The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  35 The original reading was:

  Now the Mountains were on that side seven leagues save a mile from Gondolin, and Cristhorn the Cleft of Eagles another league of upward going from the beginning of the Mountains; wherefore they were now yet two leagues and part of a third from the pass, and very weary thereto.

  36 ‘Behold, his face shineth as a star in the waste’ was added to Tuor B.

  37 This passage, from ‘But after a year and more of wandering…’, replaced the original reading ‘But after a half-year’s wandering, nigh midsummer’. This emendation depends on the changing of the time of the attack on Gondolin from midwinter to the ‘Gates of Summer’ (see notes 26 and 34). Thus in the revised version summer is retained as the season when the exiles came to the lands about Sirion, but they spent a whole year and more, rather than a half-year, to reach them.

  38 ‘even where Tulkas’: original reading: ‘even where Noldorin and Tulkas’. See pp. 278–9.

  39 The original pencilled text of Tuor A had ‘Fair among the Lothlim grows Eärendel in Sornontur the house of Tuor’. The fourth letter of this name could as well be read as a u.

  Changes made to names in

  The Fall of Gondolin

  Ilfiniol < Elfriniol in the first three occurrences of the name in the initial linking passage, Ilfiniol so written at the fourth.

  (In The Cottage of Lost Play (I.15) the Gong-warden of Mar Vanwa Tyaliéva is named only Littleheart; in the Link to The Music of the Ainur his Elvish name is Ilverin < Elwenildo (1.46, 52); and in the Link to the Tale of Tinúviel he is Ilfiniol < Elfriniol as here, while the typescript has Ilfrin (p. 7).

  In the head-note to the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin he is Elfrith < Elfriniel, and this is the only place where the meaning of the name ‘Littleheart’ is explained (p. 148); the Name-list has an entry ‘Elf meaneth “heart” (as Elfin Elben): Elfrith is Littleheart’ (see 1.255, entry Ilverin). In another projected list of names, abandoned after only a couple of entries had been made, we meet again the form Elfrith, and also Elbenil > Elwenil.

  This constant changing of name is to be understood in relation to swiftly changing phonological ideas and formulations, but even so is rather extraordinary.)

  In the following notes it is to be understood, for brevity’s sake, that names in Tuor B (before emendation) are found in the same form in Tuor A; e.g. ‘Mithrim < Asgon in Tuor B’ implies that Tuor A has Asgon (unchanged).

  Tuor Although sometimes emended to Tûr in Tuor B, and invariably written Tûr in the typescript Tuor C, I give Tuor throughout; see p. 148.

  Dor Lómin This name was so written from the first in Tuor B. Tuor A has, at the first three occurrences, Aryador > Mathusdor; at the fourth, Aryador > Mathusdor > Dor Lómin.

  Mithrim < Asgon throughout Tuor B; Tuor C has Asgon unchanged. Glorfalc or Cris Ilbranteloth (p. 150) Tuor A has Glorfalc or Teld Quing Ilon; Tuor B as written had no Elvish names, Glorfalc or Cris Ilbranteloth being a later addition.

  Ainur As in the first draft of The Music of the Ainur (I.61) the original text of Tuor A had Ainu plural.

  Falasquil At both occurrences (p. 152) in Tuor A this replaces the original name now illegible but beginning with Q; in Tuor B my mother left blanks and added the name later in pencil; in Tuor C blanks are left in the typescript and not filled in.

  Arlisgion This name was added later to Tuor B.

  Orcs Tuor A and B had Orqui throughout; my father emended this in Tuor B to Orcs, but not consistently, and in the later part of the tale not at all. In one place only (p. 193, in Thorndor’s speech) both texts have Orcs (also Orc-bands p. 195). As with the name Tuor/Tûr I give throughout the form that was to prevail.

  At the only occurrence of the singular the word is written with a k in both Tuor A and B (‘Ork’s blood’, p. 165).

  Gar Thurion < Gar Furion in Tuor B (Gar Furion in Tuor C).

  Loth < Lôs in Tuor B (Lôs in Tuor C).

  Lothengriol < Lósengriol in Tuor B (Lósengriol in Tuor C).

  Taniquetil At the occurrence on p. 161 there was added in the original text of Tuor A: (Danigwiel), but this was struck out.

  Kôr Against this name (p. 161) is pencilled in Tuor B: Tûn. See I. 222, II.292.

  Gar Ainion < Gar Ainon in Tuor B (p. 164; at the occurrence on p. 186 not emended, but I read Gar Ainion in both places).

  Nost-na-Lothion
  Duilin At the first occurrence (p. 173) < Duliglin in the original text of Tuor A.

  Rog In Tuor A spelt Rôg in the earlier occurrences, Rog in the later; in Tuor B spelt Rôg throughout but mostly emended later to Rog.

  Dramborleg At the occurrence on p. 181 < Drambor in the original text of Tuor A.

  Bansil At the occurrence on p. 184 only, Bansil > Banthil in Tuor B.

  Cristhorn From the first occurrence on p. 189 written Cristhorn (not Cris Thorn) in Tuor A; Cris Thorn Tuor B throughout.

  Bad Uthwen < Bad Uswen in Tuor B. The original reading in Tuor A was (apparently) Bad Usbran.

  Sorontur < Ramandur in Tuor B.

  Bablon, Ninwi, Trui, Rûm The original text of Tuor A had Babylon, Nineveh, Troy, and (probably) Rome. These were changed to the forms given in the text, except Nineveh > Ninwë, changed to Ninwi in Tuor B.

  Commentary on

  The Fall of Gondolin

  § 1. The primary narrative

  As with the Tale of Turambar I break my commentary on this tale into sections. I refer frequently to the much later version (which extends only to the coming of Tuor and Voronwë to sight of Gondolin across the plain) printed in Unfinished Tales pp. 17–51 (‘Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin’); this I shall call here ‘the later Tuor’.

  (i) Tuor’s journey to the Sea and the visitation

  of Ulmo (pp. 149–56)

  In places the later Tuor (the abandonment of which is one of the saddest facts in the whole history of incompletion) is so close in wording to The Fall of Gondolin, written more than thirty years before, as to make it almost certain that my father had it in front of him, or at least had recently reread it. Striking examples from the late version (pp. 23–4) are: ‘The sun rose behind his back and set before his face, and where the water foamed among the boulders or rushed over sudden falls, at morning and evening rainbows were woven across the stream’ ‘Now he said: “It is a fay-voice,” now: “Nay, it is a small beast that is wailing in the waste”’ ‘[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’—which are very closely similar to or almost identical with passages in the tale (pp. 150–1). But the differences in the narrative are profound.

  Tuor’s origin is left vague in the old story. There is a reference in the Tale of Turambar (p. 88) to ‘those kindreds about the waters of Asgon whence after arose Tuor son of Peleg’, but here it is said that Tuor did not dwell with his people (who ‘wandered the forests and fells’) but ‘lived alone about that lake called Mithrim [< Asgon]’, on which he journeyed in a small boat with a prow made like the neck of a swan. There is indeed scarcely any linking reference to other events, and of course no trace of the Grey-elves of Hithlum who in the later story fostered him, or of his outlawry and hunting by the Easterlings; but there are ‘wandering Noldoli’ in Dor Lómin (Hisilómë, Hithlum)—on whom see p. 65—from whom Tuor learnt much, including their tongue, and it was they who guided him down the dark river-passage under the mountains. There is in this a premonition of Gelmir and Arminas, the Noldorin Elves who guided Tuor through the Gate of the Noldor (later Tuor pp. 21–2), and the story that the Noldoli ‘made that hidden way at the prompting of Ulmo’ survived in the much richer historical context of the later legend, where ‘the Gate of the Noldor…was made by the skill of that people, long ago in the days of Turgon’ (later Tuor p. 18).

  The later Tuor becomes very close to the old story for a time when Tuor e
merges out of the tunnel into the ravine (later called Cirith Ninniach, but still a name of Tuor’s own devising); many features recur, such as the stars shining in the ‘dark lane of sky above him’, the echoes of his harping (in the tale of course without the literary echoes of Morgoth’s cry and the voices of Fëanor’s host that landed there), his doubt concerning the mournful calling of the gulls, the narrowing of the ravine where the incoming tide (fierce because of the west wind) met the water of the river, and Tuor’s escape by climbing to the cliff-top (but in the tale the connection between Tuor’s curiosity concerning the gulls and the saving of his life is not made: he climbed the cliff in response to the prompting of the Ainur). Notable is the retention of the idea that Tuor was the first of Men to reach the Sea, standing on the cliff-top with outspread arms, and of his ‘sea-longing’ (later Tuor p. 25). But the story of his dwelling in the cove of Falasquil and his adornment of it with carvings (and of course the floating of timber down the river to him by the Noldoli of Dor Lómin) was abandoned; in the later legend Tuor finds on the coast ruins of the ancient harbour-works of the Noldor from the days of Turgon’s lordship in Nevrast, and of Turgon’s former dwelling in these regions before he went to Gondolin there is in the old story no trace. Thus the entire Vinyamar episode is absent from it, and despite the frequent reminder that Ulmo was guiding Tuor as the instrument of his designs, the essential element in the later legend of the arms left for him by Turgon on Ulmo’s instruction (The Silmarillion pp. 126, 238–9) is lacking.

  The southward-flying swans (seven, not three, in the later Tuor) play essentially the same part in both narratives, drawing Tuor to continue his journey; but the emblem of the Swan was afterwards given a different origin, as ‘the token of Annael and his foster-folk’, the Grey-elves of Mithrim (later Tuor p. 25).

  Both in the route taken (for the geography see p. 217) and in the seasons of the year my father afterwards departed largely from the original story of Tuor’s journey to Gondolin. In the later Tuor it was the Fell Winter after the fall of Nargothrond, the winter of Túrin’s return to Hithlum, when he and Voronwë journeyed in snow and bitter cold eastwards beneath the Mountains of Shadow. Here the journey takes far longer: he left Falasquil in ‘the latest days of summer’ (as still in the later Tuor) but he went down all the coast of Beleriand to the mouths of Sirion, and it was the summer of the following year when he lingered in the Land of Willows. (Doubtless the geography was less definite than it afterwards became, but its general resemblance to the later map seems assured by the description (p. 153) of the coast’s trending after a time eastwards rather than southwards.)

  Only in its place in the narrative structure is there resemblance between Ulmo’s visitation of Tuor in the Land of Willows in a summer twilight and his tremendous epiphany out of the rising storm on the coast at Vinyamar. It is however most remarkable that the old vision of the Land of Willows and its drowsy beauty of river-flowers and butterflies was not lost, though afterwards it was Voronwë, not Tuor, who wandered there, devising names, and who stood enchanted ‘knee-deep in the grass’ (p. 155; later Tuor p. 35), until his fate, or Ulmo Lord of Waters, carried him down to the Sea. Possibly there is a faint reminiscence of the old story in Ulmo’s words (later Tuor p. 28): ‘Haste thou must learn, and the pleasant road that I designed for thee must be changed.’

  In the tale, Ulmo’s speech to Tuor (or at least that part of it that is reported) is far more simple and brief, and there is no suggestion there of Ulmo’s ‘opposing the will of his brethren, the Lords of the West’ but two essential elements of his later message are present, that Tuor will find the words to speak when he stands before Turgon, and the reference to Tuor’s unborn son (in the later Tuor much less explicit: ‘But it is not for thy valour only that I send thee, but to bring into the world a hope beyond thy sight, and a light that shall pierce the darkness’).

  (ii) The journey of Tuor and Voronwë to Gondolin (pp. 156–8)

  Of Tuor’s journey to Gondolin, apart from his sojourn in the Land of Willows, little is told in the tale, and Voronwë only appears late in its course as the one Noldo who was not too fearful to accompany him further; of Voronwë’s history as afterwards related there is no word, and he is not an Elf of Gondolin.

  It is notable that the Noldoli who guided Tuor northwards from the Land of Willows call themselves thralls of Melko. On this matter the Tales present a consistent picture. It is said in the Tale of Tinúviel (p. 9) that

  all the Eldar both those who remained in the dark or who had been lost upon the march from Palisor and those Noldoli too who fared back into the world after [Melko] seeking their stolen treasury fell beneath his power as thralls.

  In The Fall of Gondolin it is said that the Noldoli did their service to Ulmo in secret, and ‘out of fear of Melko wavered much’ (p. 154), and Voronwë spoke to Tuor of ‘the weariness of thraldom’ (pp. 156–7); Melko sent out his army of spies ‘to search out the dwelling of the Noldoli that had escaped his thraldom’ (p. 166). These ‘thrall-Noldoli’ are represented as moving as it were freely about the lands, even to the mouths of Sirion, but they ‘wandered as in a dream of fear, doing [Melko’s] ill bidding, for the spell of bottomless dread was on them and they felt the eyes of Melko burn them from afar’ (Tale of Turambar, p. 77). This expression is often used: Voronwë rejoiced in Gondolin that he no longer dreaded Melko with ‘a binding terror’—‘and of a sooth that spell which Melko held over the Noldoli was one of bottomless dread, so that he seemed ever nigh them even were they far from the Hells of Iron, and their hearts quaked and they fled not even when they could’ (p. 159). The spell of bottomless dread was laid too on Meglin (p. 169).

  There is little in all this that cannot be brought more or less into harmony with the later narratives, and indeed one may hear an echo in the words of The Silmarillion (p. 156):

  But ever the Noldor feared most the treachery of those of their own kin, who had been thralls in Angband; for Morgoth used some of these for his evil purposes, and feigning to give them liberty sent them abroad, but their wills were chained to his, and they strayed only to come back to him again.

  Nonetheless one gains the impression that at that time my father pictured the power of Melko when at its height as operating more diffusedly and intangibly, and perhaps also more universally, in the Great Lands. Whereas in The Silmarillion the Noldor who are not free are prisoners in Angband (whence a few may escape, and others with enslaved wills may be sent out), here all save the Gondothlim are ‘thralls’, controlled by Melko from afar, and Melko asserts that the Noldoli are all, by their very existence in the Great Lands, his slaves by right. It is a difference difficult to define, but that there is a difference may be seen in the improbability, for the later story, of Tuor being guided on his way to Gondolin by Noldor who were in any sense slaves of Morgoth.

  The entrance to Gondolin has some general similarity to the far fuller and more precisely visualised account in the later Tuor: a deep rivergorge, tangled bushes, a cave-mouth—but the river is certainly Sirion (see the passage at the end of the tale, p. 195, where the exiles come back to the entrance), and the entrance to the secret way is in one of the steep river banks, quite unlike the description of the Dry River whose ancient bed was itself the secret way (later Tuor pp. 43–4). The long tunnel which Tuor and Voronwë traverse in the tale leads them at length not only to the Guard but also to sunlight, and they are ‘at the foot of steep hills’ and can see the city: in other words there is a simple conception of a plain, a ring-wall of mountains, and a tunnel through them leading to the outer world. In the later Tuor the approach to the city is much stranger: for the tunnel of the Guard leads to the ravine of Orfalch Echor, a great rift from top to bottom of the Encircling Mountains (‘sheer as if axe-cloven’, p. 46), up which the road climbed through the successive gates until it came to the Seventh Gate, barring the rift at the top. Only when this last gate was opened and Tuor passed through was he able to see Gondolin; and we must suppose (though the narrative
does not reach this point) that the travellers had to descend again from the Seventh Gate in order to reach the plain.

  It is notable that Tuor and Voronwë are received by the Guard without any of the suspicion and menace that greeted them in the later story (p. 45).

  (iii) Tuor in Gondolin (pp. 159–64)

  With this section of the narrative compare The Silmarillion, p. 126:

  Behind the circle of the mountains the people of Turgon grew and throve, and they put forth their skill in labour unceasing, so that Gondolin upon Amon Gwareth became fair indeed and fit to compare even with Elven Tirion beyond the sea. High and white were its walls, and smooth its stairs, and tall and strong was the Tower of the King. There shining fountains played, and in the courts of Turgon stood images of the Trees of old, which Turgon himself wrought with elven-craft; and the Tree which he made of gold was named Glingal, and the Tree whose flowers he made of silver was named Belthil.

  The image of Gondolin was enduring, and it reappears in the glimpses given in notes for the continuation of the later Tuor (Unfinished Tales p. 56): ‘the stairs up to its high platform, and its great gate…the Place of the Fountain, the King’s tower on a pillared arcade, the King’s house…’ Indeed the only real difference that emerges from the original account concerns the Trees of Gondolin, which in the former were unfading, ‘shoots of old from the glorious Trees of Valinor’, but in The Silmarillion were images made of the precious metals. On the Trees of Gondolin see the entries Bansil and Glingol from the Name-list, given below pp. 214–16. The gift by the Gods of these ‘shoots’ (which ‘blossomed eternally without abating’) to Inwë and Nólemë at the time of the building of Kôr, each being given a shoot of either Tree, is mentioned in The Coming of the Elves (I.123), and in The Hiding of Valinor there is a reference to the uprooting of those given to Nólemë, which ‘were gone no one knew whither, and more had there never been’ (I.213).