The great difference between the versions lies of course in the nature of Melko/Morgoth’s knowledge of Gondolin. In the tale, he had by means of a vast army of spies† already discovered it before ever Meglin was captured, and creatures of Melko had found the ‘Way of Escape’ and looked down on Gondolin from the surrounding heights. Meglin’s treachery in the old story lay in his giving an exact account of the structure of the city and the preparations made for its defence—and in his advice to Melko concerning the monsters of flame. In The Silmarillion, on the other hand, there is the element, devised much later, of the unconscious betrayal by Hъrin to Morgoth’s spies of the general region in which Gondolin must be sought, in ‘the mountainous land between Anach and the upper waters of Sirion, whither [Morgoth’s] servants had never passed’ (p. 241); but ‘still no spy or creature out of Angband could come there because of the vigilance of the eagles’—and of this rфle of the eagles of the Encircling Mountains (though hostile to Melko, p. 193) there is in the original story no suggestion.

Thus in The Silmarillion Morgoth remained in ignorance until Maeglin’s capture of the precise location of Gondolin, and Maeglin’s information was of correspondingly greater value to him, as it was also of greater damage to the city. The history of the last years of Gondolin has thus a somewhat different atmosphere in the tale, for the Gondothlim are informed of the fact that Melko has ‘encompassed the vale of Tumladin around’ (p. 167), and Turgon makes preparations for war and strengthens the watch on the hills. The withdrawal of all Melko’s spies shortly before the attack on Gondolin did indeed bring about a renewal of optimism among the Gondothlim, and in Turgon not least, so that when the attack came the people were unprepared; but in the later story the shock of the sudden assault is much greater, for there has never been any reason to suppose that the city is in immediate danger, and Idril’s foreboding is peculiar to herself and more mysterious.

(v) The array of the Gondothlim (pp. 171–4)

Though the central image of this part of the story—the people of Gondolin looking out from their walls to hail the rising sun on the feast of the Gates of Summer, but seeing a red light rising in the north and not in the east—survived, of all the heraldry in this passage scarcely anything is found in later writings. Doubtless, if my father had continued the later Tuor, much would have re-emerged, however changed, if we judge by the rich ‘heraldic’ descriptions of the great gates and their guards in the Orfalch Echor (pp. 46–50). But in the concise account in The Silmarillion the only vestiges are the titles Ecthelion ‘of the Fountain’* and Glorfindel ‘chief of the House of the Golden Flower of Gondolin’. Ecthelion and Glorfindel are named also in The Silmarillion (p. 194) as Turgon’s captains who guarded the flanks of the host of Gondolin in their retreat down Sirion from the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, but of other captains named in the tale there is no mention afterwards†—though it is significant that the eighteenth Ruling Steward of Gondor was named Egalmoth, as the seventeenth and twenty-fifth were named Ecthelion (The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A (I, ii)).*

Glorfindel ‘of the golden hair’ (p. 192) remains ‘yellow-haired Glorfindel’ in The Silmarillion, and this was from the beginning the meaning of his name.

(vi) The battle of Gondolin (pp. 174–88)

Virtually the entire history of the fighting in Gondolin is unique in the tale of The Fall of Gondolin; the whole story is summarised in The Silmarillion (p. 242) in a few lines:

Of the deeds of desperate valour there done, by the chieftains of the noble houses and their warriors, and not least by Tuor, much is told in The Fall of Gondolin: of the battle of Ecthelion of the Fountain with Gothmog Lord of Balrogs in the very square of the King, where each slew the other, and of the defence of the tower of Turgon by the people of his household, until the tower was overthrown: and mighty was its fall and the fall of Turgon in its ruin.

Tuor sought to rescue Idril from the sack of the city, but Maeglin had laid hands on her, and on Eдrendil; and Tuor fought with Maeglin on the walls, and cast him far out, and his body as it fell smote the rocky slopes of Amon Gwareth thrice ere it pitched into the flames below. Then Tuor and Idril led such remnants of the people of Gondolin as they could gather in the confusion of the burning down the secret way which Idril had prepared.

(In this highly compressed account the detail that Maeglin’s body struck the slopes of Amon Gwareth three times before it ‘pitched’ into the flames was retained.) It would seem from The Silmarillion account that Maeglin’s attempt on Idril and Eдrendil took place much later in the fighting, and indeed shortly before the escape of the fugitives down the tunnel; but I think that this is far more likely to be the result of compression than of a change in the narrative of the battle.

In the tale Gondolin is very clearly visualised as a city, with its markets and its great squares, of which there are only vestiges in later writing (see above, p. 207); and there is nothing vague in the description of the fighting. The early conception of the Balrogs makes them less terrible, and certainly more destructible, than they afterwards became: they existed in ‘hundreds’ (p. 170),* and were slain by Tuor and the Gondothlim in large numbers: thus five fell before Tuor’s great axe Dramborleg, three before Ecthelion’s sword, and two score were slain by the warriors of the king’s house. The Balrogs are ‘demons of power’ (p. 181); they are capable of pain and fear (p. 194); they are attired in iron armour (pp. 181, 194), and they have whips of flame (a character they never lost) and claws of steel (pp. 169, 179).

In The Silmarillion the dragons that came against Gondolin were ‘of the brood of Glaurung’, which ‘were become now many and terrible’ whereas in the tale the language employed (p. 170) suggests that some at least of the ‘Monsters’ were inanimate ‘devices’, the construction of smiths in the forges of Angband. But even the ‘things of iron’ that ‘opened about their middles’ to disgorge bands of Orcs are called ‘ruthless beasts’, and Gothmog ‘bade’ them ‘pile themselves’ (p. 176); those made of bronze or copper ‘were given hearts and spirits of blazing fire’ while the ‘fire-drake’ that Tuor hewed screamed and lashed with its tail (p. 181).

A small detail of the narrative is curious: what ‘messengers’ did Meglin send to Melko to warn him to guard the outer entrance of the Way of Escape (where he guessed that the secret tunnel must lead in the end)? Whom could Meglin trust sufficiently? And who would dare to go?

(vii) The escape of the fugitives

and the battle in Cristhorn (pp. 188–95)

The story as told in The Silmarillion (p. 243) is somewhat fuller in its account of the escape of the fugitives from the city and the ambush in the Eagles’ Cleft (there called Cirith Thoronath) than in that of the assault and sack itself, but only in one point are the two narratives actually at variance—as already noticed, the Eagles’ Cleft was afterwards moved from the southern parts of the Encircling Mountains to the northern, and Idril’s tunnel led north from the city (the comment is made that it was not thought ‘that any fugitives would take a path towards the north and the highest parts of the mountains and the nighest to Angband’). The tale provides a richness of detail and an immediacy that is lacking in the short version, where such things as the tripping over dead bodies in the hot and reeking underground passage have disappeared; and there is no mention of the Gondothlim who against the counsel of Idril and Tuor went to the Way of Escape and were there destroyed by the dragon lying in wait,† or of the fight to rescue Eдrendel.