Fastitocalon (poem)

This is retold in the Old English poem "The Whale", where the monster appears under the name Fastitocalon, in the Exeter Book, folio 96b-97b.

[1] By etymology, the name "Fastitocalon" is a corruption of the Greek Aspido-chelōne, "round-shielded turtle", with the addition of the letter F, according to Tolkien, "simply to make the name alliterate, as was compulsory for poets in his day, with the other words in his line.

Norma Roche writes in Mythlore that Tolkien makes use of the medieval story of the voyages of Saint Brendan and the Irish Immram tradition, where a hero sails to the Celtic Otherworld, for his vision of the Blessed Realm and seas to the west of Middle-earth.

[6][7] John D. Rateliff notes that Tolkien stated that when he read a medieval work, he wanted to write a modern one in the same tradition.

He constantly created these, whether pastiches and parodies like "Fastitocalon"; adaptations in medieval metres, like "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun" or "asterisk texts" like his "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" (from "Hey Diddle Diddle"); and finally "new wine in old bottles" such as "The Nameless Land" and Aelfwine's Annals.

[8] The scholar of literature Paul H. Kocher comments that from a land-loving Hobbit point of view, the story warns never to go out on the dangerous sea, let alone try to land on an uncharted island.