Q: What Was In Bilbo’s 3 Translations From the Elvish Books?
ANSWER: In The Lord of the Rings Bilbo Baggins gives Frodo Baggins three books titled Translations from the Elvish just before Frodo leaves Rivendell to return to the Shire. According to the “Prologue”, these three volumes were included with Findegil’s second-generation copy of the Red Book of Westmarch, which copy was kept at Great Smials. According to the “Prologue”:
…These three volumes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which, between 1403 and 1418, he had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written. But since they were little used by Frodo, being almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days, no more is said of them here.
Most readers assume that these translations formed the core of the “Silmarillion” corpus; some readers go so far as to suggest that the three volumes represented “Lay of Leithian”, “Narn i Chin Hurin”, and one other story — “The Fall of Gondolin” being the most popular third choice.
In my opinion I don’t think Tolkien intended such a close identification between the three volumes and any three particular stories. Each volume might, conceivably, have had a major tale accompanied by secondary stories and commentaries, but this is all really left up to the reader’s imagination. What we can fairly certain of is that none of the translations would have referred to the time traveler Aelfwine, whom some readers feel Tolkien was trying to re-incorporate into the Silmarillion timeline. There is no trace of Aelfwine in The Lord of the Rings.
Interestingly, J.R.R. Tolkien actually seems to have wanted to publish several companion books. We know about his desire to see The Silmarillion published, but there may have been two other “companion” books on his mind at one time or another. In Letter No. 131, which he wrote to Collins editor Milton Waldman in late 1951, Tolkien listed several major stories that we think of as “constituent texts” for the “Silmarillion” cycle, but which also covered other periods: “Music of the Ainur”, “History of the Elves” (…”or the Silmarillion proper…”), “Story of Beren and Lúthien the Elfmaiden”, “Children of Húrin”, “Fall of Gondolin”, “Earendil the Wanderer”, “The Rings of Power”, “Downfall of Númenor”, and “Of Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel”. Except for the last story, which was published in The Lord of the Rings, all of these narratives were included in The Silmarillion. Tolkien concluded his letter by writing:
…If the other material, ‘The Silmarillion’ and some other tales or links such as The Downfall of Númenor are published or in process of this, then much explanation of background, and especially that found in the Council of Elrond (Bk II) could be dispensed with. But altogether it would hardly amount to the excision of a single long chapter (out of about 72).
The first “companion” book to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (2nd Edition) which saw print was The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. This book came about more by special request from Tolkien’s aged aunt Jane Neave rather than by his design, but thought is was comprised primarily of poems (many reused from earlier and unrelated activities), he nonetheless took the time to include some anecdotes and commentary that expanded the world of Middle-earth.
The second “companion” book was The Road Goes Ever On, which was inspired by composer Donald Swann, who had set several of Tolkien’s songs to music. Tolkien again included some notes and comments which further expanded the reader’s knowledge of Middle-earth. However, neither of these works provided much substantial information; readers would have to wait another 10 years for Christopher Tolkien’s Silmarillion and then another 3 years after that for Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth. It was in Unfinished Tales that Christopher suggested his father may have had something else in mind after The Silmarillion:
I judge these fragments [the ‘Cirion and Eorl’ essays] to belong to the same period as ‘The Disaster of the Gladden Fields’, when my father was greatly interested in the earlier history of Gondor and Rohan; they were doubtless intended to form parts of a substantial history, developing in detail the summary accounts given in Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings. The material is in the first stage of composition, very disordered, full of variants, breaking off into rapid jottings that are part illegible.
I suggested in my essay, “Middle-earth Revised, Again” that J.R.R. Tolkien may have been attempting to write a companion book that covered the Second and Third Ages in much detail and depth. This additional companion volume probably had no connection to Bilbo’s Translations from the Elvish — at least in the sense that I find it highly doubtful Tolkien would have had all these future essays (“Cirion and Eorl”, “Of Dwarves and Men”, “The Hunt for the Ring”, “Aldarion and Erendis”, et. al.) in mind at the time he was writing The Lord of the Rings. The tale would continue to grow long after it had supposedly been published.
It may be best, therefore, to keep in mind that Tolkien had a clear vision in his thoughts of a legendarium which demanded narration, but which through his hand and his expression continued to change and grow. He probably had no better idea of what those three volumes should have contained than we do now, even though our ideas may differ.
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