Crossings of Teiglin

The fords

The river Teiglin ran down from the Ered Wethrin through a deep gorge to join Sirion, and along most of its length it could not be crossed. The Crossings were the one place where the road from the west could ford it, on the boundary between the Guarded Plain of Nargothrond and the forest of Brethil. The ancient road ran from the havens of the Falas and Nargothrond eastward over the Crossings, through the forest, and on to the fords of Sirion and Doriath.

When Thingol allowed the people of Haleth to live in Brethil, the price was that they hold the Crossings against orcs coming down from the north, and the House of Haleth did so for more than a hundred years. It was here that Beleg fought beside the woodmen when Túrin's outlaws were raiding the same country. After the fall of Nargothrond a column of captives was driven along the road, and when the men of Brethil ambushed it at the Crossings the orcs killed their prisoners. Finduilas was pinned to a tree by a spear and died there; the woodmen buried her in a mound beside the ford, the Haudh-en-Elleth, the Mound of the Elf-maid.

Túrin, arriving too late, collapsed on her grave and was taken into Brethil. Later the mound was where the woodmen found the naked, memoryless Nienor, and it was said that she could never afterward pass it without shuddering. Glaurung, when he came to attack Brethil, made for the Crossings and lay above the gorge of the Teiglin at Cabed-en-Aras, where Túrin slew him.