The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [95]
Of the next part of this tale (pp. 146–9) almost nothing survived. Manwë’s lecture to the Noldoli disappeared (but some of its content is briefly expressed at another place in the narrative of The Silmarillion, p. 68: ‘The Noldor began to murmur against [the Valar], and many became filled with pride, forgetting how much of what they had and knew came to them in gift from the Valar’). Manwë’s naming of Fëanor’s father Bruithwir by the patronymic go-Maidros is notable: though the name Maidros was subsequently to be that of Fëanor’s eldest son, not of his grandfather, it was from the outset associated with the ‘Fëanorians’. There is no trace later of the strange story of the renegade servant of Mandos, who brought Melko’s outrageous message to the Valar, and who was hurled to his death from Taniquetil by the irrepressible Tulkas in direct disobedience to Manwë nor of the sending of Sorontur to Melko as the messenger of the Gods (it is not explained how Sorontur knew where to find him). It is said here that afterwards ‘Sorontur and his folk fared to the Iron Mountains and there abode, watching all that Melko did’. I have noticed in commenting (pp. 111–12) on The Chaining of Melko that the Iron Mountains, said to be south of Hisilómë (pp. 101, 118), there correspond to the later Mountains of Shadow (Ered Wethrin). On the other hand, in the Tale of the Sun and Moon (p. 176) Melko after his escape from Valinor makes himself ‘new dwellings in that region of the North where stand the Iron Mountains very high and terrible to see’ and in the original Tale of Turambar* it is said that Angband lay beneath the roots of the northernmost fastnesses of the Iron Mountains, and that these mountains were so named from ‘the Hells of Iron’ beneath them. The statement in the present tale that Sorontur ‘watched all that Melko did’ from his abode in the Iron Mountains obviously implies likewise that Angband was beneath them; and the story that Sorontur (Thorondor) had his eyries on Thangorodrim before he removed them to Gondolin survived long in the ‘Silmarillion’ tradition (see Unfinished Tales p. 43 and note 25). There is thus, apparently, a contradictory usage of the term ‘Iron Mountains’ within the Lost Tales; unless it can be supposed that these mountains were conceived as a continuous range, the southerly extension (the later Mountains of Shadow) forming the southern fence of Hisilómë, while the northern peaks, being above Angband, gave the range its name. Evidence that this is so will appear later.
In the original story the Noldoli of Sirnúmen were given permission (through the intercession of Aulë) to return to Kôr, but Fëanor remained there in bitterness with a few others; and thus the situation of the later narrative—the Noldor in Tirion, but Fëanor at Formenos—is achieved, with the element absent of Fëanor’s banishment and unlawful return to the city of the Elves. An underlying difference to be noted is that in The Silmarillion (pp. 61–2) the Vanyar had long since departed from Tirion and gone to dwell on Taniquetil or in Valinor: of this there is no suggestion in the old tale; and of course there is the central structural difference between the early and late narratives—when Fëanor raises his standard of rebellion the Trees are still shining in Valinor.
In the tale, a good while seems to elapse after the loss of the treasures of the Noldoli, during which they set to work again with lessened joy and Fëanor sought in vain to remake the Silmarils: this element must of course disappear in the later, much tauter structure, where Fëanor (refusing to hand over the Silmarils to the Valar for the healing of the Trees and not yet knowing that Melko has taken them) knows without attempting it that he cannot remake them any more than Yavanna can remake the Trees.
The embassage of Fëanor and other Noldoli