[Tar Elenion]

Maerbenn asks:
Tar Elenion, I do believe you, but could you please provide a citation from JRRT stating that the 'astronomy' of LotR has a sun and moon existing well before the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth? [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Certainly, [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] I could simply provide statements from Morgoth's Ring such as "The Making of the Sun and Moon must occur long before the coming of the Elves; and cannot be made to be after the death of the Two Trees - if that occurred in any connexion with the sojourn of the Noldor in Valinor. The time allowed is too short. Neither could there be woods and flowers &c. on earth, if there had been no light since the overthrow of the Lamps!"; but that would be too easy. So let us look at LotR itself:

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.
He named the nameless hills and dells;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear,
As gems upon a silver thread,
Above the shadow of his head.
The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder Days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin's Day.
A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shone for ever fair and bright.

This is Gimli's song of Durin I, the first and eldest of the Dwarves. It is interesting how when he awakens there is an (unstained) Moon, yet the 'mannish mythology' would have the Moon not exist until the return of the Noldor (by which time the Dwarves had spread far and wide). It is also interesting that the light of 'sun, star and moon' shone from dwarvish lanterns in Khazad-dum when there was (according to mannish myth) no sun and moon.

We can also look at Galadriel's lament:

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,
And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree.
Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,
In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.
There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,
While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears.

The "there" that Galadriel is singing of is Aman she would find it difficult to sing there 'beyond the Sun and Moon', if there was no sun and moon to sing beyond, considering that 'mythologically' she left Aman before the sun and moon came into being.

We could also go to The Hobbit:

For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West. There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft, in the making of beautiful and marvellous things, before some came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People.

The Wood-elves (and their relations) linger for ages under the sun and moon, while the Light-, Deep-, and Sea-elves travel to the West, and this is still before the Noldor came back.

[ February 19, 2003: Message edited by: Tar Elenion ]