• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Whereas in these outlines Maidros son of Fëanor led an attack on Angband which was repulsed with slaughter and his own capture, in The Silmarillion it was Fingolfin who appeared before Angband, and being met with silence prudently withdrew to Mithrim (p. 109). Maidros (Maedhros) had been already taken at a meeting with an embassage of Morgoth’s that was supposed to be a parley, and he heard the sound of Fingolfin’s trumpets from his place of torment on Thangorodrim—where Morgoth set him until, as he said, the Noldor forsook their war and departed. Of the divided hosts of the Noldor there is of course no trace in the old story; and the rescue of Maedhros by Fingon, who cut off his hand in order to save him, does not appear in any form: rather is he set free by Melko, though maimed, and without explanation given. But it is very characteristic that the maiming of Maidros—an important ‘moment’ in the legends—should never itself be lost, though it came to be given a wholly different setting and agency.

The Oath of the Sons of Fëanor was here sworn after the coming of the Gnomes from Valinor, and after the death of their father; and in the later outline D they then left the host of (Finwë) Nólemë, Lord of the Noldoli, and returned to Dor Lómin (Hisilómë). In this and in other features that appear only in D the story is moved nearer to its later form. In the return to Dor Lómin is the germ of the departure of the Fëanorians from Mithrim to the eastern parts of Beleriand (The Silmarillion p. 112); in the Feast of Reunion that of Mereth Aderthad, the Feast of Reuniting, held by Fingolfin for the Elves of Beleriand (ibid. p. 113), though the participants are necessarily greatly different; in the latecoming of the Fëanorians to the stricken field of Unnumbered Tears that of the delayed arrival of the host of Maedhros (ibid. p. 190–2); in the cutting-off and death of (Finwë) Nólemë in the battle that of the slaying of Fingon (ibid. p. 193—when Finwë came to be Fëanor’s father, and thus stepped into the place of Bruithwir, killed by Melko in Valinor, his position as leader of the hosts in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears was taken by Fingon); and in the great cairn called the Hill of Death, raised by the Sons of Fëanor, that of the Haudh-en-Ndengin or Hill of Slain, piled by Orcs in Anfauglith (ibid. p. 197). Whether the embassy to Túvo, Tinwelint, and Ermon (which in D becomes the sending of messengers) remotely anticipates the Union of Maedhros (ibid. p. 188–9) is not clear, though Tinwelint’s refusal to join forces with Nólemë survived in Thingol’s rejection of Maedhros’ approaches (p. 189). I cannot certainly explain Tinwelint’s words ‘Go not into the hills’, but I suspect that ‘the hills’ are the Mountains of Iron (in The Hiding of Valinor, p. 209, called ‘the Hills of Iron’) above Angband, and that he warned against an attack on Melko; in the old Tale of Turambar Tinwelint said: ‘Of the wisdom of my heart and the fate of the Valar did I not go with my folk to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.’

Other elements in the story of the battle that survived—the steadfastness of the folk of Úrin (Húrin), the escape of Turgon—already existed at this time in a tale that had been written (that of Túrin).

The geographical indications are slight, and there is no map of the Great Lands for the earliest period of the legends; in any case these questions are best left until the tales that take place in those lands. The Vale (or Valley) of the Fountains, afterwards the Valley (or Vale) of Weeping Waters, is in D explicitly equated with Gorfalong, which in the earlier outlines is given as Gorfalon, and seems to be distinct; but in any case neither these, nor ‘the Tumbled Lands’, can be brought into relation with any places or names in the later geography—unless (especially since in D Turgon is said to have fled ‘south down Sirion’) it may be supposed that something like the later picture of the Pass of Sirion was already in being, and that the Vale of the Fountains, or of Weeping Waters, was a name for it.

NOTES

1 Above