A less common name for the long tale more usually called the Lay of Leithian (Leithian being Elvish for 'release from bondage'). It told the story of the meeting of Beren and Lúthien, their desperate quest to recover a Silmaril from Morgoth's Iron Crown, and Lúthien's abandonment of her Elvish immortality to remain by Beren's side.
It was this lay that Aragorn was said to have been singing when he encountered Arwen for the first time, and like Beren he called Tinúviel! when he saw her. Indeed, the lives of Aragorn and Arwen mirrored those of Beren and Lúthien in many ways, and in the end Arwen, like Lúthien, gave up her immortality to remain with her beloved.
Notes
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We have no details of the origins of the Lay of Lúthien, beyond Aragorn's comments in The Lord of the Rings, where he quotes from it and comments that '...there are none now, except Elrond, who remember it aright as it was told of old' (The Fellowship of the Ring I 11, A Knife in the Dark). It was clearly very ancient at the end of the Third Age, then, and the suggestion that only Elrond could fully remember the original version implies that it may have been written at the Havens of Sirion before the end of the First Age.
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- Updated 25 December 2022
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