All the King's Horses and All the King's Men... - Page 2
© Michael Martinez
Well, no one can argue much with "reasons of space". Many people waited more than 40 years to see what the real appendices to The Lord of the Rings might have looked like, thanks to the "reasons of space" which forced J.R.R. Tolkien to trim the material to perhaps one-half its original content. But the "reasons of space" have nonetheless left the entire "Quendi and Eldar" collection in a disheveled state. For, you see, yet another part of "Osanwe-kenta" was published in the July, 2000 Vinyar Tengwar (issue 41). The "Etymological notes on the Osanwe-kenta" were unknown to Carl Hostetter when he published "Osanwe-kenta" in the earlier issue of VT.
The full story thus looks something like this:
Around the year 1959, J.R.R. Tolkien put aside his labors on The Silmarillion to provide himself with a bit of history. In a television interview dated to the mid-1960s, Tolkien said of himself that he disliked history unless it was the history of words. Words tell you a great deal about the people who used them, and he liked delving into such matters. "Quendi and Eldar" is thus a digression into history through words. The words alone mean little unless they have an accompanying history, so Tolkien devised that history.
In studying the roots of the Elvish words for "people" (and related words), Tolkien discovered where the three kindreds came from, and from there he learned who the Elf-fathers were. Along the way he noted that the Elves of Cuivienen might have encountered some sort of proto-Orcs but not the real Orcs of the later wars, and he had to figure out just where the Orcs came from in order to understand why that should be.
But as he was documenting the history of language, its use and development, Tolkien could not help but digress from the digression to talk about language and how the Noldor studied it. They studied their own language and the Valarin (Valinorean) language, as well as the dialects of Quenya spoken by the Teleri of Alqualonde and the Vanyar. The Silmarillion notes that the Teleri's language changed during their sojourn on Tol Eressea, and it was no doubt this old tradition which (in part) inspired Tolkien to wander into the shadowy paths of Elvish linguistic history.
