Question on "The Lay of Leithian"

[bel...@utxsvs.cc.utexas.edu]

I have just started to peruse the magnificent series of books (twelve
now, isn't it, and more coming?) after the Silmarillion such as the
Unfinished Tales and the Lays of Beleriand. In one of them (I was pressed
for time at the bookstore, so I couldn't recall which one), I found, in
answer to some of my wildest fantasies, the Lay of Leithian, which I fell
in love with from the one lonely stanza in the Tale of Beren and Luthien.
I flew to the page in the book where it started, and...well....I
academically appreciated what Chris Tolkien had done by placing all the
footnotes and divergent texts for the reader to see, but it distracted
somewhat from the reading of the epic. Worse still, when I tried to find
the passage that was in the Silmarillion (which ends "...and Finrod fell
before the throne"), it seemed different in several aspects of wording and
meter. Is there, in any other book, a more conventional and complete
telling of the Lay? I know it was unfinished by Tolkien, but even so, I
hoped that there might be a version that was internally consistent with
the "final" version of the tale used in LOTR and the Silmarillion. Any
information would be appreciated, posted or emailed.

---------------------------
Jonathan Sir Hendrey
bel...@utxsvs.cc.utexas.edu
---------------------------

[!@?*$%]

> meter. Is there, in any other book, a more conventional and complete
> telling of the Lay?

No.

Note the Lays of Beleriand has two versions of the Lay of Leithan.

--
The winter ceased its weary grip | smr...@netcom.com PO Box 1563
when soft and sudden sunbeams slip | Cupertino, California
and etch away the ice and gray, | (xxx)xxx-xxxx 95015
with life to soul and song to lip. | I don't use no smileys