The War of the Jewels by J. R. R. Tolkien Read Free Book Online Page B

forsaken Aman in rebellion, became subject to change undesigned in a measure beyond even that of the Sindar, and their own tongue in daily use swiftly became unlike the high tongue of Valinor. But the Noldor, being loremasters, retained that high tongue in lore, and ceased not to use it for noble purposes and to teach it to their children.
    Therefore the form of their speech in daily use came to be held as debased, and the Noldor would use either the High Tongue as a learned language, or else in daily business and in all matters that concerned all the Eldar of Beleriand in general they would use rather the tongue of that land. It is said that it was after the Third Battle, Dagor Aglareb, that the Noldor first began far and wide to take the Sindarin tongue, as they settled and established their realms in Beleriand.

    This restructuring and partial rewriting of the text does not change very substantially the ideas expressed in the earlier form of it: my father did not take up his pencilled note of projected alterations given on p. 24. The passage concerning Dairon and the Runes is omitted, but that had been introduced earlier in GA 2 ($31). It is now em-phasized that the Sindarin of Doriath was to some degree archaic, and
    'untouched' by Noldorin: this is not stated in GA 1, though it is said there that 'in Doriath the Sindarin tongue alone was spoken'. The acknowledgement by Fingolfin of Thingol's 'high-kingship' is retained (with the reservation 'save among the followers of Feanor's sons'), but there now appears the ban on the Noldorin tongue imposed by Thingol on his subjects when he learned of the Kinslaying at Alqualonde as one of the reasons for the abandonment of their own tongue by the Noldor. Noldorin is now said to have changed even more rapidly in Middle-earth after the Rising of the Sun than Sindarin, and this is associated with their rebellion in Aman (cf. the words in the pencilled comments at the end of the GA 1 text, p. 24: 'the Noldor brought a special curse of changefulness with them'); while the opinion coming to be held among the Noldor themselves that their spoken tongue was debased provides a further explanation of its abandonment.
    My father then (probably after no long interval) rejected the whole of this second text after the words 'and by the invention of many new words unknown to the Sindar' (p. 24) and replaced it as follows: But it came to pass ere long that the Exiles took up the tongue of Beleriand, as the language of daily use, and their ancient tongue was retained only as a high speech and a language of lore, especially in the houses of the Noldorin lords and among the wise. Now this change of speech was made for many reasons. First, the Noldor were fewer in number than the Sindar, and, save in Doriath [struck our later: and Gondolin],(9) the peoples soon became much mingled. Secondly, the Noldor learned the Sindarin tongue far more readily than the Sindar could learn the ancient speech; moreover, after the kinslaying became known, Thingol would hold no parley with any that spake in the tongue of the slayers at Alqualonde, and he forbade his folk to do so. Thus it was that the common speech of Beleriand after the Third Battle, Dagor Aglareb, was the speech of the Grey-elves, albeit somewhat enriched by words and devices drawn from Noldorin (save in Doriath where the language remained purer and less changed by time). [Struck out later: Only in Gondolin did the tongue of the Noldor remain in daily use until the end of that city; for it was early peopled by Turgon with Noldor only, from the North-west of the land, and was long hidden and cut off from all converse with others.(10) The following replacement passage was written in the margin:]

    but the Noldor preserved ever the High-speech of the West as a language of lore, and in that language they would still give names to mighty men or to places of renown. / But all the days of the Wars of Beleriand, [wellnigh >] more than six hundred years, were