The White Council

Re: the coins of Queen Beruthiel

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: I was fascinated by the reference (in the suite 101 essay on : the Merchants of Middle Earth) to the lost passage on the : coinage of Middle-earth I haven`t been able to find it yet in : the Peoples of Middle Earth. Could you tell me where in the : book it is?

Page 45, section 41 (toward the end of the paragraph).

: My main question is about Queen Beruthiel. I`m not sure where : what I remember about her comes from: the letters I think and : also the appendices - but I don`t remember any reference to her : being a princess of Umbar, as I remember reading the other day : somewhere on this site. It certainly fits the story very nicely : - and explains a lot. Is there an expanded version somewhere of : the tale that I`ve missed?

Queen Beruthiel was mentioned by Aragorn while the Fellowship of the Ring passed through Moria. His reference was obscure, but Tolkien explained it in one of his letters. In Letter 163 (written to W.H. Auden in 1955) he actually wrote, "I have yet to discover anything about Beruthiel and her cats". In Letter 174 (written to Lord Halsbury that same year) Tolkien said just about everything except Beruthiel and her cats referred to something developed prior to THE LORD OF THE RINGS or during the same period as when he wrote the book (1937-50). And repeated the assertion in Letter 180 the next year. I don't know of any other references to Beruthiel in the Letters.

Most of what is "known" about Beruthiel comes from UNFINISHED TALES. Christopher Tolkien gives a brief background on her in Note 7 to "The Istari". But it was J.R.R. Tolkien himself who revealed Beruthiel's Black Numenorean background in an interview he gave in the 1960s.

: I had often wondered about that marriage, but never thought of : it as an attempt at accomodation with Umbar. As such I suppose : it was a failure from the very start. Tarannon`s concern for : the fleets can only have been as a challenge to Umbar, and it : must already have been his life`s work: one of the problems in : the marriage was that she hated the sea, while her husband : thought of little else.

The Umbarian connection I must attribute to Chris Seeman, editor and publisher of Other Hands. He wrote an article for Other Hands a few years ago titled "A Journey in the Dark: Reflections on the Identity of Queen Beruthiel". I used to have a copy of it which he had emailed to me, but I've moved several times since then, changed PCs several times, etc., etc. All I have left is a citation I posted to a news group a couple of years ago.

Here's the relevant excerpt from my post:

But here is what Chris attributed to Daphne Castell's article, "The Realms of Tolkien" (New Worlds: 147-148) November, 1966 [reprinted in Carandaith (1969) 1/2: 10-15, 27 ]

I'm afraid some of those numbers mean nothing to me.

The citation:

   "...Most of the allusions to older legends scattered about the   tale, or summarized in Appendix A are to things which really   have an existence os some kind in the history of which 'The   Lord of the Rings' is part.  There's one exception that puzzles    me: Beruthiel.  I really don't know anything of her -- you   remember Aragorn's allusion in Book I (page 325) to the cats of   Queen Beruthiel, that could find their way home on a blind   night?  She just popped up, and obviously called for attention,   but I don't really know anything certain about her; though,   oddly enough, I have a notion that she was the wife of one of   the ship-kings of Pelargir.  She loathed the smell of the sea,   and fish, and the gulls.  Rather like Skadi, the giantess, who   came to the gods in Valhalla, demanding a recompense for the   accidental death of her father.  She wanted a husband.  The   gods all lined up behind a curtain, and she selected the pair   of feet that appealed to her most.  She thought she'd got   Baldur, the beautiful god, but it turned out to be Njord the   sea-god, and after she'd married him, she got absolutely fed up   with the seaside life, and the gulls kept her awake, and   finally she went back to live in Jotunheim. 

"Well, Beruthiel went back to live in the inland city, and went   to the bad (or returned to it -- she was a Black Numenorean in   origin, I guess).  She was one of these people who loathe cats,   but cats will jump on them and follow them about -- you know   how sometimes they pursue people who hate them?  I have a   friend like that.  I'm afraid she took to torturing them for   amusement, but she kept some and used them: trained them to   go on evil errands by night, to spy on her enemies or terrify   them."