Fifth and sixth parts. In C we meet the image of Eдrendel’s shoes shining from the dust of diamonds in Kфr, an image that was to survive (The Silmarillion p. 248):

He walked in the deserted ways of Tirion, and the dust upon his raiment and his shoes was a dust of diamonds, and he shone and glistened as he climbed the long white stairs.

But in The Silmarillion Tirion was deserted because it was ‘a time of festival, and wellnigh all the Elvenfolk were gone to Valimar, or were gathered in the halls of Manwл upon Taniquetil’ here on the other hand it seems at least strongly implied, in both B and C, that Kфr was empty because the Elves of Valinor had departed into the Great Lands, as a result of the tidings brought by the birds of Gondolin. In these very early narrative schemes there is no mention of Eдrendel’s speaking to the Valar, as the ambassador of Elves and Men (The Silmarillion p. 249), and we can only conclude, extraordinary as the conclusion is, that Eдrendel’s great western voyage, though he attained his goal, was fruitless, that he was not the agent of the aid that did indeed come out of Valinor to the Elves of the Great Lands, and (most curious of all) that Ulmo’s designs for Tuor had no issue. In fact, my father actually wrote in the 1930 version of ‘The Silmarillion’:

Thus it was that the many emissaries of the Gnomes in after days came never back to Valinor—save one: and he came too late.

The words ‘and he came too late’ were changed to ‘the mightiest mariner of song’, and this is the phrase that is found in The Silmarillion, p. 102. It is unfortunately never made clear in the earliest writings what was Ulmo’s purpose in bidding Eдrendel sail to Kфr, for which he had been saved from the ruin of Gondolin. What would he have achieved, had he come to Kфr ‘in time’, more than in the event did take place after the coming of tidings from Gondolin—the March of the Elves into the Great Lands? In a curious note in C, not associated with the present outline, my father asked: ‘How did King Turgon’s messengers get to Valinor or gain the Gods’ consent?’ and answered: ‘His messengers never got there. Ulmo [sic] but the birds brought tidings to the Elves of the fate of Gondolin (the doves and pigeons of Turgon) and they [?arm and march away].’

The coming of the message was followed by ‘the councils (counsels C) of the Gods and the uproar of the Elves’, but in C nothing is said of ‘the sorrow and wrath of the Gods’ or ‘the veil dropped between Valmar and Kфr’ referred to in B: where the meaning can surely only be that the March of the Elves from Valinor was undertaken in direct opposition to the will of the Valar, that the Valar were bitterly opposed to the intervention of the Elves of Valinor in the affairs of the Great Lands. There may well be a connection here with Vairл’s words (I. 19): ‘When the fairies left Kфr that lane [i.e. Olуrл Mallл that led past the Cottage of Lost Play] was blocked for ever with great impassable rocks’. Elsewhere there is only one other reference to the effect of the message from across the sea, and that is in the words of Lindo to Eriol in The Cottage of Lost Play (I.16):

Inwл, whom the Gnomes call Inwithiel……was King of all the Eldar when they dwelt in Kфr. That was in the days before hearing the lament of the world [i.e. the Great Lands] Inwл led them forth to the lands of Men.

Later, Meril-i-Turinqi told Eriol (I.129) that Inwл, her grandsire’s sire, ‘perished in that march into the world’, but Ingil his son ‘went long ago back to Valinor and is with Manwл’ and there is a reference to Inwл’s death in B.

In C the Solosimpi only agreed to accompany the expedition on condition that they remain by the sea, and the reluctance of the Third Kindred, on account of the Kinslaying at Swanhaven, survived (The Silmarillion p. 251). But there is no suggestion that the Elves of Valinor were transported by ship, indeed the reverse, for the Solosimpi ‘fare along all the beaches of the world’, and the expedition is a ‘March’ though there is no indication of how they came to the Great Lands.

Both outlines refer to Eдrendel being driven eastwards on his homeward voyage from Kфr, and to his finding the dwellings at Sirion’s mouth ravaged when he finally returned there; but B does not say who carried out the sack and captured Elwing. In C it was a raid by Orcs of Melko; cf. the entry in the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin (p. 215): ‘Egalmoth…got even out of the burning of Gondolin, and dwelt after at the mouth of Sirion, but was slain in a dire battle there when Melko seized Elwing’.

Neither outline refers to Elwing’s escape from captivity. Both mention Eдrendel’s going back to the ruins of Gondolin—in C he returns there with Voronwл and finds Men and Gnomes; another entry in the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin (p. 215) bears on this: ‘Galdor…won out of Gondolin and even the onslaught of Melko upon the dwellers at Sirion’s mouth and went back to the ruins with Eдrendel.’

Both outlines mention the departure of the Elves from the Great Lands, after the binding of Melko, to Tol Eressлa, C adding a reference to ‘wars with Men’ and to the Eldar being ‘unable to endure the strife of the world’, and both refer to Eдrendel’s going there subsequently, but the order of events seems to be different: in B Eдrendel on his way back from Kфr ‘sights Tol Eressлa and the fleet of the Elves’ (presumably the fleet returning from the Great Lands), whereas in C the departure of the Elves is not mentioned until after Eдrendel’s return to Sirion. But the nature of these outlines is not conveyed in print: they were written at great speed, catching fugitive thoughts, and cannot be pressed hard. However, with the fate of Elwing B and C seem clearly to part company: in B there is a simple reference to her death, apparently associated with the curse of the Nauglafring, and from the order in which the events are set down it may be surmised that her death took place on the journey to Tol Eressлa; C specifically refers to the ‘sinking’ of Elwing and the Nauglafring—but says that Elwing became a seabird, an idea that survived (The Silmarillion p. 247). This perhaps gives more point to Eдrendel’s going to the Isle of Seabirds, mentioned in both B and C: in the latter he ‘hopes that Elwing will return among the seabirds’.

Seventh part. In B the concluding part of the tale is merely summarised in the words ‘His voyage to the firmament’, with a reference to the other outline C, and in the latter we get some glimpses of a narrative. It seems to be suggested that the brightness of Eдrendel (quite unconnected with the Silmaril) arose from the ‘diamond dust’ of Kфr, but also in some sense from the exaltation of his grief. An isolated jotting elsewhere in C asks: ‘What became of the Silmarils after the capture of Melko?’ My father at this time gave no answer to the question; but the question is itself a testimony to the relatively minor importance of the jewels of Fлanor, if also, perhaps, a sign of his awareness that they would not always remain so, that in them lay a central meaning of the mythology, yet to be discovered.

It seems too that Eдrendel sailed into the sky in continuing search for Elwing (‘he sets sail on the oceans of the firmament in order to gaze over the Earth’); and that his passing through the Door of Night (the entrance made by the Gods in the Wall of Things in the West, see I.215–16) did not come about through any devising, but because he was hunted by the Moon. With this last idea, cf. I.193, where Ilinsor, steersman of the Moon, is said to ‘hunt the stars’.

The later of the two schemes for the Lost Tales, which gives a quite substantial outline for Gilfanon’s Tale, where I have called it ‘D’ (see I.234), here fails us, for the concluding passage is very condensed, in part erased, and ends abruptly early in the Tale of Eдrendel. I give it here, beginning at a slightly earlier point in the narrative: