The outcome of a tissue of subsequent misunderstandings was that my father, wholly unaware that the Quenta Silmarillion had not in fact been read by anybody, told Stanley Unwin that he rejoiced that at least it had not been rejected ‘with scorn’, and that he now certainly hoped ‘to be able, or to be able to afford, to publish the Silmarillion!’
While QS II was gone he continued the narrative in a further manuscript, which told of the death of Beren in The Wolf-hunt of Carcharoth, intending to copy the new writing into QS II when the texts were returned; but when they were, on 16 December 1937, he put The Silmarillion aside. He still asked, in a letter to Stanley Unwin of that date, ‘And what more can hobbits do? They can be comic, but their comedy is suburban unless it is set against things more elemental.’ But three days later, on 19 December 1937, he announced to Allen and Unwin: ‘I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits—“A long expected party”.’
It was at this point, as I wrote in the Appendix to The Children of Húrin, that the continuous and evolving tradition of The Silmarillion in the summarising, Quenta mode came to an end, brought down in full flight, at Túrin’s departure from Doriath, becoming an outlaw. The further history from that point remained during the years that followed in the compressed and undeveloped form of the Quenta of 1930, frozen, as it were, while the great structures of the Second and Third Ages arose with the writing of The Lord of the Rings. But that further history was of cardinal importance in the ancient legends, for the concluding stories (deriving from the original Book of Lost Tales) told of the disastrous history of Húrin, father of Túrin, after Morgoth released him, and of the ruin of the Elvish kingdoms of Nargothrond, Doriath, and Gondolin of which Gimli chanted in the mines of Moria many thousands of years afterwards.
The world was fair, the mountains tall,
in Elder Days before the fall
of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
the Western Seas have passed away . . .
And this was to be the crown and completion of the whole: the doom of the Noldorin Elves in their long struggle against the power of Morgoth, and the parts that Húrin and Túrin played in that history; ending with the Tale of E?rendil, who escaped from the burning ruin of Gondolin.
Many years later my father wrote in a letter (16 July 1964): ‘I offered them the legends of the Elder Days, but their readers turned that down. They wanted a sequel. But I wanted heroic legends and high romance. The result was The Lord of the Rings.’
*
When The Lay of Leithian was abandoned there was no explicit account of what followed the moment when ‘the fangs of Carcharoth crashed together like a trap’ on Beren’s hand in which he clutched the Silmaril; for this we must go back to the original Tale of Tinúviel (pp. 77–80), where there was a story of the desperate flight of Beren and Lúthien, of the hunt out of Angband pursuing them, and of Huan’s finding them and guiding them back to Doriath. In the Quenta Noldorinwa (p. 138) my father said of this simply that ‘there is little to tell’.
In the final story of the return of Beren and Lúthien to Doriath the chief (and radical) change to notice is the manner of their escape from the gates of Angband after the wounding of Beren by Carcharoth. This event, which The Lay of Leithian did not reach, is told in the words of The Silmarillion:
Thus the quest of the Silmaril was like to have ended in ruin and despair; but in that hour above the wall of the valley three mighty birds appeared, flying northward with wings swifter than the wind.
Among all birds and beasts the wandering and need of Beren had been noised, and Huan himself had bidden all things watch, that they might bring him aid. High above the realm of Morgoth Thorondor and his vassals soared, and seeing now the madness of the Wolf and Beren’s fall came swiftly down, even as the powers of Angband were released from the toils of sleep. Then they lifted up Beren and Lúthien from the earth, and bore them aloft into the clouds . . .
(As they passed high over the lands) Lúthien wept, for she thought that Beren would surely die; he spoke no word, nor opened his eyes, and knew thereafter nothing of his flight. And at the last the eagles set them down upon the borders of Doriath; and they were come to that same dell whence Beren had stolen in despair and left Lúthien asleep.
There the eagles laid her at Beren’s side and returned to the peaks of Crissaegrim and their high eyries; but Huan came to her, and together they tended Beren, even as before when she healed him of the wound that Curufin gave to him. But this wound was fell and poisonous. Long Beren lay, and his spirit wandered upon the dark borders of death, knowing ever an anguish that pursued him from dream to dream. Then suddenly, when her hope was almost spent, he woke again, and looked up, seeing leaves against the sky; and he heard beneath the leaves singing soft and slow beside him LúthienTinúviel. And it was spring again.
Thereafter Beren was named Erchamion, which is the One-handed; and suffering was graven in his face. But at last he was drawn back to life by the love of Lúthien, and he rose, and together they walked in the woods once more.
*
The story of Beren and Lúthien has now been told as it evolved in prose and verse over twenty years from the original Tale of Tinúviel. After initial hesitation Beren, whose father was at first Egnor the Forester, of the Elvish people called the Noldoli, translated into English as ‘Gnomes’, has become the son of Barahir, a chieftain of Men, and the leader of a band of rebels in hiding against the hateful tyranny of Morgoth. The memorable story has emerged (in 1925, in The Lay of Leithian) of the treachery of Gorlim and the slaying of Barahir (pp. 94 ff.); and while V?ann? who told the ‘lost tale’ knew nothing of what had brought Beren to Artanor, and surmised that it was a simple love of wandering (p. 41), he has become after the death of his father a far-famed enemy of Morgoth forced to flee to the South, where he opens the story of Beren and Tinúviel as he peers in the twilight through the trees of Thingol’s forest.