(ix) The slaying of Glorund (pp. 103–8)

In this section I follow the narrative of the tale as far as Tъrin’s swoon when the dying dragon opened his eyes and looked at him. Here the later story runs very close to the old, but there are many interesting differences.

In the tale Glorund is said to have had bands of both Orcs and Noldoli subject to him, but only the Orcs remained afterwards; cf. the Narn p.125:

Now the power and malice of Glaurung grew apace, and he waxed fat [cf. ‘the Foalуkл waxed fat’], and he gathered Orcs to him, and ruled as a dragon-King, and all the realm of Nargothrond that had been was laid under him.

The mention in the tale that Tinwelint’s people were ‘grievously harried’ by Glorund’s bands suggests once again that the magic of the Queen was no very substantial protection; while the statement that ‘at length there came some [Orcs] nigh even to those woods and glades that were beloved of Turambar and his folk’ seems at variance with Turambar’s saying to Nнniel earlier that ‘we are hard put to it to fend those evil ones from our homes’ (p. 100). There is no mention here of Turambar’s pledge to Nнniel that he would go to battle only if the homes of the Woodmen were assailed (Narn pp. 125–6); and there is no figure corresponding to Dorlas of the later versions. Tamar’s character, briefly described (p. 106), is in accord so far as it goes with what is later told of Brandir, but the relationship of Brandir to Nнniel, who called him her brother (Narn p. 124), had not emerged. The happiness and prosperity of the Woodmen under Turambar’s chieftainship is much more strongly emphasized in the tale (afterwards he was not indeed the chieftain, at least not in name); and it leads in fact to Glorund’s greed as a motive for his assault on them.

The topographical indications in this passage, important to the narrative, are readily enough accommodated to the later accounts, with one major exception: it is clear that in the old story the stream of the waterfall that fell down to the Silver Bowl was the same as that which ran through the gorge where Turambar slew Glorund:

Here flowed that same stream that further down wound past the dragon’s lair [lair="the" place where he was lying] in a deep bed cloven deep into the earth (p. 105).

Thus Turambar and his companions, as he said,

will go down the rocks to the foot of the fall, and so gaining the path of the stream perchance we may come as nigh to the drake as may be (ibid.).

In the final story, on the other hand, the falling stream (Celebros) was a tributary of Teiglin; cf. the Narn p.127:

Now the river Teiglin…flowed down from Ered Wethrin swift as Narog, but at first between low shores, until after the Crossings, gathering power from other streams, it clove a way through the feet of the highlands upon which stood the Forest of Brethil. Thereafter it ran in deep ravines, whose great sides were like walls of rock, but pent at the bottom the waters flowed with great force and noise. And right in the path of Glaurung there lay now one of these gorges, by no means the deepest, but the narrowest, just north of the inflow of Celebros.

The pleasant place (‘a green sward where grew a wealth of flowers’) survived; cf. the Narn p. 123: ‘There was a wide greensward at the head of the falls, and birches grew about it.’ So also did the ‘Silver Bowl’, though the name was lost: ‘the stream [Celebros] went over a lip of worn stone, and fell down by many foaming steps into a rocky bowl far below’ (Narn, ibid.; cf. the tale p. 105: ‘it fell over a great fall where the water-worn rock jutted smooth and grey from amid the grass’). The ‘little hill’ or ‘knoll’, ‘islanded among the trees’, from which Turambar and his companions looked out is not so described in the Narn, but the picture of a high place and lookout near the head of the falls remained, as may be seen from the statement in the Narn (p. 123) that from Nen Girith ‘there was a wide view towards the ravines of Teiglin’ later (Narn p. 128) it is said that it was Turambar’s intention to ‘ride to the high fall of Nen Girith…whence he could look far across the lands’, It seems certain, then, that the old image never faded, and was only a little changed.

While in both old and late accounts a great concourse of the people follow Turambar to the head of the falls against his bidding, in the late his motive for commanding them not to come is explicit: they are to remain in their homes and prepare for flight. Here on the other hand Nнniel rides with Turambar to the head of Silver Bowl and says farewell to him there. But a detail of the old story survived: Turambar’s words to Nнniel ‘Nor thou nor I die this day, nor yet tomorrow, by the evil of the dragon or by the foemen’s swords’ are closely paralleled by his words to her in the Narn (p. 129): ‘Neither you nor I shall be slain by this Dragon, nor by any foe of the North’ and in the one account Nнniel ‘quelled her weeping and was very still’, while in the other she ‘ceased to weep and fell silent’. The situation is generally simpler in the tale, in that the Woodmen are scarcely characterised; ‘Tamar is not as Brandir the titular head of the people, and this motive for bitterness against ‘Turambar is absent, nor is there a Dorlas to insult him or a Hunthor to rebuke Dorlas. Tamar is however present with Nнniel at the same point in the story, having girded himself with a sword: ‘and many scoffed at him for that’, just as it is afterwards said of Brandir that he had seldom done so before (Narn p. 132).

‘Turamhar here set out from the head of the falls with six companions, all of whom proved in the end fainthearted, whereas later he had only two, Dorlas and Hunthor, and Hunthor remained staunch, though killed by a falling stone in the gorge. But the result is the same, in that Turambar must climb the further cliff of the gorge alone. Here the dragon remained where he lay near the brink of the cliff all night, and only moved with the dawn, so that his death and the events that immediately followed it took place by daylight. But in other respects the killing of the dragon remained even in many details much as it was originally written, more especially if comparison is made with the Narn (p. 134), where there reappears the need for Turambar and his companion(s) to move from their first station in order to come up directly under the belly of the beast (this is passed over in The Silmarillion).

Two notable points in this section remain to be mentioned; both are afterthoughts pencilled into the manuscript. In the one we meet for the first time Mоm the Dwarf as the captain of Glorund’s guard over his treasure during his absence—a strange choice for the post, one would think. On this matter see p. 137 below. In the other it is said that Nнniel conceived a child by Turambar, which, remarkably enough, is not said in the text as originally written; on this see p. 135.

(x) The deaths of Tъrin and Nienуri (pp. 108–12)

In the conclusion of the story the structure remained the same from the old tale to the Narn: the moonlight, the tending of Turambar’s burnt hand, the cry of Nнniel that stirred the dragon to his final malice, the accusation by the dragon that Turambar was a stabber of foes unseen, Turambar’s naming Tamar/Brandir ‘Club-foot’ and sending him to consort with the dragon in death, the sudden withering of the leaves at the place of Nienor’s leap as if it were already the end of autumn, the invocation of Nienor to the waters and of Turambar to his sword, the raising of Tъrin’s mound and the inscription in ‘strange signs’ upon it. Many other features could be added. But there are also many differences; here I refer only to some of the most important.