Haleth

Lineage

Haleth was born in F.A. 341, the daughter of Haldad, a man of authority among the Haladin who had settled in Thargelion, the country of Caranthir, after crossing the Blue Mountains in F.A. 313. She had a twin brother, Haldar. The Haladin were a scattered woodland people who acknowledged no single lord, and Haldad was less a ruler than the man they turned to when danger came.

The siege of the stockade

Danger came in F.A. 375. Morgoth, testing the strength of the eastern marches, sent an Orc-host through the passes of the Ered Luin into Thargelion, and the isolated homesteads of the Haladin were overrun one by one. Haldad gathered every man he could find and led them, with their families, into a stockade built in the angle between the rivers Ascar and Gelion. The Orcs besieged it. When food ran short Haldad led a sortie and was killed, and Haldar, trying to recover his father's body, was killed beside him.

Haleth took command. For seven more days she held the stockade with a starving and despairing garrison, keeping them from breaking out and dying in the open, until at last the horns of Caranthir sounded and the Elves of Thargelion came down on the Orcs from the north and drove them into the rivers. Caranthir, who had until then paid little attention to the Men in his land, saw what she had done and was impressed enough to offer the Haladin lands in the north under his protection.

The refusal and the march

Haleth thanked him and refused. She had no wish for her people to become vassals of any Elven-lord, and the country that had seen her father and brother die held nothing for her. Gathering the survivors, she led them west, first to Estolad, where the other Edain had settled a generation before, and after a time onward again, seeking a land of their own. The last stage of the journey took them through the dangerous country between the Ered Gorgoroth and the Girdle of Melian, where many died and the rest reproached her, but she brought them at last across the Sirion into the forest of Brethil.

Brethil lay between the rivers Teiglin and Sirion, and Thingol counted it as his own though it was outside the Girdle. He would have driven the Haladin out, but Finrod Felagund, friend of Men, spoke for them, and Thingol agreed that they might stay if they would guard the Crossings of Teiglin against Orcs and let none pass into Doriath. Haleth accepted, and the Haladin became the Men of Brethil.

Lady of Brethil

Haleth ruled her people for the rest of her life. She never married, and she kept about her a bodyguard of women, a thing unknown among the other houses. Under her the Haladin took the name that history gave them: the House of Haleth, the Second House of the Edain. She died in F.A. 420, and her people raised a green mound over her in the forest. The lordship passed to Haldan, the son of her brother Haldar, and through him to Halmir, Haldir, Handir and Brandir, the last of the line.

Legacy

Haleth is the only woman in the histories of the Edain who ruled a house in her own right, and her refusal of Caranthir set the temper of her people, who remained proud, secretive and unwilling to serve any lord but their own. Brethil, the land she won, became the setting for the last act of the tale of Túrin, and the guardianship of the Crossings of Teiglin that she accepted from Thingol was kept until the end of the First Age.

Died in F.A. 420 in Brethil and was buried under a green mound in the forest.