6 For the path down from Mandos, the black ship Morniл, and its journey down the coast to Arvalin, see p. 77, 90 ff.
7 Turondo or Turgon, son of Nуlemл, has been named previously, p. 155.
8 The reading Hanstovбnen is slightly uncertain, and another name ‘or…… Morniлn’ follows it. See under ‘Changes made to names’ below.
9 After the word ‘dwelling’ there is a space left for the insertion of an Elvish name.
10 MS Qerkaringa unemended, but clearly the western promontory (the Icefang) is referred to, and I therefore read Helkaraksл in the text (see note 5).
Changes made to names in
The Flight of the Noldoli
Helkaraksл < Qerkaringa (for the details of, and the explanation of this change see note 5 above).
Arvalin < Habbanan.
Amnos < Emnon < Morniento.
Hanstovбnen The name of ‘the beaching place of Morniл’ was first written Morniлlta (last letters uncertain), then Vane (or Vone) Hansto; this latter was not struck out, but the form in the text (which may also be read as Hanstovбnen) seems to be the final one. After Hanstovбnen follows ‘or……Morniлn’.
Commentary on
The Flight of the Noldoli
In this ‘tale’ (in reality the conclusion of the long tale of ‘The Theft of Melko and the Darkening of Valinor’ told by Lindo and finished by Rьmil) is found the oldest account of the departure of the Gnomes out of Valinor. Here the Gods continue the vain pursuit and search long after Melko has escaped, and moreover are aided in it by the Eldar (including the Solosimpi, who as the later Teleri portrayed in The Silmarillion would hardly have left their shores and their ships). Fлanor’s return to Kфr and his haranguing of the Noldoli (and, in this account, others) by the light of their torches is se1en to be an original feature; but his sons have not yet appeared, nor indeed any of the Noldorin princes descended from Finwл save Turondo (Turgon), of whom it is specifically stated (p. 167) that he was ‘not yet upon the Earth’. There is no Oath of Fлanor, and the later story of the divided counsels of the Noldor appears only in the attempt of Nуlemл (Finwл) to calm the people—Nуlemл thus playing the later part of Finarfin (The Silmarillion p. 83). In The Silmarillion, after the Kinslaying at Alqualondл and the Prophecy of the North, Finarfin and many of his people returned to Valinor and were pardoned by the Valar (p. 88); but here those few who went back found there was no welcome for them, or else ‘Mandos has them’ (p. 168).
In the rejected section given on p. 163, which was replaced by the account of the battle of Kуpas Alqualunten, the reference to ‘those deeds which afterwards the Noldoli most bitterly rued’ must be simply to the theft of the ships of the Solosimpi, since there is no suggestion of any worse actions (in the replacement passage almost the same words are used of the Kinslaying). The actual emergence of the idea that the Noldoli were guilty of worse than theft at Kуpas is seen in a note in the little book (see p. 23) that my father used to jot down thoughts and suggestions—many of these being no more than single sentences, or mere isolated names, serving as reminders of work to be done, stories to be told, or changes to be made. This note reads:
The wrath of the Gods and Elves very great—even let some Noldoli slay some Solosimpi at Kуpas—and let Ulmo plead for them (? if Ulmo so fond of the Solosimpi).
This was struck through and marked ‘done’, and the recommendation here that Ulmo should plead for the Noldoli is found in the tale of The Hiding of Valinor (p. 209).
In the description of Kуpas the ‘mighty arch of living stone’ survived into the ‘arch of living rock sea-carved’ in the much briefer description of Alqualondл in The Silmarillion (p. 61); and we see here the reason for the Haven’s being ‘lit with many lamps’ (ibid.)—because little light came there from the Two Trees on account of the rock-wall around it (though the darkness of Alqualondл is implied by the statement in The Silmarillion that it ‘lay upon the confines of Eldamar, north of the Calacirya, where the light of the stars was bright and clear’).
The events at the Haven were differently conceived in detail from the later story, but still with much general agreement; and though the storm raised by Uinen (ibid. p. 87) does not appear in the original version, the picture of the Noldoli journeying northward some along the shore and some in the vessels remained.
There are interesting indications of the geography of the northern regions. There is no suggestion of a great wasteland (later Araman) between the northern Mountains of Valinor and the sea, a conclusion reached earlier (p. 83), and supported incidentally by the accounts of the steep path from Mandos in the mountains down to the beaching place of the black ship Morniл (p. 77, 167). The name Helkaraksл, ‘Icefang’, first appeari1ng in emendations to the text and given to the neck or promontory running out from the western land, was afterwards re-applied to what is here called Qerkaringa, the strait filled with ice-floes that ‘grind and crash together’ but this was when the Helcaraxл, ‘the Grinding Ice’, had come to have a quite different geographical significance in the much more sophisticated world-picture that my father evolved during the next ‘phase’ of the mythology.
In The Silmarillion (p. 87) there is a suggestion that the speaker of the Prophecy of the North was Mandos himself ‘and no lesser herald of Manwл’, and its gravity, indeed its centrality in the mythology, is far greater; here there is no suggestion of a ‘doom’ or ‘curse’, but only a foretelling. This foretelling included the dark words ‘Great is the fall of Gondolin’. In the tale of The Fall of Gondolin (but in an interpolated sentence very possibly later than the present tale) Turgon, standing upon the stairs of his palace amid the destruction of the city, uttered these same words, ‘and men shuddered, for such were the words of Amnon the prophet of old’. Here Amnon (rather than Amnos as in the present text, itself an emendation from Emnon) is not a place but a person (the servant of Vefбntur who uttered the prophecy?). In the little notebook referred to above occurs the following jotting:
Prophecy of Amnon. Great is the fall of Gondolin. Lo Turgon shall not fade till the lily of the valley fadeth.
In some other notes for the Lost Tales this takes the form:
Prophecy of Amnon. ‘Great is the fall of Gondolin’ and ‘When the lily of the valley withers then shall Turgon fade’.
In these notes Amnon might be either place or person. The ‘lily of the valley’ is Gondolin itself, one of whose Seven Names was Losengriol, later Lothengriol, which is translated ‘flower of the vale or lily of the valley’.
There is an interesting statement in the old story (p. 166) that the Noldoli would never have passed the ice if they had yet been subject to the ‘weariness, sickness, and the many weaknesses that after became their lot dwelling far from Valinor’, but ‘still was the blessed food of the Gods and their drink rich in their veins and they were half-divine’. This is echoed in the words of The Silmarillion (p. 90) that the Noldor were ‘but new-come from the Blessed Realm, and not yet weary with the weariness of Earth’. On the other hand it was specifically said in the Prophecy of the North (ibid. p. 88) that ‘though Eru appointed you to die not in Eд, and no sickness may assail you, yet slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be,’ &c.