In the Havens of Siron, the poet Dirhavel, sking for stories of Turin among refugees from the woods of Brethil, finds a woman who has heard the lament that Turin composed for the death of Beleg.
She racked her memory for the text of the song, but whole lines of it remained obstinately lost. It had been years ago. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, for he had told her she was the only one he had found who had heard it at all.
‘Don’t give up yet, it may still come back’ the man said. ‘But for now, I think you might be trying too hard. Just sing the tune and what you remember…’
‘What, with lots of fa-la-la?’
‘Just that.’
And thus it was that Dirhavel learned at least part of the Laer Cu Beleg.
Written at an Insta-drabbling session at the SWG Discord; not previously posted except under lock.
the sequel to 'the arrested wind' should be dirhaval trying to write turin's death scene!!
Sure.
“Then Túrin fled and slew himself by the banks of the Taeglin, at Cabed-en-Aras.” No.
He had been found with his sword broken under him. That spoke of the force with which he had flung himself down. He had thrown himself on his sword a step from the gorge where his sister died: what did that say? He would not follow her, he would not seek her in death, he would never find her. He was unlike Brandir, who dreamed of shaking free of an end.
So he must have taken thought, before he died, of what was proper: he must have stopped and stood there at the edge. What would he have glimpsed from that vantage—the pain in his hand so dulled that blinding tears no longer started from his eyes when he gripped his shoulder? Neither would he have wept before Mablung. Yes, so his eyes were clear. Then indeed he saw the cliff and the far shore, though not the river, spilling swift and narrow over stones at the foot of the gorge; but he would have heard the river, and seen the trees that were prey of Glaurung—all around he would have had the falling of dry leaves. Some trees were burned to stumps, but many more had suffered in the heat, that long night while the dragon died, Niënor died, and Túrin slept. Winter again, brought to bear by fire: the ash blowing like hot erratic snow. Pity the man who drew his comfort from that stricken land, and had come to know himself in a mist and smoke that rose off his enemy’s shape; or it was the white fog of morning. But he was Túrin, and he was awake. Suppose he said to the river: Not I. Then had he cast himself upon his sword?
Terrible to think of him, alone and proud. He would not have laughed after leaving Mablung, for Niënor was dead, but how to prevent him from laughing?—Túrin, who had slain the worm? Let him be checked, then, in his empty pride; let something bind him, for a little while, to the courtesy and meekness of long custom, though it too was hollow. He took out the sword. Ah! the sword, Beleg’s gift, black and hard and moon-edged as the river from a height. Here was a gift deserving of courtesy. If Túrin spoke to the river, he would be no slower to greet the reforged blade—Hail, Gurthang, iron of death (he can’t lose the name, Gurthang, and its evil magic; no more can he forgo meaning, for the younger listeners, refugees with no word of Sindarin; he translates as he goes, and it maddens him, no two words are the same; in elves’ ears a grievous tale, and for men—), you alone now remain. (That was right; for in hewing down Brandir and escaping Mablung he abandoned his last friends, as he once sloughed away Beleg, Finduilas, Gwindor, and Morwen: but if he hoped to get free, he had failed; there remained death and the hand that wielded it, his companions ever.) —But what lord or loyalty do you know, save the hand that wields you? (Gurthang will not contest him; so Túrin, wishing to be restrained, is grieved, and yet sounds mocking; a fault he has often displayed in better contexts. Good.) From no blood will you shrink. (To the sword, or the hand?) Will you take Turin Turambar? Will you slay me swiftly?
It needs more than that—it needs an answer, so as not to make pathetic his civility. The sword is an elvish sword, let it speak. What would it say?
“Yes, I will slay thee—” no, “I will drink your blood,” good, not shrinking but drinking, “that I may forget the blood of Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly.” Not only can the sword speak, but it remembers. “I will slay you swiftly.” In such haste did Túrin cast himself on the point, so heavy was his great heart, and so wasted the blade by Glaurung’s burning venom, that iron snapped, brittle as the wood of blighted trees. Very well. But what more did the shattered sword recall? Not the Dragon-helm, or the great yew-bow of Beleg, but the knife Túrin gave Sador, replaced in time by folding-blades given him by the elves, to whittle with; and of his craft had come shaved scrap and kindling. That child, frowning, striking awry—the image rises up like a hound in hunger, dancing for a soup-bone. Before now he wrote: “he was slow to learn his own strength”; but indeed he must have found it out by marring, not making—when first he split the branch he meant to peel, he would have guessed how strong he was. Have a care for the child, then, who learned.
“Then they lifted up Turin, and saw that his sword was broken asunder. So passed all that he possessed.”
the part with gwindor and finduilas's private conversation about turin and beren and etc
[ @crocordile asked for Turin and Finduilas’s “But you are queenly” convo and I kind of folded it into this. WRITING ABOUT WRITING IS REALLY HARD. ]
It was a tradition in Nargothrond that matters of war were debated before an assembly, in the great cavern where the river Ringwil raised all speech to a bellow on its back, and so—though Orodreth and all his councillors were slain, and Gwindor died first of those princes—Dirhaval had only to ask a cook who had taken a shift off to go hearken—and who later had run like a deer through the smoke in the forest, all the way west—to learn what words passed between Gwindor and Túrin before Túrin led Gwindor’s people to war; and, further, what words passed between Gwindor and the king, when Gwindor came unburdened out of Angband to his door.
The cook had short brown hair and a slumbering beauty, a long face with a short nose on a long neck, rounded shoulders not a fault when setting off her face, although she never straightened; she laughed like an old woman when she remembered how Turin had found the dwarf-helm. “Ha! oh, ha! Ha, ha, how daring we thought him, out to out-glower the orcs—none of our lords would have made themselves so ugly. And he said: ‘Valiant defense of the borders and hard blows ere the enemy gathers; in that course lies the best hope of your long abiding together. And do those that you speak of love such skulkers in the woods, hunting strays like a wolf, better than one who puts on his helm and figured shield, and drives away the foe, be they far greater than all his host?’ But I forget what else,” she added, going blank, using a Sindarin term humans had coined. I unremembered. She did not mean ‘I forget’; she meant, ‘I did not hear,’ or ‘I understood it poorly,’ or ‘I am not interested in the wretched end of a memory that began in merriment.’ And he could not press her, who would, in her politeness—determined to match his words to the words that she had learned—would say only and firmly, “I forget.”
But never mind. He guessed the drift of Túrin’s thought. Túrin (he was sure) thought always of his mother and his sister, who were to him the whole of Dor-lómin, who feasted on his feats of arms and withered when he cowered. He knew Túrin. Gwindor was another matter; do those that you speak of love such skulkers, had Gwindor had an answer?
What did Gwindor think of women?
Finduilas, unlucky lady, won passage for her lover and the stranger whom he led. When first Dirhaval heard the tale, she was a second Nienor; high-hearted and sorrowing, golden as dragon-mail—perhaps seven feet tall. She leaped barefoot from the dais, the throng parted for her, and she took Gwindor’s hand between her hands.
Perhaps she had. He found another watcher, a chemist-turned-fletcher who came to Nargothrond in Curufin’s train, and left in Celebrimbor’s ragtag, rallied flock—though now Celebrimbor dwelled with Gil-Galad on the Isle and this chemist, somehow, sat whetting arrow-points in Sirion, warning bystanders from his little pot of poison. This was an elf with weak blue eyes that shivered in their high seat, and vanished when he yawned, which was often; he said that Finduilas, before her father’s throne, pleaded amid a hundred voices, and although her voice was high and pure none other hushed, knowing it too well. First her voice, then her quick feet, and then at last her words were heard through that low hall, before her fair head plunged out of gloom, hands held before her like a diver’s hands. In this description Dirhaval heard the chemist’s blindness and the fletcher’s venomed aim, but nonetheless it lodged in him with barbs, and he dreamed of a lady who in girlhood harbored the gleam of new-hardened wheat, and now was white-haired, clad in white, alone.
But maybe she was brave and not high-hearted. If she came to her father’s other councils, none now living could confirm it: I forget, said the cook. I was away, said the purblind fletcher.
Túrin himself had spoken of Finduilas to the people of Brethil. He called her queenly, and a golden tree, though he said it—said the woodsman—seated by the mound, and meant perhaps to plant one there. Túrin had a straightforward enough imagination.
He took to reading Gwindor’s lines in his father’s louring tone; alone by the creek, he sat perched on driftwood and croaked to himself, “A woman is not easily deceived.” Nay, a woman is not easily deceived. Nor will you find many—nor will you find many who deny that they are loved, if that is true—and he felt a warm glow rise in him, as though he had announced to the forking stream that he was loved. Which he was, he thought; how else to explain the willows touching fingers to the green shapes in the current? Like a wicker bridge, woven for men to climb and meet themselves. Sunlit evening, tall overhead, sewed for the river a shirt of bright rings. To hear there was the spill of the water, going on its belly over stones. Yes: all of that and more. How was it that Gwindor, dead, could make him laugh and look with kindness on his father, who would shortly—in a little while—drive his poor pledged sister mad? Linnor had threatened twice already to turn him out, to make his way—she said—as Dirhaval, in a hut of reeds.
I have a house, Dirhaval argued. Not only that, I will never starve, for every hall accepts me. I have a place in the king’s own lodge when I hunt with his riders. She had his pen out of his fist and held the point very near to his eye. She said, You live in the hollow.
This was Sirion. The reeds grew to man-height, so thickly that they seemed to stand by leaning on stacked neighbors. It was hard enough to find a slender reed to cut a nib from. In wind-tossed thickets on the shore he did hear the whisper of pens dulling on the page, but preferred not to listen, as already he sometimes feared he would go mad.
“Hello,” said the cook.
He jumped to his feet, bowed, smiled; cursing himself indifferently, he relaxed when she smiled as well. She had a basket of baked fish and offered him a trout still on its skewer, and, when he took it, sat beside his place on the log, calling him to sit also. Wind lifted her short hair and showed her reddened cold ears, small and round for an elf’s, but pricked as though attentive to far sounds, and yellow at the center from the light.
“I have remembered something,” she added, inconsequentially. “My aunt’s husband was Guilin’s steward. Everyone in my family hated him because he because he always making up to us with stories about the great princes. He said that Gwindor and Finduilas fought much over the Adanedhel’s love for her.”
Dirhaval considered the fish with great interest. He had been told triumph lent him a fierce expression. He had no wish to scare his friend off now.
“Raised voices—he overheard—Gwindor said, ‘Why does he seek you out, and sit long with you, and come ever more glad away?’ And that was true, I remember; they sat together in all kinds of places, on the terraces, in the treasury, and even by the earthworks for the bridge. No doubt he told her much you would be glad to know. But as for me, I think Gwindor a fool; few men would have loved her for listening. It reminds them what they hold dear in themselves.”
“That’s true,” he said. The first time he had interviewed her, she had spoken for an hour about the cavern of assembly, like an egg on its side—but so vast!—and with stalactites Finrod himself had sung down into pillars, or was it that he had worn holes in the walls parting small caves, she couldn’t decide; and the window on the river, whence a grey light came, like a shadow thrown on the gliding light of a thousand lamps and torches. And now when she spoke it was matter-of-fact and with hardly a jibe at her uncle. She was Túrin to him in that moment with her straight-sloping neck, the flushed skin of her neck and jaw with her face as fair as fair could be near sunset, the cupful of shadow under her chin. He had burned the roof of his mouth. The fish was tender, almost flavorless, flaking between his teeth like a cake of river-flesh; a little muddy, even, as all water here was. He ate the crisped-black skin for a whiff of charcoal, which coated his mouth. “Don’t you love me, your loyal hearer?”
She gave him a startled wink; and smiled, and smiled.
“I do not think Finduilas loved the Mormegil either. Or, that is, I believe they loved one another as sister and brother.”
Trying to lick his fingers clean just spread around the soot. Among the things she had told Dirhaval was that she was an only child. But he was inclined to believe her, almost. To Finduilas Túrin should have been a child. She must have wanted to love him like a brother—it would have been best, by far clearer and finer, to love him as a brother, even when her death walked near. The death he handed her down to; but if they were kin, it would have been her right to love him, blaming him.
“Do you not agree?”
“I can’t say.” Up again to pace. She followed him, basket on her arm, and settled onto her haunches when she saw he had no journey in mind. He stood when he performed, which was not hard, but it made him more restless when alone. “I think—by the time—no, Túrin did not love her, and as for Finduilas, well, surely she cared for Gwindor? If they argued. Let’s see. And Túrin pursued her at last and fell in a swoon on her grave, we know that. And he loved Gwindor; how not, when Gwindor was with him at Ivrin? But Gwindor—I suppose—Gwindor must have hated him. No. He must have hoped Túrin loved Finduilas, and that was why he couldn’t be persuaded of the truth. For he would have wanted her to be happy, in the end.”
“Oh, no!”
His mood tipped down at once. “Oh no,” he agreed, and took his sandals off and stepped into the stream. His mother had said once that both he and his father were happier than other men, but that they had no ballast, to keep steady the craft. If he took on an ounce of grief he’d sink, and yet he felt the flood almost as freedom. It made him more the master than had his dry, feckless race, his high-riding. As long as he struggled he had yet to succumb; that was the rule for a wasted evening. From here he could trace all the way on to a night of stars. He ought to go and beg a cup of sour milk from Linnor, or go and sing a service for the king.
But it was day, it was red evening. It was his companion’s grief, filling his mind from above. She crouched and watched the far bank huge-eyed, not a tear in evidence, eyes opened but sealed, as it seemed, against sadness that strove for entry, not escape; she sat with wide mouth cracked, nostrils flared, sucking in great absent sniffs of sea-wind. She was besieged as an afterthought, safe and calm except besieged.
(Gwindor surely wished Finduilas joy. Finduilas, dying, remembered Túrin, and told him where his quest should end. The feathered tops of the reeds glowed on dark stems, like a fire in a field of reeds—there before nightfall he planted for ever the standards of the Noldor and their unsheathed swords, kindling in the dawn.)
He washed his hands and greasy beard in the river. “Your fish will be cold,” he advised. He had abandoned hope of dinner until she brought it, but that was no reason to encourage bad habits in her. Then he had to pick some scales out of his teeth, and couldn’t elaborate, but he heard her uncover the basket, anyway.
He had met her before with a handful of salt, pressing a few grains to her mouth to check their purity. “Dirhaval,” she said wisely, mouth full. “Dirhaval, I have forgotten how to cook.” Meaning she had no spices, witched ovens, and trained assistants—maybe, to her, it was really as though she had forgotten; it was at least something else she had lost.
I would love your thoughts on Dirhavel, vocaroo or text? Just because you were recently blogging about Hurin and I suppose this is kind of related. :)
A lot of my interest in Dirhavel is in his sources. The most detailed description we get of who he consulted in composing the Narn is from a pretty early stage of Tolkien’s legendarium-composition, which, let me just paste that here:
…this lay was the work of a Mannish poet, Dirhavel, who lived at the Havens in the days of Earendel and theregathered all the tidings and lore that he could of the House ofHador, whether among Men or Elves, remnants and fugitivesof Dorlomin, of Nargothrond, or of Doriath. From Mablung he learned much; and by fortune also he found a man namedAndvir, and he was very old, but was the son of that Androgwho was in the outlaw-band of Turin, and alone survived thebattle on the summit of Amon Rudh.(2) Otherwise all that timebetween the flight of Turin from Doriath and his coming toNargothrond, and Turin’s deeds in those days, would haveremained hidden, save the little that was remembered amongthe people of Nargothrond concerning such matters as Gwindoror Turin ever revealed. In this way also the matter of Mim andhis later dealings with Hurin were made clear. This lay was allthat Dirhavel ever made, but it was prized by the Elves andremembered by them. Dirhavel they say perished in the last raidof the sons of Feanor upon the Havens. His lay was composedin that mode of verse which was called Minlamad thent / estent.
Okay. So the first glaring Problem is Mablung: we know Mablung didn’t escape Doriath in the final timeline. But of course Mablung is in all other ways the ideal source for the Narn poet—we need that Mablung’s eye view on Nienor and Morwen on the trip to Nargothrond, Turin as he was that final morning in Brethil, etc. There’s another possibility, I suppose, which is that Dirhavel talks to one of the unnamed riders who form the rest of Morwen’s escort and (perhaps?) escape the clusterfuck at Nargothrond to ride out with Mablung again when he goes seeking Nienor and Turin in Brethil—but that’s not super satisfying, unless we can come up with anything else about the rider. We could also think in terms of people Mablung might choose as a confidante. Beleg’s out. Melian’s out, unfortunately. Hmm. Well, let me not string you along, I obviously have an idea here, although it’s a stupid one: NELLAS. Maybe a) Mablung started talking to Nellas after the trial/Beleg’s disappearance, since no one else was going to keep her updated and she was not going to stop creepily staring at him from a tree until he gave her an answer … b) it developed into a genuine friendship?? … c) Nellas took inspiration from Nienor and disguised herself as one of the riders who go with Mablung to Brethil? Or just legitimately went as a volunteer, who cares. Or like, everyone knew she was going along as a volunteer, but she still went in disguise, because it made her feel better.
…Hmm. Anyway, my point is, I like the idea of Nellas among the refugees in Sirion, and I like the idea of her making Dirhavel promise that he’ll list “Mablung” as his source, not “Nellas, who hates publicity.” I think it fits well in a few other ways—we know she spoke (and passed on to Turin) the beautiful ancient Doriath dialect or whatever, and one of the few pieces of information we’re given about Dirhavel is that he “has great skill in” Sindarin, which suggests to me not just fluency but mastery of multiple registers and a linguistic interest in Sindarin’s character as a language: maybe he got some material from Nellas, or it was what allowed him to talk to Nellas in the first place, or ideally both. Also, I have no basis for this actually, but Nellas seems like the kind of person who would be a really good mimic, A+ impressions—I hope this played a role in her teaching Turin about animals—and again I think it would be cool if there really was this feeling of Nellas like, channeling Mablung for the purposes of getting his testimony, in kind of the flip of Beleg summoning her for Turin’s trial.
Downsides to this theory: CoH specifically says that “Nellas of Doriath never saw [Túrin] again, and his shadow passed from her.” I don’t want to take this from Nellas!! I want to let his shadow pass from her! Still, I feel like ‘burning voyeuristic curiosity’ is distinct from ‘helpless loyalty to a memory,’ so maybe I can fudge it.
Moving on, I’m also suuuuuuuper interested in what “the people of Nargothrond” means here tbh. GWINDOR SURVIVED AND WENT TO THE HAVENS jk I love the freaking jab about “the little that… Gwindor or Turin ever revealed” too much to tamper with his post-mortem reticence, at least for the duration of this theory post. But, so, people from Nargothrond… I mean, I guess what puzzles me is the idea that it’s specifically Nargothrond’s survivors who know what happened to Mim, for example. Does that mean there were survivors in the area up to 5 years after the sack?? I guess that makes sense, now I think about it—people living off the land/going from part-time woodelf back to full-time woodelf, people who were left for dead in the battle—but I had never considered it before and it’s kind of weirding me out. Or do we imagine that Glaurung reserved a subset of the prisoners for his own slaves? That’s. Uhhh. Weird. I really don’t know what to picture for “witnesses to Mim’s death,” although I guess they could just have found the body after Hurin left. That’s a little more reasonable. That said what would make way MORE sense would be for Mim to have been one of the sources, given how many private Turin-Mim conversations are recorded. I realize Androg is supposed to have been eavesdropping but did he REALLY relay ALL of his eavesdropping to his adult son. Also, if you were Mim, would you not take this golden opportunity to pointedly enter your own “death” into the historical record
“I actually just camouflaged with the hoard because I was wearing so much shiny shit at that point. But listen, I saw his face, he WOULD have killed me if he hadn’t been busy playing hackey-sack with the Nauglamir. What do you mean he threw himself into the ocean somewhere near here, why would the ocean kill him, this isn’t safe”
…As for Dirhavel himself, I don’t know if I have a ton of headcanons. I guess I was thinking of him (??) as the kid of refugees from Brodda’s house, although man, now that I say that that feels like the kind of thing that would absolutely be mentioned if ‘true.’ Okay, here’s my thinking: I imagine him growing up in the Havens, not having ever been himself enslaved by the Easterlings, even as a child, and I also assume he was at least late 30s/40 when he died, so it would make SENSE if his parent(s) escaped in the 490s, and… hm. I guess that’s not super strong evidence. Because he’s listed as a man of the House of Hador and not, say, a man with a Hadorian mother and a Haladin father or something, I was thinking it would make sense if both his parents came from Dor-lomin and knew each other before Sirion, which was much more of a melting pot, but there’s really a bunch of unjustified assumptions I’m making there that don’t stand up to close examination, so, eh. On the other hand it’s kind of cute. Look. Whatever. I’m going to arbitrarily say I also picture him being related to Asgon. OH the other reason I was thinking about Brodda-refugees was because I was like, “where would the special affinity for Sindarin have come from,” and we know Brodda specifically seized most of Hurin’s holdings/people, and like sure everyone spoke Sindarin by then but I imagine nowhere moreso than in Hurin and Morwen’s service? To be polite to all the elf ambassadors constantly tramping through the garden if nothing else? So, that is my still deeply shaky basis. Thanks.
I was going to throw in some bullshit meta at the end here about blah blah the longest lay from those days not because more stuff HAPPENS in the Narn but because of the human preference for some granular description in the language whereas elves save the details for the telepathic music video, and also about the elves prizing the Narn because elf musicians never INTERVIEW people, the survivors of Nargothrond have never been INTERVIEWED before, no one ever talks to us!! It’s so enlivening. Then I decided I wouldn’t type it out. Then apparently I typed it out anyway. I do love the Narn being composed in Sirion because it really captures something about Sirion’s feeling of ill-defined urgency, like, we know we have to do SOMETHING… it’s all down to us… but what…… and in what timeframe… oh god, are we going to have to talk it out. I like the mechanical constraints—it can’t be a Numenorean reconstruction or whatever because it’s too immediate and living a piece of history, and he wants it to be history, and yet the Narn is in some senses about the end of history for Beleriand, or the end of its great bastions, so how do you get it written? Well, by engineering one more pause for breath. Okay. Sirion. And Dirhavel running around in the middle of that is someone I FEEL like I have a very clear image of, even if I haven’t actually talked about hypothetical personality at all here, nor would I because I suck at textual ghosts. Cute, though.
Tolkien compares the "Battle of Maldon" poet with other surviving writings of the time, indicating that the "Battle of Maldon" is recorded in a more hasty, less formal manner than earlier poetry. Tolkien indicates that this poem has been more or less constructed by a "minstrel turned scholar," one whose purpose as bard was to document the details of the battle for his listeners, yet in the process becoming an historical observer for those reading the surviving manuscripts. I was struck by this reference, given the close analogy between the sounds of speech and those of music, and how Tolkien would refer to the "Battle of Maldon" poet in this way.
Introduction of "Middle Earth Minstrel" by Bradford Lee Eden
