starspray | and the beauty of Melian was as the noon

So there's this fanfic meme on Tumblr where someone gives you a chunk of your fic and you do a dvd commentary sort of thing on it--and then vardasvapors took it and adjusted it for canon material so you're doing a close-reading instead, and I reblogged it and got an ask and I'm just gonna copy/paste what I wrote here, so I have it somewhere not-tumblr.

The ask was: "Now as has been told, one Lenwë of the host of Olwë forsook the march of the Eldar at that time when the Teleri were halted by the shores of the Great River" to "but when the Valaróma echoed in the hills, they knew well that all evil things were fled far away." ?

My response under the cut:

Ahh, I love Beleriand in the Ages of the Stars! <3

Now as has been told, one Lenwe of the host of Olwe foresook the march of the Elddar at that time when the Teleri were halted by the shores of the Great River on the borders of the westlands of Middle-earth. Little is known of the wanderings of the Nandor, whom he led away down Anduin…

I’ve always wondered what happened to Lenwe. He never gets another mention, either in The Silmarillion or in LotR, which is kind of a shame because can you imagine the hobbits meeting him, just like, chilling in Lothlorien in the Third Age?
Also when I first read this I got all excited because I recognized things like the Anduin, and the Misty Mountains, and Eriador. So the Elves we meet in Lothlorien, like Haldir and his brothers, and in Mirkwood are the descendants, or even some of the Elves who chose to stay in that part of the world.

(Also it’s a little amusing that Tolkien can’t use Misty Mountains in his histories, it’s Mountains of Mist, because it…sounds fancier? idk, it’s just funny)

Now these were a woodland people and had no weapons of steel, and the coming of the fell beasts of the North filled them with great fear, as the Naugrim declared to King Thingol in Menegroth.

What’s so interesting here is that there is communication between the Nandor of Eriador and beyond and Menegroth in Beleriand. You tend to think of the Ered Luin as this hard and fast border that gets crossed only a few notable times (by Denethor in this section, by Men later, etc), but no, there’s lots of coming and going. Mostly by the Dwarves, but probably by Elves as well, so the sundering of the Teleri at the Anduin wasn’t as permanent a thing as the sundering when Olwe took his people across the Sea.

Also, it says here that the Nandor “had no weapons of steel,” but they’re also clearly in communication with the Dwarves, who forge steel weapons for Thingol and for themselves, so if they wanted steel weapons they could presumably get them.

Therefore Denethor, the son of Lenwe, hearing rumour of the might of Thingol and his majesty, and of the peace of his realm, gathered such host of his scattered people as he could, and led them over the mountains into Beleriand. There they were welcomed by Thingol, as kin long lost that return, and they dwelt in Ossiriand, the Land of Seven Rivers.

This makes the “no weapons of steel” thing make a bit more sense–Denethor has trouble gathering a large host to bring over the Ered Luin, so the Nandor seem to be semi-nomadic at this point, as opposed to the more settled kingdoms we find later in Mirkwood and Lothlorien in LotR–which makes sense, because until the fell beasts show up they don’t really have to worry about finding somewhere safe and fortified–and steel is heavy.

As a side note, in addition to seven rivers we know that Ossiriand is home to a great number of elm trees, and also that Treebeard liked to spend his summers there:

I wandered in Summer in the elm-woods of Ossiriand.
Ah! The light and the music in the Summer by the Seven Rivers of Ossir!
And I thought that was best.

Of the long years of peace that followed after the coming of Denethor there is little tale.
GOOD, that means NOTHING BAD HAPPENED

In those days, it is said, Daeron the Minstrel, chief loremaster of the kingdom of Thingol, devised his Runes; and the Naugrim that came to Thingol learned them, and were well-pleased with the device, esteeming Daeron’s skill higher than did the Sindar, his own people. By the Naugrim the Cirth were taken east over the mountains and passed into the knowledge of many peoples; but they were little used by the Sindar for the keeping of records, until the days of the War, and much that was held in memory perished in the ruins of Doriath.

Spoiler alert, Doriath gets ruined.

No but this reminds me of that one post that was going around debating when/why Elves started writing things down. I forget the arguments on either side but here’s some good textual evidence I don’t remember seeing–although the post, IIRC, was Noldor-centric, so maybe that’s why.

Anyway, this part is why I’m rather fond of Daeron. He wasn’t just a lovesick kind of creepy puppy following Luthien around, he was doing loremastering and inventing writing systems and making friends with Dwarves and stuff, too.

But I don’t think I noticed before this reading that his runes “passed into the knowledge of many peoples,” which is really neat. I always just thought of the runes as a dwarf thing (and a Dunedain thing later, per Aragorn’s words at Weathertop that Rangers use runes sometimes), but this indicates that the Cirth were much more widespread.

But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken forever do they pass into song.

This is an interesting sentence if you recall Pengolodh the in-universe narrator, probably in Sirion, taking down as much as he can from the survivors of places like Doriath and Nargothrond and Gondolin, etc. Kind of an acknowledgment that after-the-fact recording is a bit too little too late, as far as really capturing what things were like. And there’s also the grief associated with it, that those works do get broken forever and can only survive as a memory in song–and this is the grief that leads to Celebrimbor and the making of the Elven rings, which are meant to prevent that kind of peril and decay.

In Beleriand in those days the Elves walked, and the rivers flowed, and the stars shone, and the night-flowers gave forth their scents

Hey this is a gorgeous sentence but it also sounds kind of familiar where have I heard that about rivers and stars oh right

O! Where are you going,
So late in returning?
The river is flowing,
The stars are all burning!
O! Whither so laden,
So sad and so dreary?
Here elf and elf-maiden
Now welcome the weary
With Tra-la-la-lally
Come back to the Valley,
Tra-la-la-lally
Fa-la-la-lally
Fa-la!

~~i just really like the tra la la lally songs okay~~

…and the beauty of Melian was as the noon, and the beauty of Luthien was as the dawn in spring.

Not that noon or dawn were Things in this time, which is another clear indicator that this is a record written much later and under the sun, when that kind of simile is available.

Also if we go back to “the Elves walked” and remember that his is pre-Girdle, it’s entirely feasible for Luthien to have traveled throughout Beleriand in this time, since Thingol is at this time Lord of all Beleriand and it wouldn’t make sense for him to stay in Menegroth all the time, and if he’s traveling around it just makes sense for Luthien to go with him. So when she goes after Beren later it’s not like she has absolutely no idea where she’s going, you know?

In Beleriand King Thingol upon his throne was as the lords of the Maiar, whose power is at rest, whose joy is as an air that they breathe in all their days, whose thought flows in a tide untroubled from the heights to the deeps.

And this is evidence that this record was written down by or at least influenced by Noldor out of Valinor for whom, having known many of the Maiar, this kind of simile would make sense.

In Beleriand still at times rode Orome the great, passing like a wind over the mountains, and Elves feared him for the splendour of his countenance and the great noise of the onrush of Nahar; but when the Valaroma echoed in the hills, they knew well that all evil things were fled far away.

I wonder if this fearfulness of Orome in his splendour was part of the reason Lenwe and his people abandoned the Great Journey? Like, they’re quite happy to hear the Valaroma echoing in the hills because now they don’t have to worry, at least for a while, about evil things roaming about, but they much prefer to keep Orome himself at a distance, which wouldn’t be possible in Valinor–and if Orome is overwhelming, just imagine all the Valar and Maiar gathered together in one place.

This whole section is really great, because it makes it very clear that not only were the Moriquendi doing okay in Beleriand, they were thriving, and in spite of those pesky fell beasts this was a time of peace and prosperity for them just as it was for the Elves in Valinor.