The Fall of Gondolin Read online

  Notable also is the account in this text of Ulmo’s ‘design and desire’, as his purpose is described in the Tale (p.47): but in the Tale it is said that ‘thereof Tuor understood little’ – and we are told no more. In this further brief text, the Turlin version, on the other hand, Ulmo spoke of his inability to prevail against the other Valar, isolated in his fear of the power of Melko, and of his wish that Valinor should rise against that power; his attempts also to persuade the Noldoli to send messengers to Valinor to plead for compassion and help, while the Valar ‘dwelt behind the veiled hills of Valinor heedless of the Outer World.’ This was the time known as ‘The Hiding of Valinor’, when, as is said in the Turlin version (p.115), ‘the Gods themselves had meshed the ways [to Valinor] with magic and veiled the encircling hills’ (on this crucial element in the history see The Evolution of the Story, pp.223 ff.).

  Most significant is this passage (p.116): ‘Now tells the tale how Ulmo despaired that any of the Elven 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.’

  THE STORY TOLD IN

  THE SKETCH OF THE MYTHOLOGY

  I give now the form of the story of the Fall of Gondolin that my father wrote in 1926 in a work called Sketch of the Mythology, identifying it later as The Original Silmarillion. A portion of the work was included and its nature explained in Beren and Lúthien (p.89), and I have used a further portion to serve as a prologue to this book. My father made later a number of corrections (almost all in the form of additions), and I include most of these in square brackets.

  Ylmir is the Gnomish form for Ulmo.

  The great river Sirion flowed through the lands south-west; at its mouth was a great delta, and its lower course ran through wide green and fertile lands, little peopled save by birds and beasts because of the Orc-raids; but they were not inhabited by Orcs, who preferred the northern woods, and feared the power of Ylmir – for Sirion’s mouth was in the Western Seas.

  Turgon Fingolfin’s son had a sister Isfin. She was lost in Taur-na-Fuin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. There she was trapped by the Dark Elf Eöl. Their son was Meglin. The people of Turgon escaping, aided by the prowess of Húrin, were lost from the knowledge of Morgoth, and indeed of all in the world save Ylmir. In a secret place in the hills their scouts climbing to the tops [had] discovered a broad valley entirely encircled by the hills in rings ever lower as they came towards the centre. Amid this ring was a wide land without hills, except for one rocky hill that stuck up from the plain, not right at the centre, but nearest to that part of the outer wall which marched close to the edge of Sirion. [The hill nearest to Angband was guarded by Fingolfin’s cairn.]

  Ylmir’s messages come up Sirion bidding them take refuge in this valley, and teaching them spells of enchantment to place upon all the hills about, to keep off foes and spies. He foretells that their fortress shall stand longest of all the refuges of the Elves against Morgoth, and like Doriath never be overthrown save by treachery from within. The spells are strongest near to Sirion, although here the encircling mountains are lowest. Here the Gnomes dig a mighty winding tunnel under the roots of the mountains, that issues at last in the Guarded Plain. Its outer entrance is guarded by the spells of Ylmir; its inner is watched unceasingly by the Gnomes. It is set there in case those within ever need to escape, and as a way of more rapid exit from the valley for scouts, wanderers, and messages, and also as an entrance for fugitives escaping from Morgoth.

  Thorondor King of Eagles removes his eyries to the northern heights of the encircling mountains and guards them against Orc-spies [sitting upon Fingolfin’s cairn]. On the rocky hill Amon Gwareth, the hill of watching, whose sides they polish to the smoothness of glass, and whose top they level, the great city of Gondolin with gates of steel is built. The plain all about is levelled as flat and smooth as a lawn of clipped grass to the feet of the hills, so that nothing can creep over it unawares. The people of Gondolin grows mighty, and their armouries are filled with weapons. But Turgon does not march to the aid of Nargothrond, or Doriath, and after the slaying of Dior he has no more to do with the sons of Fëanor. Finally he closes the vale to all fugitives, and forbids the folk of Gondolin to leave the valley. Gondolin is the only stronghold of the Elves left. Morgoth has not forgotten Turgon, but his search is in vain. Nargothrond is destroyed; Doriath desolate; Húrin’s children dead; and only scattered and fugitive Elves, Gnomes and Ilkorins left, except such as work in the smithies and mines in great numbers. His triumph is nearly complete.

  Meglin son of Eöl and Isfin sister of Turgon was sent by his mother to Gondolin, and there received, although half of Ilkorin blood, and treated as a prince [last of the fugitives from without].

  Húrin of Hithlum had a brother Huor. The son of Huor was Tuor, younger than [> cousin of] Túrin son of Húrin. Rían, Huor’s wife, sought her husband’s body among the slain on the field of Unnumbered Tears, and died there. Her son remaining in Hithlum fell into the hands of the faithless men whom Morgoth drove into Hithlum after that battle, and he was made a thrall. Growing wild and rough he fled into the woods, and became an outlaw, and a solitary, living alone and communing with none save rarely with wandering and hidden Elves. On a time Ylmir contrived that he should be led to a subterranean river-course leading out of Mithrim into a chasmed river that flowed at last into the Western Sea. In this way his going was unmarked by Man, Orc, or spy, and unknown of Morgoth. After long wanderings down the western shores he came to the mouths of Sirion, and there fell in with the Gnome Bronweg, who had once been in Gondolin. They journey secretly up Sirion together. Tuor lingers long in the sweet land Nan-tathrin ‘Valley of Willows’; but there Ylmir himself comes up the river to visit him, and tells him of his mission. He is to bid Turgon to prepare for battle with Morgoth; for Ylmir will turn the hearts of the Valar to forgive the Gnomes and send them succour. If Turgon will do this, the battle will be terrible, but the race of Orcs will perish, and will not in after ages trouble Elves and Men. If not, the people of Gondolin are to prepare for flight to Sirion’s mouth, where Ylmir will aid them to build a fleet and guide them back to Valinor. If Turgon does Ylmir’s will Tuor is to abide a while in Gondolin and then go back to Hithlum with a force of Gnomes and draw Men once more into alliance with the Elves, for ‘without Men the Elves shall not prevail against the Orcs and Balrogs’. This Ylmir does because he knows that ere seven full years are passed the doom of Gondolin will come through Meglin [if they sit still in their halls].

  Tuor and Bronweg reach the secret way, [which they find by grace of Ylmir] and come out upon the guarded plain. Taken captive by the watch they are led before Turgon. Turgon is grown old and very mighty and proud, and Gondolin so fair and beautiful, and its people so proud of it and confident in its secret and impregnable strength, that the king and most of the people do not wish to trouble about the Gnomes and Elves without, or care for Men, nor do they long any more for Valinor. Meglin approving, the king rejects Tuor’s message in spite of the words of Idril the far-sighted (also called Idril Silverfoot, because she loved to walk barefoot) his daughter, and the wiser of his counsellors. Tuor lives on in Gondolin, and becomes a great chieftain. After three years he weds Idril – Tuor and Beren alone of all mortals ever wedded Elves, and since Elwing daughter of Dior Beren’s son wedded Eärendel son of Tuor and Idril of them alone has come the strain of Elfinesse into mortal blood.

  Not long after this Meglin going far afield over the mountains is taken by Orcs, and purchases his life when taken to Angband by revealing Gondolin and its secrets. Morgoth promises him the lordship of Gondolin, and possession of Idril. Lust for Idril led him the easier to his treachery, and added to his hatred for Tuor.

  Morgoth sends him back to Gondolin. Eärendel is born, having the beauty and light and wisdom of Elfinesse, the hardihood and strength of Men, and the longing for the sea which captured Tuor and held him for ever when Ylmir spoke to him in the Land of Willows.r />
  At last Morgoth is ready, and the attack is made on Gondolin with dragons, Balrogs, and Orcs. After a dreadful fight about the walls the city is stormed, and Turgon perishes with many of the most noble in the last fight in the great square. Tuor rescues Idril and Eärendel from Meglin, and hurls him from the battlements. He then leads the remnant of the people of Gondolin down a secret tunnel previously made by Idril’s advice which comes out far in the north of the Plain. Those who would not come with him but fled to the old Way of Escape are caught by the dragon sent by Morgoth to watch that exit.

  In the fume of the burning Tuor leads his company into the mountains into the cold pass of Cristhorn (Eagles’ Cleft). There they are ambushed, but saved by the valour of Glorfindel (chief of the house of the Golden Flower of Gondolin, who dies in a duel with a Balrog upon a pinnacle) and the intervention of Thorondor. The remnant reaches Sirion and journeys to the land at its mouth – the Waters of Sirion. Morgoth’s triumph is now complete.

  The story told in this compressed form had not greatly changed from its form in the Tale of the Fall of Gondolin, but there are nonetheless significant developments. It is here that Tuor of the Tale is placed within the genealogy of the Edain, the Elf-friends: he has become the son of Huor the brother of Húrin – who was the father of the tragic hero Túrin Turambar. Thus Tuor was first cousin of Túrin. Here too emerges the story that Huor was slain in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (see here), and that his wife Rían searched for his body on the battlefield, and died there. Tuor their son remained in Hithlum and was enslaved by ‘the faithless men whom Morgoth drove into Hithlum after that battle’ (p.122), but he escaped from them and took to a solitary life in the wilds.

  A major difference in the early versions of the story, in respect of the wider history of the Elder Days, lies in what my father told of the discovery of the vale of Tumladen, hidden in the Encircling Mountains. In the Sketch of the Mythology (p.121) it is said that the people of Turgon escaping from the great battle (Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Unnumbered Tears) disappeared from the knowledge of Morgoth, because ‘in a secret place in the hills their scouts climbing to the tops discovered a broad valley entirely encircled by the hills’. But in the days of the writing of the Tale of the Fall of Gondolin the story had been that there was a long age after the terrible battle before the destruction of Gondolin. It was said (p.58) that Tuor heard when he came there ‘how unstaying labour through ages of years had not sufficed to its building and adornment whereat folk travailed yet’. The chronological difficulties led my father later to place the discovery of the site of Gondolin – by Turgon – and its building to a time many centuries before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears: Turgon led his people fleeing south down Sirion from the battlefield to the hidden city that he had founded a great age before. It was to a very ancient city that Tuor came.

  A distinctive change in the story of the attack on Gondolin occurs, as I believe, in the Sketch of the Mythology. In the Tale of The Fall of Gondolin it was told that Morgoth had discovered Gondolin before Meglin was captured by Orcs (pp.63 ff.). He became very suspicious at the strange news that a Man had been seen ‘wandering amid the dales of the waters of Sirion’; and to this end he gathered ‘a mighty army of spies’, of animals and birds and reptiles, who ‘through the years untiring’ brought back to him a mass of information. From the Encircling Mountains his spies had looked down on the plain of Tumladen; even the ‘Way of Escape’ had been revealed. When Eärendel was a year old tidings were brought to Gondolin of how the agents of Morgoth had ‘encompassed the vale of Tumladen all around’; and Turgon strengthened the defences of the city. In the Tale of The Fall of Gondolin the subsequent treachery of Meglin lay in his describing in detail the plan of Gondolin and all the preparations for its defence (p.67); with Melko he ‘devised a plan for the overthrow of Gondolin’.

  But in the condensed account in the Sketch (p.124) it is said that when Meglin was captured by Orcs in the mountains ‘he purchased his life when taken to Angband by revealing Gondolin and its secrets’. The words ‘revealing Gondolin’ seem to me to show clearly that the change had entered, and the later story was present: Morgoth did not know and could not discover where the Hidden Kingdom lay until the capture of Meglin by the Orcs. But there was yet another change to follow: see here–here.

  *

  THE STORY TOLD IN THE QUENTA NOLDORINWA

  I come now to a major ‘Silmarillion’ text from which I took passages in Beren and Lúthien, and I repeat here a part of the explanatory note from that book.

  After the Sketch of the Mythology this text, which I will refer to as ‘the Quenta’, was the only complete and finished version of ‘The Silmarillion’ that my father achieved: a typescript that he made in (as seems certain) 1930. No preliminary drafts or outlines, if there were any, survive; but it is plain that for a good part of its length he had the Sketch before him. It is longer than the Sketch, and the ‘Silmarillion style’ has clearly appeared, but it remains a compression, a compendious account.

  In calling this text a compression I do not mean to suggest that it was a hasty piece of work, awaiting a more finished treatment at some later time. Comparison of the two versions Q I and Q II (explained below) shows how attentively he heard and weighed the rhythm of the phrases. But compression there was indeed: witness the twenty or so lines devoted to the battle in the Quenta compared with the twelve pages in the Tale.

  Towards the end of the Quenta my father expanded and retyped portions of the text (while preserving the discarded pages); the text as it stood before this rewriting I will call ‘Q I’. Near the end of the narrative Q I gives out, and only the rewritten version (‘Q II’) continues to the end. It seems clear from this that the rewriting (which concerns Gondolin and its destruction) belongs to the same time, and I have given the Q II text throughout, from the point where the tale of Gondolin begins. The name of the King of Eagles, Thorndor, was changed throughout the text to Thorondor.

  It will be seen that in the Quenta manuscript as written the story told in the Sketch (see here) was still present: the vale of Gondolin was discovered by scouts of Turgon’s people fleeing from the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. At some later but unidentifiable time, my father rewrote all the relevant passages, and I have shown these revisions in the text that follows here.

  Here must be told of Gondolin. The great river Sirion, mightiest in Elvish song, flowed through all the land of Beleriand and its course was south-west; and at its mouth was a great delta and its lower course ran through green and fertile lands, little peopled save by birds and beasts. Yet the Orcs came seldom there, for it was far from the northern woods and fells, and the power of Ulmo waxed ever in that water, as it drew nigh to the sea; for the mouths of that river were in the western sea, whose uttermost borders are the shores of Valinor.

  Turgon, Fingolfin’s son, had a sister, Isfin the white-handed. She was lost in Taur-na-Fuin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. There she was captured by the Dark-elf Eöl, and it is said that he was of gloomy mood, and had deserted the hosts ere the battle; yet he had not fought on Morgoth’s side. But Isfin he took to wife, and their son was Meglin.

  Now the people of Turgon escaping from the battle, aided by the prowess of Húrin, as has been told, escaped from the knowledge of Morgoth and vanished from all men’s eyes; and Ulmo alone knew whither they had gone. [Their scouts climbing the heights had come upon a secret place in the mountains: a broad valley >] For they returned to the hidden city of Gondolin that Turgon had built. In a secret place in the mountains there was a broad valley entirely circled by the hills, ringed about in a fence unbroken, but falling ever lower as they came towards the middle. In the midmost of this marvellous ring was a wide land and a green plain, wherein was no hill, save for a single rocky height. This stood up dark upon the plain, not right at its centre, but nearest to that part of the outer wall that marched close to the borders of Sirion. Highest were the Encircling Mountains towards the North and the threat of Angband, and on the
ir outer slopes to East and North began the shadow of dread Taur-na-Fuin; but they were crowned with the cairn of Fingolfin, and no evil came that way, as yet.

  In this valley [the Gnomes took refuge >] Turgon had taken refuge and spells of hiding and enchantment were set on all the hills about, that foes and spies might never find it. In this Turgon had the aid of the messages of Ulmo, that came now up the river Sirion; for his voice is to be heard in many waters, and some of the Gnomes had yet the lore to harken. In those days Ulmo was filled with pity for the exiled Elves in their need, and in the ruin that had now almost overwhelmed them. He foretold that the fortress of Gondolin should stand longest of all the refuges of the Elves against the might of Morgoth, and like Doriath never be overthrown save by treachery from within. Because of his protecting might the spells of concealment were strongest in those parts nearest to Sirion, though there the Encircling Mountains were at their lowest. In that region the Gnomes dug a great winding tunnel under the roots of the hills, and its issue was in the steep side, tree-clad and dark, of a gorge through which the blissful river ran. There he was still a young stream, but strong, flowing down the narrow vale that lies between the shoulders of the Encircling Mountains and the Mountains of Shadow, Eryd-Lómin [> Eredwethion], the walls of Hithlum [struck out: in whose northern heights he took his rise].

  That passage they made at first to be a way of return for fugitives and for such as escaped from the bondage of Morgoth; and most as an issue for their scouts and messengers. For Turgon deemed, when first they came into that vale after the dreadful battle,1 that Morgoth Bauglir had grown too mighty for Elves and Men, and that it were better to seek the forgiveness and aid of the Valar, if either might be got, ere all was lost. Wherefore some of his folk went down the river Sirion at whiles, ere the shadow of Morgoth yet stretched into the uttermost parts of Beleriand, and a small and secret haven they made at his mouth; thence ever and anon ships would set forth into the West bearing the embassy of the Gnomish king. Some there were that came back driven by contrary winds; but the most never returned again, and none reached Valinor.