The Shaping of Middle-earth - Christopher Tolkien The History of Middle-earth

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story in the Tale had by this time been abandoned.

      It is not made clear whether Mîm’s presence in Nargothrond goes back to the time of the Dragon (see II. 137), nor whether the outlaws of Húrin’s band were Men or Elves (in the Tale the text was emended to convert them from Men to Elves); and there is no indication of how the gold was brought to Doriath. The outlaws disappear in S after the slaying of Mîm, and there is no suggestion of the fighting in the Thousand Caves that in the Tale led to the mound made over the slain, Cûm an-Idrisaith, the Mound of Avarice.

      The next part of the Tale (Ufedhin the renegade Gnome and the complex dealings of Thingol with him and with the Dwarves of Nogrod, II. 223–9) is reduced to a few lines in S, which could possibly stand as an extremely abbreviated account of the old story, even though Ufedhin is here not even mentioned. The making of the Necklace was not in the Tale, as it is in S, part of the king’s request: the idea of it was indeed hatched by Ufedhin during his captivity as a lure ‘for the greater ensnaring of the king’ (II. 226); but this also could be set down to compression. I think it is more probable, however, that my father had in fact decided to reduce and simplify the narrative, and that Ufedhin had been abandoned.

      The problem of the entry of the Dwarvish army into Doriath, defended by the Girdle of Melian, is still solved by the device – the too simple device, see II. 250 – of ‘some treacherous Gnomes’ (in the Tale there was only one traitor); the slaying of Thingol while hunting remains, and as in the Tale Melian, inviolable, left the Thousand Caves seeking Beren and Lúthien. Though it is not so stated, it seems likely that in this version it was Melian who brought the news and the warning to Beren (this is the story in the Quenta, p. 134). In the Tale it was Huan who brought word to Beren and Lúthien of the assault on Artanor and the death of Tinwelint, and it was Ufedhin, fleeing from the Dwarf-host (after his abortive attempt to slay Naugladur and steal the Nauglafring, and his killing of Bodruith lord of Belegost), who revealed the course that the Dwarves were taking and made possible the ambush at the Stony Ford; but Huan has in S been slain in the Wolf-hunt (§10), and Ufedhin has (as I think) been eliminated.

      The ambush at the ford is made by ‘Beren and the brown and green Elves of the wood’, which goes back to ‘the brown Elves and the green’, the ‘elfin folk all clad in green and brown’ ruled by Beren and afterwards by Dior in Hithlum, in the Tale of the Nauglafring. But of the vigorous account of the battle at the ford in the Tale – the laughter of the Elves at the misshapen Dwarves running with their long white beards torn by the wind, the duel of Beren and Naugladur, whose forge-hammer blows would have overcome Beren had not Naugladur stumbled and Beren swung him off his feet by catching hold of the Nauglafring – there is nothing in S: though equally, nothing to contradict the old story. There is however no mention of the two Dwarf-lords, Naugladur of Nogrod and Bodruith of Belegost, and though both Dwarf-cities are named the Dwarves are treated as an undivided force, with, as it seems, one king (slain at the ford): Thingol summoned those of Belegost as well as those of Nogrod to Doriath for the fashioning of the gold, whereas in the Tale (II. 230) the former only enter the story after the humiliating expulsion of the Dwarves of Nogrod, in order to aid them in their revenge. Of the old story of the death of Bodruith and the feud and slaughter among the two kindreds (brought about by Ufedhin) there is no trace.

      The drowning of the treasure in the river goes back to the Tale; but there however the suggestion is not that the treasure was deliberately sunk: rather it fell into the river with the bodies of the Dwarves who bore it:

      those that waded in the ford cast their golden burdens in the waters and sought affrighted to either bank, but many were stricken with those pitiless darts and fell with their gold into the currents (II. 237).

      It is not said in the Tale that any of the gold was drowned by the Elves. There, Gwendelin came to Beren and Tinúviel after the battle of the Stony Ford, and found Tinúviel already wearing the Nauglafring; there is mention of the greatness of her beauty when she wore it. Gwendelin’s warning is only against the Silmaril (the rest of the treasure being drowned), and indeed her horror at seeing the Necklace of the Dwarves on Tinúviel was so great that Tinúviel put it off. This was to Beren’s displeasure, and he kept it (II. 239–40). In S the drowning seems to be carried out in response to Melian’s warning of the curse upon it, and the story seems to be thus: Melian comes to Beren and Lúthien and warns them of the approach of the Dwarf-host returning out of Doriath; after the battle Lúthien wears the Nauglafring and becomes immeasurably beautiful; but Melian warns them of the curse on the gold and on the Silmaril and they drown the treasure, though Beren keeps the Necklace secretly.

      The fading of Lúthien follows immediately on the statement that the Necklace was kept, but no connection is made. In the Tale such a connection is explicit: the doom of mortality that Mandos had spoken ‘fell swiftly’–

      and in this perhaps did the curse of Mîm have [?potency] in that it came more soon upon them (II. 240).

      Moreover in a synopsis for a projected revision of the Lost Tales it is said that the Nauglafring ‘brought sickness to Tinúviel’ (II. 246).

      The reference to the fading of Lúthien in S retains the words of the Tale: Tinúviel slowly faded ‘even as the Elves of later days have done’; and, again as in the Tale, Lúthien ‘vanished’. In the Tale Beren was an Elf, and it is said of him that after searching all Hithlum and Artanor for Tinúviel in terrible loneliness ‘he too faded from life’. In my discussion of this I said (II. 250):

      Since this fading is here quite explicitly the mode in which ‘that doom of mortality that Mandos had spoken’ came upon them, it is very notable that it is likened to, and even it seems identified with, the fading of ‘the Elves of later days throughout the world’ – as though in the original idea Elvish fading was a form of mortality.

      It is possible to conclude from this that, in the conception as it was when S was written, Beren died, as a mortal dies; Lúthien went to Valinor as a living being; and Mandos allowed Beren to return to a second mortal span, but Lúthien now became subject to the same shortness of span as he. In this sense she became ‘mortal’; but being an Elf she ‘faded’ – this was the manner of her death: as it was also the manner of the death of the fading Elves of later ages. Part of the difficulty in all this undoubtedly lies in the ambiguous nature of the words ‘mortal’ and ‘immortal’ applied to the Elves: they are ‘immortal’, both in the sense that they need not die, it is not in their essential nature to die, ‘in the world’, and also in the sense that, if they did, they did not ‘leave the world’, did not go to ‘a fate beyond the world’; and they are ‘mortal’ in that they might nonetheless die ‘in the world’ (by wounds or by grief, but not from sickness or age). Lúthien became ‘mortal’ in that, although an Elf, she must die – she must fade.

      It may be noted that the words ‘as Men grew strong and took the goodness of earth’ derive from the Lay of the Children of Húrin (III. 44, 54):

      for in days long gone

      … Men were of mould less mighty builded

      ere the earth’s goodness from the Elves they drew.

      Cf. The Silmarillion, p. 105: ‘In after days, when because of the triumph of Morgoth Elves and Men became estranged, as he most wished, those of the Elven-race that lived still in Middle-earth waned and faded,

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