Melian

Origins in Valinor

Melian is a Maia who served both Vána and Estë before ever she came to Middle-earth. She dwelt in Lórien, the gardens of Irmo, tending the trees that flowered there, and the Elves say that no fairer or wiser Maia lived in Valinor. Nightingales followed her wherever she went and she taught them their song. Her voice was such that when she sang in Lórien the Valar themselves would fall silent, the fountains would cease and the birds hush to listen. Before the Elves awoke she left Valinor and passed into Middle-earth, filling the silence of the dark lands with her voice and with the voices of her birds.

The meeting in Nan Elmoth

When the Teleri reached Beleriand on the Great Journey, their king Elwë, later known as Thingol, went alone into the wood of Nan Elmoth following the song of nightingales. He came upon Melian in a starlit glade and was struck still by the light of Aman in her face. He took her hand, and an enchantment fell on both of them; they stood there unmoving, year upon year, while the stars wheeled and the Teleri searched for their lost lord in vain. When at last they came out of the wood, Olwë had taken the remaining Teleri over the Sea, and Elwë, now Elu Thingol, stayed in Middle-earth with the people who had refused to leave without him. Together he and Melian became King and Queen of the Sindar.

Queen of Doriath

Melian and Thingol made their realm in the forests of Doriath, and with the help of the Dwarves of Belegost built the underground city of Menegroth, the Thousand Caves, the fairest dwelling of any king east of the Sea. Melian's influence made it a place of learning: she taught the Sindar much wisdom and it was from her that Daeron and others drew their lore. When Melkor returned to Middle-earth and the Orcs first troubled Beleriand, she used her power to surround Doriath with an unseen wall of shadow and confusion, the Girdle of Melian, through which nothing could pass against her will unless it came with a power greater than her own. Behind it Doriath endured for the whole of the First Age while the rest of Beleriand was overrun, and it is for this that she is chiefly remembered.

Her only child by Thingol was Lúthien, born in the years of starlight, the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar and the only one of them with a Maia for a mother. Through Lúthien the blood of the Ainur passed into the line of Dior, Elwing, Elrond, Elros, and so to the kings of Númenor and at last to Aragorn and Arwen.

Counsel and foresight

Melian saw further than any in Beleriand. When Galadriel came to Doriath she and Melian spoke long together, and Melian guessed much of what the Noldor concealed about the Kinslaying and the Oath of Fëanor. She warned Thingol that the Silmarils would be the ruin of many and told him that Beren's coming was fated; when Thingol demanded a Silmaril as Lúthien's bride-price she saw at once that he had bound his realm to the Doom of the Noldor. She counselled against the coming of Túrin being met with harshness and sent him lembas by Beleg, the first time that gift was given to a mortal. When Húrin came to Menegroth, embittered by years as Morgoth's prisoner and deceived by all he had been shown, it was Melian who spoke to him until the shadow lifted and he understood that he had been used.

The withdrawal

Melian's protection was bound to Thingol. When he was killed in Menegroth by Dwarves of Nogrod in a quarrel over the Nauglamír, she sat long in silence, then withdrew her power. The Girdle failed, the forests of Doriath lay open, and the Dwarves plundered Menegroth. Melian spoke a last time to Mablung, bidding him guard the Silmaril and send word to Beren and Lúthien in Ossiriand, and then she left Middle-earth for ever, returning to Lórien in Valinor to grieve.

Legacy

Melian is the only one of the Ainur known to have married one of the Eldar and borne a child, and Unfinished Tales notes that for this she took a body that bound her to the world and its griefs in a way her kind did not usually accept. Her name survives in every generation of her descendants, and the Girdle of Melian remains the pattern of a guarded realm, echoed in the Third Age by the power of Galadriel, her pupil, over Lothlórien.

After Thingol's death Melian withdrew the Girdle and departed from Middle-earth, returning to the gardens of Lórien in Valinor.