Very remarkable is the story, as it was told in The Tale of Tinúviel, of the captivity of Beren, on his journey to Angband in quest of a Silmaril, by Tevildo Prince of Cats; so too is the total subsequent transformation of that story. But if we say that the castle of the cats ‘is’ the tower of Sauron on Tol-in-Gaurhoth ‘Isle of Werewolves’ it can only be, as I have remarked elsewhere, in the sense that it occupies the same ‘space’ in the narrative. Beyond this there is no point in seeking even shadowy resemblances between the two establishments. The monstrous gormandising cats, their kitchens and their sunning terraces, and their engagingly Elvish-feline names, Miaugion, Miaul?, Meoita, have all vanished without trace. But beyond their hatred of dogs (and the importance to the story of the mutual loathing of Huan and Tevildo) it is evident that the inhabitants of the castle are no ordinary cats: very notable is this passage from the Tale (p. 69) concerning ‘the secret of the cats and the spell that Melko had entrusted to [Tevildo]’:
and those were words of magic whereby the stones of his evil house were held together, and whereby he held all beasts of the catfolk under his sway, filling them with an evil power beyond their nature; for long has it been said that Tevildo was an evil fay in beastlike shape.
It is also interesting to observe in this passage, as elsewhere, the manner in which aspects and incidents of the original tale may reappear but in a wholly different guise, arising from a wholly altered narrative conception. In the old Tale Tevildo was forced by Huan to reveal the spell, and when Tinúviel uttered it ‘the house of Tevildo shook; and there came therefrom a host of indwellers’ (which was a host of cats). In the Quenta Noldorinwa (p. 135) when Huan overthrew the terrible werewolf-wizard Th?, the Necromancer, in Tol-in-Gaurhoth he ‘won from him the keys and the spells that held together his enchanted walls and towers. So the stronghold was broken and the towers thrown down and the dungeons opened. Many captives were released . . .’
But here we move into the major shift in the story of Beren and Lúthien, when it was combined with the altogether distinct legend of Nargothrond. Through the oath of undying friendship and aid sworn to Barahir, the father of Beren, Felagund the founder of Nargothrond was drawn into Beren’s quest of the Silmaril (p. 117, lines 157 ff.); and there entered the story of the Elves from Nargothrond who disguised as Orcs were taken by Th? and ended their days in the gruesome dungeons of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. The quest of the Silmaril involved also Celegorm and Curufin, sons of F?anor and a powerful presence in Nargothrond, through the destructive oath sworn by the F?anorians of vengeance against any ‘who hold or take or keep a Silmaril against their will’. The captivity of Lúthien in Nargothrond, from which Huan rescued her, involved her in the plots and ambitions of Celegorm and Curufin: pp. 151–2, lines 247–72.
There remains the aspect of the story that is also the end of it, and of primary significance, as I believe, in the mind of its author. The earliest reference to the fates of Beren and Lúthien after Beren’s death in the hunt of Carcharoth is in The Tale of Tinúviel; but at that time both Beren and Lúthien were Elves. There it was said (p. 87):
‘Tinúviel crushed with sorrow and finding no comfort or light in all the world followed him swiftly down those dark ways that all must tread alone. Now her beauty and tender loveliness touched even the cold heart of Mandos, so that he suffered her to lead Beren forth once more into the world, nor has this ever been done since to Man or Elf . . . Yet said Mandos to those twain: “Lo, O Elves, it is not to any life of perfect joy that I dismiss you, for such may no longer be found in all the world where sits Melko of the evil heart—and know that ye will become mortal even as Men, and when ye fare hither again it will be for ever . . . .”’
That Beren and Lúthien had a further history in Middle-earth is made plain in this passage (‘their deeds afterward were very great, and many tales are told thereof’), but no more is said there than that they are i-Cuilwarthon, the Dead that Live Again, and ‘they became mighty fairies in the lands about the north of Sirion.’
In another of the Lost Tales, The Coming of the Valar, there is an account of those who came to Mandos (the name of his halls as well as that of the God, whose true name was Vê):
Thither in after days fared the Elves of all the clans who were by illhap slain with weapons or did die of grief for those who were slain—and only so might the Eldar die, and then it was only for a while. There Mandos spake their doom, and there they waited in the darkness, dreaming of their past deeds, until such time as he appointed when they might again be born into their children, and go forth to laugh and sing again.
With this may be compared the unplaced verses for The Lay of Leithian given on pp. 216–7, concerning ‘the Land of the Lost . . . where the Dead wait, while ye forget’:
No moon is there, no voice, no sound
of beating heart; a sigh profound
once in each age as each age dies
alone is heard. Far, far it lies,
the Land of Waiting where the Dead sit,
in their thought’s shadow, by no moon lit.
The conception that the Elves died only from wounds of weapons, or from grief, endured, and appears in the published Silmarillion:
For the Elves die not till the world dies, unless they are slain or waste in grief (and to both these seeming deaths they are subject); neither does age subdue their strength, unless one grow weary of ten thousand centuries; and dying they are gathered to the halls of Mandos in Valinor, whence they may in time return. But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.
It seems to me that the words of Mandos in The Tale of Tinúviel cited above, ‘ye will become mortal even as Men, and when ye fare hither again it will be for ever’, imply that he was uprooting their destiny as Elves: having died as Elves could die, they would not be reborn, but be permitted—uniquely—to leave Mandos still in their own particular being. They would pay a price, nevertheless, for when they died a second time there would be no possibility of return, no ‘seeming death’, but the death that Men, of their nature, must suffer.
Later, in the Quenta Noldorinwa it is told (pp. 140–1) that ‘Lúthien failed and faded swiftly and vanished from the earth . . . . And she came to the halls of Mandos, and she sang to him a tale of moving love so fair that he was moved to pity, as never has befallen since.’
Beren he summoned, and thus, as Lúthien had sworn as she kissed him at the hour of death, they met beyond the western sea. And Mandos suffered them to depart, but he said that Lúthien should become mortal even as her lover, and should leave the earth once more in the manner of a mortal woman, and her beauty become but a memory of song. So it was, but it is said that in recompense Mandos gave to Beren and to Lúthien thereafter a long span of life and joy, and they wandered knowing thirst nor cold in the fair land of Beleriand, and no mortal Man thereafter spoke to Beren or his spouse.
In the draft text of the story of Beren and Lúthien prepared for the Quenta Silmarillion, referred to on p. 218, there enters the idea of the ‘choice of fate’ proposed to Beren and Lúthien before Mandos: