[Child of the 7th Age]

Pio --

I remember reading somewhere that there were fantastic creatures of tiny stature briefly referred to in the Book of Lost Tales which Tolkien later rejected completely.

Tolkien came to hate the idea of teeny, tiny fairies and elves. Just look how tall and elegant his own Elves were. In discussing hobbits, he even made a point of saying they could be up to four feet tall and were definitely substantial. He said you could even meet people of that height in the "real world."

Yet, when he was still quite young, Tolkien wrote a poem about "goblin feet" which alludes to tiny padding feet. Later, he said he wished he had never written that poem because it kept popping up everywhere in later years. (The poem appears in the Annotated Hobbit)

Tolkien felt that, in their origin, these magical beings had been conceived as large and powerful and immortal, much like his own Elves. According to legend, the pre-human Irish race of immortals, the Tuatha de Danann withdrew from Ireland to sale West as the mortals arrived and settled on the island. (There is some indication that the Tuatha may have been based on an actual historical people -- we aren't sure.) This sounds a lot like Tolkien's Elves.

Tolkien felt it was only later, as people grew distant from the ancient legends, that they conceived these beings as more like tiny fairies. And in his stories, he explains their smaller size by the diminishing which took place after the beginning of the Age of the dominance of man.

So I think these beings belonged to an earlier time in his thinking and he wouldn't have felt comfortable with them at a later date.

sharon, the 7th age hobbit