Andreth was a wise-woman of the House of Bëor in the years of the Siege of Angband, learned in the lore of her people, whom the Elves called Saelind, Wise-heart. She is known from one late work, the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, which Tolkien wrote towards the end of the 1950s and which was published in Morgoth's Ring.1
The Athrabeth is a conversation. Finrod Felagund, visiting the house where she dwelt, talks with her of the difference between Elves and Men: of death, which the Elves call the Gift of Men and the Men themselves fear, and of whether it was always so. Andreth tells him that her people have a tradition that Men were not made to die, and that their mortality is a wound dealt them by the Shadow in the dark of their beginning.1
At the end of the talk she speaks of the Old Hope among some of her people: that the One himself would one day enter into Arda and heal Men and all its hurt. Finrod receives it with wonder.1
Under the argument lies a sorrow of her own. In her youth she had loved Finrod's brother Aegnor, and he her, but he would not wed her, and she grew old while he did not.1
Interpretation Tolkien used the conversation to set down, more openly than anywhere else, his thinking on death, hope and the fate of Men.1
Sources
Citations name the chapter rather than the page, so they work in any edition. The colour of each note shows what kind of source it is.
- Edited posthumously The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and Tolkien's late writings on the Elder Days, assembled by Christopher Tolkien from his father's papers.
- Edited posthumously Morgoth's Ring (The History of Middle-earth, vol. 10), “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth”