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A very curious statement is made in this concluding part of the tale, that ‘those were days of happiness in the vales of Hithlum, for there was peace with Melko and the Dwarves who had but one thought as they plotted against Gondolin’ (p. 241). Presumably ‘peace with Melko’ means no more than that Melko had averted his attention from those lands; but nowhere else is there any reference to the Dwarves’ plotting against Gondolin.

In the typescript version of the Tale of Tinúviel (p. 43) it is said that if Turgon King of Gondolin was the most glorious of the kings of the Elves who defied Melko, ‘for a while the most mighty and the longest free was Thingol of the Woods’. The most natural interpretation of this expression is surely that Gondolin fell before Artanor; whereas in The Silmarillion (p. 240) ‘Tidings were brought by Thorondor Lord of Eagles of the fall of Nargothrond, and after of the slaying of Thingol and of Dior his heir, and of the ruin of Doriath; but Turgon shut his ear to word of the woes without.’ In the present tale we see the same chronology, in that many of the Elves who followed Beren went after his departure to Gondolin, ‘the rumour of whose growing power and glory ran in secret whispers among all the Elves’ (p. 240), though here the destruction of Gondolin is said to have taken place on the very day that Dior was attacked by the Sons of Fëanor (p. 242). To evade the discrepancy therefore we must interpret the passage in the Tale of Tinúviel to mean that Thingol remained free for a longer period of years than did Turgon, irrespective of the dates of their downfalls.

Lastly, the statements that Cûm an-Idrisaith, the Mound of Avarice, ‘stands there still in Artanor’ (p. 223), and that the waters of Aros still flow above the drowned hoard (p. 238), are noteworthy as indications that nothing analogous to the Drowning of Beleriand was present in the original conception.

V

THE TALE OF EÄRENDEL

The ‘true beginning’ of the Tale of Eärendel was to be the dwelling at Sirion’s mouth of the Lothlim (the point at which The Fall of Gondolin ends: ‘and fair among the Lothlim Eärendel grows in the house of his father’, pp. 196–7) and the coming there of Elwing (the point at which the Tale of the Nauglafring ends: ‘they departed for ever from the glades of Hithlum and got them to the south towards Sirion’s deep waters, and the pleasant lands. And thus did all the fates of the fairies weave then to one strand, and that strand is the great tale of Eärendel; and to that tale’s true beginning are we now come’, p. 242). The matter is complicated, however, as will be seen in a moment, by my father’s also making the Nauglafring the first part of the Tale of Eärendel.

But the great tale was never written; and for the story as he then conceived it we are wholly dependent on highly condensed and often contradictory outlines. There are also many isolated notes; and there are the very early Eärendel poems. While the poems can be precisely dated, the notes and outlines can not; and it does not seem possible to arrange them in order so as to provide a clear line of development.

One of the outlines for the Tale of Eärendel is the earlier of the two ‘schemes’ for the Lost Tales which are the chief materials for Gilfanon’s Tale; and I will repeat here what I said of this in the first part (I.233):

There is no doubt that [the earlier of the two schemes] was composed when the Lost Tales had reached their furthest point of development, as represented by the latest texts and arrangements given in this book. Now when this outline comes to the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale it becomes at once very much fuller, but then contracts again to cursory references for the tales of Tinúviel, Túrin, Tuor, and the Necklace of the Dwarves, and once more becomes fuller for the tale of Eärendel.

This scheme B (as I will continue to call it) provides a coherent if very rough narrative plan, and divides the story into seven parts, of which the first (marked ‘Told’) is ‘The Nauglafring down to the