[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

That passage from Ainulindalë was present in exactly the same form in the 1930s version, and as early as The Book of Lost Tales, Ulmo's music and that of water have a strangely hypnotic and alluring effect. I suspect that Tolkien felt the sea-longing himself at some level, and that this may be the source of this long-lived and oft-recurring theme.

What strikes me about Ainulindalë, other than the sheer gravitas and poetry of it, is how complete a form it had reached at such an early stage. I went looking for the passage alluded to by Aiwendil in the earlier version first of all, then re-read the version published in the 1977 Silmarillion, and there are long sections that simply haven't changed. Tolkien got it right first time, and his later changes are only improvements to what is already a fascinating work of imagination.

As for comparisons, had Formendacil not got there first I would have pointed out that Tolkien's myths attempt to reconcile polytheistic and monotheistic belief systems. I do find it interesting that there is so little of the strange Norse creation myth from Gylfaginning in this tale (save the association of evil with cold). Still, since the Norse world is made from the dismembered remains of a murdered aboriginal giant, who was created by a cow licking a block of ice, perhaps that's not so surprising after all. Has anyone looked into the Kalevala? It seems to me that the power of song might well form a strong component of some of those myths. Then again, Tolkien was a great lover of music and sometimes lamented that he had never learned to play an instrument himself. Interestingly, Mrs. Tolkien was an accomplished pianist: I wonder if that has any significance. Certainly I find the idea very effective that water carries some primeval music involved in the creation of the world; and it contrasts strikingly with the blasphemous piping so beloved of Lovecraft's Other Gods.