And this was the choice that he decreed for Beren and Lúthien. They should dwell now in Valinor until the world’s end in bliss, but in the end Beren and Lúthien must each go unto that appointed to their kind, when all things are changed: and of the mind of Ilúvatar concerning Men Manw? [Lord of the Valar] knows not. Or they might return unto Middle-earth without certitude of joy or life; then Lúthien should become mortal even as Beren, and subject to a second death, and in the end she should leave the earth for ever and her beauty become only a memory of song. And this doom they chose, that thus, whatsoever sorrow lay before them, their fates might be joined, and their paths lead together beyond the confines of the world. So it was that alone of the Eldali? Lúthien died and left the world long ago; yet by her have the Two Kindreds been joined, and she is the foremother of many.
This conception of the ‘Choice of Fate’ was retained, but in a different form, as seen in The Silmarillion: the choices were imposed on Lúthien alone, and they were changed. Lúthien may still leave Mandos and dwell until the end of the world in Valinor, because of her labours and her sorrow, and because she was the daughter of Melian; but thither Beren cannot come. Thus if she accepts the former, they must be separated now and for ever: because he cannot escape from his own destiny, cannot escape Death, which is the Gift of Ilúvatar and cannot be refused.
The second choice remained, and this she chose. Only so could Lúthien become united with Beren ‘beyond the world’: she herself must change the destiny of her being: she must become mortal, and die indeed.
As I have said, the story of Beren and Lúthien did not end with the judgement of Mandos, and some account of it, of its aftermath, and of the history of the Silmaril that Beren cut from the iron crown of Morgoth, must be given. There are difficulties in doing so in the form that I have chosen for this book, largely because the part played by Beren in his second life hinges on aspects of the history of the First Age that would cast the net too widely for the purpose of this book.
I have remarked (p. 103) of the Quenta Noldorinwa of 1930, which followed from and was much longer than the Sketch of the Mythology, that it remained ‘a compression, a compendious account’: it is said in the title of the work to be ‘the brief history of the Noldoli or Gnomes, drawn from the Book of Lost Tales’. Of these ‘summarising’ texts I wrote in The War of the Jewels (1994): ‘In these versions my father was drawing on (while also of course continually developing and extending) long works that already existed in prose or verse, and in the Quenta Silmarillion he perfected that characteristic tone, melodious, grave, elegiac, burdened with a sense of loss and distance in time, which resides partly, as I believe, in the literary fact that he was drawing down into a brief compendious history what he could also see in far more detailed, immediate, and dramatic form. With the completion of the great ‘intrusion’ and departure of The Lord of the Rings it seems that he returned to the Elder Days with a desire to take up again the far more ample scale with which he had begun long before, in The Book of Lost Tales. The completion of the Quenta Silmarillion remained an aim; but the ‘great tales’, vastly developed from their original forms—from which its later chapters should be derived—were never achieved.’
We are here concerned with a story that goes back to the latest written of the Lost Tales, where it bore the title The Tale of the Nauglafring: that being the original name of the Nauglamír, the Necklace of the Dwarves. But we come here to the furthest point in my father’s work on the Elder Days in the time following the completion of The Lord of the Rings: there is no new narrative. To cite my discussion in The War of the Jewels again, ‘it is as if we come to the brink of a great cliff and look down from highlands raised in some later age onto an ancient plain far below. For the story of the Nauglamír and the destruction of Doriath . . . we must return through more than a quarter of a century to the Quenta Noldorinwa or beyond.’ To the Quenta Noldorinwa (see p. 103) I will now turn, giving the relevant text in a very slightly shortened form.
The tale begins with the further history of the great treasure of Nargothrond that was taken by the evil dragon Glómund. After the death of Glómund, slain by Túrin Turambar, Húrin father of Túrin came with a few outlaws of the woods to Nargothrond, which as yet none, Orc, Elf, or Man, had dared to plunder, for dread of the spirit of Glómund and his very memory. But they found there one M?m the Dwarf.
THE RETURN OF BEREN AND LúTHIEN ACCORDING TO THE QUENTA NOLDORINWA
Now M?m had found the halls and treasure of Nargothrond unguarded; and he took possession of them, and sat there in joy fingering the gold and gems, and letting them run ever through his hands; and he bound them to himself with many spells. But the folk of M?m were few, and the outlaws filled with the lust of the treasure slew them, though Húrin would have stayed them; and at his death M?m cursed the gold.
[Húrin went to Thingol and sought his aid, and the folk of Thingol bore the treasure to the Thousand Caves; then Húrin departed.]
Then the enchantment of the accursed dragon gold began to fall even upon the king of Doriath, and long he sat and gazed upon it, and the seed of the love of gold that was in his heart was waked to growth. Wherefore he summoned the greatest of all craftsmen that now were in the western world, since Nargothrond was no more (and Gondolin was not known), the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost, that they might fashion the gold and silver and the gems (for much was as yet unwrought) into countless vessels and fair things; and a marvellous necklace of great beauty they should make, whereon to hang the Silmaril.*
But the Dwarves coming were stricken at once with the lust and desire of the treasure, and they plotted treachery. They said one to another: ‘Is not this wealth as much the right of the Dwarves as of the Elvish king, and was it not wrested evilly from M?m?’ Yet also they lusted for the Silmaril. And Thingol, falling deeper into the thraldom of the spell, for his part scanted his promised reward for their labour; and bitter words grew between them, and there was battle in Thingol’s halls. There many Elves and Dwarves were slain, and the howe wherein they were lain in Doriath was named C?m-nan-Arasaith, the Mound of Avarice. But the remainder of the Dwarves were driven forth without reward or fee.