Three 🧝Elven Rings for the Elven Kings

Folks, it's a poem. Have you never heard of "poetic license"?
If you were to grammatically dissect (the correct term is "parse) all the poems/verse in LOTR you would find grammatical errors in abundance.
Poets (versifiers), but especially minstrels, manipulate the language to their purposes, usually to satisfy a desired "verse structure".
They also manipulate history, lore, key players for the same reason.

Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky...

Rather than poetic license, I wonder if the missing Elven-kings has to do with how the story evolved. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I may have heard before that Tolkien wrote the ring verse itself very early. If the verse was written before it was decided that there would not be three Elven-kings I think that would explain it.

Just speculation on my part. Others (who've read HOME) will know much more than me on the topic.

Eljorahir said:

Three rings for the Elven-kings under the sky...

Rather than poetic license, I wonder if the missing Elven-kings has to do with how the story evolved. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I may have heard before that Tolkien wrote the ring verse itself very early. If the verse was written before it was decided that there would not be three Elven-kings I think that would explain it.

Just speculation on my part. Others (who've read HOME) will know much more than me on the topic.

Click to expand...

Very possible, even probable. But if it is true it also proves my point about poetic license.
That is, at the final revision of the story sent to the publisher (even the first edition) Tolkien could have changed the verse accordingly.
But given his familiarity with the oral tradition ( epics recited by minstrels, and rarely, if ever 100% accurate) as the way many early cultures passed down their history, he kept it as is.
Consider, too, the verse appears in what is called the frontmatter of the book; it's pretty obvious. Even so, he did not change it.

Gil-galad, Amdír, and Oropher
or
Gil-galad (air), Amdír (water), and Celebrimbor (fire)