THE EVOLUTION OF THE STORY
These notes (i.e. at the end of the ‘latest Tuor’ manuscript) are of slight significance in the history of the legend of The Fall of Gondolin, but they show at least that my father did not abandon this work in some sudden unlooked for haste never to take it up again. But any idea that a further fully evolved continuation of the story, after Ecthelion’s words to Tuor at the Seventh Gate of Gondolin, has been lost is out of the question.
So there we have it. My father did indeed abandon this essential, and (one may say) definitive, form and treatment of the legend, at the very moment when he had brought Tuor at long last to ‘behold a vision of Gondolin amid the white snow.’ For me it is perhaps the most grievous of his many abandonments. Why did he stop there? An answer, of a kind, can be found.
This was a deeply distressing time for him, a time of intense frustration. It can be said with certainty that when The Lord of the Rings was at last completed, he returned to the legends of the Elder days with a strong new energy. I will cite here parts of a remarkable letter that he wrote to Sir Stanley Unwin, the Chairman of Allen and Unwin, on 24 February 1950, for it clearly presents the prospect of publishing as he saw it at that time.
In one of your more recent letters you expressed a desire still to see the MS of my proposed work, The Lord of the Rings, originally expected to be a sequel to The Hobbit? For eighteen months now I have been hoping for the day when I could call it finished. But it was not until after Christmas [1949] that this goal was reached at last. It is finished, if still partly unrevised, and is, I suppose, in a condition which a reader could read, if he did not wilt at the sight of it.
As the estimate for typing a fair copy was in the neighbourhood of £100 (which I have not to spare), I was obliged to do nearly all myself. And now I look at it, the magnitude of the disaster is apparent to me. My work has escaped from my control, and I have produced a monster: an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and very terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. My estimate is that it contains, even without certain necessary adjuncts, about 600,000 words. One typist put it even higher. I can see only too clearly how impracticable this is. But I am tired. It is off my chest, and I do not feel that I can do anything more about it, beyond a little revision of inaccuracies. Worse still: I feel that it is tied to the Silmarillion.
You may, perhaps, remember about that work, a long legendary of imaginary times in a ‘high style’, and full of Elves (of a sort). It was rejected on the advice of your reader many years ago. As far as my memory goes he allowed it a kind of Celtic beauty intolerable to Anglo-Saxons in large doses. He was probably perfectly right and just. And you commented that it was a work to be drawn upon rather than published.
Unfortunately I am not an Anglo-Saxon, and though shelved (until a year ago) the Silmarillion and all that has refused to be suppressed. It has bubbled up, infiltrated, and probably spoiled everything (that even remotely approached ‘Faery’) which I have tried to write since. It was kept out of Farmer Giles with an effort, but stopped the continuation. Its shadow was deep on the later parts of The Hobbit. It has captured The Lord of the Rings so that that has become simply its continuation and completion, requiring The Silmarillion to be fully intelligible – without a lot of references and explanations that clutter it in one or two places.
Ridiculous and tiresome as you may think me, I want to publish them both – The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings – in conjunction or in connexion. ‘I want to’ – it would be wiser to say ‘I should like to’, since a little packet of, say, a million words, of matter set out in extenso, that Anglo-Saxons (or the English-speaking public) can only endure in moderation, is not very likely to see the light, even if paper were available at will.
All the same that is what I should like. Or I will let it all be. I cannot contemplate any drastic re-writing or compression. Of course being a writer I should like to see my words printed; but there they are. 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 …
I will not follow the intricate and painful history through the next two years. My father never relinquished his opinion, in his words in another letter, that ‘The Silmarillion etc. and The Lord of the Rings went together, as one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings’: ‘I was resolved to treat them as one thing, however they might formally be issued’.
But the costs of production of such a huge work in the years after the War were hopelessly against him. On 22 June 1952 he wrote to Rayner Unwin:
As for The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, they are where they were. The one finished (and the end revised), and the other still unfinished (or unrevised), and both gathering dust. I have been off and on too unwell, and too burdened to do much about them, and too downhearted. Watching paper-shortages and costs mounting against me. But I have rather modified my views. Better something than nothing! Although to me all are one, and The Lord of the Rings would be better far (and eased) as part of the whole, I would gladly consider the publication of any part of this stuff. Years are becoming precious. And retirement (not far off) will, as far as I can see, bring not leisure but a poverty that will necessitate scraping a living by ‘examining’ and suchlike tasks.
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 ].
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 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 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 new 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.
Thus it came to pass that Inglor found the deep gorge of Narog and the caves in its western side; and he built there a stronghold and armouries after the fashion of the deep mansions of Menegroth. And he called this place Nargothrond, and made there his home with many of his folk; and the Gnomes of the North, at first in merriment, called him on this account Felagund, or Lord of Caves, and that name he bore thereafter until his end. But Turgon went alone into hidden places, and by the guidance of Ulmo found the secret vale of Gondolin; and of this he said nought as yet, but returned to Nevrast and his folk.
In a further passage of the Quenta Silmarillion it is told of Turgon, the second son of Fingolfin, that he ruled over a numerous people, but ‘the unquiet of Ulmo increased upon him;’
he arose, and took with him a great host of Gnomes, even to a third of the people of Fingolfin, and their goods and wives and children, and departed eastward. His going was by night and his march swift and silent, and he vanished out of knowledge of his kindred. But he came to Gondolin, and built there a city like unto Tûn of Valinor, and fortified the surrounding hills; and Gondolin lay hidden for many years.
A third, and essential, citation comes from a different source. There are two texts, bearing the titles The Annals of Beleriand and The Annals of Valinor. These were begun about 1930, and are extant in subsequent versions. I have said of them: ‘The Annals began, perhaps, in parallel with the Quenta as a convenient way of driving abreast, and keeping track of, the different elements in the ever more complex narrative web.’ The final text of The Annals of Beleriand, also named the Grey Annals, derive from the time in the early 1950s when my father turned again to the matter of the Elder Days after the completion of The Lord of the Rings. It was a major source for the published Silmarillion.
There follows here a passage from the Grey Annals; it refers to the year ‘in which Gondolin was full-wrought, after fifty and two years of secret toil’.
Now therefore Turgon prepared to depart from Nevrast, and leave his fair halls in Vinyamar beneath Mount Taras; and then Ulmo came to him a second time and said: ‘Now thou shalt go at last to Gondolin, Turgon; and I will set my power in the Vale of Sirion, so that none shall mark thy going, nor shall any find there the hidden entrance to thy land against thy will. Longest of all the realms of the Eldalië shall Gondolin stand against Melkor. But love it not too well, and remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West and cometh from the Sea.’
And Ulmo warned Turgon that he also lay under the Doom of Mandos, which Ulmo had no power to remove. ‘Thus it may come to pass,’ he said, ‘that the curse of the Noldor shall find thee too ere the end, and treason shall awake within thy walls. Then shall they be in peril of fire. But if this peril draweth nigh, then even from Nevrast one shall come to warn thee, and from him beyond ruin and fire hope shall be born for Elves and Men. Leave, therefore, in this house arms and a sword, that in years to come he may find them, and thus shalt thou know him and be not deceived.’ And Ulmo showed to Turgon of what kind and stature should be the mail and helm and sword that he left behind.
Then Ulmo returned to the Sea; and Turgon sent forth all his folk … and they passed away, company by company, secretly, under the shadows of Eryd Wethion, and came unseen with their wives and goods to Gondolin, and none knew whither they were gone. And last of all Turgon arose and went with his lords and household silently through the hills and passed the gates in the mountains, and they were shut. But Nevrast was empty of folk and so remained until the ruin of Beleriand.
In this last passage is seen the explanation of the shield and sword, the hauberk and helm, that Tuor found when he entered the great hall of Vinyamar (LV p.162).
After the conclusion of the meeting of Ulmo with Tuor in the Land of Willows all the early texts (the Tale, the Sketch, the Quenta Noldorinwa) move on to the journey of Tuor and Voronwë in search of Gondolin. Of the eastward journey itself there is indeed scarcely any mention, the mystery of the hidden city residing in the secret of entry to Tumladen (to which in the Sketch and Quenta Noldorinwa Ulmo gives them aid).
But here we will return to the Last Version, which I left in this discussion at the coming of Tuor to the coast of the Sea in the region of Nevrast (LV p.158). Here we see the great abandoned house of Vinyamar beneath Mount Taras (‘eldest of all the works of stone that the Noldor built in the lands of their exile’) where Turgon first dwelt, and which Tuor now entered. Of all that follows (‘Tuor in Vinyamar’, LV pp.161 ff.) there is no hint or preceding trace in the early texts – save of course the advent of Ulmo, told again after a lapse of thirty-five years.
*
I pause here to observe what is told elsewhere concerning the guidance, indeed the urging, of Tuor in the furtherance of Ulmo’s designs.
The origin of his ‘designs’ that came to be centred on Tuor arose from the massive and far-reaching event that came to be called The Hiding of Valinor. There exists an early story, one of the Lost Tales, that bears that title, and describes the origin and nature of this alteration of the world in the Elder Days. It arose from the rebellion of the Noldoli (Noldor) under the leadership of Fëanor, maker of the Silmarils, against the Valar, and their intent to leave Valinor. I have described very briefly the consequence of that decision in Beren and Lúthien, p.23, and I repeat that here.
Before their departure from Valinor there took place the dreadful event that marred the history of the Noldor in Middle-earth. Fëanor demanded of those Teleri, the third host of the Eldar on the Great Journey [from the place of their Awakening], who dwelt now on the coast of Aman, that they give up to the Noldor their fleet of ships, their great pride, for without ships the crossing to Middle-earth by such a host would not be possible. This the Teleri refused utterly. Then Fëanor and his people attacked the Teleri in their city of Alqualondë, the Haven of the Swans, and took the fleet by force. In that battle, which was known as the Kinslaying, many of the Teleri were slain.
In The Hiding of Valinor there is a remarkable description of a very heated and indeed extraordinary meeting of the Valar that bears on the present subject. On this occasion there was present an Elf of Alqualondë named Ainairos whose kin had perished in the battle of the Haven, ‘and he sought unceasingly with his words to persuade the [Teleri] to greater bitterness of heart.’ This Ainairos spoke at the debate, and his words are recorded in The Hiding of Valinor.
He laid before the Gods the mind of the Elves [i.e. the Teleri] concerning the Noldoli and of the nakedness of the land of Valinor toward the world beyond. Thereat arose much tumult and many of the Valar and their folk supported him loudly, and some others of the Eldar cried out that Manwë and Varda had caused their kindred to dwell in Valinor promising them unfailing joy therein – now let the Gods see to it that their gladness was not minished to a little thing, seeing that Melko held the world and they dared not fare forth to the places of their awakening even if they would.
The most of the Valar moreover were fain of their ancient ease and desired only peace, wishing neither rumour of Melko and his violence nor murmur of the restless Gnomes to come ever again among them to disturb their happiness; and for such reasons they also clamoured for the concealment of the land. Not the least among these were Vána and Nessa, albeit most even of the great Gods were of one mind. In vain did Ulmo of his foreknowing plead before them for pity and pardon on the Noldoli, or Manwë unfold the secrets of the Music of the Ainur and the purpose of the world; and long and very full of that noise was that council, and more filled with bitterness and burning words than any that had been; wherefore did Manwë Súlimo depart at length from among them, saying that no walls or bulwarks might now fend Melko’s evil from them which lived already among them and clouded all their minds.
So came it that the enemies of the Gnomes carried the council of the Gods and the blood of [the Haven of the Swans] began already its fell work; for now began that which is named the Hiding of Valinor, and Manwë and Varda and Ulmo of the Seas had no part therein, but none others of the Valar or the Elves held aloof therefrom …
Now Lórien and Vána led the Gods and Aulë lent his skill and Tulkas his strength, and the Valar went not at that time forth to conquer Melko, and the greatest ruth was that to them thereafter, and yet is; for the great glory of the Valar by reason of that error came not to its fullness in many ages of the Earth, and still doth the world await it.
Very striking is this last passage, with its clear representation of the Gods as indolently regarding only their own security and well-being, and expression of the view that they had committed a colossal ‘error’, for in failing to make war on Melko they left Middle-earth open to the destructive ambitions and hatreds of the arch-enemy. But such condemnation of the Valar is not found in later writing. The Hiding of Valinor is present only as a great fact of legendary antiquity.
There follows in The Hiding of Valinor a passage in which the gigantic and manifold works of defence are described – ‘new and mighty labours such as had not been seen among them since the days of the first building of Valinor’, such as the making of the encircling mountains more utterly impassable on their eastern sides.
From North to South marched the enchantments and inaccessible magic of the Gods, yet were they not content; and they said: ‘Behold, we will cause all the paths that fare to Valinor, both known and secret, to fade utterly from the world, or wander treacherously into blind confusion.’
This then they did, and no channel in the seas was left that was not beset with perilous eddies or with streams of overmastering strength for the confusion of all ships. And spirits of sudden storms and winds unlooked for brooded there by Ossë’s will, and others of inextricable mist.
To read of the effects of the Hiding of Valinor on Gondolin one may look ahead to Turgon’s words to Tuor in the Tale, speaking of the fate of the many messengers that had been sent from Gondolin to build ships for the voyage to Valinor (p.57):
‘… but the paths thereto are forgotten and the highways faded from the world, and the seas and mountains are about it, and they that sit within in mirth reck little of the dread of Melko or the sorrow of the world, but hide their land and weave about it inaccessible magic, that no tidings of evil come ever to their ears. Nay, enough of my people have for years untold gone out to the wide waters never to return, but have perished in the deep places or wander now lost in the shadows that have no paths; and at the coming of next year no more shall fare to the sea …’
(It is a very curious fact that Turgon’s words here were uttered in ironic repetition of Tuor’s, spoken as Ulmo bade him, immediately preceding (Tale p.56):
‘… lo! the paths thereto are forgotten and the highways faded from the world, and the seas and mountains are about it, yet still dwell there the Elves on the hill of Kôr and the Gods sit in Valinor, though their mirth is minished for sorrow and fear of Melko, and they hide their land and weave about it inaccessible magic that no evil come to its shores.’)
on pp.115–17 (Turlin and the Exiles of Gondolin) I have given a brief text that was soon abandoned, but was clearly intended as the beginning of a new version of the Tale (but still with the old version of the genealogy of Tuor, which was replaced by that of the house of Hador in the Sketch of 1926). It is a remarkable feature of this piece that Ulmo is explicitly represented as altogether alone among the Valar in his concern for the Elves who lived under the power of Melko, ‘nor did any save Ulmo only dread the power of Melko that wrought ruin and sorrow over all the Earth; but Ulmo desired that Valinor should gather all its might to quench his evil ere it be too late, and it seemed to him that both his purposes might perchance be achieved if messengers from the Gnomes should win to Valinor and plead for pardon and for pity upon the Earth.’
It was here that the ‘isolation’ of Ulmo among the Valar first appears, for there is no suggestion of it in the Tale. I will conclude this account with a repetition of how Ulmo saw it in his words to Tuor as he stood at the water’s edge in the rising storm at Vinyamar (LV pp.165–6).
And Ulmo spoke to Tuor of Valinor and its darkening, and the Exile of the Noldor, and the Doom of Mandos, and the hiding of the Blessed Realm. ‘But behold!’ said he, ‘in the armour of Fate (as the Children of Earth name it) there is ever a rift, and in the walls of Doom a breach, until the full-making, which ye call the End. So it shall be while I endure, a secret voice that gainsayeth, and a light where darkness was decreed. Therefore, though in the days of this darkness I seem to oppose the will of my brethren, the Lords of the West, that is my part among them, to which I was appointed ere the making of the World. Yet Doom is strong, and the shadow of the Enemy lengthens; and I am diminished, until in Middle-earth I am become now no more than a secret whisper. The waters that run westward wither, and their springs are poisoned, and my power withdraws from the land; for Elves and Men grow blind and deaf to me because of the might of Melkor. And now the Curse of Mandos hastens to its fulfilment, and all the works of the Noldor shall perish, and every hope that they build will crumble. The last hope alone is left, the hope that they have not looked for and have not prepared. And that hope lieth in thee; for so I have chosen.’
This leads to a further question: why did he choose Tuor? Or even, why did he choose a Man? To this latter question an answer is given in the Tale, p.62:
Behold now many years have gone since Tuor was lost amid the foothills and deserted by those Noldoli; yet many years too have gone since to Melko’s ears came first those strange tidings – faint were they and various in form – of a man wandering amid the dales of the waters of Sirion. Now Melko was not much afraid of the race of Men in those days of his great power, and for this reason did Ulmo work through one of this kindred for the better deceiving of Melko, seeing that no Valar and scarce any of the Eldar or Noldoli might stir unmarked of his vigilance.
But to the far more significant question I think that the answer lies in the words of Ulmo to Tuor at Vinyamar (LV p.166), when Tuor said to him: ‘Of little avail shall I be, a mortal man alone, among so many and so valiant of the High Folk of West.’ To this Ulmo replied:
‘If I choose to send thee, Tuor son of Huor, then believe not that thy one sword is not worth the sending. For the valour of the Edain the Elves shall ever remember as the ages lengthen, marvelling that they gave life so freely of which on earth they had so little. 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.’
What was that hope? I believe that it was the event that Ulmo declared with such miraculous foresight to Tuor in the Tale (p.47):
‘… of a surety a child shall come of thee than whom no man shall know more of the uttermost deeps, be it of the sea or of the firmament of heaven.’
As I have observed (p.217 above), the child was Eärendel.
It cannot be doubted that Ulmo’s prophetic words ‘a light that shall pierce the darkness’, sent by Ulmo himself, and brought into the world by Tuor, is Eärendel. But strange indeed as it appears, there is a passage elsewhere showing that Ulmo’s ‘miraculous foresight’, as I have called it, had emerged many years before, independently of Ulmo.
This passage occurs in the version of the text The Annals of Beleriand known as the Grey Annals, from the period following the completion of The Lord of the Rings, on which see The Evolution of the Story . The scene is the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, towards its end with the death of Fingon the Elvenking.
The day was lost, but still Húrin and Huor with the men of Hador stood firm, and the Orcs could not yet win the passes of Sirion … The last stand of Húrin and Huor is the deed of war most renowned among the Eldar that the Fathers of Men wrought in their behalf. For Húrin spoke to Turgon saying: ‘Go now, lord, while time is! For last art thou of the House of Fingolfin, and in thee lives the last hope of the Noldor. While Gondolin stands, strong and guarded, Morgoth shall still know fear in his heart.’
‘Yet not long now can Gondolin be hidden, and being discovered it must fall,’ said Turgon.
‘Yet if it stands but a little while,’ said Huor, ‘then out of thy house shall come the hope of Elves and Men. This I say to thee, lord, with the eyes of death; though here we part for ever, and I shall never look on thy white walls, from thee and me shall a new star arise.’
Turgon accepted the counsel of Húrin and Huor. He withdrew with all such warriors as he could gather from the host of Fingon and from Gondolin and vanished into the mountains, while Húrin and Huor held the pass behind them against the swarming host of Morgoth. Huor fell with a poisoned arrow in the eye.
We cannot overestimate the divine powers of Ulmo – mightiest of the Gods after Manwë alone: in his vast knowledge and foreknowledge, and in his inconceivable ability to enter the minds of other beings and influence their thoughts and even their understanding from far away. Most notable of course is his speaking through Tuor when he came to Gondolin. This goes back to the Tale: ‘Words I will set to your mouth there’ (p.46); and in the Last Version (p.167), when Tuor asks ‘What words shall I say unto Turgon?’, Ulmo replies: ‘If thou come to him, then the words shall arise in thy mind, then thy mouth shall speak as I would.’ In the Tale (p.55) this capacity of Ulmo goes even further: ‘Then spoke Tuor, and Ulmo set power in his heart and majesty in his voice.’
In this discursive discussion of Ulmo’s designs for Tuor we have come to Vinyamar, and to the second appearance of the God in this narrative that differs profoundly from that in the Tale (p.45 and p.216 above). No longer does he come up the great river Sirion and make music sitting in the reeds, but as a great storm of the sea draws near he strides out of a wave, ‘a living shape of great height and majesty’, seeming to Tuor a mighty king wearing a tall crown; and the God speaks to the Man ‘standing knee-deep in the shadowy sea’. But the entire episode of Tuor’s coming to Vinyamar was absent from the story as it previously existed; and thus likewise the essential element, in the Last Version, of the arms left for him in the house of Turgon (see LV and above).
It is conceivable, however, that the germ of this story was present as far back as the Tale, p.55, when Turgon greets Tuor before the doors of his palace: ‘Welcome, O Man of the Land of Shadows. Lo! thy coming was set in our books of wisdom, and it has been written that there would come to pass many great things in the homes of the Gondothlim whenso thou faredst hither.’
In the Last Version there appears (p.169) the Noldorin Elf Voronwë in a role that binds him from his first appearance in the narrative to the tale of Tuor and Ulmo, wholly distinct from his entry in earlier texts (see ). After the departure of Ulmo
Tuor looked down from the lowest terrace [of Vinyamar] and saw, leaning against its wall among the stones and the sea-wrack, an Elf, clad in a grey cloak sodden with the sea … As Tuor stood and looked at the silent grey figure he remembered the words of Ulmo, and a name untaught came to his lips, and he called aloud: ‘Welcome, Voronwë! I await you.’
These words of Ulmo were his last to Tuor before his departure (LV ):
‘I will send one to thee out of the wrath of Ossë, and thus shalt thou be guided: yea, the last mariner of the last ship that shall seek into the West until the rising of the Star.’
And this mariner was Voronwë, who told his story to Tuor beside the sea at Vinyamar (LV pp.173–7). His account of his voyaging over seven years in the Great Sea was a grim one to give to Tuor, so greatly enamoured of the ocean. But before setting forth on his mission, he said (LV p.174 ff.):
I tarried on the way. For I had seen little of the lands of Middle-earth, and we came to Nan-tathrin in the spring of the year. Lovely to heart’s enchantment is that land, Tuor, as you shall find, if ever your feet go upon the southward roads down Sirion. There is the cure of all sea-longing …
The story in the Tale of Tuor’s overlong stay in Nan-tathrin, the Land of Willows, the cause of Ulmo’s visitation as originally told, bewitched by its beauty, had now of course disappeared from the narrative; but it was not lost. In the last version it was Voronwë, speaking to Tuor at Vinyamar, who had passed a while in Nan-tathrin, and become enthralled as he ‘stood knee-deep in grass’ (LV p.175); in the old story it had been Tuor who ‘stood knee-deep in the grass’ in the Land of Willows (Tale p.46). Both Tuor and Voronwë gave names of their own to the flowers and birds and butterflies unknown to them.
Since we shall not in this ‘Evolution of the Story’ meet again Ulmo in person I attach here a portrait of the great Vala that my father wrote in his work The Music of the Ainur (late 1930s):
Ulmo has dwelt ever in the Outer Ocean, and governed the flowing of all waters, and the courses of all rivers, the replenishment of springs and the distilling of rain and dew throughout the world. In the deep places he gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo thereof runs through all the veins of the world, and its joy is as the joy of a fountain in the sun whose wells are the wells of unfathomed sorrow at the foundations of the world. The Teleri learned much of him, and for this reason their music has both sadness and enchantment.
We come now to the journey of Tuor and Voronwë from Vinyamar in Nevrast, beside the sea in the far West, to find Gondolin. This would take them eastward along the southern side of the great mountain range Ered Wethrin, the Mountains of Shadow, that formed a vast barrier between Hithlum and West Beleriand, and bring them at last to the great river Sirion running from north to south.
The earliest reference, in the Tale (p.49), says no more than that ‘Long time did Tuor and Voronwë [who in the old story had never been there] seek for the city of that folk [the Gondothlim], until after many days they came upon a deep dale amid the hills’. Likewise the Sketch, not surprisingly, says very simply (pp.123–4) that ‘Tuor and Bronweg reach the secret way … and come out upon the guarded plain.’ And the Quenta Noldorinwa (p.137) is equally brief: ‘Obedient to Ulmo Tuor and Bronwë journeyed North, and came at last to the hidden door.’
Beside these terse glances the account in the Last Version of the fearful days passed by Tuor and Voronwë in the bitter winds and biting frosts of the houseless country, their escape from the bands of Orcs and their encampments, the coming of the eagles, may be seen as a significant element in the history of Gondolin. (On the presence of the eagles in that region see Quenta Noldorinwa and LV .) Most notable is their coming to the Pool of Ivrin (p.178), the lake where the river Narog rose, now defiled and made desolate by the passage of the dragon Glaurung (called by Voronwë ‘the Great Worm of Angband’). Here the seekers of Gondolin touched the greatest story of the Elder Days: for they saw a tall man passing, bearing a long sword drawn, and the blade was long and black. They did not speak to this man clad in black; and they did not know that he was Túrin Turambar, the Blacksword, fleeing north from the sack of Nargothrond, of which they had not heard. ‘Thus only for a moment, and never again, did the paths of those kinsmen, Túrin and Tuor, draw together.’ (Húrin the father of Túrin was the brother of Huor the father of Tuor.)
We come now to the last step in the ‘Evolution of the Story’ (because the Last Version extends no further): the first sight of Gondolin, by way of the hidden and guarded entry into the plain of Tumladen – a ‘door’ or ‘gate’ of renown in the history of Middle-earth. In the Tale (p.49) Tuor and Voronwë came to a place where the river (Sirion) ‘went over a very stony bed’. This was the Ford of Brithiach, not yet so named; ‘it was curtained with a heavy growth of alders’, but the banks were sheer-sided. There in the ‘green wall’ Voronwë found ‘an opening like a great door with sloping sides, and this was cloaked with thick bushes and long-tangled undergrowth’.
Passing through this opening (p.49) they found themselves in a dark and wandering tunnel. In this they groped their way until they saw a distant light, ‘and making for this gleam they came to a gate like that by which they had entered’. Here they were surrounded by armed guards, and found themselves in the sunlight at the feet of steep hills bordering in a circle a wide plain, and in this there stood a city, at the summit of a great hill standing alone.
In the Sketch there is of course no description of the entry; but in the Quenta Noldorinwa (p.131) this is said of the Way of Escape: in the region where the Encircling Mountains were at their lowest the Elves of Gondolin ‘dug a great winding tunnel under the roots of the hills, and its issue was in the steep side, tree-clad and dark, of a gorge through which the blissful river [Sirion] ran.’ It is said in the Quenta (p.137) that when Tuor and Bronwë (Voronwë) came to the hidden door they passed down the tunnel and ‘reached the inner gate’, where they were taken prisoner.
The two ‘gates’ and the tunnel between them were thus present when my father wrote the Quenta Noldorinwa in 1930, and on this conception he based the final version of 1951. This is where the resemblance ends.
But it will be seen that in the final version (LV pp.187 ff.) my father introduced a sharp difference into the topography. The entrance was no longer in the eastern bank of the Sirion; it was from a tributary stream. But the dangerous crossing of the Brithiach they made, being fortified by the appearance of the eagles.
On the far side of the ford they came to a gully, as it were the bed of an old stream, in which no water now flowed; yet once, it seemed, a torrent had cloven its deep channel, coming down from the north out of the mountains of the Echoriath, and bearing thence all the stones of the Brithiach down into Sirion.
‘At last beyond hope we find it!’ cried Voronwë. ‘See! Here is the mouth of the Dry River, and that is the road we must take.’
But the ‘road’ was full of stones and went sharply up, and Tuor expressed to Voronwë his disgust, and his amazement that this wretched track should be the way of entry to the city of Gondolin.
After many miles, and a night spent, in the Dry River it led them to the walls of the Encircling Mountains, and entering by an opening they were brought at length to what they felt to be a great silent space, in which they could see nothing. The sinister reception of Tuor and Voronwë can scarcely be equalled in the writings of Middle-earth: the dazzling light turned on Voronwë in the huge darkness, the cold menacing, questioning voice. That dreadful interview over, they were led to another entry, or exit.
In the Quenta Noldorinwa (p.138) Tuor and Voronwë stepped out from the long twisting black tunnel, where they were taken prisoner by the guard, and saw Gondolin ‘shining from afar, flushed with the rose of dawn upon the plain’. Thus the conception at that time was readily described: the wide plain Tumladen wholly encircled by the mountains, the Echoriath, and a tunnel from the outer world running through them. But in the Last Version, when they left the place of their inquisition, Tuor found that they were standing ‘at the end of a ravine, the like of which he had never before beheld or imagined in his thought’. Up this ravine, named the Orfalch Echor, a long road climbed through a succession of huge gates magnificently adorned until the top of the rift was reached at the seventh, the Great Gate. It was only then that Tuor ‘beheld a vision of Gondolin amid the white snow’; and it was there that Ecthelion said of Tuor that it was certain that ‘he comes from Ulmo himself’ – the words with which the last text of The Fall of Gondolin ends.