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From the account of the great festival (see commentary on §4) is absent both the original occasion for holding it (commemoration of the coming of the Eldar to Valinor, I. 143) and that given in The Silmarillion (the autumn feast: pp. 74–5). The later feature that the Teleri were not present appears (see I. 157); but there is no suggestion of the important elements of Fëanor coming alone to the festival from Formenos, the formal reconciliation with Fingolfin, and Fëanor’s refusal to surrender the Silmarils before he heard the news of his father’s death and the theft of the jewels (The Silmarillion pp. 75, 78–9).

In the later emendations to the text of S we see the growth of the story of the divided counsels of the Gnomes, with the introduction of the attempt of Finrod (later Finarfin) to calm the conflicting factions – though this element was present in the tale of The Flight of the Noldoli, where Finwë Nólemë plays the part of the appeaser (I. 162). After a good deal of further shifting in this passage in later texts, and the introduction of Galadriel, the alignment, and the motives, of the princes as they appear in The Silmarillion are more complex (pp. 83–4); but the element is already present that only one of Finrod’s sons sided with him (here Felagund, in The Silmarillion Orodreth).

The emendation making Fingolfin and Finweg (Fingon) rule over ‘a half of the Noldoli of Tûn’ must be incorrect; my father probably intended the revised text to read ‘over the Noldoli of Tûn’.

The rapid shifting in the part of Finrod (Finarfin) in these events can be observed in the successive interpolations made in S. It seems that in the original text he did not appear at all (the first mention of him is in the interpolated passage in §3, p. 15). He is said not to have left Tûn; then he is said to have been slain at Swanhaven; and finally it is told that he and his sons were not at Swanhaven, but left Tûn reluctantly, carrying with them many things of their making. Finrod was then introduced as only arriving with his people in the far North after the burning of the ships by the Fëanorians on the other side of the strait. As S was originally written Fingolfin, deserted and shipless, returned to Valinor, and it was his son Finweg (Fingon) who led the main host over the Grinding Ice; but with the introduction of Finrod he becomes the one who returned. (Finweg as the leader of the host was not then changed to Fingolfin, but this was obviously an oversight.)