The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [167]
In The Silmarillion (p. 249) Manwë’s judgement was that Eärendel and Elwing ‘shall not walk ever again among Elves or Men in the Outer Lands’ but it is also said that Eärendel returned to Valinor from his ‘voyages beyond the confines of the world’ (ibid. p. 250), just as it is said in the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin that he does not come ever further back than Kôr. The further statement in the Name-list, that if he did he would die like other Men, ‘so much of the mortal is in him’, was in some sense echoed long after in a letter of my father’s written in 1967: ‘Eärendil, being in part descended from Men, was not allowed to set foot on Earth again, and became a star shining with the light of the Silmaril’ (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien no. 297).
This brings to an end all the ‘prose’ materials that bear on the earliest form of the Tale of Eärendel (apart from a few other references to him that appear in the next chapter). With these outlines and notes we are at a very early stage of composition, when the conceptions were fluid and had not been given even preliminary narrative form: the myth was present in certain images that were to endure, but these images had not been articulated.
I have already noticed (p. 257) the remarkable fact that there is no hint of the idea that it was Eärendel who by his intercession brought aid out of the West; equally there is no suggestion that the Valar hallowed his ship and set him in the sky, nor that his light was that of the Silmaril. Nonetheless there were already present the coming of Eärendel to Kôr (Tirion) and finding it deserted, the dust of diamonds on his shoes, the changing of Elwing into a seabird, the passing of his ship through the Door of Night, and the sanction against his return to the lands east of the Sea. The raid on the Havens of Sirion appears in the early outlines, though that was an act of Melko’s, not of the Fëanorians; and Tuor’s departure also, but without Idril, whom he left behind. His ship was Alqarámë, Swanwing: afterwards it bore the name Eärrámë, with the meaning ‘Sea-wing’ (The Silmarillion p. 245), which retained, in form but not in meaning, the name of Eärendel’s first ship Eärámë ‘Eaglepinion’ (pp. 253–4, and see note 9).
It is interesting to read my father’s statement, made some half-century later (in the letter of 1967 referred to above), concerning the origins of Eärendil:
This name is in fact (as is obvious) derived from Anglo-Saxon éarendel. When first studying Anglo-Saxon professionally (1913–)—I had done so as a boyish hobby when supposed to be learning Greek and Latin—I was struck by the great beauty of this word (or name), entirely coherent with the normal style of Anglo-Saxon, but euphonic to a peculiar degree in that pleasing but not ‘delectable’ language. Also its form strongly suggests that it is in origin a proper name and not a common noun. This is borne out by the obviously related forms in other Germanic languages; from which amid the confusions and debasements of late traditions it at least seems certain that it belonged to astronomical-myth, and was the name of a star or star-group. To my mind the Anglo-Saxon uses seem plainly to indicate that it was a star presaging the dawn (at any rate in English tradition): that is what we now call Venus: the morning star as it may be seen shining brilliantly in the dawn, before the actual rising of the Sun. That is at any rate how I took it. Before 1914 I wrote a ‘poem’ upon Eärendel who launched his ship like a bright spark from the havens of the Sun. I adopted him into my mythology—in which he became a prime figure as a mariner, and eventually as a herald star, and a sign of hope to men. Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima ([The Lord of the Rings] II.329), ‘hail Eärendil brightest of Stars’ is derived at long remove from Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtast.* But the name could not be adopted just like