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By Root 1239 0

Gnomes of Hisilómë (Dor Lómin), who were suspected of being under the will of Melko (and this is probably a foreshadowing of the suspicion and rejection of Elves escaped from Angband described in The Silmarillion p. 156). In the manuscript it is said (p. 9) that all the Elves of the Great Lands (those who remained in Palisor, those who were lost on the march, and the Noldoli returned from Valinor) fell beneath the power of Melko, though many escaped and wandered in the wild; and as the manuscript text was first written (see p. 11 and note 3) Beren was ‘son of a thrall of Melko’s…that laboured in the darker places in the north of Hisilómë’. This conception seems reasonably clear, so far as it goes.

In the typescript version it is expressly stated that there were Gnomes ‘in Tinwelint’s service’ (p. 43): the bridge over the forest river, leading to Tinwelint’s door, was hung by them. It is not now stated that all the Elves of the Great Lands fell beneath Melko; rather there are named several centres of resistance to his power, in addition to Tinwelint/Thingol in Artanor: Turgon of Gondolin, the Sons of Fëanor, and Egnor of Hisilómë (Beren’s father)—one of the chiefest foes of Melko ‘in all the kin of the Gnomes that still were free’ (p. 44). Presumably this led to the exclusion in the typescript of the passage telling that the woodland Elves thought of the Gnomes of Dor Lómin as treacherous and faithless (see p. 43), while that concerning the distrust of those who had been Melko’s slaves was retained. The passage concerning Hisilómë ‘where dwelt Men, and thrall-Noldoli laboured, and few free-Eldar went’ (p.10) was also retained; but Hisilómë, in Beren’s wish that he had never strayed out of it, becomes ‘the wild free places of Hisilómë’ (pp. 17, 45).

This leads to an altogether baffling question, that of the references to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears; and several of the passages just cited bear on it.

The story of ‘The Travail of the Noldoli and the Coming of Mankind’ that was to have been told by Gilfanon, but which after its opening pages most unhappily never got beyond the stage of outline projections, was to be followed by that of Beren and Tinúviel (see I. 241). After the Battle of Unnumbered Tears there is mention of the Thraldom of the Noldoli, the Mines of Melko, the Spell of Bottomless Dread, the shutting of Men in Hisilómë, and then ‘Beren son of Egnor wandered out of Dor Lómin into Artanor…’ (In The Silmarillion the deeds of Beren and Lúthien preceded the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.)

Now in the Tale of Tinúviel there is a reference, in both versions, to the ‘thrall-Noldoli’ who laboured in Hisilómë and of Men dwelling there; and as the passage introducing Beren was first written in the manuscript his father was one of these slaves. It is said, again in both versions, that neither Tinwelint nor the most part of his people went to the battle, but that his lordship was greatly increased by fugitives from it (p. 9); and to the following statement that his dwelling was hidden by the magic of Gwendeling/Melian the typescript adds the word ‘thereafter’ (p. 43), i.e. after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. In the changed passage in the typescript referring to Egnor he is one of the chiefest foes of Melko ‘in all the kin of the Gnomes that still were free’.

All this seems to allow of only one conclusion: the events of the Tale of Tinúviel took place after the great battle; and this seems to be clinched by the express statement in the typescript: where the manuscript (p. 15) says that Melko ‘sought ever to destroy the friendship and intercourse of Elves and Men’, the second version adds (p. 44): ‘lest they forget the Battle of Unnumbered Tears and once more arise in wrath against him’.

It is very odd, therefore, that Vëannë should say at the beginning (in the manuscript only, p. 10 and see p. 43) that she will tell ‘of things that happened in the halls of Tinwelint after the arising of the Sun indeed but long ere the unforgotten Battle of Unnumbered Tears’. (This in any case seems to imply a much longer period between