Smith of Wootton Major in Middle Earth?

[davem]

bearing the white ships that return from battles on the Dark Marches of which men know nothing.

Few quick notes:

If the Elven mariners are 'coming home' their home must be Faerie itself, where Smith encounters them.

If 'men know nothing' of the battles on the Dark Marches then those battles cannot take place in the human world - they must take place 'elsewhere'. This means that there is a 'third' place - not the human world & not Faerie (because the Elven mariners are returning to Faerie. 'Marches' are borderlands (like the Welsh Marches, the borderlands between England & Wales) - which implies that Faerie borders on some other realm & there is a territorial dispute of some kind going on. A further implication would be that, as the Marches are 'Dark' then the battle is some kind of war between Light & Darkness - or more precisely between 'Light' (their swords shone and their spears glinted and a piercing light was in their eyes) & 'Unlight'.

So, we seem to be given a glimpse of an on-going cosmic battle, fought between Elves on the one side & ...what?.. on the other.

[littlemanpoet]

What makes you think they're Elves, davem? I always thought they were Men.

Actually, your deductive approach to the quoted text seems, well, vain. The text is evocative, meant to evoke an amazing moment in Fairy; unless you are playing detective regarding the title of this thread. In which case, I tempted you, so "mea culpa".

[davem]

Originally Posted by LmP

What makes you think they're Elves, davem? I always thought they were Men.

Well, I know you gave the passage as:

The eleven mariners were tall and terrible;

but Tolkien did write Elven - as far as I remember - don't have the book to hand.

On the other hand, the idea of such a specific number of warriors being given adds a certain charm to the incident....

But I think they must have been Elves, given the light in their eyes & their shining swords....

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I do have the book to hand, and it is "elven", so the mariners are definitely Elves. Sorry to burst the interesting bubble about a specific number. From the context, we can assume that both their goal at home and that of their journey to the Dark Marches, where they fought, are located in Faery, since Smith was in Faery when he saw them there. So the connection between the Elves and our world is not through their journey. It is Smith himself who makes the transition from real life to Faery, by way of the star, and he made the journey by foot or by horse.

On closer scrutiny, we therefore have no additional Straight Path, no doorway from one world to the other, no time transition - though it would have been interesting to explore those ideas more...

[Galadriel55]

I don't remember Smith in great detail, but when reading it a bit less than a year ago I picked up a few whiffs of ME. But I recall thinking that, albeit the whiffs, Faerie is not a physical place, because out of all the Men only the "chosen ones" with the Star were allowed to find it / were able to find it. It reminded me more of some representation of... well, I didn't really figure out what exactly it was but something like, perhaps, utter good? Or a kind of mix between hope and imagination/? Or something inside us?

I'd like to comment on some other things that were said, but I have to read the whole thread for that. So... *starts reading*

Edit: I've read a bit, and I think Mark described it very accurately in one word: dreams.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

But if Middle Earth is part of the Realm of Fairy, who knows? Is this just an example of one of those common themes that haunted Tolkien's mind? What think you?

I think that in a way, yes, and in a way ME just shows up in whatever he wrote... somehow...

Maybe Valinor is Faerie. Maybe ME/Arda as a whole. Or maybe, as you said, it is only a part of Faerie. Or maybe neither.

Originally Posted by davem

If 'men know nothing' of the battles on the Dark Marches then those battles cannot take place in the human world - they must take place 'elsewhere'. This means that there is a 'third' place - not the human world & not Faerie

ME? It is in a way the "human world", or our world, only in different time&space dimensions. It is like a cross between our world and Faerie.

I'm trying to erase the mental image of Bilbo and Frodo as the first mortals on American soil...

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

I do have the book to hand, and it is "elven", so the mariners are definitely Elves.

Maybe they were Men who seemed to be Elvish to the onooker, Smith. The Numenorians are described as a "species" of Men that comes fairly close to Elves, both physically, mentally, and spiritually. (I'm not talking about Pharazonian Numenorians, but rather them at the height of their spiritual glory).

Originally Posted by Esty

From the context, we can assume that both their goal at home and that of their journey to the Dark Marches, where they fought, are located in Faery, since Smith was in Faery when he saw them there. So the connection between the Elves and our world is not through their journey. It is Smith himself who makes the transition from real life to Faery, by way of the star, and he made the journey by foot or by horse.

This is a very interesting view.

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Either way, Bêthberry, Alf would therefore be Manwë, and the Queen of Faerie would be Varda! Such company Smith kept! Not that I'm convinced of this, but it's fun to imagine it this way.

This makes me think of Smith as Earendil...

Yet he's more similar to Beren. I think he found Doriath with the dancing princess Luthien pretty enchanting...

Originally Posted by Findegil

But we can not be sure if it was to Valinor that Smith did go. The geography he described is not fully consistent with what we know about Valinor or any other part of Arda described by Tolkien in detail. In a place the land of Faery in Smith is seen as a isle. This could be a hint to Tol Eressea in the later Ages when it was again inhabited by the Elves from Beleriand. But I remember no event in the history of Arda where elvenwarriors of Tol Eressea would take part.

But if we take that point of view, then there's the possibility that they were the Elves heeding the call of the Sea during the later part of the Third Age.

Originally Posted by mark12_30

Maybe.

Smith of Wootton Major seems to me to be one of Tolkien's more dreamlike works; not that it is meant to all signify "And he woke up and lo it was just a dream"-- but Tolkien put a lot of stock in dreams, and wrote about them within his works as well as wrote the works because of the dreams he himself had (Alkallabeth.)

To me the dreamlike quality of Smith is akin to the dreamlike quality of Frodo's Dreme in Adventures of Tom Bombadil, or (in a less serious vein) the dreamlike quality of 'The Man In The Moon Came Down Too Soon'. They are tales about wanderers feeling very much out of their element, very much vulnerable, and actually in some danger (the danger varies from piece to piece.) But Smith's vision (did he really 'see' them? Was it a dream, a vision, or outside of time, or ...) ... Smith's vision of the "Eleven men" (sic) reminds me of Frodo's Dreme and of The Man In The Moon much more than it reminds me of the Sil, for example.

From the LOTR and the Sil and Tolkien's later works, Valinor is no dream; it has soil, trees, shores, sand, feasts. Reading about it feels very real and solid and tangible. But Smith's Faery is not; it is shifting, ethereal, dreamlike. So is the land that Frodo nightmares his way through. And The Man In The Moon's sojourn among men is humorously nightmarish too.

How would I compare Smith's Faerie to Valinor-- Not to the 'real thing'. I would compare it to Frodo's dreams of Valinor (in Tom Bombadil's house, and other of his dreams) , and perhaps to some of his foreshadowings of Valiinor (in Lorien, or in Rivendell); those times when he was enchanted or in a dreamlike state.

Wow. You've looked way beyond "the simple mathematics of the legendarium", as I often call my Books arguments. And, like Elempi, I'm very moved by this post.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

I am curious regarding other people's opinions of Smith vs. the Silmarillion.

I find them both equally moving, but in different ways.

To add something of my own, I think Smith was verily doing what Gandalf couceled to do: choosing what to do with the time that is given to you. That made me think that Frodo is Smith's LORD copy and antipode at the same time. He is also "chosen" (though really, both chose their own fate in way, and in a way, both had no choice...) to bear a symbolic object, a connection to a different realm. If in Smith's case, through that object - the Star - h is connected to a heavenly realm. Through the Ring, Frodo is connected to Mordor, quite the opposite of heaven. And both have to give up these objects, yet Frodo has to destroy it completely, and Smith has to pass it on.

Another LOTR passage that came to mind is Frodo's discussion with Merry:

"Well here we are, just the four of us that started out together," said Merry. "We have left all the rest behind, one after another. It seems almost like a dream that has slowly faded."

"Not to me," said Frodo. "To me it feels mor like falling asleep again."

It seems like Merry "visited his Faerie" during his trip. Frodo "left his Faerie" in order to fulfil his mission.

Sorry if I am deviating a bit from the original topic, but there are just so many possibilities that come to mind...


Forgot to say this: In The Sil, especially in the beginning of the FA, Valinor & Inhabitants are still fresh, naive, unlearned, etc. Faerie is still too much a part of the world, and the world is a part of Faerie. By the TA, Faerie is separated from the world. It is wise, it seems ancient, etc. And it is far off, remote, leaving "our mundane world" independant of it. And that is what makes it "Faerie". In the FA, Faerie *is* the mundane, that's why it's not Faerie, or an undeveloped-Faerie.

Am I making any sense?

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

It seems like Merry "visited his Faerie" during his trip. Frodo "left his Faerie" in order to fulfil his mission.
?

Wow. Maybe I've been gone too long from this forum but that is the first explaination of that line that has ever resonated for me.

Wow.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Am I making any sense?

Mmm-hm.

[littlemanpoet]

Well, davem, if Tolkien wrote Elven, then my book has a misprint. I do find it interesting that eleven is the only number that has the word elven within it.

Perhaps charm is a satsifactory answer for why eleven. The question was percolating in my mind this morning, and then I read your post. Why not twelve, which is such a fraught number in terms of symbol? Or ten for the same reason? And it occurred to me that that could have been reason enough to avoid them. JRRT had good instincts, to say the least.

I'm interested in the recurrence of the theme, though. Smith's reaction is abject fear. He is fortunate that the warriors merely pass over him; which is to say, probably, that they did not count him worth their notice. But this "high and noble warriors coming ashore" thing (not to mention technically advanced?); could it be an English thing? A remnant of the trauma of the Norman Invasion, perhaps? Sheer speculation, I grant you, but I'm having fun with it.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

We cross-posted, LMP - "eleven" is definitely a misprint in your book. See my above post.

[littlemanpoet]

Ah well. I'll leave the post as is. It does raise a further question....