Sunday Scriberies by Elleth

Meril-i-Turinqi

Written for the question: Could you please tell me about Meril-i-Turinqi? Thank you so much!

Meril-i-Turinqi is a character exclusive to the framework-story that justifies the narration of the Lost Tales, the earliest conception of what would later become the published Silmarillion. As such she occurs only in the two parts of the Book of Lost Tales, even though there are conceptual echoes and parallels that occur in other notable figures of Tolkien’s legendarium.

As per the Book of the Lost Tales, she is the Queen of Tol Eressëa. Her name, taking into account some linguistic difficulties and shifting concepts, probably translates to Rose-the-Queen in a mix of Sindarin and Qenya (the forerunner of Tolkien’s later and more fully developed Quenya), and as such can be assumed to be both royal title and personal name, similar to the naming customs of the Númenoreans much later (e.g. Tar-Míriel). In the text she is often merely referred to as Meril.

Her royal station derives, for the most part, from her descent from In(g)wë, the leader of the Vanyar and the High King of all Elves, and this particular fact may also explain the curious one-time address of her as the Queen of the Eldalië, a term encompassing the entirety of the Elves that departed from Cuiviénen. The degree of her descent from In(g)wë shifted even in those early works; in the first drafts of the story she refers to Ingwë as her grandfather, in the published text she states that “In[g]wë was my grandsire’s sire”, but both versions allow her rulership over Tol Eressëa in spite of others’ majority in terms of age. In addition to her Vanyarin heritage, she also claims descent from the Shoreland Dancers, the later Teleri, but this is not elaborated upon.

Her precise date of birth is uncertain, but the fact that she places special emphasis on the tale of the Coming of the Eldar to Valinor and admits that “I have lengthened the tale too much for love of those days” seems to imply that she was in fact alive to see what would in the later Silmarillion become Valinor before the Darkening. It is likewise probable from hints in the texts that she came to live in Kortirion in the center of Tol Eressëa due to Ingil (later Ingwion) the son of In(g)wë summoning the more exceptional of the Eldar to help prepare the island for the returning Exiles, after he himself had returned from the textual forerunner of the War of Wrath. 

Despite the quaint, fairytale notions of her dwelling in an overgrown house in a circle of elm-trees and flowers at the foot of Ingil’s tower, her station is not merely that of a figurehead or ornament. She seems to wield executive power, devising and ordering, for example, the building of the Cottage of Lost Play. She is widely acknowledged as very wise, and given the stories that she narrates (The Chaining of Melko and the Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr, is strongly linked to ideas of peace and order. She is also stated to preserve knowledge of the Tongues of the Gods in her house, and thus can be assumed to speak, or at least have linguistic knowledge of, Valarin.

Most important for the stories that she features in, however, is her function as the keeper of limpë, the drink of the Elves that in this early version of the story both preserves their strength and grants them talents of song and poetry. She is the one the mortal traveller Eriol asks for a draught of it in order to attain immortality and live among the Elves of Tol Eressëa forever. He finds his request met with conditions to learn more about the Eldar first in order to fully understand their history and mindset, and the fact that his choice, once made, cannot be revoked and will have consequences:

”[…] hearken, O Eriol, think not to escape unquenchable longing with a draught of limpë — for only wouldst thou thus exchange desires, replacing thy old ones with new and deeper and more keen. Desire unsatisfied dwells in the hearts of both those races that are called the Children of Ilúvatar, but with the Eldar most, for their hearts are filled with a vision of beauty in great glory.” 

While the later parts of Eriol’s story for the most part are only sketched out rather than written in-detail, it must be assumed that he has met Meril’s conditions, as he is in fact allowed to drink limpë and even go so far as to marry an elven woman. But the story is abandoned soon after and Meril does not reoccur as herself (the name Meril does once, as the wife of Finrod and mother of Gil-galad, but this likely was a case of recycling rather than a link; Meril-i-Turinqi is never so much as implied as having gone into exile or even having a spouse, in fact dwelling alone with her handmaidens), though as noted above, there are similar developments in the later texts. Tuor as a mortal Man enters into Valinor with Idril and is made immortal, though how this occurs is not described in detail. It is doubtful that his change, given the ideas of the later Silmarillion, can be brought about simply by means of a drink rather than direct interference of Eru, though the quality of a foodstuff inducing longing in humans to become immortal and remain among the Elves is not wholly abandoned, especially regarding lembas. Rather than the somewhat un-serious treatment it received in the movies, Tolkien conceived of it as a near-religious food of great potency:

For it is said that, if mortals eat often of this bread, they become weary of their mortality, desiring to abide among the Elves, and longing for the fields of Aman, to which they cannot come.

Notably, lembas also was said to be in the keeping of the highest-ranking of elven women of their respective people, even so far that their title became that of Bread-Giver or Massánie/Besain in Quenya and Sindarin. The main occurence of lembas in the Silmarillion lies with Melian, who shows Túrin especial favour in granting him use of it, and in the Lord of the Rings it is Galadriel, herself a student under Melian’s tutelage, who grants it to the Fellowship when they set out from Lothlórien. Galadriel, as a relative of both Ingwë of the Vanyar and Olwë of the Teleri, who herself comes to live on Tol Eressëa after the end of her exile in Middle-earth, is likely the conceptual descendant of Meri-i-Turinqi. In fact, John Garth, author of Tolkien And The Great War: The Threshold Of Middle-earth, comes to a similar conclusion concerning their parallels:

Both elf-queens are repositories of ancient knowledge, but each also is the source of a supernaturally enduring vitality: Meril through the marvellous drink limpë that she dispenses, Galadriel through the power to arrest decay in her realm. It is symptomatic of both the fluidity and the stability of Tolkien’s mythopoetic conceptions that, while names evolved and the interrelationships of individuals and peoples changed almost beyond recognition through years of writing, rewriting, and recasting, these embodiments of quintessential elvishness - […] the queen of trees – recurred.

Chapter End Notes

Sources: The History of Middle Earth vol. 1 (Book of Lost Tales I, Ch. 4,5)

The History of Middle Earth vol. 2 (Book of Lost Tales II, Ch. 6)

The History of Middle Earth vol. 12 (Of Lembas)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

John Garth: Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth