The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [148]
If certain features are selected from these outlines, and expressed in such a way as to emphasize agreement rather than disagreement, the likeness to the narrative structure of The Silmarillion is readily apparent. Thus:
—The Noldoli cross the Helkaraksë and spread into Hisilómë, making their encampment by Asgon (Mithrim);
—They meet Ilkorin Elves (=Úmanyar);
—Fëanor dies;
—First battle with Orcs;
—A Gnomish army goes to Angband;
—Maidros captured, tortured, and maimed;
—The Sons of Fëanor depart from the host of the Elves (in D only);
—A mighty battle called the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is fought between Elves and Men and the hosts of Melko;
—Treachery of Men, corrupted by Melko, at that battle;
—But the people of Úrin (Húrin) are faithful, and do not survive it;
—The leader of the Gnomes is isolated and slain (in D only);
—Turgon and his host cut their way out, and go to Gondolin;
—Melko is wrathful because he cannot discover where Turgon has gone;
—The Fëanorians come late to the battle (in D only);
—A great cairn is piled (in D only).
These are essential features of the story that were to survive. But the unlikenesses are many and great. Most striking of all is that the entire later history of the long years of the Siege of Angband, ending with the Battle of Sudden Flame (Dagor Bragollach), of the passage of Men over the Mountains into Beleriand and their taking service with the Noldorin Kings, had yet to emerge; indeed these outlines give the effect of only a brief time elapsing between the coming of the Noldoli from Kôr and their great defeat. This effect may be to some extent the result of the compressed nature of these outlines, and indeed the reference in the last of them, D, to the practice of many arts by the Noldoli (p. 240) somewhat counteracts the impression—in any case, Turgon, born when the Gnomes were in Hisilómë or (according to D) when they were encamped by Sirion, is full grown at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.12 Even so, the picture in The Silmarillion of a period of centuries elapsing while Morgoth was straitly confined in Angband and ‘behind the guard of their armies in the north the Noldor built their dwellings and their towers’ is emphatically not present. In later ‘phases’ of the history my father steadily expanded the period between the rising of the Sun and Moon and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. It is essential, also, to the old conception that Melko’s victory was so complete and overwhelming: vast numbers of the Noldoli became his thralls, and wherever they went lived in the slavery of his spell; in Gondolin alone were they free—so in the old tale of The Fall of Gondolin it is said that the people of Gondolin ‘were that kin of the Noldoli who alone escaped Melko’s power, when at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears he slew and enslaved their folk and wove spells about them and caused them to dwell in the Hells of Iron, faring thence at his will and bidding only’. Moreover Gondolin was not founded until after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.13
Of Fëanor’s death in the early conception we can discern little; but at least it is clear that it bore no relation to the story of his death in The Silmarillion (p. 107). In these early outlines the Noldoli, leaving Hisilómë, had their first affray with the Orcs in the foothills of the Iron Mountains or in the pass of the Bitter Hills, and these heights pretty clearly correspond to the later Mountains of Shadow, Ered Wethrin (see p. 158, 238); but in The Silmarillion (p. 106) the first encounter of the Noldor with the Orcs was in Mithrim.
The meeting of Gnomes and Ilkorins survived in the meeting of the new-come Noldor with the Grey-elves of Mithrim (ibid. p. 108); but the Noldor heard rather of the power of King Thingol of Doriath than of