Of the death of Tinwelint and the flight of Gwenethlin [see p. 51]. How Beren avenged Tinwelint and how the Necklace became his. How it brought sickness to Tinъviel [see p. 246], and how Beren and Tinъviel faded from the Earth. How their sons [sic] dwelt after them and how the sons of Fлanor came up against them with a host because of the Silmaril. How all were slain but Elwing daughter of Daimord [see p. 139] son of Beren fled with the Necklace.

Of Tuor’s vessel with white sails.

How folk of the Lothlim dwelt at Sirion’s Mouth. Eдrendel grew fairest of all Men that were or are. How the mermaids (Oarni) loved him. How Elwing came to the Lothlim and of the love of Elwing and Eдrendel. How Tuor fell into age, and how Ulmo beckoned to him at eve, and he set forth on the waters and was lost. How Idril swam after him.

(In the following passage my father seems at first to have written: ‘Eдrendel…….. Oarni builded Wingilot and set forth in search of….leaving Voronwл with Elwing’, where the first lacuna perhaps said ‘with the aid of’, though nothing is now visible; but then he wrote ‘Eдrendel built Swanwing’, and then partly erased the passage: it is impossible to see now what his intention was.)

Elwing’s lament. How Ulmo forbade his quest but Eдrendel would yet sail to find a passage to Mandos. How Wingilot was wrecked at Falasquil and how Eдrendel found the carven house of Tuor there.

Here Scheme D ends. There is also a reference at an earlier point in it to ‘the messengers sent from Gondolin. The doves of Gondolin fly to Valinor at the fall of that town.’

This outline seems to show a move to reduce the complexity of the narrative, with Wingilot being the ship in which Eдrendel attempted to sail to Mandos and in which he was wrecked at Falasquil; but the outline is too brief and stops too soon to allow any certain conclusions to be drawn.

A fourth outline, which I will call ‘E’, is found on a detached sheet; in this Tuor is called Tыr (see p. 148).

Fall of Gondolin. The feast of Glorfindel. The dwelling by the waters of Sirion’s mouth. The mermaids come to Eдrendel.

Tыr groweth sea-hungry—his song to Eдrendel. One evening he calls Eдrendel and they go to the shore. There is a skiff. Tыr bids farewell to Eдrendel and bids him thrust it off—the skiff fares away into the West. Eдrendel hears a great song swelling from the sea as Tыr’s skiff dips over the world’s rim. His passion of tears upon the shore. The lament of Idril.

The building of Earum.⁹ The coming of Elwing. Eдrendel’s reluctance. The whetting of Idril. The voyage and foundering of Earum in the North, and the vanishing of Idril. How the seamaids rescued Eдrendel, and brought him to Tыr’s bay. His coastwise journey.

The rape of Elwing. Eдrendel discovers the ravaging of Sirion’s mouth.

The building of Wingelot. He searches for Elwing and is blown far to the South. Wirilуmл. He escapes eastward. He goes back westward; he descries the Bay of Faлry. The Tower of Pearl, the magic isles, the great shadows. He finds Kфr empty; he sails back, crusted with dust and his face afire. He learns of Elwing’s foundering. He sitteth on the Isle of Seabirds. Elwing as a seamew comes to him. He sets sail over the margent of the world.

Apart from the fuller account of Tuor’s departure from the mouths of Sirion, not much can be learned from this—it is too condensed. But even allowing for speed and compression, there seem to be essential differences from B and C. Thus in this outline (E) Elwing, as it appears, comes to Sirion at a later point in the story, after the departure of Tuor; but the raid and capture of Elwing seems to take place at an earlier point, while Eдrendel is on his way back to Sirion from his shipwreck in the North (not, as in B and C, while he is on the great voyage in Wingilot that took him to Kфr). Here, it seems, there was to be only one northward journey, ending in the shipwreck of Earбmл/Earum near Falasquil. Though it cannot be demonstrated, I incline to think that E was subsequent to B and C: partly because the reduction of two northward voyages ending in shipwreck to one seems more likely than the other way about, and partly because of the form Tыr, which, though it did not survive, replaced Tuor for a time (p. 148).

One or two other points may be noticed in this outline. The great spider, called Ungweliantл in C but here Wirilуmл (‘Gloomweaver’, see I.152), is here encountered by Eдrendel in the far South, not as in C on his westward voyage: see p. 256. Elwing in this version comes to Eдrendel as a seabird (as she does in The Silmarillion, p. 247), which is not said in C and even seems to be denied.

Another isolated page (associated with the poem ‘The Bidding of the Minstrel’, see pp. 269–70 below) gives a very curious account of Eдrendel’s great voyage:

Eдrendel’s boat goes through North. Iceland. [Added in margin: back of North Wind.] Greenland, and the wild islands: a mighty wind and crest of great wave carry him to hotter climes, to back of West Wind. Land of strange men, land of magic. The home of Night. The Spider. He escapes from the meshes of Night with a few comrades, sees a great mountain island and a golden city [added in margin: Kфr]—wind blows him southward. Tree-men, Sun-dwellers, spices, fire-mountains, red sea: Mediterranean (loses his boat (travels afoot through wilds of Europe?)) or Atlantic.* Home. Waxes aged. Has a new boat builded. Bids adieu to his north land. Sails west again to the lip of the world, just as the Sun is diving into the sea. He sets sail upon the sky and returns no more to earth.

The golden city was Kфr and he had caught the music of the Solosimpл, and returns to find it, only to find that the fairies have departed from Eldamar. See little book. Dusted with diamond dust climbing the deserted streets of Kфr.

One would certainly suppose this account to be earlier than anything so far considered (both from the fact that Eдrendel’s history after his return from the great voyage seems to bear no relation to that in B and C, and from his voyage being set in the lands and oceans of the known world), were it not for the reference to the ‘little book’, which must mean ‘Notebook C’, from which the outline C above is taken (see p. 254). But I think it very probable (and the appearance of the MS rather supports this) that the last paragraph (‘The golden city. was Kфr…’) was added later, and that the rest of the outline belongs with the earliest writing of the poem, in the winter of 1914.

It is notable that only here in the earliest writings is it made clear that the ‘diamond dust’ that coated Eдrendel came from the streets of Kфr (cf. the passage from The Silmarillion cited on p. 257).

Another of the early Eдrendel poems, ‘The Shores of Faлry’, has a short prose preface, which if not as old as the first composition of the poem itself (July 1915, see p. 271) is certainly not much later:

Eдrendel the Wanderer who beat about the Oceans of the World in his white ship Wingelot sat long while in his old age upon the Isle of Seabirds in the Northern Waters ere he set forth upon a last voyage.

He passed Taniquetil and even Valinor, and drew his bark over the bar at the margin of the world, and launched it on the Oceans of the Firmament. Of his ventures there no man has told, save that hunted by the orbed Moon he fled back to Valinor, and mounting the towers of Kфr upon the rocks of Eglamar he gazed back upon the Oceans of the World. To Eglamar he comes ever at plenilune when the Moon sails a-harrying beyond Taniquetil and Valinor.*

Both here and in the outline associated with ‘The Bidding of the Minstrel’ Eдrendel was conceived to be an old man when he journeyed into the firmament.