House of Haleth

A people apart

The Haladin entered Beleriand in F.A. 313, a little after the people of Bëor, but they did not follow the others to Estolad. Instead they turned north into Thargelion, the land of Caranthir, and settled in scattered homesteads with no lords over them. They spoke their own language, unrelated to the tongue of the Bëorians and the people of Marach, and they preferred the woods to open country. Alone among the Edain they were ruled, at the moment of their greatest peril, by a woman.

The stand at the stockade

In F.A. 375 Morgoth sent Orcs over the mountains into Thargelion, and the scattered Haladin were easy prey. Haldad, a man of authority among them, gathered as many as he could into a stockade between the rivers Ascar and Gelion. He was killed in a sortie, and his son Haldar died beside him. Haldad's daughter Haleth took command and held the stockade for seven days, until Caranthir's army came down from the north and drove the Orcs into the rivers. Caranthir, who had paid Men little attention before, offered Haleth lands and protection in the north. She refused. Her people were free, she said, and would follow no lord but their own.

The march to Brethil

Haleth led her people west, first to Estolad and then, by a hard road through the perilous country between Doriath and the Ered Gorgoroth, into the forest of Brethil between the rivers Teiglin and Sirion. Thingol claimed that forest, but at Finrod's urging he allowed the Haladin to live there on condition that they guard the Crossings of Teiglin against Orcs. This became the settled task of the house for the rest of the First Age. The Haladin built no great halls; they lived in the woods, kept their frontier, and stayed out of the wars of the Elven-kings when they could.

Haleth never married, and after her death in F.A. 420 the lordship passed to her nephew Haldan, son of Haldar. Under Halmir, Haldir, Handir and Brandir the people of Haleth became the Men of Brethil, holding Amon Obel with its stockaded settlement of Ephel Brandir at the heart of the forest.

The wars

The Haladin fought beside the Elves when the need was great. Halmir sent men with Beleg to ambush the Orcs who came south after the Bragollach. In the Nirnaeth Arnoediad of F.A. 472 Haldir led the Men of Brethil in the army of Fingon, and he fell there with most of his warriors. His son Handir was killed in 495 fighting Orcs in Brethil itself, in the year that Nargothrond fell.

Túrin among the Haladin

In 496 Túrin came to Brethil after the fall of Nargothrond, seeking the grave of Finduilas. He took the name Turambar and lived among the woodmen, and his energy and skill in war soon overshadowed the lame lord Brandir, who counselled secrecy and defence. When Túrin's sister Nienor was found naked and memoryless on Finduilas's mound, she too was taken into Brethil, and there, ignorant of who they were, the two were married. The dragon Glaurung came against Brethil in 499. Túrin killed him at the ravine of Cabed-en-Aras, but the dragon's dying malice revealed the truth, Nienor threw herself into the Teiglin, and Túrin slew Brandir, who had brought the news, before killing himself. The Haladin were left without a lord of Haleth's line.

Fate

The people of Haleth survived the fall of Beleriand as a remnant, and some of them sailed with the other Edain to Númenor, where their name was preserved among the Elf-friends. It is recorded in Unfinished Tales that a small folk of Drúedain lived among the Haladin in Brethil and were held in honour there; these too were carried to Númenor, though they later returned to Middle-earth. Of the three houses, the House of Haleth left the least mark on the later ages, but its memory endured in the tale of Túrin and in the tradition of Brethil's woodmen.

The Haladin were shorter and broader than the tall people of Hador, and not so fair. They were dark-haired and sturdy, and they were fewer in number than either of the other houses. Being woodland people they were skilled at moving unseen and at fighting from cover rather than in open field.

The Haladin were a clannish and reticent people who kept their own language and did not readily mix with the other Edain. They acknowledged no lord until Haldad's day, and afterward their chieftains were guided by a council of the people; in the days of Brandir the folk could overrule their lord in an assembly. Unusually, women of the house could bear arms, and Haleth kept a bodyguard of women. They lived in dispersed homesteads in the forest, with a stockaded refuge at Ephel Brandir on Amon Obel, and their chief duty was the watch on the Crossings of Teiglin.

The Haladin came from the same westward migration as the other Edain but were already a separate people with a separate tongue when they reached the Blue Mountains. They entered Beleriand in F.A. 313 and settled in Thargelion, and their history as a house begins with the Orc-raid of 375 and the leadership of Haleth.

Leaderless after Brandir's death and crushed by the ruin of Beleriand, the House of Haleth survived only as a remnant among the Edain who removed to Númenor, and as a strand in the mixed Men of the western coasts.