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By Root 1402 0

that: it had to be accommodated to the Elvish linguistic situation, at the same time as a place for this person was made in legend. From this, far back in the history of ‘Elvish’, which was beginning, after many tentative starts in boyhood, to take definite shape at the time of the name’s adoption, arose eventually (a) the C[ommon] E[lvish] stem* AYAR ‘sea’, primarily applied to the Great Sea of the West, lying between Middle-earth and Aman the Blessed Realm of the Valar; and (b) the element, or verbal base (N) DIL, ‘to love, be devoted to’—describing the attitude of one to a person, thing, cause, or occupation to which one is devoted for its own sake. Eärendil became a character in the earliest written (1916–17) of the major legends: The Fall of Gondolin, the greatest of the Pereldar ‘Half-elven’, son of Tuor of the most renowned House of the Edain, and Idril daughter of the King of Gondolin.

My father did not indeed here say that his Eärendel contained from the beginning elements that in combination give a meaning like ‘Sea-lover’ but it is in any case clear that at the time of the earliest extant writings on the subject the name was associated with an Elvish word ea ‘eagle’—see p. 265 on the name of Eärendel’s first ship Eärámë ‘Eaglepinion’. In the Name-list to The Fall of Gondolin this is made explicit: ‘Earendl [sic] though belike it hath some kinship to the Elfin ea and earen “eagle” and “eyrie” (wherefore cometh to mind the passage of Cristhorn and the use of the sign of the Eagle by Idril [see p. 193]) is thought to be woven of that secret tongue of the Gondothlim [see p. 165].’

I give lastly four early poems of my father’s in which Eärendel appears.

I

Éalá Éarendel Engla Beorhtast

There can be little doubt that, as Humphrey Carpenter supposes (Biography p. 71), this was the first poem on the subject of Eärendel that my father composed, and that it was written at Phoenix Farm, Gedling, Nottinghamshire, in September 1914.10 It was to this poem that he was referring in the letter of 1967 just cited—‘I wrote a “poem” upon Eärendel who launched his ship like a bright spark’: cf. line 5 ‘He launched his bark like a silver spark…’

There are some five different versions, each one incorporating emendations made in the predecessor, though only the first verse was substantially rewritten. The title was originally ‘The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star’, together with (as customarily) an Old English version of this: Scipfæreld Earendeles fensteorran; this was changed in a later copy to Éalá Éarendel Engla Beorhtast ‘The Last Voyage of Eärendel’, and in still later copies the modern English name was removed. I give it here in the last version, the date of which cannot be determined, though the handwriting shows it to be substantially later than the original composition; together with all the divergent readings of the earliest extant version in footnotes.

Éarendel arose where the shadow flows

At Ocean’s silent brim;

Through the mouth of night as a ray of light

Where the shores are sheer and dim 4

He launched his bark like a silver spark

From the last and lonely sand;

Then on sunlit breath of day’s fiery death

He sailed from Westerland. 8

He threaded his path o’er the aftermath

Of the splendour of the Sun,

And wandered far past many a star

In his gleaming galleon. 12

On the gathering tide of darkness ride

The argosies of the sky,

And spangle the night with their sails of light

As the streaming star goes by. 16

Unheeding he dips past these twinkling ships,

By his wayward spirit whirled

On an endless quest through the darkling West

O’er the margin of the world; 20

And he fares in haste o’er the jewelled waste

And the dusk from whence he came

With his heart afire with bright desire

And his face in silver flame. 24

The Ship of the Moon from the East comes soon

From the Haven of the Sun,

Whose white gates gleam in the coming beam

Of the mighty silver one. 28

Lo! with bellying clouds as his vessel’s shrouds