Gorlim
the Unhappy; the betrayer of Barahir
Name and Nature
Gorlim — “Gorlim the Unhappy”, one of the outlaw band of Barahir in Dorthonion after the Bragollach — was a man of the House of Bëor broken by grief: his wife had been taken (driven off or slain) when the Orcs harried, and he dwelt in despair, longing for his lost love, the weakest of the steadfast company.
The Betrayal
The Orcs came by night; Barahir and all his band were slain, and Gorlim — who (learning that the vision was false, his wife dead and the promise a cheat) at the last confessed and cursed his own part — was himself slain; only the young Beren (absent that night) escaped, taking his father’s ring.
Significance
Gorlim is the “unfortunate traitor” — the decent man broken by grief who, in his one weakness, undoes his friends; his name (with his death and his ghost’s haunting — the tale has his spectre) is the caution in the Quenta of how Sauron’s sorcery works through the heart’s wounds — and how the Outlaws’ end made Beren’s quest-poem possible.