The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [153]
15 This sentence, from ‘and is it not that very water…’, is struck through and bracketed, and in the margin my father scribbled: ‘No [?that] is Narog.’
16 The illegible word might be ‘brays’: the word ‘clearer’ is an emendation from ‘hoarser’.
17 ‘and told Beren’: i.e., ‘and Beren told’. The text as first written had ‘Then told Beren…’
18 The illegible word might just possibly be ‘treasury’, but I do not think that it is.
19 Dior replaced the name Ausir, which however occurs below as another name for Dior.
20 ‘Dior the Elf’ is an emendation from ‘Dior then an aged Elf’.
21 The latter part of this name is quite unclear: it might be read as Maithog, or as Mailweg. See Changes made to Names under Dinithel.
Changes made to names in
The Tale of the Nauglafring
Ilfiniol (p. 221) here so written from the first: see p. 201.
Gwenniel is used throughout the revised section of the tale except at the last occurrence (p. 228), where the form is Gwendelin; in the pencilled part of the tale at the first occurrence of the queen’s name it is again Gwenniel (p. 230), but thereafter always Gwendelin (see note 10).
The name of the queen in the Lost Tales is as variable as that of Littleheart. In The Chaining of Melko and The Coming of the Elves she is Tindriel > Wendelin. In the Tale of Tinúviel she is Wendelin > Gwendeling (see p. 50); in the typescript text of Tinúviel Gwenethlin > Melian; in the Tale of Turambar Gwendeling > Gwedheling; in the present tale Gwendelin/Gwenniel (the form Gwendeling occurs in the rejected passage given in note 13); and in the Gnomish dictionary Gwendeling > Gwedhiling.
Belegost At the first occurrence (p. 230) the manuscript has Ost Belegost, with Ost circled as if for rejection, and Belegost is the reading subsequently.
(i·)Guilwarthon In the Tale of Tinúviel, p. 41, the form is i.Cuilwarthon. At the occurrence on p. 240 the ending of the name does not look like-on, but as I cannot say what it is I give Guilwarthon in the text.
Dinithel could also be read as Durithel (p. 241). This name was written in later in ink over an earlier name in pencil now scarcely legible, though clearly the same as that beginning Mai…which appears for this son of Fëanor subsequently (see note 21).
Commentary on
The Tale of the Nauglafring
In this commentary I shall not compare in detail the Tale of the Nauglafring with the story told in The Silmarillion (Chapter 22, Of the Ruin of Doriath). The stories are profoundly different in essential features—above all, in the reduction of the treasure brought by Húrin from Nargothrond to a single object, the Necklace of the Dwarves, which had long been in existence (though not, of course, containing the Silmaril); while the whole history of the relation between Thingol and the Dwarves is changed. My father never again wrote any part of this story on a remotely comparable scale, and the formation of the published text was here of the utmost difficulty; I hope later to give an account of it.
While it is often difficult to differentiate what my father omitted in his more concise versions (in order to keep them concise) from what he rejected, it seems clear that a large part of the elaborate narrative of the Tale of the Nauglafring was early abandoned. In subsequent writing the story of the fighting between Úrin’s band and Tinwelint’s Elves disappeared, and there is no trace afterwards of Ufedhin or the other Gnomes that lived among the Dwarves, of the story that the Dwarves took half the unwrought gold (‘the king’s loan’) away to Nogrod to make precious objects from it, of the keeping of Ufedhin hostage, of Tinwelint’s refusal to let the Dwarves depart, of their outrageous demands, of their scourging and their insulting payment.
We meet here again the strong emphasis on Tinwelint’s love of treasure and lack of it, in contrast to the later conception of his vast wealth (see my remarks, pp. 128–9). The Silmaril is kept