(vii) Winged Dragons
At the end of The Silmarillion (p. 252) Morgoth ‘loosed upon his foes the last desperate assault that he had prepared, and out of the pits of Angband there issued the winged dragons, that had not before been seen’. The suggestion is that winged dragons were a refinement of Morgoth’s original design (embodied in Glaurung, Father of Dragons who went upon his belly). According to the Tale of Turambar (pp. 96–7), on the other hand, among Melko’s many dragons some were smaller, cold like snakes, and of these many were flying creatures; while others, the mightier, were hot and heavy, fire-dragons, and these were unwinged. As already noted (p. 125) there is no suggestion in the tale that Glorund was the first of his kind.
III THE FALL OF GONDOLIN
At the end of Eltas’ account of Ъrin’s visit to Tinwelint and of the strange fates of Ъrin and Mavwin, Tъrin and Nienуri (p. 116), the manuscript written on loose sheets in fact continues with a brief interlude in which the further course of the tale-telling is discussed in Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva.
And so saying Eltas made an end, and none asked further. But Lindo bid all thank him for his tale, and thereto he said: ‘Nay, if you will, there is much yet to tell concerning the gold of Glorund, and how the evil of that worm found its last fulfilment—but behold, that is the story of the Nauglafring or the Necklace of the Dwarves and must wait a while—and other stories of lighter and more happy things I have to tell if you would liefer listen to them.’
Then arose many voices begging Eltas to tell the tale of the Nauglafring on the morrow, but he said: ‘Nay! For who here knows the full tale of Tuor and the coming of Eдrendel, or who was Beren Ermabwed, and what were his deeds, for such things is it better to know rightly first.’ And all said that Beren Ermabwed they knew well, but of the coming of Eдrendel little enough had ever been told.
‘And great harm is that,’ said Lindo, ‘for it is the greatest of the stories of the Gnomes, and even in this house is Ilfiniol son of Bronweg, who knows those deeds more truly than any that are now on Earth.’
About that time Ilfiniol the Gong-warden entered indeed, and Lindo said to him: ‘Behold, O Littleheart son of Bronweg, it is the desire of all that you tell us the tales of Tuor and of Eдrendel as soon as may be.’ And Ilfiniol was fain of that, but said he: ‘It is a mighty tale, and seven times shall folk fare to the Tale-fire ere it be rightly told; and so twined is it with those stories of the Nauglafring and of the Elf-march1 that I would fain have aid in that telling of Ailios here and of Meril the Lady of the Isle, for long is it since she sought this house.’
Therefore were messengers sent on the next day to the korin2 of high elms, and they said that Lindo and Vairл would fain see the face of their lady among them, for they purposed to make a festival and to hold a great telling of Elfin tales, ere Eriol their guest fared awhile to Tavrobel. So was it that for three days that room heard no more tales and the folk of Vanwa Tyaliйva made great preparations, but on the fourth night Meril fared there amid her company of maidens, and full of light and mirth was that place; but after the evening meat a great host sat before Tфn a Gwedrin,3 and the maidens of Meril sang the most beautiful songs that island knew.4
And of those one did afterward Heorrenda turn to the language of his folk, and it is thus.5
But when those songs had fallen into silence then said Meril, who sate in the chair of Lindo: ‘Come now, O Ilfiniol, begin thou the tale of tales, and tell it more fully than thou hast ever done.’
Then said Littleheart son of Bronweg…(Tale of Gondolin).[sic]
This then is the Link between the Tale of Turambar and The Fall of Gondolin (an earlier ‘preface’ to the tale is given below). It seems that my father hesitated as to which tale was to follow Turambar (see note 4), but decided that it was time to introduce The Fall of Gondolin, which had been in existence for some time.
In this Link, Ailios (later Gilfanon) is present (‘I would fain have aid…of Ailios here’) at the end of Eltas’ tale of Turambar, but at the beginning of Eltas’ tale (p. 70) it is expressly said that he was not present that night. On the proposal that Eriol should ‘fare awhile’ to Tavrobel (as the guest of Gilfanon) see I.175.
The fact that Eltas speaks of the tale of Beren Ermabwed as if he did not know that it had only recently been told in Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva is no doubt to be explained by that tale not having been told before the Tale-fire (see pp. 4–7).
The teller of the tale of The Fall of Gondolin, Littleheart the Gong-warden of Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva, has appeared several times in the Lost Tales, and his Elvish name(s) have many different forms (see under Changes made to names at the end of the text of the tale). In The Cottage of Lost Play he is said (I. 15) to be ‘ancient beyond count’, and to have ‘sailed in Wingilot with Eдrendel in that last voyage wherein they sought for Kфr’ and in the Link to The Music of the Ainur (I.46) he ‘had a weather-worn face and blue eyes of great merriment, and was very slender and small, nor might one say if he were fifty or ten thousand’. He is a Gnome, the son of Bronweg/Voronwл (Voronwл of The Silmarillion) (I. 48, 94).
The texts of ‘The Fall of Gondolin’
The textual history of The Fall of Gondolin, if considered in detail, is extremely complex; but though I will set it out here, as I understand it, there is no need in fact for it to complicate the reading of the tale.
In the first place, there is a very difficult manuscript contained in two school exercise-books, where the title of the tale is Tuor and the Exiles of Gondolin (which bringeth in the great tale of Eдrendel). (This is the only title actually found in the early texts, but my father always later referred to it as The Fall of Gondolin.) This manuscript is (or rather, was) the original text of the tale, dating from 1916–17 (see I.203 and Unfinished Tales p. 4), and I will call it here for convenience Tuor A. My father’s treatment of it subsequently was unlike that of Tinъviel and Turambar (where the original text was erased and a new version written in its place); in this tale he did not set down a complete new text, but allowed a good deal of the old to stand, at least in the earlier part of it: as the revision progressed the rewriting in ink over the top of the pencilled text did become almost continuous, and though the pencil was not erased the ink effectively obliterates it. But even after the second version becomes continuous there are several places where the old narrative was not over-written but merely struck through, and remains legible. Thus, while Tuor A is on the same footing as Tinъviel and Turambar (and others of the Lost Tales) in that it is a later revision, a second version, my father’s method in Gondolin allows it to be seen that here at least the revision was by no means a complete recasting (still less a re-imagining); for if those passages in the later parts of the tale which can still be compared in the two versions shew that he was following the old fairly closely, the same is quite probably true in those places where no comparison can be made.
From Tuor A, as it was when all changes had been made to it (i.e. when it was in the form that it has now), my mother made a fair copy (Tuor B), which considering the difficulty of the original is extremely exact, with only very occasional errors of transcription. I have said in Unfinished Tales (p. 5) that this copy was made ‘apparently in 1917’, but this now seems to me improbable. * Such conceptions as the Music of the Ainur, which is referred to by later addition in Tuor A (p. 163), may of course have been in my father’s mind a good while before he wrote that tale in Oxford while working on the Dictionary (I.45), but it seems more likely that the revision of Tuor A (and therefore also Tuor B copied from it after its revision) belongs to that period also.