Celegorm
the Fair; the hunter; master of Huan
Name and Nature
Celegorm — “the Fair”, the third son of Fëanor and Nerdanel. In his youth in Valinor he was the companion-hunter of Oromë the Great Rider, and from Oromë he received the great hound Huan, the hound of Valinor, who later befriended Beren and Lúthien. Celegorm loved the woods and the chase; his name’s brightness (“fair”) lived in tension with the darkness of his deeds.
Life
- Exiled with his father, he was of the chief movers in the Kinslayings — in the first kinslaying he was among the most fierce; with his brother Curufin he was the tightest pair of the house — “the most wily and the most fierce” -
In Beleriand the brothers ruled between the rivers — their lands Himlad and Estolad; but their part in the age centres on the abduction of Lúthien: when Beren’s quest failed and Lúthien was carried by deed of the brothers — Celegorm, now master of Huan, captured Lúthien (her magic he could not resist — he planned to force her to marriage to fulfil the Oath’s hold over Doriath) — but Huan was bound by fate to obey the will of — the great Huan (whose fate it was to speak thrice and die by the wolf) betrayed his master’s plan, freeing Lúthien and aiding her into Tol-in-Gaurhoth. The shame of Celegorm (and Curufin) then ever besets the name of the brothers.
- The ruin of Doriath: After Thingol’s slaying and the theft of the Silmaril by Beren’s hand — when the Nauglamír and Silmaril lay in Doriath, the brothers’ Oath drew them in battle against the Haladrim — Celegorm was slain in the Second Kinslaying at Menegroth by — by the Dwarf no: he fell in the assault of the Fëanorians on Doriath, fighting — the account names the death-blow of Celegorm by Dior — “by Dior” (whose father Beren gave the Silmaril). His doom is the working of the Oath: he died for the jewel he had never seen.
Significance
Celegorm’s story — the hunter who became the abductor, the Fair who fell by the curse — is the sharpest single demonstration that beauty and prowess do not save the Oath-bearer; and his own hound Huan turning against him is the mythology’s emblem of the loyal creature choosing the greater right.