The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull
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very closely (if more briefly) that of The Silmarillion. Significant differences are few: Gorlim sees a phantom image of his missing wife by chance in a house and, believing her alive, deliberately seeks out Morgoth and betrays his comrades, hoping to be reunited with her; but he is killed by Morgoth. Beren, Felagund, and their companions are captured by Thû, Master of Wolves. After Beren steals away, Lúthien catches up with him first, and Huan comes later, having fetched the wolf coat and bat skin. Tolkien left the Lay unfinished in September 1931 at the point where Carcharoth devours Beren’s hand and the Silmaril.
The fourth and fifth synopses, however, contain additional material concerning the unwritten part of the Lay. During their flight Beren and Lúthien are ensnared by great spiders, but Huan rescues them, an idea which did not survive into later versions. As foretold, Huan is killed by Carcharoth in the great wolf hunt. The fate of the lovers is close to that in the Sketch: ‘Fading of Lúthien. Her journey to Mandos. The song of Lúthien in Mandos’ halls, and the release of Beren. They dwelt long in Broseliand, but spake never more to mortal Men, and Lúthien became mortal’ (*The Lays of Beleriand, p. 312). One idea which is referred to several times in the Lay and synopses, but which Tolkien abandoned in later versions, is that Morgoth sent a war band under Boldog to capture Lúthien.
The *Quenta Noldorinwa, written c. 1930 while Tolkien was still working on the Lay of Leithian, contains a brief account of the story based on the Lay to which it even refers. The latter part, roughly from the point where Beren is injured by Celegorm, was written before the corresponding part of the Lay. It follows the fourth synopsis in that Beren does not steal away from Lúthien after his recovery, but Huan, learning that they are not certain what to do, brings them the wolfskin and bat-garb and counsels them. Tolkien hesitated about the sequence of events at this point; in the fifth synopsis Beren leaves alone and is overtaken by both Lúthien and Huan, whereas in the Lay Lúthien reaches him first and Huan arrives later with the skins. There is no suggestion that Morgoth forces Lúthien to abandon her bat disguise. By an addition, Huan speaks for a third time before he dies.
The story is given briefly in both the ‘earliest’ and the ‘later’ *Annals of Beleriand (early and mid-1930s respectively). According to the ‘earliest’ Annals Barahir was slain in Year 160, and the whole story of Beren and Lúthien took place in 163–4. In the ‘later’ Annals Barahir’s death takes place in 261, emended to 460; the deeds of Beren and Lúthien are spread over the longer period 263–5 (> 463–5).
When writing the *Quenta Silmarillion (mid-1930s–early 1938) Tolkien found it difficult to keep the story of Beren and Lúthien to a length commensurate with the rest of the work, abandoning not only an unfinished draft when he realized it was too long, but also a shorter fair copy that followed at the point where Felagund and Beren are about to leave Nargothrond. He then rewrote the entire story more succinctly, closely following the Lay of Leithian with only a few changes. One of these, of the name Thû to Sauron as the servant of Morgoth who captures Beren and Felagund, was merely a change of name, as is clear in various contemporary versions of *The Fall of Númenor. The evolution of the story of Beren and Lúthien was virtually complete by the end of 1937.
About 1950, Tolkien began to make a revision of the Lay of Leithian left unfinished nearly twenty years before, and a full prose version closely related to the revision. This work included a revision of the story of Gorlim, in which his treachery is less deep and deliberate. Tolkien also told the story of Beren and Lúthien in short in the *Grey Annals (c. 1951, see *Annals of Beleriand), adding a few details such as descriptions of the refuge of Barahir and his men.
The chapter ‘Of Beren and Lúthien’ in The Silmarillion was based for the most part on the texts of the Quenta Silmarillion of the 1930s, mainly on a rejected first fair copy as far as the point where Felagund gives the crown of Nargothrond to Orodreth, but with some elements from the complete fair copy which was the source for the rest of the chapter. Christopher Tolkien also took from the Grey Annals a short passage describing Barahir’s refuge, and several short phrases which elucidated points of importance. He took the account of Gorlim’s treachery from the revision of c. 1950, and inserted thirty-two lines from the Lay of Leithian describing the contest between Felagund and Sauron (covered in only one sentence in the Quenta Silmarillion). See further, discussion in *The Lost Road and Other Writings, pp. 295–306; The Lays of Beleriand, p. 196; and *The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp. 318 and 369, and p. 372, n. 8.
Compare Christopher Tolkien’s compilation of texts for the story in the volume *Beren and Lúthien (2017).
BACKGROUND TO THE STORY
The story of Beren and Lúthien was inspired by an incident in Tolkien’s life which occurred in late May or early June 1917, when *Edith Tolkien danced for her husband in a woodland glade. He described the event in a letter to his son Christopher in 1972:
I never called Edith Lúthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in *Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance. [11 July 1972, Letters, p. 420]
What this meant to Tolkien is shown by the inscription on the stone in Wolvercote Cemetery, *Oxford, marking the burial place of Ronald and Edith Tolkien: Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889–1971. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892–1973.
Tolkien commented on the story in a letter to *Milton Waldman in ?late 1951:
Here we meet, among other things, the first example of the motive … that the great policies of world history, ‘the wheels of the world’, are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak – owing to the secret life in creation, and the part unknowable to all wisdom but One, that resides in the intrusions of the Children of God into the Drama. It is Beren the outlawed mortal who succeeds (with the help of Lúthien, a mere maiden, even if an elf of royalty) where all the armies and warriors have failed: he penetrates the stronghold of the Enemy and wrests one of the Silmarilli from the Iron Crown. Thus he wins the hand of Lúthien and the first marriage of mortal and immortal is achieved. [Letters, p. 149]
CRITICISM
Christina Scull has noted that the significance of the story became greater in later versions as the importance of the Silmarils grew in the legendarium, and the one recovered by Beren and Lúthien enabled Eärendel to reach Valinor and obtain help against Morgoth. She also has found that the love of Beren and Lúthien for each other ‘becomes deeper in successive retellings, and seems at last foreordained in the Music of the Ainur’ (‘The Development of Tolkien’s Legendarium: Some Threads in the Tapestry of Middle-earth’, in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, ed. Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter (2000), p. 16).
T.A. Shippey in The Road to Middle-earth counts at least eight extant versions of the tale of Beren and Lúthien, varying in length, completeness, intrinsic merit, literary merit, and ‘importance for understanding the development of the whole story. Yet the existence of all the versions together does more than merely provide one with more “ox-bones” for study. It also radically alters the flavour of the soup, creating something of the “flavour of deep-rootedness” which Tolkien so often detected and admired’ (2nd edn. 1992, pp. 277–8; ‘ox-bones’ and ‘soup’ are references to *On Fairy-Stories). Shippey also discusses at length some small but significant details in the story, among them Beren’s oath to Thingol:
If one had only the Silmarillion version of this scene, its logic and development would seem perfectly clear. One irreducible fact about Beren is that he becomes … ‘the One-Handed’. … Since this is an irreducible fact, surely it must all along have been part of the story that Beren, in the scene with Thingol, should find himself swearing an unknowingly ironic oath: in the words