Faerie??

[Arwen1858]

I have a question. I did do a search, but didn't find a good answer. In The Hobbit, it says that the Wood Elves were descended from ancient tribs that never went to Faerie in the West. Is Faerie another name for Valinor? If so, is it just Valinor, or does it include other places? If not, then what is it? I know he has his essay on Faerie stories, and he talks about Faerie a bit, but is it mentioned in any of his other works about Middle-earth? I read the Hobbit once several years ago, once last year, and I'm reading through it again, I've read LotR twice, and last fall I read Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham. But I haven't yet read the Silm, altough I'm starting it now, and I haven't read a lot of his other works. Is it mentioned in any of them? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Arwen

[Olorin_TLA]

Yep, it's Valinor. smilies/smile.gif

[Voralphion]

Faerie was the original name he used for Valinor. I believe it is also used in the Book of Lost Tales I & II.

[Finwe]

I think Tolkien used that word when he intended the history of Middle-earth to be a tale told by Rumil of Tirion to Edwin (I can't remember his other names), a traveler through space and time. Faerie is also probably a Mannish name for any kind of Utopia, and Valinor certainly fits that description.

[Arwen1858]

thank you all very much for your help!!
Arwen

[Westerly Wizard]

And perhaps the term Faerie could more accurately describe Eldamar, rather than all of Valinor. This would follow from the idea of Eldamar being Elvenhome, and that being essentially synonomous (in a manner) with the term Faerie as Tolkien uses it.

[Arothir]

I thought that Faerie was sort of some kind of Elven fantasy thing. That is just a set of stories about elves or whatever.

[Gil-numen]

It says in either HoME I or II that the bay of Faerie is the bay of Eldamar so Faerie could be Valinor, but it is probably Eldamar near Alqualonde.

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"Estel"

[Secret Fire]

The Faeries were JRRT's early name for the elves and the name that he uses in BoLT for them when the stories are being told to AElfwine (there are some other changes too, but it mostly similar). Tol Eressea is what i always pictured as Faery (the place), personally.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Faërie is an old, old term that refers to a plane of existence beyond the physical yet short of the divine. The Elves are not the only inhabitants of Faërie in its traditional conception (which is fairly faithfully represented in Smith of Wootton Major), and it can be a perilous realm for mortals. The term pre-dates Tolkien by a very long time, and he simply used it when writing the early versions of his legends. In those days the link between the legends of the Elves and the physical modern world was much more direct, and I've a feeling that Tolkien wanted to imply that our use of the term was a result of it being a name for Eldamar.

There's a wealth of information about the Perilous Realm in Tolkien's lecture and essay On Fairy-Stories, which was delivered in memory of the famous scholar of myth and folklore, Andrew Lang.

[Lord of Angmar]

The word "faerie" can be used somewhat interchangeably with "fairy," although their meanings can be and have historically been different. Both, I believe, come from Middle English. While fairy almost always describes "a magical, mischievous, imaginary being," faerie can be used to describe where these beings dwell. I think Tolkien wished to use faerie much as he did with Elves; that is, to alter the common connotations of the word in a mythological sense (I used to think of Elves as strickly small, mischevious creatures like fairies and muses). He probably dropped Faerie as a name for the abode of the Elves when he realized the name did not fit in aesthetically with the names and languages of Middle Earth.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 7:24 AM December 10, 2003: Message edited by: Lord of Angmar ]

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 7:24 AM December 10, 2003: Message edited by: Lord of Angmar ]