The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [84]
Two notable points in this section remain to be mentioned; both are afterthoughts pencilled into the manuscript. In the one we meet for the first time Mîm the Dwarf as the captain of Glorund’s guard over his treasure during his absence—a strange choice for the post, one would think. On this matter see p. 137 below. In the other it is said that Níniel conceived a child by Turambar, which, remarkably enough, is not said in the text as originally written; on this see p. 135.
(x) The deaths of Túrin and Nienóri (pp. 108–12)
In the conclusion of the story the structure remained the same from the old tale to the Narn: the moonlight, the tending of Turambar’s burnt hand, the cry of Níniel that stirred the dragon to his final malice, the accusation by the dragon that Turambar was a stabber of foes unseen, Turambar’s naming Tamar/Brandir ‘Club-foot’ and sending him to consort with the dragon in death, the sudden withering of the leaves at the place of Nienor’s leap as if it were already the end of autumn, the invocation of Nienor to the waters and of Turambar to his sword, the raising of Túrin’s mound and the inscription in ‘strange signs’ upon it. Many other features could be added. But there are also many differences; here I refer only to some of the most important.
Mablung being absent from the old story, it is only Turambar’s intuition (‘being free now of blindness’—the blindness that Melko ‘wove of old’, p. 83)* that informs him that Tamar was telling the truth. The slaying of Glaurung and all its aftermath is in the late story compassed in the course of a single night and the morning of the next day, whereas in the tale it is spread over two nights, the intervening day, and the morning of the second. Turambar is carried back to the people on the hill-top by the three deserters who had left him in the ravine, whereas in the late story he comes himself. (Of the slaying of Dorlas by Brandir there is no trace in the tale, and the taking of a sword by Tamar has no issue.)
Particularly interesting is the result of the changing of the place where Túrin and Nienóri died. In the tale there is only one river, and Níniel follows the stream up through the woods and casts herself over the falls of Silver Bowl (in the place afterwards called Nen Girith), and here too, in the glade above the falls, Turambar slew himself; in the developed story her death-leap was into the ravine of Teiglin at Cabed-en-Aras, the Deer’s Leap, near the spot where Turambar lay beside Glaurung, and here Turambar’s death took place also. Thus Níniel’s sense of dread when she first came to Silver Bowl with the Woodmen who rescued her (p. 101) foreboded her own death in that place, but in the changed story there is less reason for a foreknowledge of evil to come upon her there. But while the place was changed, the withering of the leaves remained, and the awe of the scene of their deaths, so that none would go to Cabed-en-Aras after, as they would not set foot on the grass above Silver Bowl.
The most remarkable feature of the earliest version of the story of Turambar and Níniel is surely that as my father first wrote it he did not say that she had conceived a child by him (note 25); and thus there is nothing in the old story corresponding to Glaurung’s words to her: ‘But the worst of all his deeds thou shalt feel in thyself’ (Narn p. 138). The fact that above all accounts for Nienor’s utter horror and despair was added to the tale later.
In concluding this long analysis of the Tale of Turambar proper the absence of place-names in the later part of it may be remarked. The dwelling of the Rodothlim is not named, nor the river that flowed past it; no name is given to the forest where the Woodmen dwelt, to their village, or even to the stream of such central importance at the end of the story (contrast