When the tale returns to Tinъviel 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 Tinъviel 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 Tinъviel’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 Lъthien’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 Tinъviel 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 Tinъviel 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 Tinъviel 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 Lъthien 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 Lъthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there….

Then Lъthien 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 Tinъviel, 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 Tinъviel journey together to Angamandi.

– Tinъviel 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 Tinъviel 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.

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

– The sleepers stir, and Beren and Tinъviel 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 goes raging south to Artanor.

– Beren and Tinъviel return to Artanor; 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.

– Tinъviel 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 prйcis 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, Lъthien’s imprisonment in Nargothrond by Celegorm and Curufin, her escape with Huan the hound of Celegorm, and the attack on Beren and Lъthien 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 Tinъviel; Tinъviel 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 Tinъviel for Angamandi. In The Silmarillion (p. 177) likewise, Beren, after long wandering in the woods with Lъthien (though not with Huan), resolves to set forth again on the quest of the Silmaril, but Lъthien’s stance in the matter is different: