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a white sea-bird, and flew away lamenting and seeking for Eärendel about all the shores of the world.
But Maidros took pity upon her child Elrond, and took him with him, and harboured and nurtured
him, for his heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath.
Learning these things Eärendel was overcome with sorrow; and he set sail once more in search of
Elwing and of Valinor. And it is told in the Lay of Eärendel that he came at last unto the Magic Isles,
and hardly escaped their enchantment, and found again the Lonely Isle, and the Shadowy Seas, and the
Bay of Faërie on the borders of the world. There he landed on the immortal shore alone of living
Men, and his feet climbed the marvellous hill of Kôr; and he walked in the deserted ways of Tûn,
where the dust on his raiment and his shoes was a dust of diamonds and gems. But he ventured not
into Valinor.
He built a tower in the Northern Seas to which all the sea-birds of the world might at times repair,
and ever he grieved for fair Elwing, looking for her return to him. And Wingelot was lifted on their
wings and sailed now even in the airs searching for Elwing; marvellous and magical was that ship, a
starlit flower in the sky. But the Sun scorched it and the Moon hunted it in heaven, and long Eärendel
wandered over Earth, glimmering as a fugitive star.
Here the tale of Eärendel and Elwing ends in the Quenta Noldorinwa as originally
composed; but at a later time a rewriting of this last passage altered profoundly the idea that
the Silmaril of Beren and Lúthien was lost for ever in the sea. As rewritten it reads:
And yet Maidros gained not the Silmaril, for Elwing seeing that all was lost and her children Elros
and Elrond taken captive, eluded the host of Maidros, and with the Nauglamír upon her breast she
cast herself into the sea, and perished, as folk thought. But Ulmo bore her up, and upon her breast
there shone as a star the shining Silmaril, as she flew over the water to seek Eärendel her beloved.
And on a time of night Eärendel at the helm saw her come towards him, as a white cloud under moon
exceeding swift, as a star over the sea moving in strange course, a pale flame on wings of storm.
And it is sung that she fell from the air upon the timbers of Wingelot, in a swoon, nigh unto death
for the urgency of her speed, and Eärendel took her into his bosom. And in the morn with marvelling
eyes he beheld his wife in her own form beside him with her hair upon his face; and she slept.
From here onwards the tale told in the Quenta Noldorinwa, largely rewritten, reached in
essentials that in The Silmarillion, and I will end the story in this book with citation of that
work.