Glǽmscrafu - Þus cwæð Ælfwine Wídlást

      ⸱	Þus cwæð Ælfwine Wídlást Éadwines sunu:	Thus spake Ælfwine the Fartravelled son of Éadwine:

      ⸱	Fela bið on Westwegum werum uncúðra,	There is many a thing in the west of the world unknown to men;
   ⸱   ⸱	wundra and wihta, wlitescéne land,	marvels and strange beings, a land lovely to look on,
     :	eardgeard ælfa and ésa bliss.	the dwelling place of the Elves and the bliss of the Gods.
      	Lýt ǽnig wát hwylc his langoð síe	Little doth any man know what longing
     :	þám þe eftsíðes eldo getwǽfeð.	is his whom old age cutteth off from return.

Commentary

Þus cwæð Ælfwine Wídlást – “Thus spake Ælfwine the Fartravelled” – was composed by J. R. R. Tolkien for his unfinished novel The Lost Road, and taken up in The Notion Club Papers. It is supposed to be a lost Old English poem of which one of the characters, Alboin Errol in The Lost Road, Alwin Arundel Lowdham in The Notion Club Papers, gets echoes in dream.

The text with its modern translation is found in The Lost Road, p. 44, and Sauron Defeated, p. 244.

The text is transcribed in tengwar or “letters of Fëanor”. Tolkien created two different adaptations of the general use of the Third Age to Old English, presented in Sauron Defeated pp. 318-327. We especially attempted here to emulate the mode of the so-called “Text I”. We made use of Måns Björkman Berg’s typeface Tengwar Eldamar. Open this mode in Glaemscribe

References

࿔ Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. The Lost Road and other writings: Language and Legend before The Lord of the Rings. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 1993. 455 p. (The History of Middle-earth; V). ISBN 0-261-10225-7.

࿔ Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel. Sauron Defeated – The End of the Third Age: The History of The Lord of the Rings, part four & The Notion Club Papers & The Drowning of Anadûnê. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 2002. 482 p. (The History of Middle-earth; IX). ISBN 0-261-10305-9.

The works of John Ronald Reuel and Christopher Tolkien are under the copyright of their authors and/or rights holders, including their publishers and the Tolkien Estate.
Quotations from other authors, editors and translators mentioned in the bibliography are under the copyright of their publishers, except for those whose copyright term has ended.