Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [92]
23 In The Silmarillion (p. 122) the High Faroth, or Taur-en-Faroth, are ‘great wooded highlands’. The description of them here as ‘brown and bare’ perhaps refers to the leaflessness of the trees in the beginning of spring.
24 One might suppose that it was only when all was over, and Túrin and Nienor dead, that her shuddering fit was recalled and its meaning seen, and Dimrost renamed Nen Girith; but in the legend Nen Girith is used as the name throughout.
25 If Glaurung’s intention had indeed been to return to Ang-band it might be thought that he would have taken the old road to the Crossings of Teiglin, a course not greatly different from that which brought him to Cabed-en-Aras. Perhaps the assumption was that he would return to Angband by the way that he came south to Nargothrond, going up Narog to Ivrin. Cf. also Mablung’s words (p. 184): ‘I watched the coming forth of Glaurung, and I thought that he . . . was returning to his Master. But he turned towards Brethil...’
When Turambar spoke of his hope that Glaurung would go straight and not swerve, he meant that if the Dragon went up along Teiglin to the Crossings he would be able to enter Brethil without having to pass over the gorge, where he would be vulnerable: see his words to the men at Nen Girith, p. 167.
26 I have found no map to illustrate my father’s conception of the lie of the land in detail, but this sketch seems at least to fit the references in the narrative:
27 The phrases ‘fled wildly from that place’ and ‘sped on before him’ suggest that there was some distance between the place where Túrin lay beside Glaurung’s corpse and the edge of the ravine. It may be that the Dragon’s death-leap carried him some way beyond the further brink.
28 Later in the narrative (p. 186) Túrin himself, before his death, called the place Cabed Naeramarth, and it may be supposed that it was from the tradition of his last words that the later name was derived.
The apparent discrepancy that, although Brandir is said (both here and in The Silmarillion) to have been the last man to look on Cabed-en-Aras, Túrin came there soon afterwards, and indeed the Elves also and all those who raised the mound over him, may perhaps be explained by taking the words of the Narn concerning Brandir in a narrow sense: he was the last man actually to ‘look down into its darkness’. It was indeed my father’s intention to alter the narrative so that Túrin slew himself not at Cabed-en-Aras but on the mound of Finduilas by the Crossings of Teiglin; but this never received written form.
29 It seems from this that ‘The Deer’s Leap’ was the original name of the place, and indeed the meaning of Cabeden-Aras.
APPENDIX
From the point in the story where Túrin and his men established themselves in the ancient dwelling of the Petty-dwarves on Amon Rûdh there is no completed narrative on the same detailed plan, until the Narn takes up again with Túrin’s journey northwards after the fall of Nargothrond. From many tentative or exploratory outlines and notes, however, some further glimpses can be gained beyond the more summary account in The Silmarillion, and even some short stretches of connected narrative on the scale of the Narn.
An isolated fragment describes the life of the outlaws on Amon Rûdh in the time that followed their settlement there, and gives some further description of Bar-en-Danwedh.
For a long while the life of the outlaws went well to their liking. Food was not scarce, and they had good shelter, warm and dry, with room enough and to spare; for they found that the caves could have housed a hundred or more at need. There was another smaller hall further in. It had a hearth at one side, above which a smoke-shaft ran up through the rock to a vent cunningly hidden in a crevice on the hillside. There were also many other chambers, opening out of the halls or the passage between them, some for dwelling, some for works or for stores. In storage Mîm had more arts than they, and he had many vessels and chests of stone and wood that looked to be of great age. But most of the chambers