The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [133]
Glorfindel ‘of the golden hair’ (p. 192) remains ‘yellow-haired Glorfindel’ in The Silmarillion, and this was from the beginning the meaning of his name.
(vi) The battle of Gondolin (pp. 174–88)
Virtually the entire history of the fighting in Gondolin is unique in the tale of The Fall of Gondolin; the whole story is summarised in The Silmarillion (p. 242) in a few lines:
Of the deeds of desperate valour there done, by the chieftains of the noble houses and their warriors, and not least by Tuor, much is told in The Fall of Gondolin: of the battle of Ecthelion of the Fountain with Gothmog Lord of Balrogs in the very square of the King, where each slew the other, and of the defence of the tower of Turgon by the people of his household, until the tower was overthrown: and mighty was its fall and the fall of Turgon in its ruin.
Tuor sought to rescue Idril from the sack of the city, but Maeglin had laid hands on her, and on Eärendil; and Tuor fought with Maeglin on the walls, and cast him far out, and his body as it fell smote the rocky slopes of Amon Gwareth thrice ere it pitched into the flames below. Then Tuor and Idril led such remnants of the people of Gondolin as they could gather in the confusion of the burning down the secret way which Idril had prepared.
(In this highly compressed account the detail that Maeglin’s body struck the slopes of Amon Gwareth three times before it ‘pitched’ into the flames was retained.) It would seem from The Silmarillion account that Maeglin’s attempt on Idril and Eärendil took place much later in the fighting, and indeed shortly before the escape of the fugitives down the tunnel; but I think that this is far more likely to be the result of compression than of a change in the narrative of the battle.
In the tale Gondolin is very clearly visualised as a city, with its markets and its great squares, of which there are only vestiges in later writing (see above, p. 207); and there is nothing vague in the description of the fighting. The early conception of the Balrogs makes them less terrible, and certainly more destructible, than they afterwards became: they existed in ‘hundreds’ (p. 170),* and were slain by Tuor and the Gondothlim in large numbers: thus five fell before Tuor’s great axe Dramborleg, three before Ecthelion’s sword, and two score were slain by the warriors of the king’s house. The Balrogs are ‘demons of power’ (p. 181); they are capable of pain and fear (p. 194); they are attired in iron armour (pp. 181, 194), and they have whips of flame (a character they never lost) and claws of steel (pp. 169, 179).
In The Silmarillion the dragons that came against Gondolin were ‘of the brood of Glaurung’, which ‘were become now many and terrible’ whereas in the tale the language employed (p. 170) suggests that some at least of the ‘Monsters’ were inanimate ‘devices’, the construction of smiths in the forges of Angband. But even the ‘things of iron’ that ‘opened about their middles’ to disgorge bands of Orcs are called ‘ruthless beasts’, and Gothmog ‘bade’ them ‘pile themselves’ (p. 176); those made of bronze or copper ‘were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire’ while the ‘fire-drake’ that Tuor hewed screamed and lashed with its tail (p. 181).
A small detail of the narrative is curious: what ‘messengers’ did Meglin send to Melko to warn him to guard the outer entrance of the Way of Escape (where he guessed that the secret tunnel must lead in the end)? Whom could Meglin trust sufficiently? And who would dare to go?
(vii) The escape of the fugitives
and the battle in Cristhorn (pp. 188–95)
The story as told in The Silmarillion (p. 243) is somewhat fuller in its account of the escape of the fugitives from the city and the ambush in the Eagles’ Cleft (there called Cirith Thoronath) than in that of the assault and sack itself, but only in one point are the two