The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1

Reviews of the published lecture had little to say against it. R.W. Chambers, for instance, wrote in Modern Language Review 33, no. 2 (April 1938) that ‘towards the study of Beowulf as a work of art, Professor Tolkien has made a contribution of the utmost importance.’ However, ‘instead of weaving them into his discourse’ Tolkien ‘has hidden away all too many of his good things in appendices and notes’ (pp. 272, 273). T.A. Shippey, in a useful brief overview of the critical response to Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, notes that Tolkien’s ‘defence of the poem as something existing in its own right … was seized on eagerly, even gratefully, by generations of critics’ (‘Structure and Unity’, p. 163).

One of these was his former B.Litt. student Joan Blomfield (*Joan Elizabeth Turville-Petre), who built on his remarks on the structure of Beowulf in an essay for the Review of English Studies (‘The Style and Structure of Beowulf’, 1938). Another was the Swiss scholar Adrien Bonjour, who in his monograph The Digressions in Beowulf (1950) stated unequivocally that he followed Tolkien concerning the general structure of the poem:

Professor Tolkien’s interpretation seems to us indeed by far the most satisfactory dramatically as well as artistically. It is, at the same time, perfectly objective: it considerably heightens our appreciation of the poem by showing the grand simplicity of its original design, its real perspective, its structural force and permanent human element – and all this on a quite solid basis, all the more solid that it is devoid of the speculative element inherent in so many other tentative explanations. [p. 70]

The first major criticism of Tolkien’s lecture did not appear until 1952. T.M. Gang, in his ‘Approaches to Beowulf’, Review of English Studies n.s. 3 (1952), disputed Tolkien’s view that

the dragon-fight symbolizes the tragedy of the human struggle against the forces of evil. … That Grendel, who is maddened by the sound of harps, should represent the outer darkness in all its active malevolence is plausible; but dragons were, after all, the natural guardians of treasures … unpleasant though they were, they were not accomplices of hell. Nor, for that matter, were they “things made by the imagination” for any purpose whatsoever; they were solid enough fact for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle [pp. 7–8]

Gang argued that Tolkien ‘never exactly claims that the poet’s original audience would have interpreted it as he does’, and that his ‘reconstruction of the Anglo-Saxon view of the world, leaning heavily as it does on the extremely doubtful evidence of Norse poetry (of a later date than Beowulf and suggestive of a very different outlook on life) can hardly be accepted as objective, unbiased, or altogether convincing’ (p. 11). This was answered by Adrien Bonjour, in defence of Tolkien, in ‘Monsters Crouching and Critics Rampant: or The Beowulf Dragon Debated’, PMLA 68 (March 1953). But Gang’s views were echoed by J.C. van Meurs in ‘Beowulf and Literary Criticism’, Neophilologus 39 (1955): he found it ‘difficult to believe that the poem contains as much implicit symbolism as Tolkien ascribes to it’ (p. 118), and worried that Tolkien’s theory was so attractive ‘that it is in danger of being taken as dogmatic truth by present-day Beowulf scholars’ (p. 115).

A more concerted disagreement was put forth by Kenneth Sisam in The Structure of Beowulf. He took issue with Tolkien’s ‘explanation of the architecture of Beowulf as an artistic balance between the first two-thirds … and the last part’ of the poem, and with ‘his view that the central theme is the battle, hopeless in this world, of man against evil’ (p. 21). According to Sisam,

if the two parts of the poem are to be solidly bound together by the opposition of youth and age, it is not enough that the hero should be young in the one part and old in the other. The change in his age must be shown to change his ability to fight monsters, since these fights make the main plot. Instead, Beowulf is represented from beginning to end as the scourge of monsters, always seeking them out and destroying them by the shortest way. [p. 24]

Whereas for Tolkien the unifying theme of the poem is ‘man at war with the hostile world and his inevitable overthrow in Time’, in Sisam’s view ‘the monsters Beowulf kills are inevitably evil and hostile because a reputation for heroism is not made by killing creatures that are believed to be harmless or beneficent – sheep for instance.’ The idea ‘that Beowulf was defeated, that “within Time the monsters would win”’ must be read into the text. ‘There is no word of his defeat in the poem … according to the poet, the Dragon Fight was “his last victory” (2710). On the other hand, all the monsters are utterly defeated’ (p. 25).

George Clark in his Beowulf (1990), while agreeing with certain aspects of Tolkien’s lecture and acknowledging its significance in the history of Beowulf studies, found fault with it for having marginalized Grendel’s mother and trivialized the dragon ‘into an emblem of malice, blaming the monster for being too symbolic, for not being “dragon enough,” then graciously relenting with the comment “But for Beowulf, the poem, that is as it should be.” But it is not so’ (p. 10). He also rejected Tolkien’s view of the Beowulf-poet, in part because ‘the membrane separating Tolkien’s critical and creative faculties was permeable in both directions’ (p. 12) – that is, in Clark’s opinion, Tolkien the writer of fiction influenced Tolkien the scholar: ‘we have no evidence for an Anglo-Saxon poet like Tolkien’s, indeed like Tolkien himself, a nostalgic re-creator of lost worlds, of pastiche’ (p. 16). In response, one could argue that a scholar who is also a storyteller may have an advantage in understanding the work of a ‘mighty predecessor and kindred spirit’, to quote T.A. Shippey in The Road to Middle-earth (2nd edn. 1992). No one, Shippey wrote, ‘had understood Beowulf but Tolkien. The work had always been something personal, even freakish, and it took someone with the same instincts to explain it. Sympathy furthermore depended on being a descendant, on living in the same country and beneath the same sky, on speaking the same language …’ (p. 44).

Although Clark would place ‘Tolkien’s critical paradigm’ firmly among ‘the literary, moral, and political convictions’ of the period following the First World War (p. 9), the influence of Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics is still to be felt in Beowulf studies. Its lively prose remains effective despite the passage of decades – untouched by the obfuscation that infects so much writing on literary subjects today. Its advanced age, however, seems to have led R.D. Fulk, editor of the anthology Interpretations of Beowulf (1991), to apologize for including Tolkien’s lecture in that book. ‘Any editor worth his salt’, he says in a preface,

and with an adequate understanding of the changing critical winds in the profession, would no doubt remark … that Tolkien’s lecture … has become the object of mindless veneration, is over-anthologized, hopelessly retrograde, and much too long, and so can safely be set aside now to make way for more important matters. … No one denies the historical importance of this lecture as the first sustained effort at viewing the poem on its own terms, according to aesthetic guidelines discoverable in the work itself, thus opening the way to the formalist principles that played such a vital role in the subsequent development of Beowulf scholarship. But Tolkien’s study is not just a pilgrims’ stop on the road to holier shrines: his explanation of the poem’s larger structure, though frequently disputed, has never been bettered, and the methodology inherent in his practice of basing claims about the macrostructural level on patterns everyone discerns in the microstructure remains a model for emulation. His view of the poet as an artist of an antiquarian bent remains enormously influential (and a major obstacle to dating the poem); and although the issue of the appropriateness of the monsters is not as pressing as it was in 1936, it is not superfluous in the context of some subsequent criticism. … [pp. xi–xii]

Peter S. Baker, editor of Beowulf: Basic Readings (1995), more directly counts Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics among those works ‘that have long been part of the standard reading list for a Beowulf course’ which ‘continue to be influential and are still worth the student’s attention’ (p. xi).

Significant comment on the lecture has also been made in the ‘Scholars Forum’ of The Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza by Michael D.C. Drout (‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics: The Brilliant Essay that Broke Beowulf Studies’, 25 April 2010) and Tom Shippey (‘Tolkien’s Two Views of Beowulf: One Hailed, One Ignored. But Did We Get This Right?’ 25 July 2010). Shippey repeats the usual praise of Tolkien’s lecture as one which ‘altered the current of Beowulf scholarship, which is only slowly starting to look for new channels’. Tolkien’s success, he argues, was partly due to his rhetorical skill: ‘he could make a shaky case look rock-solid, and several times did, and the results have not always been totally fortunate. … He wanted people to see the poem as a whole, as an integrated and purposeful work by a single poet who had a very good idea of what he was doing. … Along with that, he wanted to argue for the right to write fantasy, and in that mode to create something valuable and autonomous. And in order to make that case, he was obliged to argue down the powerfully-expressed opinions’ of critics such as R.W. Chambers and W.P. Ker. After the Second World War ‘a whole industry grew up of books and essays which demonstrated that Beowulf was a work of great “organic unity” … and that all the many bits which had been taken as “digressions” or insertions actually played an important part in the poet’s conception. … Seeing the poem as a fantasy perhaps did not catch on quite so much.’

Drout on his part observed that Tolkien attacked the view ‘that Beowulf is most valuable not as literature, but as documentation about the history and culture of the pre-literate Germanic world’, a view which gave study of the work validity despite ‘the establishment view that Beowulf was ill-shaped and inferior’. Instead, Tolkien argued that ‘critics could justify their studying Beowulf on aesthetic grounds alone and that they did not need the additional buttressing of historical interest’. He himself did not say or think ‘that the historical and quasi-historical thoughts mentioned in Beowulf were unimportant. Nevertheless subsequent critics, seeing that they were free to discuss the poem as literature only, began to abandon historical scholarship that had figured so significantly in Beowulf studies.’ Shippey agrees, stating that ‘something got lost, which I think Tolkien would have regretted. … The effect of what Tolkien wrote has been to terminate interest in Beowulf as a guide to history.’ Yet Beowulf also contains allusions to ‘lost tales’, hints of unexplained actions, elements Tolkien introduced into his own writings. More significantly, his *Finn and Hengest (1982) makes it clear that Tolkien thought that the Old English Finnsburg Fragment and the account in Beowulf of ‘the fight at Finnsburg’ refer to an actual event. Both Drout and Shippey point out that more recent archaeological discoveries of a series of great halls in the area which best fits the site for Heorot indicated in the poem suggest that Beowulf does preserve some true historical memories.

Tolkien had written in his lecture that he accepted ‘without argument throughout the attribution of Beowulf to the “age of Bede” – one of the firmer conclusions of a department of research most clearly serviceable to criticism: inquiry into the probable date of the effective composition of the poem as we have it’ (The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p. 20). But this, Shippey comments, came to be rejected, ‘often savagely … by a majority of Anglo-Saxonists, their view entrenched in a thoroughly one-sided “conference” (it was really more of a party rally)’, the conference on the dating of Beowulf held in Toronto in 1980, and expressed in The Dating of Beowulf, edited by Colin Chase (1981). From that point scholars began to write of a later date for Beowulf (with its poet imitating an earlier style, an idea enabled by Tolkien’s portrayal of him as an antiquarian), or that the poem was in effect undateable. Shippey notes, however, that ‘the balance is now beginning to turn again’ to the earlier date championed by Tolkien, ‘on grounds of metrical linguistics, palaeography, and onomastics’.

The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, edited by Leonard Neidorf (2014), revisits this issue with numerous references to Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (but not entered in the index). Its essays by Tom Shippey, ‘Names in Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon England’, and by Michael D.C. Drout with Phoebe Boyd and Emily Bowman, ‘“Give the People What They Want”: Historiography and Rhetorical History of the Dating of Beowulf Controversy’, revisit some of Shippey and Drout’s points in their online essays.

See further, Drout’s long review of the lecture (‘not just the most important single essay written on Beowulf, but also one of the most influential and widely quoted literary essays of the twentieth century’, p. 134), as well as its criticism, in ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007); and his ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics: Seventy-Five Years Later’, Mythlore 30, nos. 1/2, whole nos. 115/116 (Fall/Winter 2011).

‘Of Beren and Lúthien’. The nineteenth chapter of the *‘Quenta Silmarillion’, published in *The Silmarillion (1977), pp. 162–87.

SYNOPSIS

Barahir of the House of Bëor and a small band of men live as outlaws in their former homeland of Dorthonion, which was seized by Morgoth in the Battle of Sudden Flame. They are hunted until only Barahir, his son Beren, and eleven others remain. One of these, Gorlim, while visiting his ruined home is ensnared by a vision of his missing wife and captured by the enemy. Deceived by Sauron, he reveals his comrades’ hiding place and is put to death. But Gorlim’s shade appears to Beren, who is alone on an errand, and declares his treachery and death. Beren finds the others of his band slain, pursues their killers, and recovers from them the ring they had taken from his father, given by Felagund of Nargothrond with a promise of aid in need to Barahir who had rescued him from foes.

After four years Beren leaves Dorthonion and undertakes a terrible journey through Ered Gorgoroth and the region where the spider offspring of Ungoliant dwell. Eventually he comes to Doriath, ‘and he passed through the mazes that Melian wove about the kingdom of Thingol, even as she had foretold; for a great doom lay upon him’ (pp. 164–5). One summer evening he sees Lúthien, daughter of Thingol and Melian, ‘the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar’, dancing on the grass, and is enchanted by her. She disappears, and for long Beren seeks her. At last, near springtime, he hears her song which ‘released the bonds of winter, and the frozen waters spoke, and flowers sprang from the cold earth where her feet had passed’ (p. 165). He calls her Tinúviel, nightingale, and as she looks on him she loves him, but once more vanishes from sight. ‘Thus he began the payment of anguish for the fate that was laid on him; and in his fate Lúthien was caught, and being immortal she shared his mortality, and being free received his chain …’ (pp. 165–6). But she returns, and they meet secretly through the summer.

They are betrayed to Thingol by Daeron the minstrel, who also loves Lúthien. Lúthien refuses to tell her father anything unless he first promises not to slay Beren or imprison him. She then leads Beren before her father, who scornfully asks him what he seeks in Doriath. Beren, feeling almost as if the words are put into his mouth, says that Lúthien is the treasure he desires. Melian warns Thingol to be careful but, seeking a way to keep his promise and yet destroy Beren, Thingol says that he too desires a treasure: ‘Bring to me in your hand a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown; and then, if she will, Lúthien may set her hand in yours’ (p. 167). Beren accepts the challenge. Melian tells Thingol that he has doomed either his daughter or himself.

Beren makes his way to Nargothrond and seeks aid from Felagund according to the promise the king had made to Barahir. But Celegorm and Curufin, two of Fëanor’s sons who are living in Nargothrond, influence the Elves against giving aid to Beren. Felagund, therefore, removes his crown and with only ten faithful companions accompanies Beren on his quest. He disguises their band as orcs, but Sauron is suspicious and has them brought to his stronghold. He and Felagund strive against each other with songs of power, but Sauron prevails, and their true forms are revealed. Refusing to tell their names and purposes, they are cast into a pit and one by one begin to be devoured by a werewolf.

Learning of Beren’s plight from Melian, Lúthien wishes to go to his aid, but Daeron betrays her, and she is imprisoned by Thingol in a house high in a beech tree. By enchantment she grows her hair long, and from it weaves a dark robe to conceal her and a rope by which to escape, both charged with a spell of sleep. Meanwhile Celegorm and Curufin go hunting, hoping to hear news of Felagund, and take with them Huan, a wolfhound given to Celegorm by the Vala Oromë. It has been foretold that Huan can be overcome only by the greatest wolf ever whelped. They come upon Lúthien, and even her magic does not enable her to escape Huan. Brought to Huan’s master, she tells her story and seeks help in rescuing Beren from Sauron’s dungeons. But the brothers have no interest in doing so; they keep Lúthien a prisoner in Nargothrond, thinking to force her to marry Curufin. Huan, however, has loved Lúthien from the moment he saw her, and comes to her often. He understands all that she tells him about Beren, but is permitted to speak only three times before his death. He returns to her the magic cloak and, speaking for the first time, gives her counsel. They escape together, Lúthien riding on Huan’s back.

At last among the captives only Felagund and Beren remain. When a wolf comes to devour Beren, Felagund manages to free himself from his bonds and kills it, but is himself slain. As Beren grieves, he hears Lúthien singing outside, and sings in reply. Sauron recognizes Lúthien’s voice and thinks to capture her for Morgoth, but Huan slays all the wolves he sends, including Draugluin, greatest of werewolves, and even overcomes Sauron himself when he takes werewolf form. After Lúthien forces Sauron to yield the spells that control his tower, he flies away in the form of a vampire. The tower crumbles, Lúthien and Huan bring Beren forth, and together they bury Felagund’s body.

Huan returns to his master. When the folk of Nargothrond hear of Felagund’s fate Celegorm and Curufin are expelled. As they ride to join their brethren they come on Beren and Lúthien, who are arguing whether she should stay in safety or accompany him on his quest for a Silmaril. Curufin tries to abduct Lúthien, but Beren rescues her and is then himself rescued from Celegorm by Huan, who now rejects Celegorm as his master. Beren lets the brothers go free but takes Curufin’s weapons, including the knife Angrist made by Telchar of Nogrod, and his horse. As the brothers flee on Celegorm’s horse, Curufin fires two arrows: one is caught by Huan, but the other wounds Beren. Lúthien heals Beren and they reach the safety of Doriath. Beren steals away secretly while Lúthien is sleeping, not wishing her to accompany him into danger.

At the edge of the waste before Angband Beren sets Curufin’s horse free and sings a Song of Parting, believing that he is going to his death. But Lúthien arrives riding Huan, by whose counsel they have collected from Sauron’s ruined stronghold the wolf-skin of Draugluin and the bat-skin of Thuringwethil, a messenger of Sauron in vampire form. Huan speaks a second time and tells Beren that he cannot save Lúthien from ‘the shadow of death … for by her love she is now subject to it’. Beren can turn aside from his fate and they can live in exile for a while, ‘but if you will not deny your doom, then either Lúthien being forsaken, must assuredly die alone, or she must with you challenge the fate that lies before you’ (p. 179). Huan cannot accompany them further, but they may meet again in Doriath. Beren dons the skin of Draugluin and Lúthien that of Thuringwethil, and thus reach the Gate of Angband.

They are challenged by Carcharoth, a whelp of the race of Draugluin raised by Morgoth on living flesh to be the doom of Huan, but Lúthien casts a spell of sleep on him. They make their way down to Morgoth’s hall. Beren slinks beneath his throne. When Morgoth’s gaze strips Lúthien of her disguise she ‘named her own name, and offered her service to sing before him’, and he conceives ‘in his thought an evil lust’ (p. 180). With her song, however, she casts him and all of his court into slumber, and his crown falls from his head. Using the knife Angrist Beren cuts one Silmaril from the crown, but the knife snaps when he tries to take a second. He flees with Lúthien. As they reach the gate, Carcharoth springs at them. Beren tries to daunt Carcharoth with the Silmaril, but the wolf devours both Beren’s hand and the jewel within it. The Silmaril burns his inner parts, and he runs off mad with pain. While Morgoth and his court begin to rouse, the eagle Thorondor and his vassals carry Beren and Lúthien to Doriath.

Lúthien and Huan, who comes to them, heal Beren from the poisonous bite of Carcharoth. For a while they walk in the woods, but Beren, not wanting to withhold Lúthien from her father or have her live in the wild, persuades her that they should make their way to Thingol. The people of Doriath have sought in vain for Lúthien and grieved for her absence, and Daeron has strayed far away. Thingol has heard that Lúthien had been in Nargothrond but had fled. Just before Beren and Lúthien come to Thingol the king hears that messengers he had sent to Maedhros for aid in seeking Lúthien have been attacked by Carcharoth, who cannot be restrained by the power of Melian from entering Doriath. Beren kneels before Thingol and claims Lúthien as his own: he has fulfilled his quest. ‘Even now a Silmaril is in my hand’, but the hand is no longer on his arm. Thingol’s heart is softened, and ‘Beren took the hand of Lúthien before the throne of her father’ (pp. 184, 185).

But Carcharoth is drawing ever nearer to Menegroth. Beren rides out with Thingol and his hunters, Mablung and Beleg, and with Huan to seek the dread beast. Carcharoth leaps on Thingol, and Beren receives a mortal wound while defending the king. Huan and Carcharoth fight and slay each other, but before dying Huan speaks for the third time, bidding Beren farewell. Mablung cuts the Silmaril from the belly of the wolf and places it in Beren’s hand; ‘and Beren was aroused by the touch of the Silmaril, and held it aloft, and bade Thingol receive it’ (p. 186).

In Menegroth they are met by Lúthien who bids Beren wait for her beyond the Western Sea. And his spirit ‘tarried in the halls of Mandos … until Lúthien came to say her last farewell’. The spirit of Lúthien herself ‘fell down into darkness’, and coming to Mandos sang before him ‘the song most fair that ever in words was woven’, in which she ‘wove two themes … of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men. … And as she knelt before him her tears fell upon his feet … and Mandos was moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since’ (pp. 186–7). Mandos lays the case before Manwë, who consults the will of Ilúvatar and offers Lúthien two choices: to dwell among the Valar where Beren cannot come, or to become mortal and return to Middle-earth with Beren for a short time, and like him be subject to death. She chooses the latter, ‘that thus whatever grief might lie in wait’, her fate and that of Beren ‘might be joined, and their paths lead together beyond the confines of the world’ (p. 187).

HISTORY

The first version of this story, The Tale of Tinúviel in *The Book of Lost Tales, does not survive. Tolkien wrote it in pencil, probably in the second half of 1917, but overwrote it with a second version in ink and erased the pencil text, probably in summer 1919. References in other stories written in the intervening period, however, give some indication of what might have been in the original text. There, as in The Silmarillion, Beren was a Man, not an Elf. An allusion to ‘Tevildo Prince of Cats’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 47) suggests that Tevildo was already present in the first version. Elsewhere there are references to Lúthien’s parents, Linwë Tinto (> Tinwelint > Thingol) and Tindriel (> Wendelin > Gwendeling > Melian), and to their meeting, foreshadowing that of Lúthien and Beren. They have two children, Timpinen and Tinúviel, who ‘long after joined the Eldar again’ (The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, pp. 106–7; it is impossible to know what Tolkien meant by this phrase).

In the revised version of The Tale of Tinúviel Tinwelint and Gwendeling, who live in a deep cavern in a hidden realm in the forest of Artanor protected by the magic of Gwendeling, also have two children, Dairon the piper and Tinúviel (her real name, not that given her by Beren) whose greatest joy is dancing. One night in June Beren the Gnome (a Noldo Elf) sees Tinúviel dancing to Dairon’s flute and is enchanted. As in the final version, she flees from Beren and he seeks her. There is no betrayal by Dairon, but Beren steps boldly before her and asks her to teach him to dance. She dances away, and leads Beren to her father’s halls. There is no suggestion that she has already committed herself to him. Tinwelint, who distrusts the Noldoli, is not welcoming, but Tinúviel pleads for Beren because of his great appreciation of her dancing. When Tinwelint asks Beren what he seeks, Beren replies: ‘thy daughter … for she is the fairest and most sweet of all the maidens I have seen or dreamed of’. Tinwelint laughs, and asks for a Silmaril from the Crown of Melko as the price of his daughter’s hand. All present think that he is jesting, but Beren replies: ‘Nay, but ’tis too small a gift to the father of so sweet a bride. … I … will fulfil thy small desire …’ (*The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 13). He leaves, and Tinúviel weeps, fearing that ‘Melko will slay him, and none will look ever again with such love upon my dancing’ (p. 14).

Beren, travelling towards Melko’s stronghold, is captured by orcs. He pretends that he is a trapper of small animals and birds who wishes to serve Melko. He is sent as a thrall to Tevildo, Prince of Cats, the mightiest of all Cats and ‘possessed of an evil sprite’ (p. 16) with many cats subject to him. When Beren fails in the tasks Tevildo sets him, he is made a scullion in Tevildo’s kitchen. As in the final version, Tinúviel learns of Beren’s captivity, is betrayed by Dairon, and is imprisoned by her father. She achieves her escape in the same way, but the tale describes at length the spells by which she makes her hair grow and gives the cloak and rope made from it the power of compelling sleep. Dairon tries to follow her but becomes lost. On her journey north Tinúviel meets Huan, Captain of Dogs, a friend of Beren and great enemy of Tevildo, who devises a plan to rescue Beren. Tinúviel goes to Tevildo’s stronghold, says that she has seen Huan lying sick in the woods, and offers to lead Tevildo to him. Through a hatch she catches a glimpse of Beren in the kitchen and speaks loudly so that he knows she is there. So deceived, Tevildo with two other cats follows Tinúviel to where Huan lies pretending to be sick. Huan kills one of the cats, Oikeroi, and the other two climb trees to escape him. Huan says that he will not let them come down until Beren is set free. Eventually Tevildo yields, throws down his gold collar as a token of authority to his followers, and reveals to Huan ‘the secret of the cats and the spell that Melko had entrusted to him … words of magic whereby the stones of his evil house were held together, and whereby he held all beasts of the catfolk under his sway, filling them with an evil power beyond their nature …’ (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 28). Tinúviel returns to Tevildo’s stronghold, speaks the spell, and rescues Beren.

Tinúviel wanders a long time in the woods with Beren and Huan, but ‘grew at last to long sorely for Gwendeling’. She wishes to return home but does not want to leave Beren. He suggests that the only thing they can do is to find a Silmaril. They consult Huan (who has no restriction on his speech), who gives them the skin of Oikeroi which he had taken as a trophy; Tinúviel sews Beren into it and teaches him how to behave like a cat. They leave Huan and make their way to Melko’s stronghold, Angband. Here the earlier story differs only in detail: Tinúviel pretends that she has been driven out by her father; Beren uses a knife from Tevildo’s kitchen to prise the Silmaril from Melko’s crown; and their escape is aided by Huan, not by eagles.

Beren feels that he should leave Tinúviel, since he has no Silmaril to give her father, but she persuades him to go in hope with her, for her father might have relented. They find that her father’s realm has suffered in her absence, most recently by the incursion of Karkaras (the precursor of Carcharoth) who, driven mad by anguish, has run wild through the woods and killed many. When they come before Tinwelint Beren declares that he has a Silmaril in his hand, but shows that his hand is no longer on his arm. As in The Silmarillion, Tinwelint’s heart is softened, and he accepts Beren; but in the revised Tale of Tinúviel Karkaras comes on the hunters while they are sleeping, with Beren keeping watch; Beren does not lose his life protecting Tinwelint; Tinwelint, not Huan, kills Karkaras; and Huan survives the fight. Tinúviel is not offered a choice, but Mandos allows both her and Beren to return into the world, warning them that ‘it is not to any life of perfect joy that I dismiss you … and know ye 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’ (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 40). They return to dance in the woods and hills.

Since in this version both Beren and Tinúviel are Elves, the conflict between differing fates which becomes such an important element in later versions is absent. Here they are permitted a fate which differs from that usual for Elves who die. Instead of waiting in the Halls of Mandos and being reborn again in their children, they are sent back as themselves, but now as mortal as Men. In another tale Tolkien wrote that ‘upon Beren and Tinúviel fell swiftly that doom of mortality that Mandos had spoken’, and while their child was still young Tinúviel slowly faded, and Beren searched for her until he too faded (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 240). Unfortunately it is not known how the matter was resolved in the lost first version, when Beren was a Man. *Christopher Tolkien has said that in this version of the story Tevildo and his castle occupy ‘the same “space” in the narrative’ as Sauron and Tol-in-Gaurhoth, but otherwise the two have nothing in common (The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 53; see his detailed comparison of The Tale of Tinúviel with ‘Of Beren and Lúthien’ in The Silmarillion, in The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, pp. 51–60).

The names of Tinúviel’s parents achieved their final form, Thingol and Melian, in a typescript which Tolkien began soon after the second version of the story, but abandoned after Tinúviel’s meeting with Huan.

The earliest extant texts of the poem *Light as Leaf on Lindentree were made in Leeds c. 1923–4, when also some introductory lines of alliterative verse were added. Tolkien inserted this poem and various references to the story of Beren and Tinúviel into the second version of his alliterative poem *The Lay of the Children of Húrin, probably c. 1924–5. These show some development in the story, though Tolkien still hesitated whether Beren should be a Man or an Elf. The elven princess was now called Lúthien, and Tinúviel is the name given her by Beren. Dairon is no longer her brother but in love with her, and being jealous of Beren, ceases to play his flute. Perhaps most significantly, the inserted poem stresses the immediacy of Lúthien’s love for Beren when she first comes face to face with him.

In the brief *Sketch of the Mythology (c. 1926) Tolkien evidently was still undecided about Beren: his father Barahir is a chieftain of Ilkorindi (Elves), but Beren himself is said to be mortal. More is said about Beren’s earlier history: ‘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’ (*The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 24). A statement that Barahir had been a friend of Celegorm of Nargothrond is not developed further, but foreshadows a major new element. Beren is given as a slave to Thû the hunter, not to Tevildo. Huan is killed in the fight with Carcaras while defending Beren. Events after Beren’s death are uncertain: ‘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 …’ (The Shaping of Middle-earth, p. 25). An addition made probably soon after this says that Mandos exacted in payment that Lúthien should become as mortal as Beren. The text was revised c. 1926–30 in response to the way the story was developing in the *Lay of Leithian, so that Beren is definitely a Man and the Nargothrond element enters.

Tolkien began to write the Lay of Leithian in summer 1925, telling the story of Beren and Lúthien at length in octosyllabic couplets. At various points while this was in progress he made five synopses for parts of the story still to be written, which indicate how the story changed in stages and expanded as new ideas came to the author and were adopted or rejected. Finally he decided that Beren was a Man, and in its final form the story told in the Lay approached 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).