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Memories of Fairy-Hill
| Author | |
|---|---|
| Approved Contributors | Nenaras |
Chronicle Summary
Memories of Fairy-Hill is a compilation of the works of Lathron of Lebennin, particularly those that concern the Elf Nenaras Neldion, in as close to their original form as possible with minimal scholarly intrusion.
Chronicle Content
The Laurelin Archives EBook of Memories of Fairy-Hill (https://laurelinarchives.org/node/63783), ed. and trans. by Cyril Dafydd.
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may read it and cite it under the terms of the Laurelin Archives License included with this eBook or online at www.laurelinarchives.org
Title: Memories of Fairy-Hill
Author: Lathron of Lebennin
Illustrator: Unknown
Translator: Cyril Dafydd
Release Date: October 6, 1978
Digitization Date: February 27, 2024
[EBook #957896]
Language: English
Digitization Note: Memories of Fairy-Hill has been digitized by the Laurelin Archives for reasons of historical, artistic, and/or cultural preservation. The original text was privately printed and limited to 500 copies for the Alberta Folklore Society in 1978 by English-Canadian folklorist Cyril Dafydd, who emigrated to Canada from Devon in 1959. The following preface by Dafydd opens the original text:
Before the world was greatly changed and it still resembled the familiar shape of the maps of the West-men and the other strange peoples that inhabited history alongside them, it is said there was a high hill in the valley between the rivers Sirith and Erui in the realm of Gondor, and on that high hill was a cottage upon which a fairy-net had been cast. The net remained upon that house even after it had become a tumbled ruin of stone and rotted timbers, fragrant with the spice of nearby Lossarnach, so that when wandering men – vagabonds and shepherds – stopped at the foot of the hill or near its ruined hut, they heard an echo of song or merry laughter, and saw in the fey lights that danced atop hill and ruin visions of an old man, stooped over pen and parchment, and a fair creature beside him, vital and gay. To those who saw these lights, the figures that shimmered within them seemed queer twins. Brothers divided in mind, body, and soul, but joined in discourse. One speaking or singing, quick as the rivers that ran to the Sea, and one listening or recording, silent and still as the stones of that ruined hill.
While hill, ruin, and fairy-lights have all been lost to history, some memories of that place still remain. Writings found in the ruins of that hill were preserved, and though the voices of these writings vary – some dry, some arch, some irreverent – all were cast in ink by a strong and steady hand: the hand of Lathron of Lebennin, Elf-friend, who was scribe to Gondor's Queen, Arwen Undómiel, in the early years of the reign of King Elessar, and who was famed in his day for the Prose Sanyalindalë. The present work, Memories of Fairy- Hill, compiles the writings and translations of Lathron of Lebennin, particularly those that concern the Elf Nenaras Neldion, who, real or false, preoccupied Lathron until his final days and who he claimed was the source or subject of many of these texts. In particular, this compilation seeks to give these texts in as close to their original form as possible and correct the linguistic and cultural decay that many of these texts have suffered in their transmission to modernity, being either mistranslated into misrecognition or transformed into the “fairy tales” of recent history.
It is the hope of this author that the Memories of Fairy-Hill may nourish what little of that history is left to us, so that it too is not withered by a time that marches to the drum-beat of a "long defeat".
Cyril Dafydd. 1978.
