[Aiwendil]

While Turin's saga is the longest story in the Silmarillion and the one Tolkien seems to have sweated over more than any other, the Ruin of Doriath is undoubtedly the most puzzling and problematic from a textual point of view. Indeed, the version found in the published Silmarillion is the one instance where Christopher Tolkien found it necessary to resort to narrative invention of his own in order to assemble a coherent text. In light of this, I think it is perhaps more than usually desirable to have a brief outline of how the story evolved and what, in particular, made it so difficult to put into finished form. Apologies in advance for the length of this, but hey, no one's forcing you to read it.

The earliest version of the story is found in 'The Tale of the Nauglafring' from 'The Book of Lost Tales'. Actually, in the Lost Tales, the chapter divide is different, with Urin's (i.e. Hurin's) release from Angband and coming to Artanor (i.e. Doriath) forming the end of the 'Turin' chapter rather than the beginning of this one. In this version of the story, Urin gathers a band of men about him, goes to the ruined 'caves of the Rodothlim' (i.e. Nargothrond) where he kills Mim, and seizes the treasure of the Elves. Then he has his men carry the treasure to Tinwelint's (i.e. Thingol's) halls, where it is cast at his feet as his contemptuous 'payment' for looking after Urin's family. Urin then leaves, but a fight breaks out between his men and the Elves, both of whom are stricken with greed for the treasure. The Elves win, and though Gwendelin (i.e. Melian) counsels Tinwelint to dispose of the cursed gold, a strange character named Ufedhin, a Noldo who dwelt with the Dwarves of Nogrod, convinces him to commission the Dwarves to craft the unwrought gold into exquisite treasures. This they do, and among other things they fashion a necklace, the Nauglafring, in which the Silmaril is set. But the payment the Dwarves demand (including an Elf-maiden for each Dwarf) enrages Tinwelint, and he sends them away with almost nothing. When they bring the news back to Nogrod, Naugladur, the lord of the Dwarves, launches an assault on Tinwelint. The treacherous Elf Narthseg helps them thwart Gwendelin's protective magic and enter Artanor, where they kill Tinwelint and sack his halls; but on their return journey they are ambushed by Beren, leading a band of Green-Elves, who recovers the Silmaril. Much as in the Silmarillion, Beren and Luthien die, Dior is killed in an attack by the sons of Feanor, and Elwing escapes with the Nauglafring.

The next version of the story written is the highly compressed (less than two pages) account of the 'Sketch of the Mythology', which matches the Lost Tales version fairly closely, though some details (the fate of Hurin's band, the machinations of Ufedhin) are omitted. This account was revised and expanded to form the (still only four pages long) version found in the 'Quenta Noldorinwa'. In this version, Hurin's men kill Mim (against Hurin's wish); they take the gold, but due to Mim's curse, all of them save Hurin die in quarrels along the way. Hurin then goes to Thingol and gets him to send some of his folk to carry the gold into his hall, where Hurin mockingly declares it to be Thingol's fee for the keeping of his kin. Thingol commissions the Dwarves to work the gold, but greed drives the Dwarves to plot treachery; meanwhile, greed drives Thingol to reneg on the payment he promised them. There is a battle between Elves and Dwarves in the hall; the surviving Dwarves are driven off but they gather new forces in Nogrod and Belegost and, again aided by treacherous Elves, they enter Doriath and kill Thingol. As before, Beren leads a company of Green-Elves in an ambush against the Dwarves, and the rest of the story proceeds more or less as in the published version.

That was the last complete version of the story that Tolkien wrote, and it isn't hard to see that it would not fit into the more mature Legendarium very well. For one thing, as Christopher Tolkien points out, it makes Hurin's mocking gesture of 'payment' very silly indeed if he must first go to Thingol and ask his aid in bringing the very treasure Thingol is to be mocked with to his halls. One gets the feeling that this was just something Tolkien came up with on the spot after he killed off Hurin's men, and if he had ever written another long version of the story, he would undoubtedly have found a better solution. For another thing, the idea of treacherous Sindar helping a Dwarven army slip into Doriath, while perfectly in keeping with the character of the 'Lost Tales', would seem rather incongruous in the mature Silmarillion.

The story appears in even briefer form in the 'Annals of Beleriand', roughly contemporaneous with the 'Quenta'. Here, it is simply said that Hurin brought the gold to Thingol, with no mention of how he got it there or of the fate of his band of men.

In the 1950s Tolkien did return to this story and he wrote what appears to be the beginning of a new 'full' version. This text, called 'The Wanderings of Hurin', introduces a whole new episode with Hurin among the people of Haleth and runs to about thirty pages even though it goes no further than Hurin's departure from Brethil. Quite typically, it devolves into various notes and outlines at the end, from which it appears that, had this version continued, Hurin would again have gathered a band of men before going to Nargothrond to seize the gold.

The last thoughts that Tolkien put into writing concerning Thingol's quarrel with the Dwarves are found in the 'Tale of Years' from 1951-52. Here the traitorous Elves are gone, and it is only said that the Dwarven army invaded Doriath. But after writing this, Tolkien realized that this was not possible due to the protective Girdle of Melian, and in a contemporary note he wrote that it must be contrived that Thingol goes to war outside Doriath and is killed there. In the Tale of Years, interestingly, it becomes Celegorm and Curufin (not Beren) who ambush and destroy the Dwarf army, but the Nauglimir is not there because Melian brought it to Beren and Luthien before the Dwarves could get it. In a later letter, however, Beren is again mentioned as the one who ambushed the Dwarves, though now he has the aid not of Elves but of Ents.

That's a fairly tangled mess, but Christopher Tolkien managed to weave something out of it by introducing a few threads of his own. First of all, he omitted the new material introduced in 'The Wanderings of Hurin' since such a long and detailed account would be incongruous and grossly disproportional next to the terse summary that is all he had to work with for the rest of the chapter. Second, he cut out Hurin's band of followers and reduced the treasure brought to Doriath from hoards of unwrought gold to a single necklace. So instead of having been made specifically for the Silmaril, in CT's version, the Nauglimir already existed, and Thingol's commission for the Dwarves is only to set the Silmaril in it, not to fashion it (or anything else). Finally, he avoided the problem of getting the Dwarves through the Girdle (or of getting Thingol outside the Girdle) by having them kill Thingol right then and there after they finish the job; a full scale war is thus replaced by a single murder.

Additional readings:
HoMe II - The Lost Tales version, found in the end of 'Turambar and the Foaloke' and in 'The Nauglafring'.
HoMe IV - The 'Sketch of the Mythology' and 'Quenta Noldorinwa' synopses.
HoMe XI - 'The Wanderings of Hurin' and the 'Tale of Years'
Letters - Letter 247 for the involvement of the Ents in Beren's ambush.