hat do I mean by ‘the Canon’? I mean the whole existing description of Arda as conceived by J R R Tolkien and extant in his writings.
If one sets out, as I did, to fill in blanks in a story conceived by somebody else, then almost by definition one is going to want to fit in with the existing framework. The new growth should graft as seamlessly as possible onto the root stock; and you really won’t want to go changing anything in the existing story. Why would you? What would be the point?
Nevertheless I have, with varying degrees of reluctance, written things which may be seen as changing some details of Tolkien’s conception. The purpose of this page is to explain in detail which, and why.
lightly tricky question, for a number of reasons. An easy answer would be: the published corpus of Tolkien’s works about, or set in, his invented universe of Middle-earth. One difficulty with that is that some of these works have been published posthumously, which is always going to require some editorial intervention from third parties. A far more significant problem is that Tolkien never ceased thinking about and developing many aspects of his world throughout his life. This process is reflected in the published material, which contains many instances of stories or themes which are described more than once, the different descriptions exhibiting at times quite pronounced mutual contradictions.
These contradictions allow one a freedom that I have occasionally taken advantage of. All the same, it is no light matter. Should my own story be published, or otherwise gain wide currency, the choices I make between Tolkien’s alternative conceptions may end up themselves contributing to the Canon.
In choosing which course to steer, I have been guided by three principles:
The first of these points requires little further comment. Nobody undertakes a project of this nature without being fired by a passion for the marvellous worlds of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Passion implies respect.
As for weights, my principal criterion has been the state of completion. All other things being equal, it seems to me that a work that Tolkien himself completed and published in his lifetime should be assigned greater weight than material published after his death. And in the posthumous material, some texts and tales are clearly more coherently developed than others.
The central, and for most readers the defining, work in the whole Canon is ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (LR). I would shrink from writing anything which contradicted any part of this work. Luckily for me, the danger of doing so has scarcely arisen, since Beren occurs only in the distant mythological past of that story, and is thus sparsely mentioned.
‘The Hobbit’ is arguably the second most beloved of Tolkien’s Arda books, but for my purposes it has played almost no role, since it contains few descriptions of the structure and history of Middle-earth which cannot be seen as superseded by those in LR. For this reason I omit it from my own definition of the Canon.
Third in the popular ranking comes ‘The Silmarillion’ (S). This was a posthumous publication, edited by Tolkien’s son Christopher, therefore it cannot be said to represent work that Tolkien had completed to his own satisfaction. Nevertheless it is by far the most extensive and coherent description available of the times and events I wished to write about. Paradoxically, it is the relative paucity of information in S about Beren’s life before he met Lúthien that has allowed me such wide scope to imagine how that life might have progressed.
The major remaining contribution to the Canon are the volumes named The History of Middle-earth (HME), edited again by Christopher Tolkien, which in their entirety contain nearly every last scrap of Tolkien’s writings on Middle-earth. These are published matter, they are out there in the world, so they can by no means be ignored; yet, as mentioned before, they contain many inconsistencies, which offer quite rich ground for judicious selection. Where there is conflict (e.g. in the spelling of names) between S and HME, I have usually preferred the former.
A final addition to the published works is the small volume named ‘Unfinished Tales’. I assign this the same notional weight as The History of Middle-earth.
In choosing which version of a story, timeline, cosmogony etc. to adopt as background for my own tale, I’ve preferred later accounts over earlier — up to a point. My opinion, which may be controversial, is that Tolkien, in the last years of his life, began just a little to lose his way. What matters to me personally are the stories: the titanic struggles between larger-than-life personalities, played out against the background of the glorious landscape and mythic structure of Middle-earth. However, what began more and more, I feel, to matter to their author towards the end of his life, were what I would call the fiddly details of etymology and cosmogony. Personally I think that the mythic glamour of stories such as these loses some of its charm if one focuses too intensely on details; for this reason, I have elected to ignore some of Tolkien’s very late evolutions.
he books of the Canon as they concern the story of Beren are tabulated as follows. (The abbreviation HME refers to The History of Middle-earth.)
| My abbreviation | Probable date of composition | Full identification |
|---|---|---|
| LL | 1925-1931 | The Lay of Leithian, HME vol IV |
| AB2 | 1930-1937 | The later Annals of Beleriand, HME vol V |
| QS5 | 1938 | Quenta Silmarillion, HME vol V |
| GA | 1951+ | The Grey Annals, HME vol XI |
| WH | 1951+? | The Wanderings of Húrin, HME vol XI |
| TY | 1951+ | The Tale of the Years (version D), HME vol XI |
| LR | pub. 1954 | The Lord of the Rings. |
| NHH | 1950s? | Narn I Hin Húrin (in Unfinished Tales) |
| QS11 | 1958? | Quenta Silmarillion, HME vol XI |
| G | 1959 | Genealogical tables, HME vol XI |
| Ath | 1959 | Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, HME vol X |
| DIN | 1964? | A Description of the Island of Númenor (in Unfinished Tales) |
| DM | 1969+ | ‘Of Dwarves and Men’, HME vol XII |
| S | pub. 1977 | The Silmarillion |
he Lord of the Rings, and to a slightly lesser extent The Hobbit, are direct accounts. They grip the reader with a sense of immediacy. These are not tales of some far-off history: the reader feels parachuted into the scene. I felt a strong reluctance to change anything at all that is described in these authoritative accounts.
The Silmarillion, despite its posthumous publication, speaks also with authority. There is, however, one crucial difference between S and LR, and that is that S is presented not as a direct, eye-witness account but rather in the style of a redaction by aftercomers of more or less mythic tales that were first composed in the long-ago.
This supposed historical distance of S is of course entirely a conceptual one, since the actual author (i.e., Tolkien) is in all cases the same. Many people, both writers and readers, do enjoy the fantasy that a given mythic tale has an origin independent of the author; i.e. that the author is merely a redactor of some dusty scroll unearthed in the archives. Past fiction authors have often presented their stories in such manner, contriving for them a realistic provenance, sometimes going to extraordinary and elaborate lengths to do so. Tolkien arranged something like this himself in Lord of the Rings, in which he pretended that the entire book was written by Hobbits from tales preserved via their (imagined) Red Book of Westmarch. Later collators of and commentators on his work have occasionally continued this pleasant fiction, with it must be said sometimes less than entirely convincing results.
My present commentary is of course breaking this ‘fourth mirror’ as it might be named. Well, so be it. We are here now, discussing the secrets behind the scenery.
I confess that for the purposes of Beren One Hand, I have found a convenient leeway in this fantasy of a redaction of earlier legends and sagas by the supposed Silmarillion author(s). Furthermore, the account of Beren in the Silmarillion is presented as being of Eldarin authorship; and one may easily convince oneself that the Elves were not overly concerned with events which did not directly affect their own people. In particular, from the extreme paucity of information given about Beren’s life in Dorthonion, it appears as though the Eldar were not very interested in the affairs of the Northern men, and thus may not always have been punctilious in recording with accuracy what details they do provide. I have therefore felt free to alter (‘tweak’ may be a better word), where I have felt it to be advantageous for the story, some of the scanty details provided for this period, as well as to invent extensively to fill the great gulfs of time during which nothing whatsoever is recorded in the Canon about the First House and its doings.
I have not myself gone to any elaborate lengths to maintain a fiction that Beren One Hand was a tale written by sources who actually lived in Middle-earth, but I have left a little room for readers who wish to suppose an independent preservation of Atanic writings contributed to by Caladis, added to and preserved perhaps by Hunleth, and thence transported to Númenor and eventually to the archives in Gondor.
n the bold-font headings below I have given the date I chose; in the lists that follow each heading, I give the evidence in the Canon in support of various dates. All dates are given in ‘Years of the Sun’ (see The Silmarillion for an explanation). In this calendar, the years begin in (northern hemisphere) mid-winter, much as our own do today.
BSF refers to the Battle of Sudden Flame.
hingol challenges Beren to the Quest of the Silmaril in summer; from the alternative choices presented in the Canon, I have chosen the year 465 for the date of this event. Beren recovers from Carcaroth’s bite in spring. In between these points of narrow seasonal constraint, the following events occur, arguably in the order given. (I have collated into single entries events which occur soon upon one another, separated at most by a few days of hasty travel time.)
The question is, how much time elapses between 1 and 9?
I would think five or so months would suffice for the imprisonment in Tol in Gaurhoth. At that rate, Sauron would have been killing a prisoner about every two weeks. The rescue would thus occur towards the end of 465. This is borne out by S, which says that Beren and Lúthien spent winter together after the rescue. Thus it really comes down to the amount of time between 5 and 9. The only feasible choices are five months (i.e. til the beginning of May in 466), or sixteen months (to the beginning of, say, April 467).
Neither choice is very convenient. Sixteen months seems rather leisurely, but five is pretty short.
‘Winter came, but it hurt them not.’ The couple must have spent at least a month or two in wandering. Cut it to the bone and say 6 occurred in mid-January. Did the angry escapees really travel all the way back to Nargothrond in the very middle of winter? Set that aside — they were Elves, maybe they could manage such a thing. We pass on to the next time of waiting, between 6 and 7. How long before Beren was fit again? From a serious chest wound? With all the magic herbs in the world, it is difficult to believe this could take place in less than a month. That gives mid to late February for 7 and 8; thus leaving two months, March and April, for the recovery from the dreadful wound from Carcaroth. It’s barely possible, but it’s very, very tight.
How would the long alternative work? It begins comfortably enough. 6 would occur in the spring of 466. Give Beren two months to get fit again (til 7), then a month further wandering through the woods before 8. That brings us to the closing days of summer; that’s a good season for quests. The business in Angband occurs some time around September 466. Beren takes six months to recover from Carcaroth’s bite. It’s plausible. That takes us to spring 467 for 9.
I chose the longer alternative.
ow much time passed between the (first) deaths of Beren and Lúthien and their rebirth? GA has a space of at least a year; S implies that the interval was rather short. I saw no reason not to accept the specification of S. What would they be doing during any longer period?
wanted to have Telchar and Beren interact. Was that possible? All that we know about Telchar from the Canon is as follows:
Of these facts, the one with the most date information is the gift of the Dragonhelm. Glaurung first appeared in sun-year 260. Hador lived between sun years 390 and 455. Azaghâl died in the battle of SY 472, thus he cannot have been a warrior much before SY 270 or so (assuming an active lifetime for Dwarves of 200 years); SY 300 may be a more plausible early limit. Thus we can sketch an approximate period from SYs 300 to 430 which marks the plausible limits on the time of Telchar’s gift of the Helm to Azaghâl. I conclude that it is quite possible that Telchar’s and Beren’s lifetimes overlapped.
here are problems with Barahir’s birth date. The date of 400 given in G would make him 55 at the BSF and 60 at the time of his death, at which time he was living rough and still opposing Sauron’s forces. This seems a bit old to me. About the latest I can decently move his birth to is 409, which would make him 46 at the time of the BSF, an age at which a man might still be expected to be able to swing a vigorous sword. To see why he can’t be born much later, consider his family. Barahir is the youngest reported child of his father Bregor and unnamed mother. The eldest was Bregil, born in 386. If we assume that Barahir and Bregil’s mother was no younger than 18 in 386, she would have been 41 in 409. A gap of 23 years between first and last children is getting close to the reasonable maximum. If I made Barahir’s birth date much later I would begin to need to alter the dates of others of his family.
eren’s birth date is pretty consistently given in the Canon as 432, which would make him 23 at the time of the BSF, 28 at the time of his father’s death, and 32 at the time he met Lúthien. This again seems just a tiny bit on the old side. I thought he should be a bit less experienced at all three points, so have moved his birth to 436. This also eases the age difference between him and Húrin (they were supposed to have been boyhood friends).
regor’s granddaughter Beldis through his eldest child Bregil is stated in G and other sources to have married Handir of Brethil. However, their respective birth dates of 411 and 441 make this rather unlikely. I have introduced another generation, and a second Beldis (born in 437) to resolve this difficulty. One may suppose if one wishes that the confusion of names led to a scribal error.
he Canon (in an obscure note in DM) states that Curufin’s wife did not accompany him into exile. I did not come across this reference until I had already invented Idhren, giving her a small but nonetheless poignant cameo. I chose to leave this in, since the level of infraction seemed slight enough price to pay for the minor but vivid brush stroke.
hen I first wrote this story, I found that I had ended up with tension between the Dwarf cities of Belegost and Nogrod (which cities we may associate from DM with the founding fathers respectively of the Broadbeams and Firebeards), of which, at the time of writing, I did not know the source. Some sort of dissent between these neighbours may also be found implied in the history given in S of the raid by the Dwarves of Nogrod on Doriath, in which the Dwarves of Belegost specifically refused to take part. How was this to be explained?
It is related in S and DM how Aulë created the Dwarves without sanction from Ilúvatar. The One gave these seven ‘Fathers of the Dwarves’ souls and caused Aulë to disperse them to widely-scattered locations in Middle-earth, where they were to sleep until after the ‘regulation’ Children had awoken. The question naturally arises, how did the Dwarves propagate from this beginning? The only possibilities I could think of were:
I have chosen the last of these alternatives as perhaps the least implausible way out of the difficulty. After all, the sources do affirm that Dwarf-women existed, so they must have come into being at some point. It is easiest to conceive of this occurring at the point of creation. Even though it is said in S that the One did not amend Aulë’s work apart from giving souls to the Dwarves, perhaps he/she stretched a point and added a little necessary female nature to their being, something which one may easily imagine was beyond Aulë’s ken.
Once one takes it as assumed that some of the Seven were female, one immediately comes up against a further problem: seven is not an even number. The original Dwarves therefore cannot pair up neatly. I have used this as a starting point to elaborate a legend of the origin of the dwarvish peoples which, although it barges into completely virgin territory in the Tolkienian universe in a manner that may offend many who cherish the Canon, nevertheless provides fertile soil for drama in the later working out of dwarvish history. I would argue that this is a fitting consequence to the unintended but nonetheless unerasable variety of Original Sin inflicted by Aulë on his creations, occasioned by his making the Dwarves without sanction or oversight.
he Dwarves were traders, or at least road-makers. Some Dwarf-roads and routes are mentioned in S, but their penetration into the North and West is left practically undescribed. A route north through Aglon seems uncontroversial; if this extended via Ladros all the way past Rivil to the Vale of Sirion and beyond, that would not only open up the whole of Dorthonion but would also provide a trading route to Hithlum which avoided the unpleasantness of the path threading between the Girdle on the one side and the monsters of Dungortheb on the other.
The secret route through the southern fence of Dorthonion via the headwaters of Aros represents a leap of invention on a further level. Yet, why not? If I were chief of a parcel of tunneling Dwarves, eager to cut a great bight off an important trading artery, I would be looking at the cliffs above the springs of Aros with a speculative expression on my face.
The Dwarf-roads through eastern Beleriand are more of a problem, since here the Canon presents no tabula rasa, but rather a number of suggestions with poor mutual consistency. The question is discussed in some detail by Christopher Tolkien in HME XI, section ‘Maeglin’. Of the various conflicting conceptions on offer I have chosen the one in which the only (or at least the principal) crossing of Gelion was at Sarn Athrad.
he Dwarves were said to have been secretive and jealous of their language, Khuzdul, which is only sparsely described in the Canon. I have shrunk from promiscuous invention, but given that Beren spends some years in a Dwarf city, it seemed to me that even the strictest regime of dwarvish silence would have let slip the odd word or two. If we are to suppose (as seems reasonable) that the prohibition against speaking Khuzdul to strangers was based on custom rather than law, we may also suppose that such custom may have been unevenly upheld; that Dwarves of more amiable and carefree disposition (such as Akhal), as well as those of sufficient rank to feel free of constraint, would not always keep a rigorous guard on their tongues. The best example in the Canon of this relative freedom is Gimli in LR, who seemed to feel no great compunction about revealing a number of dwarvish words, albeit mostly place names.
In constructing new words of Khuzdul I have made grateful use of the (non-canonical) extension of Khuzdul provided by the Dwarrow Scholar (Dw), who gives only his first name ‘Roy’.
The Khuzdul terms I made up (or simply took over from Dw), and their justification, are listed below.
Dwarf personal names are another matter. If we accept the tradition that the dwarvish zeal to keep these secret from outsiders was far higher than for the rest of their language, amounting almost to an obsession, then the simplest solution is to follow Tolkien’s example and simply make up for new characters whatever names seem best to fit the case. This I have done. I made no attempt to fit names such as Yg, Breshke and Khabbock into the triconsonantal system specified for ordinary Khuzdul. Those names, such as Gebshâr, which are obviously Khuzdul may be taken simply as descriptive cognomens.
here are several scattered mentions throughout the Canon of various things made for Elves by the Dwarves of Belegost and Nogrod, or made by the Dwarves of one city for those of another. These ‘gifts’ (in which I include Narsil and the Dragonhelm) may be summarized as follows (here the names of the originating cities are represented by their initial letters).
The rather large question raised by all these gifts is what the Dwarves received in return; since they, perhaps least of all of the peoples of Middle-earth, would hardly have done so much for nothing. Yet the only mention of recompense in the Canon is the pearls paid by Thingol for the building of Menegroth. In view of the close-up view of Nogrod I chose to provide in my story, I felt the imperative to come up with some sort of explanation. I cannot claim to be entirely happy with the one I devised, but I console myself with the thought that the Dwarves surely kept further secrets to themselves.
urufin was said to have been friendly with the Dwarves, but such openness and tolerance as this implies sit poorly with the rest of what we know of his nature. I have preferred to think that he rather exploited the Dwarves for what he could get out of them, feigning friendship only so far as it served that goal.
t seems to me unavoidable to have a river which drains Dorthonion, and since this cannot feasibly flow to the South, East, or West, partly because of intervening mountains and partly because the drainage in those directions is already mapped out, it must flow to the North. Given this geographical necessity, I have fulfilled it in the way that seemed best to me. Otherwise I have preserved as best I could all the features (e.g. Foen, Rivil, Aeluin, Drûn, Ladros) depicted in the maps accompanying QS11 (HME XI), in at least their approximately correct locations. Note however that I have reversed the locations of the seats respectively of Angrod and Aegnor, since in my conception they exchanged ownership at Aegnor’s instigation so that he would not be thrown into constant contact with his abandoned love, Andreth.
am sorry if readers are disappointed by the less-than-sterling characters I have given to Bregor and Bregolas. However, the fact is that the people one writes about have a disturbing tendency to define their own characters. These come out a certain way, and there does not seem to be much one can do to prevent it. But as the quote goes, nobody’s perfect; and in any case, a story which only featured stainless heroes would be a very dull one.
The character of Andreth offers another example of stubborn self-determination. I wanted to match the slightly sullen and pouty character I absorbed from the Athrabeth, but she simply would not do it; she insisted on growing into the hard, brisk, slightly acidulous old lady of my story. I am not sure that these two versions of Andreth match up very well, but there seems to be very little I can do about it.
eren is described in note 46 to the chapter ‘of Dwarves and Men’ in HME XII as having golden hair and grey eyes. I did not read this note until I had given him dark hair with copper lights, and eyes of a striking blue; however I feel that this obscure canonical claim is weak enough to allow the slight variation.
tally in the notes at the end of DIN lists ‘Beleriand heirlooms’ taken to Númenor. The ‘bow of Bregor’ is one of these. Bregor did not turn out to be a famous archer in my story; nor, even supposing he had been, could I think of any plausible reason why Beren would carry such a sentimental keepsake out of the wreck of Dorthonion and how he would further manage to retain it through the trials of Nan Dungortheb. It all seemed a little too thin. Beren had far more use for a bow tailored to his own physique, was presumably a more practised archer than Bregor in any case, and had far more reason to try to hang on to his own, useful bow than to some heirloom. In my story, Beren left with the Haladin the great bow that Finrod made for him, and we may easily suppose that it was in fact this bow which eventually made its way to Númenor. I have made use of the general fog of obscurity the Canon lays over events in Dorthonion to smudge over the problem by leaving plausible room for misidentification by aftercomers. The Atani had other, more urgent concerns towards the close of the First Age and may be excused if they kept less than perfect account of who owned which piece of flotsam.
ow did Narsil come to Elendil, over a gap of hundreds of years? It either passed to Dior or Elros before the downfall of Beleriand, or it remained in dwarvish or elvish hands elsewhere before being gifted to one of the lords of Andúnië in Númenor — perhaps even to Elendil himself. But if the sword passed directly or almost directly from Telchar to, say, Dior, then why is such a significant item not listed among the Númenorian heirlooms? And why would such a puissant blade pass to (4th king of Númenor) Tar-Elendil’s daughter Silmarien (from whom Elendil is the direct male descendent) rather than to his son Tar-Meneldur (the 5th king)? My choice of a retention in elvish hands and a much later date of transmission to the heirs of Elros leaves the story of Narsil incomplete, but it fits better with the Canon (also it avoids cluttering up Númenor with too many glamorous objects, like an over-extended session of Dungeons and Dragons). We cannot tie up all loose ends, nor should we attempt to.
ccording to the Canon, the wild men known to the Eldar as Drúedain were called Drûg by the Haladin among whom they frequently lived. I have preferred the form ‘Druug’, which for Umlaut-blind anglophones is not so reminiscent of the word ‘drug’, while remaining a perfectly acceptable alternate anglicisation of a word which, if it were written in Middle-earth at all, would probably have been written in Tengwar.
re Hairfeet Hobbits? Alas, such is the fearsome reach and power of the legal owners of the term ‘Hobbit’ that I must refrain from any comment. Supposing however, for the sake of argument, that they were indeed one and the same people, some readers might object to me locating a tribe of them in Dorthonion; or perhaps at my mentioning them at all at such an early date in the history of Middle-earth. My answer to this hypothetical objection would be that so little information is given about the origins of Hobbits (LotR says only that they are ‘very ancient’) that I have felt — or would, in this hypothetical situation, have felt — free to discover them when and where I liked.
n ‘The Tale of Years’, HME XI, Christopher Tolkien gives evidence of the fluidity in his father’s evolving conception of the battle at Sarn Athrad. I have chosen to adhere fairly closely to the version Christopher decided to present in S, except that it did not suit my ideas about Beren to have him bear weapon. I also introduced the Dead — they seemed to suit the case, and allowed me to avoid elvish casualties.
y conception of orkish military organization is as follows:
The extras are supernumeraries (I suppose, by definition).
have not attempted a pastiche. I cannot write like Tolkien, and I have not tried to. Should this be regarded as a falling away, as somehow less than ideal? I don’t think so, and here’s why.
Tolkien himself was a writer of remarkable gifts, and one of these gifts was the ability to write in different modes. The Hobbit was a direct, straightforward story, but it contained playful, mythic elements which resonate with folk-tale. The style of The Lord of the Rings was sharply immediate, yet its main narrative is set, like the Silmaril gleaming out of the centre of the Nauglamir, as a polished jewel amid a vast matrix of history and legend. In The Silmarillion these legends themselves are related with a cool, almost scholarly distance. Yet another mode of Tolkien’s, the ability to cast tales into bardic poetry of great beauty and power, is exhibited in the Lays published now at last in The History of Middle-earth.
Given that Tolkien wrote in these various modes, which tend in my view rather to enhance than to detract from his conception, as one may gain a deeper appreciation of a precious stone by admiring it from several angles, I have felt relieved from any obligation to match a particular style; in fact rather encouraged if anything to develop one of my own.
One may gain additional encouragement from the literature of ancient Greece. A core canon of myth, which found earliest written expression in the Iliad and Odyssey, became the subject of retelling and elaboration by many subsequent writers, several of whom are still held in the greatest respect today. None of these aftercomers tried to ape the style of Homer: they all had their own styles, their own directions of view, which served rather to adorn than degrade the accumulating body of legend. I hesitate to mention my own humble aspirations in the same breath as the immortal names of Aeschylus or Euripides, but I cannot deny that I have done my poor best to follow the trail blazed by such stellar talents as these.
Some more recent writers whom I have found inspiring (and from whom I have on occasion shamelessly stolen) include T H White, John Masefield, C S Lewis, Alan Garner, Gavin Maxwell, A S Byatt, and perhaps most of all, Ursula le Guin. I know that le Guin disapproved of efforts such as my own to embroider Tolkienian myths, but I wish she could at least have seen how high I have strained to shoot the arrow in the all but impossible attempt to write prose as luminous as hers, and characters as human.
There is a fine line between enhancing the jewel and remaking it. I’ve been in doubt about some of the elements I have introduced. However, my sense of truth in human affairs has been ineluctably defined by the times I have experienced, just as Tolkien’s was by his. Given that several generations separate us, it is inevitable that our two senses should differ. But since any writer who works against his instincts about people is, in my view, committing a grave error, I have not been able to neglect my strong sense that all of the actions Tolkien ever wrote about took place in a very small part of Middle-earth, and concerned a relatively narrow selection from the infinite variety of humanity. I have not deliberately ruptured the fabric of the original story for the sake of breadth, let alone to satisfy a cheap political tokenism, but I have tried to hint with what subtlety I could muster at a wider world, both geographical and anthropological, stretching far beyond the arena in which Beren and Lúthien played out their drama.