The Lay of Leithian original manuscript

Lars Christensen

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Nov 19, 1995, 3:00:00 AM11/19/95

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While reading the Lay of Leithian I dwelt for a while on a page which
gives a photographic copy of one of Tolkien's original manuscript pages
(lines 3994-4027 of the lay).

I looked a little at the letters. Turned the page upside down. Hmm, I am
glad I was not his secretary, I thought. I couldn't match a single word
to the typewritten text given on the opposite page.

What's the story about this? Is this English, and my reading of Tolkien's
handwriting is just exceptionally bad? Or did Tolkien write the lay in
another language? Quenya?

----

Lars Christensen
fl...@inet.uni-c.dk

John Osborne

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Nov 19, 1995, 3:00:00 AM11/19/95

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In article: <48mr7m$i...@news.uni-c.dk> fl...@inet.uni-c.dk (Lars

It is indeed written in English, but using the Tengwar (Feanorian)
rather than Roman alphabet to represent the letters. JRRT did this
quite often; just check out the fly-leaves of the volumes making up
LOTR, and use the charts in Appendix E to TROTK to decode them.

I must admit that I hadn't really _examined_ the facsimile until
you mentioned it, but it's interesting to note that the orthography
does not completely match that given in Appendix E. It looks to me
as if vowels are treated very differently in this early (1930-31)
version of the tengwar, sometimes appearing as a small symbol
(tehtar) above a carrier and sometimes as a full symbol itself. The
first line of the facsimile, 'So Luthien, so Luthien' shows this
quite well.

Have fun decoding :-)

Regards

John O
--
John Osborne jo...@kami.demon.co.uk
Alle kunst is umsonst wenn ein Engel in das zundloch prunst

Michael Richard SIMINSKI

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Nov 22, 1995, 3:00:00 AM11/22/95

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fl...@inet.uni-c.dk (Lars Christensen) writes:

>While reading the Lay of Leithian I dwelt for a while on a page which
>gives a photographic copy of one of Tolkien's original manuscript pages
>(lines 3994-4027 of the lay).
>
>I looked a little at the letters. Turned the page upside down. Hmm, I am
>glad I was not his secretary, I thought. I couldn't match a single word
>to the typewritten text given on the opposite page.
>
>What's the story about this? Is this English, and my reading of Tolkien's
>handwriting is just exceptionally bad? Or did Tolkien write the lay in
>another language? Quenya?

Normally when I compare the manuscripts that *were* written in English with
the corresponding printed text, I can match half the words at the very most.

However this particular page was not written in english. It used the elvish
letters, but the words were English. I thought it used Sindarin letters, but
upon closer inspection I realised that it was not so. Most of the vowels seem
to use a "carrier", except for some that look like they're just written in in
English. Strange. This might have been a rushed manuscript. I hope someone
learned in these matters explains this for us.