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narratives actually at variance—as already noticed, the Eagles’ Cleft was afterwards moved from the southern parts of the Encircling Mountains to the northern, and Idril’s tunnel led north from the city (the comment is made that it was not thought ‘that any fugitives would take a path towards the north and the highest parts of the mountains and the nighest to Angband’). The tale provides a richness of detail and an immediacy that is lacking in the short version, where such things as the tripping over dead bodies in the hot and reeking underground passage have disappeared; and there is no mention of the Gondothlim who against the counsel of Idril and Tuor went to the Way of Escape and were there destroyed by the dragon lying in wait,† or of the fight to rescue Eärendel.

In the tale appears the keen-sighted Elf Legolas Greenleaf, first of the names of the Fellowship of the Ring to appear in my father’s writings (see p. 217 on this earlier Legolas), followed by Gimli (an Elf) in the Tale of Tinúviel.

In one point the story of the ambush in Cristhorn seems difficult to follow: this is the statement on p. 193 that the moon ‘lit not the path for the height of the walls’. The fugitives were moving southwards through the Encircling Mountains, and the sheer rockwall above the path in the Eagles’ Cleft was ‘of the right or westerly hand’, while on the left there was ‘a fall…dreadly steep’. Surely then the moon rising in the east would illuminate the path?

The name Cristhorn appears in my father’s drawing of ‘Gondolin and the Vale of Tumladin from Cristhorn’, September 1928 (Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1979, no. 35).

(viii) The wanderings of the Exiles of Gondolin (pp. 195–7)

In The Silmarillion (p. 243) it is said that ‘led by Tuor son of Huor the remnant of Gondolin passed over the mountains, and came down into the Vale of Sirion’. One would suppose that they came down into Dimbar, and so ‘fleeing southward by weary and dangerous marches they came at length to Nan-tathren, the Land of Willows’. It seems strange in the tale that the exiles were wandering in the wilderness for more than a year, and yet achieved only to the outer entrance of the Way of Escape; but the geography of this region may have been vaguer when The Fall of Gondolin was written.

In The Silmarillion when Tuor and Idril went down from Nan-tathren to the mouths of Sirion they ‘joined their people to the company of Elwing, Dior’s daughter, that had fled thither but a little while before’. Of this there is no mention here; but I postpone consideration of this part of the narrative.

§ 2 Entries in the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin

On this list see p. 148, where the head-note to it is given. Specifically linguistic information from the list, including meanings, is incorporated in the Appendix on Names, but I collect here some statements of other kind (arranged in alphabetical order) that are contained in it.

Bablon ‘was a city of Men, and more rightly Babylon, but such is the Gnomes’ name as they now shape it, and they got it from Men aforetime.’

Bansil ‘Now this name had the Gondothlim for that tree before their king’s door which bore silver blossom and faded not—and its name had Elfriniel from his father Voronwë and it meaneth “Fairgleam”. Now that tree of which it was a shoot (brought in the deep ages out of Valinor by the Noldoli) had like properties, but greater, seeing that for half the twenty-four hours it lit all Valinor with silver light. This the Eldar still tell of as Silpion or “Cherrymoon”, for its blossom was like that of a cherry in spring—but of that tree in Gondolin they know no name, and the Noldoli tell of it alone.’

Dor Lómin ‘or the “Land of Shadows” was that region named of the Eldar Hisilómë (and this means Shadowy Twilights) where Melko shut Men, and it is so called by reason of the scanty sun which peeps little over the Iron Mountains to the east and south of it—there dwell now the Shadow Folk. Thence came Tuor to Gondolin.’

Eärendel ‘was the son of Tuor and Idril and ’tis said the only being that is half of the kindred of the