After his defeat of Glaurung, and the discovery that he had wed his own sister Niënor, Túrin Turambar slew himself on the edge of the Ravines of Teiglin. The people of Brethil raised a burial mound for Túrin on the banks of the river, and on it they mounted a large grey stone, carved with runes that commemorated both Túrin and his sister, who had thrown herself into Teiglin.

This grey stone came to be known as the Stone of the Hapless, and it was here that Túrin's parents Húrin and Morwen found each other again after long wanderings. On the burial mound of her son, Morwen's life also came to an end. Húrin raised a second mound for her to the west of the Stone, and on it he carved her name beneath those of their children.

In Brethil there lived a seer named Glirhuin, who prophesied that the Stone of the Hapless should remain inviolate whatever should come to pass. At the end of the First Age, when Beleriand was drowned beneath the waters of the Great Sea, it was said that Glirhuin's prophecy had proved true: the Stone remained above the waves, on a lone island far out from the new coasts of Middle-earth that was given the name Tol Morwen.