Lúthien
Tinúviel; the Nightingale; the fairest of the Children
Name and Lineage
Lúthien — her mother Melian (a Maia) gave her the beauty of both worlds; her father Thingol the pride and grace of the Grey Elves — is “the fairest of all the Children of Ilúvatar that ever were or shall be” — the Quenta: “Lúthien… the most beautiful the world”. Calling her Tinúviel, “the Nightingale”, Beren gave her the name by which all the ages remember her.
The Song and the Meeting
Her voice was the music of the nightingale; she was an enchantress born: — she slept in the woods, danced among the trees — a “spirit of the elder world”.
- The meeting with Beren: The mortal Beren of the house of Bëor, wandering through the woods, chanced upon her dancing in the glade at nightfall; she was — and they loved immediately, “the first to love across the divide” — “the first Elf and Man to marry” (so far as the Elves knew).
The Quest and the Doom
Her story is the second half of the greatest tale:
- The bride-price: Her father, refusing the mortal, set the impossible price — a Silmaril. Beren and Lúthien set forth; in the quest she proved the heroine: she overcame Sauron (through Huan's aid) at the Isle of Werewolves, sang her great song, led the attack that all but slew the Dark — and then, at the gates of Angband, cast the enchantment of sleep over Morgoth’s whole host, so that Beren cut a Silmaril from the Iron Crown. The escape, the death of Beren by the wolf Carcharoth, her singing of the dead — she went before Mandos and sang the most beautiful lay ever sung, and the Vala, “moved to pity”, restored Beren to life at the price of her own mortality — the exchange: Lúthien and Beren returned, mortal — Lúthien — she chose the Doom of Men to be with him.
- The last days: They dwelt on the isle of Tol Galen (among the woods), “long years of happiness”; their child Dior was born; at last (in the Silmarillion’s brief account) they passed from the world — some say she and Beren died; some that she was given the choice — Tolkien’s later form: she became mortal with him, and — the tale leaves the greatest door ajar.
The Meaning Lúthien is Tolkien’s myth of
the great love and the power of song that moves God’s own ministers: she is the only being ever to sway Mandos; she crosses the divide of mortality and immortality — “the one Hope that saved the Eldar” — and her blood (via Dior, Elwing, Elrond, Elros) threads through every royal line of the later legends. Tolkien identified her, in his own life, with the figure of the fair woman whose memory sustained and ended him — the deep personal root of the whole mythology.