From: hunt@oils.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien
Subject: Re: Beren and Luthien
Date: 28 Jan 93 08:20:10 GMT
Reply-To: hunt@oils.ozy.dec.com (Peter Hunt)
Followup-To: alt.fan.tolkien
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


In article <s4q3m8+@rpi.edu> johnsc3@rpi.edu writes:
>Anyway,
>I have a couple of questions which I would like some answers to if anyone knows >them.  First, is there anything else written about the story of Beren's life,
>or his love with Luthien other than what is written in the Quenta Simarillion?  >I have been looking since I first read Sim(about 7 or 8 years ago)  I can not >get this story out of my head, and I would appreciate the help. 

	There are a number of earlier versions of the story of Beren and
Luthien in the first five volumes of the History of Middle Earth. They are
(in order in the History) :

* The Tale of Tinuviel (The Book of Lost Tales 2, HoME II)

	The earliest version of the story, but also the most detailed. It's
	written on an old English style, so you may find it quite difficult
	to read. Also, because it's the first version, there are considerable
	differences between this version and the Silmarillion version. But
	the added detail makes reading it worthwhile.

* The Lay of Luthien (The Lays of Beleriand, HoME III)

	A largely complete epic poem of the story. I can't remember if it's
	in alliterative verse, or in rhyming couplets (the latter I think),
	but it's basically a later form of the Tale of Tinuviel. The story is
	much closer to that in the Sil, but being a poem, again it's not quite
	as easy to read.

* Two versions in The Shaping of Middle Earth (HoME IV)

	The first of these is no more than a summary (in the Sketch of
	the Mythology). The second is a longer prose version, which is
	close in development to the Lay (and therefore to the Sil version).
	The style is more like the Sil than the Tale of Tinuviel, and the
	amount of detail is slightly more than in the published Sil.

* A version in The Lost Road (HoME V) - one I haven't read.

	Another prose version, much like that in the published Sil. This is
	the stage the tale was at in 1937, when Tolkien set aside the
	First Age mythology to begin writing Lord of the Rings. I don't know
	how it's detail compares with that of the published Silmarillion
	version.

So there you have it. keep in mind that these versions differ not only in
the amount of detail they provide, but also the story they tell. If you're
interested in fleshing out the Silmarillion version of the story, I would
recommend reading a later version (ie the versions from Vol IV or V of the
HoME. But if you're as interested in how the story developed as in the
story itself, then reading the earlier versions is just as fascinating.

	If you don't want to shell out megabucks just to trace one story
through its development, I'm sure you could find a library which stocks them.

+---------------------------+------------------------------------------------+
| Peter Hunt                | I'm digging in the dirt,                       |
| Networks and Comms (Aust) | to find the places I got hurt,                 |
| Digital Equipment Corp.   | to open up the places I got hurt.              |
+---------------------------+--------- Peter Gabriel, "Digging in the Dirt" -+