Текст книги "The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two"

Автор книги: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

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Now the power and malice of Glaurung grew apace, and he waxed fat [cf. ‘the Foalуkл waxed fat’], and he gathered Orcs to him, and ruled as a dragon-King, and all the realm of Nargothrond that had been was laid under him.

The mention in the tale that Tinwelint’s people were ‘grievously harried’ by Glorund’s bands suggests once again that the magic of the Queen was no very substantial protection; while the statement that ‘at length there came some [Orcs] nigh even to those woods and glades that were beloved of Turambar and his folk’ seems at variance with Turambar’s saying to Nнniel earlier that ‘we are hard put to it to fend those evil ones from our homes’ (p. 100). There is no mention here of Turambar’s pledge to Nнniel that he would go to battle only if the homes of the Woodmen were assailed (Narn pp. 125–6); and there is no figure corresponding to Dorlas of the later versions. Tamar’s character, briefly described (p. 106), is in accord so far as it goes with what is later told of Brandir, but the relationship of Brandir to Nнniel, who called him her brother (Narn p. 124), had not emerged. The happiness and prosperity of the Woodmen under Turambar’s chieftainship is much more strongly emphasized in the tale (afterwards he was not indeed the chieftain, at least not in name); and it leads in fact to Glorund’s greed as a motive for his assault on them.

The topographical indications in this passage, important to the narrative, are readily enough accommodated to the later accounts, with one major exception: it is clear that in the old story the stream of the waterfall that fell down to the Silver Bowl was the same as that which ran through the gorge where Turambar slew Glorund:

Here flowed that same stream that further down wound past the dragon’s lair [lair="the" place where he was lying] in a deep bed cloven deep into the earth (p. 105).

Thus Turambar and his companions, as he said,

will go down the rocks to the foot of the fall, and so gaining the path of the stream perchance we may come as nigh to the drake as may be (ibid.).

In the final story, on the other hand, the falling stream (Celebros) was a tributary of Teiglin; cf. the Narn p.127:

Now the river Teiglin…flowed down from Ered Wethrin swift as Narog, but at first between low shores, until after the Crossings, gathering power from other streams, it clove a way through the feet of the highlands upon which stood the Forest of Brethil. Thereafter it ran in deep ravines, whose great sides were like walls of rock, but pent at the bottom the waters flowed with great force and noise. And right in the path of Glaurung there lay now one of these gorges, by no means the deepest, but the narrowest, just north of the inflow of Celebros.

The pleasant place (‘a green sward where grew a wealth of flowers’) survived; cf. the Narn p. 123: ‘There was a wide greensward at the head of the falls, and birches grew about it.’ So also did the ‘Silver Bowl’, though the name was lost: ‘the stream [Celebros] went over a lip of worn stone, and fell down by many foaming steps into a rocky bowl far below’ (Narn, ibid.; cf. the tale p. 105: ‘it fell over a great fall where the water-worn rock jutted smooth and grey from amid the grass’). The ‘little hill’ or ‘knoll’, ‘islanded among the trees’, from which Turambar and his companions looked out is not so described in the Narn, but the picture of a high place and lookout near the head of the falls remained, as may be seen from the statement in the Narn (p. 123) that from Nen Girith ‘there was a wide view towards the ravines of Teiglin’ later (Narn p. 128) it is said that it was Turambar’s intention to ‘ride to the high fall of Nen Girith…whence he could look far across the lands’, It seems certain, then, that the old image never faded, and was only a little changed.

While in both old and late accounts a great concourse of the people follow Turambar to the head of the falls against his bidding, in the late his motive for commanding them not to come is explicit: they are to remain in their homes and prepare for flight. Here on the other hand Nнniel rides with Turambar to the head of Silver Bowl and says farewell to him there. But a detail of the old story survived: Turambar’s words to Nнniel ‘Nor thou nor I die this day, nor yet tomorrow, by the evil of the dragon or by the foemen’s swords’ are closely paralleled by his words to her in the Narn (p. 129): ‘Neither you nor I shall be slain by this Dragon, nor by any foe of the North’ and in the one account Nнniel ‘quelled her weeping and was very still’, while in the other she ‘ceased to weep and fell silent’. The situation is generally simpler in the tale, in that the Woodmen are scarcely characterised; ‘Tamar is not as Brandir the titular head of the people, and this motive for bitterness against ‘Turambar is absent, nor is there a Dorlas to insult him or a Hunthor to rebuke Dorlas. Tamar is however present with Nнniel at the same point in the story, having girded himself with a sword: ‘and many scoffed at him for that’, just as it is afterwards said of Brandir that he had seldom done so before (Narn p. 132).

‘Turamhar here set out from the head of the falls with six companions, all of whom proved in the end fainthearted, whereas later he had only two, Dorlas and Hunthor, and Hunthor remained staunch, though killed by a falling stone in the gorge. But the result is the same, in that Turambar must climb the further cliff of the gorge alone. Here the dragon remained where he lay near the brink of the cliff all night, and only moved with the dawn, so that his death and the events that immediately followed it took place by daylight. But in other respects the killing of the dragon remained even in many details much as it was originally written, more especially if comparison is made with the Narn (p. 134), where there reappears the need for Turambar and his companion(s) to move from their first station in order to come up directly under the belly of the beast (this is passed over in The Silmarillion).

Two notable points in this section remain to be mentioned; both are afterthoughts pencilled into the manuscript. In the one we meet for the first time Mоm the Dwarf as the captain of Glorund’s guard over his treasure during his absence—a strange choice for the post, one would think. On this matter see p. 137 below. In the other it is said that Nнniel conceived a child by Turambar, which, remarkably enough, is not said in the text as originally written; on this see p. 135.

(x) The deaths of Tъrin and Nienуri (pp. 108–12)

In the conclusion of the story the structure remained the same from the old tale to the Narn: the moonlight, the tending of Turambar’s burnt hand, the cry of Nнniel that stirred the dragon to his final malice, the accusation by the dragon that Turambar was a stabber of foes unseen, Turambar’s naming Tamar/Brandir ‘Club-foot’ and sending him to consort with the dragon in death, the sudden withering of the leaves at the place of Nienor’s leap as if it were already the end of autumn, the invocation of Nienor to the waters and of Turambar to his sword, the raising of Tъrin’s mound and the inscription in ‘strange signs’ upon it. Many other features could be added. But there are also many differences; here I refer only to some of the most important.

Mablung being absent from the old story, it is only Turambar’s intuition (‘being free now of blindness’—the blindness that Melko ‘wove of old’, p. 83)* that informs him that Tamar was telling the truth. The slaying of Glaurung and all its aftermath is in the late story compassed in the course of a single night and the morning of the next day, whereas in the tale it is spread over two nights, the intervening day, and the morning of the second. Turambar is carried back to the people on the hill-top by the three deserters who had left him in the ravine, whereas in the late story he comes himself. (Of the slaying of Dorlas by Brandir there is no trace in the tale, and the taking of a sword by Tamar has no issue.)

Particularly interesting is the result of the changing of the place where Tъrin and Nienуri died. In the tale there is only one river, and Nнniel follows the stream up through the woods and casts herself over the falls of Silver Bowl (in the place afterwards called Nen Girith), and here too, in the glade above the falls, Turambar slew himself; in the developed story her death-leap was into the ravine of Teiglin at Cabed-en-Aras, the Deer’s Leap, near the spot where Turambar lay beside Glaurung, and here Turambar’s death took place also. Thus Nнniel’s sense of dread when she first came to Silver Bowl with the Woodmen who rescued her (p. 101) foreboded her own death in that place, but in the changed story there is less reason for a foreknowledge of evil to come upon her there. But while the place was changed, the withering of the leaves remained, and the awe of the scene of their deaths, so that none would go to Cabed-en-Aras after, as they would not set foot on the grass above Silver Bowl.

The most remarkable feature of the earliest version of the story of Turambar and Nнniel is surely that as my father first wrote it he did not say that she had conceived a child by him (note 25); and thus there is nothing in the old story corresponding to Glaurung’s words to her: ‘But the worst of all his deeds thou shalt feel in thyself’ (Narn p. 138). The fact that above all accounts for Nienor’s utter horror and despair was added to the tale later.

In concluding this long analysis of the Tale of Turambar proper the absence of place-names in the later part of it may be remarked. The dwelling of the Rodothlim is not named, nor the river that flowed past it; no name is given to the forest where the Woodmen dwelt, to their village, or even to the stream of such central importance at the end of the story (contrast Nargothrond, Narog, Tumhalad, Amon Ethir, Brethil, Amon Obel, Ephel Brandir, Teiglin, Celebros of the later narratives).

§2. The further narrative of Eltas

(after the death of Tъtin)

My father struck out the greater part of this continuation, allowing it to stand only as far as the words ‘by reason of her great unhappiness’ on p. 113 (see note 31). From the brief passage that was retained it is seen that the story of Morwen’s coming to the stone on Tъrin’s mound goes back to the beginning, though in the later story she met Hъrin there (The Silmarillion, p. 229).

The rejected part continues as follows:

Yet it is said also that when the doom of his folk was utterly fulfilled then was Ъrin released by Melko, and bowed with age he fared back into the better lands. There did he gather some few to him, and they went and found the caverns of the Rothwarin [earlier form for Rodothlim, see p. 119] empty, and none guarded them, and a mighty treasury lay there still for none had found it, in that the terror of the drake lived longer than he and none had ventured thither again. But Ъrin let bear the gold even before Linwл [i.e. Tinwelint], and casting it before his feet bade him bitterly to take his vile reward, naming him a craven by whose faint heart had much evil fallen to his house that might never have been; and in this began a new estrangement between Elves and Men, for Linwл was wroth at Ъrin’s words and bid him begone, for said he: “Long did I foster Tъrin thy son and forgave him the evil of his deeds, and afterward thy wife I succoured, giving way against my counsel to her wild desires. Yet what is it to me—and wherefore dost thou, O son of the uncouth race of Men, endure to upbraid a king of the Eldaliл, whose life began in Palisor ages uncounted before Men were born?” And then Ъrin would have gone, but his men were not willing to leave the gold there, and a dissension arose between them and the Elves, and of this grew bitter blows, and Tintoglin [i.e. Tinwelint] might not stay them.

There then was Ъrin’s band slain in his halls, and they stained with their blood the dragon’s hoard; but Ъrin escaped and cursed that gold with a dread curse so that none might enjoy it, and he that held any part of it found evil and death to come of it. But Linwл hearing that curse caused the gold to be cast into a deep pool of the river before his doors, and not for very long did any see it again save for the Ring of Doom [emended to: the Necklace of the Dwarves], and that tale belongs not here, although therein did the evil of the worm Glorund find its last fulfilment.

(The last phrase is an addition to the text.) The remainder of this rejected narrative, concerning the final fates of Ъrin and Mavwin and their children, is essentially the same as in the replacement text given on p. 115 (‘Then Ъrin departed…’) and need not be given.

Immediately following the rejected narrative there is a short outline headed ‘Story of the Nauglafring or the Necklace of the Dwarves’, and this also was struck through. Here there is no mention of Ъrin at all, but it is told that the Orcs (emended from Gongs, see I.245 note 10) who guarded the treasury of Glorund went in search of him when he did not come back to the caves, and in their absence Tintoglin (i.e. Tinwelint), learning of Glorund’s death, sent Elves to steal the hoard of the Rothwarin (i.e. Rodothlim). The Orcs returning cursed the thieves, and they cursed the gold also.

Linwл (i.e. Tinwelint) guarded the gold, and he had a great necklace made by certain Ъvanimor (Nautar or Nauglath). (Ъvanimor have been defined in an earlier tale as ‘monsters, giants, and ogres’, see I.75, 236; Nauglath are Dwarves, I.236). In this Necklace the Silmaril was set; but the curse of the gold was on him, and he defrauded them of part of their reward. The Nauglath plotted, and got aid of Men; Linwл was slain in a raid, and the gold carried away.

There follows another rejected outline, headed ‘The Necklace of the Dwarves’, and this combines features of the preceding outline with features of the rejected ending of Eltas’ narrative (pp. 135–6). Here Ъrin gathers a band of Elves and Men who are wild and fierce, and they go to the caves, which are lightly guarded because the ‘Orqui’ (i.e. Orcs) are abroad seeking Glorund. They carry off the treasure, and the Orcs returning curse it. Ъrin casts the treasure before the king and reproaches him (saying that he might have sent a greater company to the caves to secure the treasure, if not to aid Mavwin in her distress); ‘Tintoglin would not touch it and bid Ъrin hold what he had won, but Ъrin would depart with bitter words’. Ъrin’s men were not willing to leave it, and they sneaked back; there was an affray in the king’s halls, and much blood was spilt on the gold. The outline concludes thus:

The Gongs sack Linwл’s halls and Linwл is slain and the gold is carried far away. Beren Ermabwed falls upon them at a crossing of Sirion and the treasure is cast into the water, and with it the Silmaril of Fлanor. The Nauglath that dwell nigh dive after the gold but only one mighty necklace of gold (and that Silmaril is on it) do they find. This becomes a mark of their king.

These two outlines are partly concerned with the story of the Nauglafring and show my father pondering that story before he wrote it; there is no need to consider these elements here. It is evident that he was in great doubt as to the further course of the story after the release of Ъrin—what happened to the dragon’s hoard? Was it guarded or unguarded, and if guarded by whom? How did it come at last into Tinwelint’s hands? Who cursed it, and at what point in the story? If it was Ъrin and his band that seized it, were they Men or Elves or both?

In the final text, written on slips placed in the manuscript book and given above pp. 113–16, these questions were resolved thus: Ъrin’s band was at first Men, then changed to Elves (see note 33); the treasure was guarded by the dwarf Mоm, whom Ъrin slew, and it was he who cursed the gold as he died; Ъrin’s band became a baggage-train to carry the treasure to Tinwelint in sacks and wooden boxes (and they got it to the bridge before the king’s door in the heart of the forest without, apparently, any difficulty). In this text there is no hint of what happened to the treasure after Ъrom’s departure (because the Tale of the Nauglafring begins at that point).

Subsequent to the writing of the Tale of Turambar proper, my father inserted Mоm into the text at an earlier point in the story (see pp. 103, 118 note 26), making him the captain of the guard appointed by Glorund to watch the treasure in his absence; but whether this was written in before or after the appearance of Mоm at the end (pp. 113–14)—whether it represents a different idea, or is an explanation of how Mоm came to be there—I cannot say.

In The Silmarillion (pp. 230–2) the story is wholly changed, in that the treasure remained in Nargothrond, and Hъrin after the slaying of Mоm (for a far better reason than that in the early narrative) brought nothing from it to Doriath save the Necklace of the Dwarves.

Of the astonishing feature at the end of Eltas’ narrative (pp. 115–16) of the ‘deification’ of Tъrin Turambar and Nienуri (and the refusal of the Gods of Death to open their doors to them) it must be said that nowhere is there any explanation given—though in much later versions of the mythology Tъrin Turambar appears in the Last Battle and smites Morgoth with his black sword. The purifying bath into which Tъrin and Nienуri entered, called Fфs’Almir in the final text, was in the rejected text named Fauri; in the Tale of the Sun and Moon it has been described (I. 187), but is there given other names: Tanyasalpл, Faskalanъmen, and Faskalan.

There remains one further scrap of text to be considered. The second of the rejected outlines given above (pp. 136–7) was written in ink over a pencilled outline that was not erased, and I have been able to disinter a good deal of it from beneath the later writing. The two passages have nothing to do with each other; for some reason my father did not trouble in this case to erase earlier writing. The underlying text, so far as I can make it out, reads:

Tirannл and Vainуni fall in with the evil magician Kurъki who gives them a baneful drink. They forget their names and wander distraught in the woods. Vainуni is lost. She meets Turambar who saves her from Orcs and aids in her search for her mother. They are wed and live in happiness. Turambar becomes lord of rangers of the woods and a harrier of the Orcs. He goes to seek out the Foalуkл which ravages his land. The treasure-heap—and flight of his band. He slays the Foalуkл and is wounded. Vainуni succours him, but the dragon in dying tells her all, lifting the veil Kurъki has set over them. Anguish of Turambar and Vainуni. She flees into the woods and casts herself over a waterfall. Madness of Turambar who dwells alone………. Ъrin escapes from Angamandi and seeks Tirannл. Turambar flees from him and falls upon his sword………………………. Ъrin builds a cairn and…………doom of Melko. Tirannл dies of grief and Ъrin reaches Hisilуmл…………………………………. Purification of Turambar and Vainуni who fare shining about the world and go with the hosts of Tulkas against Melko.

Detached jottings follow this, doubtless written at the same time:

Ъrin escapes. Tirannл learns of Tъrin. Both wander distraught…in the wood.

Tъrin leaves Linwл for in a quarrel he slew one of Linwл’s kin (accidentally).

Introduce Failivrin element into the story?

Turambar unable to fight because of Foalуkл’s eyes. Sees Failivrin depart.

This can only represent some of my father’s very earliest meditations on the story of Tъrin Turambar. (That it appears in the notebook at the end of the fully-written Tale may seem surprising, but he clearly used these books in a rather eccentric way.) Nienуri is here called Vainуni, and Mavwin Tirannл; the spell of forgetfulness is here laid by a magician named Kurъki, although it is the dragon who lifts the veil that the magician set over them. Tъrin’s two encounters with the dragon seem to have emerged from an original single one.

As I have mentioned before, the Tale of Turambar, like others of the Lost Tales, is written in ink over a wholly erased pencilled text, and the extant form of the tale is such that it could only be derived from a rougher draft preceding it; but the underlying text is so completely erased that there is no clue as to what stage it had reached in the development of the legend. It may well be—I think it is extremely probable—that in this outline concerning Vainуni, Tirannл, and Kurъki we glimpse by an odd chance a ‘layer’ in the Tъrin-saga older even than the erased text underlying the extant version.

§ Miscellaneous Matters

(i) Beren

The rejected passage given on p. 71, together with the marginal note ‘If Beren be a Gnome (as now in the story of Tinъviel) the references to Beren must be altered’ (note 4), is the basis for my assertion (p. 52) that in the earliest, now lost, form of the Tale of Tinъviel Beren was a Man. I have shown, I hope, that the extant form of the Tale of Turambar preceded the extant form of the Tale of Tinъviel (p. 69). Beren was a Man, and akin to Mavwin, when the extant Turambar was written; he became a Gnome in the extant Tinъviel; and this change was then written into Turambar. What the replacement passage on p. 72 does is to change the relation of Egnor and Beren from kinship with Ъrin’s wife to friendship with Ъrin. (A correction to the typescript version of Tinъviel, p. 45, is later: making the comradeship of Ъrin with Beren rather than with Egnor.) Two further changes to the text of Turambar consequent on the change in Beren from Man to Elf are given in notes 5 and 6.—It is interesting to observe that in the developed genealogy of The Silmarillion, when Beren was of course again a Man, he was also again akin to Morwen: for Beren was first cousin to Morwen’s father Baragund.

In the rejected passage on p. 71 my father wrote against the name Egnor ‘Damrod the Gnome’ (note 2), and in the amended passage he wrote that Ъrin had known Beren ‘and had rendered him a service once in respect of Damrod his son’. There is no clue anywhere as to what this service may have been; but in the second of the ‘schemes’ for The Book of Lost Tales (see I.233–4) the outline for the Tale of the Nauglafring refers to the son of Beren and Tinъviel, the father of Elwing, by the name Daimord, although in the actual tale as written the son is as he was to remain Dior. Presumably Daimord is to be equated with Damrod. I cannot explain the insertion of ‘Damrod the Gnome’ against ‘Egnor’ in the rejected passage—possibly it was no more than a passing idea, to give the name Damrod to Beren’s father.

It may be noticed here that both the rejected and the replacement passages make it very clear that the events of the story of Beren and Tinъviel took place before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears; see pp. 65–6.

(ii) The Battle of Tasarinan

It is said at the beginning of the present tale (p. 70) that it ‘tells of very ancient days of that folk [Men] before the Battle of Tasarinan when first Men entered the dark vales of Hisilуmл’.

On the face of it this offers an extreme contradiction, since it is said many times that Men were shut in Hisilуmл at the time of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, and the Tale of Turambar takes place—must take place—after that battle. The solution lies, however, in an ambiguity in the sentence just cited. My father did not mean that this was a tale of Men in ancient days of that folk before they entered Hisilуmл he meant ‘this is a tale of the ancient days when Men first entered Hisilуmл—long before the Battle of Tasarinan’.

Tasarinan is the Land of Willows, Nan-tathren in The Silmarillion; the early word-lists or dictionaries give the ‘Elvish’ form tasarin ‘willow’ and the Gnomish tathrin.* The Battle of Tasarinan took place long after, in the course of the great expedition from Valinor for the release of the enslaved Noldoli in the Great Lands. See pp. 219–20.

(iii) The geography of the Tale of Turambar

The passage describing the route of the Orcs who captured Tъrin (p. 77) seems to give further support to the idea that ‘the mountains fencing Hisilуrnл from the Lands Beyond were continuous with those above Angband’ (p. 62); for it is said here that the Orcs ‘followed ever the line of dark hills toward those regions where they rise high and gloomy and their heads are shrouded in black vapours’, and ‘there are they called Angorodin or the Iron Mountains, for beneath the roots of their northernmost fastnesses lies Angband’.

The site of the caves of the Rodothlim, agreeing well with what is said later of Nargothrond, has been discussed already (p. 123), as has the topography of the Silver Bowl and the ravine in which Turambar slew Glorund, in relation to the later Teiglin, Celebros, and Nen Girith (pp. 132–3). There are in addition some indications in the tale of how the caves of the Rodothlim related to Tinwelint’s kingdom and to the land where the Woodmen dwelt. It is said (p. 95) that ‘the dwellings of the Rodothlim were not utterly distant from the realm of Tinwelint, albeit far enough’ while the Woodmen dwelt ‘in lands that were not utterly far from Sirion or the grassy hills of that river’s middle course’ (p. 91), which may be taken to agree tolerably with the situation of the Forest of Brethil. The region where they lived is said in the same passage to have been ‘very far away many a journey beyond the river of the Rodothlim’, and Glorund’s wrath was great when he heard of ‘a brave folk of Men that dwelt far beyond the river’ (p. 103); this also can be accommodated quite well to the developed geographical conception—Brethil was indeed a good distance beyond the river (Narog) for one setting out from Nargothrond.

My strong impression is that though the geography of the west of the Great Lands may have been still fairly vague, it already had, in many important respects, the same essential structure and relations as those seen on the map accompanying The Silmarillion.

(iv) The influence of the Valar

As in the Tale of Tinъviel (see p. 68), in the Tale of Turambar also there are several references to the power of the Valar in the affairs of Men and Elves in the Great Lands—and to prayers, both of thanksgiving and request, addressed to them: thus Tъrin’s guardians ‘thanked the Valar’ that they accomplished the journey to Artanor (p. 72), and more remarkably, Ъrin ‘called upon the Valar of the west, being taught much concerning them by the Eldar of Kфr—the Gnomes he had encountered—and his words came, who shall say how, to Manwл Sъlimo upon the heights of Taniquetil’ (p. 77). (Ъrin was already an ‘Elf-friend’, instructed by the Noldoli; cf. the replacement passage on p. 72.) Was his prayer ‘answered’? Possibly this is the meaning of the very strange expression ‘as the luck of the Valar had it’ (p. 79), when Flinding and Beleg found Tъrin lying near the point where they entered the Orc-camp.*

Dreams sent by the Valar came to the chieftains of the Rodothlim, though this was changed later and the reference to the Valar removed (p. 83 and note 10); the Woodmen said ‘Would that the Valar would lift the spell that lies upon Nнniel’ (p. 101); and Tъrin ‘cried out bitterly against the Valar and his fate of woe’ (p. 111).

An interesting reference to the Valar (and their power) occurs in Tinwelint’s reply (p. 95) to Mavwin’s words ‘Give me but a woodman’s cot and my son’. The king said: ‘That I cannot, for I am but a king of the wild Elves, and no Vala of the western isles.’ In the small part of Gilfanon’s Tale that was actually written it is told (I.231) of the Dark Elves who remained in Palisor that they said that ‘their brethren had gone westward to the Shining Isles. There, said they, do the Gods dwell, and they called them the Great Folk of the West, and thought they dwelt on firelit islands in the sea.’

(v) Tъrin’s age

According to the Tale of Turambar, when Tъrin left Mavwin he was seven years old, and it was after he had dwelt among the woodland Elves for seven years that all tidings from his home ceased (p. 74); in the Narn the corresponding years are eight and nine, and Tъrin was seventeen, not fourteen, when ‘his grief was renewed’ (pp. 68, 76–7). It was exactly twelve years to the day of his departure from Mavwin when he slew Orgof and fled from Artanor (p. 75), when he was nineteen; in the Narn (p. 79) it was likewise twelve years since he left Hithlum when he hunted Saeros to his death, but he was twenty.

‘The tale tells not the number of days that Turambar sojourned with the Rodothlim but these were very many, and during that time Nienуri grew to the threshold of womanhood’ (pp. 91–2). Nienуri was seven years younger than Tъrin: she was twelve when he fled from Artanor (ibid.). He cannot then have dwelt among the Rodothlim for more than (say) five or six years; and it is said that when he was chosen chieftain of the Woodmen he possessed ‘wisdom great beyond his years’.

Bethos, chieftain of the Woodmen before Tъrin, ‘had fought though then but a boy in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears’ (p. 101), but he was killed in a foray, since ‘despite his years he still rode abroad’. But it is impossible to relate Bethos’ span (from ‘a boy’ at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears to his death on a foray at an age sufficiently ripe to be remarked on) to Tъrin’s; for the events after the destruction of the Rodothlim, culminating in Tъrin’s rescue of Nнniel after her first encounter with Glorund, cannot cover any great length of time. What is clear and certain is that in the old story Tъrin died when still a very young man. According to the precise dating provided in much later writing, he was 35 years old at his death.

(vi) The stature of Elves and Men

The Elves are conceived to be of slighter build and stature than Men: so Beleg ‘was of great stature and girth as such was among that folk’ (p. 73), and Tъrin ‘was a Man and of greater stature than they’, i.e. Beleg and Flinding (p. 80)—this sentence being an emendation from ‘he was a Man of great size’ (note 8). See on this matter I.32, 235.