It is quite clear, then, that Artanor, afterwards called Doriath (which appears in the title to the typescript text of the Tale of Tinъviel, together with an earlier form Dor Athro, p. 41), lay in the original conception in much the same relation to Hisilуmл (the Land of Shadow(s), Dor Lуmin, Aryador) as does Doriath to Hithlum (Hisilуmл) in The Silmarillion: to the south, and divided from it by a mountain-range, the Iron Mountains or Bitter Hills.
In commenting on the tale of The Theft of Melko and the Darkening of Valinor I have noticed (I. 158–9) that whereas in the Lost Tales Hisilуmл is declared to be beyond the Iron Mountains, it is also said (in the Tale of Turambar, p. 77) that these mountains were so named from Angband, the Hells of Iron, which lay beneath ‘their northernmost fastnesses’, and that therefore there seems to be 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’.
Now in the Tale of Tinъviel Beren, journeying north from Artanor, ‘drew nigh to the lower hills and treeless lands that warned of the approach of the bleak Iron Mountains’ (p. 14). These he had previously traversed, coming out of Hisilуmл but now ‘he followed the Iron Mountains till he drew nigh to the terrible regions of Melko’s abode’. This seems to support the suggestion that the mountains fencing Hisilуmл from the Lands Beyond were continuous with those above Angband; and we may compare the little primitive map (I. 81), where the mountain range f isolates Hisilуmл (g): see I. 112, 135. The implication is that ‘dim’ or ‘black’ Hisilуmл had no defence against Melko.
There appear now also the Mountains of Night (pp. 20, 46–7), and it seems clear that the great pinewoods of Taurfuin, the Forest of Night, grew upon those heights (in The Silmarillion Dorthonion ‘Land of Pines’, afterwards named Taur-nu-Fuin). Dairon was lost there, but Tinъviel, though she passed near, did not enter ‘that dark region’. There is nothing to show that it was not placed then as it was later—to the east of Ered Wethrin, the Mountains of Shadow. It is also at least possible that the description (in the manuscript version only, p. 23) of Tinъviel, on departing from Huan, leaving ‘the shelter of the trees’ and coming to ‘a region of long grass’ is a first intimation of the great plain of Ard-galen (called after its desolation Anfauglith and Dor-nu-Fauglith), especially if this is related to the passage in the typescript version telling of Tinъviel’s meeting with Huan ‘in a little glade nigh to the forest’s borders, where the first grasslands begin that are nourished by the upper waters of the river Sirion’ (p. 47).
After their escape from Angamandi Huan found Beren and Tinъviel ‘in that northward region of Artanor that was called afterward Nan Dumgorthin, the land of the dark idols’ (p. 35). In the Gnomish dictionary Nan Dumgorthin is defined as ‘a land of dark forest east of Artanor where on a wooded mountain were hidden idols sacrificed to by some evil tribes of renegade men’ (dum ‘secret, not to be spoken’, dumgort, dungort ‘an (evil) idol’). In the Lay of the Children of Hъrin in alliterative verse Tъrin and his companion Flinding (later Gwindor), fleeing after the death of Beleg Strongbow, came to this land:
There the twain enfolded phantom twilight
and dim mazes dark, unholy,
in Nan Dungorthin where nameless gods
have shrouded shrines in shadows secret,
more old than Morgoth or the ancient lords
the golden Gods of the guarded West.
But the ghostly dwellers of that grey valley
hindered nor hurt them, and they held their course
with creeping flesh and quaking limb.
Yet laughter at whiles with lingering echo,
as distant mockery of demon voices
there harsh and hollow in the hushed twilight
Flinding fancied, fell, unwholesome…
There are, I believe, no other references to the gods of Nan Dumgorthin. In the poem the land was placed west of Sirion; and finally, as Nan Dungortheb ‘the Valley of Dreadful Death’, it becomes in The Silmarillion (pp. 81, 121) a ‘no-land’ between the Girdle of Melian and Ered Gorgoroth, the Mountains of Terror. But the description of it in the Tale of Tinъviel as a ‘northward region of Artanor’ clearly does not imply that it lay within the protective magic of Gwendeling, and it seems that this ‘zone’ was originally less distinctly bounded, and less extensive, than ‘the Girdle of Melian’ afterwards became. Probably Artanor was conceived at this time as a great region of forest in the heart of which was Tinwelint’s cavern, and only his immediate domain was protected by the power of the queen:
Hidden was his dwelling from the vision and knowledge of Melko by the magics of Gwendeling the fay, and she wove spells about the paths thereto that none but the Eldar might tread them easily, and so was the king secured from all dangers save it be treachery alone. (p. 9).
It seems, also, that her protection was originally by no means so complete and so mighty a wall of defence as it became. Thus, although Orcs and wolves disappeared when Beren and Tinъviel ‘stepped within the circle of Gwendeling’s magic that hid the paths from evil things and kept harm from the regions of the woodelves’ (p. 35), the fear is expressed that even if Beren and Tinъviel reached the cavern of King Tinwelint ‘they would but draw the chase behind them thither’ (p. 34), and Tinwelint’s people feared that Melko would ‘upraise his strength and come utterly to crush them and Gwendeling’s magic have not the strength to withhold the numbers of the Orcs’ (p. 36).
The picture of Menegroth beside Esgalduin, accessible only by the bridge (The Silmarillion pp. 92–3) goes back to the beginning, though neither cave nor river are named in the tale. But (as will be seen more emphatically in later tales in this book) Tinwelint, the wood-fairy in his cavern, had a long elevation before him, to become ultimately Thingol of the Thousand Caves (‘the fairest dwelling of any king that has ever been east of the Sea’). In the beginning, Tinwelint’s dwelling was not a subterranean city full of marvels, silver fountains falling into basins of marble and pillars carved like trees, but a rugged cave; and if in the typescript version the cave comes to be ‘vaulted immeasureable’, it is still illuminated only by the dim and flickering light of torches (pp. 43, 46).
There have been earlier references in the Lost Tales to Tinwelint and the place of his dwelling. In a passage added to, but then rejected from, the tale of The Chaining of Melko (I. 106, note 1) it is said that he was lost in Hisilуmл and met Wendelin there; ‘loving her he was content to leave his folk and dance for ever in the shadows’. In The Coming of the Elves (I. 115) ‘Tinwл abode not long with his people, and yet ’tis said lives still lord of the scattered Elves of Hisilуmл’ and in the same tale (I. 118–19) the ‘Lost Elves’ were still there ‘long after when Men were shut in Hisilуmл by Melko’, and Men called them the Shadow Folk, and feared them. But in the Tale of Tinъviel the conception has changed. Tinwelint is now a king r’uling, not in Hisilуmл, but in Artanor.* (It is not said where it was that he came upon Gwendeling.)
In the account (manuscript version only, see pp. 9, 42) of Tinwelint’s people there is mention of Elves ‘who remained in the dark’ and this obviously refers to Elves who never left the Waters of Awakening. (Of course those who were lost on the march from Palisor also never left ‘the dark’ (i.e. they never came to the light of the Trees), but the distinction made in this sentence is not between the darkness and the light but between those who remained and those who set out). On the emergence of this idea in the course of the writing of the Lost Tales see I. 234. Of Tinwelint’s subjects ‘the most were Ilkorindi’, and they must be those who ‘had been lost upon the march from Palisor’ (earlier, ‘the Lost Elves of Hisilуmл’).