Shaping of Middle-Earth The Quenta, the Ambarkanta and the Annals

I PROSE FRAGMENTS FOLLOWING THE LOST TALES Before giving the 'Sketch of the Mythology', the earliest form of the prose 'Silmarillion', there are some brief prose texts that can be conventiently collected here. (i) Among loose papers there is an early piece, soon abandoneed, entitled Turlin and the Exiles of Gondolin. It will be seen that it relates closely to the beginning of the tale of The Fall of Gondolin (II. 149) but at the same time contains much that is new. That it was the beginning of a later version of the tale is clear at once from the name Mithrim, for this only replaced Asgon by emendation in the final text of The Fall of Gondolin (II. 202). This brief text reads as follows. At the first three occurrences of the name Turlin in the narrative (but not in the title ) it was emended to Turgon; at the fourth and fifth Turgon was so written from the first. I give Turgon throughout. 'Then' said Ilfiniol son of Bronweg }know that Ulmo Lord of Waters forgot never the sorrows of the Elfin kindreds beneath the power of Melko, but he might do little because of the anger of the other Gods who shut their hearts against the race of the Gnomes, and dwelt behind the veiled hills of Valinor heedless of the Outer World, so deep was their ruth and regret for the death of the Two Trees. Nor did any save Ulmo only dread the power of Melko that wrought ruin and sorrow over all the Earth; but Ulmo desired that Valinor should gather all its might to quench his evil ere it be too late, and him seemed that both purposes might perchance be achieved if messengers from the Gnomes should win to Valinor and plead for pardon and for pity upon the Earth; for the love of Palurien and Orome her son for those wide realms did slumber still. Yet hard and evil was the road from the Outer Earth to Valinor, and the Gods themselves had meshed the ways with magic and veiled the encircling hills. Thus did Ulmo seek unceasingly to stir the Gnomes to send messengers unto Valinor, but Melko was cunning and very deep in wisdom, and unsleeping was his wariness in all things that touched the Elfin kindreds, and their messengers overcame not the perils and temptations of that longest and most evil of all roads, and many that dared to set forth were lost forever. Now tells the tale how Ulmo despaired that any of the Elfin race should surpass the dangers of the way, and of the deepest and the latest design that he then fashioned, and of those things which came of it. In those days the greater part of the kindreds of Men dwelt after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears in that land of the North that has many names, but which the Elves of Kor have named Hisilome which is the Twilit Mist, and the Gnomes, who of the Elf-kin know it best, Dor-Lomin the Land of Shadows. A poeople mighty in numbers were there, dwelling about the wide pale waters pf Mithrim the great lake that lies in those regions, and other folk named them Tunglin of folk of the Harp, for their joy was in the wild music and minstrelsy of the fells and woodlands, but they knew not and sang not of the sea. Now this folk came into those places after the dread battle, being too late summoned thither from afar, and they bore no stain of treachery against the Elfin kin; but indeed many among them clung to such friendship with the hidden Gnomes of the mountains and Dark Elves as might be still for the sorrow and mistrust born of those ruinous deeds in the Vale of Niniach. Turgon was a man of that folk, son of Peleg, son of Indor, son of [Ear>] Fengel who was their chief and hearing the summons had marched out of thte deeps of the East with all his folk. But Turgon dwelt not much with his kindred, and loved rather solitude and the friendship of the Elves whose tongues he knew, and he wandered alone about the long shores of Mothrim, now hunting in its woTolkien, J. R. R. is the author of 'Shaping of Middle-Earth The Quenta, the Ambarkanta and the Annals' with ISBN 9780345400437 and ISBN 0345400437.