FOREWORD. The Quenta Silmarillion, with the Ainulindale, the Annals of Valinor, and the Annals of Beleriand, as they stood when my father began The Lord of the Rings at the end of 1937, were published six years ago in The Lost Road and Other Writings. That was the first great break in the continuous development of The Silmarillion from its origins in The Book of Lost Tales; but while one may indeed regret that matters fell out as they did just at that time, when the Quenta Silmarillion was in sight of the end, it was not in itself disastrous. Although, as will be seen in Part One of this book, a potentially destructive doubt had emerged before my father finished work on The Lord of the Rings, nonetheless in the years that immediately followed its completion he embarked on an ambitious remaking and en- largement of all the Matter of the Elder Days, without departure from the essentials of the original structure. The creative power and confidence of that time is unmistak- able. In July 1949, writing to the publishers on the subject of a sequel to Farmer Giles of Ham, he said that when he had finally achieved The Lord of the Rings 'the released spring may do something'; and in a letter to Stanley Unwin of February 1950, when, as he said, that goal had been reached at last, he wrote: 'For me the chief thing is that I feel that the whole matter is now "exorcized", and rides me no more. I can turn now to other things...' It is very significant also, I believe, that at that time he was deeply committed to the publication of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings 'in conjunction or in connexion' as a single work, 'one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings'. But little of all the work begun at that time was completed. The new Lay of Leithian, the new tale of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin, the Grey Annals (of Beleriand), the revision of the Quenta Silmarillion, were all abandoned. I have little doubt that despair of publication, at least in the form that he regarded as essential, was the prime cause. The negotiations with Collins to publish both works had collapsed. In June 1952 he wrote to Rayner Unwin: As for The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, they are where they were. The one finished (and the end revised), and the other still unfinished (or unrevised), and both gathering dust. I have been both off and on too unwell, and too burdened to do much about them, and too downhearted. Watching paper-shortages and costs mounting against me. But I have rather modified my views. Better something than nothing! Although to me all are one, and the 'Lord of the Rings' would be better far (and eased) as part of the whole, I would gladly consider the publication of any part of this stuff. Years are becoming precious... Thus he bowed to necessity, but it was a grief to him. This second break was destructive - in the sense, that The Silmarillion would never now be finally achieved. In the years that followed he was overwhelmed: the demands of his position in the University, and the necessity of moving house, led him to declare that the preparation of The Lord of the Rings for publication, which should have been 'a labour of delight', had been 'transformed into a nightmare'. Publication was followed by a huge correspondence of discussion, explanation, and analysis, of which the examples retrieved and published in the volume of his letters provide abundant evidence. It seems not to have been until the end of the 1950s that he turned again seriously to the Silmarillion narrative (for which there was now an insistent demand). But it was too late. As will be seen in the latter part of this book, much had changed since (and, as I incline to think, in direct relation to) the publication of The Lord of the Rings and its immediate aftermath. Meditating long on the world that he had brought into being and was now in part unveiled, he had become absorbed in analytic speculation concerning its underlying postulates. Before he could prepare a new and final Silmarillion he must satisfy the requirements of a coherent theological and metaphysical system, rendered now more complex in its presentation by the supposition of obscure and conflicting elements in its roots and its tradition. Among the chief 'structural' conceptions of the mythology that he pondered in those years were the myth of Light; the nature of Aman; the immortality (and death) of the Elves; the mode of their reincarnation; the Fall of Men and the length of their early history; the origin of the Orcs; and above all, the power and significance of Melkor-Morgoth, which was en- larged to become the ground and source of the corruption of Arda. For this reason I have chosen Morgoth's Ring as the title of this book. It derives from a passage in my father's essay 'Notes on motives in the Silmarillion' (pp. 394 ff.), in which he contrasted the nature of Sauron's power, concentrated in the One Ring, with that of Morgoth, enormously greater, but dis- persed or disseminated into the very matter of Arda: 'the whole of Middle-earth was Morgoth's Ring'. Thus this book and (as I hope) its successor attempt to document two radically distinct 'phases': that following the completion of The Lord of the Rings, and that following its publication. For a number of reasons, however, I have found it more satisfactory in presentation to divide the material, not according to these two 'phases', but by separating the narrative into two parts. While this division is artificial, I have been able to include in this book a high proportion of all that my father wrote in the years after The Lord of the Rings was finished, both in narrative and discussion (to which must be added of course all the material in the volume of letters), concerning the Elder Days before the Hiding of Valinor. The next volume will contain, according to my intention, all or at any rate most of the original texts relating to the legends of Beleriand and the War of the Jewels, including the full text of the Grey Annals and a major narrative remaining unpublished and unknown, The Wanderings of Hurin. The publication of the texts in this book makes it possible to relate, if not at all points or in every detail, the first eleven chapters (with the exception of Chapter II 'Of Aule and Yavanna' and Chapter X 'Of the Sindar') of the published Silmarillion to their sources. This is not the purpose of the book, and I have not discussed the construction of the published text at large; I have presented the material in terms of its evolution from earlier forms, and in those parts that concern the revision and rewriting of the Quenta Silmarillion I have retained the paragraph numbers from the pre-Lord of the Rings text given in Volume V, so that comparison is made simple. But the (inevit- ably complex) documentation of the revised Quenta Silmaril- lion is intended to show clearly its very curious relationship to the Annals of Aman, which was a major consideration in the formation of the text in the first part of the published work. I am much indebted to Mr Charles Noad, who has once again undertaken the onerous task of reading the text in proof independently and checking all references and citations with scrupulous care, to its great improvement. I am very grateful for the following communications concern- ing Volume IX, Sauron Defeated. Mr John D. Rateliff has pointed out an entry in the diary of W. H. Lewis for 22 August 1946 (Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis, ed. C. S. Kilby and M. L. Mead, 1982, p. 194). In this entry Warnie Lewis recorded that at the Inklings meeting that evening my father read 'a magnificent myth which is to knit up and conclude his Papers of the Notions [sic] Club.' The myth is of course the Drowning of Anadune. I was present on this occasion but cannot recall it (in this connection see Sauron Defeated p. 389). Mr William Hicklin has explained why John Rashbold, the undergraduate member of the Notion Club who never speaks, should bear the second name Jethro. In the Old Testament Moses' father-in-law is named both Jethro and Reuel (Exodus 2:18 and 3:1); thus John Jethro Rashbold = John Reuel Tolkien (see Sauron Defeated pp. 151, 160). I was unable to explain the reference (pp. 277 - 8) to the retreat of the Danes from Porlock in Somerset to 'Broad Relic', but Miss Rhona Beare has pointed out that 'Broad Relic' and 'Steep Relic' are in fact names used in manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the islands of Flatholme and Steepholme at the mouth of the river Severn (see The Lost Road and Other Writings p. 80); according to Earle and Plummer, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (1892; II.128), 'The name "Relic" may point to some Irish religious settlements on these islands; "relicc" (= reliquiae) is the regular Irish name for a cemetery.' I take this opportunity to notice two important misprints that entered the text of Sauron Defeated at a late stage. The first is on p. 297, where line 45 of the poem Imram should read We sailed then on till all winds failed, etc. The second is on p. 475, where in Index II a line was dropped after the entry Pharazir; the following should be restored: Pillar of Heaven, The 238, 241-2,249,302,315,317,335,353. Lastly, I should mention that after the text of this book was in print I added a discussion of the significance of the star-names that appear on p. 160 to the head-note to the Index.