Tolkien's Cottage of Lost Play

Christopher Tolkien is the editor of a book of J. R. R. Tolkien's fragmentary or unpublished stories called The Book Of Lost Tales. One of those is The Cottage of Lost Play. The basic storyline is that a traveler named Eriol comes to a fairy land by ship. He wanders to the center of a great island and weary, looks for shelter for the night in a small cottage in the village at the center of the island. The name of the house is Mar Vanwa Tyalieva or the Cottage of Lost Play. Lindo and Vaire are his hosts. With them are many of their kin as well as friends and children of many ages. Eriol hears a summoning gong. Vaire calls the room to which they go the "Hall of Play Regained" (p. 15). It is where tales are told and is filled with children and people of all ages: " In one thing only were all alike, that a look of great happiness lit with a merry expectation of further mirth and joy lay on every face." (p. 15).

The city in which Eriol has found this house is called Koromas or Kortiriion sometimes also called Gar Lossion (place of flowers). Lindo explains, "those that speak of it with love call it the Citadel of the Island, or of the World itself. More reason is there thereto than even great love, for all the island looks to the dwellers here for wisdom and leadership, for song and lore; and here in a great korin of elms dwells Meril-i-Turinqi." (p. 16). He explains that a korin is a circular hedge which could be of stone or thorn or trees. Meril is descendant of the king of the Eldar when they lived in Kor. Later a great tower was built in Loromas as a resting place for the folk.

Eriol may not drink of the liquid called limpe. Those who drink it must forever stay with the Eldar. He is taken to the "room of Logs" (p. 17). Here is a magic fire that encourages the telling of lore. Eriol asks Lindo and Vaire to tell of the origins of the place. They tell him that in the past when men were young there was a path called Olore Malle, the Path of Dreams by which human children could come to the cottage while they dreamed. Vaire says, "It was a lane of deep banks and great overhanging hedges, beyond which stood many tall trees wherein a perpetual whisper seemed to live; but not seldom great glow-worms crept about its grassy borders." (p. 18). The cottage is described as of pearl and gold and on one side is a thicket of white lilac. He says in that time it was called the cottage of Play or Sleep because in that younger time no play was lost but now it is the cottage of Lost Play. The Eldar allowed the children of the fathers of Men to come there out of pity and also to provide guidance. Care had to be taken that the children did not stray to Kor and become "enamoured of the glory of Valinor" (p. 19). Children who did this would never leave or if they wandered back become "strange and wild" (p. 19). Some children "climbed to the upper windows and gazed out, straining to see the far glimpses of the sea and the magic shores beyond the shadows and the trees." (p. 19). Vaire says that now no children come to that deserted cottage but she and Lindo took into their care the children who did not go back and the two of them built the cottage of Lost Play. Sometimes the children in their keeping go out to the land of Men and comfort the human children. Eriol said that one of his family told tales of this which were handed down. He speculates that men who have been to the fairy land in their dreams are always restless. Lindo and Vaire think many of them become poets.

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