The Shaping of Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien
now emerge the death of Fëanor at the hand of Gothmog the Balrog, the parley with the enemy and the faithless intentions on both sides, the arrival of the second host, unfurling their blue and silver banners (see p. 9) under the first Sunrise, and the dismay of the Orcs at the new light, the hostile armies of the Gnomes encamped on opposite sides of Lake Mithrim, the ‘vast smokes and vapours’ rising from Angband. The only important structural element in the narrative that has yet to appear is that of Fingolfin’s march to Angband immediately on arrival in Middle-earth and his beating on the doors.
The earlier existence of the story of the rescue of Maidros by Finweg (Fingon) is implied by a reference in the Lay of the Children of Húrin (see III. 65, 86) – that in the Lay of Leithian is some two years later than S (III. 222). A curious point arises in the account in S: it seems that it was only at this juncture that Manwë brought into being the race of Eagles. In the tale of The Theft of Melko Sorontur (the ‘Elvish’ form of Gnomish Thorndor) had already played a part in the story before the departure of the Noldoli from Valinor: he was the emissary of the Valar to Melko before the destruction of the Trees, and because Melko tried to slay the Eagle
between that evil one and Sorontur has there ever since been hate and war, and that was most bitter when Sorontur and his folk fared to the Iron Mountains and there abode, watching all that Melko did (I. 149).
It may be noted that Lake Mithrim is placed in Hisilómë/Hithlum/Dorlómin; see III. 103.
For this section of the narrative the earliest materials are so scanty that we may almost say that the ‘Sketch’ is the starting-point. In an outline for Gilfanon’s Tale (I. 238) there is mention of a meeting between Gnomes and Ilkorins, and it was with the guidance of these Ilkorins that Maidros led an army to Angamandi, whence they were driven back with slaughter leaving Maidros a captive; and this was followed by Melko’s southward advance and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. As I have noted (I. 242):
The entire later history of the long years of the Siege of Angband, ending with the Battle of Sudden Flame (Dagor Bragollach), of the passage of Men over the Mountains into Beleriand and their taking service with the Noldorin Kings, had yet to emerge; indeed these outlines give the effect of only a brief time elapsing between the coming of the Noldoli from Kôr and their great defeat.
In another outline (I. 240) there is a slight suggestion of a longer period, in the reference to the Noldoli ‘practising many arts’. In this outline the meeting of Gnomes and Ilkorins takes place at ‘the Feast of Reunion’ (where Men were also present). But beyond this there is really nothing of the later story to be found in these projections. Nor indeed had S (as originally written) made any very remarkable advances. Men ‘already dwelt in the woods of the North’, which is sufficiently strange, since according to S Men awoke at the first rising of the Sun (§6), when also Fingolfin marched into Middle-earth (§8), and far too little time had elapsed, one would think, for Men to have journeyed out of ‘the far East’ (§6) and become established in ‘the woods of the North’. Moreover there is no suggestion (even allowing for the brief and concentrated nature of the ‘Sketch’) that the Leaguer of Angband lasted any great length of time, nor is the breaking of the Leaguer particularly characterised: Morgoth ‘sends out his armies’, and ‘Gnomes and Ilkorins and Men are scattered’; that is all. But the breaking of the Leaguer was already seen as a turning-point in the history of the Elves of Beleriand. It is perfectly possible that much of the new material that appears at this place in the Quenta (see pp. 104 ff.) was already in my father’s mind when he wrote S (i.e., S was a précis, but a précis of an unwritten story); for instance, the blasting of the great grassy northern plain in the battle that ended the siege (not even mentioned in S) was already present when the Lay of the Children of Húrin was written (III. 55).
With the later interpolations in S enters the idea of the Siege of Angband as an epoch, ‘a time of growth and birth and flowering’; and also the disposition of the Gnomish princes, with the essentials of the later history already present – Fingolfin in Hithlum, the Fëanorians in the East (where they afterwards warred with Dwarves, Orcs, and Men), and Felagund guarding the entry into the lands of Sirion. (The reference to Broseliand in this passage is noteworthy: the form of the name spelt with -s- first appears in the A-text of Canto IV of the Lay of Leithian – probably early 1928; III. 195, 197). ‘Fingolfin is slain when Morgoth breaks the leaguer’ may or may not imply the story of his duel with Morgoth before Angband.
Gumlin father of Húrin has appeared in the second version of the Lay of the Children of Húrin (III. 115, 126); but Huor, named as Húrin’s brother in the rewriting of S, here makes his first appearance in the legends.
The complexities of the history of Barahir and Beren and the founding of Nargothrond are best discussed together with what is said in §10; see the commentary on the next section.
In §9 as first written Barahir already appears as the father of Beren, replacing Egnor; and they are here Ilkorin Elves, not Men, though this was changed when the passage was revised. In the first version of the Lay of the Children of Húrin Beren was still an Elf, while in the second version my father shifted back and forth between Man and Elf (III. 124–5); the opening cantos of the A-text of the Lay of Leithian (in being by the autumn of 1925) Egnor and his son were Men (III. 171); now here in S (early 1926) they are again Elves, though Egnor has become Barahir. Perplexingly, in §10 as first written, while Barahir is ‘a famous chieftain of Ilkorindi’, on the same page of the manuscript and quite certainly written at the same time Beren ‘alone of mortals came back from Mandos’. It may well be that the statements in S that Barahir and Beren were Ilkorins were an inadvertent return to the former idea, after the decision that they were Men (seen in the A-text of the Lay of Leithian) had been made. (Later in the original text of S, §14, Beren is a mortal.)
The reference in §9 to the founding of Nargothrond by Celegorm and Curufin and in §10 to Barahir having been ‘a friend of Celegorm of Nargothrond’ belong to the phase of the swiftly-evolving legend represented by alterations to the text of the Lay of the Children of Húrin (see III. 83–5), when it was Celegorm and Curufin who founded Nargothrond after the breaking of the Leaguer of Angband and Felagund had not yet emerged; similarly in the A-text of the Lay of Leithian (III. 171).
The alterations to S in these sections move the story on to the form found in the B-text of the Lay of Leithian, with Felagund as the one saved by Barahir and the founder of Nargothrond – though here it is said specifically that Felagund and his brothers founded the realm, with the aid of Celegorm and Curufin; it seems therefore that the deaths of Angrod and Egnor in the battle that ended the Leaguer had not yet arisen (see III. 221, 247).
The very early form of the story of Beren (the first stage of development from the Tale of Tinúviel) in S §10 as first written has been discussed in III. 219–20, 244. There remains an interesting point to mention in the end of this version: the sentence ‘Some songs say that Lúthien went even over the Grinding Ice, aided by the power of her divine mother, Melian, to Mandos’ halls and won him back.’ There is no suggestion here that Lúthien herself died at the time of Beren’s death; and the same idea seems likely to underlie the lines of the second version of the Lay of the Children of Húrin (III. 107):
ere he winged afar
to the long awaiting; thence Lúthien won him,
the Elf-maiden, and the arts of Melian …
In the Tale of Tinúviel, on the other hand, it is said (II. 40) that
Tinúviel crushed with sorrow and finding no comfort or light