the swan-maiden and the swan-ships

Because when you work on a ship the ship is like, your lifeblood. The center of your world. You're never NOT thinking about it, you're always mending sails or doing a soapy deck wash or doing rig checks or whatever

It's yours and you're its and it's everything and it is ACTUALLY NOT a really easy prospect to hand it off to some asshole for god knows how long 😭 and the swanships of the Teleri were major cultural symbols too, that's even MORE meaningful and important

Ossë

@tolkienfashionweek day two | cultures | the falmari

The greatest host came last, and they are named the Teleri, for they tarried on the road, and were not wholly of a mind to pass from the dusk to the light of Valinor. In water they had great delight, and those that came at last to the western shores were enamoured of the sea. The Sea-elves therefore they became in the land of Aman, the Falmari, for they made music beside the breaking waves. Two lords they had, for their numbers were great: Elwë Singollo (which signifies Greymantle) and Olwë his brother.

—The Silmarillion, “Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor”

From silver timbers strong and fair,

My fathers formed the swans to sail;

My mothers wove her wings to bear

Their children through the lilting gale.

By jewels strewn across the strand,

By glowing lamps along the quays; 

Long would we have roamed the lands

Where Light first spilled upon the waves.

Long I searched the firth red-stained,

O’er splintering prow, their names I cried;

My eyes through flaming water strained,

But faltered on the faithless tide.

If my love could parry steel,

Your sword would break before it fell.

If sorrow could forestall a host,

Then clear would run the darkened swell.

Still would their lives with mine be twined,

Could I have matched your strength in wrath;

But love and grief may only bind

Myself along the orphaned path.

Did pity sting your prideful heart,

When pleading still they named you kin?

And were your ears not rent apart

By children screaming in the din?

If it be so, my friend, wherefore

Did you forsake us weeping then,

Alone beside the empty moor

While forth to doom your quest began?

The stolen Light, far off before;

Behind, the haven falling back,

Where open stood the pearly doors 

In welcome ere the sudden sack.

For verses more your lay shall go,

But mine here ends along the mole,

Yet fastened with its severed rope,

In memory of what once was whole.

My moonlit child, light the lamps

Once more, and may your heart forget

What love has in my heart entrapped,

Amid forgiveness and regret.

___

Context: I wrote a few verses of a Sindarin lament/work song for my Maeglin gen fic which deals a lot with his Telerin inheritance. It's intended as a Telerin perspective of Maglor's Noldolantë.

Truly WIP Whenever because it’s 1 fucking am and writing all this gotdamn (admittedly loose) iambic tetrameter took me FUCKING FOREVER. I’m quite proud of it though.