Yet came they at last to the great pools and the edges of that most tender Land of Willows; and the very breath of the winds thereof brought rest and peace to them, and for the comfort of that place the grief was assuaged of those who mourned the dead in that great fall. There women and maids grew fair again and their sick were healed, and old wounds ceased to pain; yet they alone who of reason feared their folk living still in bitter thraldom in the Hells of Iron sang not, nor did they smile.

Here they abode very long indeed, and Eдrendel was a grown boy ere the voice of Ulmo’s conches drew the heart of Tuor, that his sea-longing returned with a thirst the deeper for years of stifling; and all that host arose at his bidding, and got them down Sirion to the Sea.

Now the folk that had passed into the Eagles’ Cleft and who saw the fall of Glorfindel had been nigh eight hundreds—a large wayfaring, yet was it a sad remnant of so fair and numerous a city. But they who arose from the grasses of the Land of Willows in years after and fared away to sea, when spring set celandine in the meads and they had held sad festival in memorial of Glorfindel, these numbered but three hundreds and a score of men and man-children, and two hundreds and three score of women and maid-children. Now the number of women was few because of their hiding or being stowed by their kinsfolk in secret places in the city. There they were burned or slain or taken and enthralled, and the rescue-parties found them too seldom; and it is the greatest ruth to think of this, for the maids and women of the Gondothlim were as fair as the sun and as lovely as the moon and brighter than the stars. Glory dwelt in that city of Gondolin of the Seven Names, and its ruin was the most dread of all the sacks of cities upon the face of Earth. Nor Bablon, nor Ninwi, nor the towers of Trui, nor all the many takings of Rыm that is greatest among Men, saw such terror as fell that day upon Amon Gwareth in the kindred of the Gnomes; and this is esteemed the worst work that Melko has yet thought of in the world.

Yet now those exiles of Gondolin dwelt at the mouth of Sirion by the waves of the Great Sea. There they take the name of Lothlim, the people of the flower, for Gondothlim is a name too sore to their hearts; and fair among the Lothlim Eдrendel grows in the house of his father,³⁹ and the great tale of Tuor is come to its waning.’

Then said Littleheart son of Bronweg: ‘Alas for Gondolin.’

And no one in all the Room of Logs spake or moved for a great while.

NOTES

1 Not of course the great journey to the Sea from the Waters of Awakening, but the expedition of the Elves of Kфr for the rescue of the Gnomes (see I. 26).

2 A korin is defined in The Cottage of Lost Play (I.16) as ‘a great circular hedge, be it of stone or of thorn or even of trees, that encloses a green sward’ Meril-i-Turinqi dwelt ‘in a great korin of elms’.

3 Tфn a Gwedrin is the Tale-fire.

4 There is here a direction: ‘see hereafter the Nauglafring’, but this is struck out.

5 On Heorrenda see pp. 290, 323. A small space is left after the words ‘it is thus’ to mark the place of the poem in Old English that was to be inserted, but there is no indication of what it was to be.

(In the following notes ‘the original reading’ refers to the text of Tuor A, and of Tuor B before the emendation in question. It does not imply that the reading of Tuor A was, or was not, found in the original pencilled text (in the great majority of cases this cannot be said).)

6 This passage, beginning with the words ‘And Tuor entered that cavern…’ on p. 149, is a late replacement written on a slip (see p. 147). The original passage was largely similar in meaning, but contained the following:

Now in delving that riverway beneath the hills the Noldoli worked unknown to Melko who in those deep days held them yet hidden and thralls beneath his will. Rather were they prompted by Ulmo who strove ever against Melko; and through Tuor he hoped to devise for the Gnomes release from the terror of the evil of Melko.

7 ‘three days’: ‘three years’ all texts, but ‘days?’ pencilled above ‘years’ in Tuor B.

8 The ‘evolution’ of sea-birds through Ossл is described in the tale of The Coming of the Elves, I.123; but the sentence here derives from the original pencilled text of Tuor A.

9 In the typescript Tuor C a blank was left here (see p. 147) and subsequently filled in with ‘Ulmo’, not ‘Ainur’.

10 The original reading was: ‘Thou Tuor of the lonely heart the Valar will not to dwell for ever in fair places of birds and flowers; nor would they lead thee through this pleasant land…’

11 Tuor C adds here: ‘with Ulmo’s aid’.

12 The reference to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is a later addition to Tuor B. The original reading was: ‘who alone escaped Melko’s power when he caught their folk…’

13 In Tuor A and B Voronwл is used throughout, but this phrase, with the form Bronweg, is an addition to Tuor B (replacing the original ‘Now after many days these twain found a deep dale’).

14 The typescript Tuor C has here:

…that none, were they not of the blood of the Noldoli, might light on it, neither by chance nor agelong search. Thus was it secure from all ill hap save treachery alone, and never would Tыr have won thereto but for the steadfastness of that Gnome Voronwл.

In the next sentence Tuor C has ‘yet even so no few of the bolder of the Gnomes enthralled would slip down the river Sirion from the fell mountains’.

15 The original reading was: ‘his speech they comprehended, though somewhat different was the tongue of the free Noldoli by those days to that of the sad thralls of Melko.’ The typescript Tuor C has: ‘they comprehended him for they were Noldoli. Then spake Tыr also in the same tongue…’

16 The original reading was: ‘It was early morn when they drew near the gates and many eyes gazed…’ But when Tuor and Voronwл first saw Gondolin it was ‘in the new light of the morning’ (p. 158), and it was ‘a day’s light march’ across the plain; hence the change made later to Tuor B.

17 ‘Evil One’: original reading ‘Ainu’.

18 This passage, from ‘Rugged was his aspect…’, is a replacement on a separate slip; the original text was:

Tuor was goodly in countenance but rugged and unkempt of locks and clad in the skins of bears, yet his stature was not overgreat among his own folk, but the Gondothlim, though not bent as were no few of their kin who laboured at ceaseless delving and hammering for Melko, were small and slender and lithe.

In the original passage Men are declared to be of their nature taller than the Elves of Gondolin. See pp. 142, p. 220.

19 ‘come hither’: ‘escaped from Melko’ Tuor C.

20 ‘folk’: original reading ‘men’. This is the only place where ‘men’ in reference to Elves is changed. The use is constant in The Fall of Gondolin, and even occurs once in an odd-sounding reference to the hosts of Melko: ‘But now the men of Melko have assembled their forces’ (p. 183).

21 The passage ending here and beginning with the words ‘Then Tuor’s heart was heavy…’ on p. 162 was bracketed by my father in Tuor B, and on a loose slip referring to this bracketed passage he wrote:

(If nec[essary]): Then is told how Idril daughter of the king added her words to the king’s wisdom so that Turgon bid Tuor rest himself awhile in Gondolin, and being forewise prevailed on him [to] abide there in the end. How he came to love the daughter of the king, Idril of the Silver Feet, and how he was taught deeply in the lore of that great folk and learned of its history and the history of the Elves. How Tuor grew in wisdom and mighty in the counsels of the Gondothlim.