In The Book of Lost Tales the narrator of Túrin's story says of his choosing to pursue the orcs who had taken Failivrin (Finduilas) captive says that his life could have turned out differently if he had done so. As the last clause of sentence indicates, the dragon, Glomund (Glaurung), was of the same opinion and refused to let that happen.
Maybe in that desperate venture [Túrin] had found* a kindly and swift death or perchance an ill one, and maybe he had rescued* [Finduilas] and found* happiness, yet not thus was he fated to earn the name he had taken anew, and the drake reading his mind suffered him not thus lightly to escape his tide of ill.
(LT II.87)
That last phrase--“to escape his tide of ill”--is quite lovely, but as enigmatic as it is evocative. Does tide here allude to the unstoppable tides of the ocean, or does it mean time or season as in yuletide? The latter meaning is older by far. Old English tid** appears in the Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, in the gospel of Matthew in the Lindisfarne Gospels, and in Beowulf (147). The former is not found before the 14th Century.
In The Book of Lost Tales Tolkien uses tide in both senses, but mostly in reference to the sea. The context, however, normally contains one or more other words that establish the connection to the natural phenomenon.
So, for example:
"but the Ainur put it into [Tuor's] heart to climb from the gully when he did, or had he been whelmed in the incoming tide" (LT II.151)."The went the Man of the Sea out when the tide began to creep in slow and shallow over the long flats" (LT II.317)
"When that tide again forsook the Hungry Sands..." (LT II.318).
But there are examples where it refers to time. Thus, high-tide*** in the first example below refers not to the sea but to a high-time, that is, a time of celebration or festival, like Christmas. And day-tide**** in the second means simply daytime.
"this year you will celebrate the death of Karkaras with a high-tide greater than even before, O King" (LT II.231).
Of this converse of Eriol and Vairë upon the lawn that fair day-tide came it that Eriol set out not many days thereafter (LT I.95).
Some of the poetry from the war years, which Christopher Tolkien includes in The Book of Lost Tales, also signifies time by tid:
Still their old heart unmoved nor weeps nor grieves,
Uncomprehending of this evil tide,
Today’s great sadness, or Tomorrow’s fear(LT II.296)
So, again, which meaning of tide is Tolkien using here? While it could be a figurative use of tide to suggest the overpowering, irresistible force of evil, as it is at LT II.232--"valiantly they warded the palace of the king until the tide of numbers bore them back"--the "tide of ill" which the dragon has in mind is the calamitous life of woe and sorrow to which Melkor had cursed Túrin and his family. As the narrator indicates earlier in the sentence by saying that Túrin and Finduilas might have "found happiness," he is thinking about a span of time, not being swept away by the force of a moment.
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** “Tide, N., Sense I.1.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5003698957.
*** “Day Tide, N., Sense 1.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9829095802.
**** “High Tide, N., Sense I.1.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1021614943.
