![]() |
![]() |
Visit The *EVEN NEWER* Barrow-Downs Photo Page |
|
![]() |
#1 | |
Shade of Carn Dûm
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Tol Morwen
Posts: 332
![]() |
![]()
So, in his 1958 cursory revision of the Quenta, Tolkien somewhat changed its conclusion, that is, the Second Prophecy of Mandos. (p. 247 of The War of the Jewels)
Some of the changes are: 1) in the revised version, Turin doesn't return from the Halls of Mandos, but from the Doom of Men (from beyond the Circles of the World, from outside of Ea in other words) 2) in the previous version, it was Yavanna who broke the Silmarils and rekindled the Two Trees - in this one, it is Feanor himself who breaks them 3) Tolkien rejected the last two sentences, which go like this: In that light the Gods will grow young again, and the Elves awake and all their dead arise, and the purpose of Ilúvatar be fulfilled concerning them. But of Men in that day the prophecy of Mandos doth not speak, and no Man it names, save Túrin only, and to him a place is given among the sons of the Valar. 4) and the final change, or rather an addition, which inspired me to make this thread since I couldn't find any discussion about it online: Beren returns at the end of time! I guess the purpose of this post is to find out what others might think of this, frankly quite weird addition. Personally, after spending way too much time thinking about this, my headcanon is that, at that time in Tolkien's life, while Turin was there at the end of the world in order to kill Morgoth (with Gurthang, 'Iron of Death'), Beren might have been intended to vanquish Sauron (maybe with Dagmor, 'Slayer of Darkness', his sword?). (Well, never mind the fact that I don't know of any text that places Sauron at Dagor Dagorath, even though I think it is not completely unreasonable to assume this). From what I gathered from the many different versions of the end times, it seems that in every one of them Morgoth is vanquished permanently (as in wiped from the face of...well...everything - that is, his very spirit and essence seem to be annihilated). This led me to believe that Sauron, the next in line to Morgoth, so to speak, might suffer the same fate, perhaps by none other than Beren Camlost (who is also thematically tied to Sauron in many, many ways). So, what do you folks think?
__________________
Quote:
Last edited by Arvegil145; 09-22-2022 at 12:57 PM. |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#2 | ||
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,857
![]() ![]() |
Oh wow!
So I've started out by taking the Second Prophecy from HoME V.333 and making the amends Christopher lists in XI.246-7. The latest Second Prophecy, including Tolkien's added sub-heading, looks like this: Quote:
What immediately jumps out is that the only hint of a full-scale battle is that it is "gathered on the fields of Valinor". The only enemy combatant named is Morgoth: he breaks through the Door of Night, destroys the Sun and Moon, is forced down into Valinor, and fights Tulkas, Eonwe, Turin, and Beren. Are there armies of orcs and elves involved, with captains and hosts and all that jazz? Tolkien doesn't say, and it's actually hard to imagine how the orcs could get to Valinor in the first place. In any case, Beren is specifically said to be facing Morgoth. Perhaps the "battle" is simple a clash between the two great Powers: Tulkas, who has spent the life of Arda preparing for this battle, and Morgoth, who has spent it nurturing his rage. I can imagine Eonwe's only task is to try and contain the battle, so that all of Valinor isn't destroyed outright (though quite possibly devastated, given that immediately afterwards 'the Earth shall be broken and remade'). That makes Turin and Beren the Little People - small, unnoticed actors who can nevertheless change the course of the battle. Because Tolkien's great victories don't usually come through standing on a battlefield in single combat. Beren retrieved the Silmaril while Morgoth slept; Turin hid and struck Glaurung from below; Merry stabbed the Witch-King in the back so Eowyn could take him out; and of course the whole War of the Ring was a vast diversion to keep Sauron from noticing Frodo and Sam pushing his self-destruct button. Would the Final Battle be any different? I mean, heck, Beren Camlost would never be seen on a battlefield if he could possibly be unseen instead. I feel like the most canonical thing for Beren and Turin to do would be: a) argue, b) wait until Morgoth is entirely distracted by his imminent victory over Tulkas, and then c) have Beren stab him in his wounded foot so that he leans down and Turin can get in there with Gurthang. (Or they could chase him up a tree, which is always my favourite version of the story.) Actually, that thread is the one where I collected all the Dagor Dagorath sources I could find; I'll probably go back and add in this one, because I never spotted that Tolkien had edited it before! It includes what I suspect is the last Dagorath text from HoME XII "The Problem of Ros": Quote:
hS
__________________
Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#3 | ||
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: In that far land beyond the Sea
Posts: 7,431
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]()
Whoa, what a thread!
Quote:
But of course the concept of Dagor Dagorath itself is in this sense very un-Tolkien-y: it is hard to imagine anyone pulling some Frodo trick in the middle of a battle that is literally meant to be a battle and nothing else (note the word root "dagor" repeating twice). The equivalent being... hm hmm... well, "pulling a Frodo trick" would mean destroying the Ring while the Enemy is otherwise occupied, ergo... ergo while Tulkas distracts Melkor, Beren - who after all was apt at stealing Simarils from under others' noses - destroys Morgoth's 'Ring'! Oh wait... Morgoth's Ring... where have I heard that... ![]() Okay, seems like I inadverently devised an unexpected twist version of Dagor Dagorath, where somehow, while the supernatural powers are concerned with their massive battle of cosmic proportions, the humble Men, the humble Children of Eru, represented specifically by Beren, steal and destroy Arda, thus bringing about the victory of the 'good guys'. You're welcome. (Yeah, this is my self that relishes in absurd drama and dadaism speaking here: I have no idea how this would actually come to be, but I just accept the notion that it would. The rest are details.) Quote:
But yes, if we go with the full-scale battle, then Wolf Sauron would make a lot of sense. Even though I somehow feel that if we take the analogy, then we should take into account that Túrin is not fighting the same Glaurung, but he is fighting Ancalagon. So following the same logic, Beren should not be fighting Sauron either. What is Ancalagon? Some sort of Glaurung's offspring, a "follow-up", powerful, more mobile though not as old. I don't think we can find a perfect analogy, but one of the first obvious thoughts is the Witch-King. This would have several advantages: 1) We'd have a "named" representative of the evil Men on the side, so we get the "mortal" side of the battle. If Men are so instrumental to this climactic event, or to the fate of the universe as it is continuously hinted at in various places, it would be only "fair" to underline this by having some of them also on the other side. (I am not doubting that there would not be some horde of evil Men, if we are thinking the massive-scale battle, but it would add something to it if we had a "named" - yet-not-really-named, which I, sidenote, sorta personally like for the notion that evil does not get to be remembered - representative.) 2) It would in a lovely manner underline the ominous line in LotR where, after Witch-King gets chopped down by Éowyn, it says "...a voice bodiless and thin that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of this world." (emphasis mine) Now we'd know that this refers to Dagor Dagorath, and we'd know exactly where! 3) Purely cosmetic addendum, since I mentioned the differences between Túrin's original and later foes, Glaurung and Ancalagon, as Ancalagon being the "more mobile", now I can imagine WK riding on some Fell Beast into the final battle and also being "mobile". Not necessary, but why not.
__________________
"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories |
||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#4 | ||
Shade of Carn Dûm
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Tol Morwen
Posts: 332
![]() |
Quote:
Why Tolkien did that, meaning shifting Turin's fate from killing Morgoth at the end of time to Turin killing Ancalagon in the War of Wrath, is anybody's guess IMO. One thing to keep in mind though, is that the prophecy is made by Andreth, a mortal woman of the Edain (as opposed to Mandos), in this conception of the legendarium - and it may well have been the case that Tolkien, when he decided that the histories of the Elder Days were Mannish in origin and that the Elves had no predictions of their own regarding the ending of the world, simply intended Andreth's prophecy to have been one among many others.
__________________
Quote:
|
||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#5 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,857
![]() ![]() |
Quote:
1/ Andreth died just after the Bragollach, about a decade before Turin was even born. The "one prophecy among any others" explanation would have to assume that she correctly foresaw the birth of Turin and Morgoth's emnity with him, and the creation of Ancalagon - but then added a false prophecy on the end about him coming back 50 years after his death. 2/ The context in which "the language of the Folk of Haleth was not used", and wouldn't be unless Turin returned from the Dead, is Earendil's appeal to the Valar. There isn't a lot of time between those two events; and "Problem of Ros" namechecks Numenor, which means if it has an internal existence at all (which the ambiguity in the prophecy suggests), it must be a Numenorean or Gondorian text writing after the War of Wrath. It seems more plausible that between footnote and text, Tolkien used two different meanings of Last Battle, than that he suddenly decided to resurrect Turin for the War of Wrath and simultaneously overturn Earendil's longstanding killing of Ancalagon. If it is a reference to the War of Wrath, then for the Dagorath we're back where we started: there's no references to a battle later than the Lost Tales, just to a four-on-one duel with Morgoth. hS
__________________
Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#6 | |||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 1,033
![]() ![]() |
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
My "in story" (tentative) theory: the Numenorean Myth (the former Second Prophecy) is a garbling, in part, of Andreth's Prophecy, altering her (in my opinion) more-likely-to-be-true prophetic inspiration into a next stage bit of myth-making . . . . . . in other words, the tale grew in the telling: the "Last Battle" of Andreth's Prophecy is ultimately confused for an end-of-times "Last Battle" myth, in which Turin the famous dragon slayer goes from giving Ancalagon his death stroke (prophecy) -- to delivering Morgoth his death stroke. Or not. If that doesn't work? |
|||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#7 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,857
![]() ![]() |
I mean... no? But if Turin actually returned for the War of Wrath, the total absence of this concept anywhere else in the Legendarium, the contradiction with the statements that Beren was the only mortal to return from death, and the fact that he would have waited in the Halls of Mandos for 50+ years rather than moving on, all make it difficult to accept at face value. It also takes a mythic Returning Hero and turns him into a historically-verifiable event: Bilbo could ask Elrond about it and be told, "Oh yeah, Turin came back for a bit; I chatted with him, he was intense." It just doesn't feel like it fits.
Quote:
![]() Well, "The Problem of Ros" mentions Numenor. That means the document as a whole must post-date the War of Wrath, and so any prophecy relating to it would have to be in the past tense ("unless the prophecy of Andreth was true, and Turin in the War of Wrath returned, and slew Ancalagon"). They would also know whether it happened. ![]() Even if the "Turin" footnote is held to be earlier than other parts of the document - when earlier? It relays details of what Earendil said to Manwe, which means someone must have passed on to the recorder; that means it has to have been written between the arrival of the Armies of Valinor and the death of Ancalagon. I just have a hard time believing a continent-destroying war is a good time to jot down notes on what that Elros bloke's name means, oh and btw watch out for a grumpy guy with an evil sword, he's got an appointment with a dragon and you do NOT wanna get in his way. Could Andreth have prophesies about the War of Wrath? Sure. Finrod in her presence speaks prophetically of both the Bragollach and Arda Renewed, so we know that both timeframes were available to foresight. But I don't think this source text can be held up as supporting such a prophecy. hS
__________________
Have you burned the ships that could bear you back again? ~Finrod: The Rock Opera |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
|
![]() |