The Children of Húrin: Preface and Introduction

The very beginning of the second book of this read-through

Cover images and illustrations, unless otherwise specified, by Alan Lee.

Preface

It is undeniable that there are a very great many readers of The Lord of the Rings for whom the legends of the Elder Days (as previously published in varying forms in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth) are altogether unknown, unless by their repute as strange and inaccessible in mode and manner. For this reason it has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it. I have thought that if the story of the fate of Turin and Nienor, the children of Hurin and Morwen, could be presented in this way, a window might be opened onto a scene and a story set in an unknown Middle-earth that are vivid and immediate, yet conceived as handed down from remote ages: the drowned lands in the west beyond the Blue Mountains where Treebeard walked in his youth, and the life of Turin Turambar, in Dor-lómin, Doriath, Nargothrond, and the Forest of Brethil. This book is thus primarily addressed to such readers as may perhaps recall that the hide of Shelob was so horrendously hard that it 'could not be pierced by any strength of men, not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the hand of Beren or of Turin wield it', or that Elrond named Turin to Frodo at Rivendell as one of 'the mighty Elf- friends of old'; but know no more of him. When my father was a young man, during the years of the First World War and long before there was any inkling of the tales that were to form the narrative of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, he began the writing of a collection of stories that he called The Book of Lost Tales. That was his first work of imaginative literature, and a substantial one, for though it was left unfinished there are fourteen completed tales. It was in The Book of Lost Tales that there first appeared in narrative the Gods, or Valar; Elves and Men as the Children of Iluvatar (the Creator); Melkor-Morgoth the great Enemy; Balrogs and Ores; and the lands in which the Tales are set, Valinor 'land of the Gods' beyond the western ocean, and the 'Great Lands' (afterwards called 'Middle-earth', between the seas of east and west). Among the Lost Tales three were of much greater length and fullness, and all three are concerned with Men as well as Elves: they are The Tale of Tinuviel (which appears in brief form in The Lord of the Rings as the story of Beren and Luthien that Aragorn told to the hobbits on Weathertop; this my father wrote in 1917), Turambar and the Foaloke (Turin Turambar and the Dragon, certainly in existence by 1919, if not before), and The Fall of Gondolin (1916-17). In an often-quoted passage of a long letter describing his work that my father wrote in 1951, three years before the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring, he told of his early ambition: 'once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story - the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths? I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched.' It is seen from this reminiscence that from far back it was a part of his conception of what came to be called The Silmarillion that some of the 'Tales' should be told in much fuller form; and indeed in that same letter of 1951 he referred expressly to the three stories which I have mentioned above as being much the longest in The Book of Lost Tales. Here he called the tale of Beren and Luthien 'the chief of the stories of The Silmarillion', and of it he said: 'the story is (I think a beautiful and powerful) heroic-fairy-romance, receivable in itself with only a very general vague knowledge of the background. But it is also a fundamental link in the cycle, deprived of its full significance out of its place therein.' 'There are other stories almost equally full in treatment,' he went on, 'and equally independent, and yet linked to the general history': these are The Children of Hurin and The Fall of Gondolin. It thus seems unquestionable, from my father's own words, that if he could achieve final and finished narratives on the scale he desired, he saw the three 'Great Tales' of the Elder Days (Beren and Luthien, the Children of Hurin, and the Fall of Gondolin) as works sufficiently complete in themselves as not to demand knowledge of the great body of legend known as The Silmarillion. On the other hand, as my father observed in the same place, the tale of the Children of Hurin is integral to the history of Elves and Men in the Elder Days, and there are necessarily a good many references to events and circumstances in that larger story. It would be altogether contrary to the conception of this book to burden its reading with an abundance of notes giving information about persons and events that are in any case seldom of real importance to the immediate narrative. However, it may be found helpful here and there if some such assistance is provided, and I have accordingly given in the Introduction a very brief sketch of Beleriand and its peoples near the end of the Elder Days, when Turin and Nienor were born; and, as well as a map of Beleriand and the lands to the North, I have included a list of all names occurring in the text with very concise indications concerning each, and simplified genealogies. At the end of the book is an Appendix in two parts: the first concerned with my father's attempts to achieve a final form for the three tales, and the second with the composition of the text in this book, which differs in many respects from that in Unfinished Tales. I am very grateful to my son Adam Tolkien for his indispensable help in the arrangement and presentation of the material in the Introduction and Appendix, and for easing the book into the (to me) daunting world of electronic transmission.

-Christopher Tolkien

Introduction

Middle-earth in the Elder Days The character of Turin was of deep significance to my father, and in dialogue of directness and immediacy he achieved a poignant portrait of his boyhood, essential to the whole: his severity and lack of gaiety, his sense of justice and his compassion; of Hurin also, quick, gay, and sanguine, and of Morwen his mother, reserved, courageous, and proud; and of the life of the household in the cold country of Dor-lómin during the years, already full of fear, after Morgoth broke the Siege of Angband, before Turin was born. But all this was in the Elder Days, the First Age of the world, in a time unimaginably remote. The depth in time to which this story reaches back was memorably conveyed in a passage in The Lord of the Rings. At the great council in Rivendell Elrond spoke of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men and the defeat of Sauron at the end of the Second Age, more than three thousand years before: Thereupon Elrond paused a while and sighed. 'I remember well the splendour of their banners,' he said. 'It recalled to me the glory of the Elder Days and the hosts of Beleriand, so many great princes and captains were assembled. And yet not so many, nor so fair, as when Thangorodrim was broken, and the Elves deemed that evil was ended for ever, and it was not so.' 'You remember?' said Frodo, speaking his thought aloud in his astonishment. 'But I thought,' he stammered as Elrond turned towards him, 'I thought that the fall of Gilgalad was a long age ago.' 'So it was indeed,' answered Elrond gravely. 'But my memory reaches back even to the Elder Days. Earendil was my sire, who was born in Gondolin before its fall; and my mother was Elwing, daughter of Dior, son of Luthien of Doriath. I have seen three ages in the West of the world, and many defeats, and many fruitless victories.' Some six and a half thousand years before the Council of Elrond was held in Rivendell, Turin was born in Dor-lómin, 'in the winter of the year,' as is recorded in the Annals of Beleriand, 'with omens of sorrow'. But the tragedy of his life is by no means comprehended solely in the portrayal of character, for he was condemned to live trapped in a malediction of huge and mysterious power, the curse of hatred set by Morgoth upon Hurin and Morwen and their children, because Hurin defied him, and refused his will. And Morgoth, the Black Enemy, as he came to be called, was in his origin, as he declared to Hurin brought captive before him, 'Melkor, first and mightiest of the Valar, who was before the world.' Now become permanently incarnate, in form a gigantic and majestic, but terrible, King in the north-west of Middle-earth, he was physically present in his huge fortress of Angband, the Hells of Iron: the black reek that issued from the summits of Thangorodrim, the mountains that he piled above Angband, could be seen far off staining the northern sky. It is said in the Annals of Beleriand that 'the gates of Morgoth were but one hundred and fifty leagues distant from the bridge of Menegroth; far and yet all too near.' These words refer to the bridge leading to the dwellings of the Elvish king Thingol, who took Turin to be his fosterson: they were called Menegroth, the Thousand Caves, far south and east of Dor-16min. But being incarnate Morgoth was afraid. My father wrote of him: As he grew in malice, and sent forth from himself the evil that he conceived in lies and creatures of wickedness, his power passed into them and was dispersed, and he himself became ever more earthbound, unwilling to issue from his dark strongholds.' Thus when Fingolfin, High King of the Noldorin Elves, rode alone to Angband to challenge Morgoth to combat, he cried at the gate: 'Come forth, thou coward king, to fight with thine own hand! Den-dweller, wielder of thralls, liar and lurker, foe of Gods and Elves, come! For I would see thy craven face.' Then (it is told) 'Morgoth came. For he could not refuse such a challenge before the face of his captains.' He fought with the great hammer Grond, which at each blow made a great pit, and he beat Fingolfin to the ground; but as he died he pinned the great foot of Morgoth to the earth, 'and the black blood gushed forth and filled the pits of Grond. Morgoth went ever halt thereafter.' So also, when Beren and Luthien, in the shapes of a wolf and a bat, made their way into the deepest hall in Angband, where Morgoth sat, Luthien cast a spell on him: and 'suddenly he fell, as a hill sliding in avalanche, and hurled like thunder from his throne lay prone upon the floors of hell. The iron crown rolled echoing from his head.' The curse of such a being, who can claim that 'the shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda [the Earth], and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will', is unlike the curses or imprecations of beings of far less power. Morgoth is not 'invoking' evil or calamity on Hurin and his children, he is not 'calling on' a higher power to be the agent: for he, 'Master of the fates of Arda' as he named himself to Hurin, intends to bring about the ruin of his enemy by the force of his own gigantic will. Thus he 'designs' the future of those whom he hates, and so he says to Hurin: 'Upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair.' The torment that he devised for Hurin was 'to see with Morgoth's eyes'. My father gave a definition of what this meant: if one were forced to look into Morgoth's eye he would 'see' (or receive in his mind from Morgoth's mind) a compellingly credible picture of events, distorted by Morgoth's bottomless malice; and if indeed any could refuse Morgoth's command, Hurin did not. This was in part, my father said, because his love of his kin and his anguished anxiety for them made him desire to learn all that he could of them, no matter what the source; and in part from pride, believing that he had defeated Morgoth in debate, and that he could 'outstare' Morgoth, or at least retain his critical reason and distinguish between fact and malice.

Throughout Turin's life from the time of his departure from Dor-lómin, and the life of his sister Nienor who never saw her father, this was the fate of Hurin, seated immovably in a high place of Thangorodrim in increasing bitterness inspired by his tormentor. In the tale of Turin, who named himself Turambar 'Master of Fate', the curse of Morgoth seems to be seen as power unleashed to work evil, seeking out its victims; so the fallen Vala himself is said to fear that Turin 'would grow to such a power that the curse that he had laid upon him would become void, and he would escape the doom that had been designed for him'. And afterwards in Nargothrond Turin concealed his true name, so that when Gwindor revealed it he was angered: 'You have done ill to me, friend, to betray my right name, and call down my doom upon me, from which I would lie hid.' It was Gwindor who had told Turin of the rumour that ran through Angband, where Gwindor had been held prisoner, that Morgoth had laid a curse on Hurin and all his kin. But now he replied to Turin's wrath: 'the doom lies in yourself, not in your name.' So essential is this complex conception in the story that my father even proposed an alternative title to it: Nam e-'Rach Morgoth, The Tale of the Curse of Morgoth. And his view of it is seen in these words: 'So ended the tale of Turin the hapless; the worst of the works of Morgoth among Men in the ancient world.' When Treebeard strode through the forest of Fangorn carrying Merry and Pippin each in the crook of his arm he sang to them of places that he had known in remote times, and of the trees that grew there: In the willow-meads of Tasarinan I walked in the Spring. Ah! the sight and the smell of the Spring in Nan-tasarion! And I said that was good. I wandered in Summer in the elm-woods of Ossiriand. Ah! the light and the music in the Summer by the Seven Rivers of Ossir! And I thought that was best. To the beeches of Neldoreth I came in the Autumn. Ah! the gold and the red and the sighing of leaves in the Autumn in Taur-na-Neldor! It was more than my desire. To the pine-trees upon the highland of Dorthonion I climbed in the Winter. Ah! the wind and the whiteness and the black branches of Winter upon Orod-na-Thon!

My voice went up and sang in the sky. And now all those lands lie under the wave, And I walk in Ambarona, in Tauremorna, in Aldalome, In my own land, in the country of Fangorn, Where the roots are long, And the years lie thicker than the leaves In Tauremornalome. The memory of Treebeard, 'Ent the earthborn, old as mountains', was indeed long. He was remembering ancient forests in the great country of Beleriand, which was destroyed in the tumults of the Great Battle at the end of the Elder Days. The Great Sea poured in and drowned all the lands west of the Blue Mountains, called Ered Luin and Ered Lindon: so that the map accompanying The Silmarillion ends in the east with that mountain-chain, whereas the map accompanying The Lord of the Rings ends in the west with the same range; and the coastal lands beyond the mountains named on that map Forlindon and Harlindon (North Lindon and South Lindon) were all that remained in the Third Age of the country called both Ossiriand, Land of Seven Rivers, and also Lindon, in whose elmwoods Treebeard once walked. He walked also among the great pine-trees on the highland of Dorthonion ('Land of Pines'), which afterwards came to be called Taur-nu-Fuin, 'the Forest under Night', when Morgoth turned it into 'a region of dread and dark enchantment, of wandering and despair'; and he came to Neldoreth, the northern forest of Doriath, realm of Thingol. It was in Beleriand and the lands to the north that Turin's terrible destiny was played out; and indeed both Dorthonion and Doriath where Treebeard walked were crucial in his life. He was born into a world of warfare, though he was still a child when the last and greatest battle in the wars of Beleriand was fought. A very brief sketch of how this came about will answer questions that arise and references that are made in the course of the narrative. In the north the boundaries of Beleriand seem to have been formed by the Ered Wethrin, the Mountains of Shadow, beyond which lay Hurin's country, Dor-lómin, a part of Hithlum; while in the east Beleriand extended to the feet of the Blue Mountains. Further east lay lands that scarcely appear in the history of the Elder Days; but the peoples that shaped that history came out of the east by the passes of the Blue Mountains. The Elves appeared on earth far off in the distant east, beside a lake that was named Cuivienen, Water of Awakening; and thence they were summoned by the Valar to leave Middle-earth, and passing over the Great Sea to come to the 'Blessed Realm' of Aman in the west of the world, the land of the Gods. Those who accepted the summons were led on a great march across Middle-earth from Cuivienen by the Vala Orome, the Hunter, and they are called the Eldar, the Elves of the Great Journey, the High Elves: distinct from those who, refusing the summons, chose Middle-earth for their land and their destiny. They are the 'lesser Elves', called Avari, the Unwilling.

But not all the Eldar, though they had crossed the Blue Mountains, departed over the Sea; and those who remained in Beleriand are named the Sindar, the Grey Elves. Their high king was Thingol (which means 'Grey-cloak'), who ruled from Menegroth, the Thousand Caves in Doriath. And not all the Eldar who crossed the Great Sea remained in the land of the Valar; for one of their great kindreds, the Noldor (the 'Loremasters'), returned to Middle-earth, and they are called the Exiles. The prime mover in their rebellion against the Valar was Feanor, 'Spirit of Fire': he was the eldest son of Finwe, who had led the host of the Noldor from Cuivienen, but was now dead. This cardinal event in the history of the Elves was thus briefly conveyed by my father in Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings: Feanor was the greatest of the Eldar in arts and lore, but also the proudest and most selfwilled. He wrought the Three Jewels, the Silmarilli, and filled them with the radiance of the Two Trees, Telperion and Laurelin, that gave light to the land of the Valar. The Jewels were coveted by Morgoth the Enemy, who stole them and, after destroying the Trees, took them to Middle-earth, and guarded them in his great fortress of Thangorodrim [the mountains above Angband]. Against the will of the Valar Feanor forsook the Blessed Realm and went in exile to Middle-earth, leading with him a great part of his people; for in his pride he purposed to recover the Jewels from Morgoth by force. Thereafter followed the hopeless war of the Eldar and the Edain against Thangorodrim, in which they were at last utterly defeated. Feanor was slain in battle soon after the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth, and his seven sons held wide lands in the east of Beleriand, between Dorthonion (Taur-nu-Fuin) and the Blue Mountains; but their power was destroyed in the terrible Battle of Unnumbered Tears which is described in The Children of Hurin, and thereafter 'the Sons of Feanor wandered as leaves before the wind'. The second son of Finwe was Fingolfin (the half-brother of Feanor), who was held the overlord of all the Noldor; and he with his son Fingon ruled Hithlum, which lay to the north and west of the great chain of Ered Wethrin, the Mountains of Shadow. Fingolfin dwelt in Mithrim, by the great lake of that name, while Fingon held Dor-lómin in the south of Hithlum. Their chief fortress was Barad Eithel (the Tower of the Well) at Eithel Sirion (Sirion's Well), where the river Sirion rose in the east face of the Mountains of Shadow: Sador, the old crippled servant of Hurin and Morwen, served as a soldier there for many years, as he told Turin. After Fingolfin's death in single combat with Morgoth Fingon became the High King of the Noldor in his stead. Turin saw him once, when he 'and many of his lords had ridden through Dor-lómin and passed over the bridge of Nen Lalaith, glittering in silver and white'. The second son of Fingolfin was Turgon. He dwelt at first, after the return of the Noldor, in the house named Vinyamar, beside the sea in the region of Nevrast, west of Dor-lómin; but he built in secret the hidden city of Gondolin, which stood on a hill in the midst of the plain called Tumladen, wholly surrounded by the Encircling Mountains, east of the river Sirion. When Gondolin was built, after many years of labour, Turgon removed from Vinyamar and dwelt with his people, both Noldor and Sindar, in Gondolin; and for centuries this Elvish redoubt of great beauty was preserved in the most profound secrecy, its only entry undiscoverable and heavily guarded, so that no stranger could ever pass in; and Morgoth was unable to learn where it lay. Not until the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, when more than three hundred and fifty years had passed since he left Vinyamar, did Turgon emerge with his great army from Gondolin. The third son of Finwe, the brother of Fingolfin and half-brother of Feanor, was Finarfin. He did not return to Middle-earth, but his sons and daughter came with the host of Fingolfin and his sons. The eldest son of Finarfin was Finrod, who, inspired by the magnificence and beauty of Menegroth in Doriath, founded the underground fortress-city of Nargothrond, for which he was named Felagund, interpreted to mean 'Lord of Caves' or 'Cave-hewer' in the tongue of the Dwarves. The doors of Nargothrond opened onto the gorge of the river Narog in West Beleriand, where that river passed through the high hills called Taur-en-Faroth, or the High Faroth; but Finrod's realm extended far and wide, east to the river Sirion, and west to the river Nenning that reached the sea at the haven of Eglarest. But Finrod was slain in the dungeons of Sauron, chief servant of Morgoth, and Orodreth, the second son of Finarfin, took the crown of Nargothrond: this took place in the year following the birth of Turin in Dor-lómin. The other sons of Finarfin, Angrod and Aegnor, vassals of their brother Finrod, dwelt on Dorthonion, looking northwards over the vast plain of Ard-galen. Galadriel, Finrod's sister, dwelt long in Doriath with Melian the Queen. Melian was a Maia, a spirit of great power who took human form and dwelt in the forests of Beleriand with King Thingol: she was the mother of Luthien, and the fore-mother of Elrond. Not long before the return of the Noldor from Aman, when great armies out of Angband came south into Beleriand, Melian (in the words of The Silmarillion) 'put forth her power and fenced all that dominion [the forests of Neldoreth and Region] round about with an unseen wall of shadow and bewilderment: the Girdle of Melian, that none thereafter could pass against her will or the will of King Thingol, unless one should come with a power greater than that of Melian the Maia.' Thereafter the land was named Doriath, 'the Land of the Fence'. In the sixtieth year after the return of the Noldor, ending many years of peace, a great host of Ores came down from Angband, but was utterly defeated and destroyed by the Noldor. This was called Dagor Aglareb, the Glorious Battle; but the Elvish lords took warning from it, and set the Siege of Angband, which lasted for almost four hundred years. It was said that Men (whom the Elves called Atani 'the Second', and Hildor 'the Followers') arose far off in the east of Middle-earth towards the end of the Elder Days; but of their earliest history the Men who entered Beleriand in the days of the Long Peace, when Angband was besieged and its gates shut, would never speak. The leader of these first Men to cross the Blue Mountains was named Beor the Old; and to Finrod Felagund, King of Nargothrond, who first encountered them Beor declared: A darkness lies behind us; and we have turned our backs on it, and we do not desire to return thither even in thought. Westwards our hearts have been turned, and we believe that there we shall find Light.' Sador, the old servant of Hurin, spoke in the same way to Turin in his boyhood. But it was said afterwards that when Morgoth learned of the arising of Men he left Angband for the last time and went into the East; and that the first Men to enter Beleriand 'had repented and rebelled against the Dark Power, and were cruelly hunted and oppressed by those that worshipped it, and its servants'. These Men belonged to three Houses, known as the House of Beor, the House of Hador, and the House of Haleth. Hurin's father Galdor the Tall was of the House of Hador, being indeed his son; but his mother was of the House of Haleth, while Morwen his wife was of the House of Beor, and related to Beren. The people of the Three Houses were the Edain (the Sindarin form of Atani), and they were called Elf- friends. Hador dwelt in Hithlum and was given the lordship of Dor-lómin by King Fingolfin; the people of Beor settled in Dorthonion; and the people of Haleth at this time dwelt in the Forest of Brethil. After the ending of the Siege of Angband Men of a very different sort came over the mountains; they were commonly referred to as Easterlings, and some of them played an important part in the story of Turin. The Siege of Angband ended with a terrible suddenness (though long prepared) on a night of midwinter, 395 years after it had begun. Morgoth released rivers of fire that ran down from Thangorodrim, and the great grassy plain of Ard-galen that lay to the north of the highland of Dorthonion was transformed into a parched and arid waste, known thereafter by a changed name, Anfauglith, the Gasping Dust. This catastrophic assault was called Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame. Glaurung Father of Dragons emerged from Angband now for the first time in his full might; vast armies of Ores poured southwards; the Elvish lords of Dorthonion were slain, and a great part of the warriors of Beor's people. King Fingolfin and his son Fingon were driven back with the warriors of Hithlum to the fortress of Eithel Sirion in the east face of the Mountains of Shadow, and in its defence Hador Goldenhead was killed. Then Galdor, Hurin's father, became the lord of Dor-lómin; for the torrents of fire were stopped by the barrier of the Mountains of Shadow, and Hithlum and Dor-lómin remained unconquered. It was in the year after the Bragollach that Fingolfin, in a fury of despair, rode to Angband and challenged Morgoth. Two years later Hurin and Huor went to Gondolin. After four more years, in a renewed assault on Hithlum, Hurin's father Galdor was slain in the fortress of Eithel Sirion: Sador was there, as he told Turin, and saw Hurin (then a young man of twenty-one) 'take up his lordship and his command'. All these things were fresh in memory in Dor-lómin when Turin was born, nine years after the Battle of Sudden Flame.