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Old 12-04-2023, 07:11 AM   #8
Huinesoron
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Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Huinesoron is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
The only thing I can bring to mind is from way back in the Book of Lost Tales, and it kind of feels like everyone is right: the "Fourth Great Tale" is both Earendil and the Nauglamir.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BoLT II
There is no doubt that [the earlier of the two schemes] was composed when the last Tales had reached their furthest point of development, as represented by the latest texts and arrangements given in this book. Now when this outline comes to the matter of Gilfanon's Tale it becomes at once very much fuller, but then contracts again to cursory references for the tales of Tinuviel, Turin, Tuor; and the Necklace of the Dwarves, and once more becomes fuller for the tale of Earendel. This scheme B (as I will continue to call it) provides a coherent if very rough narrative plan, and divides the story into seven parts, of which the first (marked 'Told') is 'The Nauglafring down to the flight of Elwing'.

This sevenfold division is referred to by Littleheart at the beginning of The Fall of Gondolin: 'It is a mighty tale, and seven times shall folk fare to the Tale-fire ere it be rightly told; and so twined is it with those stories of the Nauglafring and of the Elf-march that I would fain have aid in that telling...'

If the six parts following the Tale of the Nauglafring were each to be of comparable length, the whole Tale of Earendel would have been some-where near half the length of all the tales that were in fact written; but my father never afterwards returned to it on any ample scale.
This scheme would make the fourth Great Tale the Tale of Earendil, but that tale starts with the Nauglamir and the falls of Doriath. Over the course of the Nauglamir story, it also weaves together all three of the previous Great Tales: Turin's father brings about the doom of Tinuviel's family, and sends her granddaughter off to meet Tuor's son. The end of the Tale of the Nauglafring notes this explicitly:

Quote:
Originally Posted by BoLT II
Now was naught left of the seed of Beren Ermabwed son of Egnor save Elwing the Lovely, and she wandered in the woods, and of the brown Elves and the green a few gathered to her, and they departed for ever from the glades of Hithlum and got them to the south towards Sirion's deep waters, and the pleasant lands. And thus did all the fates of the fairies weave then to one strand, and that strand is the great tale of Earendel; and to that tale's true beginning are we now come.
hS
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