Narn i Chîn Húrin
the Tale of the Children of Húrin
Nature
Narn i Chîn Húrin — “the Tale of the Children of Húrin” — is the fullest and most sorrowful of the “great tales”: the tragedy of Túrin, the son of Húrin and Morwen, under the Curse of Morgoth — his exile, his wars, his wins and his self-slain ruin, and the doom brought upon his sister Nienor. It is the age’s deepest tragic narrative — the “woodcut of the fall” — Tolkien’s most complete novel-length legendarium tale.
Contents
The full shape of the tragedy (in the Narn’s longer form): The ruin of Dor-lómin; the sending of young Túrin to Doriath; the flight through the wilds; the friendship and death of Beleg; The downfall of Nargothrond and the enchantment under the dragon Glaurung; The adoption of the woods of Brethil; the meeting and unwitting marriage of Túrin (as Turambar) with his sister Nienor (as Níniel); The slaying of Glaurung, the revelation, the double suicide, and the end of the house — with the prophecy of the Doom of the World (Túrin’s rising at the Last Battle).
Composition and Editions
The
Narn’s material is among Tolkien’s oldest and most-reworked (the early “Tale of Túrin” in the Book of Lost Tales, the later full “Narn i Chîn Húrin” of the 1950s published in part in Unfinished Tales, and assembled as the standalone The Children of Húrin in 2007 by Christopher Tolkien — the most complete form, with his commentary). The “shorter” versions appear in the Quenta Silmarillion’s chapter “Of Túrin Turambar”; the poetic Lay of the Children of Húrin (in The Lays of Beleriand) is the initial verse form.