Faerie
 

aye...what is it ?...I have a rough sort of idea but do any of you folk out there have anything a bit clearer. It's not something JR mentions too often but it does crop up in some of the early stuff.

Ta....Paul.

Grrr... I'm sure that was mentioned somwhere in the book of lost tales 1. I just cant find it. [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img]

If you'd like to know all about Faerie, as Tolkien described it, and are willing to read about it for a long time, I highly recommend his essay "On Fairy Stories". You can find it in "The Tolkien Reader" and probably elsewhere, too. It's a great read; hard, but great!

Faerie is another name for the Undying Lands in the West - Valinor and maybe Tol Eressea as well. The word is used once in the Hobbit, and a few times in other places (including "Smith of Wotton Major").

I think, Voronwe, that you limit Faerie too much. Faerie is wherever Elves are, I think. You have it in Rivendell, in Lorien, in Thranduil's realm, etc. This makes sense, because (as I've said elsewhere) Elves are modeled (not solely) upon the Tuatha de Danaan of Celtic myth, which are the original 'faerie' peoples.

In The Hobbit, it says that Tharanduil's people were descended from the elves that 'never went to Faerie in the West'. I think, in this context at least, Faerie means Valinor.