The only narrative difference here from the actual text lies in the introduction of the king’s daughter Idril as an influence on Tuor’s decision to remain in Gondolin. The passage is otherwise an extremely abbreviated summary of the account of Tuor’s instruction in Gondolin, with omission of what is said in the text about the preparations of the Gondothlim against attack; but I do not think that this was a proposal for shortening the written tale. Rather, the words ‘If necessary’ suggest strongly that my father had in mind only a reduction for oral delivery—and that was when it was read to the Exeter College Essay Club in the spring of 1920; see p. 147. Another proposed shortening is given in note 32.
22 This passage, beginning ‘Great love too had Idril for Tuor’’, was written on a separate slip and replaced the original text as follows:
The king hearing of this, and finding that his child Idril, whom the Eldar speak of as Irildл, loved Tuor in return, he consented to their being wed, seeing that he had no son, and Tuor was like to make a kinsman of strength and consolation. There were Idril and Tuor wed before the folk in that Place of the Gods, Gar Ainion, nigh the king’s palace; and that was a day of mirth to the city of Gondolin, but of (&c.)
The replacement states that the marriage of Tuor and Idril was the first but not the last of the unions of Man and Elf, whereas it is said in the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin that Eдrendel was ‘the only being that is half of the kindred of the Eldaliл and half of Men’ (see p. 215).
23 The phrase ‘and that tale of Isfin and Eцl may not here be told’ was added to Tuor B. See p. 220.
24 Original reading: ‘a name wrought of the tongue of the Gondothlim’.
25 The sapphires given to Manwл by the Noldoli are referred to in the tale of The Coming of the Elves, I.128. The original pencilled text of Tuor A can be read here: ‘bluer than the sapphires of Sъlimo’.
26 The passage ending here and beginning with ‘In these ways that bitter winter passed…’is inserted on a separate sheet in Tuor B (but is not part of the latest layer of emendation); it replaces a much shorter passage going back to the primary text of Tuor A:
Now on midwinter’s day at early even the sun sank betimes beyond the mountains, and lo! when she had gone a light arose beyond the hills to the north, and men marvelled (&c.)
See notes 34 and 37.
27 The Scarlet Heart: the heart of Finwл Nуlemл, Turgon’s father, was cut out by Orcs in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, but it was regained by Turgon and became his emblem; see I. 241 and note 11.
28 This passage describing the array and the emblems of the houses of the Gondothlim was relatively very little affected by the later revision of Tuor A; the greater part of it is in the original pencilled text, which was allowed to stand, and all the names appear to be original.
29 The word ‘burg’ is used in the Old English sense of a walled and fortified town.
30 The death of Ecthelion in the primary text of Tuor A is legible; the revision introduced a few changes of wording, but no more.
31 This sentence, from ‘and men shuddered’, was added to Tuor B. On the prophecy see I.172.
32 Tuor B is bracketed from ‘Now comes Tuor at their head to the Place of Wedding’ on p. 186 to this point, and an inserted slip relating to this bracketing reads:
How Tuor and his folk came upon Idril wandering distraught in the Place of the Gods. How Tuor and Idril from that high place saw the sack of the King’s Hall and the ruin of the King’s Tower and the passing of the king, for which reason the foe followed not after. How Tuor heard tidings of Voronwл that Idril had sent Eдrendel and her guard down the hidden way, and fared into the city in search of her husband; how in peril from the enemy they had rescued many that fled and sent them down the secret way. How Tuor led his host with the luck of the Gods to the mouth of that passage, and how all descended into the plain, sealing the entrance utterly behind them. How the sorrowful company issued into a dell in the vale of Tumladin.
This is simply a summary of the text as it stands; I suppose it was a cut proposed for the recitation of the tale if that seemed to be taking too long (see note 21).
33 This passage, from ‘Here were gathered…’, replaced in Tuor B the original reading: ‘Here they are fain to rest, but finding no signs of Eдrendel and his escort Tuor is downcast, and Idril weeps.’ This was rewritten partly for narrative reasons, but also to put it into the past tense. In the next sentence the text was emended from ‘Lamentation is there…’ and ‘about them looms…’ But the sentence following (‘Fire-drakes are about it…’) was left untouched; and I think that it was my father’s intention, only casually indicated and never carried through, to reduce the amount of ‘historical present’ in the narrative.
34 ‘for summer is at hand’: the original reading was ‘albeit it is winter’. See notes 26 and 37.
35 The original reading was:
Now the Mountains were on that side seven leagues save a mile from Gondolin, and Cristhorn the Cleft of Eagles another league of upward going from the beginning of the Mountains; wherefore they were now yet two leagues and part of a third from the pass, and very weary thereto.
36 ‘Behold, his face shineth as a star in the waste’ was added to Tuor B.
37 This passage, from ‘But after a year and more of wandering…’, replaced the original reading ‘But after a half-year’s wandering, nigh midsummer’. This emendation depends on the changing of the time of the attack on Gondolin from midwinter to the ‘Gates of Summer’ (see notes 26 and 34). Thus in the revised version summer is retained as the season when the exiles came to the lands about Sirion, but they spent a whole year and more, rather than a half-year, to reach them.
38 ‘even where Tulkas’: original reading: ‘even where Noldorin and Tulkas’. See pp. 278–9.
39 The original pencilled text of Tuor A had ‘Fair among the Lothlim grows Eдrendel in Sornontur the house of Tuor’. The fourth letter of this name could as well be read as a u.
Changes made to names in
The Fall of Gondolin
Ilfiniol < Elfriniol in the first three occurrences of the name in the initial linking passage, Ilfiniol so written at the fourth.
(In The Cottage of Lost Play (I.15) the Gong-warden of Mar Vanwa Tyaliйva is named only Littleheart; in the Link to The Music of the Ainur his Elvish name is Ilverin < Elwenildo (1.46, 52); and in the Link to the Tale of Tinъviel he is Ilfiniol < Elfriniol as here, while the typescript has Ilfrin (p. 7).
In the head-note to the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin he is Elfrith < Elfriniel, and this is the only place where the meaning of the name ‘Littleheart’ is explained (p. 148); the Name-list has an entry ‘Elf meaneth “heart” (as Elfin Elben): Elfrith is Littleheart’ (see 1.255, entry Ilverin). In another projected list of names, abandoned after only a couple of entries had been made, we meet again the form Elfrith, and also Elbenil > Elwenil.
This constant changing of name is to be understood in relation to swiftly changing phonological ideas and formulations, but even so is rather extraordinary.)