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Ythlings
A people of skilful mariners and ship builders, who Eriol meets on his voyage to TolEressëa.
Children of the Waves, but the Elves call the island Eneadur, and its folk the Shipmen of the West.
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| And the folk that dwell there are a strange folk, and none know how they came thither in the West, yet are they accounted among the kindreds of Men, albeit their land is on the outer borders of the regions of Mankind, lying yet further toward the Setting Sun beyond the Harbourless Isles and further to the North than is that isle whereon Ælfwine was cast away.
Marvellously skilled are these people in the building of ships and boats of every kind and in the sailing of them; yet do they fare seldom or never to the lands of other folk, and little do they busy themselves with commerce or with war. Their ships they build for love of that labour and for the joy they have only to ride the waves in them. And a great part of that people are ever aboard their ships, and all the water about the island of their home is ever white with their sails in calm or storm. Their delight is to vie in rivalry with one another with their boats of surpassing swiftness, driven by the winds or by the ranks of their long shafted oars. Other rivalries have, they with ships of great seaworthiness, for with these will they contest who will weather the fiercest storms (and these are fierce indeed about that isle, and it is iron-coasted save for one cool harbour in the North). Thereby is the craft of their shipwrights proven… | | BoLT2 |
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Could the prototype of this people be the Irish?
A brief fact on this idea:
- The Irish, although not a sea going nation were well equipped for sea transit and quite expert in the art. The Book of Acaill contains sea laws and defines the rights and duties of foreign trading vessels.
But, of course, this assumption is rather vague.
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