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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sorontur < Ramandur in Tuor B.

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

Commentary on

The Fall of Gondolin

§ 1. The primary narrative

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

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

of Ulmo (pp. 149–56)

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

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

The later Tuor becomes very close to the old story for a time when Tuor emerges out of the tunnel into the ravine (later called Cirith Ninniach, but still a name of Tuor’s own devising); many features recur, such as the stars shining in the ‘dark lane of sky above him’, the echoes