The Gnomes now fought for the first time with the Orcs and captured the pass of the Bitter Hills; thus they escaped out of the Land of Shadows, to Melko’s fear and amazement. They entered the Forest of Artanor (later Doriath) and the Region of the Great Plains (perhaps the forerunner of the later Talath Dirnen, the Guarded Plain of Nargothrond); and the host of Nуlemл grew to a vast size. They practised many arts, but would dwell no longer in settled abodes. The chief camp of Nуlemл was about the waters of Sirion; and the Gnomes drove the Orcs to the foothills of the Iron Mountains. Melko gathered his power in secret wrath.
Turgon was born to Nуlemл.
Maidros, ‘chief son of Fлanor’, led a host against Angband, but was driven back with fire from its gates, and he was taken alive and tortured—according to C, repeating the story of the earlier outline, because he would not reveal the secret arts of jewel-making. (It is not said here that Maidros was freed and returned, but it is implied in the Oath of the Seven Sons that follows.)
The Seven Sons of Fлanor swore their terrible oath of hatred for ever against all, Gods or Elves or Men, who should hold the Silmarils; and the Children of Fлanor left the host of Nуlemл and went back into Dor Lуmin, where they became a mighty and a fierce race.
The hosts of Tareg the Ilkorin (see p. 237) found the Gnomes at the Feast of Reunion; and the Men of Ermon first saw the Gnomes. Then Nуlemл’s host, swollen by that of Tareg and by the sons of Ermon, prepared for battle; and messengers were sent out North, South, East, and West. Tinwelint alone refused the summons, and he said: ‘Go not into the hills.’ Ъrin and Egnor* marched with countless battalions.
Melko withdrew all his forces and Nуlemл believed that he was afraid. The hosts of Elfinesse drew into the Tumbled Lands and encamped in the Vale of Fountains (Gorfalong), or as it was afterwards called the Valley of Weeping Waters.
(The outline D differs in its account of the events before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears from that in the earlier ones, here including C. In the earlier, the Gnomes fled from the camp by Sirion when Melko’s hosts approached, and retreated to Gorfalon, where the great host of Gnomes, Ilkorins, and Men was gathered, and arrayed in the Valley of the Fountains. In D, there is no mention of any retreat by Nуlemл’s hosts: rather, it seems, they advanced from the camp by Sirion into the Vale of Fountains (Gorfalong). But from the nature of these outlines they cannot be too closely pressed. The outline C, which ends here, says that when the Gnomes first encountered Men at Gorfalon the Gnomes taught them crafts—and this was one of the starting-points, no doubt, of the later Elf-friends of Beleriand.)
Certain Men suborned by Melko went among the camp as minstrels and betrayed it. Melko fell upon them at early dawn in a grey rain, and the terrible Battle of Unnumbered Tears followed, of which no full tale is told, for no Gnome will ever speak of it. (In the margin here my father wrote: ‘Melko himself was there?’ In the earlier outline Melko himself entered the camp of his enemies.)
In the battle Nуlemл was isolated and slain, and the Orcs cut out his heart; but Turgon rescued his body and his heart, and it became his emblem.11 Nearly half of all the Gnomes and Men who fought there were slain.
Men fled, and the sons of Ъrin alone stood fast until they were slain; but Ъrin was taken. Turgon was terrible in his wrath, and his great battalion hewed its way out of the fight by sheer prowess.
Melko sent his host of Balrogs after them, and Mablon the Ilkorin died to save them when pursued. Turgon fled south along Sirion, gathering women and children from the camps, and aided by the magic of the stream escaped into a secret place and was lost to Melko.
The Sons of Fлanor came up too late and found a stricken field: they slew the spoilers who were left, and burying Nуlemл they built the greatest cairn in the world over him and the [?Gnomes]. It was called the Hill of Death.
There followed the Thraldom of the Noldoli. The Gnomes were filled with bitterness at the treachery of Men, and the ease with which Melko beguiled them. The outline concludes with references to ‘the Mines of Melko’ and ‘the Spell of Bottomless Dread’, and the statement that all the Men of the North were shut in Hisilуmл.
The outline D then turns to the story of Beren and Tinъviel, with a natural connection from the tale just sketched: ‘Beren son of Egnor wandered out of Dor Lуmin* into Artanor…’ This is to be the next story told by the Tale-fire (as also in outline B); in D the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale is to take four nights.
If certain features are selected from these outlines, and expressed in such a way as to emphasize agreement rather than disagreement, the likeness to the narrative structure of The Silmarillion is readily apparent. Thus:
—The Noldoli cross the Helkaraksл and spread into Hisilуmл, making their encampment by Asgon (Mithrim);
—They meet Ilkorin Elves (=Ъmanyar);
—Fлanor dies;
—First battle with Orcs;
—A Gnomish army goes to Angband;
—Maidros captured, tortured, and maimed;
—The Sons of Fлanor depart from the host of the Elves (in D only);
—A mighty battle called the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is fought between Elves and Men and the hosts of Melko;
—Treachery of Men, corrupted by Melko, at that battle;
—But the people of Ъrin (Hъrin) are faithful, and do not survive it;
—The leader of the Gnomes is isolated and slain (in D only);
—Turgon and his host cut their way out, and go to Gondolin;
—Melko is wrathful because he cannot discover where Turgon has gone;
—The Fлanorians come late to the battle (in D only);
—A great cairn is piled (in D only).
These are essential features of the story that were to survive. But the unlikenesses are many and great. Most striking of all is that the entire later history of the long years of the Siege of Angband, ending with the Battle of Sudden Flame (Dagor Bragollach), of the passage of Men over the Mountains into Beleriand and their taking service with the Noldorin Kings, had yet to emerge; indeed these outlines give the effect of only a brief time elapsing between the coming of the Noldoli from Kфr and their great defeat. This effect may be to some extent the result of the compressed nature of these outlines, and indeed the reference in the last of them, D, to the practice of many arts by the Noldoli (p. 240) somewhat counteracts the impression—in any case, Turgon, born when the Gnomes were in Hisilуmл or (according to D) when they were encamped by Sirion, is full grown at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.12 Even so, the picture in The Silmarillion of a period of centuries elapsing while Morgoth was straitly confined in Angband and ‘behind the guard of their armies in the north the Noldor built their dwellings and their towers’ is emphatically not present. In later ‘phases’ of the history my father steadily expanded the period between the rising of the Sun and Moon and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. It is essential, also, to the old conception that Melko’s victory was so complete and overwhelming: vast numbers of the Noldoli became his thralls, and wherever they went lived in the slavery of his spell; in Gondolin alone were they free—so in the old tale of The Fall of Gondolin it is said that the people of Gondolin ‘were that kin of the Noldoli who alone escaped Melko’s power, when at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears he slew and enslaved their folk and wove spells about them and caused them to dwell in the Hells of Iron, faring thence at his will and bidding only’. Moreover Gondolin was not founded until after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.13
Of Fлanor’s death in the early conception we can discern little; but at least it is clear that it bore no relation to the story of his death in The Silmarillion (p. 107). In these early outlines the Noldoli, leaving Hisilуmл, had their first affray with the Orcs in the foothills of the Iron Mountains or in the pass of the Bitter Hills, and these heights pretty clearly correspond to the later Mountains of Shadow, Ered Wethrin (see p. 158, 238); but in The Silmarillion (p. 106) the first encounter of the Noldor with the Orcs was in Mithrim.