Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [91]
11 The last-written versions of this part of the story agree that when Túrin became captain of the outlaw band he led them away from the homes of the Woodmen in the forest south of Teiglin, and that Beleg came there soon after they had gone; but the geography is unclear and the accounts of the outlaws’ movements conflicting. It seems necessary to suppose, in view of the subsequent course of the narrative, that they remained in the Vale of Sirion, and indeed that they were not far from their previous haunts at the time of the Orc-raid on the homes of the Woodmen. In one tentative version they went away southwards and came to the country ‘above the Aelin-uial and the Fens of Sirion’; but the men becoming discontented in that ‘harbourless land’, Túrin was persuaded to lead them back to the woodlands south of Teiglin where he first encountered them. This would fit the requirements of the narrative.
12 In The Silmarillion the narrative continues (pp. 201 – 2) with Beleg’s farewell to Túrin, Túrin’s strange foreknowledge that his fate would lead him to Amon Rûdh, Beleg’s coming to Menegroth (where he received the sword Anglachel from Thingol and lembas from Melian), and his return to warfare against the Orcs in Dimbar. There is no other text to supplement this, and the passage is omitted here.
13 Túrin fled from Doriath in the summer; he passed the autumn and winter among the outlaws, and he slew Forweg and became their captain in the spring of the next year. The events described here took place in the summer following.
14 Aeglos, ‘snowthorn’, is said to have been like furze (gorse), but larger, and with white flowers. Aeglos was also the name of the spear of Gil-galad. Seregon, ‘blood of stone’, was a plant of the kind called in English ‘stonecrop’; it had flowers of a deep red.
15 So also the yellow-flowered gorse bushes encountered by Frodo, Sam and Gollum in Ithilien were ‘gaunt and leggy below but thick above’, so that they could walk upright under them, ‘passing through long dry aisles’, and they bore flowers that ‘glimmered in the gloom and gave a faint sweet scent’ (The Two Towers IV 7).
16 Elsewhere the Sindarin name of the Petty-Dwarves is given as Noegyth Nibin (so in The Silmarillion p. 204) and Nibin-Nogrim. The ‘high moorlands that rose between the Vales of Sirion and Narog’, north-east of Nargothrond (p. 128 above) are more than once referred to as the Moors of the Nibin-noeg (or variants of this name).
17 The tall cliff through which Mîm led them by the cleft that he called ‘the gate of the garth’ was (it appears) the north edge of the shelf; the cliffs on the eastern and western sides were much more precipitous.
18 Andróg’s curse is also recorded in the form: ‘May he lack a bow at need ere his end.’ In the event Mîm met his death from Húrin’s sword before the Doors of Nargothrond (The Silmarillion p. 230).
19 The mystery of the other things in Mîm’s sack is not explained. The only other statement on the subject is in a hastily scribbled note, which suggests that there were ingots of gold disguised as roots, and refers to Mîm seeking ‘for old treasures of a dwarf-house near the “flat stones” ’ . These were no doubt those referred to in the text (p. 125) as ‘great stones, leaning or tumbled together’, at the place where Mîm was captured. But there is nowhere any indication of what part this treasure was to play in the story of Bar-en-Danwedh.
20 It is said on p. 90 that the pass over the shoulder of Amon Darthir was the only pass ‘between Serech and far westward where Dor-lómin marched with Nevrast’.
21 In the story as told in The Silmarillion (p. 216) Brandir’s foreboding of evil came upon him after he had heard ‘the tidings that Dorlas brought’, and therefore (as it appears) after he knew that the man on the bier was the Black Sword of Nargothrond, rumoured to be the son of Húrin of Dorlómin.
22 See p. 197, where there is a reference to Orodreth’s exchanging messages with Thingol ‘by secret ways’.