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

Автор книги: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

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Dor Lуmin < Aryador (p. 11). In the tale of The Coming of the Elves it is said (I. 119) that Aryador was the name of Hisilуmл among Men; for Dor Lуmin—Hisilуmл see I. 112. At subsequent occurrences in this tale Aryador was not changed.

Angband was originally twice written, and in one of these cases it was changed to Angamandi, in the other (p. 35) allowed to stand; in all other instances Angamandi was the form first written. In the manuscript version of the tale Vлannл does not make consistent use of Gnomish or ‘Elvish’ forms: thus she says Tevildo (not Tifil), Angamandi, Gwendeling (< Wendelin), Tinwelint (< Tinto (Ellu)). In the typescript version, on the other hand, Vлannл says Tiberth, Angband, Melian (< Gwenethlin), Thingol (< Tinwelint).

Hirilorn, the Queen of Trees < Golosbrindi, the Queen of the Forest (p. 18); Hirilorn < Golosbrindi at subsequent occurrences.

Uinen < Onen (or possibly Ъnen).

Egnor bo-Rimion < Egnor go-Rimion. In the tales previously given the patronymic prefix is go-(I. 146, 155).

Tinwelint < Tinthellon (p. 35, the only case). Cf. Tinto’ellon mentioned above under Tinwл Linto.

i·Cuilwarthon < i·Guilwarthon.

(ii) Typescript Version

Tinъviel < Tynwfiel in the title and at every occurrence until the passage corresponding to MS version p. 11 ‘yet now did he see Tinъviel dancing in the twilight’ there and subsequently the form typed was Tinъviel.

Singoldo < Tinwл Linto (p. 41).

Melian < Gwenethlin at every occurrence until the passage corresponding to MS version p. 12 ‘the stateliness of Queen Gwendeling’ there and subsequently the form typed was Melian.

Thingol < Tinwelint at every occurrence until the passage corresponding to MS version p. 12 ‘by winding paths to the abode of Tinwelint’ there and subsequently the form typed was Thingol.

For Egnor > Barahir see p. 43.

Commentary on

The Tale of Tinъviel

§ 1. The primary narrative

In this section I shall consider only the conduct of the main story, and leave for the moment such questions as the wider history implied in it, Tinwelint’s people and his dwelling, or the geography of the lands that appear in the story.

The story of Beren’s coming upon Tinъviel in the moonlit glade in its earliest recorded form (pp. 11–12) was never changed in its central image; and it should be noticed that the passage in The Silmarillion (p. 165) is an extremely concentrated and exalted rendering of the scene: many elements not mentioned there were never in fact lost. In a very late reworking of the passage in the Lay of Leithian* the hemlocks and the white moths still appear, and Daeron the minstrel is present when Beren comes to the glade. But there are nonetheless the most remarkable differences; and the chief of these is of course that Beren was here no mortal Man, but an Elf, one of the Noldoli, and the absolutely essential element of the story of Beren and Lъthien is not present. It will be seen later (pp. 71–2, 139) that this was not originally so, however: in the now lost (because erased) first form of the Tale of Tinъviel he had been a Man (it is for this reason that I have said that the reading man in the manuscript (see p. 33 and note 10), later changed to Gnome, is a ‘significant slip’). Several years after the composition of the tale in the form in which we have it he became a Man again, though at that time (1925–6) my father appears to have hesitated long on the matter of the elvish or mortal nature of Beren.

In the tale there is, necessarily, a quite different reason for the hostility and distrust shown to Beren in Artanor (Doriath)—namely that ‘the Elves of the woodland thought of the Gnomes of Dor Lуmin as treacherous creatures, cruel and faithless’ (see below, p. 65). It seems clear that at this time the history of Beren and his father (Egnor) was only very sketchily devised; there is in any case no hint of the story of the outlaw band led by his father and its betrayal by Gorlim the Unhappy (The Silmarillion pp. 162ff.) before the first form of the Lay of Leithian, where the story appears fully formed (the Lay was in being to rather beyond this point by the late summer of 1925). But an association of Beren’s father (changed to Beren himself) with Ъrin (Hъrin) as ‘brother in arms’ is mentioned in the typescript version of the tale (pp. 44–5); according to the latest of the outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale (I. 240) ‘Ъrin and Egnor marched with countless battalions’ (against the forces of Melko).

In the old story, Tinъviel had no meetings with Beren before the day when he boldly accosted her at last, and it was at that very time that she led him to Tinwelint’s cave; they were not lovers, Tinъviel knew nothing of Beren but that he was enamoured of her dancing, and it seems that she brought him before her father as a matter of courtesy, the natural thing to do. The betrayal of Beren to Thingol by Daeron (The Silmarillion p. 166) therefore has no place in the old story—there is nothing to betray; and indeed it is not shown in the tale that Dairon knew anything whatsoever of Beren before Tinъviel led him into the cave, beyond having once seen his face in the moonlight.

Despite these radical differences in the narrative structure, it is remarkable how many features of the scene in Tinwelint’s hall (pp. 12–13), when Beren stood before the king, endured, while all the inner significance was shifted and enlarged. To the beginning go back, for instance, Beren’s abashment and silence, Tinъviel’s answering for him, the sudden rising of his courage and uttering of his desire without preamble or hesitation. But the tone is altogether lighter and less grave than it afterwards became; in the jeering laughter of Tinwelint, who treats the matter as a jest and Beren as a benighted fool, there is no hint of what is explicit in the later story: ‘Thus he wrought the doom of Doriath, and was ensnared within the curse of Mandos’ (The Silmarillion p. 167). The Silmarils are indeed famous, and they have a holy power (p. 34), but the fate of the world is not bound up with them (The Silmarillion p. 67); Beren is an Elf, if of a feared and distrusted people, and his request lacks the deepest dimension of outrage; and he and Tinъviel are not lovers.

In this passage is the first mention of the Iron Crown of Melko, and the setting of the Silmarils in the Crown; and here again is a detail that was never lost: ‘Never did this crown leave his head’ (cf. The Silmarillion p. 81: ‘That crown he never took from his head, though its weight became a deadly weariness’).

But from this point Vлannл’s story diverges in an altogether unexpected fashion from the later narrative. At no other place in the Lost Tales is the subsequent transformation more remarkable than in this, the precursor of the story of the capture of Beren and Felagund and their companions by Sauron the Necromancer, the imprisonment and death of all save Beren in the dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth (the Isle of Werewolves in the river Sirion), and the rescue of Beren and overthrow of Sauron by Lъthien and Huan.

Most notably, what may be referred to as ‘the Nargothrond Element’ is entirely absent, and in so far as it already existed had as yet made no contact with the story of Beren and Tinъviel (for Nargothrond, not yet so named, at this period see pp. 81, 123–4). Beren has no ring of Felagund, he has no companions on his northward journey, and there is no relationship between (on the one hand) the story of his capture, his speech with Melko, and his dispatch to the house of Tevildo, and (on the other) the events of the later narrative whereby Beren and the band of Elves out of Nargothrond found themselves in Sauron’s dungeon. Indeed, all the complex background of legend, of battles and rivalries, oaths and alliances, out of which the story of Beren and Lъthien arises in The Silmarillion, is very largely absent. The castle of the Cats ‘is’ the tower of Sauron on Tol-in-Gaurhoth, but only in the sense that it occupies the same ‘space’ in the narrative: beyond this there is no point in seeking even shadowy resemblances between the two establishments. The monstrous gormandising cats, their kitchens and their sunning terraces, and their engagingly Elvish-feline names (Miaugion, Miaulл, Meoita) all disappeared without trace. Did Tevildo? It would scarcely be true, I think, to say even that Sauron ‘originated’ in a cat: in the next phase of the legends the Necromancer (Thы) has no feline attributes. On the other hand it would be wrong to regard it as a simple matter of replacement (Thы stepping into the narrative place vacated by Tevildo) without any element of transformation of what was previously there. Tevildo’s immediate successor is ‘the Lord of Wolves’, himself a werewolf, and he retains the Tevildo-trait of hating Huan more than any other creature in the world. Tevildo was ‘an evil fay in beastlike shape’ (p. 29); and the battle between the two great beasts, the hound against the werewolf (originally the hound against the demon in feline form) was never lost.

When the tale returns to Tinъviel in Artanor the situation is quite the reverse: for the story of her imprisonment in the house in Hirilorn and her escape from it never underwent any significant change. The passage in The Silmarillion (p. 172) is indeed very brief, but its lack of detail is due to compression rather than to omission based on dissatisfaction; the Lay of Leithian, from which the prose account in The Silmarillion directly derives, is in this passage so close, in point of narrative detail, to the Tale of Tinъviel as to be almost identical with it.

It may be observed that in this part of the story the earliest version had a strength that was diminished later, in that the duration of Tinъviel’s imprisonment and her journey to Beren’s rescue relates readily enough to that of Beren’s captivity, which was intended by his captors to be unending; whereas in the later story there is a great deal of event and movement (with the addition of Lъthien’s captivity in Nargothrond) to be fitted into the time when Beren was awaiting his death in the dungeon of the Necromancer.

While the strong element of ‘explanatory’ beast-fable (concerning cats and dogs) was to be entirely eliminated, and Tevildo Prince of Cats replaced by the Necromancer, Huan nonetheless remained from it as the great Hound of Valinor. His encounter with Tinъviel in the woods, her inability to escape from him, and indeed his love for her from the moment of their meeting (suggested in the tale, p. 23, explicit in The Silmarillion p. 173), were already present, though the context of their encounter and the motives of Huan were wholly different from the absence of ‘the Nargothrond Element’ (Felagund, Celegorm and Curufin).

In the story of the defeat of Tevildo and the rescue of Beren the germ of the later legend is clearly seen, though for the most part only in broad structural resemblances. It is curious to observe that the loud speaking of Tinъviel sitting perched on the sill of the kitchen hatch in the castle of the Cats, so that Beren might hear, is the precursor of her singing on the bridge of Tol-in-Gaurhoth the song that Beren heard in his dungeon (The Silmarillion p. 174). Tevildo’s intention to hand her over to Melko remained in Sauron’s similar purpose (ibid.); the killing of the cat Oikeroi (p. 28) is the germ of Huan’s fight with Draugluin—the skin of Huan’s dead opponent is put to the same use in either case (pp. 30–1, The Silmarillion pp. 178–9); the battle of Tevildo and Huan was to become that of Huan and Wolf-Sauron, and with essentially the same outcome: Huan released his enemy when he yielded the mastery of his dwelling. This last is very notable: the utterance by Tinъviel of the spell which bound stone to stone in the evil castle (p. 29). Of course, when this was written the castle of Tevildo was an adventitious feature in the story—it had no previous history: it was an evil place through and through, and the spell (deriving from Melko) that Tevildo was forced to reveal was the secret of Tevildo’s own power over his creatures as well as the magic that held the stones together. With the entry of Felagund into the developing legend and the Elvish watchtower on Tol Sirion (Minas Tirith: The Silmarillion pp. 120, 155–6) captured by the Necromancer, the spell is displaced: for it cannot be thought to be the work of Felagund, who built the fortress, since if it had been he would have been able to pronounce it in the dungeon and bring the place down over their heads—a less evil way for them to die. This element in the legend remained, however, and is fully present in The Silmarillion (p. 175), though since my father did not actually say there that Sauron told Huan and Lъthien what the words were, but only that he ‘yielded himself’, one may miss the significance of what happened:

And she said: ‘There everlastingly thy naked self shall endure the torment of his scorn, pierced by his eyes, unless thou yield to me the mastery of thy tower.’

Then Sauron yielded himself, and Lъthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there….

Then Lъthien stood upon the bridge, and declared her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare.

Here again the actual matter of the narrative is totally different in the early and late forms of the legend: in The Silmarillion ‘many thralls and captives came forth in wonder and dismay…for they had lain long in the darkness of Sauron’, whereas in the tale the inmates who emerged from the shaken dwelling (other than Beren and the apparently inconsequent figure of the blind slave-Gnome Gimli) were a host of cats, reduced by the breaking of Tevildo’s spell to ‘puny size’. (If my father had used in the tale names other than Huan, Beren, and Tinъviel, and in the absence of all other knowledge, including that of authorship, it would not be easy to demonstrate from a simple comparison between this part of the Tale and the story as told in The Silmarillion that the resemblances were more than superficial and accidental.)

A more minor narrative point may be noticed here. The typescript version would presumably have treated the fight of Huan and Tevildo somewhat differently, for in the manuscript Tevildo and his companion can flee up great trees (p. 28), whereas in the typescript nothing grew in the Withered Dale (where Huan was to lie feigning sick) save ‘low bushes of scanty leaves’ (p. 48).

In the remainder of the story the congruence between early and late forms is far closer. The narrative structure in the tale may be summarised thus:

– Beren is attired for disguise in the fell of the dead cat Oikeroi.

– He and Tinъviel journey together to Angamandi.

– Tinъviel lays a spell of sleep on Karkaras the wolf-ward of Angamandi.

– They enter Angamandi, Beren slinks in his beast-shape beneath the seat of Melko, and Tinъviel dances before Melko.

– All the host of Angamandi and finally Melko himself are cast into sleep, and Melko’s iron crown rolls from his head.

– Tinъviel rouses Beren, who cuts a Silmaril from the crown, and the blade snaps.

– The sleepers stir, and Beren and Tinъviel flee back to the gates, but find Karkaras awake again.

– Karkaras bites off Beren’s outthrust hand holding the Silmaril.

– Karkaras becomes mad with the pain of the Silmaril in his belly, for the Silmaril is a holy thing and sears evil flesh.

– Karkaras goes raging south to Artanor.

– Beren and Tinъviel return to Artanor; they go before Tinwelint and Beren declares that a Silmaril is in his hand.

– The hunting of the wolf takes place, and Mablung the Heavy-handed is one of the hunters.

– Beren is slain by Karkaras, and is borne back to the cavern of Tinwelint on a bier of boughs; dying he gives the Silmaril to Tinwelint.

– Tinъviel follows Beren to Mandos, and Mandos permits them to return into the world.

Changing the catskin of Oikeroi to the wolfskin of Draugluin, and altering some other names, this would do tolerably well as a prйcis of the story in The Silmarillion! But of course it is devised as a summary of similarities. There are major differences as well as a host of minor ones that do not appear in it.

Again, most important is the absence of ‘the Nargothrond Element’. When this combined with the Beren legend it introduced Felagund as Beren’s companion, Lъthien’s imprisonment in Nargothrond by Celegorm and Curufin, her escape with Huan the hound of Celegorm, and the attack on Beren and Lъthien as they returned from Tol-in-Gaurhoth by Celegorm and Curufin, now fleeing from Nargothrond (The Silmarillion pp. 173–4, 176–8).

The narrative after the conclusion of the episode of ‘the Thraldom of Beren’ is conducted quite differently in the old story (pp. 30–1), in that here Huan is with Beren and Tinъviel; Tinъviel longs for her home, and Beren is grieved because he loves the life in the woods with the dogs, but he resolves the impasse by determining to obtain a Silmaril, and though Huan thinks their plan is folly he gives them the fell of Oikeroi, clad in which Beren sets out with Tinъviel for Angamandi. In The Silmarillion (p. 177) likewise, Beren, after long wandering in the woods with Lъthien (though not with Huan), resolves to set forth again on the quest of the Silmaril, but Lъthien’s stance in the matter is different:

‘You must choose, Beren, between these two: to relinquish the quest and your oath and seek a life of wandering upon the face of the earth; or to hold to your word and challenge the power of darkness upon its throne. But on either road I shall go with you, and our doom shall be alike.’

There then intervened the attack on Beren and Lъthein by Celegorm and Curufin, when Huan, deserting his master, joined himself to them; they returned together to Doriath, and when they got there Beren left Lъthien sleeping and went back northwards by himself, riding Curufin’s horse. He was overtaken on the edge of Anfauglith by Huan bearing Lъthien on his back and bringing from Tol-in-Gaurhoth the skins of Draugluin and of Sauron’s bat-messenger Thuringwethil (of whom in the old story there is no trace); attired in these Beren and Lъthien went to Angband. Huan is here their active counsellor.

The later legend is thus more full of movement and incident in this part than is the Tale of Tinъviel (though the final form was not achieved all at one stroke, as may be imagined); and in the Silmarillion form this is the more marked from the fact that the account is a compression and a summary of the long Lay of Leithian.*

In the Tale of Tinъviel the account of Beren’s disguise is characteristically detailed: his instruction by Tinъviel in feline behaviour, his heat and discomfort inside the skin. Tinъviel’s disguise as a bat has however not yet emerged, and whereas in The Silmarillion when confronted by Carcharoth she ‘cast back her foul raiment’ and ‘commanded him to sleep’, here she used once more the magical misty robe spun of her hair: ‘the black strands of her dark veil she cast in his eyes’ (p. 31). The indifference of Karkaras to the false Oikeroi contrasts with Carcharoth’s suspicion of the false Druagluin, of whose death he had heard tidings: in the old story it is emphasised that no news of the discomfiture of Tevildo (and the death of Oikeroi) had yet reached Angamandi.

The encounter of Tinъviel with Melko is given with far more detail than in The Silmarillion (here much compressed from its source); notable is the phrase (p. 32) ‘he leered horribly, for his dark mind pondered some evil’, forerunner of that in The Silmarillion (p. 180):

Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark than any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor.

We are never told anything more explicit.

Whether Melko’s words to Tinъviel, ‘Who art thou that flittest about my halls like a bat?’, and the description of her dancing ‘noiseless as a bat’, were the germ of her later bat-disguise cannot be said, though it seems possible.

The knife with which Beren cut the Silmaril from the Iron Crown has a quite different provenance in the Tale of Tinъviel, being a kitchen-knife that Beren took from Tevildo’s castle (pp. 29, 33); in The Silmarillion it was Angrist, the famous knife made by Telchar which Beren took from Curufin. The sleepers of Angamandi are here disturbed by the sound of the snapping of the knife-blade; in The Silmarillion it is the shard flying from the snapped knife and striking Morgoth’s cheek that makes him groan and stir.

There is a minor difference in the accounts of the meeting with the wolf as Beren and Tinъviel fled out. In The Silmarillion ‘Lъthien was spent, and she had not time nor strength to quell the wolf’ in the tale it seems that she might have done so if Beren had not been precipitate. Much more important, there appears here for the first time the conception of the holy power of the Silmarils that burns unhallowed flesh.*

The escape of Tinъviel and Beren from Angamandi and their return to Artanor (pp. 34–6) is treated quite differently in the Tale of Tinъviel. In The Silmarillion (pp. 182–3) they were rescued by the Eagles and set down on the borders of Doriath; and far more is made of the healing of Beren’s wound, in which Huan plays a part. In the old story Huan comes to them later, after their long southward flight on foot. In both accounts there is a discussion between them as to whether or not they should return to her father’s hall, but it is quite differently conducted—in the tale it is she who persuades Beren to return, in The Silmarillion it is Beren who persuades her.

There is a curious feature in the story of the Wolf-hunt (pp. 38–9) which may be considered here (see p. 50, notes 12–15). At first, it was Tinъviel’s brother who took part in the hunt with Tinwelint, Beren, and Huan, and his name is here Tifanto, which was the name throughout the tale before its replacement by Dairon.* Subsequently ‘Tifanto’—without passing through the stage of ‘Dairon’—was replaced by ‘Mablung the heavy-handed, chief of the king’s thanes’, who here makes his first appearance, as the fourth member of the hunt. But earlier in the tale it is told that Tifanto > Dairon, leaving Artanor to seek Tinъviel, became utterly lost, ‘and came never back to Elfinesse’ (p. 21), and the loss of Tifanto > Dairon is referred to again when Beren and Tinъviel returned to Artanor (pp. 36–7).

Thus on the one hand Tifanto was lost, and it is a grief to Tinъviel on her return to learn of it, but on the other he was present at the Wolf-hunt. Tifanto was then changed to Dairon throughout the tale, except in the story of the Wolf-hunt, where Tifanto was replaced by a new character, Mablung. This shows that Tifanto was removed from the hunt before the change of name to Dairon, but does not explain how, under the name Tifanto, he was both lost in the wilds and present at the hunt. Since there is nothing in the MS itself to explain this puzzle, I can only conclude that my father did, in fact, write at first that Tifanto was lost and never came back, and also that he took part in the Wolf-hunt; but observing this contradiction he introduced Mablung in the latter rфle (and probably did this even before the tale was completed, since at the last appearance of Mablung his name was written thus, not emended from Tifanto: see note 15). It was subsequent to this that Tifanto was emended, wherever it still stood, to Dairon.

In the tale the hunt is differently managed from the story in The Silmarillion (where, incidentally, Beleg Strongbow was present). It is curious that all (including, as it appears, Huan!) save Beren were asleep when Karkaras came on them (‘in Beren’s watch’, p. 39). In The Silmarillion Huan slew Carcharoth and was slain by him, whereas here Karkaras met his death from the king’s spear, and the boy Ausir tells at the end that Huan lived on to find Beren again at the time of ‘the great deeds of the Nauglafring’ (p. 41). Of Huan’s destiny, that he should not die ‘until he encountered the mightiest wolf that would ever walk the world’, and of his being permitted ‘thrice only ere his death to speak with words’ (The Silmarillion p. 173), there is nothing here.

The most remarkable feature of the Tale of Tinъviel remains the fact that in its earliest extant form Beren was an Elf; and in this connection very notable are the words of the boy at the end (p. 40):

Yet said Mandos to those twain: ‘Lo, O Elves, it is not to any life of perfect joy that I dismiss you, for such may no longer be found in all the world where sits Melko of the evil heart—and know ye that ye will become mortal even as Men, and when ye fare hither again it will be for ever, unless the Gods summon you indeed to Valinor.’

In the tale of The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor there occurs the following passage (I. 76; commentary I. 90):

Thither [i.e. to Mandos] in after days fared the Elves of all the clans who were by illhap slain with weapons or did die of grief for those that were slain—and only so might the Eldar die, and then it was only for a while. There Mandos spake their doom, and there they waited in the darkness, dreaming of their past deeds, until such time as he appointed when they might again be born into their children, and go forth to laugh and sing again.

The same idea occurs in the tale of The Music of the Ainur (I. 59). The peculiar dispensation of Mandos in the case of Beren and Tinъviel as here conceived is therefore that their whole ‘natural’ destiny as Elves was changed: having died as Elves might die (from wounds or from grief) they were not reborn as new beings, but returned from Mandos in their own persons—yet now ‘mortal even as Men’. The earliest eschatology is too unclear to allow of a satisfactory interpretation of this ‘mortality’, and the passage in The Building of Valinor on the fates of Men (I. 77) is particularly hard to understand (see the commentary on it, I. 90ff.). But it seems possible that the words ‘even as Men’ in the address of Mandos to Beren and Tinъviel were included to stress the finality of whatever second deaths they might undergo; their departure would be as final as that of Men, there would be no second return in their own persons, and no reincarnation. They will remain in Mandos (‘when ye fare hither again it will be for ever’)—unless they are summoned by the Gods to dwell in Valinor. These last words should probably be related to the passage in The Building of Valinor concerning the fate of certain Men (I. 77):

Few are they and happy indeed for whom at a season doth Nornorл the herald of the Gods set out. Then ride they with him in chariots or upon good horses down into the vale of Valinor and feast in the halls of Valmar, dwelling in the houses of the Gods until the Great End come.

§ 2. Places and peoples in the Tale of Tinъvie l

To consider first what can be learned of the geography of the Great Lands from this tale: the early ‘dictionary’ of the Gnomish language makes it clear that the meaning of Artanor was ‘the Land Beyond’, as it is interpreted in the text (p. 9). Several passages in the Lost Tales cast light on this expression. In an outline for Gilfanon’s untold tale (I. 240) the Noldoli exiled from Valinor

now fought for the first time with the Ores and captured the pass of the Bitter Hills; thus they escaped from the Land of Shadows…They entered the Forest of Artanor and the Region of the Great Plains…

(which latter, I suggested, may be the forerunner of the later Talath Dirnen, the Guarded Plain of Nargothrond). The tale to follow Gilfanon’s, according to the projected scheme (I. 241), was to be that of Tinъviel, and this outline begins: ‘Beren son of Egnor wandered out of Dor Lуmin [i.e. Hisilуmл, see I. 112] into Artanor…’ In the present tale, it is said that Beren came ‘through the terrors of the Iron Mountains until he reached the Lands Beyond’ (p. 11), and also (p. 21) that some of the Dogs ‘roamed the woods of Hisilуmл or passing the mountainous places fared even at times into the region of Artanor and the lands beyond and to the south’. And finally, in the Tale of Turambar (p. 72) there is a reference to ‘the road over the dark hills of Hithlum into the great forests of the Land Beyond where in those days Tinwelint the hidden king had his abode’.

It is quite clear, then, that Artanor, afterwards called Doriath (which appears in the title to the typescript text of the Tale of Tinъviel, together with an earlier form Dor Athro, p. 41), lay in the original conception in much the same relation to Hisilуmл (the Land of Shadow(s), Dor Lуmin, Aryador) as does Doriath to Hithlum (Hisilуmл) in The Silmarillion: to the south, and divided from it by a mountain-range, the Iron Mountains or Bitter Hills.

In commenting on the tale of The Theft of Melko and the Darkening of Valinor I have noticed (I. 158–9) that whereas in the Lost Tales Hisilуmл is declared to be beyond the Iron Mountains, it is also said (in the Tale of Turambar, p. 77) that these mountains were so named from Angband, the Hells of Iron, which lay beneath ‘their northernmost fastnesses’, and that therefore there seems to be a contradictory usage of the term ‘Iron Mountains’ within the Lost Tales—‘unless it can be supposed that these mountains were conceived as a continuous range, the southerly extension (the later Mountains of Shadow) forming the southern fence of Hisilуmл, while the northern peaks, being above Angband, gave the range its name’.

Now in the Tale of Tinъviel Beren, journeying north from Artanor, ‘drew nigh to the lower hills and treeless lands that warned of the approach of the bleak Iron Mountains’ (p. 14). These he had previously traversed, coming out of Hisilуmл but now ‘he followed the Iron Mountains till he drew nigh to the terrible regions of Melko’s abode’. This seems to support the suggestion that the mountains fencing Hisilуmл from the Lands Beyond were continuous with those above Angband; and we may compare the little primitive map (I. 81), where the mountain range f isolates Hisilуmл (g): see I. 112, 135. The implication is that ‘dim’ or ‘black’ Hisilуmл had no defence against Melko.