Before Arwen and Aragorn was a love story of heart-wrenching proportions: and that tale was of Beren and Lúthien (or should we say John and Edith). "The Silmarillion" describes the beginning of time in Middle-Earth, before all happenings we see in The Hobbit and LOTR, and 'The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien' was part of this. It tells the story of the mortal man Beren, who meets immortal Elf-maiden Lúthien singing and dancing in a glade. Her father, King Thingol, disliked Beren and set him on the impossible task of collecting the stolen Silmarils from Sauron's master, Morgoth, in Angband; all to win the hand of Lúthien. The beauty of this story is deepened by the inspiration behind it. Tolkien's wife, Edith, had once danced in a glade with flowering hemlocks in Yorkshire; undeniably the muse for both Lúthien and Arwen, but also, family rifts were similar to that of Thingol's prejudice. Edith was an Anglican; Tolkien a Catholic, and he was ordered by his guardian to stop any contact between them until Tolkien reached the legal age of 21 (five years later). She moved away and was engaged to another man, but dropped it all at the first hearing from Tolkien on the eve of his 21st birthday. In a letter to his son, Christopher, Tolkien spoke of Edith:
"She was (and knew she was) my Luthien. I will say no more now. But I should like ere long to have a long talk with you. For if as seems probable I shall never write any ordered biography--it is against my nature, which expresses itself about things deepest felt in the tales and myths--someone close in heart to me should know something about things that records do not record: the dreadful sufferings of our childhoods, from which we rescued one another, but could not wholly heal wounds that later often proved disabling; the sufferings that we endured after our love began--all of which (over and above personal weaknesses) might help to make pardonable, or understandable, the lapses and darknesses which at times marred our lives--and to explain how these never touched our depths nor dimmed the memories of our youthful love. For ever (especially when alone) we still met in the woodland glade and went hand in hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before out last parting."
