The Lays of Beleriand
Book by John Ronald Reuel TolkienWikipedia
6
MENTIONS
4
EPISODES
3
PODCASTS
Search complete. 6 mentions across 4 episodes found for "The Lays of Beleriand".
Oct 9, 2026
Cameron KunzelmanHOST
[clears throat] This is, uh, this is, uh, from a lay.
Cameron KunzelmanHOST
You remember those things we were talking about, the Lays of Beleriand?
Austin WalkerHOST
Yeah.
Michael LutzHOST
Yeah.
Cameron KunzelmanHOST
That's a book."
Michael LutzHOST
Mm-hmm.
Cameron KunzelmanHOST
You know? Well, it turns out the Lays of Beleriand are the, i- it's those poems that I told you about from Christopher Tolkien that are, are the earliest or some of the earliest workings out of what's going on in The Silmarillion.
Michael LutzHOST
Mm-hmm.
ChrisHOST
But the land itself went through a run of different names before settling.
ChrisHOST
So in the earliest poems, uh, which were "The Lays of Beleriand," the country was called Broceliand, uh, which is one vowel from Broceliande, which is the enchanted forest in Arthurian tales.
ChrisHOST
Uh, but there's also a wider rejected name which might sound a bit familiar, Ingolende, which is obviously a very deliberate play on the word England.
ChrisHOST
And this harkens back to the earlier days of the whole mythology when Tolkien genuinely intended like the whole mythology to, to be that, a mythology for England.
Sara BrownHOST
It absolutely does.
Sara BrownHOST
Now since this is botany adjacent at the very least, we should start with Walter and Graham Judd's excellent book, Flora of Middle Earth, and they write, quote, "It is remarkable that nearly all references in Tolkien's writings to hemlock are linked to a single dramatic event, the first meeting of Lúthien Tinúviel, the elven daughter of Thingol of Doriath and Melian of the Maiar, and Beren, the son of Barahir of the House of Bëor." Of course, that story is told many times throughout the legendarium, from the tale of Tinúviel, which we'll start looking at next week, to The Lay of Leithian, an epic poem found in The Lays of Beleriand and written between 1925 and 1931.
Sara BrownHOST
Not to mention the version of the tale that Aragorn retells on Weathertop.
Alan SistoHOST
Mm-hmm.
Alan SistoHOST
... at least it was covering material that I had more familiarity with.
Alan SistoHOST
It took a while for me to go back and do the Book of Lost Tales and The Lays of Beleriand because there's definitely a deterrent aspect.
Alan SistoHOST
Christopher explains it's because the way his father wrote these stories was, quote, "intrinsically difficult," and one of his jobs in writing The History of Middle-earth was to disentangle it.
SaraHOST
Mm.