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Re: A project ~~~~Revising the Fall of Gondolin
I am responding here to three issues that have been raised, and have tried to deal with them exhaustively.
On Boldog:
All the material is in MT, text 10,
Orcs. Tolkien is speculating that Orcs were derived from Men,and says they were by nature short-lived. This then seems to bring up a difficulty in his mind as his earlier conception of Elvish origin might make Orcs immortal in the same way Elves were. (That the goblins of
The Hobbit actually recognized Orcrist and Glamdring from Gondolin is perhaps the only published text that indicates this, but Tolkien certainly had much in his mind that he either did not put on paper or has not survived.) Tolkien then tries to account for apparently long-lived Orcs:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> This last point was not well understood in the Elder Days. For Morgoth had many servants, the oldest and most potent of whom were immortal, belonging indeed in their beginning to the Maiar; and these spirits like their Master could take on visible forms. Those whose business it was to direct the Orcs often took Orkish shapes, though they were greater and more terrible.^4 Thus it was that the histories speak of Great Orcs or Orc-captains who were not slain, and who reappared in battle through years far longer than the span of the lives of Men.*^5
****[footnote to the text]
Boldog, for instance, is a name that occurs many times in the tales of the War. But it is possible that
Boldog was not a personal name, and either a title, or else the name of a kind of creature: the Orc-formed Maiar, only less formidable than the Balrogs.
4**Cf. text IX, p.*414: 'But always among them [Orcs] (as special servants and spies of Melkor, and as leaders) there must have been numerous corrupted minor spirits who assumed similar bodily shapes'; also text VIII. p. 410.
5**The footnote at this point, stating that '
Boldog, for instance, is a name that occurs many times in the tales of the War'. and was perhaps not a personal name, is curious.
Boldog appears several times in the
Lay of Leithian as the name of the Orc-captain who led a raid into Doriath (references in the Index to
The Lays of Beleriand; he reappears in the
Quenta (IV.113), but is not mentioned thereafter. I do not know of any other references to an Orc named
Boldog.<hr></blockquote>The
Quenta reference is:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Boldog captain of the Orcs was there slain in battle by Thingol, ...<hr></blockquote>It would seem that Tolkien in his mind saw Boldog playing a greater part in the tale than in the extant texts, presumably as a leader in earlier battles between Elves and Orcs, and this part was either never actually written down or has become lost. But if Orcs are short-lived, how could this be? Tolkien then speculates that
Boldog may have been a title not a personal name, or may have been the name applied to Orc-formed Maiar. Or is that last note actally saying that Boldog was the name of a particular creature who was one of the Orc-formed Maiar. This interpretation agrees less readily with the wording but more readily with the logic.
This
speculation would be unnecessary if in legends of the First Age more than one Boldog appeared at a single time. Multiple Boldogs in one tale, at least by that name, did not occur and should not be made to occur, even if
Boldog were to be accepted as name for incarnate Maiar in Orc-form and not some other sort of title. Possibly also it was the personal name of a particular Maia in Orc-form.
That Tolkien would have replaced some of the Balrogs in the "Fall of Gondolin" with "Orc-formed Maia" may be true. But would the Elves know an Orc-formed Maia from a true Orc? One could probably change some of the Balrogs into something like "Great Orcs" instead, if justification can be found to change them into anything. I don't believe the word "Boldog" can be used. (I know that we aren't to use asethetics for anything but very, very low-level choosing, but also I don't find it particularly effective to have Gondolin razed by an army of bull-dogs.)
The House of the Swan
In the BoLT version of "The Fall of Gondolin" there are several references connecting Tuor to the swans:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Now on the quiet waters of Mithrim over which the voice of the duck or moorhen would carry far he had fared much in a small boat with a prow fashioned like to the neck of a swan,<hr></blockquote>Later:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> This by slow labour he adorned with fair carvings of the beasts and trees and flowers and birds that he knew about the waters of Mithrim, and ever among them was the Swan the chief, for Tuor loved this emblem and it became the sign of himself, his kindred and folk thereafter.<hr></blockquote>On his entrance to Gondolin Tuor claims:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> I am Tuor son of Peleg son of Indor of the house of the Swan of the sons of the Men of the North who live far hence, ...<hr></blockquote>Within Gondolin:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Upon a time the king caused his most cunning artificers to fashion a suit of armour for Tuor as a great gift, and it was made of Gnome-steel overlaid with silver; but his helm was adorned with a device of metals and jewels like to two swan-wings, one on either side, and a swan's ring was wrought on his shield;<hr></blockquote>Of the name of Tuor's "house":<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> ... and the bodyguard of Tuor, the folk of the Wing, was accounted the twelfth.<hr></blockquote>The phrases "folk of the Wing" and "guard of the Wing", "my men of the Wing" are also used later in the account.
It is not clear then what Tolkien means by "House of the Swan". It might be that he changed his mind in the midst of writing, as he was wont to do, and decided that the Swan was a token of Tuor's ancestral lineage, not a symbol he himself had adopted. Or it might be that it was the custom to name oneself fully by giving the name of one's father and grandfather, and then the "House" that one belonged to. Since Tuor lives solitary, not connected to any other "House", he belonged then only to his own House, and since his last permanent dwelling was ornamented with carved swans, he might well say, in an attempt not to appear altogether rustic and uncouth, that he is of the "House of the Swan".
"House" does not imply a necessary blood relationship. In Gondolin Tuor has his own House of the Wing to which many Elves belong. In the later "Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin" Voronwë claims to be of the "House of Turgon", though he could not be of very close kin to Turgon. In LR Gildor Inglorion of the "House of Finrod" may be only declaring that he belongs to a House named from Finrod, perhaps mostly the remnant of Finrod's House in Nargothrond, or a House whose core was made up of Elves who had formally dwelt in Nargothrond, not that he is of close kin to Finrod.
In any case, no later reference indicates any connection between the symbol of a swan or swan's wing and Tuor's ancestry.
"Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin" drops all reference to the swan-prowed boat and to Tuor's building a house with swan carvings. When he sees the swans that he will follow to his destiny, we are told rather: <blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Now Tuor loved swans, which he knew on the grey pools of Mithrim; and the swan moreover had been the token of Annael and his foster-folk.<hr></blockquote>When Tuor enters Vinyamar and sees the arms and shield with a swan's wing thereon, he says:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> 'By this token I will take these arms unto myself, and upon myself whatsoever doom they bear.'<hr></blockquote>Tuor takes the swan's wing on the shield as an omen from his own particular love of swans, because they were the token of Annael and his foster-folk to whom he belonged, and because (I would assume) he has been led to them by swans.
If "House of the Swan" is let stand, then it must refer to Annael and his people, and to Tuor insomuch as he was one of those people and may still feel so. Tuor seems to be one well suited to solitary life, but it would be reasonable that eventually he would indeed have gone to the south in search of Annael and his people had Ulmo not intervened. We
might even reinstate the building of Tuor's house, though now inland by the marshes of Linaewen rather then on the coast at Falasquil, and let "House of the Swan" also stand in relation to this house as I have indicated
might have been Tolkien's meaning.
Or we might change the phrase to "fosterling of the House of the Swan", or something similar.
Changing it to "House of Hador" is a likely substitution. At the time of the primitive "Fall of Gondolin" no such House existed, and nothing indicates what Tuor's affiliaton was with other Men, but in the later background and genealogy it would somewhat surprising for him not to announce that he was of the House of Hador.
We could also simply drop the phrase as probably no longer valid.
I don't see any of these solutions as necessarily more
right than another, which is unfortunate. Perhaps one here goes by the rule of don't change anything you don't
have to change, and so leave it untouched for the reader to misunderstand.
Thorondor on the Iron Mountains
That Thorondor (for so I shall name him here ignoring the variation in texts) dwelt on Thangorodrim, or at least on the Iron Mountains from which Thangorodrim jutted out, is an early concept. In BoLT 1, chapter IV "The Theft of Melko":<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> ... and that was most bitter when Sorontur and his folk fared to the Iron Mountains and there abode, watching all that Melko did.<hr></blockquote>In
The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoME 4), II The Earliest 'Silmarillion',
8:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> ... and sends them under their king Thorndor to dwell in the crags of the North and watch Morgoth. The eagles dwell out of reach of Orc and Balrog, and are great foes of Morgoth and his people.<hr></blockquote>This account remains essentially the same through the texts of the
Silmarillion tradition to the account in
The Lost Road (HoME 5), VI Quenta Silmarillion, §93:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> ... had sent forth the race of Eagles. Thorondor was their king. And Manwë commanded them to dwell in the crags of the North, and keep watch upon Morgoth; for Manwë still had pity for the exiled Elves. And the Eagles brought news of much that passed in those days to the sad ears of Manwë; and they hindered the deeds of Morgoth.<hr></blockquote>There are no later emendations of this text. But none of the texts in this line give Thorondor's actual dwelling place.
That Thorondor was not dwelling on the Encircling Mountains from the beginning first appears as part of the
Silmarillion tradition in
The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoME 4), II The Earliest 'Silmarillion',
15 telling of the founding of Gondolin after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> Thorndor King of Eagles removes his eyries to the Northern heights of the encircling mountains and guards them against Orc-spies.<hr></blockquote>The passage is later expanded in
ibid., III The Quenta,
§15 in the Q II version:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> In those days Thorndor King of Eagles removed his eyries from Thangorodrim, because of the power of Morgoth, and the stench and fumes, and the evil of the dark clouds that lay now ever upon the mountain-towers above his cavernous halls. But Thorndor dwelt upon the northward heights above the Encircling Mountains, and he kept watch and saw many things, sitting upon the cairn of King Fingolfin.<hr></blockquote>Here explicitly re-emerges the BoLT tale that Thorondor dwelt on the Iron Mountains, indeed, as we are told for the
first time, on Thangorodrim itself.
Soon after this Tolkien decided to place the foundation of Gondolin long before the breaking of the Siege, and does so in a brief note under year 50 in "The Earliest Annals of Beleriand". No mention of Thorondor or the eagles are made at this point (and perhaps in so brief an annal we should not expect them to be). All later tales of the foundation of Gondolin are expansions of this annal showing no influence in their wording from the earlier accounts of its foundation after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.
A mention of Thorondor and his eagles
might have been lost for this reason. There is only the inconclusive mention in "Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin": in
The War of the Jewels (HoME 11), Part Two: The Later Quenta Silmarillion, 12 "Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin":<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> ... in a ring of mountains tall and sheer, and no living thing came there save the eagles of Thorondor.<hr></blockquote>But the presence of eagles near Gondolin was always an important feature, and one might expect Tolkien to use a word such as "dwell" rather than "came" and to introduce their guardianship of Gondolin if he thought they had their eyries there at that time. This is the latest account of the founding of Gondor and a very finished and polished text.
So if they were not dwelling in Crissaegrim then, when did they begin to dwell there?
That Thorondor took the body of Fingolfin to a mountain-top above Tumladen is already found in the "Lay of Leithien" Canto XII, and is taken up in
The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoME 4), III The Quenta,
9. His presence at the battle is unexplained; but if he was then thought to be dwelling on Thangorodrim it does not need to be. Thorondor carries of Fingolfin's body to a mountain-peak which by chance is close by where Gondolin will be founded by Fingolfin's son Turgon many years later.
Perhaps to reduce this element of chance in the
The Lost Road (HoME 5), Quenta Silmarillion, §147, Thorondor is protrayed as dwelling in the Encircling Mountains at the time of the battle and only coming to the battlefield late after Fingolfin's death:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> ... but Thorondor came hasting from his eyrie among the peaks of Gochressiel, and he stooped upon Morgoth, ...<hr></blockquote>This account of the death of Fingolfin is the last one Tolkien made. Christopher Tolkien provides the final revisions to this part of the
Silmarillion in
The War of the Jewels (HoME 11), Part Two: The Later
Quenta Silmarillion, chapter 15 "Of the Ruin of Berleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin". The only pertinent emendation is a manuscript change of
Gochressiel to
Crissaegrim which is taken up in the typescript Christopher Tolkien calls LQ*1. Christopher Tolkien writes of the typescript in
Morgoth's Ring in his introduction to Part Three: The Later Quenta Silmarillion:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> It seems virtually certain that it was made in 1951(-2).<hr></blockquote>This material was then retyped as QS*2 about 1957.
However Christopher Tolkien notes in his commentary on the material in this section in
The War of the Jewels that much of the correction here is very casual. In particular:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> The only alterations that my father made to the passage in LQ*2, however, were the replacement of
Gumlin by
Galdor and
Haleth by
Halmir*** thus retaining the long since rejected story while substituting the new names that had entered with the chapter
Of the Coming of Men into the West. This was obviously not his intention (probably he altered the names rapidly throughout the chapter without considering the content in this paragraph), and indeed he marked the passage in the margin with an X and noted against it 'This is incorrect story. See Annals and tale of Túrin'.<hr></blockquote>Of the date of the tale "Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin" Christopher Tolkien in UT only says in the introduction:<blockquote>
Quote:<hr> It seems very likely that this was written in 1951, when
The Lord of the Rings was finished but its publication doubtful.<hr></blockquote>In the Grey Annals §111 and §299 material in agreement with "Of Tuor" is inserted to replace older accounts. Presumably at the same time a new rider which Christopher Tolkien supplies in The Later
Quenta Silmarillion as "Of Turgon and the Building of Gondolin" was created containing much of the same material word-for-word. This appears in its proper place in LQ*1.
So LQ*1 agrees in all respects with the revisions introduced in "Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin" except for Voronwë's statement that Thorondor's folk "dwelt once even on Thangorodrim ere Morgoth grew so mighty, and dwell now in the Mountains of Turgon since the fall of Fingolfin." Considering the casual and incomplete nature of the corrections to LQ*1 and especially LQ*2 it is not now clear to me that Voronwë's claim can be disregarded. That is, in general LQ 1 and LQ 2 can be trusted for what they change, but not always for what they retain.
Conclusions:
*****1. I see no indication that the dwelling of Thorondor and his people on Thangorodrim was ever discarded.
*****2. It seems to me to be equally valid to remove "ere Morgoth grew so mighty" and "now" and "since the fall of Fingolfin" from Voronwë's speech, or to remove "from Crissaegrim" from the QS77 account. In the late LQ*1 and LQ*2 manuscripts Tolkien often did correct word-forms without properly correcting the story, while "Of Tuor" is a fully considered revision and a full account (not a summary) to which in every other respect all later material is brought into accord. (I may say that it also seems more sensible that Thorondor would fly a short distance from an eyrie on Thangorodrim or the Iron Mountains to the battlefield then all the way from Crissaegrim. What tidings would have come to him in time that he would know to make that flight?)
Altogether now: "WHO CARES?!!!!!!"
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Edited by: <A HREF=http://www.barrowdowns.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_profile&u=00000212>jallanit e</A> at: 6/24/01 8:39:23 pm