The lays of Beleriand Book

3 - 3.5 stars

_The Lays of Beleriand_ is a book that I've had on my bookshelf for many, many years and quite frankly never thought I'd get to. I think I probably got my copy around the time it was first published when I was but a wee sprat simply because it was by Tolkien and certainly at that time the likelihood that I would read a book comprised primarily of two long narrative poems accompanied by copious editorial apparatus was, to say the least, unlikely. As time went on and I got older I still never read it as I didn't think the 'History of Middle-earth' series (or HoME) would hold much interest for me. Why bother reading the 'preliminary drafts' of the material when I had already read the finished products, or at least as close as we were going to get to them in the case of The Silmarillion? It took the podcasts of Corey Olsen ('The Tolkien Professor') to get me off my rump in this regard and encourage me to actually pick up the series which allowed me to more fully appreciate what the History of Middle-earth series really provides.

I had always thought the series was little more than rough drafts which would only, at best, provide a view into Tolkien's writing process. An interesting area of study for some perhaps, but it certainly wasn't my primary interest in him. While this aspect of the series is certainly still somewhat true, I found once I had given the books a fair chance that they offered far more. Ultimately they allowed me to see, in the best cases, much fuller versions of the tales of the First Age of Middle-earth that are given only in precis in The Silmarillion as published. I should have considered this possibility after being blown away by the content in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth when I read it, but all I remembered at the time were my failed attempts at the first volume in the series, The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, when I was young and as for the current volume in question? As noted above plowing through some very long narrative poems still didn't exactly recommend itself to me when I considered all of the other items on my to-read list. Well, I will admit that I'm glad now that I *did* read it.

I could nit-pick and complain that instead of yet another version of the stories of Turin and Beren & Luthien (they were certainly the stories that Tolkien seemed to have loved the most and came back to again and again, re-writing, revising and tinkering as was his wont) it would have been great if we had gotten the full epic treatment of something for which we don't already have a lot of material, say perhaps the story of Tuor…or hey how about Earendil? He was the first character in what was to become Middle-earth about whom Tolkien wrote and his was supposedly the tale that spawned the entire opus of Middle-earth and was, arguably, the cornerstone to the entire story of the First Age and yet we have little to nothing about him! Still, even if we're visiting well-tread ground here (at least if you're a Tolkien fan and have read the other material that exists apart from the HoME series) these versions have plenty to recommend them to us. For one thing there is just so much more detail than we get in the Silmarillion versions that you can really start to live inside the tales a little more easily as a result. You also get a glimpse of the true scope of what Tolkien worked on beyond his most famous works the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit; even though this material was all, in some ways, preliminary and ultimately published posthumously, it becomes obvious that this was really what was at the heart of his creative life and it was truly huge in scope.

I was actually surprised when I finished the book to find that I preferred the Lay of Leithian since I normally don't gravitate as much to the story of Beren of Luthien, beautiful as it is, and the fact that it was written in rhyming couplets could have been disastrous. Luckily there was no twee sing-songiness to the poem (Tolkien really was a fairly accomplished poet) and the chance to see more of both Beren and Luthien in action (not to mention Huan the great hound of Valinor) turned out to be very enjoyable. All those people who think Tolkien didn't like (or write) strong women really need to take a gander at Luthien. Her tale has been described as the story of a girl and her dog who go out to rescue her boyfriend, and while it is much more than that, the fact that it works well enough as a thumbnail sketch speaks volumes.

If you're a Tolkien fan, especially one who enjoys poetry, and you enjoy the tales of the Silmarillion then you owe it to yourself to check out the HoME series and this volume does not at all disappoint in that regard. A must-read for the Tolkien completist.