The Book of Lost Tales 2. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ arises in The Silmarillion, is very largely absent. The castle of the Cats ‘is’ the tower of Sauron on Tol-in-Gaurhoth, but only in the sense that it occupies the same ‘space’ in the narrative: beyond this there is no point in seeking even shadowy resemblances between the two establishments. The monstrous gormandising cats, their kitchens and their sunning terraces, and their engagingly Elvish-feline names (Miaugion, Miaulë, Meoita) all disappeared without trace. Did Tevildo? It would scarcely be true, I think, to say even that Sauron ‘originated’ in a cat: in the next phase of the legends the Necromancer (Thû) has no feline attributes. On the other hand it would be wrong to regard it as a simple matter of replacement (Thû stepping into the narrative place vacated by Tevildo) without any element of transformation of what was previously there. Tevildo’s immediate successor is ‘the Lord of Wolves’, himself a werewolf, and he retains the Tevildo-trait of hating Huan more than any other creature in the world. Tevildo was ‘an evil fay in beastlike shape’ (p. 29); and the battle between the two great beasts, the hound against the werewolf (originally the hound against the demon in feline form) was never lost.

      When the tale returns to Tinúviel in Artanor the situation is quite the reverse: for the story of her imprisonment in the house in Hirilorn and her escape from it never underwent any significant change. The passage in The Silmarillion (p. 172) is indeed very brief, but its lack of detail is due to compression rather than to omission based on dissatisfaction; the Lay of Leithian, from which the prose account in The Silmarillion directly derives, is in this passage so close, in point of narrative detail, to the Tale of Tinúviel as to be almost identical with it.

      It may be observed that in this part of the story the earliest version had a strength that was diminished later, in that the duration of Tinúviel’s imprisonment and her journey to Beren’s rescue relates readily enough to that of Beren’s captivity, which was intended by his captors to be unending; whereas in the later story there is a great deal of event and movement (with the addition of Lúthien’s captivity in Nargothrond) to be fitted into the time when Beren was awaiting his death in the dungeon of the Necromancer.

While the strong element of ‘explanatory’ beast-fable (concerning cats and dogs) was to be entirely eliminated, and Tevildo Prince of Cats replaced by the Necromancer, Huan nonetheless remained from it as the great Hound of Valinor. His encounter with Tinúviel in the woods, her inability to escape from him, and indeed his love for her from the moment of their meeting (suggested in the tale, p. 23, explicit in The Silmarillion p. 173), were already present, though the context of their encounter and the motives of Huan were wholly different from the absence of ‘the Nargothrond Element’ (Felagund, Celegorm and Curufin).

In the story of the defeat of Tevildo and the rescue of Beren the germ of the later legend is clearly seen, though for the most part only in broad structural resemblances. It is curious to observe that the loud speaking of Tinúviel sitting perched on the sill of the kitchen hatch in the castle of the Cats, so that Beren might hear, is the precursor of her singing on the bridge of Tol-in-Gaurhoth the song that Beren heard in his dungeon (The Silmarillion p. 174). Tevildo’s intention to hand her over to Melko remained in Sauron’s similar purpose (ibid.); the killing of the cat Oikeroi (p. 28) is the germ of Huan’s fight with Draugluin—the skin of Huan’s dead opponent is put to the same use in either case (pp. 30–1, The Silmarillion pp. 178–9); the battle of Tevildo and Huan was to become that of Huan and Wolf-Sauron, and with essentially the same outcome: Huan released his enemy when he yielded the mastery of his dwelling. This last is very notable: the utterance by Tinúviel of the spell which bound stone to stone in the evil castle (p. 29). Of course, when this was written the castle of Tevildo was an adventitious feature in the story—it had no previous history: it was an evil place through and through, and the spell (deriving from Melko) that Tevildo was forced to reveal was the secret of Tevildo’s own power over his creatures as well as the magic that held the stones together. With the entry of Felagund into the developing legend and the Elvish watchtower on Tol Sirion (Minas Tirith: The Silmarillion pp. 120, 155–6) captured by the Necromancer, the spell is displaced: for it cannot be thought to be the work of Felagund, who built the fortress, since if it had been he would have been able to pronounce it in the dungeon and bring the place down over their heads—a less evil way for them to die. This element in the legend remained, however, and is fully present in The Silmarillion (p. 175), though since my father did not actually say there that Sauron told Huan and Lúthien what the words were, but only that he ‘yielded himself’, one may miss the significance of what happened:

      And she said: ‘There everlastingly thy naked self shall endure the torment of his scorn, pierced by his eyes, unless thou yield to me the mastery of thy tower.’

      Then Sauron yielded himself, and Lúthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there….

      Then Lúthien stood upon the bridge, and declared her power: and the spell was loosed that bound stone to stone, and the gates were thrown down, and the walls opened, and the pits laid bare.

      Here again the actual matter of the narrative is totally different in the early and late forms of the legend: in The Silmarillion ‘many thralls and captives came forth in wonder and dismay…for they had lain long in the darkness of Sauron’, whereas in the tale the inmates who emerged from the shaken dwelling (other than Beren and the apparently inconsequent figure of the blind slave-Gnome Gimli) were a host of cats, reduced by the breaking of Tevildo’s spell to ‘puny size’. (If my father had used in the tale names other than Huan, Beren, and Tinúviel, and in the absence of all other knowledge, including that of authorship, it would not be easy to demonstrate from a simple comparison between this part of the Tale and the story as told in The Silmarillion that the resemblances were more than superficial and accidental.)

A more minor narrative point may be noticed here. The typescript version would presumably have treated the fight of Huan and Tevildo somewhat differently, for in the manuscript Tevildo and his companion can flee up great trees (p. 28), whereas in the typescript nothing grew in the Withered Dale (where Huan was to lie feigning sick) save ‘low bushes of scanty leaves’ (p. 48).

      In the remainder of the story the congruence between early and late forms is far closer. The narrative structure in the tale may be summarised thus:

       – Beren is attired for disguise in the fell of the dead cat Oikeroi.

       – He and Tinúviel journey together to Angamandi.

       – Tinúviel lays a spell of sleep on Karkaras the wolf-ward of Angamandi.

       – They enter Angamandi, Beren slinks in his beast-shape beneath the seat of Melko, and Tinúviel dances before Melko.

       – All the host of Angamandi and finally Melko himself are cast into sleep, and Melko’s iron crown rolls from his head.

       – Tinúviel rouses Beren, who cuts a Silmaril from the crown, and the blade snaps.

       – The sleepers stir, and Beren and Tinúviel flee back to the gates, but find Karkaras awake again.

       – Karkaras bites off Beren’s outthrust hand holding the Silmaril.

       – Karkaras becomes mad with the pain of the Silmaril in his belly, for the Silmaril is a holy thing and sears evil flesh.

       – Karkaras СКАЧАТЬ