in the tale my father imagined a great age passing between the battle of unnumbered tears and the destruction of the city ( 'unstaying labour through ages of years had not sufficed to its building and adornment whereat folk travailed yet ' , p. 163 ) ; afterwards , with radical changes in the chronology of the first age after the rising of the sun and moon , this period was reduced to no more than ( in the last extant version of 'the tale of years ' of the first age ) thirty-eight years .