It is called The Children of Húrin and is only 170 lines long (compared to the 2276 lines of the first of the alliterative poems) that poem, however, has been omitted from the book. In the book Christopher Tolkien mentions a third Túrin poem, this time in rhyming couplets and incomplete. The Gest of Beren son of Barahir and Lúthien the Fay called Tinúviel the Nightingale or the Lay of Leithian - Release from Bondage (split into fourteen cantos).The Lay of Leithian (unfinished poem: the Tale of Beren and Lúthien in verse (over 4200 lines of iambic tetrameters, in rhyming couplets):.Fragment of an alliterative Lay of Earendel.The Lay of the Children of Húrin, the tale of Túrin in 2276 lines of verse.The book is split into these main sections: The first versions of the long lays fit chronologically in with Tolkien's earliest writings, as recounted in The Book of Lost Tales, but the later version of The Lay of Leithian is contemporary with the writing of The Lord of the Rings. In addition to these two poems, the book contains three short, soon-abandoned alliterative poems, The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor, The Lay of Eärendel, and The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin.

The first poem is in alliterative verse, and the second is in rhyming couplets. Although Tolkien abandoned them before their respective ends, they are both long enough to occupy many stanzas, each of which can last for over ten pages. The book contains the long heroic lays or lyric poetry that Tolkien wrote: these are The Lay of the Children of Húrin about the saga of Túrin Turambar, and The Lay of Leithian (also called Release from Bondage) which tells the Tale of Beren and Lúthien. See also: Poetry in The Lord of the Rings In the second part is the Lay of Leithian, which is the Gest of Beren and Lúthien as far as the encounter of Beren with Carcharoth at the gate of Angband'. The inscription in Book III reads: 'In the first part of this Book is given the Lay of the Children of Húrin by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, in which is set forth in part the Tale of Túrin. There is an inscription in the Fëanorian characters ( Tengwar, an alphabet Tolkien has devised for High-Elves) in the first pages of every History of Middle-earth volume, written by Christopher Tolkien and describing the contents of the book. The Lays of Beleriand, published in 1985, is the third volume of Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume book series, The History of Middle-earth, in which he analyzes the unpublished manuscripts of his father J.

The tale of beren and lúthien