Maeglin

Maeglin was the only child of Eöl, called the Dark Elf, and of Aredhel Ar-Feiniel, daughter of Fingolfin and sister of Turgon. His father was of the Sindar and claimed kinship with Elu Thingol, yet he took no pleasure in the return of the Noldor to Beleriand and would not dwell among them; instead he kept to Nan Elmoth, a woodland of close-grown trees into which little daylight came, and there he laboured in secret at the working of metals. Into that forest Aredhel strayed while riding abroad from Gondolin, and there she remained as Eöl's wife. Maeglin was born in Nan Elmoth and passed his youth in it, so that by descent he stood between two peoples: the Grey-elves of Beleriand on his father's side, and on his mother's the house of Fingolfin, through whom he is reckoned among the Noldor.

Two names were laid upon him, and they came from opposed quarters. His mother gave him the first privately, in the High-elven speech that Eöl had forbidden in his house: Lómion, which may be rendered as child of the dusk, the element lómë signifying twilight or nightfall. The second was bestowed by his father only when the boy was twelve years old, and it is the name by which he is remembered: Maeglin, a Sindarin form understood as sharp glance, from maeg, keen or piercing. Eöl chose it because he judged his son's sight sharper than his own, and his understanding apt to reach through speech to what a speaker had not said. That the paternal name prevailed while the maternal one remained half-hidden is itself part of the record of his upbringing.

In colouring he resembled Eöl, being dark of hair, but in height and in the cast of his face he favoured his mother's kindred, and he grew tall after the manner of the Noldor. He was quick to learn, sparing of speech, and watchful. From his father he had the craft of the forge, and he went with him more than once eastward to Nogrod and Belegost in the Blue Mountains, where the smiths of the Dwarves received them and where he gathered much concerning ores, mining and the shaping of metal. From his mother, in the long absences of Eöl, he heard of the Noldor and of the deeds of her house, and a wish to look upon that kindred took root in him without his father's knowledge.

The turning of Maeglin's life came while Eöl was absent in the east, gone to a feast of the Dwarves in the Blue Mountains. Maeglin pressed his mother to leave Nan Elmoth and seek the kindred of whom she had told him, and Aredhel at last consented; they took horses from Eöl's stables and rode west, seeking the guarded land of Turgon. Returning early and finding them fled, Eöl followed their trail. Passing through Himlad he was taken by riders of Curufin, son of Fëanor, who mocked him for wedding a lady of the Noldor and warned him to turn back, but let him go; Eöl went on toward the Encircling Mountains regardless. Mother and son reached the hidden entry before him and were brought before the king, who received his sister with joy and her son with honour, thinking him a worthy addition to his house.

In the years that followed he grew in stature among the Gondolindrim. His counsel was heard in the king's councils, and being a lord of the smithies he searched the mountains for ores and opened the mine of Anghabar in the northern arc of the Encircling Mountains, whence came metal for the arms of the city. When Turgon at last broke his long silence and marched north to the Union of Maedhros, Maeglin would not remain behind as regent but went with the host and fought at the king's side in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in the year 472 of the First Age, and his valour there added to his repute. He was accounted second in honour only to Turgon himself. But from his first coming he had set his desire upon Idril, the king's daughter and his first cousin, a match the Eldar held unlawful by nearness of kin; Idril returned him no love, and perceiving the bent of his heart she liked him the less, so that his longing turned inward and grew crooked with the years.

The coming of Tuor son of Huor, sent by Ulmo with a warning that Gondolin should be emptied and its people brought down to the sea, set Maeglin openly against him in council. He argued that the city should not be abandoned, and his voice weighed with a king already unwilling to forsake his work; the counsel of Ulmo was set aside. Worse for Maeglin, Tuor found favour with Turgon and in time wedded Idril, and their son Eärendil was born in the hidden city. Foreseeing peril, Idril caused a passage to be delved in secret from her house beneath the plain toward the northern hills, and Maeglin was told nothing of it. His hatred of Tuor and his thwarted desire hardened together, and he began to keep his own counsel.

Within Gondolin Maeglin held an office rather than a realm. His standing rested on two supports: kinship with Turgon, who had no other near heir of his blood besides Idril, and competence in the crafts the hidden city most needed. He was set over the smithies and the working of metal, and the search for ore and its delving fell to him; when Tuor was brought at last before the throne, Maeglin stood at the king's side as one of the chief among his household. But nothing in the record gives him lands, a following of his own choosing, or authority independent of Turgon. He governed no people outside the walls, held no march or fortress, and could be overruled in council at any moment the king wished; that his voice carried against the errand of Ulmo says more about what Turgon already desired than about any power of persuasion peculiar to Maeglin.

His abilities are of a plain and bounded kind. He had the smith-craft got in Nan Elmoth and enlarged among the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains, a practical knowledge of metals, veins and mining, and he applied it to the arming of a city that could not trade for what it lacked. No weapon or work of his hands is named or preserved in the tradition, unlike the dark metal his father devised; his contribution was output and organisation rather than singular making. He had no arts beyond craft: no enchantment, no lore of the Valar, no foresight. His noted keenness of eye and inference failed him precisely where it mattered, for Idril judged his mind more accurately than he judged hers, and the delving of her secret way went forward without his ever suspecting it.

Every bond in Maeglin's life is a bond of kindred, and none of them is simple. His father and mother wanted opposite things for him and used him as the ground of their quarrel, so that from the beginning affection reached him bound up with prohibition. Turgon offered the opposite: an uncle who welcomed him without condition, gave him honour ahead of older lords, and appears never to have suspected what his sister's son wanted. That generosity is the pivot of the tragedy, because it placed Maeglin inside the household of the one person he could not have, and gave him no rival's cause for grievance beyond his own desire. The Eldar reckoned marriage between first cousins unlawful, so Idril stood on the far side of a barrier that no favour of the king could move; and Maeglin, who had watched his father defy custom to keep a wife, had before him the example of a man who took what he was not granted.

With Idril the relation is almost entirely one-sided, and its interest lies in her clarity rather than his hope. She read him early, disliked him the more for what she read, and neither confronted nor accommodated him; she simply took precautions, and the secret way she caused to be delved is the measure of how little she trusted him years before he gave her cause. Tuor inherits that hostility rather than earning it, for Maeglin's enmity toward him is fixed before any word passes between them, and it is telling that Maeglin's opposition in council took the form of arguing for Gondolin's safety — the pretext of loyalty covering a private grudge. Against a mortal newcomer he could bring kinship, standing and long service, and he lost on every count that mattered to Idril.

The name kept the form Meglin through the early phases of the mythology, in the compressed summaries of the Sketch of the Mythology and the Quenta that grew out of it, where his part shrinks to the treason and its consequence and nothing is made of his upbringing; the form Maeglin belongs to the later work. His mother likewise bore the name Isfin for many years before Tolkien set it aside for Aredhel. The fullest treatment of him, and the immediate source of the published chapter, is a late narrative printed in The War of the Jewels, in which the matter of Nan Elmoth, the two names given him, the journeys east to the Dwarf-cities and the mine opened in the mountains are all set out; of most of this the earlier texts know nothing at all.