Lay of the Children of Húrin
the verse saga of Túrin; the alliterative epic
The Lay of the Children of Húrin
Nature
The Lay of the Children of Húrin — the great alliterative verse-epic of Túrin — is the poetic twin of the Lay of Leithian: a long poem (in old English alliterative metre) recounting the tragedy úrin — the boy’s exile, his career, the dragon, and the doom — It is the most heroic (and most northern) of Tolkien’s long lays, its lines echoing the Beowulf-style.
Contents and Abandonment
The Lay covers (in canto after canto) Húrin’s capture, Túrin’s youth in Doriath, the death of Beleg, the year of Nargothrond and the dragon’s ruin — breaking off (incompletely) before the last stages.
- Tolkien began it c. 1920 (and reworked) but left it unfinished in the late 1920s-30s — “the legend outgrew the metre” — its sorrow: the verse could not hold the growing plot, and Tolkien turned to the prose Narn.
Composition
Published by Christopher Tolkien in
The Lays of Beleriand (HoME 3) with its structure compared to the later prose; it is important as the fullest early telling (some details differ from the final Narn). The prose forms are the Narn i Chîn Húrin and the Children of Húrin book.