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The Tale of Tinúviel in its rewritten form, which is the earliest form for us, was by no means the
earliest of the Lost Tales, and light is shed on it by features in other Tales. To speak only of narrative
structure, some of them, such as the tale of Túrin, are not very far removed from the version in the
published Silmarillion; some, notably the Fall of Gondolin, the first to be written, is present in the
published work only in a severely compressed form; and some, most remarkably the present Tale, are
strikingly different in certain aspects.
A fundamental change in the evolution of the legend of Beren and Tinúviel (Lúthien) was the entry
into it later of the story of Felagund of Nargothrond and the sons of Fëanor; but equally significant, in
a different aspect, was the alteration in the identity of Beren. In the later versions of the legend it was
an altogether essential element that Beren was a mortal man, whereas Lúthien was an immortal Elf;
but this was not present in the Lost Tale: Beren, also, was an Elf. (It is seen, however, from my
father’s notes to other Tales, that he was originally a Man; and it is clear that this was true also in the
erased manuscript of The Tale of Tinúviel.) Beren the Elf was of the Elvish people named the
Noldoli (later Noldor), which in the Lost Tales (and later) is translated ‘Gnomes’: Beren was a
Gnome. This translation later became a problem for my father. He was using another word Gnome,
wholly distinct in origin and meaning from those Gnomes who nowadays are small figures specially
associated with gardens. This other Gnome was . . . from a Greek word gnōmē ‘thought, intelligence’;
it barely survives in modern English, with the meaning ‘aphorism, maxim’, together with the adjective
gnomic.