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VII.

THE EARLIEST ANNALS OF
BELERIAND.

As with the Annals of Valinor, these are the 'earliest' Annals
of Beleriand because they were followed by others, the last be-
ing called the Grey Annals, companion to the Annals of Aman
and belonging to the same time (p. 310). But unlike the Annals
of Aman, the Grey Annals were left unfinished at the end of
the story of Turin Turambar; and both as prose narrative and
still more as definitive history of the end of the Elder Days
from the time of The Lord of the Rings their abandonment is
grievous.
The earliest Annals of Beleriand ('AB') are themselves
found in two versions, which I shall call AB I and AB II. AB
I is a complete text to the end of the First Age; AB II is quite
brief, and though it begins as a fair copy of the much-emended
opening of I it soon becomes strongly divergent. In this chapter
I give both texts separately and in their entirety, and in what
follows I refer only to the earlier, AB I.
This is a good, clear manuscript, but the style suggests very
rapid composition. For much of its length the entries are in the
present tense and often staccato, even with such expressions as
'the Orcs got between them' (annal 172), though by subse-
quent small expansions and alterations here and there my fa-
ther slightly modified this character. I think that his primary
intention at this time was the consolidation of the historical
structure in its internal relations and chronology - the Annals
began, perhaps, in parallel with the Quenta as a convenient
way of driving abreast, and keeping track of, the different el-
ements in the ever more complex narrative web. Nonetheless
major new developments enter here.
The manuscript was fairly heavily emended, though much


less so towards the end, and from the nature of the changes,
largely concerned with dating, it has become a complicated
document. To present it in its original form, with all the later
changes recorded in notes, would make it quite unnecessarily
difficult to follow, and indeed would be scarcely possible,
since many alterations were made either at the time of writing
or in its immediate context. A later 'layer' of pencilled emen-
dation, very largely concerned with names, is easily separable.
The text given here, therefore, is that of the manuscript afier
all the earlier changes and additions (in ink) had been made
to it, and these are only recorded in the notes in certain cases.
The later pencilled alterations are fully registered.
That AB I is earlier than the comparable portion of AV is
easily shown. Thus in AB I, as in Q ($8), there is no mention