If this is so, the narrowed sense of Eldar reflects the situation in after days in Tol Eressëa; and indeed, in the tales that follow, where the narrative is concerned with the time before the rebellion of the Noldoli and their departure from Valinor, they are firmly ‘Eldar’. After the rebellion, in the passage cited above, Aulë would not call the Noldoli who remained in Valinor by that name—and, by implication, he would not call those who had departed ‘Eldar’.
