see pp. 205 ff.
9 The Shadowy Isles are very probably the Enchanted Isles described at the end of The Silmarillion ch. 11, which were ‘strung as a net in the Shadowy Seas from the north to the south’ at the time of the Hiding of Valinor.
10 Cf. The Silmarillion p. 196: ‘At the bidding of Turgon [after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad] Círdan built seven swift ships, and they sailed out into the West; but no tidings of them came ever back to Balar, save of one, and the last. The mariners of that ship toiled long in the sea, and returning at last in despair they foundered in a great storm within sight of the coasts of Middle-earth; but one of them was saved by Ulmo from the wrath of Ossë, and the waves bore him up, and cast him ashore in Nevrast. His name was Voronwë; and he was one of those that Turgon sent forth as messengers from Gondolin.’; Cf. also The Silmarillion p. 239.
11 The words of Ulmo to Turgon appear in The Silmarillion ch. 15 in the form: ‘Remember that the true hope of the Noldor lieth in the West and cometh from the Sea,’ and ‘But if this peril draweth nigh indeed, then even from Nevrast one shall come to warn thee.’
12 Nothing is told in The Silmarillion of the further fate of Voronwë after his return to Gondolin with Tuor; but in the original story (‘Of Tuor and the Exiles of Gondolin’) he was one of those who escaped from the sack of the city – as is implied by the words of Tuor here.
13 Cf. The Silmarillion p. 159: ‘[Turgon] believed also that the ending of the Siege was the beginning of the downfall of the Noldor, unless aid should come; and he sent companies of the Gondolindrim in secret to the mouths of Sirion and the Isle of Balar. There they built ships, and set sail into the uttermost West upon Turgon’s errand, seeking for Valinor, to ask for pardon and aid of the Valar; and they besought the birds of the sea to guide them. But the seas were wild and wide, and shadow and enchantment lay upon them; and Valinor was hidden. Therefore none of the messengers of Turgon came into the West, and many were lost and few returned.’
In one of the ‘constituent texts’ of The Silmarillion it is said that although the Noldor ‘had not the art of shipbuilding, and all the craft that they built foundered or were driven back by the winds’, yet after the Dagor Bragollach ‘Turgon ever maintained a secret refuge upon the Isle of Balar’, and when after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad Círdan and the remnant of his people fled from Brithombar and Eglarest to Balar ‘they mingled with Turgon’s outpost there’. But this element in the story was rejected, and thus in the published text of The Silmarillion there is no reference to the establishment of dwellings on Balar by Elves from Gondolin.
14 The woods of Núath are not mentioned in The Silmarillion and are not marked on the map that accompanies it. They extended westward from the upper waters of the Narog towards the source of the river Nenning.
15 Cf. The Silmarillion pp. 209 – 10: ‘Finduilas daughter of Orodreth the King knew [Gwindor] and welcomed him, for she had loved him before the Nirnaeth, and so greatly did Gwindor love her beauty that he named her Faelivrin, which is the gleam of the sun on the pools of Ivrin.’
16 The river Glithui is not mentioned in The Silmarillion and is not named on the map, though it is shown: a tributary of the Teiglin joining that river some way north of the inflowing of the Malduin.
17 This road is referred to in The Silmarillion, p. 205: ‘The ancient road... that led through the long defile of Sirion, past the isle where Minas Tirith of Finrod had stood, and so through the land between Malduin and Sirion, and on through the eaves of Brethil to the Crossings of Teiglin.’
18 ‘Death to the Glamhoth!’ This name, though it does not occur in The Silmarillion or in The Lord of the Rings, was a general term in the Sindarin language for Orcs. The meaning is ‘din-horde’, ‘host of tumult’; cf. Gandalf’ s sword Glamdring, and Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the Isle of (the host of ) Werewolves.
19 Echoriath: the Encircling Mountains about the plain of Gondolin. ered e·mbar nín: the mountains of my home.
20 In The Silmarillion, pp. 200 – 1, Beleg of Doriath said to Túrin (at a time some years before that of the present narrative) that Orcs had made a road through the Pass of Anach, ‘and Dimbar which used to be in peace is falling under the Black Hand’.
21 By this road Maeglin and Aredhel fled to Gondolin pursued by Eöl (The Silmarillion ch. 16); and afterwards Celegorm and Curufin took it when they were expelled from Nargothrond (ibid. p. 176). Only in the present text is there any mention of its westward extension to Turgon’s ancient home at Vinyamar under Mount Taras; and its course is not marked on the map from its junction with the old south road to Nargothrond at the north-western edge of Brethil.
22 The name Brithiach contains the element brith ‘gravel’, as also in the river Brithon and the haven of Brithombar.
23 In a parallel version of the text at this point, almost certainly rejected in favour of the one printed, the travellers did not cross the Sirion by the Ford of Brithiach, but reached the river several leagues to the north of it. ‘They trod a toilsome path to the brink of the river, and there Voronwë cried: “See a wonder! Both good and ill does it forebode. Sirion is frozen, though no tale tells of the like since the coming of the Eldar out of the East. Thus we may pass and save many weary miles, too long for our strength. Yet thus also others may have passed, or may follow.” ’ They crossed the river on the ice unhindered, and ‘thus did the counsels of Ulmo turn the malice of the Enemy to avail, for the way was shortened, and at the end of their hope and strength Tuor and Voronwë came at last to the Dry River at its issuing from the skirts of the mountains’.
24 Cf. The Silmarillion p. 125: ‘But there was a deep way under the mountains delved in the darkness of the world by waters that flowed out to join the streams of Sirion; and this way Turgon found, and so came to the green plain amid the mountains, and saw the island-hill that stood there of hard smooth stone; for the vale had been a great lake in ancient days.’
25 It is not said in The Silmarillion that the great eagles ever dwelt on Thangorodrim. In ch. 13 (p. 110) Manwë ‘sent forth the race of Eagles, commanding them to dwell in the crags of the North, and to keep watch upon Morgoth’; while in ch. 18 (p. 154) Thorondor ‘came hasting from his eyrie among the peaks of the Crissaegrim’ for the rescue of Fingolfin’s body before the gates of Angband. Cf. also The Return of the King VI 4: ‘Old Thorondor, who built his eyries in the inaccessible peaks of the Encircling Mountains when Middle-earth was young.’ In all probability the conception of Thorondor’s dwelling at first upon Thangorodrim, which is found also in an early Silmarillion text, was later abandoned.
