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Originally Posted by Morthoron
Beth, in regards to animals Tolkien relied heavily on folkloric motifs throughout his corpus. This is readily apparent even in The Hobbit: Bear=Beorn relative to Anglo-Saxon and even earlier Norse motifs, the references to the Old English and Yorksire derivations of spider (ie., 'attercop', 'lob', 'cob'), Warg (from the Norse/Icelandic 'vargr', related to the deity Fenris/Fenrir, and also the A/S Beowulf 'grund-wyrgen' or 'warg of the deep'), the white stag/hart is drawn from Celtic/Brythonic lore and either presages the faery realm or the breaking of 'tynged' ('taboo', or in Irish 'geasa'), etc.
Elsewhere, horses are noble and it is also noble to ride them (the Rohirrim were utterly appalled that someone would even imply they would sell horses to Sauron); crows are harbingers of death (hence carrion-crows hanging around the gibbet or battlefield), thus the pejorative "stormcrow" levelled at Gandalf; and cats have always been associated as demonic familiars for witches; even the cock crowing prior to the charge of the Rohirrim in Gondor is a biblical motif.
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Yes, of course you are right,
Morth, about the folkloric bits. So, does this suggest that Tolkien was simply "placing" Radagast in a folkloric context by having him so close with animals, fitting one of his wizards into fairie?
And then there's the next bit, just how appropriately or successfully does Jackson reproduce such folkloric elements? Or is his rendition just Jackson excess?
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Originally Posted by Ben K.
I'm betting dollars on animals playing a key part in the battle of Dol Guldur too, a la the Ents.
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Ooooh. Does that include entwives too?