Barahir is driven into hiding, his hiding betrayed, and Barahir slain; his son Beren after a life outlawed flees south, crosses the Shadowy Mountains, and after grievous hardships comes to Doriath. Of this and his other adventures is told in The Lay of Leithian. He gains the love of Tinúviel ‘the nightingale’—his own name for Lúthien—the daughter of Thingol. To win her Thingol, in mockery, requires a Silmaril from the crown of Morgoth. Beren sets out to achieve this, is captured, and set in dungeon in Angband, but conceals his real identity and is given as a slave to Th? the hunter. Lúthien is imprisoned by Thingol, but escapes and goes in search of Beren. With the aid of Huan lord of dogs she rescues Beren, and gains entrance to Angband where Morgoth is enchanted and finally wrapped in slumber by her dancing. They get a Silmaril and escape, but are barred at gates of Angband by Carcaras the Wolf-ward. He bites off Beren’s hand which holds the Silmaril, and goes mad with the anguish of its burning within him.
They escape and after many wanderings get back to Doriath. Carcaras ravening through the woods bursts into Doriath. There follows the Wolf-hunt of Doriath, in which Carcaras is slain, and Huan is killed in defence of Beren. Beren is however mortally wounded and dies in Lúthien’s arms. Some songs say that Lúthien went even over the Grinding Ice, aided by the power of her divine mother, Melian, to Mandos’ halls and won him back; others that Mandos hearing his tale released him. Certain it is that he alone of mortals came back from Mandos and dwelt with Lúthien and never spoke to Men again, living in the woods of Doriath and in the Hunters’ Wold, west of Nargothrond.
It will be seen that there have been great changes in the legend, the most immediately evident being that of Beren’s captor: here we meet Th? ‘the hunter’. At the end of the Sketch it is said of Th? that he was the ‘great chief’ of Morgoth, and that he ‘escaped the Last Battle and dwells still in dark places, and perverts Men to his dreadful worship’. In The Lay of Leithian Th? emerges as the fearful Necromancer, Lord of Wolves, who dwelt in Tol Sirion, the island in the river Sirion with an Elvish watchtower, which came to be Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the Isle of Werewolves. He is, or will be, Sauron. Tevildo and his realm of cats have disappeared.
But in the background another significant element in the legend had emerged after The Tale of Tinúviel was written: this concerns the father of Beren. Egnor the forester, the Gnome ‘who hunted in the darker places of Hisilóm?’ (p. 41) has gone. Now, in the passage from the Sketch just given, his father is Barahir, ‘a famous chieftain of Men’: driven into hiding by the growing hostile power of Morgoth, his hiding was betrayed, and he was slain. ‘His son Beren after a life outlawed flees south, crosses the Shadowy Mountains, and after grievous hardships comes to Doriath. Of this and his other adventures is told in The Lay of Leithian.’
A PASSAGE EXTRACTED FROM THE LAY OF LEITHIAN
I give here the passage in the Lay (written in 1925; see p. 88) that describes the treachery of Gorlim, known as Gorlim the Unhappy, who betrayed to Morgoth the hiding place of Barahir and his companions, and the aftermath. I should mention here that the textual detail of the poem is very complex, but since my (ambitious) purpose in this book is to make a readily readable text that shows the narrative evolution of the legend at different stages, I have neglected virtually all detail of this nature, which could only confuse that purpose. An account of the textual history of the poem will be found in my book The Lays of Beleriand (The History of Middle-earth, Vol. III, 1985). I have taken the extracts from the Lay in the present book word for word from the text that I prepared for The Lays of Beleriand. The line-numbers are simply those of the extracts, and have no relation to those of the whole poem.
The extract that follows is taken from Canto II of the Lay. It is preceded by a description of the ferocious tyranny of Morgoth over the northern lands at the time of Beren’s coming into Artanor (Doriath), and of the survival in hiding of Barahir and Beren and ten others, hunted in vain by Morgoth for many years, until at last ‘their feet were caught in Morgoth’s snare’.
Gorlim it was, who wearying
of toil and flight and harrying
one night by chance did turn his feet o’er the dark fields by stealth to meet 5with hidden friends within a dale, and found a homestead looming pale
against the misty stars, all dark
save one small window, whence a spark of fitful candle strayed without.
10Therein he peeped, and filled with doubt he saw, as in a dreaming deep
when longing cheats the heart in sleep, his wife beside a dying fire
lament him lost; her thin attire
15and greying hair and paling cheek of tears and loneliness did speak.
‘A! fair and gentle Eilinel,
whom I had thought in darkling hell
long since emprisoned! Ere I fled
20I deemed I saw thee slain and dead upon that night of sudden fear
when all I lost that I held dear’:
thus thought his heavy heart amazed
outside in darkness as he gazed.
25But ere he dared to call her name, or ask how she escaped and came
to this far vale beneath the hills,
he heard a cry beneath the hills!
There hooted near a hunting owl
30with boding voice. He heard the howl of the wild wolves that followed him and dogged his feet through shadows dim.
Him unrelenting, well he knew,
the hunt of Morgoth did pursue.
35Lest Eilinel with him they slay without a word he turned away,
and like a wild thing winding led
his devious ways o’er stony bed
of stream, and over quaking fen,
40until far from the homes of men he lay beside his fellows few
in a secret place; and darkness grew, and waned, and still he watched unsleeping, and saw the dismal dawn come creeping 45in dank heavens above gloomy trees.
A sickness held his soul for ease,
and hope, and even thraldom’s chain
if he might find his wife again.
But all he thought twixt love of lord 50and hatred of the king abhorred and anguish for fair Eilinel
who drooped alone, what tale shall tell?
Yet at the last, when many days of brooding did his mind amaze,
55he found the servants of the king and bade them to their master bring
a rebel who forgiveness sought,
if haply forgiveness might be bought with tidings of Barahir the bold,
60and where his hidings and his hold might best be found by night or day.
And thus sad Gorlim, led away
unto those dark deep-dolven halls,
before the knees of Morgoth falls,
65and puts his trust in that cruel heart wherein no truth had ever part.
Quoth Morgoth: ‘Eilinel the fair
thou shalt most surely find, and there where she doth dwell and wait for thee 70together shall ye ever be, and sundered shall ye sigh no more.
Thus guerdon shall he have that bore these tidings sweet, O traitor dear!
For Eilinel she dwells not here,
75but in the shades of death doth roam widowed of husband and of home— a wraith of that which might have been, methinks, it is that thou hast seen!
Now shalt thou through the gates of pain 80the land thou askest grimly gain; thou shalt to the moonless mists of hell descend and seek thy Eilinel.’
Thus Gorlim died a bitter death
and cursed himself with dying breath, 85and Barahir was caught and slain, and all good deeds were made in vain.
But Morgoth’s guile for ever failed, nor wholly o’er his foes prevailed;
and some were ever that still fought 90unmaking that which malice wrought.
Thus Men believed that Morgoth made
the fiendish phantom that betrayed
the soul of Gorlim, and so brought
the lingering hope forlorn to nought 95that lived amid the lonely wood; yet Beren had by fortune good
long hunted far afield that day,
and benighted in strange places lay