Lay of Leithian
release from bondage; the poetic form of the tale of Beren and Lúthien
The Lay of Leithian
Nature
The Lay of Leithian — Leithian, “Release from Bondage” — is the great alliterative verse-romance of Beren and Lúthien, the most sustained of Tolkien’s long poems: a heroic lay (in octosyllabic couplets,) recounting the whole tale — the meeting at Nan Elmoth, the quest for the Silmaril, the dungeons of the werewolf-isle, the sleeping of Angband, the death and the return — in the style of the old North’s “heroic lay”. It was — Tolkien’s own term.
Contents and Beauty
The Lay (about 4,200 lines, unfinished at the death in the late 1930s
— it breaks off in the last canto) covers: The wooing of Lúthien and the bride-price of the Silmaril; The aid of Finrod (his descent, his song-duel with Sauron, his death); The freeing by Huan, the rescue of Beren, the enchantment of Angband, the taking of the jewel; The tragedy of the wolf, the halls of Mandos, and the mortal rebirth of the lovers. Its verse includes some of Tolkien’s most beautiful writing (, the songs of the earth and sea), and it was (with the unfinished poem “The Lay of the Children of Húrin”) the poetic heart of the mythology between the wars.
Composition
Begun c. 1925 (and “re-begun” again), the Lay was read/recited by Tolkien among his friends; he abandoned and partly rewrote it (C.S. Lewis reviewed it admiringly —).
Christopher Tolkien edited it (with the fragments and the “alliterative” version) in The Lays of Beleriand (HoME 3), with its prose forms gathered in Beren and Lúthien (2017).