Thus Maedhros and Maglor gained not the jewel; but it was not lost. For Ulmo bore up Elwing out of the waves, and he gave her the likeness of a great white bird, and upon her breast there shone as a star the Silmaril, as she flew over the water to seek Eärendil her beloved.
JRR Tolkien: The Silmarillion: Chapter 24: Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath
I will never get over Earendil, Elwing and language, and how it’s used to show their connection to each other and to their heritages.
Earendil is canonically trilingual (Quenya, Sindarin, and Taliska) and he pleads to the Valar for the peoples of Middle-earth in all three languages; he succeeds in his plea in part because he can speak in all three languages - he’s asking on behalf of (almost) everyone in Beleriand - the Exiles, the native Sindar, and the Edain, and though he doesn’t have any Sindarin ancestry (though his wife and children do) he can speak the language and does.
Earendil also named Vingilot after Elwing . Tolkien makes note of it more than once and at one point says that the ship has to be called Vingilot(or a variation thereof; there are multiple forms) becauseit references Elwing’s name. From Problem of Ros:
[Elros] called [his ship] Wingalôtë*, which like his own names were Quenya in form; for Quenya was his childhood’s speech, since in the house of his mother’s father, Turukáno (Turgon), King of Gondolin, that speech was in daily use. But Vinga- was not a Quenya word: it was a Quenyarized form of the Bëorian wing that appeared in Elwing the name of his spouse. The form given to this name in Sindarin was Gwingloth, but as said above it was in the Adunaic of Númenor translated as Rôthinzil.
[…]
[Christopher says that his father] still held to the view that the word wing (‘spray, spindrift’) was of Bëorian origin; and while noting that the name Wingalôtë [> Wingelótë] of Earendil’s ship had not appeared in print, [Tolkien] observed that it ‘must be retained, since it is connected with the name Elwing[…] Concerning wing he said again that Earendil named his ship in Quenya form, since that language had been his childhood speech, and that he intended its meaning to be ‘Foam-flower’; but he adopted the element wing from the name of Elwing his wife. That name was given to her by her father Dior, who knew the Bëorian tongue [Dior grew up either bilingual or with Beorian as his first language; Luthien and Beren spoke it to each other.]
Earendil likely learned the Edainic language Taliska in Sirion. It’s questionable whether Tuor spoke it - certainly it wasn’t Tuor’s native language, which would have been the Sindarin spoken by Annael and the other Elves who raised him.
Elwing spoke Taliska too, and gave Elros a name with a Taliska element. She (obviously) speaks Sindarin as well, probably multiple dialects thereof, since there were multiple dialects spoken in Sirion (there were several tongues to be heard [in Sirion]. Not only the Sindarin, which was chiefly used, but also its Northern dialect**).
But I also think she speaks Quenya. Firstly, she speaks to the Teleri. Telerin and Quenya are mutually intelligeable - that is, someone who speaks one language can understand someone who speaks the other, though there may be some difficulties. Meanwhile, Sindarin would not at all help her speak to the Teleri - Telerin and Sindarin don’t have much in common aside from a couple sound changes not found in Quenya (/kw/ to /p/ and the prenasalized voiced stops becoming voiced stops rather than nasals). A monolingual speaker of Sindarin would not be able to communicate linguistically to a monolingual speaker of Telerin. Elwing was without a doubt exposed to Quenya - she married a native Quenya speaker who went by his Quenya name and lived in a city where a large portion of the population (the Gondolindrim) had at least some knowledge of it.
And her husband named a ship after her in Quenya - a clear act of love and acknowledgement, and also acknowledging their mutual human ancestry. Elwing and Earendil are so clearly devoted to each other and their love for each other informs everything they do - I can’t see Earendil using a Quenya name for Vingilot if Elwing didn’t like it; I can’t see Elwing as hating Quenya when it’s Earendil’s language. I can see her learning it because it’s Earendil’s language and she wants to learn it to learn him and be close to him, just as I can see Earendil learning Taliska because it’s a language she speaks or a language that she wants to learn because of her father and Beorian heritage. But just… language and sociolinguistics as a thing of connection and liminality and heritage and love, and the multilingualism of the Peredhil as a way of signifying their heritages.
*In later Exilic Quenya VingilóteorVingilot. Tolkien varies between i, e, and a for the second vowel; the published Silmarillion uses i. The /w/ -> /v/ change occurred in Exilic Quenya sometime in the Second or Third Age (I’d place it in the early Second, personally, and might headcanon it as starting in the First but not a change that happened in isolated Gondolin.) The lóte->lotshows fairly common Exilic changes: one is that long vowels shorten in final syllables and the other is that there’s often alteration between -CV:Ceand -CVC (see also Númenóre ~ Númenor).
Incidentally,Rôthinzil(alsoRothinzil) is very pretty I think. Adûnaic is often very pretty.
**what Tolkien means by “the Sindarin but also its Northern dialect” is unclear. Sirion was founded by Falathrim refugees after the Nirnaeth, so their dialect woud have been spoken first and it’s also the dialect that becomes Standard Sindarin, as seen in LotR and Jirt’s writings. I don’t think he’d refer to the Iathren dialect as plain “Sindarin” and the Falathrim/Standard dialect would definitely be spoken in the Havens so I think that’s what he’s referring to. Presumably there would be some Sindarin of Doriath as well, so all three major Sindarin dialects there (not that the dialects are all that divergent). Sirion is very multilingual!
“What would I do in Ferria? I am the queen of Attolia. I cannot mend shirts for a living.” “You did a decent job with this,” he counters. He’s wearing one of the shirts Irene mended, and she breaks into a gallop so he cannot see her blush. He curses and falls behind, his horse trying to follow her lead. She smirks to herself and schools her face before slowing down and allowing him to join her again.
“And you, Eugenides? Would you guard me forever, to make sure I never go back to the Medes? Like a personal jailor?” The pause is long enough to be uncomfortable before he says, so low the wind almost drowns it, “Like a husband.”
Elwing yeets herself into the sea and gets turned into a seagull.
Maglor yeets himself into the sea and gets turned into a siren so Ulmo can have his own personal Spotify playlist for eternity (fuck off Manwë this is my pet kinslayer and I’m keeping him)
“When any ship approached the land seabirds in great flocks would arise and fly above it for no purpose but welcome and gladness.” - The Nature of Middle-Earth: Of the Land and Beasts of Númenor
over on patreon Space Bat wanted albatross sirens and albatross sirens you shall have. i figure that just like mermaids they come in all sorts of fun shapes and the humanoid slider is all over the place. the only constants are that they use sound magic, they have links to fortune/weather/death, and they’re fuckoff huge. like, an adult siren is 8 feet tall at the smallest and their wingspan is ridiculous. they can also be just as heavy as they look or they can will themselves to be as light as an feather.
very weird bid people. if you must interact please proceed with caution.
You know. I love that Elwing became a bird but I can’t help but wonder. What if Ulmo had given her another form? Something that could survive the desperate fall to the sea below. A seal, perhaps?
Elwing diving off of the balcony of her children’s room into the churning angry seas beneath. Resplendent in a white shawl and gown. Appearing for a brief moment akin to a falling star, beautiful and tragic in its descent. And finally her body cutting through the white foam and the choppy waves. Sinking into the dark waters.
Elwing, the princess of the Sindar, lady of the Havens, gone in that brief moment. Maedhros and Maglor watching. Her sons shrieking in grief and terror against them for the brothers had grasped onto the children in order to keep them from following their mother over the ledge. They’re quiet. Filled with horror and despair and anger at the sight. The anger gives way to the horror. Despair clings to their throats and bright bright eyes meet over the heads of two squirming biting children filled with the grief of too many centuries and the madness of an oath sworn out of love.
Someone gasps. One of the twins, perhaps. Bright eyes fixed on the waters below. Desperately seeking the sight of his mother. She promised during the dark silent nights that she’d never leave them. She’d always come back, no matter what. Naneth wasn’t ada, a tiny dark-haired child would whisper to his brother on those nights. She loved them more than the sea.
Something rises from the waters. A creature, fat and sleek, fur a bright blinding shade of white. The exact same color as their mother’s gowns. Light radiating from her form as she dives back into the sea. A star whose light cannot be drowned out by the darkness. She rises and falls cutting across the rolling waves.
A gem bound around her throat. The Silmaril gold and silver and every color in-between. Its light emphasizing the radiance spilling from her form. Illuminating the sea around her as she swims away from them.
Their mother is gone. Taken by the sea. A distant star on the horizon.
She stops. Briefly. White and silver. A star held in the cradle of Uinen’s hands, the white-foaming waves urging her onwards. Large star-bright eyes watch them from a distance. She is gone with the next rolling wave.
It is said that Elwing was carried by the sea, by Ulmo’s will, by Uinen’s gentle hands, to Eärendil. She rose from the waters not as a seal but as a woman. Bright white sealskin wrapped around her shoulders. Jewel on her breast. Starbright eyes filled with terror and grief and fury. A face as lovely as the dawn. Hair dark and seeping through the waters like seaweed.
It is Eärendil who takes her skin from her as Lúthien once took Thuringwethil’s. It is Eärendil who returns the white sealskin cloak back to his wife once she has settled within his ship. Love in his eyes and grief in his voice. Her name on his tongue and his children’s in his heart.
Eärendil weeps.
Elwing is silent in her grief.
A jewel, bright as the Sun, more beautiful than the Moon, between their swaying forms.
Fandom tends to portray Elwing as a single mother in over her head with parenting and leading the Havens of Sirion without any real support network (with or without a dose of jewel-sickness) but I was having Thoughts about Sirion today and let’s be real, she probably did have a support system. Do you really think the people who carried baby Elwing from the sack of Menegroth would just shrug and say “Eh, she’s apparently an adult now, she’s got this, we can leave her alone”? Would the Gondolindrim who doted on baby Earendil stand back and not have any interest in his sons? Elves treasure children, and so do a lot of humans.
Consider these possibilities instead: Elwing really needs to be at this meeting, but fortunately there’s a whole pack of honorary aunts and uncles absolutely delighted at the possibility of carrying little Elrond and Elros off to play with them for a couple of hours. Elwing needs to get back home to put the kids to bed? Well, it just happens to be the perfect time for a break, right everyone? They can pick the meeting back up when she gets back. Elwing is down at the beach helping her sons build sand castles but you really need to talk to her about something? Better be prepared to play in the sand too while you bring up your issue to her! Elwing didn’t get much sleep because the boys were trading off who had nightmares and she spent most of the night comforting them? Go take a nap, Elwing, we’ve got your kids and someone will handle the day’s duties.
In short, Elrond and Elros were the darlings of the Havens and everyone was willing to step in where needed, both in raising them and in supporting Elwing when her husband is away. We have so little detail in canon, it’s not like I can prove any of this, but it feels pretty plausible to me, and more plausible than Elwing being left to flounder despite being surrounded by people who love her and love her family. This means, of course, that when the Third Kinslaying occurred, Elrond and Elros didn’t just lose their mother; they lost playmates and [honorary] aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
This this this.
Ido tend to lead towards the interpretation that Elwing had a lot of things pulling her in a lot of directions. She’s the heir of Thingol now; she has to lead the survivors even if she has help from whatever advisors and capable people she has left.
And Elwing’s job isn’t easy. Sirion is a refugee camp with the usual array of complications that carries. People are packed together tightly. Everyone is traumatized, everyone has lost a home and probably loved ones too. Resources are scarce, and the threat of finally losing to Morgoth or the Fëanorions is ever-present. There are distinct and probably somewhat separate groups of survivors—Nargothrondrim, Doriathrim, Gondolindrim, assorted men and probably also dwarves—with little incentive to get along beyond shared miserable circumstances. They all have complicated histories with one another. Tensions are high, and patience is low.
And everyone looks to their leaders to fix it. And that means Elwing.
I think that Elwing had a lot of problems on her plate, but that doesn’t necessarily add up to bad parenting or bad anything, really. OP’s point about her having advisors is really valid. You can look at Elwing and see someone who speaks and looks like a grown woman (with children of her own, no less), but there’s also going to be people who remember her as a little kid only two decades ago. Elwing flees from Sirion when she’s in her early thirties. If 50 years is about the age of full adulthood, then Elwing is a half-baked adolescent if she didn’t have mortal blood quickening her maturity. But to her advisors, the culturally ingrained “30 = child = protect” instinct is gonna be hard to shake.
Elwing had help—probably lots of it. Both for ruling, and for taking care of what ruling means she can’t pay full attention to. Not to mention, Elrond and Elros are princes of two nobles lines, which means they have at least two groups of survivors who treated them as their very own royalty. You think they were neglected? Even if Elwing wasn’t functionally their primary caretaker, and she might not have been, her sons were far from abandoned.
I wrote this for Passion Week (the week before Easter), though technically I’m posting it a day early.
…….
“No,” said Frodo, “we shan’t need much on that road. And at its end nothing.” ~ The Lord of the Rings
He had left his arms and armour aboard ship; they were needed no longer, and could serve no purpose here. Without having set foot in this land before, he seemed to know his path, by instinct or foreknowledge.
He knew that he had come here to die.
His path led high into the mountains, shrouded in low cloud. As he climbed, the world faded around him into chill mists and pale grey light, shapes visible only for a few steps in front of him; a phantom in a phantom landscape.
The mists seemed to swallow the lands and seas he had left far behind him.
He had loved Middle-earth from the first moment he opened his eyes in it. Gondolin had been easy to love: a place of beauty and splendour at every turn, with a mother and father who loved him more than aught else on earth, a stream of honorary uncles and aunts who delighted in him, a grandfather who doted on him. It had been a paradise for a child. When they had fled its destruction, and all mourned it, Eärendil, as both child and mortal, had been quicker to recover joy and wonder at the lands they passed through than the other exiles, staring in awe at the great river, wider by far than any he had seen before, and seeking around camp for new plants and flowers to show to his parents and see the sorrow in their eyes lighten a little. And, more than anything else, more even than Gondolin the fair - the Sea. The smell of salt, the cry of gulls, the strange creatures that bloomed like flowers on the shoreline - the ship-deck under his feet and the craft guided by wind and skill, moving under his command as easily as skilled horse and horseman - the great whales, dwarfing his ship and yet gentler in nature than any of the great beasts of the land - from the moment he first looked on it, the sea had been his home.
And then, the far lands of his journeys. Seeking Valinor ever, being ever driven back to strange shores, wishing he had been born at another time when all the world was not in peril, when he might live in these lands for a time and learn to know their people whose homes and lives he could only glimpse from afar. Vast deserts of sand, with pools of water in the distance where the towers of great buildings rose up. Great forests of brightly-coloured birds, and men and women growing grain by the shoreline, of a kind he had never seen. The Helcaraxë, fair and deadly, gleaming in the sunlight.
The thought of the shadow of Angband, spreading beyond Beleriand, swallowing all.
He would never see those lands and seas again, never speak to new peoples and learn new tongues and ways, as he had from the Iathrim and Falmari of Sirion and the remnants of the houses of the Edain. He had known it, always, as the price of his journey should he succeed; but the chances of success had seemed so faint that the losses from success had been eclipsed by the losses from failure.
The damp mist chilled his hands and face. He stumbled, catching himself against the cliff-edge.
He let go of the world he had known.
He climbed farther, his breath visible in the cold air and mixing with the mists.
They swallowed his people.
Rule and governance had never come naturally to him as they had to his mother, but he had loved the people of Sirion - the clamour of voices in many tongues, the pride of craftsmen in trades employed not merely for adornment but for use, carpenters and shipbuilders and weavers and fishers and those who knew the animals of the shoreline and the times and places of collection for food.
His mind found it difficult to accept that they were all gone now, that everyone he had known was dead, the homes and workshops and gathering-places ruined and abandoned. He had seen them when he last departed; surely they were still there. But they were gone, gone; destroyed not by the forces of Morgoth, from whom Ulmo could still protect them, but by elves, distant kin he had never met. The last free remnants of the Three Houses of the Edain, of the Doriathrim, of the Gondolindrim, dead. His friends and companions and teachers, dead.
He lost his footing and caught himself, hands and one knee on the path, scrapes leaving behind small flecks of blood.
He had no people now to be lord of, to lead and to safeguard, to work beside and learn from. His plea could not be for them, but for others he did not know. Any Falmari who yet endured on Balar. The last of the House of Hador, living as thralls in Hithlum. Any Laiquendi who survived in Ossiriand. And all the peoples beyond the mountains to the east, beyond the seas to south. His people were all peoples; for them he would speak, for them he would plead.
He pushed himself back to his feet.
The path grew rougher, with loose stones underfoot, jagged cliffs to his left and open air to his right. The mists closed in further, so he could see no more than a step in front of him at a time.
Ghosts appeared in the mists.
He and Elwing had not intended children, in times of such danger and fear, knowing that Eärendil must leave soon on a desperate journey that, in success or failure, could have no return. But none had known whether chikdbearing among the Peredhil followed the rules of men or elves; the only other such person in the world had been Dior Elúchill who had been killed while his daughter was still an infant.
When Elwing began throwing up every morning, a thing unheard of among elves, they had feared some illness, until the gossip rapidly spread among the people of Sirion and an Edain fisherwoman pushed her way into the room, asked some pointed questions, and gave them the likely answer. Eärendil had delayed his journey until the birth of their sons, and for the first year after their birth, and had been lost in wonder at their smiles, the soft word ‘adda’, tiny hands grasping his fingers.
For the first time in his adult life, he had not longed for the sea.
He and Elwing had talked, she weeping but speaking aloud the same words that his wisdom counselled: if you do not go, if you do not succeed, there will soon be no safe place for them.
He had gone.
Sirion had not been safe.
He had been too late.
Their sons were dead.
He’d never had the chance to see his boys grow, to talk and play with them, to teach Elros to swim (Elwing had done that), to hear Elrond’s first attempts at poetry. And now they were dead, killed by people who had claimed to come to Middle-earth to save it from Morgoth, killed by the same people who had killed Elwing’s brothers at much the same age.
For the first day after her flight to Vingilot, Elwing had scarce been able to speak for weeping.
That elves could fall to evil had not been a revelation to Eärendil; he had known it since his childhood, when his cousin had nearly killed him, a blur in memory of screaming, kicking, biting. In later years he had grown to regard him with a mix of fear and pity. Orcs were miserable creatures; how horrible it must be, to be an elf who of their own will behaved as an orc.
You came here to plead for all the peoples of Middle-earth. He could not tell if the voice came from the air around him or from within his own spirit.
His foot caught on a jagged place in the path and he fell again, tearing his hand open on a sharp stone. He had become so numb from the mist that he scarcely felt it, looking at the red blood welling up and dropping to the ground as if it belonged to someone else.
This time, he did not try to rise.
Why was he here?
To plead mercy for the people of Middle-earth.
Why were the Noldor barred?
Because they were kinslayers. Because they had sacked and ruined another seaside town long years before his Sirion, ere ever they had arrived in Middle-earth, and parted parents from children and husbands from wives.
Why should the Valar offer pardon for murder when not even the person asking it could do so?
The world closed in around him, and he saw nothing, not even the stone beneath his hands.
He could not be a father and not be angry at those who had killed his sons. He could not be a husband and not be angry at those who had shattered his wife’s spirit. He could not be a lord and not be angry at those who had slaughtered the people he abandoned.
He had once seen a barbed fish hook cut out of a man’s hand, tearing the skin around it to pieces. He tore out his own soul, ripping out hatred, and everything around it.
He was not the father of Elrond and Elros. He was not the husband of Elwing. He was not the lord of ruined Sirion. He was about to die; and for the last and most important thing he had to do, he could not be. His children, his wife, his people, were the people of Middle-earth, all, known and unknown, friends and enemies. Even those who had taken his sons from him.
He desired mercy for all of them.
He climbed to his feet again, his hand leaving a smear of blood against the stone.
He felt both lighter and wearier than he had ever known; empty of himself, and full of the world.
It took only a little space further for the mists to clear and reveal a city, fair yet barren, abandoned.
The messenger hailed him.
He came to the Valar.
He offered his plea in all the tongues he knew, and law the world at their feet.
They accepted it and took it up.
He was empty, and ready to depart.
Elwing chose to stay, and looked at him with tears in her eyes. He stayed. He did not know how to explain what he had done and who he had made himself; he did not know how to answer the rage and grief that still blazed through her spirit with pity wrung from his hearts’-blood.
The Valar gave him a new ship and sent him back to Middle-earth, to see and to give hope, but not to touch, not to live.
He heard the griefs and fears of the people of Middle-earth, and wonder breaking through despair at the appearance of the new star; he reached out to answer, to offer hope and comfort.
He heard a conversation.
“Surely that is a Silmaril that shines now in the West?”
“If so, then let us be glad, for now its glory is seen by many, and yet is secure from all evil.”
He looked down, and saw his sons. They were well, sleeping peacefully and wrapped in many blankets. He wept, for the first time since the end of his journey through the Calacirya; shaking, racking sobs, the star standing fixed in place. He reached out to them in their sleep. It will be all right, it will be all right. We are coming, we love you.
He could feel the spirits of the two Fëanoreans beside them, and compassion filled him, compassion that did not need to be chosen or struggled for but appeared as naturally as clouds produced rain.
It was as though he was looking into a burnt and broken mirror. He had emptied himself, and been filled with light as a gift. They too had emptied themselves, and were left with only ashes.
He reached out to the minds instinctively. One was entirely closed, so much so it might scarcely have been there at all. The other perceived him, and flinched away from the pity as if it were a brand, closing in around itself like a startled sea-creature in its shell. Grief cut into him, as if the refusal came from dear friends rather than erstwhile enemies, and he could scarce tell if he rejoiced more for his sons or mourned more for their captors.
…..
Centuries later, as he passed above Middle-earth, he heard amid the petitions and invocations an anguished voice that was scarcely a whisper, and knew it instantly.
“I am sorry.”
I forgive you, Eärendil returned with delight, but the mind remained shut to him and could not hear. As many times, as many nights, as he reached out, he found the way closed. Over millennia, over ages, the words repeated, whispered or only thought as a prayer, but every time he reached out with forgiveness he met only the locked and barred door of the mind. It tore at his heart, like watching a man starving to death while refusing the food that was offered.
Ages later, of an afternoon, Eärendil stood in the living room of his tower in Valinor and heard a knock on the door.
A figure entered, only ever seen before at vast distances, but instantly familiar.
“Lord Eärendil,” he said uncomfortably, eyes flicking back and forth between Eärendil’s face and the floor. “I am sorry.”
I’ve posted a new fic on AO3. I wrote this for Passion Week (the week before Easter), about Eärendil’s journey through the Calacirya to ask mercy of the Valar.
