Therefore now they raised Beren gently up and tended him and washed him, and he breathed, but he spoke not nor opened his eyes, and when the sun arose and they had rested a little they bore him as softly as might be upon a bier of boughs back through the woodlands; and nigh midday they drew near the homes of the folk again, and then were they deadly weary, and Beren had not moved nor spoken, but groaned thrice.
There did all the people flock to meet them when their approach was noised among them, and some bore them meat and cool drinks and salves and healing things for their hurts, and but for the harm that Beren had met great indeed had been their joy. Now then they covered the leafy boughs whereon he lay with soft raiment, and they bore him away to the halls of the king, and there was Tinúviel awaiting them in great distress; and she fell upon Beren’s breast and wept and kissed him, and he awoke and knew her, and after Mablung gave him that Silmaril, and he lifted it above him gazing at its beauty, ere he said slowly and with pain: ‘Behold, O King, I give thee the wondrous jewel thou didst desire, and it is but a little thing found by the wayside, for once methinks thou hadst one beyond thought more beautiful, and she is now mine.’ Yet even as he spake the shadows of Mandos lay upon his face, and his spirit fled in that hour to the margin of the world, and Tinúviel’s tender kisses called him not back.
*
[Here V?ann? suddenly ceased speaking, but she wept, and after a while she said ‘Nay, that is not all the tale; but here endeth all that I rightly know’. In the conversation that followed one Ausir said: ‘I have heard that the magic of Tinúviel’s tender kisses healed Beren, and recalled his spirit from the gates of Mandos, and long time he dwelt among the Lost Elves . . .’]
But another said: ‘Nay, that was not so, O Ausir, and if thou wilt listen I will tell the true and wondrous tale; for Beren died there in Tinúviel’s arms even as V?ann? has said, and Tinúviel crushed with sorrow and finding no comfort or light in all the world followed him swiftly down those dark ways that all must tread alone. Now her beauty and tender loveliness touched even the cold heart of Mandos, so that he suffered her to lead Beren forth once more into the world, nor has this ever been done since to Man or Elf, and many songs and stories are there of the prayer of Tinúviel before the throne of Mandos that I remember not right well. Yet said Mandos to those twain: “Lo, O Elves, it is not to any life of perfect joy that I dismiss you, for such may no longer be found in all the world where sits Melko of the evil heart—and know that ye will become mortal even as Men, and when ye fare hither again it will be for ever, unless the Gods summon you indeed to Valinor.” Nonetheless those twain departed hand in hand, and they fared together through the northern woods, and oftentimes were they seen dancing magic dances down the hills, and their name became heard far and wide.’
[Then V?ann? said:] ‘Aye, and they did more than dance, for their deeds afterward were very great, and many tales are there thereof that thou must hear, O Eriol Melinon, upon another time of tale-telling. For these twain it is that stories name i-Cuilwarthon, which is to say the dead that live again, and they became mighty fairies in the lands about the north of Sirion. Behold now all is ended—and doth it like thee?’
[Then Eriol said that he had not expected to hear such an astonishing story from one such as V?ann?, to which she answered:]
‘Nay, but I fashioned it not with words of myself; but it is dear to me—and indeed all the children know of the deeds that it relates—and I have learned it by heart, reading it in the great books, and I do not comprehend all that is set therein.’
*
DURING THE 1920s my father was engaged in the casting of the Lost Tales of Turambar and Tinúviel into verse. The first of these poems, The Lay of the Children of Húrin, in the Old English alliterative metre, was begun in 1918, but when far from completion he abandoned it, very probably when he left the University of Leeds. In the summer of 1925, the year in which he took up his appointment to the professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, he began ‘the poem of Tinúviel’, called The Lay of Leithian. This he translated ‘Release from Bondage’, but he never explained the title.
Remarkably and uncharacteristically he inserted dates at many points. The first of these, at line 557 (in the numbering of the poem as a whole) is 23 August 1925; and the last, 17 September 1931, is written against line 4085. Not far beyond this, at line 4223, the poem was abandoned, at the point in the narrative where ‘the fangs of Carcharoth crashed together like a trap’ on Beren’s hand bearing the Silmaril, as he fled from Angband. For the remainder of the poem that was never written there are prose synopses.
In 1926 he sent many of his poems to R.W. Reynolds, who had been his teacher at King Edward’s School in Birmingham. In that year he composed a substantial text with the title Sketch of the mythology with especial reference to The Children of Húrin, and on the envelope containing this manuscript he wrote later that this text was ‘the original Silmarillion’, and that he had written it for Mr Reynolds in order to ‘explain the background of the “alliterative version” of Túrin and the Dragon.’
This Sketch of the Mythology was ‘the original Silmarillion’ because from it there was a direct line of evolution; whereas there is no stylistic continuity with the Lost Tales. The Sketch is what its name implies: it is a synopsis, composed in a terse, present-tense manner. I give here the passage in the text that tells in briefest form the tale of Beren and Lúthien.
A PASSAGE FROM THE ‘SKETCH OF THE MYTHOLOGY’
The power of Morgoth begins to spread once more. One by one he overthrows Men and Elves in the North. Of these a famous chieftain of Men was Barahir, who had been a friend of Celegorm of Nargothrond.