Tolkien

JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN (1892 - 1973)

Tolkien’s father died when he was 2 and his mother died when he was 12, but both he and his younger brother visited their father's sister, Grace Mountain who lived in 9, St George's Terrace, then moved to Hexham, then 8 Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle. Tolkien came to Newcastle in 1910, 1911, and 1912. Sydenham Terrace was pulled down for the inner city motorway and the Civil Engineering Department of Newcastle University.

Her husband, William C Mountain, was a member of the North East Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers between 1892-1928, and was vice-president of the Institute in 1925. Whether Tolkien drew on his uncle’s experience when describing the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings is open to conjecture. Commentators have also detected references to the Stanegate along the Roman Wall, and the wild cattle at Chillingham Castle.

Tolkien encountered the Crist of Cynewulf (q.v.) two lines of which struck him:

Eala earendel engla beorhtast
ofer middangeard monnum sended.

'Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / above the middle-earth sent unto men.' Earendel means a shining light, a ray in Anglo-Saxon, but here it clearly has some special meaning. Tolkien himself interpreted it as referring to John the Baptist, but he believed that Earendel had originally been the name for the star presaging the dawn, that is, Venus. He was strangely moved by its appearance in the Cynewulf lines. 'I felt a curious thrill,' he wrote long afterwards, 'as if something had stirred in me, half awakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.' In 1914, Tolkien wrote a poem headed by Cynewulf's line: 'Eala earendel engla beorhtast!' It was called 'The Voyage of Arendel, the Evening Star' and was the beginning of Tolkien's own mythology. The name Earendil, with stellar associations, appears in The Lord of the Rings and is referred to in one of the lays sung at Rivendell in the first part of the saga.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN (1892 - 1973) Tolkien’s father died when he was 2 and his mother died when he was 12, but both he and his younger brother visited their father's sister, Grace Mountain who lived in 9, St George's Terrace, then moved to Hexham, then 8 Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle. Tolkien came to Newcastle in 1910, 1911, and 1912. Sydenham Terrace was pulled down for the inner city motorway and the Civil Engineering Department of Newcastle University. Her husband, William C Mountain, was a member of the North East Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers between 1892-1928, and was vice-president of the Institute in 1925. Whether Tolkien drew on his uncle’s experience when describing the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings is open to conjecture. Commentators have also detected references to the Stanegate along the Roman Wall, and the wild cattle at Chillingham Castle. Tolkien encountered the Crist of Cynewulf (q.v.) two lines of which struck him: Eala earendel engla beorhtast ofer middangeard monnum sended. 'Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / above the middle-earth sent unto men.' Earendel means a shining light, a ray in Anglo-Saxon, but here it clearly has some special meaning. Tolkien himself interpreted it as referring to John the Baptist, but he believed that Earendel had originally been the name for the star presaging the dawn, that is, Venus. He was strangely moved by its appearance in the Cynewulf lines. 'I felt a curious thrill,' he wrote long afterwards, 'as if something had stirred in me, half awakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.' In 1914, Tolkien wrote a poem headed by Cynewulf's line: 'Eala earendel engla beorhtast!' It was called 'The Voyage of Arendel, the Evening Star' and was the beginning of Tolkien's own mythology. The name Earendil, with stellar associations, appears in The Lord of the Rings and is referred to in one of the lays sung at Rivendell in the first part of the saga.
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