Tinfang Warble by Dawn Walls-Thumma

Tinfang Warble is a character that antedates Tolkien's earliest work on the legendarium, published as The Book of Lost Tales, by at least three years. Also known as Timpinen or as simply Tinfang, he is a character difficult to classify, especially given the shape the legendarium swiftly took after Tolkien's inaugural effort on the Lost Tales. Tinfang Warble is a character who fits best in the early, whimsical fairy-story mode of the Lost Tales before receding to a figure of folklore and legend and finally disappearing altogether.

Tinfang first appeared in the 1914 poem "Tinfang Warble," then again in a poem entitled "Over Old Hills and Far Away," which dates to winter 1915-16.¹ To place these poems within the context of the legendarium, Tolkien did not begin writing the Lost Tales until 1917. Early in his work on the Lost Tales, Tolkien introduced Tinfang as a character in the legendarium.² Tolkien later revised and published the two Tinfang poems. At roughly the same time, Tinfang made an appearance in the Lay of Leithian³ before finally appearing in The Quenta, the first full narrative of the "Silmarillion."⁴ As noted above, with each iteration, Tinfang's role diminished until—like the memory of a dream at first vivid, then fading until forgotten—subsequent versions of the "Silmarillion" failed to include him at all.

Tinfang's initial role was as a musician and enchanter who plays at night "beneath a goodly moon."⁵ We encounter him through the Mortal mariner Eriol on Tol Eressëa. Awakened at night by "dream music," Eriol approaches Vairë—in the Lost Tales, one of the Elves of Eressëa who assumes a mentor role toward Eriol—looking for an explanation: 

'Aye,' said Eriol, 'and the hearts of those that hear him go beating with a quickened longing. Meseemed 'twas my desire to open the window and leap forth, so sweet was the air that came to me from without, nor might I drink deep enough, but as I listened I wished to follow I know not whom, I know not whither, out into the magic of the world beneath the stars.'⁶

Vairë tells him, "'Then of a sooth 'twas Timpinen who played to you … and honoured are you.'"⁷ She goes on to describe a character closely associated with starlight, even star-kindling—a role later reserved for Varda. Of the stars, she reports that "'at every note a new one sparkles forth and glisters. The Noldoli say that they come out too soon if Tinfang Warble plays,'" and "'the stars go bright and blue'" at the sound of his song.⁸

These descriptions of a piper whose song affects the starlight hearkens back to the earlier poems "Tinfang Warble" and "Over Old Hills and Far Away." In "Tinfang Warble," Tinfang appears at twilight, and at his fluting

The first star has shown
And its lamp is blown
to a flame of flickering blue.⁹

Here, it is strongly implied that Tinfang's playing causes the first star to appear at night, an idea that would persist through to the Lay of Leithian, penned in roughly 1925:

Tinfang Gelion who still the moon
enchants on summer nights of June
and kindles the pale firstling star ….¹⁰

In "Over Old Hills and Far Away," this implication is not present, and the speaker awakes after the stars have emerged to find himself drawn to the window by an eerie sense of enchantment. The imagery surrounding the effect of Tinfang's playing on the stars remains, however:

And the stars were about him, and blinked to his tune
Shimmering blue like sparks in a haze,
As always they shimmer and shake when he plays.¹¹

Tolkien's characterization of Tinfang establishes a character who manages to be eerie without being sinister. The night he inhabits is a genial place, if strange. He is aloof and timid, often going about alone, "shier than a fawn."¹² Yet his music also provokes mysterious longings in listeners, especially Mortal listeners—recall that Eriol was tempted to leap from the window upon hearing it! The indescribable appeal of his music coupled with his shyness results in a character who is often just out of sight or earshot. The poem "Over Old Hills and Far Away," for example, centers the speaker's experience of approaching Tinfang, only to make a tiny sound of shoe on stone, followed by a lengthy and evocative depiction of Tinfang's near-instantaneous disappearance. Out of sight, Tinfang lets slip "[a] few little notes came trillaping quick," and the speaker is of course compelled to follow.¹³

This nimble, quicksilver characterization is partly explained by the fairy element heavily present in the earliest writings about Tinfang. I have written before about how the Lost Tales leaned heavily on the fairy element—the same characterization of small, whimsical fairies that Tolkien later decried but that, somewhat oddly, pervades his early work.¹⁴ The early poems use the words leprawn, fay, and fairy to describe him, words that Tolkien would later revise to reference "Elvenfolk" and "Elvenhome" instead, more consistent with the emerging "Silmarillion" narrative.¹⁵ His descriptions in the Lost Tales match the poems in tone, and Tinfang is a character who flits and trillups across the page. Not long after the poems were published in 1927 with these revisions in place, a less capricious Tinfang appears in the text, suggesting that—as with other characters—the revisions between the Lost Tales and the Quenta marked a turning point in tone and, particularly, how Tolkien described his most fantastical characters to match the darker Northern mythic mode instead of the delicate Victorian fairy-story.

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Another key element of Tinfang's character is his mobility between Aman (or at least Eressëa) and Middle-earth. He plays in both places and moves seemingly without effort between them. Vairë tells Eriol, "'Ever and again we miss his piping for long months, and we say: "Tinfang Warble has gone heartbreaking in the Great Lands, and many a one in those far regions will hear his piping in the dusk outside tonight."'"¹⁶ In fact, the two non-legendarium poems featuring Tinfang both include this as a central element, being about a presumably Mortal listener who encounters Tinfang and his music in our world: Middle-earth. In fact, it is this element of his story that may have caused the shift he would undergo, and his eventual disappearance from the story. As the focus of the early legendarium increasingly became first the rebellion of the Noldor (and their ban from Aman) and then the tale of the Númenóreans and their ban from the West, the idea of a character who effortlessly traverses that boundary diminishes the sense of separation between the Outer Lands and Westernesse.

Of course, Tinfang's easy movement between the worlds of Aman and Middle-earth again suggests the fairy narrative—though not the eensy innocence of the Victorian flower-fairies. In many of these stories, the narrative centers on the movement of Fairies or Elves into the mortal realm, where they often enchant the mortal residents found there to the point of mayhem and madness. All of these elements are present in Tinfang's early story, where his music entices its listeners past the point of all reason.

The fairy element and Tinfang's easy translocation between Aman and Middle-earth begs the question: What nature of being even is Tinfang? Usually something I would address in the first paragraph of a character biography, its omission here is intentional for the simple reason that none know. Much like Tom Bombadil (who shares similar, whimsical characteristics to Tinfang and also originated in poetry written relatively early in the tradition), Tinfang's identity is a mystery and in fact subject to in-universe debate. Speaking to Eriol, Vairë says that

[the Solosimpi] claim him as their kin; yet 'tis said everywhere that this quaint spirit is neither wholly of the Valar nor of the Eldar, but is half a fay of the woods and dells, one of the great companies of the children of Palúrien, and half a Gnome or a Shoreland Piper.¹⁷

Note that the Solosimpi, at this phase of the legendarium, refer to the Sea-elves who would later be known as the Teleri. What is amusing in Vairë's description of Tinfang's origins is how muddled even the supposed common knowledge is. Everywhere it is said, according to Vairë, that Tinfang is one of the Maiar¹⁸ of Yavanna (Palúrien), unless he's a Teler, unless he's a Noldo. The variation between these three groups of characters, even this early in the legendarium, is extreme and carries the subtext that no one knows who Tinfang is. He could belong to anyone.

In the early writing of Tinfang, one clear association did briefly emerge before being swiftly rejected: that Tinfang was the son of Melian and Thingol and the brother of Lúthien Tinúviel. The passage, which Christopher Tolkien describes as "firmly struck through," reads:

The truth is that he is a son of Linwë Tinto King of the Pipers [Thingol] who was lost of old upon the great march from Palisor, and wandering in Hísilόmë found the lonely twilight spirit (Tindriel) Wendelin [Melian] dancing in a glade of beeches. Loving her he was content to leave his folk and dance for ever in the shadows, but his children Timpinen and Tinúviel long after joined the Eldar again, and tales there are concerning them both, though they are seldom told.¹⁹

Here, Tinfang briefly warbles his way into one of the three Great Tales, though it is interesting that Tolkien still cloaks him in a guise of secrecy by noting that tales of him "are seldom told." Although Tolkien definitively rejected Tinfang's place in Lúthien's family tree, his association with the royal family of Doriath lingered, and as Tolkien reshaped Tinfang's character to fit the more somber "Silmarillion" narrative, Tinfang would retain his association with Doriath.

In fact, even as early as the Tale of Tinúviel found in the Lost Tales themselves—likely revised to their final form several years after the Chaining of Melko where Tinfang briefly enjoyed status as Lúthien's brother—Tinfang had been rejected from Thingol's family but was mentioned in association with Lúthien and Daeron, now the brother of Lúthien: "Dairon was then a boy strong and merry, and above all things he delighted to play upon a pipe of reeds or other woodland instruments, and he is named now among the three most magic players of the Elves, and the others are Tinfang Warble and Ivarë who plays beside the sea."²⁰

Notably, this early version of Daeron plays the flute, just as Tinfang did. His merry mien matches the spritelike playfulness of Tinfang as well.²¹ Furthermore, one of Daeron's early names was Tifanto, a name associated with the same root words used to construct the name Tinfang.²² This suggests that Daeron likely emerged from the character Tinfang Warble with both characters deriving their preeminence from Tinfang's exceptionality.

In this mode, Tinfang would continue. In the Lay of Leithian, there is a brief melding of his identities as a star-kindler and one of the greatest Eldarin musicians:

Such players have there only been
thrice in all Elfinesse, I ween:
Tinfang Gelion²³ who still the moon
enchants on summer nights of June
and kindles the pale firstling star ….²⁴

Notably absent, though, is any mention of his fairylike qualities. Instead of enchanting mortals from their beds and into the dew-damp night, his music is so outstanding that it entices the summer stars into skies where the sun is wont to linger.

And by the Quenta, the 1930 expansion of the "Silmarillion" narrative, Tinfang would appear one more time, again in association with Daeron: "He [Daeron] was the greatest of the musicians of the Elves, save Maglor son of Fëanor, and Tinfang Warble."²⁵ Even the perfunctory mention of Tinfang's skills present in the Lay of Leithian is now gone. He has receded fully into the mode of a folkloric character used by Tolkien to create the illusion of narrative depth on par with real-world cycles of myth and folklore.²⁶

Yet even this role would not remain. The Quenta contained Tinfang's final appearance in the legendarium before he disappeared entirely, like a song fading into the night. It may well be that the fay elements of Tinfang (even just in the playful, percussive sound of his name) were too prominent for the tone Tolkien envisioned for his "Silmarillion." It may be that the Arda Tolkien came to imagine—where Aman was literally broken apart from the rest of the world—was a place too confining and severe for a character like Tinfang, with his lithesome steps and star-white hair. He came, instead, to be supplanted by the Elven musicians Daeron and Maglor, both somber, tormented, and ill-fated, singing their sorrows on the shores of dark waters.

Works Cited

1. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, "Commentary on The Chaining of Melko."
2. Tolkien's work is notoriously thorny to date. In the case of Tinfang, he appears in three Lost Tales texts: The Chaining of Melko, The Tale of the Sun and Moon, and The Tale of Tinúviel. Christopher Tolkien actually dates the latter as the earliest of the three, written around 1917 (The History of Middle-earth, Volume II: The Book of Lost Tales 2, The Tale of Tinúviel, "Link" passage [typescript]). The other two texts, Christopher believes were written sequentially, following The Music of the Ainur, roughly 1918-20 (The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1,The Tale of the Sun and the Moon, "Commentary on The Tale of the Sun and the Moon, Note on the order of the Tales").
3. The History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, Lay of Leithian, "Canto III."
4. The History of Middle-earth, Volume IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, The Quenta, §10.
5. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Chaining of Melko.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, "Commentary on The Chaining of Melko, "Tinfang Warble," 9-11."
10. The History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, Lay of Leithian, "Canto III, 503-5."
11. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, "Commentary on The Chaining of Melko, "Over Old Hills and Far Away," 25-27."
12. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Chaining of Melko. The poem "Tinfang Warble" also uses the comparison to a fawn.
13. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, "Commentary on The Chaining of Melko, "Over Old Hills and Far Away," 46."
14. Tolkien claimed that the Victorian trend of diminishing the fairy-folk in size and seriousness turned "glamour" (a word laden with magical connotations) into "fragility that could hide in a cowslip," identifying these figures as "flower-fairies and fluttering sprites with antennae that I so disliked as a child." The Tolkien Reader, On Fairy-stories, "Fairy-story."
15. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, "Commentary on The Chaining of Melko, commentary on "Tinfang Warble" and "Over Old Hills and Far Away."
16. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Chaining of Melko.
17. Ibid.
18. Note that the term Maiar didn't yet exist at this point of the development of the legendarium, but the children of the Valar would later assume that role.
19. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, The Chaining of Melko, Note 1.
20. The History of Middle-earth, Volume II: The Book of Lost Tales 2, The Tale of Tinúviel, "Link" passage (typescript).
21. By the published Silmarillion, the merry flutist is gone from the text, and Daeron is a loremaster and minstrel who invented the Cirth runes.
22. The History of Middle-earth, Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales 1, "Appendix, Tinfang" and The History of Middle-earth, Volume II: The Book of Lost Tales 2, "Appendix, Tifanto."
23. The name Gelion first appears here and is never defined. See he History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, The Lay of Leithian, Note on Line 503.
24. The History of Middle-earth, Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand, The Lay of Leithian, 501-5.
25. The History of Middle-earth, Volume IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth, The Quenta, §10.
26. In 1945, Tolkien wrote to Christopher about this device of creating narrative distance: "I think you are moved by Celebrimbor because it conveys a sudden sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees (like Niggle's) never to be approached …" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "96 To Christopher Tolkien 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford.") Tinfang would have been a prime candidate for character used for such a purpose, having a backstory no longer wholly appropriate to the legendarium but carrying a mythic or folkloric quality.