These two outlines are partly concerned with the story of the Nauglafring and show my father pondering that story before he wrote it; there is no need to consider these elements here. It is evident that he was in great doubt as to the further course of the story after the release of Ъrin—what happened to the dragon’s hoard? Was it guarded or unguarded, and if guarded by whom? How did it come at last into Tinwelint’s hands? Who cursed it, and at what point in the story? If it was Ъrin and his band that seized it, were they Men or Elves or both?

In the final text, written on slips placed in the manuscript book and given above pp. 113–16, these questions were resolved thus: Ъrin’s band was at first Men, then changed to Elves (see note 33); the treasure was guarded by the dwarf Mоm, whom Ъrin slew, and it was he who cursed the gold as he died; Ъrin’s band became a baggage-train to carry the treasure to Tinwelint in sacks and wooden boxes (and they got it to the bridge before the king’s door in the heart of the forest without, apparently, any difficulty). In this text there is no hint of what happened to the treasure after Ъrom’s departure (because the Tale of the Nauglafring begins at that point).

Subsequent to the writing of the Tale of Turambar proper, my father inserted Mоm into the text at an earlier point in the story (see pp. 103, 118 note 26), making him the captain of the guard appointed by Glorund to watch the treasure in his absence; but whether this was written in before or after the appearance of Mоm at the end (pp. 113–14)—whether it represents a different idea, or is an explanation of how Mоm came to be there—I cannot say.

In The Silmarillion (pp. 230–2) the story is wholly changed, in that the treasure remained in Nargothrond, and Hъrin after the slaying of Mоm (for a far better reason than that in the early narrative) brought nothing from it to Doriath save the Necklace of the Dwarves.

Of the astonishing feature at the end of Eltas’ narrative (pp. 115–16) of the ‘deification’ of Tъrin Turambar and Nienуri (and the refusal of the Gods of Death to open their doors to them) it must be said that nowhere is there any explanation given—though in much later versions of the mythology Tъrin Turambar appears in the Last Battle and smites Morgoth with his black sword. The purifying bath into which Tъrin and Nienуri entered, called Fфs’Almir in the final text, was in the rejected text named Fauri; in the Tale of the Sun and Moon it has been described (I. 187), but is there given other names: Tanyasalpл, Faskalanъmen, and Faskalan.

There remains one further scrap of text to be considered. The second of the rejected outlines given above (pp. 136–7) was written in ink over a pencilled outline that was not erased, and I have been able to disinter a good deal of it from beneath the later writing. The two passages have nothing to do with each other; for some reason my father did not trouble in this case to erase earlier writing. The underlying text, so far as I can make it out, reads:

Tirannл and Vainуni fall in with the evil magician Kurъki who gives them a baneful drink. They forget their names and wander distraught in the woods. Vainуni is lost. She meets Turambar who saves her from Orcs and aids in her search for her mother. They are wed and live in happiness. Turambar becomes lord of rangers of the woods and a harrier of the Orcs. He goes to seek out the Foalуkл which ravages his land. The treasure-heap—and flight of his band. He slays the Foalуkл and is wounded. Vainуni succours him, but the dragon in dying tells her all, lifting the veil Kurъki has set over them. Anguish of Turambar and Vainуni. She flees into the woods and casts herself over a waterfall. Madness of Turambar who dwells alone………. Ъrin escapes from Angamandi and seeks Tirannл. Turambar flees from him and falls upon his sword………………………. Ъrin builds a cairn and…………doom of Melko. Tirannл dies of grief and Ъrin reaches Hisilуmл…………………………………. Purification of Turambar and Vainуni who fare shining about the world and go with the hosts of Tulkas against Melko.

Detached jottings follow this, doubtless written at the same time:

Ъrin escapes. Tirannл learns of Tъrin. Both wander distraught…in the wood.

Tъrin leaves Linwл for in a quarrel he slew one of Linwл’s kin (accidentally).

Introduce Failivrin element into the story?

Turambar unable to fight because of Foalуkл’s eyes. Sees Failivrin depart.

This can only represent some of my father’s very earliest meditations on the story of Tъrin Turambar. (That it appears in the notebook at the end of the fully-written Tale may seem surprising, but he clearly used these books in a rather eccentric way.) Nienуri is here called Vainуni, and Mavwin Tirannл; the spell of forgetfulness is here laid by a magician named Kurъki, although it is the dragon who lifts the veil that the magician set over them. Tъrin’s two encounters with the dragon seem to have emerged from an original single one.

As I have mentioned before, the Tale of Turambar, like others of the Lost Tales, is written in ink over a wholly erased pencilled text, and the extant form of the tale is such that it could only be derived from a rougher draft preceding it; but the underlying text is so completely erased that there is no clue as to what stage it had reached in the development of the legend. It may well be—I think it is extremely probable—that in this outline concerning Vainуni, Tirannл, and Kurъki we glimpse by an odd chance a ‘layer’ in the Tъrin-saga older even than the erased text underlying the extant version.

§ Miscellaneous Matters

(i) Beren

The rejected passage given on p. 71, together with the marginal note ‘If Beren be a Gnome (as now in the story of Tinъviel) the references to Beren must be altered’ (note 4), is the basis for my assertion (p. 52) that in the earliest, now lost, form of the Tale of Tinъviel Beren was a Man. I have shown, I hope, that the extant form of the Tale of Turambar preceded the extant form of the Tale of Tinъviel (p. 69). Beren was a Man, and akin to Mavwin, when the extant Turambar was written; he became a Gnome in the extant Tinъviel; and this change was then written into Turambar. What the replacement passage on p. 72 does is to change the relation of Egnor and Beren from kinship with Ъrin’s wife to friendship with Ъrin. (A correction to the typescript version of Tinъviel, p. 45, is later: making the comradeship of Ъrin with Beren rather than with Egnor.) Two further changes to the text of Turambar consequent on the change in Beren from Man to Elf are given in notes 5 and 6.—It is interesting to observe that in the developed genealogy of The Silmarillion, when Beren was of course again a Man, he was also again akin to Morwen: for Beren was first cousin to Morwen’s father Baragund.

In the rejected passage on p. 71 my father wrote against the name Egnor ‘Damrod the Gnome’ (note 2), and in the amended passage he wrote that Ъrin had known Beren ‘and had rendered him a service once in respect of Damrod his son’. There is no clue anywhere as to what this service may have been; but in the second of the ‘schemes’ for The Book of Lost Tales (see I.233–4) the outline for the Tale of the Nauglafring refers to the son of Beren and Tinъviel, the father of Elwing, by the name Daimord, although in the actual tale as written the son is as he was to remain Dior. Presumably Daimord is to be equated with Damrod. I cannot explain the insertion of ‘Damrod the Gnome’ against ‘Egnor’ in the rejected passage—possibly it was no more than a passing idea, to give the name Damrod to Beren’s father.