Song of Eärendil

Frodo's dream of Eärendil by Anke Eißmann

"Eärendil was a mariner", also known as The Short Lay of Eärendel: Eärendillinwë, or just the Eärendillinwë, was a song written by Bilbo and Aragorn, and sung by Bilbo when the Hobbits reached Rivendell.

It is believed that the song is a reworking of an earlier nonsensical poem Errantry, most likely also composed by Bilbo after his return from the Quest for Erebor, lightheartedly incorporating Elvish elements. Perhaps because Bilbo was proud of Errantry's metrical devices, he transformed and (incongruously) applied that poem to the legends of the First Age. Aragorn's contributions included his request for a green jewel in the song; Bilbo obeyed, but inaccurately referred to it as an emerald.

Division of the poem

1. An introduction to Eärendil and the building of his ship
2. A detailed description of him, the final line of which was supposedly influenced by Aragorn
3. A description of his fruitless wanderings in search of Valinor
4. How Elwing his wife flew to him in the form of a bird and bound the jewel to his forehead
5. How he found Valinor
6. Concerning his stay there
7. How they built a new ship for him, and how Elbereth gave him wings
8. How he left Valinor
9. How he passed over Middle-earth and became a star

Metre and assonance

The metre is iambic tetrameter. The poem is structured according to trisyllabic assonances, inherited from "Errantry". These are units of three syllables in which the first and third syllables of one unit, which are accented, rhyme or off-rhyme with the first and third syllables of another. The off-rhymes are typically assonances, that is, matching vowel sounds, though some only have similar vowels, and often the consonants are similar or the same as well.

For example,

The winds of wrath came driving him,
and blindly in the foam he fled
from west to east and errandless,
unheralded he homeward sped.

Here "fled" rhymes with "sped", but in addition, the vowel of "foam" is the same as the first vowel of "homeward". Thus the matching units are "foam he fled" and "homeward sped". Another pair of matching units is "driving him" and "blindly in". Another is "errandless" and "[un]heralded".

The pattern is the same throughout the poem. In every set of four lines, the last three syllables of the first line match the second, third and fourth of the second line. The third and fourth lines have the same kind of matching. And the last three syllables of the second line match those of the fourth line, usually with an exact rhyme at the end.

An example where the vowels don't match exactly is "across" and "passed", though the sounds are similar and the "s" is repeated. The first four lines are especially atypical.

Poem excerpts

First stanza

Eärendil was a mariner
that tarried in Arvernien;
he built a boat of timber felled
in Nimbrethil to journey in;
her sails he wove of silver fair,
of silver were her lanterns made,
her prow he fashioned like a swan,
and light upon her banners laid.

Second stanza

In panoply of ancient kings,
in chainéd rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm from him;
his bow was made of dragon-horn,
his arrows shorn of ebony,
of silver was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony;
his sword of steel was valiant,
of adamant his helmet tall,
an eagle-plume upon his crest,
upon his breast an emerald.

Last stanza

And over Middle-earth he passed
and heard at last the weeping sore
of women and of elven-maids
in Elder Days, in years of yore.
But on him mighty doom was laid,
till Moon should fade, an orbéd star
to pass, and tarry never more
on Hither Shores where mortals are;
for ever still a herald on
on errand that should never rest
to bear his shining lamp afar,
the Flammifer of Westernesse.

Inspiration

Eärendil derives from Tolkien's earlier poem Errantry (published 1933). In the drafts of The Fellowship of the Ring, Errantry evolved in stages, and reached its final published form after fifteen revisions. Errantry was eventually republished in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Both Errantry and Eärendil use a sound pattern of Tolkien's own invention: trisyllabic assonances or near-assonances. This fact passed into the legendarium, as the Preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil says that Bilbo was probably proud of his metre and used it as a model for Earendil.

Other versions of the Legendarium

Among the various versions of the poem, there is one version which Christopher Tolkien believed that his father most likely intended for publication instead of the above version, which was published in The Fellowship of the Ring.

The title Eärendillinwë (sometimes Earendillínwë with a long í) is a title that appears in various drafts but not in the published text of the Fellowship. The spelling Earendel belongs to earlier versions of the Legendarium, as when the character first appears in The Book of Lost Tales.

See also

• Errantry
• Fragment of an alliterative Lay of Eärendel
• Lay of Eärendil
• Poems in The Lord of the Rings

External links

• Eärendillinwë, the latest form of the Song of Eärendil, which was not published in Fellowship