The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [142]
Now did Nuin descend deeper into the vale, treading softly by reason of some unknown wonder that possessed him, and lo, beneath the trees he saw the warm dusk full of sleeping forms, and some were twined each in the other’s arms, and some lay sleeping gently all alone, and Nuin stood and marvelled, scarce breathing.
Then seized with a sudden fear he turned and stole from that hallowed place, and coming again by the passage through the mountain he sped back to the abode of Tû and coming before that oldest of wizards he said unto him that he was new come from the Eastward Lands, and Tû was little pleased thereat; nor any the more when Nuin made an end of his tale, telling of all he there saw—“and me-thought,” said he, “that all who slumbered there were children, yet was their stature that of the greatest of the Elves.”
Then did Tû fall into fear of Manwë, nay even of Ilúvatar the Lord of All, and he said to Nuin:
Here Gilfanon’s Tale breaks off. The wizard Tû and the Dark Elf Nuin disappeared from the mythology and never appear again, together with the marvellous story of Nuin’s coming upon the forms of the Fathers of Mankind still asleep in the Vale of Murmenalda—though from the nature of the work and the different degrees of attention that my father later gave to its different parts one cannot always distinguish between elements definitively abandoned and elements held in ‘indefinite abeyance’. And unhappy though it is that this tale should have been abandoned, we are nonetheless by no means entirely in the dark as to how the narrative would have proceeded.
I have referred earlier (p. 107, note 3) to the existence of two ‘schemes’ or outlines setting out the plan of the Lost Tales; and I have said that one of these is a résumé of the Tales as they are extant, while the other is divergent, a project for a revision that was never undertaken. There is no doubt that the former of these, which for the purposes of this chapter I will call ‘B’, 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. It is clear, therefore, that B is the preliminary form, according to the method that my father regularly used in those days, of Gilfanon’s Tale, and indeed the part of the tale that was written as a proper narrative is obviously following the outline quite closely, while substantially expanding it.
There is also an extremely rough, though full, outline of the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale which though close to B has things that B does not, and vice versa; this is virtually certainly the predecessor of B, and in this chapter will be called ‘A’.
The second outline referred to above, an unrealized project for the revision of the whole work, introduces features that need not be discussed here; it is sufficient to say that the mariner was now Ælfwine, not Eriol, and that his previous history was changed, but that the general plan of the Tales themselves was largely intact (with several notes to the effect that they needed abridging or recasting). This outline I shall call ‘D’. How much time elapsed between B and D cannot be said, but I think probably not much. It seems possible that this new scheme was associated with the sudden breaking-off of Gilfanon’s Tale. As with B, D suddenly expands to a much fuller account when this point is reached.
Lastly, a much briefer and more cursory outline, which however adds one or two interesting points, also has Ælfwine instead of Eriol; this followed B and preceded D, and is here called ‘C’.
I shall not give all these outlines in extenso, which is unnecessary in view of the amount of overlap between them;