J. R. R. Tolkien: The Children of Húrin

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Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2008

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2007

The Children of Húrin © The Tolkien Estate Limited and C R Tolkien 2007

Illustrations © Alan Lee 2007

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Source ISBN: 9780007246229

Ebook Edition March 2009 ISBN: 9780007322589

Version: 2019-01-08

To

BAILLIE TOLKIEN

Contents

COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

CHAPTER I: THE CHILDHOOD OF TÚRIN

CHAPTER II: THE BATTLE OF UNNUMBERED TEARS

CHAPTER III: THE WORDS OF HÚRIN AND MORGOTH

CHAPTER IV: THE DEPARTURE OF TÚRIN

CHAPTER V: TÚRIN IN DORIATH

CHAPTER VI: TÚRIN AMONG THE OUTLAWS

CHAPTER VII: OF MÎM THE DWARF

CHAPTER VIII: THE LAND OF BOW AND HELM

CHAPTER IX: THE DEATH OF BELEG

CHAPTER X: TÚRIN IN NARGOTHROND

CHAPTER XI: THE FALL OF NARGOTHROND

CHAPTER XII: THE RETURN OF TÚRIN TO DOR-LÓMIN CHAPTER

CHAPTER XIII: THE COMING OF TÚRIN INTO BRETHIL

CHAPTER XIV: THE JOURNEY OF MORWEN AND NIËNOR TO NARGOTHROND

CHAPTER XV: NIËNOR IN BRETHIL

CHAPTER XVI: THE COMING OF GLAURUNG

CHAPTER XVII: THE DEATH OF GLAURUNG

CHAPTER XVIII: THE DEATH OF TÚRIN

GENEALOGIES

APPENDIX

LIST OF NAMES IN THE TALE OF THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN

NOTE ON THE MAP

WORKS BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Illustrations

Húrin and Huor are Carried to Gondolin

Heir of the House of Hador

Húrin Rides to the Nirnaeth Anoediad

The Host of Fingon

Haudh-en-Nirnaeth, the Mound of Tears

The Words of Húrin and Morgoth

The Departure of Túrin

Nellas and Túrin in the Woods of Doriath

Beleg Departs from Menegroth

Beleg and Anglachel

Túrin is Surrounded by the Outlaws

Lembas

The Petty-Dwarves

Amon Rûdh

The Helm of Hador, the Bow of Beleg

Beleg at the Crossings of Teiglin

Finduilas Welcomes Gwindor and Túrin

The Reforging of Anglachel

Gelmir and Arminas Approach the Gates of Nargothrond

Under the Spell of the Dragon

Túrin Returns to Dor-lómin

The Burning of the Hall

Túrin is Carried to Ephel Brandir

The Coming of Túrin into Brethil

Haudh-en-Elleth, the Mound of the Elf-Maid

The Journey of Morwen and Niënor

Niënor into the Wild

The Scouts under the Eaves of Brethil

The Coming of Glaurung

Túrin and Hunthor Cross the Cabed-en-Aras

The Death of Glaurung

The Death of Túrin

Húrin and Morwen

PREFACE

It is undeniable that there are a very great many readers of The Lord of the Rings for whom the legends of the Elder Days (as previously published in varying forms in The Silmarillion , Unfinished Tales , and The History of Middle-earth ) are altogether unknown, unless by their repute as strange and inaccessible in mode and manner. For this reason it has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father’s long version of the legend of the Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it.

I have thought that if the story of the fate of Túrin and Niënor, the children of Húrin and Morwen, could be presented in this way, a window might be opened onto a scene and a story set in an unknown Middle-earth that are vivid and immediate, yet conceived as handed down from remote ages: the drowned lands in the west beyond the Blue Mountains where Treebeard walked in his youth, and the life of Túrin Turambar, in Dor-lómin, Doriath, Nargothrond, and the Forest of Brethil.

This book is thus primarily addressed to such readers as may perhaps recall that the hide of Shelob was so horrendously hard that it ‘could not be pierced by any strength of men, not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the the children of húrin hand of Beren or of Túrin wield it’, or that Elrond named Túrin to Frodo at Rivendell as one of ‘the mighty Elf-friends of old’; but know no more of him.

When my father was a young man, during the years of the First World War and long before there was any inkling of the tales that were to form the narrative of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings , he began the writing of a collection of stories that he called The Book of Lost Tales. That was his first work of imaginative literature, and a substantial one, for though it was left unfinished there are fourteen completed tales. It was in The Book of Lost Tales that there first appeared in narrative the Gods, or Valar; Elves and Men as the Children of Ilúvatar (the Creator); Melkor-Morgoth the great Enemy; Balrogs and Orcs; and the lands in which the Tales are set, Valinor ‘land of the Gods’ beyond the western ocean, and the ‘Great Lands’ (afterwards called ‘Middle-earth’, between the seas of east and west).

Among the Lost Tales three were of much greater length and fullness, and all three are concerned with Men as well as Elves: they are The Tale of Tinúviel (which appears in brief form in The Lord of the Rings as the story of Beren and Lúthien that Aragorn told to the hobbits on Weathertop; this my father wrote in 1917), Turambar and the Foalókë (Túrin Turambar and the Dragon, certainly in existence by 1919, if not before), and The Fall of Gondolin (1916–17). In an often-quoted passage of a long letter describing his work that my father wrote in 1951, three years before the publication of TheFellowship of the Ring , he told of his early ambition: ‘once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths . . . I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched.’