Seeing the Stars from Inside a Well and Such Places

[Extollager]

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gimli urges Frodo to come down a slope to look into the Mirrormere, Kheled-Zâram. Sunlight is in the sky, but they can see glinting stars. In George MacDonald's Phantastes, Anodos descends into a deep well-like declivity by sunlight, but when he reaches the bottom and looks up he can see the stars.

I am sure I have run across this idea elsewhere too, that the stars would be visible by daylight if one were looking up from a deep place. Can anyone cite further examples? This is nagging at me!

 

[HareBrain]

There's actually another example in LOTR, in the chapter "The Passing of the Grey Company"

...a road between sheer cliffs, knife-edged against the sky far above. So deep and narrow was that chasm that the sky was dark, and in it small stars glinted. Yet as Gimli after learned it was still two hours ere sunset of the day on which they had set out from Dunharrow;

In fact this was the subject of a Tolkien trivia quiz question earlier this year. See this post and the following ones

The Revived Tolkien Trivia

Well I think it's Turin. Dad = Hurin the Strong. Friend = Beleg Strongbow. It's finding the quotations for the justifications that's foxed me for the moment.

www.sffchronicles.com

ETA: It seems odd to me that Tolkien should have written this, when it ought to have been clearly untrue. I wonder if he was influenced by the MacDonald example, and this confused his common sense?

 

[Extollager]

Your example from LotR is better than the one I cited.

I think this notion was actually widely believed.

Stars Visible from Well (snopes.com)

Is there an example in something by Robert Louis Stevenson?