Men fled, and the sons of Ъrin alone stood fast until they were slain; but Ъrin was taken. Turgon was terrible in his wrath, and his great battalion hewed its way out of the fight by sheer prowess.

Melko sent his host of Balrogs after them, and Mablon the Ilkorin died to save them when pursued. Turgon fled south along Sirion, gathering women and children from the camps, and aided by the magic of the stream escaped into a secret place and was lost to Melko.

The Sons of Fлanor came up too late and found a stricken field: they slew the spoilers who were left, and burying Nуlemл they built the greatest cairn in the world over him and the [?Gnomes]. It was called the Hill of Death.

There followed the Thraldom of the Noldoli. The Gnomes were filled with bitterness at the treachery of Men, and the ease with which Melko beguiled them. The outline concludes with references to ‘the Mines of Melko’ and ‘the Spell of Bottomless Dread’, and the statement that all the Men of the North were shut in Hisilуmл.

The outline D then turns to the story of Beren and Tinъviel, with a natural connection from the tale just sketched: ‘Beren son of Egnor wandered out of Dor Lуmin* into Artanor…’ This is to be the next story told by the Tale-fire (as also in outline B); in D the matter of Gilfanon’s Tale is to take four nights.

If certain features are selected from these outlines, and expressed in such a way as to emphasize agreement rather than disagreement, the likeness to the narrative structure of The Silmarillion is readily apparent. Thus:

—The Noldoli cross the Helkaraksл and spread into Hisilуmл, making their encampment by Asgon (Mithrim);

—They meet Ilkorin Elves (=Ъmanyar);

—Fлanor dies;

—First battle with Orcs;

—A Gnomish army goes to Angband;

—Maidros captured, tortured, and maimed;

—The Sons of Fлanor depart from the host of the Elves (in D only);

—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 Ъrin (Hъrin) are faithful, and do not survive it;

—The leader of the Gnomes is isolated and slain (in D only);

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

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

—The Fлanorians come late to the battle (in D only);

—A great cairn is piled (in D only).

These are essential features of the story that were to survive. But the unlikenesses are many and great. Most striking of all is that the entire later history of the long years of the Siege of Angband, ending with the Battle of Sudden Flame (Dagor Bragollach), of the passage of Men over the Mountains into Beleriand and their taking service with the Noldorin Kings, had yet to emerge; indeed these outlines give the effect of only a brief time elapsing between the coming of the Noldoli from Kфr and their great defeat. This effect may be to some extent the result of the compressed nature of these outlines, and indeed the reference in the last of them, D, to the practice of many arts by the Noldoli (p. 240) somewhat counteracts the impression—in any case, Turgon, born when the Gnomes were in Hisilуmл or (according to D) when they were encamped by Sirion, is full grown at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.¹² Even so, the picture in The Silmarillion of a period of centuries elapsing while Morgoth was straitly confined in Angband and ‘behind the guard of their armies in the north the Noldor built their dwellings and their towers’ is emphatically not present. In later ‘phases’ of the history my father steadily expanded the period between the rising of the Sun and Moon and the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. It is essential, also, to the old conception that Melko’s victory was so complete and overwhelming: vast numbers of the Noldoli became his thralls, and wherever they went lived in the slavery of his spell; in Gondolin alone were they free—so in the old tale of The Fall of Gondolin it is said that the people of Gondolin ‘were that kin of the Noldoli who alone escaped Melko’s power, when at the Battle of Unnumbered Tears he slew and enslaved their folk and wove spells about them and caused them to dwell in the Hells of Iron, faring thence at his will and bidding only’. Moreover Gondolin was not founded until after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.¹³

Of Fлanor’s death in the early conception we can discern little; but at least it is clear that it bore no relation to the story of his death in The Silmarillion (p. 107). In these early outlines the Noldoli, leaving Hisilуmл, had their first affray with the Orcs in the foothills of the Iron Mountains or in the pass of the Bitter Hills, and these heights pretty clearly correspond to the later Mountains of Shadow, Ered Wethrin (see p. 158, 238); but in The Silmarillion (p. 106) the first encounter of the Noldor with the Orcs was in Mithrim.

The meeting of Gnomes and Ilkorins survived in the meeting of the new-come Noldor with the Grey-elves of Mithrim (ibid. p. 108); but the Noldor heard rather of the power of King Thingol of Doriath than of the Battle of Palisor.

Whereas in these outlines Maidros son of Fлanor led an attack on Angband which was repulsed with slaughter and his own capture, in The Silmarillion it was Fingolfin who appeared before Angband, and being met with silence prudently withdrew to Mithrim (p. 109). Maidros (Maedhros) had been already taken at a meeting with an embassage of Morgoth’s that was supposed to be a parley, and he heard the sound of Fingolfin’s trumpets from his place of torment on Thangorodrim—where Morgoth set him until, as he said, the Noldor forsook their war and departed. Of the divided hosts of the Noldor there is of course no trace in the old story; and the rescue of Maedhros by Fingon, who cut off his hand in order to save him, does not appear in any form: rather is he set free by Melko, though maimed, and without explanation given. But it is very characteristic that the maiming of Maidros—an important ‘moment’ in the legends—should never itself be lost, though it came to be given a wholly different setting and agency.

The Oath of the Sons of Fлanor was here sworn after the coming of the Gnomes from Valinor, and after the death of their father; and in the later outline D they then left the host of (Finwл) Nуlemл, Lord of the Noldoli, and returned to Dor Lуmin (Hisilуmл). In this and in other features that appear only in D the story is moved nearer to its later form. In the return to Dor Lуmin is the germ of the departure of the Fлanorians from Mithrim to the eastern parts of Beleriand (The Silmarillion p. 112); in the Feast of Reunion that of Mereth Aderthad, the Feast of Reuniting, held by Fingolfin for the Elves of 1Beleriand (ibid. p. 113), though the participants are necessarily greatly different; in the latecoming of the Fлanorians to the stricken field of Unnumbered Tears that of the delayed arrival of the host of Maedhros (ibid. p. 190–2); in the cutting-off and death of (Finwл) Nуlemл in the battle that of the slaying of Fingon (ibid. p. 193—when Finwл came to be Fлanor’s father, and thus stepped into the place of Bruithwir, killed by Melko in Valinor, his position as leader of the hosts in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears was taken by Fingon); and in the great cairn called the Hill of Death, raised by the Sons of Fлanor, that of the Haudh-en-Ndengin or Hill of Slain, piled by Orcs in Anfauglith (ibid. p. 197). Whether the embassy to Tъvo, Tinwelint, and Ermon (which in D becomes the sending of messengers) remotely anticipates the Union of Maedhros (ibid. p. 188–9) is not clear, though Tinwelint’s refusal to join forces with Nуlemл survived in Thingol’s rejection of Maedhros’ approaches (p. 189). I cannot certainly explain Tinwelint’s words ‘Go not into the hills’, but I suspect that ‘the hills’ are the Mountains of Iron (in The Hiding of Valinor, p. 209, called ‘the Hills of Iron’) above Angband, and that he warned against an attack on Melko; in the old Tale of Turambar Tinwelint said: ‘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.’