house has still not emerged, but we have a king Gelmir of the Gnomes, with his sons Golfin, Delin, Lúthien (the last emended from Oleg), captains of his three armies. There is no suggestion that Fëanor and his sons were associated with these in any sort of close kinship. In the fragment of the Lay of the Fall of Gondolin (see III. 146–7) there appears – for the first time – Fingolfin, who steps into Finwë Nólemë’s place as the father of Turgon and Isfin, but is not the son of Finwë, rather of Gelmir. I have suggested there that this Gelmir, father of Golfin/Fingolfin, is to be identified with Finwë, father of Fingolfin in the alliterative poems and later; and it may be that the name Gelmir is formally connected with Fin-golma, which in the outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale is another name for Finwë Nólemë (I. 238–9, and see I. 263, entry Nólemë). It is to be remembered that Finwë Nóleme was not in the earliest legend the father of Fëanor and was not slain by Melko in Valinor, but came to the Great Lands. – Of the other sons of Gelmir named in the present text, Delin and Lúthien, there is no trace elsewhere.
It is certainly clear that Golfin here is the first appearance of Fingolfin, and by the same token that this text preceded the abandoned beginning of the Lay of the Fall of Gondolin. On the other hand, the obscure story of the death of Fëanor in the earliest outlines (I. 238–9) has disappeared, and though the present text breaks off too soon for certainty it seems extremely probable that, had my father continued it a little further, we should have learned of Fëanor’s death in battle with the Orcs whom he and his companions had aroused in the valley where they were encamped. It may be, too, that we should have had an explanation of the puzzling lines of the Lay (III. 146):
’Twas the bent blades of the Glamhoth that drank Fingolfin’s life as he stood alone by Fëanor.
We are in any case here still a long way from the story of the divided hosts and the treachery of Fëanor.
The encampment of Mithrim (Asgon) is referred to already in the early outlines, but in the later of these there is mention (I. 239) of the first devising of weapons by the Gnomes at this time, whereas in the present text they are said to have brought great store of arms ‘out of Valinor and the armouries of Makar’. Here also appears the earliest form of the idea of the flowers springing beneath the marching feet of the Gnomish host.
A characteristic heraldry appears in the armies led by Gelmir’s sons, all in gold and silver, in memory of the Two Trees – the banners made (curiously enough) by the sons of Fëanor. In the ‘Sketch of the Mythology’ the banners of Fingolfin were in blue and silver, as they remained (p. 22).
The name Ior, which occurs at the beginning of the text in the expression ‘among other children of Ior’ (as opposed to ‘the Elfin race’) and seems therefore to refer to Ilúvatar, occurs elsewhere only in a quite different reference: it is given in the early Gnomish dictionary as the equivalent of Qenya Ivárë, ‘the famous “piper of the sea’”.
(iii)
Thirdly and lastly, an isolated slip of paper contains a most curious trace of a stage in development between The Flight of the Noldoli in the Lost Tales and the ‘Sketch of the Mythology’.
The Trees stand dark. The Plain is full of trouble. The Gnomes gather by torchlight in Tûn or Côr; Fëanor laments Bruithwir (Felegron) [emended to (Feleor)] his father, bids Gnomes depart & seek Melko and their treasures – he longs for the Silmarils – Finweg & Fingolfin speak against him. The Gnomes shout and prepare to depart. The Solosimpi refuse: the wise words of Ethlon (Dimlint). Foamriders [?beaches]. The threats of Fëanor to march to Cú nan Eilch. The arch, the lamplit quays; they seize the boats. One Gilfanon sees his mighty swanwinged swan-feather boat with red oars [?going] & he & his sons run to the arch and threaten the Gnomes. The fight on the arch & Gilfanon’s [?curse] ere they throw him into the waves. The Gnomes reach Fangros & repent – burn the boats.
Here Bruithwir (with the additional name Felegron > Feleor) is still the father of Fëanor as in the Lost Tales; but Fingolfin and Finweg have emerged, and speak against Fëanor (it is not clear whether Finweg here is Fingolfin’s father (Finwë) or Fingolfin’s son (later Fingon): see III. 137–8, 146). Narrative features that were never taken up in the later development of ‘The Silmarillion’ here make their only appearance. What lay behind ‘the wise words of Ethlon (Dimlint)’ and ‘the threats of Fëanor to march to Cú nan Eilch’ has now vanished without trace. The name Fangros appears once elsewhere, in the alliterative Children of Húrin, III. 31 line 631 (earlier Fangair), where there is a reference to a song, or songs, being sung
of the fight at Fangros, and Fëanor’s sons’
oath unbreakable
(the fight and the oath need not be in any way connected). But whatever happened at Fangros is lost beyond recall; and nowhere later is there any suggestion that the burning of the ships arose from repentance. In the Lost Tales (I. 168) the Gnomes ‘abandoned their stolen ships’ when they made the passage of the Ice; Sorontur reported to Manwë (I. 177) that he had seen ‘a fleet of white ships that drifted empty in the gales, and some were burning with bright fires’; and Manwë ‘knew thereby that the Noldoli were gone for ever and their ships burned or abandoned’.
Lastly, Gilfanon appears as an Elf of Alqualondë, one of those hurled by the Gnomes into the sea, though it is not said that he was drowned. Gilfanon of Tavrobel was a Gnome (I. 174–5); and it seems virtually certain that the two Gilfanons were not the same. In that case it is most probable that the Elf of Tavrobel had ceased to be so named; though he had not, as I think, ceased to exist (see p. 274).
(The ‘Sketch of the Mythology’)
I have earlier (III. 3) given an account of this text, but I repeat the essentials of it here. On the envelope containing the manuscript my father wrote at some later time:
Original ‘Silmarillion’. Form orig[inally] composed c. 1926–30 for R. W. Reynolds to explain background of ‘alliterative version’ of Túrin & the Dragon: then in progress (unfinished) (begun c. 1918).
The ‘Sketch’ represents a new starting-point in the history of ‘The Silmarillion’; for while it is a quite brief synopsis, the further written development of the prose form proceeded from it in a direct line. It is clear from details that need not be repeated here that it was originally written in 1926 (after the Lay of the Children of Húrin had been abandoned, III. 3); but it was afterwards revised, in places very heavily, and this makes it a difficult text to present in a way that is both accurate and readily comprehensible. The method I have adopted is to give the text exactly as it was first written (apart from a very few slight alterations of expression in no way affecting the narrative, which are adopted silently into the text), but to break it up into short sections, following each with notes giving the later changes made in that section. I must emphasize that there is no manuscript warrant for the 19 divisions so made: it is purely a matter of convenience of presentation. This method has certain advantages: the later changes can be readily compared with the original text immediately preceding; and since the following version of ‘The Silmarillion’, the Quenta, has been treated in the same way and divided into corresponding
