# Talk:A Elbereth Gilthoniel

I am no Sindarin expert, but the translation (twice) of Fanuilos (one of Elbereth’s bynames) as “Everwhite” looks wrong to me. The closing particle los does indeed mean “snow” or “snowy white,” but “ever” would be uial or something like it. Fanui looks more likely to have something to do with clouds, as in the Quenya form fanyar in Galadriel’s Namarië lament:

An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë
.
For now, Varda the Kindler from Eversnow
like clouds her hands the Starqueen has spread
In that case a better rendering of Fanuilos would be Cloudwhite. Can anyone shed more light on this?
Dodiad (talk) 05:37, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, but we can't try working this out for ourselves, that's obviously OR. The elvish dictionary notes that in The Road Goes Ever On, Tolkien gave the translation "bright spirit clothed in ever-white" but as always offered other meanings. "Fan" can be "cloud" or "radiant figure [of a Vala]", the latter seemingly being the intended sense here. Best we stay with the sources, as usual. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:58, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Brief comment to ask if any Tolkien scholars have compared this work with other Elvish poetry? Carcharoth (talk) 19:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Adding that the article could maybe make clearer where the reader encounters this song. It is first encountered in part as sung by the High Elves that Frodo encounters in passing (the Gildor Inglorion meeting) and Frodo then cries the first line of the verse when attacking a Black Rider at Weathertop. This all comes before the full text at Rivendell. Surely some sources cover this? Apologies if this was already planned for inclusion! Carcharoth (talk) 19:47, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Add that by all means. It's a primary matter so the primary source is fine as refs here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:12, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Having said that, there are differences. Might not be quite the same song. Hmm. Carcharoth (talk) 20:15, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Maybe best to check Shippey, etc, on the matter, then. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:23, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
I will check. My memory may be playing me false. It occurs in variations throughout the books, as here from The Tolkien Gateway: Variations of this hymn are sung throughout the book, such as the very last one written down: ...and as if in answer, from down below, coming up the road out of the valley, voices sang: A! Elbereth Gilthoniel! silivren penna míriel o menel aglar elenath, Gilthoniel, A! Elbereth! We still remember, we who dwell In this far land beneath the trees Thy starlight on the Western Seas." - Frodo Baggins in The Return of the King, The Grey Havens I am almost certain that someone somewhere has written about this echoing callback technique, similar to the various walking songs. Will see what I can find. Carcharoth (talk) 20:45, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
On "as if", we have Tolkien's ambiguity. On callback, I'm not sure I've read anything. On "We still remember", Shippey (Road) has a bit on p. 214ff (with various echoes some pages on about the "hither shore" etc.) Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:02, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. This page here quotes the earliest version the reader encounters:
https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/A_Elbereth_Gilthoniel
Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!O Queen beyond the Western Seas!O Light to us that wander hereAmid the world of woven trees!Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath!Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to theeIn a far land beyond the Sea.O stars that in the Sunless YearWith shining hand by her were sown,In windy fields now bright and clearWe see your silver blossom blown!O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!We still remember, we who dwellIn this far land beneath the trees,Thy starlight on the Western Seas. And I did remember correctly that the Grey Havens version of this is in 'response' to the third version of the walking song (which as you know there are Wikipedia articles about: A Walking Song and The Road Goes Ever On (song)). What I cannot remember is whether there was a walking song just before the hobbits hear the Elves singing in 'Three is Company'? The other point is that although the Rivendell song is provided to the reader as untranslated Elvish, this one is not. It is translated (by whom is not clear, there is an implication that one of the authors of the Red Book has translated here). I am not sure if the reader is expected to make the connection when the Rivendell song appears. Maybe not until a second or third reading... :-) Carcharoth (talk) 21:26, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Randomly adding in here that this blog has confirmed the linkage between the walking songs and the elven hymns (at least as sung out in the wild). Hopefully a conventional source can be found that discusses this. This is a good overview. That is probably enough for tonight. Carcharoth (talk) 23:17, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

Regardless of the above section, the article as currently written (version from April 2025) says: "There are three versions of this iambic tetrameter hymn, the first of which is the largest portion of Sindarin in The Lord of the Rings" and then gives references to three text versions ('Three is Company', 'Many Meetings', 'Choices of Master Samwise'). However, this purported largest portion of Sindarin is actually the second version. And the 'Three is Company' version (and its later appearance in 'The Grey Havens') is not covered in the article (which only has secondary analysis of two of the three versions). I will try and add this in later, but have run out of time today. Maybe someone else has time? I am also doubly positive now that someone did write about the translated vs untranslated aspect of the 'walking song' version and the 'Hall of Fire' version (I just made up those names for them). Will try and find that reference. Carcharoth (talk) 21:47, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

To clarify one more point about the whole 'translation' issue, the description from 'Three is Company' makes it clear that this is Frodo later writing down what he understood the words to mean: The singing drew nearer. One clear voice rose now above the others. It was singing in the fair elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little, and the others knew nothing. Yet the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words which they only partly understood. This was the song as Frodo heard it [...] And then you get the "Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!" 'translation' into Westron (and thence into English going by the translation conceit). Some articles out there treat this as a separate song, but it makes sense IMO to treat this all in one article. Apparently (trivia alert) this song is sung in a Slovak radio adaptation of LotR. It is almost certain that the foreshadowing here ("sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words") of the later Hall of Fire effect has also been written about. Carcharoth (talk) 09:58, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

Maybe more useful than the above is this 1975 Mallorn article: The Elven Hymn to Elbereth by Neil McLeod (Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society No. 9 (1975), pp. 5-7). There will be more recent sources as well by established Tolkien scholars. Carcharoth (talk) 10:05, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

It's not a very informative source, other than pointing to the primary materials, and it's doubtfully a RS as it's very early, before Mallorn was peer reviewed, and McLeod doesn't seem to be a known authority. Also we now have 3 threads on the same topic! Chiswick Chap (talk) Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:20, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Sorry. Will try and convert the musings into something useful, though not quite yet. It was interesting seeing that early attempt at translation, but agreed on what you say. Though it may be of passing interest that "Fír Fesso A FESTSCHRIFT FOR NEIL MCLEOD" (2018) includes 'Historical Linguistics, Manuscript Tradition, and the Languages of Tolkien’s Middle Earth' by an Aaron Griffith. It is interesting the background of some of the people that write these articles. Anyway, not relevant here, and also not relevant but while looking for that, I came across a recent article on another Tolkien topic, which I will pop on your talk page. Carcharoth (talk) 19:07, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
I did search for NM + Tolkien, without result; there are many men of the same name, which makes working out what this NM actually did difficult. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:44, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
If it is the one with Aaron Griffith writing about Tolkien languages and manuscript tradition in the festschrift I mention above, then it is the (now retired) Australian law professor who wrote on early Irish contract law. Maybe writing for Mallorn when a student. But difficult to confirm this (and not really relevant in any case). Carcharoth (talk) 08:15, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
It is, as it confirms he was not a Tolkien or English lit scholar. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:50, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Apologies for yet another talk page section, but I thought it might help to put what I have found so far here ahead of me (or others if I don't find time) adding them. Also other sources could be suggested. I do have the Walking Tree collection of essays on Tolkien's poetry, but not to hand right now. Other than that, this is what I have found so far:

Verlyn Flieger's Splintered Light (2002 edition) has a few pages on starlight in this poem, the power of the name of Elbereth, and Frodo's cry at Weathertop (pp.89-91).
Verlyn Flieger contributed the section on poems in The Lord of the Rings to the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006) and highlights how the reprise of the walking song and the elven hymn means the book has "come full circle" and "Frodo will follow the hidden paths, and the story and the poems will have no more to say."
Verlyn Flieger's chapter on language ('The Orcs and the Others: Familiarity as Estrangement in The Lord of the Rings') in the edited work 'Tolkien and Alterity' (2017) has some brief commentary on the Shire and Rivendell elven songs (p.208).
Tom Shippey's J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2014) has relevant bits on pp.200-201. Making the point that Gildor's group sang in Quenya and the language in Rivendell and later is Sindarin. I am not entirely sure how he makes that determination though.
Tom Shippey's The Road to Middle-Earth (2014 edition) makes connections with the walking song and other songs (pp.189-190).
Greg Maillet's Recovering Consolation (2024) has some commentary as well (it is in his section on the chapter 'Three is Company').
Jared Lobdell's The World of the Rings (2004) has some mentions as well (pp.82-83).
The chapter by Mary Quella Kelly ('The Poetry of Fantasy: Verse in The Lord of the Rings') in Tolkien and the Critics (1968) has perhaps been superseded by more recent sources, but the section on Elven poems is insightful and starts and ends with what is referred to as the 'Elbereth song': "The first of the elvish songs in the trilogy is that sung by the exiled Elves who meet Frodo, Sam, and Pippin shortly after they begin their adventure" (p.184) and "Thus the songs of the fading Elves repeatedly capture musically the mood of beauty mingled with sadness which yet brings comfort and solace to the hearers. [...]  At the conclusion of the story, the song of Elbereth is heard as if in answer to Frodo’s singing the old marching song." (p.191)
There is more, but am trying to only pick out the best sources. The bit I am having most difficulty with is the phrase "as if in answer" - as pointed out somewhere above, Shippey does comment on this phrase in relation to the horns sounding after the cockcrow at Mindolluin (the Battle of the Pelennor Fields), but it seems surprisingly few scholars (not found any yet) have explicitly commented on this in relation to the use of the same phrase at the end of the book. Possibly someone has done some corpus linguistics analysis as in the work Tolkien as a Literary Artist (2021, Thomas Kullmann and Dirk Siepmann) and found other instances of the phrase. Or maybe not. Carcharoth (talk) 20:37, 9 August 2025 (UTC) Updated: 08:00, 10 August 2025 (UTC)