For the last two days I’ve been sick.  Thursday morning I went to work for a few hours to get some stuff done that couldn’t wait, but after that I went home, where I’ve been since.  I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping and a lot of drinking fluids, and a lot of watching TV.  A while back I got the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so I decided to watch them.

I’m kind of surprised how much deleted material there is, and I’m also kind of surprised how frequently I’m able to go “oh, that scene wasn’t in the original.”  I didn’t realize I’d seen the originals so many times.  I’m not a Tolkein nerd, I don’t know the lore and mythology behind it all like some people do.

So I’m watching Fellowship of the Ring Thursday, not too far into it, and Frodo and Sam have just begun their journey.  One of the extended version scenes plays.  It’s a scene in which the two hobbits get a distant look at a band of wood elves who are on their way to the undying lands.  And as they pass, they are singing.  Have a look (it’s less than a minute).

I watched that scene over and over again, just for the music.  That haunting, beautiful music got my attention and would not let go of me.  It stands strong on its own but was used so perfectly in the movie.  It just resonates with something inside me.  So, of course, I got online.  I wanted to know everything about this song, from who performed it to the story line behind it.  Why were the Elves leaving Middle Earth?  What are the lyrics?  What do they mean?

This one was a tough nut to crack, but I figured LotR has enough fan nerds that the information has got to be out there somewhere.  After enough digging, I found it.  The song isn’t on the regular soundtrack – you have to get the Complete Recordings box set, which I’ve linked to at the bottom of this post.  The song is called The Passing of the Elves, or the Elvish Lament.  It was apparently composed by Plan 9, which appears to be more of a record label than a band.  I found both the Elvish lyrics and the English translation (both beautiful), as well as some information about why the Elves are leaving Middle Earth.

Here’s the song.  The nerdy background info explaining why the Elves leaving is such a mournful thing is below.

The Passing of the Elves.mp3

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Elves are bound to the earth and they do age albeit very slowly. As they age their spirits become dominant over their physical bodies until they become beings of spirit only (this explains in the created mythology why we don’t see even a few elves around today). This is referred to as the fading of the elves – this process was held back in Rivendell and Lorien by the power of the Elven rings.  It seems clear from Tolkien’s published works that with the destruction of the One Ring, the power of the Three Rings of the Elves would also end and the Age of Men would begin. Men no longer needed Elves, and Elves have an instinctual call to the sea from the moment they are born. Legolas talks about it in Return of the King; how he will never again find peace under bough or leaf because he heard the sea bird’s call. It’s both a necessity for the age of men to take place and an instinctual need within the elves. If elves had stayed, middle earth would cease to develop because men would continue to look to them for guidance and their “magic.” Middle earth would have reached a state of stagnation.  Being immortal, elves attempt to be preservers – they try to halt change as much as possible. Change can even give men turmoil in our short lives, so it wears and tears even more on elves as they live thousands of years. In Aman, they may rejoin their kin and live in a place that changes very little.  Elves that remained in Middle-earth were doomed to a slow decline until, in the words of Galadriel, they faded and became a “rustic folk of dell and cave,” and were greatly diminished from their ancient power and nobility. Tolkien does not explicitly state how long this “dwindling” process would take, but implies that while the power of the remaining Noldor (Elves) would be immediately lessened, the “fading” of all Elvenkind was a phenomenon that would play out over hundreds and even thousands of years; until, in fact, our own times, when occasional glimpses of rustic Elves would fuel our folktales and fantasies.

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