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That Beren was still an Elf, not a Man, (deducible on other grounds) is apparent from lines 178–9:

and never ere now for need or wonder

had children of Men chosen that pathway

– cf. the Tale (II. 72): ‘and Túrin son of Úrin was the first of Men to tread that way’, changed from the earlier reading ‘and Beren Ermabwed was the first of Men …’

In the parting of Túrin from his mother comparison with the Tale will show some subtle differences which need not be spelled out here. The younger of Túrin’s guardians is now named, Halog (and it is said that Gumlin and Halog were the only ‘henchmen’ left to Morwen).

Some very curious things are said of Beleg in the poem. He is twice (200, 399) called ‘a (the) son of the wilderness who wist no sire’, and at line 416 he is ‘Beleg the ageless’. There seems to be a mystery about him, an otherness that sets him apart (as he set himself apart, 195) from the Elves of Thingol’s lordship (see further p. 127). It may be that there is still a trace of this in the 1930 ‘Silmarillion’, where it is said that none went from Doriath to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears save Mablung, and Beleg ‘who obeyed no man’ (in the later text this becomes ‘nor any out of Doriath save Mablung and Beleg, who were unwilling to have no part in these great deeds. To them Thingol gave leave to go …’; The Silmarillion p. 189). In the poem (219) Beleg says expressly that he did not go to the great Battle. – His great bow of black yew-wood (so in The Silmarillion, p. 208, where it is named Belthronding) now appears (400): in the Tale he is ssss1 (II. 123).

Beleg’s The gods have guided you (215) and Turin’s guardians’ thought the gods are good (244) accord with references in the Lost Tales to the influence of the Valar on Men and Elves in the Great Lands: see II. 141.

The potent wine that Beleg carried and gave to the travellers from his flask (223 ff.) is notable – brought from the burning South and by long ways carried to the lands of the North – as is the name of the land from which it came: Dor-Winion (230, 425). The only other places in my father’s writings where this name occurs (so far as I know) are in The Hobbit, Chapter IX Barrels out of Bond: ‘the heady vintage of the great gardens of Dorwinion’, and ‘the wine of Dorwinion brings deep and pleasant dreams’.^* See further p. 127.