Brethil

The forest

Brethil lay in the angle between the river Teiglin on the west and Sirion on the east, north of their confluence and south of the highland moors that sloped up toward Tol Sirion. It was a wood of birch and other trees on rising ground, with the hill of Amon Obel in its midst. Thingol claimed it as part of his domain, though it lay outside the Girdle of Melian, and the marchwardens of Doriath had watched it before Men came. Its name in the Grey-elven tongue was taken from the silver birch, the tree that gave the wood its look and its light.

The people of Haleth

The Haladin were the second of the three houses of the Edain to enter Beleriand, and the least like the others. They came over the Blue Mountains after the folk of Bëor and settled scattered in Thargelion under the loose lordship of Caranthir, living in small family holdings and taking no lord over them all. When orcs fell on them there, the greater part were killed; the survivors held a stockade between Ascar and Gelion for seven days under the direction of Haldad and, when he was slain, of his daughter Haleth, until Caranthir's horsemen came. Haleth would not accept Caranthir's offer of land and protection, and led her people west across Beleriand instead, through the horror of Nan Dungortheb at a cost that was long remembered, until they came to the wood between the rivers.

Thingol had no love of Men in his land, but at Finrod's request he allowed the Haladin to remain in Brethil on one condition: that they hold the Crossings of Teiglin against every enemy of the Elves. That bargain the House of Haleth kept for the rest of the Age. They were a woodland people, fewer than the other houses and more secretive, speaking their own tongue rather than the Grey-elven speech and keeping their own customs, among them the counting of women as fighters and leaders. They lived in scattered steadings under the trees and gathered at the stockaded settlement of Ephel Brandir on the crown of Amon Obel. They were ruled not by kings but by a chieftain chosen from the line of Haleth, advised by a council of the folk.

The guarded crossings

The Crossings of Teiglin were the reason Brethil mattered to the wars of Beleriand. There the old road from the Pass of Sirion came down to the fords and ran west and south toward the Guarded Plain of Nargothrond; it was the only easy way over the Teiglin for many miles, for above and below the fords the river ran in deep gorges cut through rock. Every orc-raid that came south down the vale of Sirion had to reckon with the archers of Brethil in the trees, and the woodmen's arrows and their knowledge of the paths made them a more serious obstacle than their numbers suggested.

The settlement

The Haladin came into the forest about the year 390 of the First Age, and the sons of Haleth's kin ruled after her from Ephel Brandir. Haleth herself died unwed and was buried under a green mound in the wood; her people were called the Halethrim, or Folk of Haleth, ever after. Haldan her nephew succeeded her, and the line ran down through Halmir, Haldir, Handir and at last Brandir the Lame.

The wars of the north

While the Siege of Angband held, Brethil was quiet. The Dagor Bragollach broke that peace: orcs came down the Pass of Sirion in strength and drove south toward the Teiglin, and Halmir the chieftain, with the help of Beleg and the marchwardens of Doriath, ambushed them in the woods and destroyed them. From that time the men of Brethil fought a running border war on the northern eaves of the forest.

When Maedhros called the Union together, Halmir's son Haldir led the strength of Brethil north to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad in F.A. 472. He and almost all his men were killed there, most of them in the rearguard that stood with the House of Hador so that Turgon might get away. Brethil never recovered those losses. Handir, Haldir's son, held the forest for a time and was killed by orcs on his own borders in 495, and the chieftainship fell to his son Brandir, a lame and gentle man who had neither the strength nor the desire for war and wished only to keep his people hidden and alive.

Túrin Turambar

When Nargothrond fell in F.A. 495, Túrin went north after Finduilas, who had been carried off with the other captives. At the Crossings of Teiglin he found the woodmen, who told him that the orcs had killed her there when their column was attacked, and that they had buried her in a mound near the crossings which they called the Haudh-en-Elleth, the Mound of the Elf-maid. Túrin collapsed with grief, and the men of Brethil carried him to Ephel Brandir.

He stayed. He would not use his own name any longer, and called himself Turambar, master of doom, meaning to be done with the curse laid on his family. Brandir received him kindly, but Túrin's ability and his fame drew the woodmen to him, and within a short time he was in effect their captain, urging them to open battle where Brandir counselled hiding. Nienor, his sister, had ridden out from Doriath with Morwen to seek him, and had been caught on the hill of Amon Ethir by Glaurung, who stripped her of memory and left her naked and mindless. She wandered to the Haudh-en-Elleth, where Túrin found her, and she was taken in and given the name Níniel, the maid of tears. Neither of them knew what they were to each other, and after three years Túrin married her.

Glaurung and the end

In the winter of 499 Glaurung came out of Nargothrond and made for Brethil, burning as he came. Túrin resolved to meet him not in the open but at the gorge of Cabed-en-Aras, the deer's leap, where the Teiglin ran in a narrow chasm the dragon would have to cross. With Dorlas and Hunthor he climbed down the cliff at night to wait beneath; Dorlas turned back and Hunthor was killed by a falling stone, so that Túrin alone was there when the dragon dragged himself over the ravine. He drove the black sword Gurthang up into the dragon's soft belly and Glaurung's death-cry shook the woods. Túrin, wrenching the blade free, was struck down senseless by the venom that came from the wound.

Níniel came to the gorge with Brandir and found him lying as if dead. Then Glaurung opened his eyes a last time, and with his dying words gave Nienor back her memory and told her whose wife she was. She threw herself from the cliff into the water and her body was never found. Brandir, who had heard everything, went back and told the woodmen that Turambar was dead and Níniel with him; when Túrin came into the settlement alive, Brandir repeated the dragon's words to him and Túrin, believing them a lie, killed him. Mablung of Doriath arrived within the hour and confirmed the truth. Túrin went back to the gorge and threw himself on his sword, and the men of Brethil raised a great standing stone over him above Cabed-en-Aras, which they would not name again.

Aftermath

Húrin, released from Angband, came to Brethil in 501 and found Morwen sitting by that stone. She died there at nightfall and he buried her beside their son. The account in Unfinished Tales, which is the only source for this part of the story, adds that Húrin's coming set off a quarrel among the Halethrim: the chieftain Hardang, of a different branch of Haleth's line, imprisoned him, and in the fighting that followed the leaders of the people were killed and the folk of Brethil were left broken and lordless. The wood was drowned with the rest of Beleriand in the ruin at the end of the Age, and the Edain who survived to reach Númenor included the last of Haleth's people among them.

Brethil's western edge was the deep gorge of the Teiglin, crossed only at the Crossings; its eastern edge was Sirion, with the wood of Nivrim of Doriath across the river. To the south the two rivers met near the meres of Aelin-uial. Through the forest the old road ran from the Crossings to the fords of Sirion, and Amon Obel rose in the centre with Ephel Brandir on its crown. Below the crossings the Teiglin cut a chasm in the rock, narrowing at Cabed-en-Aras to a leap a deer might make; above it a falling stream at Nen Girith gave a viewpoint over the gorge. North of the forest the ground rose to open moorland toward the Ered Wethrin and the Pass of Sirion, and it was down that way that the orc-raids came.