Uinen by Dawn Walls-Thumma

Uinen

Uinen, the "lady of the seas," was among the earliest characters in the pantheon of Ainur in Tolkien's legendarium. The published Silmarillion presents her straightforwardly with just six mentions outside the "Index of Names." Uinen, along with her husband Ossë, "are best known to the Children of Ilúvatar" of all the Maiar--quite a statement when one considers that those Maiar include the likes of Melian, Gandalf, Saruman, and (perhaps most of all) Sauron.¹

Her role as one of the legendarium's sea deities might explain her fame among the peoples of Arda. The published Silmarillion claims her "hair lies spread through all waters under sky" but gives her special affinity for the plants and animals of the sea. Seafaring people hold her in high regard, and "to her mariners cry, for she can lay calm upon the waves, restraining the wildness of Ossë." Uinen is depicted in the published Silmarillion as something of a foil to her husband--calm where he is wild--and described as pacifying him.² Specifically, she is credited with her friendship toward and instruction of the Teleri while they awaited transport across the Great Sea.³ Later, in retribution for the first kinslaying, she would rise against the Noldor as they attempted to cross the sea in the ships they stole from the Teleri.⁴ In the Second Age, "The Númenóreans lived long in her protection, and held her in reverence equal to the Valar."⁵

However, like many of the characters whose histories extend back to his earliest writings, the published text provides only a partial picture of a character who evolved considerably as Tolkien wrote and rewrote her character. As is typical for his earliest material, Uinen carried an aura of whimsy and of the paganistic playfulness familiar from the myth cycles of the Greeks and Norse. Her morality, initially the unsentimental ethic of nature, with clear symbolic connections to the sea, evolved as Tolkien reworked her character, giving her a clearer alignment with the "goodness" of Manwë and affiliated Ainur.

Nom de Mer: The Many Names of Uinen

Although Tolkien settled relatively early and definitively on the name Uinen, prior to that point, she underwent numerous name changes over a relatively short period of time. These changes also reflect the evolution of her character.

In the Appendix of The Book of Lost Tales 1, Christopher Tolkien published a glossary of names derived from two sources, the Qenya Lexicon (1915) and the Gnomish Lexicon (1917). According to Christopher, the Qenya Lexicon is notable because it "gives glimpses of a stage even earlier than the Lost Tales."⁶ Uinen's entry contains material from the Qenya Lexicon, suggesting her character originated very early in Tolkien's work on the legendarium. Here, she is Ui Oarista, and the root oar- is glossed as "child of the sea; merchild," making Ui Oarista the "queen of the mermaids."⁷

The later Gnomish Lexicon grounds Uinen more firmly in the character she'd become in the legendarium, glossing the name Únen as "lady of the seas."⁸ However, in a list of the Valar contained in the chapter The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor, Uinen is identified as Solórë and, again, Ui Oarista.⁹ Since this text is later, dated by Christopher to between late 1918 and spring of 1920, it is possible the whimsical association between Uinen and mermaids was not entirely abandoned, even after Tolkien wrote considerable amounts of the early text about her character (without mentioning mermaids directly).

Nor were these the only name shifts Uinen underwent in the early work on her character. Initially and briefly Ówen in a text written between late 1918 and spring 1920, Tolkien changed her name to Ónen, which persisted for a short while.¹⁰ Not long after, he wrote the name Uinen for the first time,¹¹ and so she remained with the exception of a single appearance as Oinen.¹² Much later, in the 1937 Etymologies, Tolkien gives the roots of Uinen's name as NEN- ("water") and UY- ("long trailing plant, especially seaweed").¹³ Later still, in the 1959-60 Quendi and Eldar, the fictional philologist Pengolodh notes that the name Uinen is not Elvish at all and must therefore come from titles in Valarin "or such part of them as the Eldar could  adapt."¹⁴

Uinen and the Ainurian Bureaucra-sea

Uinen is part of a subset of sea deities. From the published Silmarillion, readers will be familiar with the concept of Ulmo as the Vala of the sea with Ossë and Uinen specifically designated mastery "of the seas that wash the shores of Middle-earth."¹⁵ Along with the death deities, the hierarchy of the sea deities is more organized and described in greater detail than any of the other Ainur. In addition to the three of them, Salmar descended to Arda with Ulmo and made the conches, along with "many other spirits beside" who assisted in governance of the waters.¹⁶

The idea of multiple sea deities arranged in a hierarchical fashion emerged early in Tolkien's work on the legendarium, collected in The Book of Lost Tales. At this point, the Ainur have not been subdivided into Valar and Maiar but are all classified broadly as "gods."¹⁷ Ossë and Uinen, specifically, are described as "vassals" of Ulmo, arriving in Arda after Ulmo "and with them the troops of the Oarni and Falmarini and the long-tressed Wingildi, and these are the spirits of the foam and the surf of ocean."¹⁸ In this very early concept of Arda, the world was encased in an "outer ocean" called Vai, ominously described as "dark waters ... that have no tides, and they are very cool and thin, that no boat can sail upon their bosom or fish swim within their depths."¹⁹ Ulmo is charged specifically with the governance of this ethereal realm. It is Ossë and Uinen who preside over the "lesser seas," which include the Great Sea that separates Aman and Middle-earth.²⁰

The Book of Lost Tales is rich in detail, especially concerning the Ainur, and is rife with  otherworldly and whimsical descriptions. When Tolkien recommenced work on the Silmarillion materials in the 1930s, he would strip away much of this detail and rebuild upon the bare foundations of the story. Some of these details simply never appeared again or were contradicted entirely in later drafts. In other instances--Salmar and the "other spirits," for instance--they would reappear but in far less detail. The bureaucracy of the sea gods is one such area where Tolkien left the basic structure in place without the richer elaboration found in the Lost Tales.

Finally, Uinen's place within the larger hierarchy of Valar and Maiar would shift over the years as well. After the lush detail found in The Book of Lost Tales, Tolkien's next draft of the Silmarillion--the 1926 "Sketch of the Mythology"--was just as the name suggests: a mere sketch. Here, Uinen (and Ossë) are listed among the Valar.

In the History of Middle-earth series, Christopher Tolkien identifies two major phases of his father's work on the Silmarillion materials, the caesura caused by the prolonged effort Tolkien undertook in writing The Lord of the Rings.²¹ When Tolkien ceased work on the Silmarillion materials to turn his attention to The Lord of the Rings, Uinen was ranked among the Valar. When he next mentioned her, in the 1951-2 Annals of Aman, she remained a Vala.²² Tolkien later changes this in a revision to this text, removing both Ossë and Uinen from the ranks of the Valar.²³

Given this--and especially given Tolkien's addition several years later in the Valaquenta about the Númenórean reverence for Uinen as a Vala²⁴--one might question the rigidity of the Valarin-Maiarin hierarchy and the extent to which it may have been cultural rather than absolute: a reflection of the importance of a Ainurian figure to the culture maintaining a particular set of scriptures or historical records.

Becalmed: The Transformation of Uinen

While all of the sea deities in the legendarium are analogous to the ocean in key ways, it is Uinen who is perhaps the most perfect metaphor of all. Physically omnipresent in a way that Ulmo and Ossë are not, her generous moods bring fortune and plenty to those who don't make waves with her, while her anger (or indifference) brings peril and death to those who would cross her. Over time, however, Tolkien shifted her ethical center more toward the capital-G Good of Manwë and his associates rather than the blasé brutality of Nature.

Uinen's simultaneous potential for brutality and benevolence was present from the earliest versions of her story, illustrated by her involvement with Ossë's rebellion against Ulmo, found in the Book of Lost Tales. This early version of the tale introduces the idea of Ulmo transporting the Eldar across the Great Sea via a moving island. Ossë's grievances in this contrivance are many. First, the island Ulmo takes was of Ossë's creation and something of his secret clubhouse, and Ulmo takes it without asking. Then he doesn't involve Ossë in planning to move the Elves. Miffed, as Ulmo returns to pick up the Teleri (here called the Solosimpi), Ossë "cast storms and shadows about the return of Ulmo, so that he drove by devious ways." When at last the Teleri step aboard, they are less than halfway there when "Ossë and Ónen [Uinen] waylay them" and "Ossë with Ónen's aid [brings] the isle to a stand" by first tying it up with "giant ropes of those leather-weeds and polyps," then piling up rocks under the floating island, essentially beaching it.²⁵

Uinen here aids Ossë in thwarting Ulmo's plans, presumably also experiencing the same umbrage at her husband's treatment as Ossë himself felt, and as the Teleri abide in the midst of her realm, "Uinen and the Oarni and all the spirits of the waves were enamoured of them."²⁶ It is due to Uinen's love for them that, despite his growing pity for their plight, Ossë makes no move to recommence the island's journey across the sea to reunite the Teleri with their kin. (Ulmo eventually answers trickery with trickery by harnessing the seabirds that Ossë has tamed to drag the island to its destination within sight of Aman.)

Uinen's perilousness appears again in the same text in reference to the Magic Isles,²⁷ a string of islands between Middle-earth and Aman famed for ensnaring unlucky passersby and preventing them from reaching Aman. In the Book of Lost Tales version, it is Ossë who makes the Magic Isles, again in defiance of Ulmo, and Uinen who is at least partly responsible for their somnolent allure. The Book of Tales describes this archipelago as,

so alluring were they that few had power to pass them by, and did any essay to then sudden storms drove them perforce against those beaches whose pebbles shone like silver and like gold. Yet all such as stepped thereon came never thence again, but being woven in the nets of Oinen's hair the Lady of the Sea, and whelmed in agelong slumber that Lórien set there, lay upon the margin of the waves, as those do who being drowned are cast up once more by the movements of the sea; yet rather did these hapless ones sleep unfathomably and the dark waters laved their limbs, but their ships rotted, swathed in weeds, on those enchanted sands, and sailed never more before the winds of the dim West.²⁸

These two anecdotes may have had something to do with Uinen's transformation, etymologically, from Ui Oaresta, "the queen of the mermaids," to Uinen and her association with seaweeds. While the Magic Isles entice passing sailors similar to the folklore about mermaids and sirens, Uinen is not specifically credited with creating that allure--as one might expect of a mermaid--but rather with physically ensnaring passersby in the algaelike nets of her hair. Likewise, in the tale of Ossë's arresting of Tol Eressëa, the island is secured by being tied with seaweeds. While not directly attributed to Uinen, the association is impossible to ignore. As a folkloric figure, the mermaid is plagued similarly to the fairy and pixie: once perilous beings diminished to "flower-fairies and fluttering sprites" cast in "dull stor[ies]" mainly distinguished by their "prettiness."²⁹ As Tolkien revised the stories of The Book of Lost Tales, he replaced beings with similar prettified and diminished associations, and it may have been that Uinen underwent a similar revision.³⁰ Instead of a mermaid--a figure more familiar to readers as a bare-breasted temptress cradling a handsome half-drowned sailor in her lissom arms--he associates her instead with ubiquitous, devouring vegetation, more reminiscent of weed-choked meres and the carnivorous trees of The Lord of the Rings.

Uinen in this version of the story occupies a moral gray area: perilous, sometimes tricky, and yet not malevolent. At this early stage, her character has little of the benevolence we will later see from her. She is rawer, more primal. She desires the Teleri not for affection but for the pride of having them. She snares sailors for no reason than that it is her nature to do so. She is the ticklish, fleshy vegetation that fills places irrespective of their beauty until they are hypoxic, poisoned by it. None of this is due to evil. It simply is.

Her association, first in The Book of Lost Tales³¹ and later in the Lay of Leithian, with Lúthien Tinúviel further underscores the neutrality of these early depictions of Uinen. As she seeks to fashion a magical cloak from her own hair, Lúthien calls upon Uinen to aid her:

and last and longest named she then
the endless hair of Uinen,
the Lady of the Sea, that lies
through all the waters under skies.³²

Lúthien represents nothing evil and would call upon nothing evil--much less "last and longest" of her enchantments. But she finds in Uinen a potentiality powerful enough to become magic.

As Tolkien rewrote and revised Uinen's character, however, she would become defanged. While never the frolicking playful Nessa and Vána, she would become more benign and benevolent over time, and less perilous: more of a protectress and less capricious. Other characters among the Ainur and Elves experience similar trajectories as their characters evolve. In the 1930 Quenta Noldorinwa, Ossë's "rebelliousness" against Ulmo remains, but Uinen's role as his accomplice is gone. The pair is described, succinctly: "Subject to [Ulmo], though he is often of rebellious mood, is Ossë the master of the seas of the lands of Men, whose spouse is Uinen the Lady of the Sea. Her hair lies spread through all the waters under skies."³³ In the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion, Tolkien introduces his first new idea about Uinen in nearly twenty years. After the kinslaying at Alqualondë, "Uinen wept for the slain of the Teleri; and the sea roared against the Gnomes, so that many of the ships were wrecked and those in them drowned."³⁴

First stripped of her perilousness, in the Quenta Silmarillion, Uinen undergoes a moral shift. She no longer simply is. We see here the germ of her affection and protectiveness of the Teleri--later extended to include seafarers more broadly, namely the Númenóreans--and her willingness to act from a moral position in defense of those over whom she exercises stewardship. She is no longer acting with the nonchalant hunger of Nature but makes moral calculations, chooses sides, and acts accordingly.

By the 1958 Annals of Aman, Uinen has assumed an explicitly benevolent aspect. Now she, along with Ossë, form friendships and instruct the Teleri marooned on the western shores of Middle-earth: "And Ossë and Uinen came to them and befriended them and taught them all manner of sea-lore and sea-music."³⁵ When Ossë later arrests the island prior to its arrival in Aman, it is due to affection for its passengers, not rebellion or a desire for mischief. (Uinen's role, in any case, is now gone.) Likewise, it is now Ossë, not Ulmo, who now teaches the Teleri shipbuilding so that they can reach their estranged kin in Valinor.

In another text written around the same time, Tolkien signals Uinen's moral position through her invocation by another character. Just as Lúthien calling chiefly upon Uinen in early versions of the story showed that, despite Uinen's pestilence, she was a neutral being of Nature and not morally corrupt, in this text, it is Morgoth who invokes Uinen. As he embarks upon his destruction of the Two Trees, "There he cursed the Sea, saying: 'Slime of Ulmo! I will conquer thee yet, shrivel thee to a stinking ooze. Yea, ere long Ulmo and Ossë shall wither, and Uinen crawl as a mud-worm at my feet!'"³⁶ Thus, she is named an enemy of evil, herself aligned on the side of Good.

It is at the same time that Uinen's role as a calming influence on the irascibility of her husband Ossë also emerged. Prior to the 1958-60 revisions that produced some of the later Silmarillion materials, the text we now know as the Valaquenta was incorporated as part of the first chapter in the Quenta Silmarillion, titled "Of the Valar." Around 1958-60, Tolkien broke up the Valaquenta as a separate text that Christopher Tolkien describes as "innovating" for its introduction of new material.³⁷ Among that material was the idea that, "to [Uinen] mariners cry, for she can lay calm upon the waves, restraining the wildness of Ossë," as well as:

It is said that in the making of Arda [Melkor] endeavoured to draw Ossë to his allegiance, promising to him all the realm and power of Ulmo, if he would serve him. So it was that long ago there arose great tumults in the sea that wrought ruin to the lands. But Uinen, at the prayer of Aulë, restrained Ossë and brought him before Ulmo; and he was pardoned and returned to his allegiance, to which he has remained faithful.³⁸

Consider Uinen's trajectory across the roughly forty-year history of her character, beginning with her introduction in the Lost Tales material at the end of the 1910s to the "innovation" of the Valaquenta material roughly 1958-60. Once solidly in cahoots with her rebellious husband, she now stands almost as a foil character: She is calming where he is tumultuous; she receives reverence from seafarers where "they do not trust him."³⁹ From a character often feral, often inscrutable, she is now almost unrecognizable ethically, operating not with capriciousness reminiscent of the sea but from a moral code that aligns her with Manwë and affiliated Valar.

Flotsam and Jetsam: Jettisoned Character Details

In the early, freewheeling phase of the Lost Tales, Tolkien also introduced details about Uinen that, it seems, he just as swiftly abandoned. They were never so much as hinted at in his later writings--a characteristic state of affairs, according to Christopher Tolkien, who states that "in the history of the history of Middle-earth the development was seldom by outright rejection--far more often it was by subtle transformation in stages."⁴⁰

The first is the description of Ossë's house, located in Valinor and where he and Uinen dwelled when not out to sea:

Ossë too had a great house, and dwelt therein whenso a conclave of the Valar was held or did he grow weary of the noise of the waves upon his seas. Ónen [Uinen] and the Oarni brought thousands of pearls for its building, and its floors were of sea-water, and its tapestries like the glint of the silver skins of fishes, and it was roofed with foam.⁴¹

Uinen's role in building this "great house"--which interestingly contains precisely the kinds of features that Tolkien would later decry in the style of the French "contes de fées" that he detested⁴²--would be repeated in a similar passage slightly later in the Lost Tales, when the Ainur collaborate in their construction of the Sun and Moon. Here, Uinen aids in the making of the Moon, weaving sails of "white mists and foam, and some were sprent with glinting scales of silver fish, some threaded with tiniest stars like points of light--sparks caught in snow when Nielluin was shining."⁴³

Uinen's flirtation with engineering--even the whimsical variety where steel cables are bedecked in silver scales--was brief yet perhaps marked a movement toward depicting Uinen as an active character whose role exceeded merely going with the flow in the same manner as her weedy tresses. It may also represent an intentional move by Tolkien away from a popular storytelling style that he once felt compelled to mimic but, as his style matured, eventually decided to avoid.

Rocking the Boat: Uinen in the Second Age

Tolkien's final word on Uinen came as part of the text Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife, written no later than 1965. This lengthy narrative set in Númenor mentions Uinen several times in the context of worldbuilding, drawing on long-established details about Uinen's character to add realistic details concerning the culture of Númenor.

Present from Tolkien's first writings about her, Uinen's island-building emerges once more in this late text. Tol Uinen is a "little isle" set by Uinen in the bay of Rómenna. The island holds significance to Aldarion and the Guild of Venturers: He moors his ship there, and the guild keeps their headquarters on the island. Aldarion builds sea-walls there and a lighthouse called Calmindon. Uinen's importance to the Guild is expressed in the moniker they choose for themselves: Uinendili, the lovers of Uinen.⁴⁴

Other cultural details emerge that attest to the importance of Uinen to the Númenóreans:

Here must be told of the custom that when a ship departed from Númenor over the Great Sea to Middle-earth a woman, most often of the captain's kin, should set upon the vessel's prow the Green Bough of Return; and that was cut from the tree oiolairë, that signifies "Ever-summer," which the Eldar gave to the Númenóreans, saying that they set it upon their own ships in token of friendship with Ossë and Uinen.⁴⁵

In the context of Aldarion and Erendis, Aldarion's father, the Númenórean king Meneldur, forbids his wife and daughters to deliver the Green Bough of Return to his son, "saying that he refused his blessing to his son, who was venturing forth against his will." It is seen by the other sailors as unlucky to depart without the Bough; it is Erendis who delivers it from the queen, securing Aldarion's regard and eventual love.⁴⁶

This anecdote reveals an undercurrent present in most mentions of Uinen in this text: the tension between the seafarers of Númenor and those who found their adventures too bold. Meneldur, in speaking to Aldarion, refers to Uinen specifically among the Lords of the West under whose "grace" the Númenóreans dwell: "'Do you forget that the Edain dwell here under the grace of the Lords of the West, that Uinen is kind to us, and Ossë is restrained? Our ships are guarded, and other hands guide them than ours.'" He objects specifically to Aldarion's claim that he "deals with the sea," finding such language overproud and symptomatic of a dangerous rashness. More specifically, Meneldur worries that the pride and needless risk-taking of Aldarion and his men will lose them the blessings of Uinen, a censure that may extend to all of the Númenóreans.⁴⁷

Later, this same tension emerges between Aldarion and Erendis as well. At a feast, Valandil the Lord of Andúnië calls Erendis Uinéniel, the daughter of Uinen. She bridles at the characterization: "'"Call me by no such name! I am no daughter of Uinen: rather is she my foe.'" The couple is not yet betrothed, though Aldarion clearly desires it. Erendis's doubts center upon her perception of competition with Uinen: "'I will not share my husband with the Lady Uinen,'" she says. Erendis asks Aldarion to come inland with her, to appreciate the meadows and forests of Númenor that are her chief delight, and though he admires the land, her doubts persist. "'[Y]ou would fell any wood as a gift to Uinen, if you had a mind,'" she tells him.⁴⁸

That Uinen features so prominently in the objections of Aldarion's father (and king) and wife to his chosen profession speaks to her cultural importance to the Númenórean mariners. She is mentioned more often in Aldarion and Erendis than Ossë or Ulmo; recall that Tolkien's work on the Valaquenta, where Uinen is first identified as the special protector of the Númenóreans, was written within a few years of Aldarion and Erendis, and it very may well have been that Tolkien had the ideas for both texts in his mind as he introduced this final key element to Uinen's story.

Conclusion: Sea Changes

Among the longest-enduring characters in the legendarium, Uinen shows Tolkien's evolution on several points. First is in terms of style and storytelling. In her initial presentation, she sometimes appears in whimsical passages of a style that Tolkien would later denigrate. Her initial identification with mermaids is along the same lines, and it may well be that these early changes occurred as part of eliminating these stylistic elements from the legendarium.

Her role in later texts also attests to the longevity of her character. Elements introduced early on--her weedlike hair, her island-building--arise in several points as part of the worldbuilding surrounding other characters and cultures.

But most importantly, Tolkien's earliest writings permitted an ethic that doesn't conform to the dualistic morality that gives rise to Epic Battles of Good vs. Evil--a Western trope that Tolkien in fact helped popularize with The Lord of the Rings. Much has been written on the "Northern" sense of The Silmarillion, and looking at the texts from which it arose, one can see why. In the Lost Tales, we find the primal forces of nature going through their dispassionate motions. We find gods--later distanced from our real-world mythology through terms like Valar and Maiar--more akin to the trickster gods omnipresent in world myth, where a chaotic element prevails absent malevolence.

Over time and revision of his narrative, however, many of these elements faded away. The stakes grew higher, the good characters became really good and the bad characters fully evil.

Uinen is a case study in how a character evolves within this larger trajectory. She began, as did many of the Ainur, with a certain apathy toward anything resembling a greater good. Primeval and self-interested, she acted with the same inevitability of a plant creeping toward the sun. Over time, Tolkien bestowed her with benevolence: her friendship with the Teleri, her vengeance on their behalf after the kinslaying, her intercession on behalf of mariners, her protection of the Númenóreans. By the time her character's development at last came to rest, she was simultaneously familiar in her features--the weedlike hair, the habit of setting islands--and unrecognizable in her ethical frame.

Works Cited

1. Valaquenta, "Of the Maiar.”
2. Ibid.
3. The Silmarillion, "Of the Beginning of Days." A sharp-eyed reader may notice that the published Silmarillion identifies just Ossë--not Uinen--as the one who "instructed [the Teleri], sitting upon a rock near to the margin of the land, and of him they learned all manner of sea-lore and sea-music." However, Douglas Charles Kane observes that the omission of Uinen is not in fact Tolkien's but Christopher Tolkien, who removed Uinen from this passage, seemingly without reason. As Kane notes, "This small but significant change is the first of a number of occasions in which it appears that the roles of female characters are systematically lessened." Douglas Charles Kane, Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2009), 68.
4. The Silmarillion, "Of the Flight of the Noldor.”
5. Valaquenta, "Of the Maiar."
6. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, Appendix, "Names in the Lost Tales--Part I," introductory remarks.
7. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, Appendix, "Names in the Lost Tales--Part I, Ónen."
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Music of the Ainur, "Changes Made to Names in The Music of the Ainur.
11. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Chaining of Melko.
12. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Hiding of Valinor.
13. The History of Middle-earth, Volume V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, Etymologies, "NEN-."
14. The History of Middle-earth, Volume XI: The War of the Jewels, Quendi and Eldar, "Note on the 'Language of the Valar.'"
15. The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Maiar."
16. The Silmarillion, "Of the Beginning of Days."
17. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Music of the Ainur, "Commentary on The Music of the Ainur."
18. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor.
19. Ibid.
20. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor, "Commentary onThe Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor."
21. In a 1937 letter to his publisher, Tolkien wrote: "I think it is plain that quite apart from it, a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called for. I promise to give this thought and attention. But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils are in my heart." The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "19 To Stanley Unwin."
22. The History of Middle-earth, Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, The Annals of Aman, §2.
23. The History of Middle-earth, Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, The Annals of Aman, "Commentary on the first section of the Annals of Aman."
24. Tolkien pulled out the Valaquenta as a separate section from the Quenta Silmarillion and added material to it around 1958-60, including (seemingly) this first mention of Uinen's specific significance to the Númenóreans. The History of Middle-earth, Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, The Later Quenta Silmarillion 2, "The Valaquenta."
25. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, Of the Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr.
26. Ibid.
27. The Magic Isles are called the Enchanted Isles in the published Silmarillion.
28. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Hiding of Valinor.
29. The Tolkien Reader, On Fairy-Stories.
30. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor, "Commentary on The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor." Christopher Tolkien writes here: "In the later work there is no trace of any such explanation of the 'pixie' element in the world's population: the Maiar are little referred to, and certainly not said to include such beings as 'sing amid the grass at morning and chant among the standing corn at eve'."
31. The History of Middle-earth, Volume II: The Book of Lost Tales 2, Tale of Tinúviel.
32. The History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, Lay of Leithian, Canto V, 1498-1501.
33. The History of Middle-earth, Volume IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, The Quenta, initial section.
34. The History of Middle-earth, Volume V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, Quenta Silmarillion, "Of the Flight of the Noldor," §70.
35. The History of Middle-earth, Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, Annals of Aman, Year 1132.
36. The History of Middle-earth, Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, The Later Quenta Silmarillion 2, "Of the Darkening of Valinor," §57a.
37. The History of Middle-earth, Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, The Later Quenta Silmarillion 2, "The Valaquenta."
38. The Silmarillion, Valaquenta.
39. Ibid.
40. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, Foreword.
41. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, Of the Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor.
42. See, for example, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "210 From a letter to Forrest J. Ackerman": "As I have shown I dislike strongly any pulling of my tale towards the style and feature of 'contes des fees', or French fairy-stories." Interestingly, in his lecture-turned-essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien quotes a fairy-story by Michael Drayton including the kinds of whimsical details found in the Lost Tales and proclaims it "one of the worst ever written."
43. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Tale of the Sun and Moon.
44. Unfinished Tales, Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.