This brings to an end all the ‘prose’ materials that bear on the earliest form of the Tale of Eдrendel (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 Eдrendel 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 Eдrendel to Kфr (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 Fлanorians; and Tuor’s departure also, but without Idril, whom he left behind. His ship was Alqarбmл, Swanwing: afterwards it bore the name Eдrrбmл, with the meaning ‘Sea-wing’ (The Silmarillion p. 245), which retained, in form but not in meaning, the name of Eдrendel’s first ship Eдrбmл ‘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 Eдrendil:

This name is in fact (as is obvious) derived from Anglo-Saxon йarendel. 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 Eдrendel 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 Eдrendil Elenion Ancalima ([The Lord of the Rings] II.329), ‘hail Eдrendil brightest of Stars’ is derived at long remove from Йalб Йarendel engla beorhtast.* But the name could not be adopted just like 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. Eдrendil 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 Eдrendel 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 Eдrendel’s first ship Eдrбmл ‘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 Eдrendel appears.

I

Йalб Йarendel Engla Beorhtast

There can be little doubt that, as Humphrey Carpenter supposes (Biography p. 71), this was the first poem on the subject of Eдrendel 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 Eдrendel 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 Йarendel the Evening Star’, together with (as customarily) an Old English version of this: Scipfжreld Earendeles fensteorran; this was changed in a later copy to Йalб Йarendel Engla Beorhtast ‘The Last Voyage of Eдrendel’, 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.

Йarendel 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

He weighs anchor down the dark,

And on shimmering oars leaves the blazing shores

In his argent-timbered bark.      32

Readings of the earliest version:

1–8   Eдrendel sprang up from the Ocean’s cup