Free The Lays of Beleriand by J. R. R. Tolkien Page A

Beleg
    companions-in-arms on
    the marches of Doriath;
    Turin wears the
    Dragon-helm.
    Death of Orgof.
    Turin leaves Doriath;
    a band of outlaws forms
    round him which attacks
    all comers.
    The band captures Beleg
    (who knows nothing of
    Turin's leaving Doriath)
    and ties him to a tree.

    Turin has him set free;
    suffers a change of heart;
    Beleg joins the band; all
    swear an oath.
    Great prowess of the band
    against the Orcs.
    Silmarillion and Narn
    As in the poem.
    Death of Saeros.
    Turin leaves Doriath
    and joins a band of
    desperate outlaws.
    The band captures Beleg
    (whe is searching for
    Turin bearing Thingol's
    pardon) (and ties him to a
    tree, Narn).
    Turin has him set free;
    suffers a change of heart;
    but Beleg will not join the
    band and departs. (No
    mention of oath.)
    (Later Beleg returns and
    joins the band:)
    Land of Dor-Cuarthol.
    Before leaving this part of the story, it may be suggested that lines 605 ff., in which Turin declares to Beleg that This band alone /I count as comrades, contain the germ of Turin's words to him in the Xarn, p.94:
    The grace of Thingol will not stretch to receive these companions of my fall, I think; but I will not part with them now, if they do not wish to part with me, &c.
    The traitor, who betrayed the band to the Orcs, now first appears. At first he is called Bauglir both in A and in B as originally typed; and it might be thought that the name had much too obviously an evil significance. The explanation is quite clearly, however, that Bauglir became Blodrin at the same time as Bauglir replaced Belcha as a name of: Morgoth. (By the time my father reached line 990 Blodrin is the name as first written in both A and B; while similarly at line 1055 Bauglir is Morgoth's name, not Belcha, both in A and B as first written.) The change of Ban (father of Blodrin) to Bor was passing; he is Ban in the 1926 'Sketch of the Mythology', and so remained until, much later, he disappeared.
    Blodrin's origin is interesting:
    trapped as a child
    he was dragged by the Dwarves to their deep mansions, and in Nogrod nurtured, and in nought was like, spite blood and birth, to the blissful Elves. (666 -- g) Thus Blodrin's evil nature is explicitly ascribed to the influence of the bearded Dwarves / of troth unmindful (1148-9); and Blodrin follows Ufedhin of the Tale of the Nauglafring as an example of the sinister .
    effect of Elvish association with Dwarves -- not altogether absent in the tale of Eol and Maeglin as it appears in The Silmarillion. Though the nature -- and name -- of the traitor in Turin's band went through Protean mutations afterwards, it is not inconceivable that recollection of the Dwarvish element in Blodrin's history played some part in the emergence of Mim in this role. On the early hostile view of the Dwarves see II. 247.
    The words of the poem just cited arise from the 'betrayal' of Flinding by his dwarvish knife, which slipped from its sheath; so later, in the Lay of Leithian, when Beren attempted to cut a second Silmaril from the Iron Crown (lines 4160-2)
    The dwarvish steel of cunning blade
    by treacherous smiths of Nogrod made
    snapped...
    The idea expressed in the Tale (II. 76) that Turin was taken alive by Morgoth's command 'lest he cheat the doom that was devised for him'
    reappears in the poem: lest he flee his fate (705).
    The rest of the story as told in the poem differs only in detail from that in the Tale. The survival of Beleg in the attack by Orcs and his swift recovery from his grievous wounds (II. 77), present in much changed circumstances in The Silmarillion (p. 206), is here made perhaps more comprehensible, in that Elves from Doriath, who were searching for Turin (654 -- 5), found Beleg and took him back to be healed by Melian in the Thousand Caves (727 -- 3I). In the account of Beleg's meeting with Flinding in Taur-na-Fuin, led to him by his blue lamp, the poem is following the Tale very closely.* My father's painting of the scene (Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien no.