Middle-earth is Our Earth by Independence1776

This is a collection of quotes from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and the History of Middle-Earth series dealing with the fact that Tolkien explicitly set Middle-earth in our world from the very beginning of his Legendarium, not in a constructed or imaginary world as is common in many fantasy novels.

Due to the amount of material, this is not an exhaustive compilation. Furthermore, if a book doesn’t appear, it simply means that in my skimming I didn’t see a reference, not that none exist (though obviously that can also be true).

THE LETTERS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN

~ Letter 165: “’Middle-earth’, by the way, is not a name of a never-never land without relation to the world we live in (like the Mercury of Eddison). It is just a use of Middle English middel-erde (or erthe), altered from the Old English Middangeard: the name for inhabited lands of Men ‘between the seas’. And though I have not attempted to relate the shape of the mountains and land-masses to what geologists may say or surmise about the nearer past, imaginatively this ‘history’ is supposed to take place in a period of the actual Old World of this planet.”

~ Letter 183: “I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. The name is the modern form (appearing in the 13th century and still in use) of midden-erd > middle-erd, an ancient name for the oikoumene, the abiding place of Men, the objectively real world, in use specifically oppose to imaginary worlds (as Fairyland) or unseen worlds (as Heaven or Hell). The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, if a little glorified by the enchantment of distance in time.”

~ Letter 183: “Mine is not an ‘imaginary’ world, but an imaginary historical moment on ‘Middle-earth’-- which is our habitation.”

~ Letter 184: “I can only say, for your comfort I hope, that the ‘Sam Gamgee’ of my story is a most heroic character, now widely beloved by many readers, even though his origins are rustic. So that perhaps you will not be displeased by the coincidence of the name of this imaginary character (of supposedly many centuries ago) being the same name as yours.”

~ Letter 211: “All I can say is that, if it were ‘history’, it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or ‘cultures’) into such evidence as we possess, archeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire, for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region (I p. 12 [compiler’s note: the second quote in the LotR section below]). I could have fitted things in with greater verisimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; and I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap* in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for ‘literary credibility’, even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of ‘pre-history’.

“*I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years; that is we are at the end of the Fifth Age, if Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.

“I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in ‘space’. However curious, they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood-kin. Middle-earth is (by the way & if such a note is necessary) not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration (New English Dictionary ‘a perversion’) of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumene: middle because though of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between the ice of the North and the fire of the South. O. English middan-geard, mediæval E. midden-erd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!”

~ Letter 257: When C.S. Lewis and I tossed up, and he was to write on space-travel and I on time-travel, I began an abortive book of time travel of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Númenor, the Land in the West. The thread was to be the occurrence time and again in human families (like Durin among the Dwarves) of a father and son called by names that could be interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. These no longer understood are found in the end to refer to the Atlantid-Númenórean situation and mean ‘one loyal to the Valar, content with the bliss and prosperity within the limits prescribed’ and ‘one loyal to the friendship with the High-elves’. It started with a father-son affinity between Edwin and Elwin of the present, and was supposed to go back into legendary time by way of an Eädwine and Ælfwine of circa A.D. 918, and Audoin and Alboin of Lombardic legend, and so the traditions of the North Sea concerning the coming of the corn and cultural heroes, ancestors of kingly lines, in boats (and their departure in funeral ships). One such Sheaf, or Shield Sheafing, can actually be made out as one of the remote ancestors of our present Queen. In my tale we were to come at last to Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Númenor, when it fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil ‘Elf-friend’ was the founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor.”

~ Letter 294: “[In response to the following comment in a letter Tolkien received] ‘Middle-earth… corresponds to Nordic Europe’

“Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories. Geographically Northern is usually better. But examination will show that even this is inapplicable (geographically or spiritually) to ‘Middle-earth’. This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlines of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely ‘Nordic’ area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of the Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.”

THE LORD OF THE RINGS

The Fellowship of the Ring

~ Prologue, 1 Concerning Hobbits: “Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt. [...] Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of ‘the Big Folk’, as they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. [...] They seldom now reach three feet; but they have dwindled, they say, and in ancient days they were taller.”

~ Prologue, I Concerning Hobbits: “Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea.”

~ Prologue, 2 Concerning Pipe-weed: “There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of an herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or ‘art’ as the Hobbits preferred to call it. All that could be discovered in antiquity was put together by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later Master of Buckland), and since he and the tobacco of the Southfarthing play a part in the history that follows [...].”

~ Strider: “The Sickle* was swinging bright above the shoulder of Bree-hill.

“*The Hobbits’ name for the Plough or Great Bear.”

The Return of the King

~ The Battle of the Pelennor Fields: “Shapeless they [the mantle and hauberk of the Witch-king] lay now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up into the shuddering air, and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world.”

~ Appendix D, The Calendars: “The Calendar in the Shire differed in several features from ours. The year no doubt was of the same length (365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds), for long ago as those times are now reckoned in years and lives of men, they were not very remote according to the memory of the Earth.”

~ Appendix D, The Calendars: “It seems clear that the Eldar in Middle-earth, who had, as Samwise remarked, more time at their disposal, reckoned in long periods, and the Quenya word yén, often translated ‘year’, really means 144 of our years.”

~ Appendix D, The Calendars: “How any remaining inaccuracy [in the Eldarin calendar] was dealt with is uncertain. If the year was then of the same length as now, the yén would have been more than a day too long. That there was an inaccuracy is shown by a note in the Calendars of the Red Book to the effect that in the ‘Reckoning of Rivendell’ the last year of every third yén was shortened by three days: the doubling of the three enderi due in that year was omitted; ‘but that has not happened in our time’. Of the adjustment of any remaining inaccuracy there is no record.”

~ Appendix D, The Calendars: “In Númenor calculations started with S.A. 1. The Deficit caused by deducting 1 day from the last year of a century was not adjusted until the year of a millennium, leaving a millennial deficit of 4 hours, 46 minutes, 40 seconds.”

~ Appendix D, The Calendars: “In the above notes, as in the narrative, I [Tolkien as ‘translator’] have used our modern names for both months and weekdays, though of course neither the Eldar nor the Dúnedain nor the Hobbits actually did so. Translation of the Westron names seemed to be essential to avoid confusion, while the seasonal implications of our names are more or less the same, at any rate in the Shire. It appears, however, that Mid-Year’s Day was intended to correspond as nearly as possible to the summer solstice. In that case the Shire dates were actually in advance of ours by some ten days, and our New Year’s Day corresponded more or less to the Shire January 9.”

~ Appendix D, The Calendars: “The months and days, therefore, throughout The Lord of the Rings refer to the Shire Calendar. The only points in which the differences between this and our calendar are important to the story at the crucial period, the end of 3018 and the beginning of 3019 (S.R. 1418, 1419), are these: October 1418 has only 30 days, January 1 is the second day of 1419, and February has 30 days; so that March 25, the date of the downfall of the Barad-dûr, would correspond to our March 27, if our years began at the same seasonal point.”

~ Appendix E, Writing and Spelling, 1 A Pronunciation of Words and Names: “In transcribing the ancient scripts I have tried to represent the original sounds (so far as they can be determined) with fair accuracy, and at the same time to produce words and names that do not look uncouth in modern letters.”

~ Appendix E, Writing and Spelling, 1 A Pronunciation of Words and Names, Consonants, H: “The Quenya combination ht has the sound of cht, as in German echt, acht: e.g. in the name Telumehtar ‘Orion’.”

~ Appendix F, I The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age: “The language represented in this history by English was the Westron or ‘Common Speech’ of the West-lands of Middle-earth in the Third Age.”

~ Appendix F, II On Translation: “In presenting the matter of the Red Book, as a history for people of today to read, the whole of the linguistic setting has been translated as far as possible into terms of our own times. Only the languages alien to the Common Speech have been left in their original form; but these appear mainly in the names of persons and places.”

~ Appendix F, II On Translation: “It may be observed that in this book as in The Hobbit the form dwarves is used, although the dictionaries tell us the plural of dwarf is dwarfs. It should be dwarrows (or dwerrows), if singular and plural had each gone its own way down the years, as have man and men, or goose and geese. But we no longer speak of a dwarf as often as we do of a man, or even a goose, and memories have not been fresh enough among Men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now abandoned to folk-tales, where at least a shadow of the truth is preserved, or at last to nonsense-stories in which they have become mere figures of fun.”

~ Appendix F, II On Translation: “This old word [Elf, Elves] was indeed the only one available, and was once fitted to apply to such memories of this people as Men preserved, or to the making of Men’s minds not wholly dissimilar. But it has been diminished [...]. Their dominion passed long ago, and they dwell now beyond the circles of the world, and do not return.”

THE HOBBIT

~ An Unexpected Party: “I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off.”

~ An Unexpected Party: “By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his front door smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed) – Gandalf came by.”

THE SILMARILLION

~ Quenta Silmarillion, Of Beren and Lúthien: “Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien. Of their lives was made the Lay of Leithian, Release from Bondage, which is the longest save one of the songs concerning the world of old; but here is the tale told in fewer words and without song.”

While this section is organized primarily by book, the first subsection deals with Ælfwine, who was in the Legendarium from the beginning and is thus in all of the Silmarillion-focused HoME books.

ÆLFWINE

Ælfwine/Eriol is the original in-universe compiler of the Silmarillion material (started in 1916-1917), though his role was eventually taken by Bilbo in 1966 (The Book of Lost Tales 1, Foreword).

Much of what can be read about him in The Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2 deals with him sailing and becoming involved in with the Elves. I cannot quote all of the material, so I have picked some of the clearest.

~ Book of Lost Tales 1, The Cottage of Lost Play, Commentary on ‘The Cottage of Lost Play’: the first few pages of the commentary is Christopher Tolkien explaining Eriol’s origins and the original conception of Tol Eressëa as England. Two quotes from it shall suffice:

• In what must be, at any rate, among the very earliest of these outlines, found in this little pocket-book, and headed ‘Story of Eriol’s Life’, the mariner who came to Tol Eressëa is brought into relation with the tradition of the invasion of Britain by Hengest and Horsa in the fifth century A.D. […] From these jottings we learn that Eriol’s original name was Ottor […] Ottor Wæfre settled on the island of Heligoland in the North Sea […].”
• Later his name changed to Ælfwine (‘Elf-friend’), the mariner became an Englishman of the ‘Anglo-Saxon period’ of English history, who sailed west over sea to Tol Eressëa – he sailed from England out into the Atlantic Ocean; […]. But in the earliest conception he [Ælfwine] was not an Englishman of England: England in the sense of the land of the English did not yet exist; for the cardinal fact (made quite explicit in extant notes) of this conception is that the Elvish isle to which Eriol came was England – that is to say, Tol Eressëa would become England, the land of the English, at the end of the story.”

~ The Book of Lost Tales 2, The History of Eriol or Ælfwine and the End of the Tales, (5): “Eriol drinks limpë. Gilfanon tells him of things to be; that in his mind (although the fairies hope not) he believes that Tol Eressëa will become a dwelling of Men. […] Rising of the Lost Elves against the Orcs and Nautar. The time is not ready for the Faring Forth, but the fairies judge it to be necessary. They obtain through Ulmo the help of Uin, and Tol Eressëa is uprooted and dragged near to the Great Lands, nigh to the promontory of Rôs. A magic bridge is cast across the intervening sound. Ossë is wroth at the breaking of the roots of the isle he set so long ago – and many of his rare sea-treasures grow about it – that he tries to wrench it back; and the western half breaks off, and is now the Isle of Íverin.”

~ The Book of Lost Tales 2, The History of Eriol or Ælfwine and the End of the Tales, (13): “There follow in notebook C some jottings that make precise identifications of places in Tol Eressëa with places in England. [Compiler’s summary of the linguistic work follows:] Warwick, Oxford, and Great Haywood; the latter where JRRT and Edith lived at the time.”

~ The Book of Lost Tales 2, The History of Eriol or Ælfwine and the End of the Tales, (15): “Ælfwine of England dwelt in the South-west; he was of the kin of Ing, King of Luthany. His mother and father were slain by the sea-pirates and he was made captive. He had always loved the fairies: his father had told him many things (of the tradition of Ing). He escapes. He beats about the northern and western waters. He meets the Ancient Mariner – and seeks for Tol Eressëa (seo umwemmede íeg), whither most of the unfaded Elves have retired from the noise, war, and clamour of Men. The Elves greet him, and the more so when they learn of him who he is. They call him Lúthien the man of Luthany. He finds his own tongue, the ancient English tongue, is spoken in the isle.”

~ The Book of Lost Tales 2, The History of Eriol or Ælfwine and the End of the Tales, Ælfwine of England: “There was a land called England, and it was an island of the West, and before it was broken in the warfare of the Gods it was westernmost of all the Northern lands, and looked upon the Great Sea that Men of old called Garsecg; but that part that was broken was called Ireland and many names besides, and its dwellers come not into these tales. […] Now it is the dull hearts of later days rather than the red deeds of cruel hands that set the mind of the little folk [Elves] to fare away; and ever and anon a little ship weighs anchor from Belerion [no relation to Beleriand] at eve and its sweet sad song is lost forever on the waves. Yet even in the days of Ælfwine there was many a laden ship under elfin sails that left these shores for ever, and many a comrade he had, seen or half-seen, upon his westward road.”

~ The Lost Road, The Lost Road, (iii) The Unwritten Chapters: “Ælfwine and Eadwine live in the time of Edward the Elder, in North Somerset. Ælfwine ruined by the incursions of Danes. Picture opens with the attack (c.915) on Portloca (Porlock) and Wæced. Ælfwine is awaiting Eadwine’s return at night. […] In the end they go off with ten neighbors. Pursued by Vikings off Lundy. Wind takes them out to sea, and persists. Eadwine falls sick and says odd things. Ælfwine dreams too. Mountainous seas.

“The Straight Road ...... water (island of Azores?) ...... off. Ælfwine (?restores ?restrains) Eadwine. Thinks it is a vision of delirium. The vision of Eressëa and the sound of voices. Resigns himself to die but prays for Eadwine. Sensation of falling. They come down in (?real) sea and west wind blows. Land in Ireland (implication is they settle there, and this leads to Finntan).”

~ The Lost Road, Part Two: Valinor and Middle-earth before ‘The Lord of the Rings’, VI Quenta Silmarillion, The Title Page of the QS Manuscript: “The Quenta Silmarillion// Herein is Qenta Noldorinqa or Pennas inGeleidh or History of the Gnomes// This is a history in brief drawn from many older tales; for all the matters that it contains were of old, and are still among the Eldar of the West, recounted more fully in other histories and songs. But many of these were not recalled by Eriol, or men have again lost them since his day. This Account was composed first by Pengolod of Gondolin, and Ælfwine turned it into our speech as it was in his time, adding nothing, he said, save explanations of some few names.”

~ The Lost Road, Part Two: Valinor and Middle-earth before ‘The Lord of the Rings’, VI Quenta Silmarillion, The Conclusion of the ‘Quenta Silmarillion’, §33: “Here endth The Silmarillion: which is drawn out in brief from those songs and histories which are yet sung and told by the fading Elves, and (more clearly and full) by the vanished Elves that dwell now upon the Lonely Isle, Tol Eressëa, whither few mariners of Men have ever come, save once or twice when some man of Eärendel's race hath passed beyond the lands of mortal sight and seen the glimmer of the lamps upon the quays of Avallon, and smelt afar the undying flowers in the meads of Dorwinion. Of whom Eriol was one, that men name Ælfwine, and he alone returned and brought tidings of Cortirion to the Hither Lands.”

~ The War of the Jewels, Part Three, The Wanderings of Húrin and Other Writings Not Forming Part of the ‘Quenta Silmarillion’, II Ælfwine and Dírhaval, A: “Though this [style of] verse was not wholly unlike the verse known to Ælfwine, he translated the lay [of Túrin] into prose (including in it, or adding in the margins as seemed fit to him, matter from the Elvish commentaries that he had heard or seen); for he was not himself skilled in the making of verse, and the transference of this long tale from Elvish into English was difficult enough. Indeed even as it was made, with the help of the Elves as it would seem from his notes and additions, in places his account is obscure.

“This version into ‘modern’ English, that is forms of English intelligible to living users of the English tongue (who have some knowledge of letters, and are not limited to the language of daily use from mouth to mouth) does not attempt to imitate the idiom of Ælfwine, nor that of the Elvish which often shows through especially in the dialogue.”

~ The War of the Jewels, Part Three, The Wanderings of Húrin and Other Writings Not Forming Part of the ‘Quenta Silmarillion’, II Ælfwine and Dírhaval, B: “He [Dírhaval] used that mode of Elvish verse ..... [blank space in text; never named] which was of old proper to the narn; but though this verse mode is not unlike the verse of the [Anglo-Saxon] English, I have rendered it in prose, judging my skill to be too small to be at once scop [poet] and walhstod [interpreter]. Even so, my task has been hard enough, and without the help of the Elves could not have been completed.”

THE LAYS OF BELERIAND

~ The Lay of Leithian, The Gest of Beren and Lúthien, I, Notes: “An earlier draft, after line 12 found could be, has the couplet ‘from England unto Eglamar/ o’er folk and field and lands afar.’”

~ The Lay of Leithian, The Gest of Beren and Lúthien, III, Notes, 508: “After this line [508] [version] A has a couplet omitted in [version] B: ‘from England unto Eglamar/ on rock and dune and sandy bar,’.”

~ The Lay of Leithian, The Gest of Beren and Lúthien, III (Beren’s Meeting With Lúthien), Commentary on Canto III: “The form Eglamar (Gnomish, =Eldamar) occurs in the very early poem The Shores of Faëry and its prose preface (II 262, 272 [compiler’s note: I don’t know if the page numbers will be accurate for your editions of BoLT 2]); and the same line from England unto Eglamar is found in the rough workings of the beginning of the Lay (note to lines 1-30). The mention of England is a reminder that at this time the association of the legends with Eriol/Ælfwine was still very much alive, though there is no other indication of it in the Lay of Leithian.”

THE SHAPING OF MIDDLE-EARTH

~ The Earliest ‘Silmarillion’, 18: “The Elves set sail from Lúthien (Britain or England) for Valinor. (Changed to: The Elves march to the Western shore, and begin to set sail from Lúthien (Britain or England) for Valinor.) Thence they ever still from time (to time) set sail leaving the world ere they fade.”

~ The Earliest ‘Silmarillion’, 19: “And this is the last end of the tales of the days before the days, in the Northern regions of the Western World. These tales are some of those remembered and sung by the fading Elves, and most by the Vanished Elves of the Lonely Isle. They have been told by Elves to Men of the race of Eärendel, and most to Eriol who alone of mortals of later days sailed to the Lonely Isle, and yet came back to Lúthien (changed to Leithian), and remembered things he had heard in Cortirion, the town of the Elves in Tol Eressëa.”

~ The Quenta, §18: “In those days there was a mighty building of ships on the shores of the Western Sea, and most upon those great isles, which in the disruption of the Northern world were fashioned of Beleriand. Thence in many a fleet the survivors of the Gnomes [Noldor], and of the Western companies of the Dark-elves set sail into the West and came no more into the lands of weeping and of war; and the Light-elves marched back beneath the banners of their king following in the train of Fionwë’s victory. Yet not all returned, and some lingered many an age in the West and North, and especially in the Western Isles. Yet ever as the ages drew on and the Elf-folk faded on the Earth, they would still set sail at eve from our Western shores; as still they do, when now there linger few anywhere of the lonely companies.”

~ The Quenta, §18 in the Quenta II version: “In those days there was a mighty building of ships on the shores of the Western Sea, and especially upon those great isles, which in the disruption of the Northern world were fashioned of ancient Beleriand. Thence in many a fleet the survivors of the Gnomes [Noldor], and of the Western companies of the Dark-elves set sail into the West and came not again into the lands of weeping and of war; but the Light-elves marched back beneath the banners of their king following in the train of Fionwë’s victory, and they were borne back in triumph unto Valinor. […]

“Yet not all would forsake the Outer Lands where they had long suffered and long dwelt; and some lingered many an age in the West and North, and especially in the western isles and the lands of Leithian. […] But ever as the ages drew on and the Elf-folk faded on the Earth, they would still set sail at eve from our Western shores; as still they do, when now there linger few anywhere of the lonely companies.”

~ The Ambarkanta, Commentary on the Ambarkanta: “But on the back of Map IV is another map (V) that illustrates all the features of both accounts. […] In relation to Beleriand in the North-west, and bearing in mind the whole underlying history of Eriol-Ælfwine and Leithian (England), the southern part of the Hither Lands, below the Great Gulf, bears an obvious resemblance to the continent of Africa; and in a vaguer way the Inland Sea could be interpreted as the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. But I [Christopher] can offer nothing on this matter that would not be the purest speculation.”

THE LOST ROAD AND OTHER WRITINGS

~ “The Lost Road” is the second difficult section to deal with. Given the quote from Letter 257 that is specifically about this part of The Lost Road and Other Writings, it seems a bit redundant to list the material here. Nor would it be a simple task, given that the entirety of the first two chapters of “The Lost Road” are set in Tolkien’s own time with the point-of-view character Alboin (which means Elf-friend) dreaming of Númenor and the languages used there, as well as the final dream of him meeting Elendil and being offered the chance to travel back in time to Númenor (Part One, III The Lost Road, The opening chapters). In the end, I decided that it was better to give the above summary of that part of the story than quote multiple entire pages.

~ Part Two: Valinor and Middle-earth before ‘The Lord of the Rings’, V The Lhammas, Title page of Lhammas B: “The ‘Lhammas’// This is the ‘Account of Tongues’ which Pengolod of Gondolin wrote in later days in Tol-eressëa, using the work of Rúmil the sage of Tûn. This account Ælfwine saw when he came into the West.”

~ Part Two: Valinor and Middle-earth before ‘The Lord of the Rings’, V The Lhammas, Lhammas B, 8: “But still in the Hither Lands of the West there linger the fading remnants of the Noldor and Teleri, and hold in secret to their own tongues; for there were some of those folk that would not leave the Middle-earth or the companionship of Men, but accepted the doom of Mandos that they should fade even as the younger Children of Ilúvatar waxed, and remained in the world, and are now, as are all those of Quendian race, but faint and few.”

~ Some of the material from the penultimate section in this book (VI Quenta Silmarillion, The Conclusion of the ‘Quenta Silmarillion’) is quoted above in Ælfwine’s section, but here is the final relevant quote from §28: “Yet not all the Eldalië were willing to forsake the Hither Lands where they had long suffered and long dwelt; and some lingered many an age in the West and North, and especially in the western isles and the Land of Leithien. […] But ever as the ages drew on and the Elf-folk faded upon earth, they would sail at eve from the western shores of this world, as still they do, until now there linger few anywhere of their lonely companies.”

SAURON DEFEATED

~ The material in The Notion Club Papers is the third area of the Legendarium that is hard to quote due to the amount of it-- nearly 120 pages worth, excluding the editorial notes. This is JRR Tolkien’s second attempt at a time-travel story dealing with Númenor, this time set in the (at the time) near future of the 1980s. Dreams and memory-training are the methods of time-travel, where the mind travels to or sees or hears things in or from the past while the body remains in the present.

For the significance in relation to this compilation and to connection to other versions of the Legendarium, it is easiest to quote from the last paragraph from Christopher Tolkien’s Introduction to The Notion Club Papers: “However it was, the Notion Club was abandoned [in the mid 1940s], and with it his final attempt to embody the riddle of Ælfwine and Eädwine in a ‘tale of time’. But from its forgotten ‘Papers’ and the strange figure of Arundel Lowdham there emerged a new conception of the Downfall of Númenor, embodied in a different tradition, which would come to constitute a major element of the ‘Akallabêth’ many years later.”

~ Part Three, The Drowning of Anadúnë, (i) The third version of ‘The Fall of Númenor’, §11: “Now the blood of the Númenóreans remained most among men of those western lands and shores; and the memory of the primeval world abode most strongly there, where the old paths to the West had aforetime set out from Middle-earth.”

MORGOTH’S RING

~ Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, Commentary, Author’s Note 2: “Arda or ‘The Kingdom of Arda’ (as being directly under the kingship of Eru’s vice-gerent Manwë) is not easy to translate, since neither ‘earth’ nor ‘world’ are entirely suitable. Physically Arda was what we should call the Solar System. Presumably the Eldar could have had as much and as accurate information concerning this, its structure, origin, and its relation to the rest of Eä (the Universe) as they could comprehend. Probably those who were interested did acquire this knowledge. [...]

“The traditions here [in the Athrabeth] have come down from the Eldar of the First Age, through Elves who were never directly acquainted with the Valar, and through Men who received ‘lore’ from the Elves but who had myths and cosmogonic legends, and astronomical guesses, of their own. There is, however, nothing in them that seriously conflicts with present human notions of the Solar System, and its size and position relative to the Universe. [...]

“It is certainly the case with the Elvish traditions that the principal part of Arda was the Earth (Imbar ‘The Habitation’), as the scene of the Drama of the war of the Valar and the Children of Eru with Melkor: so that loosely used Arda often seems to mean the Earth: and that from this point of view the function of the Solar System was to make possible the existence of Imbar.”

~ Myths Transformed, I: “It is now clear that in any case the Mythology must actually be a ‘Mannish’ affair. (Men are really only interested in Men and in Men’s ideas and visions.) The High Eldar living and being tutored by the demiurgic beings must have known, the ‘truth’ (according to their measure of understanding). What we have in the Silmarillion etc. are traditions (especially personalized and centered upon actors, such as Fëanor) handed on by Men in Númenor and later in Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor); but already far back-- from the first association of the Dúnedain and Elf-friends in Beleriand-- blended and confused with their own Mannish myths and cosmic ideas.

“At that (in reconsideration of the early cosmogonic parts) I was inclined to adhere to the Flat Earth and the astronomically absurd business of the making of the Sun and Moon. But you can make up stories of that kind when you live among people who have the same general background of imagination, when the Sun ‘really’ rises in the East and goes down in the West, etc. When however (no matter how little most people know or think about astronomy) it is the general belief that we live upon a ‘spherical’ island in ‘Space’ you cannot do this any more.”

~ Myths Transformed, II: “The Making of the Sun and Moon must occur long before the coming of the Elves; […] The time allowed is too short. Neither could there be woods and flowers &c. on earth, if there had been no light since the overthrow of the Lamps! […]

“Since the Eldar are supposed to be wiser and have truer knowledge of the history and nature of the Earth than Men (or than Wild Elves), their legends should have a closer relations to the knowledge now possessed of at least the form of the Solar System (=Kingdom of Arda); though it need not, of course, follow any ‘scientific’ theory of its making or development.”

~ Myths Transformed, II: “The Story, it seems, should follow such a line as this. The entry of the Valar into Eä at the beginning of Time. The choosing of the Kingdom of Arda as their chief abiding place (? by the highest and noblest of the Ainur, to whom Ilúvatar had intended to commit the care of the Eruhíni). Manwë and his companions elude Melkor and begin the ordering of Arda, but Melkor seeks for them and at last finds Arda, and contests the kingship with Manwë.

“This period will, roughly, correspond to supposed primeval epochs before Earth became habitable. A time of fire and cataclysm. Melkor disarrayed the Sun so that at periods it was too hot, and at others too cold. Whether this was due to the state of the Sun, or alteration in the orbit of Earth, need not be made precise: both are possible.”

~ Myths Transformed, IV: “The mythical association of Varda with the stars is of twofold origin. In the ‘demiurgic period’, before the establishment of Arda ‘the Realm’, while the Valar in general (including an unnamed host of others who never came to Arda) were labouring in the general construction of Eä (the World or Universe), Varda was in Eldarin and Númenorean legend said to have designed and set in their places most of the principal stars; but being (by destiny and desire) the future Queen of Arda, in which her ultimate function lay, especially as the lover and protectress of the Quendi, she was concerned not only with the great Stars in themselves, but also in their relations to Arda, and their appearance therefrom (and their effect upon the Children to come). Such forms and major patterns, therefore, as we call (for instance) the Plough, or Orion, were said to be designs. Thus the Valacirca or ‘Sickle of the Gods’, which was one of the Eldarin names of the Plough, was, it was said, intended later to be a sign of menace and threat of vengeance over the North in which Melkor took up his abode.”

~ Myths Transformed, V: “The making of the Sun after the Death of the Trees is not only impossible ‘mythology’ now -- especially since the Valar must be supposed to know the truth about the structure of Eä (and not make mythical guesses like Men) and to have communicated this to the Eldar (and so to the Númenoreans!) -- it is also impossible chronologically in the Narrative.”

~ Myths Transformed, VII, (iii): “We read then that he [Morgoth] was then thrust into the Void. That should mean that he was put outside Time and Space, outside Eä altogether; but if that were so this would imply a direct intervention of Eru (with or without supplication of the Valar). It may however refer inaccurately* to the extrusion or flight of his spirit from Arda.

“*Since the minds of Men (and even of the Elves) were inclined to confuse the ‘Void’, as a conception of the state of Not-being, outside Creation or Eä, with the conception of vast spaces within Eä, especially those conceived to lie all about the enisled ‘Kingdom of Arda’ (which we should probably call the Solar System).”

~ Index, Star-names: This is not a direct quote, but a summary of the text. There is a document where Tolkien was working on the names of the constellations, but on it he also set down the names of six planets in Elvish: Jupiter Alkarinque, Mars Karnil, Saturn Lumbar, Mercury Elemmire, Uranus Nénar, and Neptune Luinil.

THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH

Due to the amount of material-- almost all of it earlier drafts for the LotR Appendices material quoted above-- I have only selected a few quotes.

~ Part One, The Prologue and Appendices to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, II The Appendix on Languages, §1: “This tale is drawn from the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, preserved for the most part in the Great Red Book of Samwise. It has been written during many years for those who were interested in the account of the great Adventure of Bilbo, and especially for my friends, the Inklings (in whose veins, I suspect, a good deal of hobbit blood still runs), and for my sons and daughter.”

~ Part One, The Prologue and Appendices to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, II The Appendix on Languages, §3: “To the Inklings I dedicate this book, since they have already endured it with patience – my only reason for supposing that they have a hobbit-strain in their venerable ancestry: otherwise it would be hard to account for their interest in the history and geography of those long-past days, between the end of the Dominion of the Elves and the beginning of the Dominion of Men, when for a brief time the Hobbits played a supreme part in the movements of the world.”

~ Part One, The Prologue and Appendices to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, II The Appendix on Languages, §5: “No doubt for the historians and philologists it would have been desirable to preserve the original tongues; and certainly something of the idiom and the humour of the hobbits is lost in translation, even into a language as similar in mood as our own. But the study of the languages of those days requires time and labour, which no one but myself would, I think, be prepared to give it. So I have except for a few phrases and inscriptions transferred the whole linguistic setting into the tongues of our own time.”

~ Part One, The Prologue and Appendices to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, IV The Calendars, D1: “In the Shire the Calendar was not arranged as ours is; though the year seems to have been of the same length, for long ago as those times are now, reckoned in years and men’s lives, they were not (I suppose) far back in the age of Middle-earth.”

~ Part One, The Prologue and Appendices to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, V The History of the Akallabêth, §19: “In §23 ‘within the girdle of the Earth’ was changed [in the published Silmarillion] to ‘within the Circles of the World’, and ‘The love of this Earth’ to ‘The love of Arda’.”