numerous letters that so many people, both in England and across the Water, share my interest in this almost forgotten history; but it is not yet universally recognized as an important branch of study. It has indeed no obvious practical use, and those who go in for it can hardly expect to be assisted.
Much information, necessary and unnecessary, will be found in the Prologue....
In the Second Edition of 1966 this Foreword was rejected in its entirety. On one of his copies of the First Edition my father wrote beside it: 'This Foreword I should wish very much in any case to cancel.
Confusing (as it does) real personal matters with the "machinery" of the Tale is a serious mistake.'(12)
NOTES.
1. On this passage see note 11.
2. On my father's conception at this time of the use in Middle-earth in the Third Age of Noldorin on the one hand, and of 'the language of the woodland Elves* on the other, see p. 36, $18, and commentary (pp. 65-6).
3. On this passage concerning the origin of the Common Speech see p. 63, $9.
4. In Appendix A (RK pp. 349 - 50) the length of time between the birth-dates of Eorl the Young and Theoden was 463 years.
5. My father was asserting, I think, that a language so base and narrow in thought and expression cannot remain a common tongue of widespread use; for from its very inadequacy it cannot resist change of form, and must become a mass of closed jargons, incomprehensible even to others of the same kind.
6. This passage concerning the Dwarves, absent in the original version of Appendix F, reappeared subsequently (p. 75), and was retained, a good deal altered, in the final form of that Appendix (RK p. 410).
7. My father deeply regretted that in the event his 'facsimiles' of the torn and burned pages from the Book of Mazarbul were not reproduced in The Lord of the Rings (see Letters nos.137, 139-40; but also pp. 298-9 in this book). They were finally published in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1979.
8. This is where the passage that concludes Appendix F in the published form first arose. See further pp. 76-7.
9. Nauglir: curiously, my father here returned to the form found in the Quenta of 1930, rather than using Naugrim, found in the Quenta Silmarillion and later (see V.273, 277; XI.209). As with those referred to in notes 6 and 8, this passage, absent in the original version of Appendix F, was reinstated and appears with little change in the published form (where the name is Naugrim).
10. Years later my father called this text a 'fragment' (see note 12). It ends at the foot of a page, the last words typed being 'since their birth', with 'in the deeps of time' added in pencil.
11. For passages from F' that reappeared in the course of the development see notes 6, 8 and 9. In this connection there is a curious and puzzling point arising from F'. In this text my father showed his intention to say something in the published work about the fiction of translation: that he had converted the 'true' languages of Men (and Hobbits) in the Third Age of Middle-earth, wholly alien to us, into an analogical structure composed of English in modern and ancestral form, and Norse ($$5-6, 8). Introducing this subject, he wrote ($4): 'It is said that Hobbits spoke a language, or languages, very similar to ours. But that must not be misunderstood. Their language was like ours in manner and spirit; but if the face of the world has changed greatly since those days, so also has every detail of speech ...'
One might wonder for a moment who said this of Hobbits, and why my father should introduce it only to warn against taking it literally; but it was of course he himself who said it, in the original version P 1 of the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits (VI.311, cited on p. 8): 'And yet plainly they must be relatives of ours ... For one thing, they spoke a very similar language (or languages), and liked or disliked much the same things as we used to.' This was repeated years later in the revision of the second text P 2
Much information, necessary and unnecessary, will be found in the Prologue....
In the Second Edition of 1966 this Foreword was rejected in its entirety. On one of his copies of the First Edition my father wrote beside it: 'This Foreword I should wish very much in any case to cancel.
Confusing (as it does) real personal matters with the "machinery" of the Tale is a serious mistake.'(12)
NOTES.
1. On this passage see note 11.
2. On my father's conception at this time of the use in Middle-earth in the Third Age of Noldorin on the one hand, and of 'the language of the woodland Elves* on the other, see p. 36, $18, and commentary (pp. 65-6).
3. On this passage concerning the origin of the Common Speech see p. 63, $9.
4. In Appendix A (RK pp. 349 - 50) the length of time between the birth-dates of Eorl the Young and Theoden was 463 years.
5. My father was asserting, I think, that a language so base and narrow in thought and expression cannot remain a common tongue of widespread use; for from its very inadequacy it cannot resist change of form, and must become a mass of closed jargons, incomprehensible even to others of the same kind.
6. This passage concerning the Dwarves, absent in the original version of Appendix F, reappeared subsequently (p. 75), and was retained, a good deal altered, in the final form of that Appendix (RK p. 410).
7. My father deeply regretted that in the event his 'facsimiles' of the torn and burned pages from the Book of Mazarbul were not reproduced in The Lord of the Rings (see Letters nos.137, 139-40; but also pp. 298-9 in this book). They were finally published in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1979.
8. This is where the passage that concludes Appendix F in the published form first arose. See further pp. 76-7.
9. Nauglir: curiously, my father here returned to the form found in the Quenta of 1930, rather than using Naugrim, found in the Quenta Silmarillion and later (see V.273, 277; XI.209). As with those referred to in notes 6 and 8, this passage, absent in the original version of Appendix F, was reinstated and appears with little change in the published form (where the name is Naugrim).
10. Years later my father called this text a 'fragment' (see note 12). It ends at the foot of a page, the last words typed being 'since their birth', with 'in the deeps of time' added in pencil.
11. For passages from F' that reappeared in the course of the development see notes 6, 8 and 9. In this connection there is a curious and puzzling point arising from F'. In this text my father showed his intention to say something in the published work about the fiction of translation: that he had converted the 'true' languages of Men (and Hobbits) in the Third Age of Middle-earth, wholly alien to us, into an analogical structure composed of English in modern and ancestral form, and Norse ($$5-6, 8). Introducing this subject, he wrote ($4): 'It is said that Hobbits spoke a language, or languages, very similar to ours. But that must not be misunderstood. Their language was like ours in manner and spirit; but if the face of the world has changed greatly since those days, so also has every detail of speech ...'
One might wonder for a moment who said this of Hobbits, and why my father should introduce it only to warn against taking it literally; but it was of course he himself who said it, in the original version P 1 of the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits (VI.311, cited on p. 8): 'And yet plainly they must be relatives of ours ... For one thing, they spoke a very similar language (or languages), and liked or disliked much the same things as we used to.' This was repeated years later in the revision of the second text P 2
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