Ómar-Amillo by Dawn Walls-Thumma

Ómar-Amillo

In commentary found in the first volume of The Book of Lost Tales, Christopher Tolkien calls the Valarin character Ómar-Amillo "a divinity without much substance."¹ Indeed, Ómar did not hang around long, appearing only in The Book of Lost Tales—and only the first volume at that.² In another recent biography, I detailed the evolution of the character of Salmar-Noldorin, the brother of Ómar, and make the case that Salmar suffers from indistinctness. Tolkien seemed to have slotted him into multiple roles where a character with god-like stature might fit, leading him to never develop a distinct identity as a character the way that Valar like Manwë and Ulmo do. (Bilbo might say that Salmar is like too little butter stretched over too much bread!) Salmar eventually assumes a much-reduced role in the story, making it into the published Silmarillion only as the artificer of the Ulumúri, as the roles of other Valar expand to fill what was once his.

His brother Ómar seems to suffer from the opposite problem but with many of the same effects. (Although Ómar doesn't even make it into the published text.) Ómar never seems to fully emerge from the story at all, making his eventual deletion from the "Silmarillion" barely noticeable.

Ómar's primary role is as a singer-cum-linguist. We first meet him in the link text between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur, when Rúmil—yes, that Rúmil, the Noldorin inventor of writing and loremaster who penned the Aman portions of the "Silmarillion"—lobs a lengthy and whimsically peevish diatribe at Eriol³ about birdsong:

'Your pardon, sir! I marked you not, for I was listening to the birds. Indeed sir you find me in a sour temper; for lo! here I have a black-winged rogue fat with impudence who singeth songs before unknown to me, and in a tongue that is strange! It irks me sir, it irks me, for me-thought at least I knew the simple speeches of all birds. I have a mind to send him down to Mandos for his pertness!'

At this Eriol laughed heartily, but said the door-ward: 'Nay sir, may Tevildo Prince of Cats harry him for daring to perch in a garden that is in the care of Rúmil. Know you that the Noldoli grow old astounding slow, and yet have I grey hairs in the study of all the tongues of the Valar and of Eldar. Long ere the fall of Gondolin, good sir, I lightened my thraldom under Melko in learning the speech of all monsters and goblins—have I not conned even the speeches of beasts, disdaining not the thin voices of the voles and mice?—have I not cadged a stupid tune or two to hum of the speechless beetles? Nay, I have worried at whiles even over the tongues of Men, but Melko take them! they shift and change, change and shift, and when you have them are but a hard stuff whereof to labour songs or tales. Wherefore is it that this morn I felt as Ómar the Vala who knows all tongues, as I hearkened to the blending of the voices of the birds comprehending each, recognising each well-loved tune, when tirípti lirilla here comes a bird, an imp of Melko—but I weary you sir, with babbling of songs and words.'⁴

Here, Ómar is identified as "the Vala who knows all tongues." I quote the entire passage because it illustrates the likely importance of this role in Tolkien's imagination. In his late twenties when he wrote the link text between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur, Tolkien was working on the Oxford English Dictionary⁵ and not far from the young man who almost failed his term for his overly enthusiastic study of Finnish.⁶ Language loomed large in his world, as did poetry and song, which even by the stage of the Lost Tales, featured heavily in the emerging legendarium and would continue to do so.

Furthermore, given the cultures from which Tolkien drew his inspiration, poetry and song would have played a culturally vital role within the legendarium. The Valar have an oral (not written) tradition,⁷ meaning that their memories are bound up in poetry and song, and Ómar would have likely been the living repository for their history. In addition, as I detailed in the biography of Salmar, the preliterate Northern cultures from which Tolkien took most of his inspiration used poetry not as an emotional or creative outlet—as we tend to think of poetry today—but as a form of political power. Through their poems, poets shaped public opinion of a ruler and, through their renditions of the past, preserved his legacy. Court poets held tremendous power in these societies, which suggests that Ómar—had his character survived beyond the Lost Tales—likely did as well.

Ómar appears only a few times in the Lost Tales, but in all instances, these are consistent with his role as a singer, poet, and linguist. When the Valar arrive in Arda, "[l]ast of all came Ómar who is called Amillo, youngest of the great Valar, and he sang songs as he came."⁸ Ómar often appears alongside Salmar:

In Valmar too dwelt Noldorin known long ago as Salmar, playing now upon his harps and lyres, now sitting beneath Laurelin and raising sweet music with an instrument of the bow. There sang Amillo joyously to his playing, Amillo who is named Ómar, whose voice is the best of all voices, who knoweth all songs in all speeches; but whiles if he sang not to his brother's harp then would he be trilling in the gardens of Oromë when after a time Nielíqui [Nessa], little maiden, danced about its woods.⁹

The passage above, of course, reiterates Ómar's role as a singer and one "who knows all tongues."¹⁰ Additionally, his role as Salmar's brother—and as Christopher Tolkien explains, a name list near the end of the manuscript of The Coming of Valar and the Building of Valinor identifies them as twin brothers—makes sense as well. Salmar is a musician who plays stringed instruments; Ómar is a singer. The talents of the two complement each other. (They form a bit of a two-man band.) Furthermore, Tolkien had a tendency to present twins as composite characters: Amrod and Amras, Eluréd and Elurín, Elladan and Elrohir. While Salmar and Ómar do have distinct identities, their separate skills can also function in composite, where they become, collectively, the gods of music. After the destruction of the Trees, the flight of the Noldor, and the kinslaying at Alqualondë, "Salmar and Ómar stood by and their instruments of music made no sound and they were heavy of heart."¹¹ Their dual silence speaks to a tragedy so incomprehensible that they cannot fulfill their role of interpreting an event so that it can be processed by their people and remembered. To paraphrase the singer-songwriter Don McLean, so great a tragedy becomes "the day the music died."

Earlier in the text, when the Valar seek to subdue Melkor, "There rode the Fánturi upon a car of black, and there was a black horse upon the side of Mandos and a dappled grey upon the side of Lórien, and Salmar and Ómar came behind running speedily …"¹² Again, this is not inconsistent with Ómar's role as a singer and poet, given that singers in an oral society did far more than (as Dire Straits bemoaned) "get a blister on [their] little finger" in the course of their professional activities. They would have accompanied the soldiery into battle, where it would have been their chief responsibility to memorialize their people's achievements and losses and process the event in a politically sensitive manner. Here, we see Ómar occupying exactly such a role.

With all of this in mind, how can I open this biography with Christopher Tolkien's assertion that Ómar is "a divinity without much substance" and proceed as though I accept his conclusion as true? After all, in an oral society, Ómar's role is essential. Given Tolkien's penchant for invented loremasters, it is possible that, had Ómar survived beyond the Lost Tales, some of the published Silmarillion could be attributed to him.

Much like Salmar, however, Ómar suffers from redundancy that may explain why he was not developed further in the "Silmarillion." Throughout the Lost Tales, we see various Ainur being charged with teaching the Elves poetry and music. For the Teleri (here the Solosimpi), it is Ulmo and Ossë. The Noldor are taught music by Salmar, but his role is superseded by Aulë, whose instruction in craft and science more aligns with the part the Noldor come to play in the story. Ómar gets tacked on as a teacher of music and poetry to the Vanyar (here the Teleri), but similar to Salmar, this task becomes almost immediately subordinate to Manwë's near-identical role (and Manwë makes better sense as the teacher of the Vanyar, given their later reverence for the Valar):

Now these [the Noldor and Vanyar] after a season took hope and their sorrow grew less bitter, learning how their kindred dwelt in no unkindly land, and Ulmo had them under his care and guardianship. Wherefore they heeded now the Gods' desire and turned to the building of their home; and Aulë taught them very much lore and skill, and Manwë also. Now Manwë loved more the Teleri [Vanyar], and from him and from Ómar did they learn deeper of the craft of song and poesy than all the Elves beside ….¹³

Even in the construction of the sentence, Ómar is simply tacked on with a coordinating conjunction mid-sentence, offering no unique contribution to the education of the Vanyar. Instead of a confusion of music teachers, it is possible that Tolkien sought to simplify the text by striking Ómar (and Salmar) from this role and focusing instead on the more relevant tutelage of the Vanyar by Manwë and Noldor by Aulë, which aligns them more tightly to the roles each respective people would come to play in the emerging legendarium.

Therefore, Ómar never fully emerged as a character before being summarily dismissed from the story. Tolkien's understanding of Ómar and his role doesn't always seem to be fully thought out. (Now, to be fair, these are draft texts never intended for you and I to read. We shouldn't presume them to be well thought out—but Ómar does seem to lack a distinctness that the Valar who would survive into the published text are beginning to assume.) For example,

Then sped Vána a little way out upon the plain, and she lifted up her sweet voice with all her power and it came trembling faintly to the gates of Valmar, and all the Valar heard. Then said Ómar. "'Tis the voice of Vána's lamentation," but Salmar said: "Nay, listen more, for rather is there joy in that sound," and all that stood by hearkened, and the words they heard were Iᐧkal'antúlien, Light hath returned.¹⁴

That a character—and a god at that—whose domain is music cannot distinguish between a song of joy and a lamentation seems inconceivable. It seems to me that, in this scene, Ómar's original purpose had begun to slip from Tolkien's mind and his importance was instead as the brother and conversation partner of Salmar, who was given the more prominent role.

Furthermore, his status as the youngest of the Valar¹⁵ doesn't fully square with his role as their singer either. Christopher Tolkien questions this on the basis of his father's assertion that the Valar only began to age after the destruction of the Two Trees using Ómar to make his point: Clearly, he says, aging was always possible, else Ómar could not be the youngest.¹⁶ I question the usefulness of an oral historian who is the last to arrive, both in terms of "birth order" and his arrival in Aman. Who then would memorialize the earliest history of the Valar, both in Eä and in Arda? What I think both Christopher's and my objections show is that Tolkien's understanding of the Valar was evolving at this point. He knew he wanted a pantheon with the same big personalities, dramatic antics, and worldly meddling of the pagan pantheons of the Greeks and Norse. As he began to layer on more complex thinking about the effects of time upon immortal beings, convenient notions of certain Valar being older or younger than others didn't always align with these ideas.

Likewise is the notion of memory. Did the Valar even need an oral tradition? They are already immortal, so there is no need for a legacy, and the Valarin capacity for memory is prodigious enough that the essential function of an oral poet in preserving the past is unneeded. Each can likely handle this on her or his own.

Given all of this, it comes as little surprise that Ómar faded from the story. Oral tradition was important within the cultures Tolkien admired and used as inspiration when crafting his own Secondary World so it likely seemed natural to create a role for a court poet in his earliest work on the legendarium. However, as he thought it through the role of oral tradition—and therefore Ómar—to the Valar, it seems likely that he realized there wasn't a natural fit, making Ómar's primary role as a teacher of the Vanyar. This, too, possibly accounted for his disappearance, as the story shifted away from Aman and toward the deeds of the Noldor with the Vanyar intentionally set apart from the main action. Manwë's tutelage of the Vanyar would not only suffice but made better sense than introducing a minor god to teach people who are intentionally relegated to a passive role. When, in 1926, Tolkien wrote his next "Silmarillion" draft, it comes as little surprise that Ómar did not reappear.

Works Cited

1. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Music of the Ainur, "Commentary on 'Link between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur.'"
2. Ómar is indexed in The Book of Lost Tales 2 but is mentioned there only by Christopher Tolkien, discussing material from the first volume.
3. If you're not familiar with the Lost Tales, The Cottage of Lost Play is likely to be especially inscrutable. It did not survive at all into the published Silmarillion. In fact, it didn't even survive into the much-pared-down "Sketch of the Mythology," the next iteration in Tolkien's construction of the "Silmarillion," written a little over a decade later. To make a long story short, the Lost Tales follow the Anglo-Saxon mariner Eriol as he ventures around Tol Eressëa, speaking with the various Elves there and learning their history. Rúmil is the door-ward for the Cottage of Lost Play, a place where Elves go to hear stories.
4. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Music of the Ainur, "Link between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur," emphasis mine.
5. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Music of the Ainur, introductory material.
6. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "75 To Christopher Tolkien."
7. See The History of Middle-earth, Volume V: The Lost Road and Other Writings, The Lhamas, "Of the tongues of the Elves in Valinor," section 5: Valarin was used by the Valar "little save among themselves in their high councils, and they wrote it not nor carved it …." The Lhamas is an earlier text, and some of Tolkien's ideas about languages in it changed, but the idea of the Valar having an oral tradition seems to have remained intact. In Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien never discusses Valarin as anything but a spoken language, even as written texts in Elvish languages are referenced throughout (The History of Middle-earth, Volume XI: The War of the Jewels, Quendi and Eldar, "Note on the 'Language of the Valar.'"). The closest we come to a historical record among the Valar at the time of the Lost Tales are the tapestries "picturing those things that were and shall be," which are not yet assigned to Vairë but, in these early texts, appear in Aulë's halls (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, (vi) The Gods of Death and the Fates of Elves and Men." Gratitude to the many people on the SWG's Discord server that helped me thoroughly unpack the question of orality-versus-written in Valarin and other languages.
8. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor.
9. Ibid.
10. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Music of the Ainur, "Link between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur."
11. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Tale of the Sun and the Moon.
12. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Chaining of Melko.
13. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr, emphasis mine.
14. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Tale of the Sun and Moon.
15. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor.
16. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Hiding of Valinor, "Commentary on The Hiding of Valinor.