Eärendil and Elwing

Eärendil is the subject, too, of the song in The Lord of the Rings sung and supposedly composed by Bilbo in Rivendell, described by Tom Shippey as exemplifying "an elvish streak ... signalled ... by barely-precedented intricacies" of poetry.

[4] Tolkien stated that the name came from the Old English name Ēarendel; he was struck by its "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.".

Fëanor, son of Finwë, the King of the Noldor, one branch of the Elves, had unique skill in craftsmanship, and forged three brilliant and highly prized jewels, the Silmarils, that shone like bright stars.

[T 3] Eärendil was the half-elven son of a Man, Tuor, and an Elf, Idril, daughter of Turgon, the King of the hidden Elvish city of Gondolin.

[T 4] 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 4]Hearing of the tragedy that had befallen Arvernien, Eärendil then sought after the home of the godlike and immortal Valar, Valinor, aboard the Vingilot, and he and Elwing found their way there at last.

[T 4] Because Eärendil had undertaken this errand on behalf of Men and Elves, and not for his own sake, Manwë, King of the Valar, refrained from dealing out the punishment of death that was due for entering Valinor.

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.

His ship, Vingilot (Quenya: Vingilótë), was placed in the heavens, and he sailed it "even into the starless voids", but he returned at sunrise or sunset, glimmering in the sky as the Morning Star.

"[T 1][T 9] Tolkien was particularly inspired by the Crist lines:[9][7] éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sendedHail Earendel, brightest of angels, over Middle-earth to men sentThe first of the Crist lines is parallelled by Frodo Baggins's exclamation in The Two Towers, Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima!, which in Tolkien's invented language of Quenya means, "Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!"

[12][13] These lines from Crist can be taken as the inspiration not only for the role of Eärendil in Tolkien's work from as early as 1914, but for the term Middle-earth (translating Old English Middangeard) for the inhabitable lands (c.f.

When these too are destroyed, their last fragment of light is made into the Silmarils, and a sapling too is rescued, leading to the White Tree of Númenor, the living symbol of the Kingdom of Gondor.

Wade has power over the sea and superhuman strength, while 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.

[18] Elwing's staying at home waiting for her husband to return from his vain voyages across the ocean echoes the literary motif of the "long-suffering woman".

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 in Tolkien's legendarium Men are mortal, while Elves will live until the world is undone.

[T 10] The Song of Eärendil is described by Tom Shippey as exemplifying "an elvish streak .. signalled .. by barely-precedented intricacies" of poetry, an approach derived from the Middle English poem Pearl.