The Shaping of Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien

      Beren and Lúthien are here said to have lived, after Beren’s return, ‘in the woods of Doriath and in the Hunters’ Wold, west of Nargothrond’. The Land of the Dead that Live was placed in the Hunters’ Wold (Hills of the Hunters) in the Lay of the Children of Húrin; see III. 89, where the previous history of its placing is given.

      That Beren and Húrin were friends and fellows-in-arms is stated in the Lay of the Children of Húrin, and earlier (see III. 25), but it has not been said before that this relationship arose during the time of Beren’s outlawry.

      For the use of ‘Shadowy Mountains’ to mean the Mountains of Terror see III. 170–1.

      In the rewritten passage (pp. 25–6) the story is seen at an earlier stage than that in the ‘Synopsis II’ for Cantos VI and VII of the Lay of Leithian (1928), the text of which is given in III. 221, 233. Celegorm has been displaced by Felagoth (not yet Felagund); but Celegorm ‘discovered what was the secret mission of Felagoth and Beren’ after their departure from Nargothrond, and thus the element of the intervention of Celegorm and Curufin, turning the Elves of Nargothrond against their king, was not yet present. Moreover in the northward journey of Beren and his companions from Nargothrond there is a battle with Orcs, from which only a small band of the Elves escapes, afterwards returning to the battlefield to despoil the dead and disguise themselves as Orcs. These two elements are clearly interconnected: Celegorm (and Curufin) do not know why Beren and Felagoth are setting out, and thus there is no reason why the king should not set out with a strong force. When my father wrote ‘Synopsis II’ he had brought in the element of the intervention of the Fëanorian brothers against Felagund and Beren, and with it the small band that was all they had as companions from their first departure from Nargothrond.

      The sequence is thus clearly: S – Synopsis I – interpolation in S – Synopsis II; and in the revision of S here we have an interesting stage in which Felagund (Felagoth) has emerged as the lord of Nargothrond, but the ‘Fëanorian intervention’ has not, and Celegorm still ‘offers redress’ to Lúthien, as he did in Synopsis I (III. 244) – for his dog Huan had hurt her.

11

      The earliest form of this part of the story (apart from that which relates to Húrin) is extant only in the compressed outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale. In my comparison of those early outlines with the narrative of The Silmarillion I noted (I. 242) as essential features of the story that were to survive:

       – A mighty battle called the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is fought between Elves and Men and the hosts of Melko;

       – Treachery of Men, corrupted by Melko, at that battle;

       – But the people of Úrin (Húrin) are faithful, and do not survive it;

       – The leader of the Gnomes is isolated and slain;

       – Turgon and his host cut their way out, and go to Gondolin;

       – Melko is wrathful because he cannot discover where Turgon has gone;

       – The Fëanorians come late to the battle;

       – A great cairn is piled.

      There is no evidence for any narrative of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears in its own right between the outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale and the ‘Sketch’; thus §11 in S shows at a step a very great advance. This is not however to be regarded as a direct evolution from the outlines, for many elements – such as the stories of Beren and Tinúviel, and of Nargothrond – had been developed ‘collaterally’ in the meantime. As S was originally written in §11, the old ‘pre-Felagund’ story was present (‘Curufin and Celegorm despatch a host from Nargothrond’, see commentary on §10), and although the failure of the Union of Maidros to gather together all the Elves of Beleriand into a united force already appears, the alignments were for this reason quite different: the Gnomes of Nargothrond (ruled by Celegorm and Curufin) will not serve under Finweg (Fingon). But with the rewriting of S, made after the emergence of the Felagund-story, an essential element of the later narrative comes into being: Orodreth will not join the league on account of Felagund his brother (cf. The Silmarillion p. 188: ‘Orodreth would not march forth at the word of any son of Fëanor, because of the deeds of Celegorm and Curufin.’) That Thingol sent few (emended from none) out of Doriath is a very old element, appearing already in the Tale of Turambar (II. 73), where Tinwelint said to Mavwin, in words echoed in the present passage of S:

      not for love nor for fear of Melko but of the wisdom of my heart and the fate of the Valar did I not go with my folk to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, who am now become a safety and a refuge …

      A new factor in Thingol’s policy now appears, however, in that he resented the ‘haughty words’ addressed to him by Maidros, demanding the return of the Silmaril – those ‘haughty words’ and their effect on the Union of Maidros survived into The Silmarillion (p. 189). That Thingol here allows ‘the Gnomes of Doriath’ to join the league is to be related to the statement in S §9: ‘Many Gnomes take service with Thingol and Melian’ (after the breaking of the Siege of Angband). (In the Tale of Tinúviel there were Noldoli in Tinwelint’s service: it was they indeed who built the bridge before his doors. II. 9, 43.)

      As S was rewritten, the division of the opponents of Morgoth into two hosts was due to the refusal of the Fëanorians to be led by Finweg (Fingon), whereas in The Silmarillion account there was good agreement between Himring and Eithel Sirion, and the assault from East and West of the Fëanorians and the Noldor of Hithlum a matter of strategy (‘they thought to take the might of Morgoth as between anvil and hammer, and break it to pieces’).

      The Battle of Unnumbered Tears is still in S in a simple form, but the advance of the Elves of Hithlum into Dor-na-Fauglith in pursuit of a defeated Orc-army, so that they fall prey to much greater hosts loosed from Angband, moves towards the plan of the later narrative; the late arrival of the Fëanorians goes back to an outline for Gilfanon’s Tale (see above). No detail is given in S concerning the treachery of Men at the battle, nor is any reason suggested for the late coming of the Eastern Noldor.

      Finweg (Fingon) had taken the place of Finwë (Nólemë) as the Gnomish king slain in the battle already in the Lay of the Children of Húrin (III. 86), and so the story of the Scarlet Heart, emblem of Turgon (I. 241, II. 172), had disappeared; in the second version of the Lay there is mention of his white banners … in blood beaten (III. 96). In S Turgon is a leader, with his brother Finweg (Fingon), of the Western Noldor from the outset, and was clearly conceived to be dwelling at this time in Hithlum (cf. the interpolation in §9: ‘Fingolfin’s sons Finweg and Turgon still hold out in the North’, i.e. after the ending of the Siege of Angband); and the discovery of the secret valley and the founding of Gondolin follows from the retreat from the disaster of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. The ‘sacrifice of Mablon the Ilkorin’ (I. 239, 241) has disappeared.

      The great mound of the slain on Dor-na-Fauglith, the first trace of which appears in an outline for Gilfanon’s Tale (I. 241, 243), had been described in the Lay of the Children of Húrin (III. 58–9), where Flinding said to Túrin as they passed by it in the moonlight:

      A! green that hill with grass fadeless

      where sleep the swords of seven kindreds …

      neath moon nor sun is it mounted ever

      by Man nor Elf; not Morgoth’s host

      ever dare for dread to delve therein.

      The story of Húrin at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears – his holding of the rearguard with his men while Turgon escaped southwards, his capture, defiance of Morgoth, and torture – had already been told in the Tale of Turambar (II. 70–1) and in the Lay of the Children of Húrin (see III. 23–4, 102). In all these sources Morgoth’s concern with Húrin, his attempts to seduce him, and his great rage when defied, arise from his desire to find Turgon; but the element is still of course lacking in S that Húrin had previously