Thanks for the kind words Prince! And if interested, in early versions (I updated names in almost all cases)...
spoiler alert space
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
...
Thingol, wearing the Nauglamir, is out on a hunt, noted in BOLT as a yearly hunt in memory of the great wolf-hunt of
Beren, and he's joined by Mablung, who tells the king that
Huan is in
Doriath too.
The scene moves to
Melian. Doriath is entered by hostile folk due to the help of a treacherous
Elf who had been
"bitten by the gold-lust" of
Glaurung's hoard. This Elf had led a host through the magic of Melian. Melian speaks to another Elf who was in league with the baddies too (including
Orcs):
"Get thee now gone with thy foul Orcs, lest Tinwelint [Thingol] coming repay thee bitterly"
The Elf laughs (but ill at ease, and does not look at Melian), saying:
"Nay but he is already come." The Dwarf-lord of Nogrod enters (called Naugladur in the early tale, and at least at one point referred to as king), wearing the Nauglamir and
bearing the head of Thingol "crowned and helmed in gold". Thingol's fate is soon told.
While on the hunt, Thingol rests amid mirth and laughter, but suddenly the king and his company are surrounded by foes. Huan is heard baying. Thingol and Mablung fall side by side, and the
dwarf Naugladur only beheads an already slain Thingol, not daring the king's
sword nor the
axe of Mablung [
Tolkien also noted a direction here: the story was to be that the Nauglamir caught in the bushes and held the king].
Huan escapes; Melian too, as when her foes try to seize her they
"groped as if in sudden dark, or stumbled and fell tripping each the other..." Christopher Tolkien comments that Melian's
"protective magic was easily -- too easily -- overthrown by the simple device of a single treacherous Elf (...) this was evidently unsatisfactory"
Later, with respect to this "unsatisfactory" comment I think, CJRT refers to the
"cannot" that Tolkien wrote against an entry for year 503 in a version of
The Tales of Years, which read:
"The Dwarves of Belegost and Norgrod invade Doriath" (Tolkien also penciled an
X here)...
... and thus we come to Tolkien's note as I quoted in my previous post, where we have Melian departing before Doriath is ravaged by the Dwarves. Along with the BOLT description, there were at least two other, but brief, mentions of Thingol's hunt and treacherous
Elves helping the ruin of Doriath...
... but The
Tale of Years "cannot", and note, are later than these sources, Tolkien still trying to find the "true" story here.
