The Book of Lost Tales 2. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ they go before Tinwelint and Beren declares that a Silmaril is in his hand.

       – The hunting of the wolf takes place, and Mablung the Heavy-handed is one of the hunters.

       – Beren is slain by Karkaras, and is borne back to the cavern of Tinwelint on a bier of boughs; dying he gives the Silmaril to Tinwelint.

       – Tinúviel follows Beren to Mandos, and Mandos permits them to return into the world.

      Changing the catskin of Oikeroi to the wolfskin of Draugluin, and altering some other names, this would do tolerably well as a précis of the story in The Silmarillion! But of course it is devised as a summary of similarities. There are major differences as well as a host of minor ones that do not appear in it.

      Again, most important is the absence of ‘the Nargothrond Element’. When this combined with the Beren legend it introduced Felagund as Beren’s companion, Lúthien’s imprisonment in Nargothrond by Celegorm and Curufin, her escape with Huan the hound of Celegorm, and the attack on Beren and Lúthien as they returned from Tol-in-Gaurhoth by Celegorm and Curufin, now fleeing from Nargothrond (The Silmarillion pp. 173–4, 176–8).

The narrative after the conclusion of the episode of ‘the Thraldom of Beren’ is conducted quite differently in the old story (pp. 30–1), in that here Huan is with Beren and Tinúviel; Tinúviel longs for her home, and Beren is grieved because he loves the life in the woods with the dogs, but he resolves the impasse by determining to obtain a Silmaril, and though Huan thinks their plan is folly he gives them the fell of Oikeroi, clad in which Beren sets out with Tinúviel for Angamandi. In The Silmarillion (p. 177) likewise, Beren, after long wandering in the woods with Lúthien (though not with Huan), resolves to set forth again on the quest of the Silmaril, but Lúthien’s stance in the matter is different:

      ‘You must choose, Beren, between these two: to relinquish the quest and your oath and seek a life of wandering upon the face of the earth; or to hold to your word and challenge the power of darkness upon its throne. But on either road I shall go with you, and our doom shall be alike.’

      There then intervened the attack on Beren and Lúthein by Celegorm and Curufin, when Huan, deserting his master, joined himself to them; they returned together to Doriath, and when they got there Beren left Lúthien sleeping and went back northwards by himself, riding Curufin’s horse. He was overtaken on the edge of Anfauglith by Huan bearing Lúthien on his back and bringing from Tol-in-Gaurhoth the skins of Draugluin and of Sauron’s bat-messenger Thuringwethil (of whom in the old story there is no trace); attired in these Beren and Lúthien went to Angband. Huan is here their active counsellor.

      The later legend is thus more full of movement and incident in this part than is the Tale of Tinúviel (though the final form was not achieved all at one stroke, as may be imagined); and in the Silmarillion form this is the more marked from the fact that the account is a compression and a summary of the long Lay of Leithian.*

In the Tale of Tinúviel the account of Beren’s disguise is characteristically detailed: his instruction by Tinúviel in feline behaviour, his heat and discomfort inside the skin. Tinúviel’s disguise as a bat has however not yet emerged, and whereas in The Silmarillion when confronted by Carcharoth she ‘cast back her foul raiment’ and ‘commanded him to sleep’, here she used once more the magical misty robe spun of her hair: ‘the black strands of her dark veil she cast in his eyes’ (p. 31). The indifference of Karkaras to the false Oikeroi contrasts with Carcharoth’s suspicion of the false Druagluin, of whose death he had heard tidings: in the old story it is emphasised that no news of the discomfiture of Tevildo (and the death of Oikeroi) had yet reached Angamandi.

The encounter of Tinúviel with Melko is given with far more detail than in The Silmarillion (here much compressed from its source); notable is the phrase (p. 32) ‘he leered horribly, for his dark mind pondered some evil’, forerunner of that in The Silmarillion (p. 180):

      Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark than any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor.

      We are never told anything more explicit.

      Whether Melko’s words to Tinúviel, ‘Who art thou that flittest about my halls like a bat?’, and the description of her dancing ‘noiseless as a bat’, were the germ of her later bat-disguise cannot be said, though it seems possible.

The knife with which Beren cut the Silmaril from the Iron Crown has a quite different provenance in the Tale of Tinúviel, being a kitchen-knife that Beren took from Tevildo’s castle (pp. 29, 33); in The Silmarillion it was Angrist, the famous knife made by Telchar which Beren took from Curufin. The sleepers of Angamandi are here disturbed by the sound of the snapping of the knife-blade; in The Silmarillion it is the shard flying from the snapped knife and striking Morgoth’s cheek that makes him groan and stir.

      There is a minor difference in the accounts of the meeting with the wolf as Beren and Tinúviel fled out. In The Silmarillion ‘Lúthien was spent, and she had not time nor strength to quell the wolf’ in the tale it seems that she might have done so if Beren had not been precipitate. Much more important, there appears here for the first time the conception of the holy power of the Silmarils that burns unhallowed flesh.*

The escape of Tinúviel and Beren from Angamandi and their return to Artanor (pp. 34–6) is treated quite differently in the Tale of Tinúviel. In The Silmarillion (pp. 182–3) they were rescued by the Eagles and set down on the borders of Doriath; and far more is made of the healing of Beren’s wound, in which Huan plays a part. In the old story Huan comes to them later, after their long southward flight on foot. In both accounts there is a discussion between them as to whether or not they should return to her father’s hall, but it is quite differently conducted—in the tale it is she who persuades Beren to return, in The Silmarillion it is Beren who persuades her.

There is a curious feature in the story of the Wolf-hunt (pp. 38–9) which may be considered here (see p. 50, notes 12–15). At first, it was Tinúviel’s brother who took part in the hunt with Tinwelint, Beren, and Huan, and his name is here Tifanto, which was the name throughout the tale before its replacement by Dairon.* Subsequently ‘Tifanto’—without passing through the stage of ‘Dairon’—was replaced by ‘Mablung the heavy-handed, chief of the king’s thanes’, who here makes his first appearance, as the fourth member of the hunt. But earlier in the tale it is told that Tifanto > Dairon, leaving Artanor to seek Tinúviel, became utterly lost, ‘and came never back to Elfinesse’ (p. 21), and the loss of Tifanto > Dairon is referred to again when Beren and Tinúviel returned to Artanor (pp. 36–7).

      Thus on the one hand Tifanto was lost, and it is a grief to Tinúviel on her return to learn of it, but on the other he was present at the Wolf-hunt. Tifanto was then changed to Dairon throughout the tale, except in the story of the Wolf-hunt, where Tifanto was replaced by a new character, Mablung. This shows that Tifanto was removed from the hunt before the change of name to Dairon, but does not explain how, under the name Tifanto, he was both lost in the wilds and present СКАЧАТЬ