Читать книгу The Shaping of Middle-earth онлайн | страница 58

– 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 Úrin (Húrin) are faithful, and do not survive it;

– The leader of the Gnomes is isolated and slain;

– Turgon and his host cut their way out, and go to Gondolin;

– Melko is wrathful because he cannot discover where Turgon has gone;

– The Fëanorians come late to the battle;

– A great cairn is piled.

There is no evidence for any narrative of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears in its own right between the outlines for Gilfanon’s Tale and the ‘Sketch’; thus §11 in S shows at a step a very great advance. This is not however to be regarded as a direct evolution from the outlines, for many elements – such as the stories of Beren and Tinúviel, and of Nargothrond – had been developed ‘collaterally’ in the meantime. As S was originally written in §11, the old ‘pre-Felagund’ story was present (‘Curufin and Celegorm despatch a host from Nargothrond’, see commentary on §10), and although the failure of the Union of Maidros to gather together all the Elves of Beleriand into a united force already appears, the alignments were for this reason quite different: the Gnomes of Nargothrond (ruled by Celegorm and Curufin) will not serve under Finweg (Fingon). But with the rewriting of S, made after the emergence of the Felagund-story, an essential element of the later narrative comes into being: Orodreth will not join the league on account of Felagund his brother (cf. The Silmarillion p. 188: ‘Orodreth would not march forth at the word of any son of Fëanor, because of the deeds of Celegorm and Curufin.’) That Thingol sent few (emended from none) out of Doriath is a very old element, appearing already in the Tale of Turambar (II. 73), where Tinwelint said to Mavwin, in words echoed in the present passage of S:

not for love nor for fear of Melko but of the wisdom of my heart and the fate of the Valar did I not go with my folk to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, who am now become a safety and a refuge …