Commentary on

The Tale of the Nauglafring

In this commentary I shall not compare in detail the Tale of the Nauglafring with the story told in The Silmarillion (Chapter 22, Of the Ruin of Doriath). The stories are profoundly different in essential features—above all, in the reduction of the treasure brought by Hъrin from Nargothrond to a single object, the Necklace of the Dwarves, which had long been in existence (though not, of course, containing the Silmaril); while the whole history of the relation between Thingol and the Dwarves is changed. My father never again wrote any part of this story on a remotely comparable scale, and the formation of the published text was here of the utmost difficulty; I hope later to give an account of it.

While it is often difficult to differentiate what my father omitted in his more concise versions (in order to keep them concise) from what he rejected, it seems clear that a large part of the elaborate narrative of the Tale of the Nauglafring was early abandoned. In subsequent writing the story of the fighting between Ъrin’s band and Tinwelint’s Elves disappeared, and there is no trace afterwards of Ufedhin or the other Gnomes that lived among the Dwarves, of the story that the Dwarves took half the unwrought gold (‘the king’s loan’) away to Nogrod to make precious objects from it, of the keeping of Ufedhin hostage, of Tinwelint’s refusal to let the Dwarves depart, of their outrageous demands, of their scourging and their insulting payment.

We meet here again the strong emphasis on Tinwelint’s love of treasure and lack of it, in contrast to the later conception of his vast wealth (see my remarks, pp. 128–9). The Silmaril is kept in a wooden casket (p. 225), Tinwelint has no crown but a wreath of scarlet leaves (p. 227), and he is far less richly clad and accoutred than ‘the wayfarer in his halls’ (Ufedhin). This is very well in itself—the Woodland Elf corrupted by the lure of golden splendour, but it need not be remarked again how strangely at variance is this picture with that of Thingol Lord of Beleriand, who had a vast treasury in his marvellous underground realm of Menegroth, the Thousand Caves—itself largely contrived by the Dwarves of Belegost in the distant past (The Silmarillion pp. 92–3), and who most certainly did not need the aid of Dwarves at this time to make him a crown and a fine sword, or vessels to adorn his banquets. Thingol in the later conception is proud, and stern; he is also wise, and powerful, and greatly increased in stature and in knowledge through his union with a Maia. Could such a king have sunk to the level of miserly swindling that is portrayed in the Tale of the Nauglafring?

Great stress is indeed placed on the enormous size of the hoard—‘such mighty heaps of gold have never since been gathered in one place’, p. 223—which is made so vast that it becomes hard to believe that a band of wandering outlaws could have brought it to the halls of the woodland Elves, even granting that ‘some was lost upon the way’ (p. 114). There is perhaps some difference here from the account of the Rodothlim and their works in the Tale of Turambar (p. 81), where there is certainly no suggestion that the Rodothlim possessed treasures coming out of Valinor—though this idea remained through all the vicissitudes of this part of the story: it is said of the Lord of Nargothrond in The Silmarillion (p. 114) that ‘Finrod had brought more treasures out of Tirion than any other of the princes of the Noldor’.

More important, the elements of ‘spell’ and ‘curse’ are dominant in this tale, to such a degree that they might almost be said to be the chief actors in it. The curse of Mоm on the gold is felt at every turn of the narrative. Vengeance for him is one motive in Naugladur’s decision to attack the Elves of Artanor (p. 230). His curse is fulfilled in the ‘agelong feud’ between the kindreds of the Dwarves (p. 235)—of which all trace was afterwards effaced, with the loss of the entire story of Ufedhin’s intent to steal the Necklace from Naugladur sleeping, the killing of Bodruith Lord of Belegost, and the fighting between the two clans of Dwarves. Naugladur was ‘blinded by the spell’ in taking so imprudent a course out of Artanor (p. 236); and the curse of Mоm is made the ‘cause’ of his stumbling on a stone in his fight with Beren (p. 238). It is even, and most surprisingly, suggested as a reason for the short second lives of Beren and Tinъviel (p. 240); and finally ‘the spell of Mоm’ is an element in the attack on Dior by the Fлanorians (p. 241). An important element also in the tale is the baleful nature of the Nauglafring, for the Dwarves made it with bitterness; and into the complex of curses and spells is introduced also ‘the dragon’s ban upon the gold’ (p. 239) or ‘the spell of the dragon’ (p. 241). It is not said in the Tale of Turambar that Glorund had cursed the gold or enspelled it; but Mоm said to Ъrin (p. 114): ‘Has not Glorund lain long years upon it, and the evil of the drakes of Melko is on it, and no good can it bring to Man or Elf.’ Most notably, Gwendelin implies, against Beren’s assertion that ‘its holiness might overcome all such evils’, that the Silmaril itself is unhallowed, since it ‘abode in the Crown of Melko’ (p. 239). In the later of the two ‘schemes’ for the Lost Tales (see I.107 note 3) it is said that the Nauglafring ‘brought sickness to Tinъviel’.*

But however much the chief actors in this tale are ‘enspelled’ or blindly carrying forward the mysterious dictates of a curse, there is no question but that the Dwarves in the original conception were altogether more ignoble than they afterwards became, more prone to evil to gain their ends, and more exclusively impelled by greed; that Doriath should be laid waste by mercenary Orcs under Dwarvish paymasters (p. 230) was to become incredible and impossible later. It is even said that by the deeds of Naugladur ‘have the Dwarves been severed in feud for ever since those days with the Elves, and drawn more nigh in friendship to the kin of Melko’ (p. 230); and in the outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale the Nauglath are an evil people, associates of goblins (I.236–7). In a rejected outline for the Tale of the Nauglafring (p. 136) the Necklace was made ‘by certain Ъvanimor (Nautar or Nauglath)’, Ъvanimor being defined elsewhere as ‘monsters, giants, and ogres’. With all this compare The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F (I): ‘They [the Dwarves] are not evil by nature, and few ever served the Enemy of free will, whatever the tales of Men may have alleged.’

The account of the Dwarves in this tale is of exceptional interest in other respects. ‘The beards of the Indrafangs’ have been named in Tinъviel’s ‘lengthening spell’ (pp. 19, 46); but this is the first description of the Dwarves in my father’s writings—already with the spelling that he maintained against the unceasing opposition of proof-readers—and they are eminently recognisable in their dour and hidden natures, in their ‘unloveliness’ (The Silmarillion p. 113), and in their ‘marvellous skill with metals’ (ibid. p. 92). The strange statement that ‘never comes a child among them’ is perhaps to be related to ‘the foolish opinion among Men’ referred to in The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A (III), ‘that there are no Dwarf-women, and that the Dwarves “grow out of stone”.’ In the same place it is said that ‘it is because of the fewness of women among them that the kind of the Dwarves increases slowly’.

It is also said in the tale that it is thought by some that the Dwarves ‘have not heard of Ilъvatar’ on knowledge of Ilъvatar among Men see p. 209.

According to the Gnomish dictionary Indrafang was ‘a special name of the Longbeards or Dwarves’, but in the tale it is made quite plain that the Longbeards were on the contrary the Dwarves of Belegost; the Dwarves of Nogrod were the Nauglath, with their king Naugladur. It must be admitted however that the use of the terms is sometimes confusing, or confused: thus the description of the Nauglath on pp. 223–4 seems to be a description of all Dwarves, and to include the Indrafangs, though this cannot have been intended. The reference to ‘the march of the Dwarves and Indrafangs’ (p. 234) must be taken as an ellipse, i.e. ‘the Dwarves of Nogrod and the Indrafangs’. Naugladur of Nogrod and Bodruith of Belegost are said to have been akin (p. 235), though this perhaps only means that they were both Dwarves whereas Ufedhin was an Elf.