The War of the Jewels (54 page)

First I have an errand. I must go to the Field of the Worm and the Stone of the Hapless, where Morwen their mother lies un-tended. Will any come with me?'

Then ruth smote the hearts of those that heard him; and though some drew back in fear, many were willing to go, but among these there were more women than men.

Therefore at length they set off in silence on the path that led down along the falling torrent of Celebros. Wellnigh eight leagues was that road, and darkness fell ere they came to Nen Girith,(52) and there they passed the night as they could. And the next morning they went on down the steep way to the Field of Burning, and they found the body of Morwen at the foot of the Standing Stone. Then they looked upon her in pity and wonder; for it seemed to them that they beheld a great queen whose dignity neither age nor beggary nor all the woe of the world had taken from her.

Then they desired to do her honour in death; and some said:

'This is a dark place. Let us lift her up, and bring the Lady Morwen to the Garth of the Graves and lay her among the House of Haleth with whom she had kinship.'

But Hurin said: 'Nay, Nienor is not here, but it is fitter that she should lie here near her son than with any strangers. So she would have chosen.' Therefore they made a grave for Morwen above Cabed Naeramarth on the west side of the Stone; and when the earth was laid upon her they carved on the Stone: Here lies also Morwen Edelwen, while some sang in the old tongue the laments that long ago had been made for those of their people who had fallen on the March far beyond the Mountains.

And while they sang there came a grey rain and all that desolate place was heavy with grief, and the roaring of the river was like the mourning of many voices. And when all was ended they turned away, and Hurin went bowed on his staff. But it is said that after that day fear left that place, though sorrow remained, and it was ever leafless and bare. But until the end of Beleriand women of Brethil would come with flowers in spring and berries in autumn and sing there a while of the Grey Lady who sought in vain for her son. And a seer and harp-player of Brethil, Glirhuin, made a song saying the Stone of the Hapless should not be defiled by Morgoth nor ever thrown down, not though the Sea should drown all the land. As after indeed befell, and still the Tol Morwen stands alone in the water beyond the new coasts that were made in the days of the wrath of the Valar.

But Hurin does not lie there, for his doom drove him on, and the Shadow still followed him.

Now when the company had come back to Nen Girith they halted; and Hurin looked back, out across Taeglin towards the westering sun that came through the clouds; and he was loth to return into the Forest. But Manthor looked eastward and was troubled, for there was a red glow in the sky there also.(53)

'Lord,' he said, 'tarry here if you will, and any others who are weary. But I am the last of the Haladin and I fear that the fire which we kindled is not yet quenched. I must go back swiftly, lest the madness of men bring all Brethil to ruin.'

But even as he said this an arrow came from the trees, and he stumbled and sank to the ground. Then men ran to seek for the bowman; and they saw a man running like a deer up the path towards the Obel, and they could not overtake him; but they saw that it was Avranc.

Now Manthor sat gasping with his back to a tree. 'It is a poor archer that will miss his mark at the third aim,' he said.

Hurin leaned on his staff and looked down at Manthor. 'But thou hast missed thy mark, kinsman,' he said. 'Thou hast been a valiant friend, and yet I think thou wert so hot in the cause for thyself also. Manthor would have sat more worthily in the chair of the Chieftains.'

'Thou hast a hard eye, Hurin, to pierce all hearts but thine own,' said Manthor. 'Yea, thy darkness touched me also. Now alas! the Haladin are ended; for this wound is to the death. Was not this your true errand, Man of the North: to bring ruin upon us to weigh against thine own? The House of Hador has conquered us, and four now have fallen under its shadow: Brandir, and Hunthor, and Hardang, and Manthor. Is that not enough? Wilt thou not go and leave this land ere it dies?'

'I will,' said Hurin. 'But if the well of my tears were not utterly dried up, I would weep for thee, Manthor; for thou hast saved me from dishonour, and thou hadst love for my son.'

'Then, lord, use in peace the little more life that I have won for thee,' said Manthor. 'Do not bring your shadow upon others!'

'Why, must I not still walk in the world?' said Hurin. 'I will go on till the shadow overtakes me. Farewell!'

Thus Hurin parted from Manthor. When men came to tend his wound they found that it was grave, for the arrow had gone deep into his side; and they wished to bear Manthor back as swiftly as they could to the Obel to have the care of skilled leeches. 'Too late,' said Manthor, and he plucked out the arrow, and gave a great cry, and was still. Thus ended the House of Haleth, and lesser men ruled in Brethil in the time that was left.

But Hurin stood silent, and when the company departed, bearing away the body of Manthor, he did not turn. He looked ever west till the sun fell into dark cloud and the light failed; and then he went down alone towards the Haud-en-Elleth.

Both my father's typescript and the amanuensis typescript end here, and this is clearly the designed conclusion of 'Hurin in Brethil'; but in draft manuscript material there are some suggestions (very slight) as to the course of the narrative immediately beyond this point.(54) There are also a few other brief writings and notes of interest.(55) My father never returned to follow the further wanderings of Hurin.(56) We come here to the furthest point in the narrative of the Elder Days that he reached in his work on The Silmarillion (in the widest sense) after the Second War and the completion of The Lord of the Rings. There are bits of information about the succeeding parts -

not much - but no further new or revised narrative; and the promise held out in his words (p. 258) 'Link to the Necklace of the Dwarves, Sigil Elu-naeth, Necklace of the Woe of Thingol' was never fulfilled. 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 Nauglamir and the destruction of Doriath, the fall of Gondolin, the attack on the Havens, we must return through more than a quarter of a century to the Quenta Noldorinwa (Q), or beyond.

The huge abruptness of the divide is still more emphasised by the nature of this last story of the Elder Days, the Shadow that fell upon Brethil.(57) In its portrayal of the life of Brethil into which Hurin came for its ruin, the intricacies of law and lineage, the history of ambition and conflicting sentiment within the ruling clan, it stands apart. In the published Silmarillion I excluded it, apart from using Hurin's vain attempt to reach Gondolin and his finding of Morwen dying beside the Standing Stone. Morwen's grave is made by Hurin alone; and having made it, 'he passed southwards down the ancient road that led to Nargothrond'.

To have included it, as it seemed to me, would have entailed a huge reduction, indeed an entire re-telling of a kind that I did not wish to undertake; and since the story is intricate I was afraid that this would produce a dense tangle of narrative statement with all the subtlety gone, and above all that it would diminish the fearful figure of the old man, the great hero, Thalion the Steadfast, furthering still the purposes of Morgoth, as he was doomed to do. But it seems to me now, many years later, to have been an excessive tampering with my father's actual thought and intention: thus raising the question, whether the attempt to make a 'unified' Silmarillion should have been embarked on.

NOTES.

1. With the beginning of this passage cf. Q (IV.131): 'Some have said that Morwen, wandering woefully from Thingol's halls, when she found Nienor not there on her return, came on a time to that stone and read it, and there died.' - For the abandoned idea that it was Turin who met Morwen in her wandering see pp. 161-2.

2. Hurin was born in 441 (GA $141). - At this point the first side of the 'lost manuscript' ends. The text on the reverse was struck through and replaced by a new text on a new sheet, all but identical in content but finely written - suggestive of confidence in this further extension of the Grey Annals.

3. Asgon reappears here, without introduction, from NE (Unfinished Tales p. 109), one of the men who fled with Turin from Brodda's hall; in the condensed account in GA ($297) he was not named.

4. The spellings Asgorn here, but Asgon in the preceding paragraph (see note 3), are clear. See note 21.

5. The term Eastron has not been used before.

6. 'Yet this can scarce be so': i.e., ignorance of Glaurung's death can scarcely be the reason for Hurin's going to Nargothrond.

7. The space marked by a caret evidently awaited the name of the new Lord of Brethil.

8. 'He must come of a different race': is this the first reference to the Petty-dwarves?

9. (Annal 490-5) The name Iarwaeth has appeared in GA $268 (see also p. 142, commentary on $277, at end), but Thuringud 'the Hidden Foe' is found nowhere else: cf. Finduilas' name for Turin, Thurin 'the Secret', Unfinished Tales pp. 157, 159).

10. (Annal 494) The statements that Morgoth stirred up the Eastrons (see note 5) to greater hatred of the Elves and Edain, and that Lorgan sought to take Nienor by force, are entirely new. In GA ($274) it is clear that Morwen and Nienor left Dor-lomin because the lands had become more safe.

11. (Annal 495) Cirith Ninniach, the final name of the Rainbow Cleft, is found in the later Tale of Tuor (Unfinished Tales p. 23), where also the meeting of Tuor with Gelmir and Arminas is recounted (pp. 21 - 2); the name was added to the map (p. 182, square c 4). On the story of their coming to Nargothrond and its relation to the Grey Annals see pp. 141 - 2, commentary on $277.

It may be mentioned here that in another 'plot-synopsis' concerning Turin my father referred to the two Elves by the names Faramir and Arminas, adding in a note: 'Faramir and Arminas were later Earendil's companions on voyage'.

The 'Narrow Land' is the Pass of Sirion. The form Erydwethian occurs in the typescript text of 'Gelmir and Arminas'

(p. 142).

'[Handir's] son Brandir the lame is chosen Chieftain, though many would have preferred his cousins Hunthor or Hardang': there has been no previous suggestion of a disagreement over the succession to Brandir; judging by the outspokenness of the people of Brethil as recorded in NE, they would surely have used it against Brandir if they had known of it. - The name Hunthor replaced Torbarth as that of the 'kinsman of Brandir', who died at Cabed-en-Aras, in NE (this change was not made in GA: see p. 156). He appears in the genealogical table of the Haladin (p. 237), but his descent had by this time been changed: for this, and for Hardang, another cousin, see pp. 268-70.

The defeat of Tum-halad has not previously been attributed to

'the dread of Glaurung', nor has it been said that Turin gave his word to Gwindor that he would endeavour to save Finduilas.

On the form Haudh-en-Elleth see p. 148, $301.

The story that Tuor and Voronwe saw Turin journeying northward at Eithil Ivrin has appeared in an inserted annal entry in GA ($299), but no more was said there than that 'they saw Turin pass, but spoke not with him'. For the fullest account see the later Tale of Tuor, Unfinished Tales pp. 37-8.

12. (Annal 496) The death of Sador in the fighting in Brodda's hall is told in NE (Unfinished Tales p. 108), where also Asgon of Dor-lomin first appears (p. 109).

13. (Annal 497) Lindis of Ossiriand: no mention has been made before of the wife of Dior Thingol's heir. See further The Tale of Years, pp. 349-51.

14. (Annal 498) In GA ($319) Turin and Niniel were married 'at the mid-summer' of 498, and she conceived in the spring of 499.

15. (Annal 499) Of course Glaurung did not reveal to Turin 'who he was': he did not need to. But this is without significance: it was a short-hand when writing very fast (in the same annal my father wrote 'Nargothrond' for 'Brethil' and 'Tuor' for 'Turin'), and means that it was through the words of Glaurung that Turin and Nienor came to know that they were brother and sister.

The name Talbor of the memorial stone raised at Cabed-en-Aras has not been given before.

For previous mentions of Mim and the treasure of Nargothrond, and his death at the hand of Hurin, see the Tale of Turambar, II.113 - 14; the Sketch of the Mythology, IV.32; the Annals of Beleriand (AB 1 and AB 2), IV.306 and V.141; and Q, IV.132 and commentary IV.187 - 8.

16. (Annal 500) The names Elrun and Eldun of the sons of Dior appear in emendations made to Q (IV.135) and AB 2 (V.142 and note 42), replacing Elboron and Elbereth. It has not been said that they were twin brothers (in the Genealogies associated with

- AB 1, of which some extracts were given in V.403, their birthdates were three years apart, 192 and 195, - later 492, 495: these latter are found in the genealogical table of the House of Beor, p. 231).