By Oshun
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We recently published a lengthy, if not exhaustive, three-part biography of Lúthien but want to follow it with the history of her lover and husband Beren. As Romeo to Lúthien's Juliet, Beren's story is covered in its most basic form in the earlier bio. However, despite playing the main supporting role in Lúthien's story, Beren nonetheless requires a separate biography of his own. His own history within Tolkien's legendarium is as unique as is his contribution to the legacy of the first of "two marriages of mortal and elf – both later coalescing in the kindred of Eärendil, represented by Elrond the Half-elven who appears in all the stories, even The Hobbit."1 Beren is an only child born in the year 432 of the First Age of Middle-earth to Barahir the Lord of the House of Bëor, the first people of the race of Men to enter Beleriand, and his wife Emeldir of the same house of the Edain. Beren grew into manhood shortly before the dark lord Morgoth's breaking of the watchful peace known as the Siege of Angband.
The story of the romance of Beren and Lúthien was one of Tolkien's earliest tales which he would rewrite and revise throughout the rest of his life. In the Kirkus Reviews' article issued on the publication of Christopher Tolkien's Beren and Lúthien collection in 2017, they characterize the tale as "a foundational story a century in the making, one yarn to rule them all." 2 Tolkien associated this saga with his own relationship with his wife Edith whom he married only a short while before he was deployed to the Somme. 3 The following year he was to begin
composing the earliest version of a tale to which he would always return: The love of Beren, a mortal man, and Lúthien, daughter of the Elven King of the forest realm of Doriath. The disapproval of Lúthien's horrified and irate father ultimately sends the two lovers on a series of perilous quests …. they rescue each other through bravery, music and love — with an assist from a magical dog. 4
The love affair which led to the marriage of the young Ronald Tolkien and his sweetheart Edith Bratt might not have been as colorful or as challenging and fraught with resistance as that of Beren and Lúthien. But to two youngsters in love, such experiences can and do assume an epic scale in the minds of their protagonists: "Young Tolkien had fallen in love with Edith when he was 16 and she 19, but his guardian disapproved (both he and Edith were orphans). They finally married when Tolkien was 24." Most readers have heard of the tale of the gravestone that Tolkien chose for them bearing "the names of Edith Mary Tolkien and her husband John Ronald, but underneath each name was another: ‘Lúthien' and ‘Beren.'"5
Beren's tale is often presented by scholars and fans alike in retellings as the quest of a raggedy mortal fugitive to win the hand in marriage of a legendary beauty, a semi-divine Elven princess. And it's true that Lúthien was truly that special but Beren himself was a young and handsome warrior of renowned skill and the scion of honorable lineage amongst the leaders of Men. The House of Bëor was an ancient one and of great significance within the history of the Edain who were to become central actors in Tolkien's epic drama, beginning with their initial appearance in the First Age in Middle-earth. Not only was this house the earliest tribe of the Mortal Men who made their way into Beleriand during the Long Peace, but Beren's antecedents became the first to meet the Eldar in the person of the great Elf lord Finrod Felagund.
Finrod Felagund, wandering in the deep forests of Beleriand without any compelling purpose but with his characteristic burning curiosity and thirst for exploration, encounters the tribesmen of what would come to be called the House of Bëor. This is a fascinating and consequential moment of The Silmarillion. On a hunting trip with Maglor and Maedhros, Finrod grew restless and left on his own to investigate a part of the forest unfamiliar to him. This initial encounter with the race of Men has been often memorialized in Silmarillion art (high and low, lofty and comedic; for an example of the latter, see pandemonium_213's illustration of that memorable moment in my biography of Finrod Felagund):
. . . and at a time of night he came upon a dale in the western foothills of the Blue Mountains. There were lights in the dale and the sound of rugged song. Then Felagund marvelled, for the tongue of those songs was not the tongue of Eldar or of Dwarves. Nor was it the tongue of Orcs, though this at first he feared. There were camped the people of Bëor, a mighty warrior of Men, whose son was Barahir the bold. They were the first of Men to come into Beleriand . . .6
Knowing instantly that these creatures were not of the Eldar he observed them for a long while with fascination and without revealing himself. Tolkien describes how "love for them stirred in his heart." After the Men fell asleep, Finrod drew closer to sit "beside their dying fire where none kept watch; and he took up a rude harp which Bëor had laid aside, and he played music upon it such as the ears of Men had not heard; for they had as yet no teachers in the art, save only the Dark Elves in the wild lands."7 That love of Finrod for the people of the House of Bëor never diminished, nor did their respect and reverence for him: "Felagund dwelt among them and taught them true knowledge, and they loved him, and took him for their lord, and were ever after loyal to the house of Finarfin."8
In keeping with those close ties of the house of Beren's antecedents to Finrod, several years later Beren's father Barahir personally saved the life of Finrod. Morgoth's firestorm of a surprise offensive ended the Siege of Angband, scattering the Noldor and driving them south. That fourth of the great Battles of Beleriand, called the Dagor Bragollach (Sindarin for "Battle of Sudden Flame"), resulted in the deaths of Finrod's brothers Angrod and Aegnor and dealt devastation and destruction amongst the settlements of the peoples of the Edain. Surrounded, Finrod himself would have been killed in a massacre but was saved by Barahir and his followers.
When Barahir received the news that Finrod Felagund was trapped in a skirmish near the Fen of Serech, he rushed to intervene with a small group of his bravest and best warriors. They formed a wall of spears around Finrod and cut their way out of the battle at a terrible cost in lives to Barahir's contingent: "Thus Felagund escaped, and returned to his deep fortress of Nargothrond; but he swore an oath of abiding friendship and aid in every need to Barahir and all his kin, and in token of his vow he gave to Barahir his ring."9
Beren was not only the son of a heroic father, the leader of one of the major houses of the Edain, but he likewise was raised by a brave and illustrious mother, Emeldir. The formidable Emeldir also traced her roots to the founding fathers of the House of Bëor. In her biography of Emeldir the Manhearted, Robinka notes that she was "clearly a woman capable of wielding weapons and knowledgeable as to the ways of defence" and further that she took upon herself the "task of saving the women, children, and probably the elderly, too, of her tribe. And she succeeded, even though there were casualties during the escape." Robinka explains how this mission was undertaken "under the nose of an ever-watchful enemy and his spies. The tragic cost of her providing rescue came also in the fact that she never saw her husband and her son again."10 It is important to note the strength and spirit of Beren's mother because it doubtless influenced his attitude toward Lúthien, who would not be a quiet stay-at-home wife. With a mother like Emeldir, Beren was unlikely to have expected or desired a subservient or placid wife.
Thus when Felagund survived, escaping to return to his cavernous fortress of Nargothrond, he swore an oath of abiding friendship and the promise of aid in every need to Barahir and all of his kin, and in token of his vow he gave to Barahir his ring. Not long after receiving the fateful ring from Finrod Felagund, Barahir met a hard and tragic end:
It is told that Bëor was slain and Barahir yielded not to Morgoth, but all his land was won from him and his people scattered, enslaved or slain, and he himself went in outlawry with his son Beren and ten faithful men. Long they hid and did secret and valiant deeds of war against the Orcs. But in the end, as is told in the beginning of the lay of Lúthien and Beren, the hiding place of Barahir was betrayed, and he was slain and his comrades, all save Beren who by fortune was that day hunting afar.11
In the very first version of Beren's character in the Lost Tales, he is not the Mortal Man of the later story of Beren and Lúthien that we know so well. He is a Gnome—an earlier version of the Elves we learn to know so well in the latter versions of The Silmarillion. (Beren's type of Gnome will later transmogrify into that breed of crafty Elves, the Noldor.) As Christopher Tolkien explains, "In The Book of Lost Tales the princes of the Noldor have scarcely emerged, nor the Grey-elves of Beleriand; Beren is an Elf, not a Man, and his captor, the ultimate precursor of Sauron in that rôle, is a monstrous cat inhabited by a fiend."12 I knew at some point in my long years of studying Tolkien that I had read a description of Beren, and I looked long and hard to find it a second time.13 His appearance was of particular interest to me because I recalled Tolkien presenting a slightly different account of the physical traits of the House of Bëor. My blurry memory prompted me to imagine Beren with lighter hair than Lúthien's raven locks. Most notably in Unfinished Tales, in the incomplete novella of Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife, Tolkien describes Erendis as a descendant of the House of Bëor who bears their distinctive physical traits:
‘The Men of that House [i.e. of Bëor] were dark or brown of hair, with grey eyes.' According to a genealogical table of the House of Bëor, Erendis was descended from Bereth, who was the sister of Baragund and Belegund, and thus the aunt of Morwen mother of Túrin Turambar and of Rían the mother of Tuor.14
Both Erendis, a Númenórean of the Second Age, and Morwen, mother of the ill-fated Túrin of the First Age, are said to be dark-haired and notably beautiful women. Beren, however, is described as having lighter hair "of a golden brown and grey eyes; he was taller than most of his kin, but he was broad-shouldered and very strong in his limbs."15 Beren, like his kinsmen, was good-looking if perhaps somewhat fairer in coloring.
The world of Beren the Gnome is a very different one from the one we read of in The Silmarillion. Finrod Felagund does not even exist within the pages of The Book of Lost Tales, eliminating the most dramatic and philosophically profound elements from Beren's story.
Katherine Neville notes that in her opinion, "'The Tale of Tinúviel' is a ‘single and well-defined narrative,' one which reads like a true fairy tale." She writes of it containing spells of enchantment, for example, of Lúthien's Rapunzel-like escape from her treetop prison using her hair magically grown long. She points out that "our hero Beren is a great hunter and bold trickster who is forced to become a scullery maid before being rescued by his true love and her faithful talking dog."16
In that fairytale account in The Tale of Tinúviel in Lost Tales, Beren is captured and imprisoned by Melko (name later changed to Melkor), who hands him over as a slave to his partner in crime Tevildo, called the Prince of Cats (who later will become Sauron). Tevildo is in this draft an actual cat, if a very magnificent and powerful one.17 Many readers are particularly enchanted by this initial version for its fantastic and whimsical fairytale quality:
All about shone cats' eyes glowing like green lamps or red or yellow where Tevildo's thanes sat waving and lashing their beautiful tails, but Tevildo himself sat at their head and he was a mighty cat and coal-black and evil to look upon. His eyes were long and very narrow and slanted, and gleamed both red and green, but his great grey whiskers were as stout and as sharp as needles. His purr was like the roll of drums and his growl like thunder, but when he yelled in wrath it turned the blood cold, and indeed small beasts and birds were frozen as to stone, or dropped lifeless often at the very sound. Now Tevildo seeing Beren narrowed his eyes until they seemed to shut, and said: ‘I smell dog', and he took dislike to Beren from that moment.18
Poor Beren is reminiscent herein as less the manly protagonist in a hero's tale and more a masculine version of Cinderella. He was charged day and night with menial tasks like "the turning of spits whereon birds and fat mice were daintily roasted for the cats." He was seldom allowed to eat or rest and "became haggard and unkempt, and wished often that never straying out of Hisilómë he had not even caught sight of the vision of Tinúviel."19 Oh, my! This does not sound like our ever-determined and never-faltering Beren of Silmarillion fame. Lúthien is also much less serious. Instead of the indefatigable, unwavering heroine, she is shown in the Lost Tales as being ready to return to her mother because she missed her home—"wild and rugged and very lonely were those days, for never a face of Elf or of Man did they see." She misses the twilight falling "in the woodlands by their ancient halls." Nope. Silmarillion Lúthien would have never been willing to leave Beren and Huan to continue their quest alone.20
It is evident that many changes will be necessary to be made to Lost Tales' Beren in order to create the final version of the legendarium in which Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings mirror the legendary history of Beren and Lúthien in the First Age. Among those changes, "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 Tales."21
The fully developed romance of Beren and Lúthien is only initiated in this original fairy story version. The evolution which began in the "Tale of Tinúviel" continues over the course of years and requires most significantly that Beren become a mortal man. The link that will tie Beren and Lúthien and Aragorn and Arwen together is the element of a love so strong that it enables a potentially deathless Elf-maid to choo¬se mortality and her human lover over a quasi-immortal existence and the mythical land of the Valar across the sea, the paradisiacal Far West. Tolkien "takes Strider from rascal to forest ranger to king, progressively peeling away the layers that have concealed his identity" as perhaps "the most civilized man in the book—certainly the one with the longest lineage, the most distinguished heritage, and the most brilliant future."22
These two marriages of Mortal and Elf are at the very center of Tolkien's legendarium:
In all its versions, the story concerns Lúthien (or Tinúviel), the half-divine daughter of an elven king and a fairy queen, who falls in love with Beren, a wayfarer who stumbles into their protected kingdom. Together, they set off to steal a Silmaril (a divine gem with which the fate of the world is intertwined) from Morgoth (the satanic dark lord who preceded Sauron) in order to prove Beren's worth to Lúthien's father.23
But it took Tolkien decades to place this tale within its preeminent position within the belief system reflected within his Middle-earth. As we are fond of repeating, when he died he had not yet finished tinkering with The Silmarillion, his elusive prequel to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Tolkien points out that these important unions of Elf and Man later coalesced "in the kindred of Eärendil, represented by Elrond the Half-elven who appears in all the stories."24 It is perhaps first within the person of Beren in the tale of Beren and Lúthien that Tolkien asserts his distinguishing concept that "‘the wheels of the world', are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak."25
Lúthien, as I pointed out in her biography, is the real star of their story—a shining epitome of female beauty, courage, and magical skill—a scene stealer par excellence. But it is Beren who succeeds in actually wresting the Silmaril from Morgoth's iron crown.26 Jeff LaSala notes in an article for the Tor publisher's website that in the first version of Beren and Lúthien
there is no political element—no sons of Fëanor, no Nargothrond, no Finrod—and everyone's big enemy is named Melko (he's just not quite as wicked without that terminal "r"). And good old Huan, the dog to end all dogs, still shows up. But he talks a lot more—like, a lot more—and he's also got an epithet. Here, he's the Captain of Dogs. Milkbones for everyone!27
It is interesting to note that the story of Beren and Lúthien could nearly have existed on its own, and even as one reads The Silmarillion, there is almost a sense that it has been dropped into that epic account of the First Age intact with very little introduction and only a few short references back to it later. And yet those references are weighty ones and followed through to the end of The Silmarillion and into The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien's commentary throughout his standalone publication Beren and Lúthien is useful in trying to tie together the entire story and reflect in a useful and informed way upon the history and evolution of its narrative. He notes how "the story of Beren and Lúthien is spread over many years and several books." More importantly, not only did his father edit the original story over decades but as he edited and added to the narrative he allowed it to become "entangled with the slowly evolving Silmarillion, and ultimately an essential part of it." As Tolkien returns again and again to Beren and Lúthien it progressively gains a greater importance within the entire history of the Elder Days.28
We are finally given in The Silmarillion a solid introduction and background for Beren grounding the story narratively within the general plot of the First Age and its ongoing struggles against the dark Vala Morgoth. The story begins simply:
Beren falls in love with Lúthien at first sight. She sings gloriously and is beautiful beyond anything he has ever seen. However, when Lúthien is discovered with Beren, and he is brought before Thingol, Lúthien's father vehemently objects to their love. He separates the two, eventually imprisoning Lúthien so that she will not run off to Beren. Thingol sets an impossible Quest for Beren: he must retrieve one of the Silmarils, currently in a crown worn by the powerful Morgoth, and give it to Thingol. (Lúthien, of course, cleverly manages to escape so that she may help Beren with his Quest.)29
The fact that Beren first enters into the magnificent throne room of Thingol badly needing a shave and a haircut is not only reminiscent for many of us of the 2020 pandemic but also of our first encounter with Strider in The Lord of the Rings. One cannot avoid making the connection with Aragorn, who first appears as a scruffy mortal in The Lord of the Rings yet, in fact, is to be the surviving heir of the Númenórean kings. Lúthien wastes no time in telling her parents that Beren is a noble among men and has a widespread reputation in the world outside of their protected circle.
Tolkien scholar Richard C. West further notes that
[t]he earliest "Tale of Tinúviel" has no back story for Beren, and Tolkien added one making him a noted hero in the struggle against Morgoth, the last survivor of a band of guerrillas resisting the invader. There seems to me to be an underlying taste of Robin Hood and his outlaw band driven by oppressors into the forest, and also a whiff of James Fenimore Cooper's Hawkeye tracking down marauders in the wilderness. There is also something of those other devoted lovers, Tristan and Iseut, in Tolkien's pair (Lúthien is willing simply to go on living with Beren in the woods, should he abandon the quest). And we may remember that Tristan was a great hunter, said to have invented much of the terminology of the hunt, much as Beren early on is a skillful hunter and trapper (although he later develops rather into a friend of beasts and birds).30
Although Beren was the son of a prominent leader, he was nevertheless outclassed socially by Lúthien, the daughter of Melian, one of the Maiar, and Thingol, the great Elven king of the Sindar. Melian served under Vána and Estë in Aman and is one of the stronger women characters in the legendarium, powerful enough to serve as helpmate and collaborator with powerful goddess-like figures in Aman and as tutor to Galadriel, one of the strongest of the Noldorin princes in Middle-earth. Thingol, the father of Lúthien, is one of the three leaders preeminent among the Elves first chosen by Oromë the Huntsman of the Valar who were taken across the sea to Aman to be shown the light of the Two Trees.
In the "Index of Names" to The Silmarillion, Tolkien gives us an unusually complete summary of Beren's life and times. Lúthien's beloved husband is not one of the characters within The Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings who receives a lot of speaking lines or a well-developed voice. He is not described in novelistic detail. He is a hero and an important character, but in many ways he is also a symbol:
Beren - Son of Barahir; cut a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown to be the bride-price of Lúthien Thingol's daughter, and was slain by Carcharoth the wolf of Angband; but returning from the dead, alone of mortal Men, lived afterwards with Lúthien on Tol Galen in Ossiriand, and fought with the Dwarves at Sarn Athrad. Great-grandfather of Elrond and Elros and ancestor of the Númenórean Kings. Called also Camlost, Erchamion, and One-hand.31
Beren represents the race of Mortal Men and traces his line to the first to pledge their allegiance to Finrod Felagund, the least problematic and most admirable among the exiled Noldor, one who is called even by Thingol, not one to be loose with praise, "Finrod the beloved."32 Barahir is given the ring and cherishes it throughout his life. When he and his last loyal supporters are overrun by Orcs and killed, they chop off his hand, ring and all. Young Beren, absent at the time of the attack, tracks down the company of Orcs, seeking to avenge for his father. When he finds them he retrieves his father's hand, taking the ring that had been buried it with his body. Thereafter Beren always wears the ring.33 It is interesting indeed that the famous ring ends up with Aragorn two long Ages of Arda later:
The ring remained with Beren's line and came into the possession of his descendants of the royal House of Númenor from whom Elendil's line was descended. In the middle of the Third Age it was given by Arvedui, the last king of Arnor, to the Lossoth people from Forochel in gratitude for their help following his defeat in battle with the Witch-king of Angmar. The Dúnedain later ransomed it and it was subsequently kept in Rivendell until Elrond presented it to Aragorn.34
But, to return to the forests of the First Age, bereft of kin and alone in that perilous wilderness Beren's greatest fear is that he would be entrapped and captured as his father and his last companions had been. The Lay of Leithian gives us a heartbreaking portrait of this young man.
As fearless Beren was renowned,
as man most hardy upon ground,
while Barahir yet lived and fought;
but sorrow now his soul had wrought
to dark despair, and robbed his life
of sweetness, that he longed for knife,
or shaft, or sword, to end his pain,
and dreaded only thraldom's chain.35
Even in that state of loneliness and seeming abandonment, Beren is never truly pitiful. The Silmarillion describes him as strong and admirable. He is much-lauded by Elves and Men and feared by his enemies. Beren may wander alone for four full years, befriended only by birds and beasts, but those forest creatures help him stay alive. And his valorous deeds do not pass unnoticed, not even within Thingol's protected realm:
He did not fear death, but only captivity, and being bold and desperate he escaped both death and bonds; and the deeds of lonely daring that he achieved were noised abroad throughout Beleriand, and the tale of them came even into Doriath. At length Morgoth set a price upon his head no less than the price upon the head of Fingon, High King of the Noldor; but the Orcs fled rather at the rumour of his approach than sought him out.36
At what must have seemed his darkest hour, Beren saw Lúthien dancing.
Michael Martinez was one of the better-known writers on Tolkien's legendarium when I first encountered the online Tolkien fandom. I have often been drawn to his work for two reasons: 1) he wrote a lot of his essays before the film trilogy was released, so those were not colored or influenced by Peter Jackson's vision, and 2) he also wrote before the notable upsurge in Tolkien scholarship over the last decade-and-a-half or more. Because his audience was more the earnest, often somewhat isolated, Tolkien fan than the serious academic, his language can be refreshingly straightforward and direct. I like his brief description of Beren as a hero written in 1999:
Probably the most moving story in all the Tolkien legendarium is that of Beren and Luthien. They are the true heroes of Middle-earth, the first and only people among Elves and Men to achieve any palpable result against Morgoth in the ill-fated War of the Silmarils. They are also the only heroes of the First Age to actually be given any significant consideration in the pages of The Lord of the Rings.37
One certainly cannot argue that the Elves, beautiful and wise, highly skilled and preternaturally gifted, fresh from Aman where they have been schooled and refined by the gods themselves, fail where a rugged Mortal Man and his Elven sweetheart succeed. This fact, to me as a lifelong Tolkien reader, most significantly links The Silmarillion to The Lord of the Rings.
The greatest Elven warriors of the First Age fail where Tolkien's star-crossed lovers fulfill their quest. It foreshadows the anti-heroic focus found in The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion's heroes (as much as it pains me to admit it, unrelenting Noldor-lover that I am) are not some combination of Maedhros, Fingon, Finrod, Glorfindel, or Idril, or even the hosts of Aman coming in from the West to save the day in the War of Wrath, the final conflict against Morgoth at the end of the First Age. The heroes of The Silmarillion are Beren and Lúthien. Their tale foreshadows beautifully Tolkien's eucatastrophic finale wherein, in spite of the leadership of many illustrious heroes from nearly every culture found within Middle-earth, the true heroes of The Lord of the Rings in Tolkien's mind are Frodo and his Hobbit kinsmen, along with his humble servant Sam.
Where and when did Tolkien decide to turn a classic hero's tale on its head and chose a lesser creature, a Mortal Man, to be his example of true heroism? In an article written by Diana Glyer and Josh Long in a study of Tolkien's sources, they note that "Tolkien's love of language, his interest in Anglo-Saxon poetry, his perspective on the nature of fairy stories, and his convictions as a Roman Catholic will exert their influence on his work to a greater or lesser degree."38 There are many examples in Tolkien's work of varying degrees of heroism and heroic courage. Tolkien, however, tends to paint characters in shades of color, ranging from the darkest villains to the brightest examples of goodness. His antiheroes, like the Fëanorian brothers, are not without their moments of heartbreaking beauty and heroism, nor are his examples of noble leadership without flaws.
In writing a separate biography of Beren, I had hoped to look more closely at him and even perhaps find out in what ways he reflects who Tolkien was or how the author beginning this tale as a young man wanted his own life to go. But we never do get a definitive version of his story—what Tolkien liked to think of as the tale at the center of his life's work. One does get the sense that Tolkien was not satisfied. His last words on the subject are restated in Lisa Graham's review cited earlier: "'The story is gone crooked, and I am left,' Tolkien wrote of his legendarium after Edith died, when he decided to have the names of Beren and Lúthien added to the tombstone they would share." 39 Tolkien was never entirely satisfied with Beren. We, however, have been gifted with the next best thing: in Christopher Tolkien's Beren and Lúthien wherein he compares and contrasts, explains and develops what he believes his father tried to express with this tale.
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