The story of Tъrin’s madness after the slaying of Beleg, the guidance of Gwindor, and the release of Tъrin’s tears at Eithel Ivrin, is here in embryo. Of the peculiar nature of Beleg’s sword there is no suggestion.
(iv) Tъrin among the Rodothlim; Tъrin and Glorund (pp. 81–8)
In this passage is found (so far as written record goes, for it is to be remembered that a wholly erased text underlies the manuscript) the origin of Nargothrond, as yet unnamed. Among many remarkable features the chief is perhaps that Orodreth was there before Felagund, Lord of Caves, with whom in the later legend Nargothrond was identified, as its founder and deviser. (In The Silmarillion Orodreth was one of Finrod Felagund’s brothers (the sons of Finarfin), to whom Felagund gave the command of Minas Tirith on Tol Sirion after the making of Nargothrond (p. 120), and Orodreth became King of Nargothrond after Felagund’s death.) In the tale this cave-dwelling of exiled Noldoli is a simpler and rougher place, and (as is suggested) short-lived against the overwhelming power of Melko; but, as so often, there were many features that were never altered, even though in a crucial respect the history of Nargothrond was to be greatly modified by contact with the legend of Beren and Tinъviel. Thus the site was from the start ‘above a stream’ (the later Narog) that ‘ran down to feed the river Sirion’, and as is seen later (p. 96) the bank of the river on the side of the caves was higher and the hills drew close: cf. The Silmarillion p. 114: ‘the caves under the High Faroth in its steep western shore’. The policy of secrecy and refusal of open war pursued by the Elves of Nargothrond was always an essential element (cf. The Silmarillion pp. 168, 170),* as was the overturning of that policy by the confidence and masterfulness of Tъrin (though in the tale there is no mention of the great bridge that he caused to be built). Here, however, the fall of the redoubt is perhaps more emphatically attributed to Tъrin, his coming there seen more simply as a curse, and the disaster as more inevitably proceeding from his unwisdom: at least in the fragments of this part of the Narn (pp. 155–7) Tъrin’s case against Gwindor, who argued for the continuation of secrecy, is seemingly not without substance, despite the outcome. But the essential story is the same: Tъrin’s policy revealed Nargothrond to Morgoth, who came against it with overwhelming strength and destroyed it.
In relation to the earliest version the roles of Flinding (Gwindor), Failivrin (Finduilas),† and Orodreth were to undergo a remarkable set of transferences. In the old tale Flinding had been of the Rodothlim before his capture and imprisonment in Angband, just as afterwards Gwindor came from Nargothrond (but with a great development in his story, see The Silmarillion pp. 188, 191–2), and on his return was so changed as to be scarcely recognisable (I pass over such enduring minor features as the taking of Tъrin and Flinding/Gwindor prisoner on their coming to the caves). The beautiful Failivrin is already present, and her unrequited love for Tъrin, but the complication of her former relation with Gwindor is quite absent, and she is not the daughter of Orodreth the King but of one Galweg (who was to disappear utterly). Flinding is not shown as opposed to Tъrin’s policies; and in the final battle he aids Tъrin in bearing Orodreth out of the fight. Orodreth dies (after being carried back to the caves) reproaching Tъrin for what he has brought to pass—as does Gwindor dying in The Silmarillion (p. 213), with the added bitterness of his relation with Finduilas. But Failivrin’s father Galweg is slain in the battle, as is Finduilas’ father Orodreth in The Silmarillion. Thus in the evolution of the legend Orodreth took over the rфle of Galweg, while Gwindor took over in part the rфle of Orodreth.
As I have noticed earlier, there is no mention in the tale of any peculiarity attaching to Beleg’s sword, and though the Black Sword is already present it was made for Tъrin on the orders of Orodreth, and its blackness and its shining pale edges were of its first making (see The Silmarillion pp. 209–10). Its power of speech (‘it is said that at times it spake dark words to him’) remained afterwards in its dreadful words to Tъrin before his death (Narn p. 145)—a motive that appears already in the tale, p. 112; and Tъrin’s name derived from the sword (here Mormagli, Mormakil, later Mormegil) was already devised. But of Tъrin’s disguising of his true name in Nargothrond there is no suggestion: indeed it is explicitly stated that he said who he was.
Of Gelmir and Arminas and the warning they brought to Nargothrond from Ulmo (Narn pp. 159–62) the germ can perhaps he seen in the ‘whispers in the stream at eve’, which undoubtedly implies messages from Ulmo (see p. 77).
The dragon Glorund is named in the ‘lengthening spell’ in the Tale of Tinъviel (pp. 19, 46), but the actual name was only introduced in the course of the writing of the Tale of Turambar (see note 11). There is no suggestion that he had played any previous part in the history, or indeed that he was the first of his kind, the Father of Dragons, with a long record of evil already before the Sack of Nargothrond. Of great interest is the passage in which the nature of the dragons of Melko is defined: their evil wisdom, their love of lies and gold (which ‘they may not use or enjoy’), and the knowledge of tongues that Men say would come from eating a dragon’s heart (with evident reference to the legend in the Norse Edda of Sigurd Fafnisbane, who was enabled to understand, to his own great profit, the speech of birds when he ate the heart of the dragon Fafnir, roasting it on a spit).
The story of the sack of Nargothrond is somewhat differently treated in the old story, although the essentials were to remain of the driving away of Failivrin/Finduilas among the captives and of the powerlessness of Tъrin to aid her, being spellbound by the dragon. Minor differences (such as the later arrival of Glorund on the scene: in The Silmarillion Tъrin only came back to Nargothrond after Glaurung had entered the caves and the sack was ‘well nigh achieved’) and minor agreements (such as the denial of the plunder to the Orcs) may here be passed over; most interesting is the account of Tъrin’s words with the dragon. Here the whole issue of Tъrin’s escaping or not escaping his doom is introduced, and it is significant that he takes the name Turambar at this juncture, whereas in the later legend he takes it when he joins the Woodmen in Brethil, and less is made of it. The old version is far less powerfully and concisely expressed, and the dragon’s words are less subtle and ingeniously untrue. Here too the moral is very explicitly pointed, that Tъrin should not have abandoned Failivrin ‘in danger that he himself could see’—does this not suggest that, even under the dragon’s spell as he was, there was a weakness (a ‘blindness’, see p. 83) in Tъrin which the dragon touched? As the story is told in The Silmarillion the moral would seem uncalled for: Tъrin was opposed by an adversary too powerful for his mind and will.
There is here a remarkable passage in which suicide is declared a sin, depriving such a one of all hope ‘that ever his spirit would be freed from the dark glooms of Mandos or stray into the pleasant paths of Valinor’. This seems to go with the perplexing passage in the tale of The Coming of the Valar and the Building of Valinor concerning the fates of Men: see p. 60.
Finally, it is strange that in the old story the gold and treasure was carried out from the caves by the Orcs and remained there (it ‘lay by the caves above the stream’), and the dragon most uncharacteristically ‘slept before it’ in the open. In The Silmarillion Glaurung ‘gathered all the hoard and riches of Felagund and heaped them, and lay upon them in the innermost hall’.