Barahir

Lineage

Barahir was born in F.A. 400, the younger son of Bregor, lord of the House of Bëor in Dorthonion. His elder brother was Bregolas. He married Emeldir, a woman of his own house whose spirit later earned her the name Man-hearted, and their only child was Beren, born in F.A. 432.

The Dagor Bragollach

When Morgoth broke the Siege of Angband in the winter of F.A. 455, Barahir was fighting in the west of Dorthonion, near the Fen of Serech where the river Rivil joined the Sirion. Finrod Felagund, coming north from Nargothrond, was cut off there with a small company and would have been killed or captured. Barahir and the bravest of his men fought through to him, made a wall of spears, and brought him out of the marsh at great cost. Finrod swore an oath of friendship and aid to Barahir and all his kin, and gave him his own ring, a token of the house of Finarfin, as a sign of it. That ring, the Ring of Barahir, passed to Beren and was carried down the ages to Aragorn.

Bregolas fell in the same battle, and Barahir became lord of a house that was nearly destroyed. Dorthonion was overrun; the sons of Finarfin who had ruled it were dead.

The outlaws of Dorthonion

Barahir refused to leave his land. He sent Emeldir with the women and children over the mountains toward Brethil, and he himself kept a band of twelve companions in the highlands. Among them were Beren, his nephews Baragund and Belegund, and Gorlim son of Angrim. They made their refuge beside the mountain lake of Tarn Aeluin, a place held to have been blessed by Melian, and from it they harried the Orcs so successfully that Morgoth put a price on their heads. For five years his servants could not find them.

Betrayal and death

In the end Sauron, then Morgoth's lieutenant in the north, found the way in. Gorlim, tormented by longing for his wife Eilinel, was lured by a phantom of her, captured, and broken by torture and by the promise that she would be restored to him. He told Sauron where Barahir lay hid, and Sauron, who had let him believe Eilinel lived, put him to death.

Beren was away on an errand when the Orcs came. Barahir and the rest of the band were slain by the lake in F.A. 460, and the Orc captain cut off Barahir's hand to carry the ring back to Morgoth as proof. Beren, warned by Gorlim's ghost in a dream, came too late to save them. He buried his father under a cairn, tracked the Orcs to their camp at the well of Rivil, killed the captain, and took back the hand and the ring.

Legacy

Barahir's death made Beren an outlaw alone, and the years that followed drove him at last over the Ered Gorgoroth into Doriath and to Lúthien. The oath Finrod had sworn to Barahir was what bound him to leave his kingdom and die in Sauron's dungeon for Beren's sake. The Ring of Barahir remained an heirloom of the House of Bëor, of Elros, and of the kings of Númenor and Arnor; Aragorn wore it when he came to Rohan and Gondor.

Slain by Orcs beside Tarn Aeluin in F.A. 460 after Gorlim's betrayal; his severed hand was recovered by Beren.