Литагент HarperCollins - Unfinished Tales

Thus he stood and spoke no word. Silent upon either hand stood a host of the army of Gondolin; all of the seven kinds of the Seven Gates were there represented; but their captains and chieftains were upon horses, white and grey. Then even as they gazed on Tuor in wonder, his cloak fell down, and he stood there before them in the mighty livery of Nevrast. And many were there who had seen Turgon himself set these things upon the wall behind the High Seat of Vinyamar.

Then Ecthelion said at last: ‘Now no further proof is needed; and even the name he claims as son of Huor matters less than this clear truth, that he comes from Ulmo himself.’ 31

NOTES

1In The Silmarillion p. 196 it is said that when the Havens of Brithombar and Eglarest were destroyed in the year after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad those of the Elves of the Falas that escaped went with Círdan to the Isle of Balar, ‘and they made a refuge for all that could come thither; for they kept a foothold also at the Mouths of Sirion, and there many light and swift ships lay hid in the creeks and waters where the reeds were dense as a forest’.

2The blue-shining lamps of the Noldorin Elves are referred to elsewhere, though they do not appear in the published text of The Silmarillion . In earlier versions of the tale of Túrin, Gwindor, the Elf of Nargothrond who escaped from Angband and was found by Beleg in the forest of Taur-nu-Fuin, possessed one of these lamps (it can be seen in my father’s painting of that meeting, see Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien , 1979, no. 37); and it was the overturning and uncovering of Gwindor’s lamp so that its light shone out that showed Túrin the face of Beleg whom he had killed. In a note on the story of Gwindor they are called ‘Fëanorian lamps’, of which the Noldor themselves did not know the secret; and they are there described as ‘crystals hung in a fine chain net, the crystals being ever shining with an inner blue radiance’. †

3‘The sun shall shine upon your path.’ – In the very much briefer story told in The Silmarillion , there is no account of how Tuor found the Gate of the Noldor, nor any mention of the Elves Gelmir and Arminas. They appear however in the tale of Túrin ( The Silmarillion p. 212) as the messengers who brought Ulmo’s warning to Nargothrond; and there they are said to be of the people of Finarfin’s son Angrod, who after the Dagor Bragollach dwelt in the south with Círdan the Shipwright. In a longer version of the story of their coming to Nargothrond, Arminas, comparing Túrin unfavourably with his kinsman, speaks of having met Tuor ‘; in the wastes of Dor-lómin’; see p. 208.

4In The Silmarillion pp. 80 – 1 it is told that when Morgoth and Ungoliant struggled in this region for possession of the Silmarils ‘Morgoth sent forth a terrible cry, that echoed in the mountains. Therefore that region was called Lammoth; for the echoes of his voice dwelt there ever after, so that any who cried aloud in that land awoke them, and all the waste between the hills and the sea was filled with a clamour as of voices in anguish.’ Here, on the other hand, the conception is rather that any sound uttered there was magnified in its own nature; and this idea is clearly also present at the beginning of ch. 13 of The Silmarillion , where (in a passage very similar to the present) ‘even as the Noldor set foot upon the strand their cries were taken up into the hills and multiplied, so that a clamour as of countless mighty voices filled all the coasts of the North’. It seems that according to the one ‘tradition’ Lammoth and Ered Lómin (Echoing Mountains) were so named from their retaining the echoes of Morgoth’s dreadful cry in the toils of Ungoliant; while according to the other the names are simply descriptive of the nature of sounds in that region.

5Cf. The Silmarillion p. 215: ‘And Túrin hastened along the ways to the north, through the lands now desolate between Narog and Teiglin, and the Fell Winter came down to meet him; for in that year snow fell ere autumn was passed, and spring came late and cold.’

6In The Silmarillion p. 126 it is told that when Ulmo appeared to Turgon at Vinyamar and bade him go to Gondolin, he said: ‘Thus it may come to pass that the curse of the Noldor shall find thee too ere the end, and treason awake within thy walls. Then they shall be in peril of fire. But if this peril draweth nigh indeed, then even from Nevrast one shall come to warn thee, and from him beyond ruin and fire hope shall be born for Elves and Men. Leave therefore in this house arms and a sword, that in years to come he may find them, and thus shalt thou know him, and not be deceived.’ And Ulmo declared to Turgon of what kind and stature should be the helm and mail and sword that he left behind.

7Tuor was the father of Ea¨rendil, who was the father of Elros Tar-Minyatur, the first King of Númenor.

8This must refer to the warning of Ulmo brought to Nargothrond by Gelmir and Arminas; see pp. 205ff.

9The Shadowy Isles are very probably the Enchanted Isles described at the end of The Silmarillion ch. 11, which were ‘strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south’ at the time of the Hiding of Valinor.

10Cf. The Silmarillion p. 196: ‘At the bidding of Turgon [after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad] Círdan built seven swift ships, and they sailed out into the West; but no tidings of them came ever back to Balar, save of one, and the last. The mariners of that ship toiled long in the sea, and returning at last in despair they foundered in a great storm within sight of the coasts of Middle-earth; but one of them was saved by Ulmo from the wrath of Ossë, and the waves bore him up, and cast him ashore in Nevrast. His name was Voronwë; and he was one of those that Turgon sent forth as messengers from Gondolin.’; Cf. also The Silmarillion p. 239.

11The words of Ulmo to Turgon appear in The Silmarillion ch. 15 in the form: ‘Remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West and cometh from the Sea,’ and ‘But if this peril draweth nigh indeed, then even from Nevrast one shall come to warn thee.’

12Nothing is told in The Silmarillion of the further fate of Voronwë after his return to Gondolin with Tuor; but in the original story (‘Of Tuor and the Exiles of Gondolin’) he was one of those who escaped from the sack of the city – as is implied by the words of Tuor here.

13Cf. The Silmarillion p. 159: ‘[Turgon] believed also that the ending of the Siege was the beginning of the downfall of the Noldor, unless aid should come; and he sent companies of the Gondolindrim in secret to the mouths of Sirion and the Isle of Balar. There they built ships, and set sail into the uttermost West upon Turgon’s errand, seeking for Valinor, to ask for pardon and aid of the Valar; and they besought the birds of the sea to guide them. But the seas were wild and wide, and shadow and enchantment lay upon them; and Valinor was hidden. Therefore none of the messengers of Turgon came into the West, and many were lost and few returned.’

In one of the ‘constituent texts’ of The Silmarillion it is said that although the Noldor ‘had not the art of shipbuilding, and all the craft that they built foundered or were driven back by the winds’, yet after the Dagor Bragollach ‘Turgon ever maintained a secret refuge upon the Isle of Balar’, and when after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad Círdan and the remnant of his people fled from Brithombar and Eglarest to Balar ‘they mingled with Turgon’s outpost there’. But this element in the story was rejected, and thus in the published text of The Silmarillion there is no reference to the establishment of dwellings on Balar by Elves from Gondolin.