The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [74]
(i) The capture of Úrin and Túrin’s childhood in Hisilómë (pp. 70–2).
At the outset of the tale, it would be interesting to know more of the teller, Eltas. He is a puzzling figure: he seems to be a Man (he says that ‘our people’ called Turambar Turumart ‘after the fashion of the Gnomes’) living in Hisilómë after the days of Turambar but before the fall of Gondolin, and he ‘trod Olórë Mallë’, the Path of Dreams. Is he then a child, one of ‘the children of the fathers of the fathers of Men’, who ‘found Kôr and remained with the Eldar for ever’ (The Cottage of Lost Play, I.19–20)?
The opening passage agrees in almost all essentials with the ultimate form of the story. Thus there go back to the beginning of the ‘tradition’ (or at least to its earliest extant form) the departure of Húrin to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears at the summons of the Noldor, while his wife (Mavwin = Morwen) and young son Túrin remained behind; the great stand of Húrin’s men, and Húrin’s capture by Morgoth; the reason for Húrin’s torture (Morgoth’s wish to learn the whereabouts of Turgon) and the mode of it, and Morgoth’s curse; the birth of Nienor shortly after the great battle.
That Men were shut in Hisilómë (or Hithlum, the Gnomish form, which here first appears, equated with Dor Lómin, p. 71) after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is stated in The Coming of the Elves (I. 118) and in the last of the outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale (I.241); later on this was transformed into the confinement of the treacherous Easterling Men in Hithlum (The Silmarillion p. 195), and their ill-treatment of the survivors of the House of Hador became an essential element in the story of Túrin’s childhood. But in the Tale of Turambar the idea is already present that ‘the strange men who dwelt nigh knew not the dignity of the Lady Mavwin’. It is not in fact clear where Úrin dwelt: it is said here that after the battle ‘Mavwin got her in tears into the land of Hithlum or Dor Lómin where all Men must now dwell’, which can only mean that she went there, on account of Melko’s command, from wherever she had dwelt with Úrin before; on the other hand, a little later in the tale (p. 73), and in apparent contradiction to this, Mavwin would not accept the invitation of Tinwelint to come to Artanor partly because (it is suggested) ‘she clung to that dwelling that Úrin had set her in ere he went to the great war’.
In the later story Morwen resolved to send Túrin away from fear that he would be enslaved by the Easterlings (Narn p. 70), whereas here all that is said is that Mavwin ‘knew not in her distress how to foster both him and his sister’ (which presumably reflects her poverty). This in turn reflects a further difference, namely that here Nienóri was born before Túrin’s departure (but see p. 131); in the later legend he and his companions left Dor-lómin in the autumn of the Year of Lamentation and Nienor was born early in the following year—thus he had never seen her, even as an infant.
An important underlying difference is the absence in the tale of the motive that Húrin had himself visited Gondolin, a fact known to Morgoth and the reason for his being taken alive (The Silmarillion pp. 158–9, 196–7); this element in the story arose much later, when the founding of Gondolin was set far back and long before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.
(ii) Túrin in Artanor (pp. 72–6)
From the original story of Túrin’s journey the two old men who accompanied him, one of whom returned to Mavwin while the older remained with Túrin, were never lost; and the cry of Túrin as they set out reappears in the Narn (p. 73): ‘Morwen, Morwen, when shall I see you again?’
Beleg was present from the beginning, as was the meaning of his name: ‘he was called Beleg for he was of great stature’ (see I.254, entry Haloisi velikë, and the Appendix to The Silmarillion, entry beleg); and he plays the same rôle in the old story, rescuing the travellers starving in the forest