Smith of Wootton Major in Middle Earth?

[davem]

Originally Posted by LMP

But that's not my main point in bringing up the quote: Valinor is called Faerie!

We have to remember that TH was not intended to be part of the Legendarium, & Tolkien merely made use of certain elements from it. Quite possibly he was using them merely to give background to the story, without intending them to be analysed so deeply. Of course, TH wasn't the only story in which he did this.
There's an interesting note to the text of Roverandom:

the shadowy seas ... and the light of Faery upon the waves
The earliest text has: It was the whale who took them to the Bay of Fairyland beyond the Magic Isles, & they saw far off in the West the Shores of Fairyland.#, & the Mountains of the Last Land & the Light of Fairyland upon the waves.' I Tolkien's mythology the Shadowy Seas & the Magic Isles hide & guard Aman (Elvenhome, & the home of the Valar or Gods) from the rest of the world.

The final text continues:

Roverandom thought he caught a glimpse of the city of the Elves on the green hill beneath the mountains, a glint of white far away; but Uin (the great whale of the story) dived again so suddenly that he could not be sure. If he was right, he is one of the few creaures, on two legs or four, who can walk about our own lands & say that they have glimpsed that other land, however far away.
'I should catch it, if this was found out!' said Uin. Noone from the Outer Lands is supposed ever to come here; & few ever do now. Mum's the word!'

While TH did get taken up into the Legendarium, Roverandom did not, & Smith, I believe, was not meant to be included either. Having said that, I think it would be easier to include Roverandom in the mythology then it would Smith - after all the mentions of Fairyland/'Valinor' & its geography in that work are more explicit than in Smith (or even in TH come to that). Of course, if we did include Roverandom then it would make it a bit easier to explain the talking animals in TH & LotR!

[littlemanpoet]

davem:

Smith, I believe, was not meant to be included either.

Oh, I know.

But imagine if it were.... Who were those Elven warriors that came out of the silent sea? Feanor and his sons plus some hangers on, just after the kinslaying?

Yeah, I know it's a really, really steep reach, but heck why not?

Of course, if we did include Roverandom then it would make it a bit easier to explain the talking animals in TH & LotR!

Having just read the chapters on Beorn and the Spiders, I really don't have any trouble with the talking beasts. They just feel like they fit in The Hobbit. And that Fox in the early part of the FotR, I always loved that little inclusion. It just helped to make Middle Earth that much more of a place I want to go.

H=I:Is this just an example of one of those common themes that haunted Tolkien's mind?

yes

Aw, do ya really think so? (Har har.)

[Findegil]

I also like to speculate who were the Elven warriors. The benefit of it is that we might be able to determine the placement of Smith within the timescale of Middle-Earth and thus get some further idea if the inclusion of Smith into the legendarium is likely or not.

If we assume that Smith did visit Valinor, than the only elvenwarriors coming back to it were the Vanyar and Noldor of Finarfin after the final defeat of Morgoth. Smithwould thus be placed around the end of the First Age and the beginning of the Second.
I doubt much if the Queen of Faery is Varda and Alf Manwe. It would rather fit the story to take some elvish leaders here. But the only story that would come to mind is that of the Lost Tales in a very forced combination with some other source: If Ingwe died in the War of Wrath (as he did in LT) and Ingwiel his son did follow Telemektar in watching the sky against Melkors return than Alf could be his son that was call back to Valinor to take up the kingdom.

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.

An other isle that comes to mind is that of Balar. Between the year of the Sun 473 of the First Age and the end of that Age the isle was inhabited by Elves, while an approached to it would be possible to nearly uninhabited lands. Further on it was told that Círdan's people made swift landings up and down the coast before they were driven from Birthombar and Eglarest, it seems possible therefore that what Smith saw were warriors coming back to Balar after such a ride.
Further on we could also in this light interpret the message of the Queen to Alf (read on carefully, what comes now is based on the speculation just made):
Who could be called king living at Balar? Non else than Gil-galad. We do not hear that he ever had a wife but the Queen of Faery must not necessarily be his wife.
If we take a some what forced interpretation we could say that with the answer that Smith got when he asked were the king was ('He has not told us.') was meant king Turgon. Thus after the fall of Gondolin became known at Balar, the Queen of Faery - Orodreth wife, the mother of Gil-galad would be nearest to this possition - called for Gil-galad to come back since he was now the king ('The time has come.').

Respectfully
Findegil

[mark12_30]

Monster and the critics:

"...But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea."

....Novalis:

Life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps it will.

The Sea Bell:

Trembling it lay in my wet hand.

[littlemanpoet]

Very, very emblematic and enigmatic, mark12_30. I'm too dense to make a whole lot out of what you're quoting. Could you explicate?

[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.

And yet (going back to the "eleven men"-- somehow it strikes me that Tolkien would have found that fascinating, and this discussion of the eleven elven mannish men very enjoyable) -- in dreams, if what we dream is true, it is both foggy and distilled, indistinct and purified. Life is too often mundane, so that we forget to touch, or even seek, the truth; but in dreams, we may perchance find it even when we are too distracted to seek it while we are awake. Frodo's dreams are like this. And Smith's venture into Faerie is like that; he leaves the mundane and searches for what is pure and true, even if he can't really bring *it* home with him back to the mundane; still *he* comes back changed.

And so, Novalis: Life is no dream (it is mundane, and we all too rarely touch the truth); but life ought to become less mundane and the truth shine through it more (eucatastrophe, revelation...) and perhaps someday it will.

There's a whole 'nother side of my thoughts: regarding the tower, the sea, and Tolkien's own dream of the drowning of Numenor, and how that all relates to the way he treats dreams, and how dreams so often include the sea; there it is.

[littlemanpoet]

I'm moved by your post, mark12_30. Not only do you point out a valuable distinction, but you effectively evoke that to which you assign greater value.

So why is it that The Silmarillion seems so ..... like looking through a spyglass at something real but remote ..... while Smith seems, like you said, as if I'm looking inside my own dreams? Same author; different technique? I suppose so, but I doubt that technique is at the heart of it.

Does The Sil convey truth with the same power that Smith does? I don't think so. I've rarely been moved by The Sil (cannot include Valaquenta, etc. - Tolkien didn't); but I am moved deeply every time I re-read Smith.

Oh, and thanks for moving this thread onto something really worth thinking about.