Q: Who was the Prophet who Foretold Gondolin’s Fall?
ANSWER: A reader asks if there is any information about the prophet mentioned in “The Fall of Gondolin” who, according to Turgon, foretold the fall of the city. “The Fall of Gondolin” was published in The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two and was part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s long-abandoned “mythology for England”. However, “The Fall of Gondolin” is also believed to be the first of the many stories JRRT composed for The Book of Lost Tales. The passage in question reads thus:
Then dread fell on all for the doom of the fountain, and the square was filled with mists of scalding heat and blinding fogs, and the people of the royal house were killed therein by heat and by the foe and by the serpents and by one another: but a body of them saved the king, and there was a rally of men beneath Glingol and Bansil. Then said the king: “Great is the fall of Gondolin”, and men shuddered, for such were the words of Amnon the prophet of old;” but Tuor speaking wildly for ruth and love of the king cried: “Gondolin stands yet, and Ulmo will not suffer it to perish!” Now were they at that time standing, Tuor by the Trees and the king upon the Stairs, as they had stood aforetime when Tuor spake the embassy of Ulmo. But Turgon said: “Evil have I brought upon the Flower of the Plain in despite of Ulmo, and now he leaveth it to wither in the fire. Lo! hope is no more in my heart for my city of loveliness, but the children of the Noldoli shall not be worsted for ever.”
To learn more about this prophet we must turn back to The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, where Christopher Tolkien writes:
In The Silmarillion (p. 87) there is a suggestion that the speaker of the Prophecy of the North was Mandos himself ‘and no lesser herald of Manwe’, and its gravity, indeed its centrality in the mythology, is far greater; here there is no suggestion of a ‘doom’ or ‘curse’, but only a foretelling. This foretelling included the dark words ‘Great is the fall of Gondolin’. In the tale of The Fall of Gondolin (but in an interpolated sentence very possibly later than the present tale) Turgon, standing upon the stairs of his palace amid the destruction of the city, uttered these same words, ‘and men shuddered, for such were the words of Amnon the prophet of old’. Here Amnon (rather than Amnos as in the present text, itself an emendation from Emnon) is not a place but a person (the servant of Vefantur who uttered the prophecy?).
In the little notebook referred to above occurs the following jotting:
Prophecy of Amnon. Great is the fall of Gondolin. Lo Turgon shall not fade till the lily of the valley fadeth.
In some other notes for the Lost Tales this takes the form: Prophecy of Amnon. ‘Great is the fall of Gondolin’ and ‘When the lily of the valley withers than shall Turgon fade’. In these notes Amnon might be either place or person. The ‘lily of the valley’ is Gondolin itself, one of whose Seven Names was Losengriol, later Lothengriol, which is translated ‘flower of the vale or lily of the valley’.
The “present text” to which Christopher refers is “The Flight of the Noldoli”, and Amnos is mentioned in passing:
‘Thou hast told the true tale,’ said Rumil, ‘yet hast thou not said how ere they came to Helkarakse the host passed by that place where Mornie is wont to be beached, for there a steep and rugged path winds down from Mandos deep in the mountains that the souls whom Fui sends to Arvalin must tread.’ There did a servant of Vefantur spy them and asking what might that wayfaring mean pled with them to return, but they answered him scornfully, so that standing upon a high rock he spoke to them aloud and his voice came even to the fleet upon the waves; and he foretold to them many of the evil adventures that after came to them, warning them against Melko, and at last he said: “Great is the fall of Gondolin”, and none there understood, for Turondo son of Noleme’ was not yet upon the Earth. But the wise men stored his sayings, for Mandos and all his people have a power of prophecy, and these words were treasured long among them as the Prophecies of Amnos, for thus was the place where they were spoken called at that time, which now is Hanstovanen or the beaching place of Mornie.
Vefantur was the Vala who in later versions became Namo (usually referred to as Mandos). Mornie was the black ship (associated with death) that sailed between Mandos and Erumani. Erumani would have been geographically equivalent to the Avathar of The Silmarillion, the land south of the Bay of Eldamar where Morgoth met with Ungoliant.
A variation on the name (“Amnon”) appears in “The Tale of the Sun and Moon”:
Then did Lindo lift up his voice,’ and it was the most pleasant to hearken to of all tale-tellers, and he said: ‘A tale I tell of that time of the first flight of the Gnomes, and behold they are but newly fled. Now came that grievous news to the Gods and the other Elves, and at first none believed. Nonetheless the tidings came still unto them, and by many different messengers. Some were of the Teleri, who had heard the speech of Feanor in the square of Kor and had seen the Noldoli depart thence with all the goods they might convey; others were of the Solosimpi, and these brought the dire tidings of the swanships’ rape and the dread kinslaughter of the Haven, and the blood that lay on the white shores of Alqalunte.
Lastly came some hotfoot from Mandos who had gazed upon that sad throng nigh the strands of Amnor, and the Gods knew that the Gnomes were far abroad, and Varda and all the Elves wept, for now seemed the darkness black indeed and that more than the outward light of the fair Trees was slain.
In this passage Amnor seems to be a place, not a person, and perhaps the two names are not directly related but one can easily infer that Amnos/Amnon may have been the dweller in Amnor who prophesied for the rebellious Noldoli.
The name Amnon is also found in the Old Testament. He was the son of David who raped his own sister, Tamar; their brother Absalom slew him in revenge. In Hebrew “Amnon” means “faithful”. So far as I know, Tolkien never carried this name forward after he abandoned The Book of Lost Tales; the person and place were replaced by other names in what eventually became the published Silmarillion.
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