Tolkien, J R R - Unfinished Tales

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

page 1

PART ONE: THE FIRST AGE

IOF TUOR AND HIS COMING TO GONDOLIN

Notes

II NARN I HÎN HÚRIN

The Childhood of Túrin 61; The Words of Húrin and Morgoth 70; The

Departure of Túrin 72;

Túrin in Doriath 81; Túrin among the Outlaws 90; Of Mîm the Dwarf

101; The Return of Túrin

to Dorlómin 110; The Coming of Túrin into Brethil 115; The Journey of

Morwen and Nienor

to Nargothrond 118; Nienor in Brethil 127; The Coming of Glaurung

132; The Death of

Glaurung 139; The Death of Túrin 147

Notes

153

Appendix

158

PART TWO: THE SECOND AGE

I A DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLAND OF NÚMENOR

173

Notes

180

II ALDARION AND ERENDIS: The Mariner's Wife

181

Notes

222

III THE LINE OF ELROS: KINGS OF NÚMENOR

228

Notes

234

IV THE HISTORY OF GALADRIEL AND CELEBORN and of Amroth

King of Lórien 239

Notes

264

Appendices (Appendix A, The Silvan Elves and their Speech 268;

Appendix B,

The Sindarin Princes of the Silvan Elves 270; Appendix C, The

Boundaries of

Lórien 272; Appendix D, The Port of Lond Daer 274; Appendix

D, The Names

of Celeborn and Galadriel 278)

PART III: THE THIRD AGE

ITHE DISASTER OF THE GLADDEN FIELDS

page 283

Notes

290

Appendix (Númenórean Linear Measures)

297

II CIRION AND EORL AND THE FRIENDSHIP OF GONDOR AND

ROHAN 301

(i) The Northmen and the Wainriders

301

(ii) The Ride of Eorl

308

(iii) Cirion and Eorl

313

(iv) The Tradition of Isildur

322

Notes

324

III THE QUEST OF EREBOR

335

Notes

341

Appendix (Note of the text, and extracts from the earlier version)

page 341

IV THE HUNT FOR THE RING

352

(i) Of the Journey of the Black Riders according to the account that

Gandalf gave to Frodo 352

(ii) Other Versions of the Story

357

(iii) Concerning Gandalf, Saruman and the Shire

364

Notes

368

VTHE BATTLES OF THE FORDS OF ISEN

371

Notes

380

Appendix

383

PART FOUR

ITHE DRÚEDAIN

393

Notes

401

II THE ISTARI

405

Notes

418

III THE PALANTÍRI

421

Notes

430

INDEX

434

NOTE

It has been necessary to distinguish author and editor

in different ways in different parts of this book, since

the incidence of commentary is very various. The

author appears in larger type in the primary texts

throughout; if the editor intrudes into one of these

texts he is in smaller type intended from the margin

(e.g. p. 307) In The History of Galadriel and

Celeborn,however, where editorial text is

predominant, the reverse indentation is employed. In

the Appendixes (and also in The Further Course of

the Narrative of 'Aldarion and Erendis', pp. 215 ff.)

both author and editor are in the smaller type, with

citations from the author indented (e.g. p. 161).

Notes to texts in the Appendixes are given as

footnotes rather than as numbered references; and the

author's own annotation of a text at a particular point

is indicated throughout by the words '[Author's Note]'.

INTRODUCTION

The problems that confront one given responsibility for the writings of a

dead author are hard to resolve. Some persons in this position may elect

to make to material whatsoever available for publication, save perhaps

for work that was in a virtually finished state at the time of the author's

death. In the case of the unpublished writings of J. R. R. Tolkien this

might seem at first sight the proper course; since he himself, peculiarly

critical and exacting of his own work, would not have dreamt of allowing

even the more completed narratives in this book to appear without much

further refinement.

On the other hand, the nature and scope of his invention seems to

me to place even his abandoned stories in a peculiar position. That The

Silmarillion should remain unknown was for me out of the question,

despite its disordered state, and despite my father's known if very largely

unfulfilled intentions for its transformation; and in that case I presumed,

after long hesitation, to present the work not in the form of an historical

study, a complex of divergent texts interlinked by commentary, but as a

completed and cohesive entity. The narratives in this book are indeed on

an altogether different footing: taken together they constitute no whole,

and the book is no more than a collection of writings, disparate in form,

intent, finish, and date of composition (and in my own treatment of

them), concerned with Númenor and Middle-earth. But the argument for

their publication is not different in its nature, though it is of lesser force,

from that which I held to justify the publication of The Silmarillion.

Those who would not have forgone the images of Melkor with Ungoliant

looking down from the summit of Hyarmentir upon "the fields and

pastures of Yavanna, gold beneath the tall wheat of the gods"; of the

shadows of Fingolfin's host cast by the first moonrise in the West; of

Beren lurking in wolf's shape beneath the throne of Morgoth; or of the

light of the Silmaril suddenly revealed in the darkness of the Forest of

Neldoreth – they will find, I believe, that imperfections of form in these

tales are much outweighed by the voice (heard now for the last time) of

Gandalf, teasing the lordly Saruman at the meeting of the White Council

in the year 2851, or describing in Minas Tirith after the end of the War of

the Ring how it was that he came to send the Dwarves to the celebrated

party at Bag-End; by the arising of Ulmo Lord of Waters out of the sea at

Vinyamar; by Mablung of Doriath hiding "like a vole" beneath the ruins

of the bridge at Nargothrond; or by the death of Isildur as he floundered

up out of the mud of Anduin.

Many of the pieces in this collection are elaborations of matters told

more briefly, or at least referred to, elsewhere; and it must be said at once

that much in the book will be found unrewarding by readers of The Lord

of the Rings who, holding that the historical structure of Middle-earth is

ameans and not an end, the mode of the narrative and not its purpose,

feel small desire of further exploration for its own sake, do not wish to

know how the Riders of the Mark of Rohan were organised, and would

leave the Wild Men of the Drúadan Forest firmly where they found them.

My father would certainly not have thought them wrong. He said in a

letter written in March 1955, before the publication of the third volume

of The Lord of the Rings:

Inow wish that no appendices had been promised! For I think their

appearance in truncated and compressed form will satisfy nobody;

certainly not me; clearly from the (appalling mass of) letters I re-

ceive not those people who like that kind of thing – astonishingly

many; while those who enjoy the book as an "heroic romance" only,

and find "unexplained vistas" part of the literary effect, will neglect

the appendices, very properly.

Iam not now at all sure that the tendency to treat the whole

thing as a kind of vast game is really good – certainly not for me

who find that kind of thing only too fatally attractive. It is, I sup-

pose, a tribute to the curious effect that a story has, when based on

very elaborate and detailed workings, of geography, chronology,

and language, that so many should clamour for sheer "information,"

or "lore."

In a letter of the following year he wrote:

... while many like you demand maps, others wish for geological

indications rather than places; many want Elvish grammars, phonol-

ogies, and specimens; some want metrics and prosodies....

Musicians want tunes, and musical notation; archaeologists want ce-

ramics and metallurgy; botanists want a more accurate description

of the mallorn,of elanor,niphredil,alfirin,mallos, and

symbelmynë,historians want more details about the social and

political structure of Gondor; general enquirers want information

about the Wainriders, the Harad, Dwarvish origins, the Dead Men,

the Beornings, and the missing two wizards (out of five).

But whatever view may be taken of this question, for some, as for

myself, there is a value greater than the mere uncovering of curious detail

in learning that Vëantur the Númenórean brought his ship Entulessë, the

"Return", into the Grey Havens on the spring winds of the six hundredth

year of the Second Age, that the tomb of Elendil the Tall was set by

Isildur his son on the summit of the beacon-hill Halifirien, that the Black

Rider whom the Hobbits saw in the foggy darkness on the far side of

Bucklebury Ferry was Khamûl, chief of the Ringwraiths of Dol Guldur –

or even that the childlessness of Tarannon twelfth King of Gondor (a fact

recorded in an Appendix to The Lord of the Rings) was associated with

the hitherto wholly mysterious cats of Queen Berúthiel.

The construction of the book has been difficult, and in the result is

somewhat complex. The narratives are all "unfinished," but to a greater

or lesser degree, and in different senses of the word, and have required

different treatment; I shall say something below about each one in turn,

and here only call attention to some general features.

The most important is the question of "consistency," best illustrated

from the section entitled "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn." This

is an "Unfinished Tale" in a larger sense: not a narrative that comes to an

abrupt halt, as in "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin," nor a series of

fragments, as in "Cirion and Eorl," but a primary strand in the history of

Middle-earth that never received a settled definition, let alone a final

written form. The inclusion of the unpublished narratives and sketches of

narrative on this subject therefore entails at once the acceptance of the

history not as a fixed, independently-existing reality which the author

"reports" (in his "persona" as translator and redactor), but as a growing

and shifting conception in his mind. When the author has ceased to

publish his works himself, after subjecting them to his own detailed

criticism and comparison, the further knowledge of Middle-earth to be

found in his unpublished writings will often conflict with what is already

"known"; and new elements set into the existing edifice will in such

cases tend to contribute less to the history of the invented world itself

than to the history of its invention. In this book I have accepted from the

outset that this must be so; and except in minor details such as shifts in

nomenclature (where retention of the manuscript form would lead to

disproportionate confusion or disproportionate space in elucidation) I

have made no alterations for the sake of consistency with published

works, but rather drawn attention throughout to conflicts and variations.

In this respect therefore "Unfinished Tales" is essentially different from

The Silmarillion,where a primary though not exclusive objective in the

editing was to achieve cohesion both internal and external; and except in

afew specified cases I have indeed treated the published form of The

Silmarillion as a fixed point of reference of the same order as the

writings published by my father himself, without taking into account the

innumerable "unauthorised" decisions between variants and rival

versions that went into its making.

In content the book is entirely narrative (or descriptive): I have

excluded all writings about Middle-earth and Aman that are of a pri-

marily philosophic or speculative nature, and where such matters from

time to time arise I have not pursued them. I have imposed a simple

structure of convenience by dividing the texts into Parts corresponding to

the first Three Ages of the World, there being in this inevitably some

overlap, as with the legend of Amroth and its discussion in "The History

of Galadriel and Celeborn." The fourth part is an appendage, and may

require some excuse in a book called "Unfinished Tales," since the

pieces it contains are generalised and discursive essays with little or no

element of "story." The section on the Drúedain did indeed owe its

original inclusion to the story of "The Faithful Stone" which forms a

small part of it; and this section led me to introduce those on the Istari

and the Palantíri, since they (especially the former) are matters about

which many people have expressed curiosity, and this book seemed a

convenient place to expound what there is to tell.

The notes may seem to be in some places rather thick on the ground,

but it will be seen that where clustered most densely (as in "The Disaster

of the Gladden Fields") they are due less to the editor than to the author,

who in his later work tended to compose in this way, driving several

subjects abreast by means of interlaced notes. I have throughout tried to

make it clear what is editorial and what is not. And because of this

abundance of original material appearing in the notes and appendices I

have thought it best not to restrict the page-references in the Index to the

texts themselves but to cover all parts of the book except the

Introduction.

Ihave throughout assumed on the reader's part a fair knowledge of

the published works of my father (more especially The Lord of the

Rings), for to have done otherwise would have greatly enlarged the

editorial element, which may well be thought quite sufficient already. I

have, however, included short defining statements with almost all the

primary entries in the Index, in the hope of saving the reader from

constant reference elsewhere. If I have been inadequate in explanation or

unintentionally obscure, Mr. Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-

earth supplies, as I have found through frequent use, an admirable work

of reference.

References to The Silmarillion are to the pages of the hardback edi-

tion; to The Lord of the Rings by title of the volume, book, and chapter.

There follow now primarily bibliographical notes on the individual

pieces.



PART ONE

Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin

My father said more than once that "The Fall of Gondolin" was the

first of the tales of the First Age to be composed, and there is no

evidence to set against his recollection. In a letter of 1964 he declared

that he wrote it "'out of my head' during sick-leave from the army in

1917," and at other times he gave the date as 1916 or 1916-17. In a letter

to me written in 1944 he said: "I first began to write [The Silmarillion]in

army huts, crowded, filled with the noise of gramophones": and indeed

some lines of verse in which appear the Seven Names of Gondolin are

scribbled on the back of a piece of paper setting out "the chain of

responsibility in a battalion." The earliest manuscript is still in existence,

filling two small school exercise-books; it was written rapidly in pencil,

and then, for much of its course, overlaid with writing in ink, and heavily

emended. On the basis of this text my mother, apparently in 1917, wrote

out a fair copy; but this in turn was further substantially emended, at

some time that I cannot determine, but probably in 1919-20, when my

father was in Oxford on the staff of the then still uncompleted

Dictionary. In the spring of 1920 he was invited to read a paper to the

Essay Club of his college (Exeter); and he read "The Fall of Gondolin."

The notes of what he intended to say by way of introduction of his

"essay" still survive. In these he apologised for not having been able to

produce a critical paper, and went on: "Therefore I must read something

already written, and in desperation I have fallen back on this Tale. It has

of course never seen the light before. . . . A complete cycle of events in

an Elfinesse of my own imagining has for some time past grown up

(rather, has been constructed) in my mind. Some of the episodes have

been scribbled down. . . . This tale is not the best of them, but it is the

only one that has so far been revised at all and that, insufficient as that

revision has been, I dare read aloud."

The tale of Tuor and the Exiles of Gondolin (as "The Fall of

Gondolin" is entitled in the early MSS) remained untouched for many

years, though my father at some stage, probably between 1926 and 1930,

wrote a brief, compressed version of the story to stand as part of The

Silmarillion (a title which, incidentally, first appeared in his letter to The

Observer of 20 February 1938); and this was changed subsequently to

bring it into harmony with altered conceptions in other parts of the book.

Much later he began work on an entirely refashioned account, entitled

"Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin." It seems very likely that this was

written in 1951, when The Lord of the Rings was finished but its

publication doubtful. Deeply changed in style and bearings, yet retaining

many of the essentials of the story written in his youth, "Of Tuor and the

Fall of Gondolin" would have given in fine detail the which legend that

constitutes the brief 23rd chapter of the published Silmarillion,but,

grievously, he went no further than the coming of Tuor and Voronwe to

the last gate and Tuor's sight of Gondolin across the plain of Tumladen.

To his reasons for abandoning it there is no clue.

This is the text that is given here. To avoid confusion I have retitled

it "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin," since it tells nothing of the fall

of the city. As always with my father's writings there are variant

readings, and in one short section (the approach to and passage of the

river Sirion by Tuor and Voronwë) several competing forms; some minor

editorial work has therefore been necessary.

It is thus the remarkable fact that the only full account that my

father ever wrote of the story of Tuor's sojourn in Gondolin, his union

with Idril Celebrindal, the birth of Eärendil, the treachery of Maeglin, the

sack of the city, and the escape of the fugitives – a story that was a

central element in his imagination of the First Age – was the narrative

composed in his youth. There is no question, however, that that (most

remarkable) narrative is not suitable for inclusion in this book. It is

written in the extreme archaistic style that my father employed at that

time, and it inevitably embodies conceptions out of keeping with the

world of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion in its published

form. It belongs with the rest of the earliest phase of the mythology, "the

Book of Lost Tales": itself a very substantial work, of the utmost interest

to one concerned with the origins of Middle-earth, but requiring to be

presented in a lengthy and complex study if at all.

The Tale of the Children of Húrin

The development of the legend of Turin Turambar is in some

respects the most tangled and complex of all the narrative elements in the

story of the First Age. Like the tale of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin it

goes back to the very beginnings, and is extant in an early prose narrative

(one of the "Lost Tales") and in a long, unfinished poem in alliterative

verse. But whereas the later "long version" of Tuor never proceeded very

far, my father carried the later "long version" of Turin much nearer

completion. This is called Narn i Hîn Húrin,and this is the narrative that

is given in the present book.

There are however great differences in the course of the long Narn

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摘要：

CONTENTSINTRODUCTIONpage1PARTONE:THEFIRSTAGEIOFTUORANDHISCOMINGTOGONDOLIN19Notes54IINARNIHÎNHÚRIN61TheChildhoodofTúrin61;TheWordsofHúrinandMorgoth70;TheDepartureofTúrin72;TúrininDoriath81;TúrinamongtheOutlaws90;OfMîmtheDwarf101;TheReturnofTúrintoDorlómin110;TheComingofTúrinintoBrethil115;TheJourneyo...

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