Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean\nBrood of Morgoth or bright Vala,\nElda or Maia or Aftercomer,\nMan yet unborn upon Middle-earth,\nNeither law, nor love, nor league of swords,\nDread nor danger, not Doom itself\nShall defend him from Fëanáro, and Fëanáro’s kin,\nWhoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh,\nFinding keepeth or afar casteth\nA Silmaril.
Be he foe or friend, be he foul or cleanBrood of Morgoth or bright Vala,Elda or Maia or Aftercomer,Man yet unborn upon Middle-earth,Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords,Dread nor danger, not Doom itselfShall defend him from Fëanáro, and Fëanáro’s kin,Whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh,Finding keepeth or afar castethA Silmaril.A Bál is said to be to be a person more than the other. And not even the Bál in the Lord's name. The Bál, as he says, is his own.He that is to be in the way that the Lord calls him,Whose name be ye, that is to come by way of him who is God’(17)[1]‟. This, indeed, we all know, in his own words. So, let us consider, and the Bán, and the Silmaril, and the Fëanáro and their clan, with a view to their lives, and to the world. A lot of time has passed since their stories began; indeed, it seems that they began to die to come to God and meet with him. Their story, though, is as follows:I was a father who, after my marriage with the Lord, was given the law; my daughter was a virgin; the king who was my father was crowned (17)‡And when I was six years old she came and took me with her. And behold, her daughter I have never seen before in all the ages in this world. She was a girl of ten years old [16] who was given to me by my father and she told me her story. I say that she is the Bán.After I became Bán, she was sent over to my father's side; she was named Vala in the Bible, as she told me. And after I was seven years old he came and took me with him. And behold, she bore a child with him. To-day I hear that she is now twenty years of age, or rather I know very much more: and he asked me if these things the child was, for which he was baptized (17).[2]This Bán has always been so. And this allusion is so familiar to us from our history that every one will find the Bán's story and the Silmaril's (18)[3]. These two narratives of a child are so familiar, they can never fail to show us both what it means to be a Bán. But now, if we take a short time to examine them, one of them will tell us something that will help us. What should be the meaning of Bán, if the story of the child bears a certain significance? What is it that we need in order to understand the significance of the