The Book of Lost Tales 2. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ shelter of the trees’ and coming to ‘a region of long grass’ is a first intimation of the great plain of Ard-galen (called after its desolation Anfauglith and Dor-nu-Fauglith), especially if this is related to the passage in the typescript version telling of Tinúviel’s meeting with Huan ‘in a little glade nigh to the forest’s borders, where the first grasslands begin that are nourished by the upper waters of the river Sirion’ (p. 47).

After their escape from Angamandi Huan found Beren and Tinúviel ‘in that northward region of Artanor that was called afterward Nan Dumgorthin, the land of the dark idols’ (p. 35). In the Gnomish dictionary Nan Dumgorthin is defined as ‘a land of dark forest east of Artanor where on a wooded mountain were hidden idols sacrificed to by some evil tribes of renegade men’ (dum ‘secret, not to be spoken’, dumgort, dungort ‘an (evil) idol’). In the Lay of the Children of Húrin in alliterative verse Túrin and his companion Flinding (later Gwindor), fleeing after the death of Beleg Strongbow, came to this land:

      There the twain enfolded phantom twilight

      and dim mazes dark, unholy,

      in Nan Dungorthin where nameless gods

      have shrouded shrines in shadows secret,

      more old than Morgoth or the ancient lords

      the golden Gods of the guarded West.

      But the ghostly dwellers of that grey valley

      hindered nor hurt them, and they held their course

      with creeping flesh and quaking limb.

      Yet laughter at whiles with lingering echo,

      as distant mockery of demon voices

      there harsh and hollow in the hushed twilight

      Flinding fancied, fell, unwholesome…

      There are, I believe, no other references to the gods of Nan Dumgorthin. In the poem the land was placed west of Sirion; and finally, as Nan Dungortheb ‘the Valley of Dreadful Death’, it becomes in The Silmarillion (pp. 81, 121) a ‘no-land’ between the Girdle of Melian and Ered Gorgoroth, the Mountains of Terror. But the description of it in the Tale of Tinúviel as a ‘northward region of Artanor’ clearly does not imply that it lay within the protective magic of Gwendeling, and it seems that this ‘zone’ was originally less distinctly bounded, and less extensive, than ‘the Girdle of Melian’ afterwards became. Probably Artanor was conceived at this time as a great region of forest in the heart of which was Tinwelint’s cavern, and only his immediate domain was protected by the power of the queen:

Hidden was his dwelling from the vision and knowledge of Melko by the magics of Gwendeling the fay, and she wove spells about the paths thereto that none but the Eldar might tread them easily, and so was the king secured from all dangers save it be treachery alone. (p. 9).

It seems, also, that her protection was originally by no means so complete and so mighty a wall of defence as it became. Thus, although Orcs and wolves disappeared when Beren and Tinúviel ‘stepped within the circle of Gwendeling’s magic that hid the paths from evil things and kept harm from the regions of the woodelves’ (p. 35), the fear is expressed that even if Beren and Tinúviel reached the cavern of King Tinwelint ‘they would but draw the chase behind them thither’ (p. 34), and Tinwelint’s people feared that Melko would ‘upraise his strength and come utterly to crush them and Gwendeling’s magic have not the strength to withhold the numbers of the Orcs’ (p. 36).

The picture of Menegroth beside Esgalduin, accessible only by the bridge (The Silmarillion pp. 92–3) goes back to the beginning, though neither cave nor river are named in the tale. But (as will be seen more emphatically in later tales in this book) Tinwelint, the wood-fairy in his cavern, had a long elevation before him, to become ultimately Thingol of the Thousand Caves (‘the fairest dwelling of any king that has ever been east of the Sea’). In the beginning, Tinwelint’s dwelling was not a subterranean city full of marvels, silver fountains falling into basins of marble and pillars carved like trees, but a rugged cave; and if in the typescript version the cave comes to be ‘vaulted immeasureable’, it is still illuminated only by the dim and flickering light of torches (pp. 43, 46).

      There have been earlier references in the Lost Tales to Tinwelint and the place of his dwelling. In a passage added to, but then rejected from, the tale of The Chaining of Melko (I. 106, note 1) it is said that he was lost in Hisilómë and met Wendelin there; ‘loving her he was content to leave his folk and dance for ever in the shadows’. In The Coming of the Elves (I. 115) ‘Tinwë abode not long with his people, and yet ’tis said lives still lord of the scattered Elves of Hisilómë’ and in the same tale (I. 118–19) the ‘Lost Elves’ were still there ‘long after when Men were shut in Hisilómë by Melko’, and Men called them the Shadow Folk, and feared them. But in the Tale of Tinúviel the conception has changed. Tinwelint is now a king r’uling, not in Hisilómë, but in Artanor.* (It is not said where it was that he came upon Gwendeling.)

In the account (manuscript version only, see pp. 9, 42) of Tinwelint’s people there is mention of Elves ‘who remained in the dark’ and this obviously refers to Elves who never left the Waters of Awakening. (Of course those who were lost on the march from Palisor also never left ‘the dark’ (i.e. they never came to the light of the Trees), but the distinction made in this sentence is not between the darkness and the light but between those who remained and those who set out). On the emergence of this idea in the course of the writing of the Lost Tales see I. 234. Of Tinwelint’s subjects ‘the most were Ilkorindi’, and they must be those who ‘had been lost upon the march from Palisor’ (earlier, ‘the Lost Elves of Hisilómë’).

      Here, a major difference in essential conception between the old legend and the form in The Silmarillion is apparent. These Ilkorindi of Tinwelint’s following (‘eerie and strange beings’ whose ‘dark songs and chantings…faded in the wooded places or echoed in deep caves’) are described in terms applicable to the wild Avari (‘the Unwilling’) of The Silmarillion; but they are of course actually the precursors of the Grey-elves of Doriath. The term Eldar is here equivalent to Elves (‘all the Eldar both those who remained in the dark or had been lost upon the march from Palisor’) and is not restricted to those who made, or at least embarked on, the Great Journey; all were Ilkorindi—Dark Elves—if they never passed over the Sea. The later significance of the Great Journey in conferring ‘Eldarin’ status was an aspect of the elevation of the Grey-elves of Beleriand, bringing about a distinction of the utmost importance within the category of the Moriquendi or ‘Elves of the Darkness’—the Avari (who were not Eldar) and the Úmanyar (the Eldar who were ‘not of Aman’): see the table ‘The Sundering of the Elves’ given in The Silmarillion. Thus:

      Lost Tales

      Eldar: of Kôr

      Eldar: of the Great Lands (the Darkness): Ilkorindi

      Silmarillion

      Avari

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