Brethil

Brethil is a Sindarin name, and it names the forest after its trees. The list of name elements at the end of The Silmarillion glosses the word as a silver birch, so the forest's name amounts to a plain description of its vegetation. This follows a common pattern in the Grey-elven naming of Beleriand, where regions are often called after a visible feature of the land rather than after a founder or an event. The published texts do not say who first gave the forest this name or when. Its Sindarin form places it among the names in use in the Elvish lands east of the sea, and it is a reasonable inference that the name was current among the Elves of Doriath, whose realm lay close by, before Men settled there.1

The same word appears in a compound far from Beleriand. Bilbo's song of Eärendil, sung in Rivendell, tells that the mariner's ship was built from timber felled in Nimbrethil, a birch-wood in the coastal land of Arvernien. The compound joins brethil with nim, the Sindarin word for white, and so describes the pale bark of the trees. The two names mark two separate stands of birch in the old geography of the Elder Days. Their shared element lets a reader of The Lord of the Rings, where Brethil itself is never named, recognise the word before meeting it in the Silmarillion material.2

In the narrative tradition the forest's name also serves to identify a people. The Haladin, the folk of Haleth, received leave to live in the forest, and from then on they are often called simply the Men of Brethil, as Beleg calls them in his talk with Túrin. The Elvish place-name thus outlived its purely descriptive sense and became the usual label for a community of Men. The texts give that community no separate name of its own for the forest. Individual sites within the wood, such as the settlement of Ephel Brandir, carry names of their own, but the forest as a whole is always called Brethil.3

Brethil is a woodland of West Beleriand that fills the land between two rivers. The Teiglin bounds it on the west and the Sirion on the east. The Teiglin flows south-eastward to join the greater river, so the forest lies in the angle between the two streams and is closed on most sides by running water. Thingol counted the wood as part of his realm, but it lay outside the Girdle of Melian and did not share the protection that kept Doriath hidden. For that reason Brethil was a border country rather than a sheltered one. It stood between the guarded heart of the Grey-elven kingdom and the open lands that armies from the north could reach.1

The forest's most important point was the Crossings of Teiglin, a ford on its western side where the old road south from the Pass of Sirion passed over the river on its way toward Nargothrond. When the Haladin were allowed to settle in the wood, the condition attached was that they keep these crossings against the Enemy. Their homeland therefore served as a checkpoint on one of the main routes of western Beleriand. Across the Teiglin lay the Guarded Plain that belonged to Nargothrond. Beyond the Sirion to the north-east lay Dimbar, and the Orc incursions over the Pass of Anach threatened Dimbar and Brethil together.2

Within the forest the ground rose to Amon Obel, a hill near its centre. The chief dwelling-place of the forest-folk stood on this hill, fenced for defence. Streams ran from the higher woodland down toward the Teiglin. One of them, the Celebros, fell in a series of cascades at Nen Girith before reaching the river. Farther along the Teiglin's course the river cut through a deep, narrow ravine at Cabed-en-Aras, where the forest's western edge came close to the steep gorge. Near the Crossings stood the burial mound of Finduilas, raised by the woodmen. It became a landmark on the approach to the wood from the west.3

Before the arrival of Men, Brethil was a wooded march of Thingol's realm. The published texts record no settlement or event there from that earlier age. Its recorded history begins with the Haladin, the second of the three houses of the Edain to enter Beleriand. They first dwelt in Thargelion, the land of Caranthir. There an Orc-raid fell on them, killing their chieftain Haldad. His daughter Haleth held the survivors within a stockade until Caranthir came to their relief. She declined his offer of land under his lordship and led her people westward. After a hard journey they reached the woods south of the Teiglin, and Thingol, through Finrod's intercession, allowed them to remain on the terms already described.1

Haleth governed the forest-folk for the rest of her life. When she died, her people buried her in a green mound on the forest heights, which was afterwards known as the Ladybarrow. Leadership then passed to her kin. Halmir was lord of the Haladin in the troubled years after the Dagor Bragollach, when the siege of Angband had been broken and the Orcs spread southward. A force of Orcs that tried to push down into the western lands was caught and heavily defeated on the forest's borders by the Men of Brethil and a company from Doriath under Beleg. For some time afterwards the woodland kept the Crossings secure, as its people had undertaken to do.2

The forest-folk took part in the Union of Maedhros, and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad cost them dearly. Haldir, Halmir's son, led the men of Brethil to the battle and fell there, and few of those who marched with him returned. His son Handir became chief of a much weakened people. In the years that followed the Orcs from Taur-nu-Fuin came down through the Pass of Anach, and Beleg judged that the pressure on Dimbar and on the forest-folk required watchful defenders in those parts. The Haladin now relied increasingly on concealment and on their knowledge of the woods, rather than on open war.3

The fall of Nargothrond brought the war to the forest's doorstep. The host that sacked the city drove captives north past the Crossings. When woodmen attacked it there, the prisoners were killed, Finduilas among them. Handir was slain in the fighting against the Orcs in this period, and his son Brandir, lame from childhood, became chief. Soon afterwards Túrin came to the forest. He took the name Turambar and dwelt at Brandir's settlement on Amon Obel. There he wed Níniel, who was his sister Nienor, although neither of them knew it. Against Brandir's counsel of secrecy, he led the woodmen in open attacks on the Orcs and for a while kept the enemy out of the western woods.4

That open defiance drew the attention of Glaurung. The dragon came out of Nargothrond toward Brethil and approached the Teiglin at Cabed-en-Aras. Turambar went out against him with two companions, climbed the ravine and slew him from beneath. The events that followed destroyed the forest's leadership. Nienor learned the truth and threw herself into the gorge, Túrin killed Brandir, and he then died by his own sword beside the river. The woodmen raised a stone over him and set Nienor's name on it, although her body was never found. The ravine was afterwards called Cabed Naeramarth, and the published narrative says little more about the Haladin as a people after this.5

The stone by the gorge is the forest's last landmark in the published record. After his release from Angband, Húrin came there and found Morwen, who died beside him, and he buried her near her children's memorial. When Beleriand was drowned at the end of the First Age, the forest itself went down with the rest of the land. The stone did not. The texts report that it rose above the new waters as an island, Tol Morwen, off the altered coast. It is the only part of Brethil said to have survived into later ages.6

The inhabitants of Brethil in the recorded period were the Haladin, a people who stood somewhat apart from the other houses of the Edain. Their speech differed from that of the followers of Bëor, and they were fewer in number than either of the other houses. They preferred to live in scattered groups among the trees rather than gather in large settlements. The accounts describe them as reserved and sparing of words, and less eager than their kin for the lore of the Eldar. They were not given to seeking dealings with strangers, and this habit of seclusion suited a people set to guard a forest march.1

Rule among the forest-folk passed within one kindred, but not always from parent to child. Haleth never married, and after her the chieftainship went to Haldan, the son of her brother Haldar. From Haldan it descended in the direct line through Halmir, Haldir and Handir to Brandir. The house of Haleth was bound to the house of Hador by a double marriage: Haldir, son of Halmir, wed Glóredhel, Hador's daughter, while Hador's son Galdor wed Hareth, Halmir's daughter. Through Hareth, Húrin and Huor were kin to the Haladin. For this reason the two boys were staying in Brethil when they went out with its men against the Orcs. They became separated from the others and were brought to Gondolin.2

Here the concealment that fails is not a great Elvish city but a scattered folk of Men, and the downfall reaches the house of Húrin itself.

The Haladin were not the only folk in the wood. According to the account of the Drúedain, some of that small and ancient people lived among the Folk of Haleth. The woodmen held them in high regard, and valued in particular their watchfulness and their skill in carving figures of stone. In their outward relations the Haladin stood under Thingol's sufferance rather than under any lord of the Noldor. After declining Caranthir's offer, they owed their foothold to the king of Doriath and to Finrod's advocacy. Toward the other Edain they kept ties of kinship without any shared government. Each house remained under its own chieftains.3

In the tale of the Children of Húrin, Brethil is the last place where Túrin tries to begin again. He reaches the forest broken by the loss of Nargothrond, and the woodmen carry him to Brandir, who tends him. There he gives up his old identity and takes a new name, as though a change of name could shake off the doom laid on his kin. The forest therefore works less as a battlefield than as a threshold. It is the final refuge the story offers him, and the narrative treats it as a place of brief and fragile peace.1

The same threshold draws Nienor in. After Glaurung's spell has taken her memory, she flees to the forest's edge. Turambar and his men find her there and bring her among the woodmen, where she receives a new name as he did. Brethil thus becomes the meeting ground of two people who have both lost their pasts. Their marriage there is the point where the tale's tragedy closes on itself. Brandir stands beside them as a quiet counter-figure. He is lame, cautious and devoted to Níniel, and he argues for hiding rather than fighting. The story sets his watchful restraint against Turambar's pride, and the forest becomes the stage on which the two ways of meeting the Enemy are weighed.2

Read as a whole, Brethil repeats the pattern of Nargothrond on a smaller scale. A hidden people is drawn into open war by Túrin's leadership, wins a season of success, and so attracts a ruin it cannot withstand. The difference lies in the ending. Here the concealment that fails is not a great Elvish city but a scattered folk of Men, and the downfall reaches the house of Húrin itself. The forest is where the curse spoken over that house is finally fulfilled, and it is remembered afterwards chiefly as the setting of that fulfilment.3

The forest took on its later character only gradually in Tolkien's drafts. In the early tale of Turambar and the dragon, the hero finds refuge among a folk of woodland Men who have no named homeland. Their lame leader is called Tamar, not Brandir. The broad shape of the episode was present from the start, including the refuge in the woods, the rivalry with a crippled chieftain and the dragon's approach through a ravine. The geography and the people only acquired their fixed names in later layers of the legendarium. In the Quenta and annal texts of the 1930s, the people later known as the Haladin are led by Haleth as a man, a hunter and chieftain, and it is his son who falls in the great defeat. The conception of Haleth as a woman who leads her people out of Thargelion and never marries belongs to Tolkien's work on the Silmarillion after The Lord of the Rings.1

The fullest late treatment of the forest comes in an unfinished narrative about Húrin's wanderings after his release. The published Silmarillion reduces this episode to a brief mention. In the draft, Húrin comes to Brethil after the deaths of Túrin and Brandir and finds the Haladin divided under a new chief, Hardang. Hardang distrusts Húrin, while his kinsman Manthor takes Húrin's part. The quarrel ends in violence and the burning of the chief's hall, and both men lose their lives in the strife. The text thus pictures Brethil as a community with its own laws and internal factions. That is a much fuller portrait than the published narrative gives.2