As I said in Morgoth’s Ring (1993): ‘Thus he bowed to necessity, but it was a grief to him’.
I believe that the explanation of his abandonment of ‘the Last Version’ is to be found in the extracts of correspondence given above. In the first place, there are his words in his letter to Stanley Unwin of 24 February 1950. He announced firmly that The Lord of the Rings was finished: ‘after Christmas this goal was reached at last.’ And he said: ‘For me the chief thing is that I feel that the whole matter is now “exorcized”, and rides me no more. I can turn now to other things …’
In the second place, there is an essential date. The page of the manuscript of the Last Version of Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin, carrying notes of elements in the story that were never reached in that text (p.202), was a page of an engagement calendar for September 1951; and other pages from this calendar were used for rewriting passages.
In the Foreword to Morgoth’s Ring I wrote:
But little of all the work begun at that time was completed. The new Lay of Leithian, the new tale of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin, the Grey Annals (of Beleriand), the revision of the Quenta Silmarillion, were all abandoned. I have little doubt that despair of publication, at least in the form that he regarded as essential, was the prime cause.
As he said in the letter to Rayner Unwin of 22 June 1952 cited above: ‘As for The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, they are where they were. I have been off and on been too unwell, and too burdened to do much about them, and too downhearted.’
It remains therefore to look back at what we do possess of this last story, which never became ‘the Fall of Gondolin’, but is nevertheless unique among the evocations of Middle-earth in the Elder Days, most especially perhaps in my father’s intense awareness of the detail, of the atmosphere, of successive scenes. Reading his account of the coming to Tuor of the God Ulmo, Lord of Waters, of his appearance and of his ‘standing knee-deep in the shadowy sea’, one may wonder what descriptions there might have been of the colossal encounters in the battle for Gondolin.
As it stands – and stops – it is the story of a journey – a journey on an extraordinary mission, conceived and ordained by one of the greatest of the Valar, and expressly imposed upon Tuor, of a great house of Men, to whom the God ultimately appears at the ocean’s edge in the midst of a vast storm. That extraordinary mission is to have a yet more extraordinary outcome, that would change the history of the imagined world.
The profound importance of the journey presses down upon Tuor and Voronwë, the Noldorin Elf who becomes his companion, at every step, and my father felt their growing deadly weariness, in the Fell Winter of that year, as if he himself had in dreams trudged from Vinyamar to Gondolin in hunger and exhaustion, and the fear of Orcs, in the last years of the Elder Days in Middle-earth.
The story of Gondolin has now been repeated from its origin in 1916 to this final but strangely abandoned version of some thirty-five years later. In what follows I will usually refer to the original story as ‘the Lost Tale’, or for brevity simply as ‘the Tale’, and the abandoned text as ‘the Last Version’, or abbreviated ‘LV’. Of these two widely separated texts this may be said at once. It seems unquestionable either that my father had the manuscript of the Lost Tale in front of him, or at any rate that he had been reading it not long before, when he wrote the Last Version. This conclusion derives from the very close similarity or even near identity of passages here and there in either text. To cite a single example:
(The Lost Tale p.40)
Then Tuor found himself in a rugged country bare of trees, and swept by a wind coming from the set of the sun, and all the shrubs and bushes leaned to the dawn because of the prevalence of that wind.
(The Last Version p.158)
[Tuor] wandered still for some days in a rugged country bare of trees; and it was swept by a wind from the sea, and all that grew there, herb or bush, leaned ever to the dawn because of the prevalence of that wind from the West.
All the more interesting is it to compare the two texts, in so far as they are comparable, and observe how essential features of the old story are retained but transformed in their significance, while wholly new elements and dimensions have entered.
In the Tale Tuor announces his name and lineage thus (p.54):
I am Tuor son of Peleg son of Indor of the house of the Swan of the sons of the Men of the North who live far hence.
It was also said of him in the Tale (p.41) that when he made a dwelling for himself in the cove of Falasquil on the coast of the ocean he adorned it with many carvings, ‘and ever among them was the Swan the chief, for Tuor loved this emblem and it became the sign of himself, his kindred and folk thereafter.’ Moreover, again in the Tale, it was said of him (p.60) that when in Gondolin a suit of armour was made for Tuor ‘his helm was adorned with a device of metals and jewels like to two swan-wings, one on either side, and a swan’s wing was wrought on his shield.’
And again, at the time of the attack on Gondolin, all the warriors of Tuor who stood around him ‘wore wings as it were of swans or gulls upon their helms, and the emblem of the White Wing was upon their shields’ (p.73); they were ‘the folk of the Wing’.
Already in the Sketch of the Mythology, however, Tuor had been drawn into the evolving Silmarillion. The house of the Swan of the Men of the North had disappeared. He had become a member of the House of Hador, the son of Huor who was killed in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears and the cousin of Túrin Turambar. Yet the association of Tuor with the Swan and the Swan’s wing was by no means lost in this transformation. It was said in the Last Version (p.160):
Now Tuor loved swans, which he knew on the grey pools of Mithrim; and the swan moreover had been the token of Annael and his foster-folk [for Annael see the Last Version here].
Then in Vinyamar, the ancient house of Turgon before the discovery of Gondolin, the shield that Tuor found bore upon it the emblem of a white swan’s wing, and he said: ‘By this token I will take these arms unto myself, and upon myself whatsoever doom they bear’ (LV p.162).
The original Tale opened (p.37) with no more than a very slight introduction concerning Tuor, ‘who dwelt in very ancient days in that land of the North called Dor-lómin or the Land of Shadows.’ He lived alone, a hunter in the lands about Lake Mithrim, singing the songs that he made and playing on his harp; and he became acquainted with ‘the wandering Noldoli’, from whom he learned greatly and not least much of their language.
But ‘it is said that magic and destiny led him on a day to a cavernous opening down which a hidden river flowed from Mithrim’, and Tuor entered in. This, it is said, ‘was the will of Ulmo Lord of Waters at whose prompting the Noldoli had made that hidden way.’
When Tuor was unable against the strength of the river to retreat from the cavern the Noldoli came and guided him along dark passages amid the mountains until he came out in the light once more.
In the Sketch of 1926, where as noted above Tuor’s lineage as a descendant of the house of Hador emerged, it is told (pp.122–3) that after the death of Rían his mother he became a slave of the faithless men whom Morgoth drove into Hithlum after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears; but he escaped from them, and Ulmo contrived that he should be led to a subterranean river-course leading out of Mithrim into a chasmed river that flowed at last into the Western Sea. In the Quenta of 1930 (pp.134–5) this account was closely followed, and in both texts the only significance in the story that is ascribed to it is the secrecy that it afforded to Tuor’s escape, totally unknown to any spy of Morgoth. But both these texts were of their nature largely condensed.
Returning to the Tale, Tuor’s passage of the river-chasm was told at length, to the point where the incoming tide met the river flowing down swiftly from Lake Mithrim in frightening tumult to one standing in the path: ‘but the Ainur [Valar] put it into his heart to climb from the gully when he did, or had he been whelmed in the incoming tide’ (p.40). It seems that the guiding Noldoli left Tuor when he came out
of the dark cavern: ‘[The Noldoli] guided him along dark passages amid the mountains until he came out in the light once more’ (p.38).
Leaving the river and standing above its ravine Tuor for the first time set his eyes upon the sea. Finding in the coast a sheltered cove (which came to be called Falasquil) he built there a dwelling of timber floated down the river to him by the Noldoli (on the Swan amid the carvings of his dwelling see here above). In Falasquil he ‘passed a very great while’ (Tale p.41) until he wearied of his loneliness, and here again the Ainur are said to bear a part (‘for Ulmo loved Tuor’, Tale p.41); he left Falasquil and followed a flight of three swans passing southward down the coast and plainly leading him. His great journey through winter to spring is described, until he reached the Sirion. Thence he went further until he reached the Land of Willows (Nan-tathrin, Tasarinan), where the butterflies and the bees, the flowers and the singing birds enthralled him, and he gave names to them, and lingered there through spring and summer (Tale pp.44–5).
The accounts in the Sketch and the Quenta are extremely brief, as is to be expected. In the Sketch (p.123) it is said of Tuor only that ‘after long wanderings down the western shores he came to the mouths of Sirion, and there fell in with the Gnome Bronweg [Voronwë] who had once been in Gondolin. They journey secretly up Sirion together. Tuor lingers long in the sweet land Nan-tathrin “Valley of Willows”.’ The passage in the Quenta (p.135–6) is in content essentially the same. The Gnome, spelled Bronwë, is now said to have escaped from Angband, and ‘being of old of the people of Turgon sought ever to find the path to the hidden places of his lord’, and so he and Tuor went up Sirion and came to the Land of Willows.
It is curious that in these texts the entry of Voronwë into the narrative takes place before the coming of Tuor to the Land of Willows: for in the primary source, the Tale, Voronwë had appeared much later, under wholly different circumstances, after the appearance of Ulmo. In the Tale (p.45) Tuor’s long rapture in Nan-tathrin led Ulmo to fear that he would never leave it; and in his instruction to Tuor he said that the Noldoli would escort him secretly to the city of the people named Gondothlim or ‘dwellers in stone’ (this being the first reference to Gondolin in the Tale: in both the Sketch and the Quenta some account of the hidden city is given before there is any mention of Tuor). In the event, according to the Tale (p.48), the Noldoli guiding Tuor on his eastbound journey deserted him out of fear of Melko, and he became lost. But one of the Elves came back to him, and offered to accompany him in his search for Gondolin, of which this Noldo had heard rumour, but nothing else. He was Voronwë.
Advancing now through many years we come to the Last Version (LV), and what is told of Tuor’s youth. Neither in the Sketch nor the Quenta is there any reference to Tuor’s fostering by the Grey-elves of Hithlum, but in this final version there enters an extensive account (pp.145–9). This tells of his upbringing among the Elves under Annael, of their oppressed lives and southward flight by the secret way known as Annon-in-Gelydh ‘the Gate of the Noldor, for it was made by the skill of that people long ago in the days of Turgon’. There is here also an account of Tuor’s slavery and his escape, with the years following as a much feared outlaw.
The most significant development in all this arises from Tuor’s determination to flee the land. Following what he had learned from Annael he sought far and wide for the Gate of the Noldor, and the mysterious hidden kingdom of Turgon (LV p.149). This was Tuor’s express aim; but he did not know what that ‘Gate’ might be. He came to the spring of a stream that rose in the hills of Mithrim, and it was here that he made his final decision to depart from Hithlum ‘the grey land of my kin’, though his search for the Gate of the Noldor had failed. He followed the stream down until he came to a rock wall where it disappeared in ‘an opening like a great arch’. There he sat in despair through the night, until at sunrise he saw two Elves climbing up from the arch.
They were Noldorin Elves named Gelmir and Arminas, engaged on an urgent errand which they did not define. From them he learned that the great arch was indeed the Gate of the Noldor, and all unknowing he had found it. Taking the place of the Noldoli who guided him in the old Tale (p.38), Gelmir and Arminas guided him through the tunnel to a place where they halted, and he questioned them about Turgon, saying that that name strangely moved him whenever he heard it. To this they gave him no reply, but bade him farewell and went back up the long stairs in the darkness (p.155).
The Last Version introduced little alteration to the narrative of the Tale in the account of Tuor’s journey, after he had emerged from the tunnel, down the steep-sided ravine. It is notable, however, that whereas in the Tale (p.40) ‘the Ainur put it into his heart to climb from the gully when he did, or had he been whelmed in the incoming tide’, in LV (pp.157–8) he climbed up because he wished to follow the three great gulls, and he ‘was saved by the call of the sea-birds from death in the rising tide’. The sea-cove named Falasquil (Tale p.41) where Tuor built himself a dwelling and ‘passed a very great while’, ‘by slow labour’ adorning it with carvings, had disappeared in the Last Version.
In that text Tuor, dismayed by the fury of the strange waters (LV p.158), set off southwards from the ravine of the river, and passed into the borders of the region of Nevrast in the far west ‘where once Turgon had dwelt’; and at last he came at sunset to the shores of Middle-earth and saw the Great Sea. Here the Last Version departs radically from the history of Tuor as told hitherto.
Returning to the Tale, and the coming of Ulmo to meet Tuor in the Land of Willows (p.45), there enters my father’s original description of the appearance of the great Vala (Tale p.45). The Lord of all seas and rivers, he came to urge Tuor to tarry no longer in that place. This description is an elaborate and sharply defined picture of the god himself, come on a vast voyage across the ocean. He dwells in a ‘palace’ below the waters of the Outer Sea, he rides in his ‘car’, made in the fashion of a whale, at a stupendous speed. His hair and his great beard are observed, his mail ‘like the scales of blue and silver fishes’, his kirtle (coat) of ‘shimmering greens’, his girdle of great pearls, his shoes of stone. Leaving his ‘car’ at the mouth of the Sirion he strode up beside the great river, and ‘he sat among the reeds at twilight’ near the place where Tuor ‘stood knee-deep in the grass’; he played upon his strange instrument of music, which was ‘made of many long twisted shells pierced with holes’ (Tale pp.45–6).
Perhaps most notable of all the characters of Ulmo was the fathomless depth of his eyes and his voice when he spoke to Tuor, filling him with fear. Leaving the Land of Willows Tuor, escorted secretly by Noldoli, must seek out the city of the Gondothlim (see here above). In the Tale (p.46) Ulmo said ‘Words I will set to your mouth there, and there you shall abide awhile.’ Of what his words to Turgon would be there is in this version no indication – but it is said that Ulmo spoke to Tuor ‘some of his design and desire’, which he scarcely understood. Ulmo uttered also an extraordinary prophecy concerning Tuor’s child to be, ‘than whom no man shall know more of the uttermost deeps, be it of the sea or of the firmament of heaven.’ That child was Eärendel.
*
In the Sketch of 1926, on the other hand, there is a clear statement (p.123) of Ulmo’s purpose that Tuor is to assert in Gondolin: in brief, Turgon must prepare for a terrible battle with Morgoth, in which ‘the race of Orcs will perish’; but if Turgon will not accept this, then the people of Gondolin must flee their city and go to the mouth of Sirion, where Ulmo ‘will aid them to build a fleet and guide them back to Valinor’. In the Quenta Noldorinwa of 1930 (p.137) the prospects held out by Ulmo are essentially the same, though the outcome of such a battle, ‘a terrible and mortal strife’, is presented as the breaking of Morgoth’s power and much else, ‘whereof the greatest good should come into the world, and the servants of Morgoth trouble it no more’.
It is convenient at this point to turn to the important manuscript of the later 1930s entitled Quenta Silmarillion. This was to be a n
ew prose version of the history of the Elder Days following the Quenta Noldorinwa of 1930; but it came to an abrupt end in 1937 with the advent of the ‘new story about hobbits’ (I have given an account of this strange history in Beren and Lúthien, pp.219–21).
From this work I append here passages that bear on the early history of Turgon, his discovery of Tumladen and the building of Gondolin, but which do not appear in the texts of The Fall of Gondolin.
It is told in the Quenta Silmarillion that Turgon, a leader of the Noldor who dared the terror of the Helkaraksë (the Grinding Ice) in the crossing to Middle-earth, dwelt in Nevrast. In this text occurs this passage:
On a time Turgon left Nevrast where he dwelt and went to visit Inglor his friend, and they journeyed southward along Sirion, being weary for a while of the northern mountains, and as they journeyed night came upon them beyond the Meres of Twilight beside the waters of Sirion, and they slept upon his banks beneath the summer stars. But Ulmo coming up the river laid a profound sleep upon them and heavy dreams; and the trouble of the dreams remained after they awoke, but neither said aught to the other, for their memory was not clear, and each deemed that Ulmo had sent a message to him alone. But unquiet was upon them ever after and doubt of what should befall, and they wandered often alone in unexplored country, seeking far and wide for places of hidden strength; for it seemed to each that he was bidden to prepare for a day of evil, and to establish a retreat, lest Morgoth should burst from Angband and overthrow the armies of the North.
The Fall of Gondolin Page 17
