is flooded, but nothing is said of its position. In the Quenta Noldorinwa the isle is said to be in the seas.
In the Sketch of the Mythology Yavanna ‘plants the Two Trees’ and ‘they grow under her songs’ (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 12). Telperion is described first, suggesting that it may already have become the elder of the Trees; this is specifically stated in the Quenta Noldorinwa. A replacement page in the Quenta Noldorinwa brings the description of the creation of the Trees closer to its final form, with Yavanna hallowing the mould with her song and Nienna watering the ground with her tears.
The version of the *Ainulindalë written in 1946 contained a new account, not only of the Creation, but also of early events in Arda. Since the Sun exists from the beginning and provides light to the earth (round, not flat), the episode of the making of the pillars and their overthrow is omitted. Instead there is open strife