You know what, I’ve mentioned Fastitocalon at times and I feel the need to talk about this magnificent bastard who only exists in a Hobbit-verse in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
So. Tolkien talks about Turtle-fish in literally just the poem Fastitocalon (linked here from the Council of Elrond website), in a letter (Letter #255) and in The Book of Lost Tales Part One. We don’t know much about them at all. But Fastitocalon is referred to as the last of his kind - the last of the great Turtle-fish.
Fastitocalon is essentially a giant turtle. When he’s not submerged, vegetation grows on his shell and gives him the deceitful appearance of an island. Sailors may decide to step “ashore”, but as the poem goes, Fastitocalon will notice their footsteps after a while on his shell and will dive or roll around to drown them. The poem literally advises sailors to “set foot on no uncharted shore”, which is pretty self-explanatory. If you don’t know what it is, don’t go there.
I don’t remember where I read it, because it is not in the book that I have (Tales from the Perilous Realm, which is a collection of stories and poems - Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (being the original poem-collection), Leaf by Niggle, and Smith of Wootton Major), but I have read a theory somewhere that the poem about old Fastitocalon is a Hobbit-version of the Fall of Númenor - a mostly child-friendly version, mind, as it really only deals with a gigantic turtle what might drown you and not the whole “Sauron convinced the Men of Númenor to worship Melkor and to make war on the Valar” thing. But it’s a really interesting theory to me, especially considering that this is (to my knowledge) the only existing Hobbit-verses talking about the sea that we don’t know for certain were written by Bilbo or Frodo or Sam. Who wrote Fastitocalon? Who had heard stories about the Turtle-fish and decided to write this?
What makes it more interesting is that the name itself is a derivation of astitocalon in Shire-speech, which is in turn derived from the High Elven word Aspido-chelöne - which, as Tolkien mentions in letter #255, rendered in Greek means roughly “turtle with a round shield (of hide)”, and the F was added in to make the word more alliterate.
So. A High Elven word, with an alteration in Shire-speech. All clearly referring to a gigantic Turtle-fish.
What damn hobbit met a High Elf and heard stories about these creatures and wrote a poem about them? If not Bilbo or Frodo, then who? The poem is only marked as “a Hobbit-verse”, and the writer is not mentioned.
Point is, I find this fascinating, and Fastitocalon is easily one of my favourite poems by Tolkien.
