The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [137]
How is this to be understood? Was this Ulmo’s ‘diplomacy’? Certainly Turgon’s understanding of the motives of the Valar chimes better with what is said of them in The Hiding of Valinor.
But the Gnomes of Gondolin reverenced the Valar. There were ‘pomps of the Ainur’ (p. 165); a great square of the city and its highest point was Gar Ainion, the Place of the Gods, where weddings were celebrated (pp. 164, 186); and the people of the Hammer of Wrath ‘reverenced Aulë the Smith more than all other Ainur’ (p. 174).
Of particular interest is the passage (p. 165) in which a reason is given for Ulmo’s choice of a Man as the agent of his designs: ‘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.’ This is the only place where a reason is expressly offered, save for an isolated early note, where two reasons are given:
(1) ‘the wrath of the Gods’ (i.e. against the Gnomes);
(2) ‘Melko did not fear Men—had he thought that any messengers were getting to Valinor he would have redoubled his vigilance and evil and hidden the Gnomes away utterly.’
But this is too oblique to be helpful.
The conception of ‘the luck of the Gods’ occurs again in this tale (pp. 188, 200 note 32), as it does in the Tale of Turambar: see p. 141. The Ainur ‘put it into Tuor’s heart’ to climb the cliff out of the ravine of Golden Cleft for the saving of his life (p. 151).
Very strange is the passage concerning the birth of Eärendel (p. 165): ‘In these days came to pass the fulfilment of the time of the desire of the Valar and the hope of the Eldalië, for in great love Idril bore to Tuor a son and he was called Eärendel.’ Is it to be understood that the union of Elf and mortal Man, and the birth of their offspring, was ‘the desire of the Valar’—that the Valar foresaw it, or hoped for it, as the fulfilment of a design of Ilúvatar from which great good should come? There is no hint or suggestion of such an idea elsewhere.
(iii) Orcs
There is a noteworthy remark in the tale (p. 159) concerning the origin of the Orcs (or Orqui as they were called in Tuor A, and in Tuor B as first written): ‘all that race were bred of the subterranean heats and slime.’ There is no trace yet of the later view that ‘naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë before the Beginning’, or that the Orcs were derived from enslaved Quendi after the Awakening (The Silmarillion p. 50). Conceivably there is a first hint of this idea of their origin in the words of the tale in the same passage: ‘unless it be that certain of the Noldoli were twisted to the evil of Melko and mingled among these Orcs’, although of course this is as it stands quite distinct from the idea that the Orcs were actually bred from Elves.
Here also occurs the name Glamhoth of the Orcs, a name that reappears in the later Tuor (pp. 39 and 54 note 18).
On Balrogs and Dragons in The Fall of Gondolin see pp. 212–13.
(iv) Noldorin in the Land of Willows
‘Did not even after the days of Tuor Noldorin and his Eldar come there seeking for Dor Lómin and the hidden river and the caverns of the Gnomes’ imprisonment; yet thus nigh to their quest’s end were like to abandon it? Indeed sleeping and dancing here…they were whelmed by the goblins sped by Melko from the Hills of Iron and Noldorin made bare escape thence’ (p. 154). This was the Battle of Tasarinan, mentioned in the Tale of Turambar (pp. 70, 140), at the time of the great expedition of the Elves from Kôr. Cf. Lindo’s remark in The Cottage of Lost Play (I.16) that his father Valwë ‘went with Noldorin to find the Gnomes’.
Noldorin (Salmar, companion of Ulmo) is also said