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The opening section or ‘Prologue’ of the poem derives from the opening of the Tale (II. 70–1) and in strictly narrative terms there has been little development. In lines 18–21 (and especially in the rejected line in A, as a myriad rats in measureless army / might pull down the proudest) is clearly foreshadowed the story in The Silmarillion (p. 195):

… they took him at last alive, by the command of Morgoth, for the Orcs grappled him with their hands, which clung to him though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them.

On the other hand the motive in the later story for capturing him alive (Morgoth knew that Húrin had been to Gondolin) is necessarily not present, since Gondolin in the older phases of the legends was not discovered till Turgon retreated down Sirion after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears (II. 120, 208). That he was taken alive by Morgoth’s command is however already stated in the poem (line 20), though it is not explained why. In the Tale Morgoth’s interest in Húrin as a tool for the discovery of Turgon arose from his knowledge that

the Elves of Kôr thought little of Men, holding them in scant fear or suspicion for their blindness and lack of skill

– an idea that is repeated in the poem (46–8); but this idea seems only to have arisen in Morgoth’s mind when he came to Húrin in his dungeon (44 ff.).

The place of Húrin’s torment (in the Tale ‘a lofty place of the mountains’) is now defined as a stool of stone on the steepest peak of Thangorodrim; and this is the first occurrence of that name.

In the change of son to heir in line 29 is seen the first hint of a development in the kingly house of the Noldoli, with the appearance of a second generation between Finwë (Finweg) and Turgon; but by the time that my father pencilled this change on the text (and noted ‘He was Fingolfin’s son’) the later genealogical structure was already in being, and this is as it were a casual indication of it.

In ‘Túrin’s Fostering’ there is a close relationship between the Tale and the poem, extending to many close similarities of wording – especially abundant in the scene in Thingol’s hall leading to the death of Orgof; and some phrases had a long life, surviving from the Tale, through the poem, and into the Narn i Hîn Húrin, as