The Lays of Beleriand. Christopher Tolkien

so later, in the Lay of Leithian, when Beren attempted to cut a second Silmaril from the Iron Crown (lines 4160–2)

       The dwarvish steel of cunning blade

       by treacherous smiths of Nogrod made

       snapped …

      The idea expressed in the Tale (II. 76) that Túrin was taken alive by Morgoth’s command ‘lest he cheat the doom that was devised for him’ reappears in the poem: lest he flee his fate (705).

      The rest of the story as told in the poem differs only in detail from that in the Tale. The survival of Beleg in the attack by Orcs and his swift recovery from his grievous wounds (II. 77), present in much changed circumstances in The Silmarillion (p. 206), is here made perhaps more comprehensible, in that Elves from Doriath, who were searching for Túrin (654–5), found Beleg and took him back to be healed by Melian in the Thousand Caves (727–31). In the account of Beleg’s meeting with Flinding in Taur-na-Fuin, led to him by his blue lamp, the poem is following the Tale very closely.^* My father’s painting of the scene (Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien no. 37) was almost certainly made a few years later, when the Elf lying under the tree was still called Flinding son of Fuilin (in the Tale bo-Dhuilin, earlier go-Dhuilin, son of Duilin; the patronymic prefix has in the poem (814, 900) reverted to the earlier form go-, see II. 119).

      In the Tale it is only said (II. 81) that Flinding was of the people of the Rodothlim ‘before the Orcs captured him’; from the poem (819–21) it seems that he was carried off, with many others, from Nargothrond, but this can scarcely be the meaning, since nought yet knew they [the Orcs] of Nargothrond (1578). The marginal note in B against these lines ‘Captured in battle at gates of Angband’ refers to the later story, first appearing in the 1930 ‘Silmarillion’.

      The poem follows the Tale in the detail of Flinding’s story to Beleg, except that in the poem he was recaptured by the Orcs in Taur-na-Fuin (846 ff.) and escaped again (crept from their clutches as a crawling worm, 879), whereas in the Tale he was not recaptured but ‘fled heedlessly’ (II. 79). The notable point in the Tale that Flinding ‘was overjoyed to have speech with a free Noldo’ reappears in the poem: Marvelling he heard / the ancient tongue of the Elves of Tûn. The detail of their encountering of the Orc-host is slightly different: in the Tale the Orcs had changed their path, in the poem it seems that Beleg and Flinding merely came more quickly than did the Orcs to the point where the Orc-road emerged from the edge of the forest. In the Tale it seems indeed that the Orcs had not left the forest when they encamped for the night: the eyes of the wolves ‘shone like points of red light among the trees’, and Beleg and Flinding laid Túrin down after his rescue ‘in the woods at no great distance from the camp’. The cup outcarven on the cold hillside of the poem (1036), where the Orcs made their bivouac, is the ‘bare dell’ of The Silmarillion.

In contrast to the Tale (see p. 26) Beleg is now frequently called Beleg the bowman, his great bow (not yet named) is fully described, and his unmatched skill as an archer (1071 ff.). There is also in the poem the feature of the arrow Dailir, unfailingly found and always unharmed (1080 ff.), until it broke when Beleg fell upon it while carrying Túrin (1189–92): of this there is never a mention later. The element of Beleg’s archery either arose from, or itself caused, the change in the story of the entry of Beleg and Flinding into the Orc-camp that now appears: in the Tale they merely ‘crept between the wolves at a point where there was a great gap between them’, whereas in the poem Beleg performed the feat of shooting seven wolves in the darkness, and only so was ‘a great gap opened’ (1097). But the words of the Tale, ‘as the luck of the Valar had it Túrin was lying nigh’, are echoed in

       till the Gods brought them

       and the craft and cunning of the keen huntsman

       to Túrin the tall where he tumbled lay

      (1130–2)

      The lifting and carrying of Túrin by the two Elves, referred to in the Tale as ‘a great feat’, ‘seeing that he was a Man and of greater stature than they’ (II. 80), is expanded in the poem (1156 ff.) into a comment on the stature of Men and Elves in the ancient time, which agrees with earlier statements on this topic (see I. 235, II. 142, 220). The notable lines

       though Men were of mould less mighty builded

       ere the earth’s goodness from the Elves they drew

      (1157–8)

      are to be related to the statements cited in II. 326: ‘As Men’s stature grows [the Elves’] diminishes’, and ‘ever as Men wax more powerful and numerous so the fairies fade and grow small and tenuous, filmy and transparent, but Men larger and more dense and gross’. The mention here (1164) of the ten races of Hithlum occurs nowhere else, and it is not clear whether it refers to all the peoples of Men and Elves who in one place or another in the Lost Tales are set in Hithlum, which as I have remarked ‘seems to have been in danger of having too many inhabitants’ (see II. 249, 251).

      The Tale has it that it was Beleg’s knife that had slipped from him as he crept into the camp; in the poem it is Flinding’s (1142 ff.). In the Tale Beleg returned to fetch his sword from the place where he had left it, since they could carry Túrin no further; in the poem they carried Túrin all the way up to the dark thicket in a dell whence they had set out (1110, 1202). The ‘whetting spell’ of Beleg over his (still unnamed) sword is an entirely new element (and without trace later); it arises in association with line 1141, No blade would bite on the bonds he wore. In style it is reminiscent of Lúthien’s ‘lengthening spell’ in Canto V of the Lay of Leithian; but of the names in the spell, of Ogbar, Gaurin, Rodrim, Saithnar, Nargil, Celeg Aithorn, there seems to be now no other trace.

      There now occurs in the poem the mysterious leering laugh (1224), to which it seems that the ghostly laughter of grim phantom in line 1286 refers, and which is mentioned again in the next part of the poem (1488–90). The narrative purpose of this is evidently to cause the covering of the lamp and to cause Beleg to work too quickly in the darkness at the cutting of the bonds. It may be also that the wounding of Beleg’s hand when he put it on the point of Dailir his arrow (1187) accounts for his clumsiness; for every aspect of this powerful scene had been pondered and refined.

      In the poem the great storm is introduced: first presaged in lines 1064 ff., when Beleg and Flinding were at the edge of the dell (as it is in The Silmarillion):

       Lo! black cloud-drifts

       surged up like smoke from the sable North,

       and the sheen was shrouded of the shivering moon;

       the wind came wailing from the woeful mountains,

       and the heath unhappy hissed and whispered

      and bursting at last after Beleg’s death (1301 ff.), to last all through the following day, during which Túrin and Flinding crouched on the hillside (1320, 1330–1). On account of the storm the Orcs were unable to find Túrin, and departed, as in The Silmarillion; in the Tale Flinding roused Túrin to flee as soon as the shouts of discovery were heard from the Orc-camp, and nothing more is said of the matter. But in the poem it is still, as in the Tale, the sudden uncovering of Flinding’s lamp as he fell back from Túrin’s assault that illumined Beleg’s face; in the last account that my father wrote of this episode he was undecided whether it was the cover falling off the lamp or a great flash of lightning that gave the light, and in the published work I chose the latter.

      There remain a few isolated points, mostly concerning names. In this part of the poem we meet for the first time:

      Nargothrond 821, 904;

      Taur-na-Fuin (for Taur Fuin of the Lost Tales) 766, 828; called also Deadly Nightshade 767, 837, 1317, and Forest of Night 896;