In Elder Days, in years of yore

Archimago

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I'm catching up after a couple years' hiatus (and still have about 100 episodes to go), so perhaps this has already been discussed at some point. But if not –

I found these lines from the last stanza of the Eärendil poem quite interesting:

and over Middle-earth he passed
and heard at last the weeping sore
of women and of elven-maids
in Elder Days, in years of yore.

This is the first time in the poem that we have any reference to the fact that these events happened a long, long time ago. We aren't told this at the beginning, as you might expect if it were something important we needed to know. Of course, Bilbo's audience already knows this, so it makes sense that they don't need to be told. If that's the case, why mention it at all in the final stanza?

Is it possible that "in Elder Days, in years of yore" is referring to the women and elven-maids, rather than Eärendil? In other words, the weeping that Eärendil hears is not a current event, but something that happened "in years of yore." If so, why is Eärendil only now hearing it?

My first thought was that perhaps a great deal of time passed while Eärendil was in Valinor (a common hazard when wandering into Faerie). This would explain the passage of time, but not why Eärendil is hearing weeping from long ago.

How far above Middle-earth is Eärendil flying? As an "orbéd star", he's confined to the sphere of the fixed stars. That is, he's free to move about this outer sphere, but he's constrained to a fixed altitude. How far away is this sphere? Could he be so distant that an Age has passed before the sound of the weeping reaches him?

This seems an absurdly technical explanation to me; I can't really imagine Bilbo worrying about the speed of sound waves propagating through the ether. (Though if you're wondering, assuming the air pressure at sea level stays constant even to the fixed stars - after all, Eärendil still has to breathe, right? - sound would take 1,000 years to travel each 6.7 billion miles.)

Still, I think the idea works, kind of, and the phrase "heard at last" could also suggest the passage of time (or it could simply indicate an ending). I don't really imagine Bilbo figuring out the numbers; rather, I think of this as a poetic device to emphasize the great distance separating Eärendil from those who love him, and the terrible consequences of a mortal doomed to immortality.

Ultimately, I think this idea is a little too weird to be plausible. But if so, what are we meant to make of "in Elder Days, in years of yore?"
 
Ultimately, I think this idea is a little too weird to be plausible. But if so, what are we meant to make of "in Elder Days, in years of yore?"

It hing it is just "zooming out" from the past in the story as the next finishing part is about the unending preasent of his task. So imho it just signals the change of perspective - a break in the story - the part of the story untill now was in the past - the rest is the present and future.
 
I always assumed that on his first journey as a star he heard the weeping of women and of elven-maids - he was in the same time as they were, and probably felt frustrated at not being able to help them. He was just getting used to this new state of being.
 
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