Bëor
Bëor the Old; the Father of Men; lord of the first house
Name and
His Coming
Bëor — called “the Old” — was the first of the race of Men to enter Beleriand. The Quenta tells that the Elf-name Bëor (“Servant”, “Vassal”) was given him by the Elves in honour of his willing service, when Finrod met him in the mountains of Ossiriand and learned his reason for coming west: he had glimpsed the Star-light of the Land. Their friendship — “the friendship of Finrod and Bëor” — founded the Elf-friendship of the whole race: he was the first Man to be called an Elf-friend, and he served the lords of the Elves.
The First King of Men in the West
Led his host
(the first house) into Estolad and dwelt there in peace.
- The long life and the heir: He lived long (the Elves measured by the “years of Men”); when he grew old he went to inherit the lordship of Ladros under Finrod’s gift — he was the “Bëor the Old” for his great age; his heirs became the lords of Ladros, and thence sprang the line of Barahir, Beren and the greatest heroes of the Edain.
Significance
Bëor is the hinge-figure of the Edain’s story: the man whose friendship (and whose people’s settlement under the Elves) set the terms of Elf-Man alliance, and through whose house — the House of Bëor — the blood of Beren, Túrin’s mother’s kin, and the line of kings descends. In the later histories he is the venerated “first” — the Father of Men remembered by the Númenóreans as Bëor the Old.