In connection with the place of the banishment of the Noldoli, here called Sirnъmen (‘Western Stream’), it may be mentioned that in an isolated note found in the little book referred to on p. 23 it is stated: ‘The river of the second rocky dwelling of the Gnomes in Valinor was kelusindi and the spring at its source kapalinda.’

Very remarkable is the passage (p. 142) where Manwл is said to know that ‘the Elves were children of the world and must one day return to her bosom’. As I have noticed earlier (p. 82) ‘the world’ is often equated with the Great Lands, and this usage occurs repeatedly in the present tale, but it is not clear to me whether this sense is intended here. I incline to think that the meaning of the phrase is that at ‘the Great End’ the Eldar, being bound to the Earth, cannot return with the Valar and spirits that were ‘before the world’ (p. 66) to the regions whence they came (cf. the conclusion of the original Music of the Ainur, p. 60).

Coming to the account of the theft of the jewels, the structure of the narrative is again radically different from the later story, in that there Melko1r’s attack on the Noldor of Formenos, the theft of the Silmarils and the slaying of Finwл, was accomplished after his meeting with Ungoliant in the South and the destruction of the Two Trees; Ungoliant was with him at Formenos. Nor in the earliest version is there any mention of Melko’s previous visit to Formenos (The Silmarillion pp. 71–2), after which he passed through the Calacirya and went northwards up the coast, returning later in secret to Avathar (Arvalin, Eruman) to seek out Ungoliant.

On the other hand the great festival was already the occasion for Melko’s theft of the Silmarils from the dwelling of the Noldoli, though the festival was wholly different in having a purely commemorative purpose (see The Silmarillion pp. 74–5), and it was a necessary part of that purpose that the Solosimpi should be present (in The Silmarillion ‘Only the Teleri beyond the mountains still sang upon the shores of the sea; for they recked little of seasons or times…’).

Of Melko’s dark accomplices out of Mandos (some of them said to be ‘aforetime children of Mandos’, p. 154) there is no trace later, nor of his theft of Oromл’s horses; and while Melko is here said to have wished to leave Valinor by passes over the northern mountains, but to have thought better of it (leading to a reflection on what might have been the fate of Valinor had he not), in the later story his movement northwards was a feint. But it is interesting to observe the germ of the one in the other, the underlying idea never lost of a northward and then a southward movement, even though it takes place at a different point in the narrative and has a different motivation.

Interesting also is the emergence of the idea that a close kinsman of Fлanor’s—only after much hesitation between brother and son becoming fixed on the father—was slain by Melkor in the dwelling of the Noldoli, Sirnъmen, precursor of Formenos; but the father had yet to be identified with the lord of the Noldoli.

In this passage there are some slight further geographical indications. The Two Trees stood to the north of the city of Valmar (p. 143), as they are shown on the map (see pp. 81–2); and, again in agreement with the map, the Great Lands and the Outer Lands came very close together in the far North (p. 146). Most notably, the gap in the Mountains of Valinor shown on the map and which I marked with the letter e is now explained: ‘the low place in the hills’ by which Melko and his following passed out of Valinor into Arvalin-Eruman, a gap left by Tulkas and Aulл for their own entry into Valinor at the time of the raising of the mountains (p. 145).

Of the next part of this tale (pp. 146–9) almost nothing survived. Manwл’s lecture to the Noldoli disappeared (but some of its content is briefly expressed at another place in the narrative of The Silmarillion, p. 68: ‘The Noldor began to murmur against [the Valar], and many became filled with pride, forgetting how much of what they had and knew came to them in gift from the Valar’). Manwл’s naming of Fлanor’s father Bruithwir by the patronymic go-Maidros is notable: though the name Maidros was subsequently to be that of Fлanor’s eldest son, not of his grandfather, it was from the outset associated with the ‘Fлanorians’. There is no trace later of1 the strange story of the renegade servant of Mandos, who brought Melko’s outrageous message to the Valar, and who was hurled to his death from Taniquetil by the irrepressible Tulkas in direct disobedience to Manwл nor of the sending of Sorontur to Melko as the messenger of the Gods (it is not explained how Sorontur knew where to find him). It is said here that afterwards ‘Sorontur and his folk fared to the Iron Mountains and there abode, watching all that Melko did’. I have noticed in commenting (pp. 111–12) on The Chaining of Melko that the Iron Mountains, said to be south of Hisilуmл (pp. 101, 118), there correspond to the later Mountains of Shadow (Ered Wethrin). On the other hand, in the Tale of the Sun and Moon (p. 176) Melko after his escape from Valinor makes himself ‘new dwellings in that region of the North where stand the Iron Mountains very high and terrible to see’ and in the original Tale of Turambar* it is said that Angband lay beneath the roots of the northernmost fastnesses of the Iron Mountains, and that these mountains were so named from ‘the Hells of Iron’ beneath them. The statement in the present tale that Sorontur ‘watched all that Melko did’ from his abode in the Iron Mountains obviously implies likewise that Angband was beneath them; and the story that Sorontur (Thorondor) had his eyries on Thangorodrim before he removed them to Gondolin survived long in the ‘Silmarillion’ tradition (see Unfinished Tales p. 43 and note 25). There is thus, apparently, a contradictory usage of the term ‘Iron Mountains’ within the Lost Tales; unless it can be supposed that these mountains were conceived as a continuous range, the southerly extension (the later Mountains of Shadow) forming the southern fence of Hisilуmл, while the northern peaks, being above Angband, gave the range its name. Evidence that this is so will appear later.

In the original story the Noldoli of Sirnъmen were given permission (through the intercession of Aulл) to return to Kфr, but Fлanor remained there in bitterness with a few others; and thus the situation of the later narrative—the Noldor in Tirion, but Fлanor at Formenos—is achieved, with the element absent of Fлanor’s banishment and unlawful return to the city of the Elves. An underlying difference to be noted is that in The Silmarillion (pp. 61–2) the Vanyar had long since departed from Tirion and gone to dwell on Taniquetil or in Valinor: of this there is no suggestion in the old tale; and of course there is the central structural difference between the early and late narratives—when Fлanor raises his standard of rebellion the Trees are still shining in Valinor.

In the tale, a good while seems to elapse after the loss of the treasures of the Noldoli, during which they set to work again with lessened joy and Fлanor sought in vain to remake the Silmarils: this element must of course disappear in the later, much tauter structure, where Fлanor (refusing to hand over the Silmarils to the Valar for the healing of the Trees and not yet knowing that Melko has taken them) knows without attempting it that he cannot remake them any more than Yavanna can remake the Trees.

The embassage of Fлanor and other Noldoli to Manwл, demanding that the Gods ferry them back to the Great Lands, was exci1sed, and with it Manwл’s remarkable instruction to them concerning the coming of Men—and his expressed reluctance to have the Eldar return to ‘the world’ while Men were still in their infancy. No such idea is represented in The Silmarillion as being in Manwл’s mind (nor is there any suggestion that Manwл’s knowledge was so great); and indeed, where in the old story it was Manwл’s very description of Men and account of his policy with regard to them that gave rise to Fлanor’s rhetoric against them, and which gave strong colour to his assertion of the Valar’s true motive for bringing the Eldar to Valinor, in The Silmarillion (p. 68) these ideas are a part of the lies of Melkor (I have noticed above that in Melko’s persuasions of the Noldoli in the tale there is no reference to the coming of Men).