In Song Unsung by sabcatt

The Lay of King Nelyafinwë

[T]his lack of primary sources has been the cause of no little frustration in my attempts to study the function of the “Fëanorian stories” within Exilic society.

From Canto IV of "The Lay of King Nelyafinwë": Fingon the Valiant, in friendship ever true / paused not, nor yielded to prudent counsel.

Read The Lay of King Nelyafinwë

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A whole corpus of works concerning various moments in this relationship is known to have existed, with the broad strokes of at least four distinct episodes centered on Maedhros and Fingon as a pair being attested in various contemporary texts. However, few copies of the texts of such works have been preserved, and those that do remain are woefully incomplete. While it is easy to understand how and why such a shift occurred, this lack of primary sources has been the cause of no little frustration in my attempts to study the function of the “Fëanorian stories” within Exilic society.

There is significantly more evidence from which to construct a historical study of the relationship between Fingon and Maedhros; however, my focus is on them as narrative figures, and their use—both individually and in concert—as symbols within Exilic culture, rather than the quantifiable facts of their lives. For this purpose, I have selected two fragments to present here which, taken together, function as bookends to the storied relationship. The popular narrative acknowledges an “ancient friendship” between them (best explicated in Hillithanor's extensive scholarship on the repeated motifs in the Fingon-Maedhros narrative cycle) that began during the Noontide of Valinor, but the first narrative episode about which full poems and songs were composed was the Kinslaying at the Swan-Harbor. [...] The final episode concerns Fingon’s daring—or reckless, depending on which source you consult—rescue of Maedhros from his captivity on Thangorodrim. [...]

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Fragment 1: from Canto IV of “The Lay of King Nelyafinwë”
Notes: Lines which are less than half-intact have been elided entirely, for ease of reading. Although the damaged text is of great interest to the academic, such fragments are minimally useful for an initial or introductory reading. At times several elided lines may be indicated with a single ellipsis, to keep the text concise and readable.

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Fingon the Valiant     in friendship ever true
paused not, nor yielded     to prudent counsel.
With shining sword     seaward he drew
and, amid torchlight      touching the waves
(then boiling, rolling,     made black with blood)
first wet his blade     for kin beloved.
Uncautious ellon!     Careless prince!
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stirr’d not, nor spoke     amid the s...
There lay round fallen     the ...
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[“A]n evil thing, even     done with thought of love
may not itself excuse     for any reason.
Cousin, for thy choice     I cannot resent thee:
to your aid alone     I owe my life.
Yet I must sorrow     at the sin I provoked.”
His fellow prince     Fingon the Bold
... breath to speak     but Maedhros stayed him.
[“]...     make hard your heart;
… avail not     hands unclean.
Now mercy only     might us redeem
For lives stolen     …[”]
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