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‘who hold or take or keep a Silmaril against their will’. The captivity of Lúthien in
Nargothrond, from which Huan rescued her, involved her in the plots and ambitions of
Celegorm and Curufin: pp. 151–2, lines 247–72.
There remains the aspect of the story that is also the end of it, and of primary significance,
as I believe, in the mind of its author. The earliest reference to the fates of Beren and Lúthien
after Beren’s death in the hunt of Carcharoth is in The Tale of Tinúviel; but at that time both
Beren and Lúthien were Elves. There it was said (p. 87):
‘Tinúviel crushed with sorrow and finding no comfort or light in all the world followed him swiftly
down those dark ways that all must tread alone. Now her beauty and tender loveliness touched even
the cold heart of Mandos, so that he suffered her to lead Beren forth once more into the world, nor has
this ever been done since to Man or Elf . . . Yet said Mandos to those twain: “Lo, O Elves, it is not to
any life of perfect joy that I dismiss you, for such may no longer be found in all the world where sits
Melko of the evil heart—and know that ye will become mortal even as Men, and when ye fare hither
again it will be for ever . . . .”’
That Beren and Lúthien had a further history in Middle-earth is made plain in this passage
(‘their deeds afterward were very great, and many tales are told thereof’), but no more is
said there than that they are i-Cuilwarthon, the Dead that Live Again, and ‘they became
mighty fairies in the lands about the north of Sirion.’
In another of the Lost Tales, The Coming of the Valar, there is an account of those who
came to Mandos (the name of his halls as well as that of the God, whose true name was Vê):
Thither in after days fared the Elves of all the clans who were by illhap slain with weapons or did
die of grief for those who were slain—and only so might the Eldar die, and then it was only for a
while. There Mandos spake their doom, and there they waited in the darkness, dreaming of their past
deeds, until such time as he appointed when they might again be born into their children, and go forth
to laugh and sing again.
With this may be compared the unplaced verses for The Lay of Leithian given on pp. 216–7,
concerning ‘the Land of the Lost . . . where the Dead wait, while ye forget’:
No moon is there, no voice, no sound
of beating heart; a sigh profound
once in each age as each age dies
alone is heard. Far, far it lies,
the Land of Waiting where the Dead sit,
in their thought’s shadow, by no moon lit.
The conception that the Elves died only from wounds of weapons, or from grief, endured,
and appears in the published Silmarillion:
For the Elves die not till the world dies, unless they are slain or waste in grief (and to both these
seeming deaths they are subject); neither does age subdue their strength, unless one grow weary of ten
thousand centuries; and dying they are gathered to the halls of Mandos in Valinor, whence they may in