Eärendil and Elwing

Eärendil means 'Lover of the Sea' in Tolkien's invented language of Quenya. However, Tolkien borrowed the name from Old English literature.[2] Tolkien stated that the name came from Old English éarendel; he was struck by the name's "great beauty" c. 1913, which he perceived as "entirely coherent with the normal style of A-S, but euphonic to a peculiar degree in that pleasing but not 'delectable' language.".[T 1] Elwing's name means "Star-spray" in Tolkien's Elvish language Sindarin.[3]

The half-elven son of Tuor and Idril, daughter of Turgon, Eärendil was raised in Gondolin. When Eärendil was seven years old, he escaped the sacking of Gondolin with his parents. He was almost killed by his mother's treacherous cousin Maeglin, who had betrayed Gondolin, but was saved when his father slew Maeglin. Eärendil and his parents lived afterwards in Arvernien by the mouth of Sirion. Eärendil later became the leader of the people who lived there, and married Elwing the half-elven daughter of Dior and the Sindarin elf-maid Nimloth. Beren and Lúthien are Elwing's paternal grandparents. They had two sons, Elrond and Elros. Elrond would later come to play an important role in Tolkien's most widely known story, The Lord of the Rings.

With the aid of Círdan the Shipwright, Eärendil built a ship, Vingilótë (Quenya for "foam-flower"). He often sailed the seas west of Middle-earth, leaving his wife behind in Arvernien.[4] At this time Elwing had in her possession the Silmaril that Beren had wrested from Morgoth. When the remaining sons of Fëanor heard about this, they attacked Arvernien and killed most of the people living there. Elwing, rather than be captured, threw herself with the Silmaril into the sea. Next, according to The Silmarillion):

For Ulmo bore up Elwing out of the waves, and he gave her the likeness of a great white bird, and upon her breast there shone as a star the Silmaril, as she flew over the water to seek Eärendil her beloved. On a time of night Eärendil at the helm of his ship saw her come towards him, as a white cloud exceeding swift beneath the moon, as a star over the sea moving in strange courses, a pale flame on wings of storm. And it is sung that she fell from the air upon the timbers of Vingilot, in a swoon, nigh unto death for the urgency of her speed, and Eärendil took her to his bosom; but in the morning with marvelling eyes he beheld his wife in her own form beside him with her hair upon his face, and she slept.[T 2]

Hearing of the tragedy that had befallen Arvernien, Eärendil then sought after Valinor, aboard the Vingilot, and he and Elwing found their way there at last. Eärendil thus became the first of all mortals to set foot on Valinor. Eärendil then went before the Valar, and asked them for aid for Men and Elves in Middle-earth, to fight against Morgoth; the Valar accepted his plea.

Because Eärendil had undertaken this errand on behalf of Men and Elves, and not for his own sake, Manwë refrained from dealing out the punishment of death that was due. Also, because both Eärendil and Elwing descended from a union of Elves and Men, Manwë granted to them and their sons the gift to choose to which race they would be joined (a gift that was further passed to the children of Elrond, who became known as the Half-elven). Elwing chose to be one of the Elves. Eärendil would have rather been one of the Men; however, for the sake of his wife, he chose to be one of the Elves. The Silmarillion says:

Now when first Vingilot was set to sail in the seas of heaven, it rose unlooked for, glittering and bright; and the people of Middle-earth beheld it from afar and wondered, and they took it for a sign, and called it Gil-Estel, the Star of High Hope. The Valar, having listened to Eärendil's plea, went with a mighty host to Middle-earth, and overthrew Morgoth. Eärendil took part in the battle, riding on Vingilot beside Thorondor and the Eagles. He struck down the great dragon Ancalagon and cast him down onto Thangorodrim, the event which, along with the sheer devastation caused by the War of Wrath, led to the Ruin of Beleriand. However, as prophesied by Mandos, before the Dagor Dagorath, the Last Battle, that "When the world is old and the Powers grow weary, then Morgoth, seeing that the guard sleepeth, shall come back through the Door of Night out of the Timeless Void; and he shall destroy the Sun and Moon. But Eärendel shall descend upon him as a white and searing flame and drive him from the airs.[T 3]

In 1914, Tolkien wrote a poem The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star which was inspired by the "Crist" poem of Cynewulf.[5] While studying at Oxford, Tolkien developed a constructed language that later became known as Quenya. Already around 1915 he had the idea that this language needed an internal history and was spoken by Elves whom his invented character Eärendil meets during his journeys.[6] The next step in the creation of the underlying mythology was the Lay of Earendel, a work composed of several poems that describes the mariner Earendel and his voyages and how his ship is turned into a star. The mysterious land of Valinor and its Two Trees of gold and silver were first described in this cycle.[7]

There is a poem by Tolkien dated to 1914 entitled "The Voyage of Eärendel the Evening Star" (published in The Book of Lost Tales 2 267–269). Tolkien was also aware of the name's Germanic cognates (Old Norse Aurvandill, Lombardic Auriwandalo), and the question why the Old English rather than the Lombardic or Proto-Germanic form should be taken up in the mythology is alluded to in The Notion Club Papers. The Old Norse together with the Old English evidence point to an astronomical myth, the name referring to a star, or a group of stars, and the Old English in particular points to the morning star as the herald of the rising Sun (in Crist Christianized to refer to John the Baptist).[2]

Tolkien was particularly inspired by the lines in the Crist written by Cynewulf:[5]

éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended

"Hail Earendel, brightest of angels, over Middle-earth to men sent"

which can be taken as the inspiration not only for the role of Eärendil in Tolkien's work, but also for the term Middle-earth (translating Middangeard) for the inhabitable lands (c.f. Midgard).

The first line is paralleled by Frodo Baggins' exclamation in The Two Towers, Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!, which in Tolkien's invented language of Quenya means, "Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!" Frodo's exclamation was in reference to the 'Star-glass' he carried, which contained the light of Eärendil's star, the Silmaril.

Tolkien's legend of Eärendil has elements resembling the Mabinogion or the Christian legend of St. Brendan the Navigator.[8] The Tolkien scholar Tibor Tarcsay wrote that Eärendil is based not only on Old English but also Indo-European and universal myths. His ship Vingilot is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale as the name of Wade's ship; Wade is in turn mentioned in the Old English poem Widsith, while Sir Gawain's horse has a name similar to Vingilot, Gryngolet. He notes that Wade has power over the sea and superhuman strength, and that numerous other mythical Indo-European figures share Eärendil's conjunction of water, boat or horse, and herald or star, such as Surya, the sun-god of the Vedas, or Apollo with his horse-drawn chariot which pulls the sun across the sky.[9]

Humphrey Carpenter, in his biography of Tolkien, remarked that Eärendil "was in fact the beginning of Tolkien's own mythology".[5]

Elwing staying at home waiting for her husband to return from his vain voyages across the ocean is the motive of the "long-suffering woman" often found in classic literature. The choice of fate offered by the Valar to Eärendil and Elwing resulting in both of them becoming immortal Elves has been interpreted as a move of Tolkien to solve "several untidy plot points in one fell swoop": Being Half-elven, neither of the two would have been allowed to set foot in the land of the Valar, nor was their eventual fate determined since Men in Tolkien's legendarium are mortal, while Elves will live until the world is undone. The metamorphosis of the couple then continues as Eärendil's ship is transformed into a flying vessel, so he can continue his journeys in the sky rather than at sea. Still now, Elwing will remain at home again but as an "upgrade" she is granted a white tower to dwell in.[4]

Elwing's love for Eärendil the Mariner has also been compared to Richard Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman wherein the protagonist is doomed to sail the seas until he finds true love. The opera's heroine Senta casts herself into the sea to die when the Dutchman does not return her love, whereas Elwing is transformed into a bird and is able to fly to Eärendil. A connection may also be made between Elwing and Ino, a figure of the Greek mythology. The latter is a princess of Thebes who leaps into the sea and is then transformed into a "white goddess". In the Odyssey, she rescues Odysseus just like Elwing saves Eärendil from his futile cruises.[3]

The longest poem in The Lord of the Rings is the Song of Eärendil (also called Eärendillinwë in a different version) which Bilbo sings, and supposedly composed, at Rivendell.[1] This poem has an extraordinarily complex history. Long before writing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote a poem he called "Errantry", probably in the early 1930s, which was published in The Oxford Magazine on Nov. 9, 1933. Although this fanciful poem does not mention Eärendil, nor does it refer to any names or events from his mythology, Bilbo's song ultimately derives from it. There are six texts of different versions of this poem extant in Tolkien's papers, and no less than 15 further manuscripts and typescripts of Bilbo's song, in several lines of development. In fact, based on the evidence of the existing texts, it appears that the version which Tolkien sent to his publisher and which was published in the book was actually not his final version of the poem. Apparently the final version was mislaid, and an earlier version was the one that was printed.[T 6]

The Song of Eärendil is described by Tom Shippey as exemplifying "an elvish streak .. signalled .. by barely-precedented intricacies" of poetry. He notes however that the "elvish tradition" corresponded to a real English tradition, that of the Middle English poem Pearl. It makes use of an attempt at immortality and a "fantastically complex metrical scheme" with many poetic mechanisms, including alliteration as well as rhyme; for example, it begins "Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye / To clanly clos in golde so clere".[1][10] Shippey observes that the tradition of such complex verse had died out before the time of Shakespeare and Milton, to their and their readers' loss, and that "Tolkien obviously hoped in one way to recreate it," just as he sought to create a substitute for the lost English mythology.[1]

Shippey identifies five mechanisms used by Tolkien in The Song of Eärendil to convey an "elvish" feeling of "rich and continuous uncertainty, a pattern forever being glimpsed but never quite grasped",[1] its goals "romanticism, multitudinousness, imperfect comprehension .. achieved stylistically much more than semantically."[1] The mechanisms are rhyme, internal half-rhyme, alliteration, alliterative assonance, and "a frequent if irregular variation of syntax."[1] They can be seen in the first stanza of the long poem, only some of the instances being highlighted:[1]

A species of fossil mammal from the Paleocene was named Earendil undomiel by Leigh Van Valen in 1978.[12] The name translates to 'Earendil Evenstar'.

• Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (1981), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-31555-7
• Carpenter, Humphrey (2000). J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0618057023.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977), Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Silmarillion, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-25730-1