Ever Wonder...

[Galadriel55]

Ever wonder why Luthien does most of the work but Beren gets most of the credit?
Ever wonder how can Imrahil be related to Nimrodel, even distantly, if there were only 3 unions of Elves and Men?

[Galadriel55]

Ever wonder how Gildor can be Inglorion (ie son of Finrod) when Finrod didn't have a wife?

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Ever wonder how Gildor can be Inglorion (ie son of Finrod) when Finrod didn't have a wife?

Inglorion, if it contains -ion 'son, descendant' (as I would suggest it does) would mean 'Son of Inglor'. Who is Inglor? As I'm sure you know, you were never supposed to know Inglor was 'once' a name of Felagund externally -- noting that Tolkien himself never published that Inglor was Felagund's name, he simply first published that Finrod, but not Felagund... was Galadriel's father!

ahem

So you can't really wonder this unless you know the 'unpublished' background, (otherwise you could not state that Inglor was once a name for Felagund) -- and once you know the background, you realize that Inglor is only 'Finrod' in an abandoned sense, and so...

... ever wonder who Inglor is?



And you can wonder if Inglor as Felagund had a wife at the time Tolkien wrote or published Gildor Inglorion. I checked this out myself, and I think (IIRC) I found out that it was possible enough, for JRRT didn't always think that Inglor/Finrod had had no wife.

Ever wonder why Fingon has to be the Lord of Hair (from fin+kano)?

The Shibboleth of Feanor explains...

'It would have been sufficient for Fingolfin to give to his eldest son a name beginning with fin- as an echo of the ancestral name, and if this was also specially applicable it would have been approved as a good invention. In the case of Fingon it was suitable...'

So in my opinion Findecáno would have really 'meant' commander with an ancestral (and suitable) prefix added. If Fingon had been a true Sindarin name it might have conveyed 'Hair-shout' rather, if interpretable at all, but in this case Fingon was just a Sindarization of his Quenya name in any event.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Galin

... ever wonder who Inglor is?

I happened to, once. That brought me to do a quick google search, that revealed that Inglor used to be the name of Finrod in earlier drafts.

[mark12_30]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Ever wonder why Luthien does most of the work but Beren gets most of the credit?
Ever wonder how can Imrahil be related to Nimrodel, even distantly, if there were only 3 unions of Elves and Men?

I was caught by that too-- what I didn't realize (until after I had written about it) but there were only three NOLDORIN unions of elves and men. Tolkien doesnt count the silvan unions. Mithrellas was silvan, and she wedded Imrazor, a man from Dol Amroth (which probably wasn't named Dol Amroth at the time?)

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by mark12_30

I was caught by that too-- what I didn't realize (until after I had written about it) but there were only three NOLDORIN unions of elves and men. Tolkien doesnt count the silvan unions.

Eh? Since when was Lúthien a Noldo?

However, the actual line (LotR Appendix A) is "There were three unions of the Eldar and the Edain". Not all Elves are Eldar. Tolkien later (see History of Galadriel and Celeborn) cast the Silvan Elves as descendants of the Nandor, thus Eldar– but this wasn't so at time he wrote the Appendices to Lord of the Rings. In "Of the Elves" (Appendix F), it's stated that "The Elves far back in the Elder Days became divided into two main branches: The West-elves (the Eldar) and the Eastelves. Of the latter kind were most of the elven folk of Mirkwood and Lórien..."

Apart from that, the marriage of Mithrellas and Imrazôr is presented as more of a tale than an historical fact: "The legend of the prince's line", "the tradition of his house" etc. (History of G & C again). So maybe it's supposed to be off-the-record because nobody's sure if it really happened.

[Mnemosyne]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

Apart from that, the marriage of Mithrellas and Imrazôr is presented as more of a tale than an historical fact: "The legend of the prince's line", "the tradition of his house" etc. (History of G & C again). So maybe it's supposed to be off-the-record because nobody's sure if it really happened.

How would you explain Imrahil's beardlessness, then?

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Mnemosyne

How would you explain Imrahil's beardlessness, then?

I'm not saying the Dol Amroth-ites aren't meant to have some Elvish blood, but just that it appears no-one's sure exactly how they acquired it. So it doesn't have an"official" standing, if you see what I mean.

The main thing, though, I think, is that at the time Tolkien wrote the Appendices, he didn't consider Silvan Elves to be Eldar anyway.

[Galin]

Interestingly, for the first edition Tolkien wrote that there were three unions of the High Elves and Men, and only much later in the 1960s revised this to Eldar and Edain. By the time of this revision, Tolkien had come to think of the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien as Eldar, but...

Nerwen wrote: In "Of the Elves" (Appendix F), it's stated that "The Elves far back in the Elder Days became divided into two main branches: The West-elves (the Eldar) and the Eastelves. Of the latter kind were most of the elven folk of Mirkwood and Lórien..."

Music to my ears Nerwen! Plus Appendix F (on translation) notes that the term Eldar referred to the Elves who had passed Oversea save the Sindar only: which I take as meaning only the Sindar -- of those elves who did not pass Oversea -- were considered Eldar.

It makes sense compared to the other citation from Appendix F, as the Sindar went just about as West as one could go without passing Oversea -- thus the West-Elves are the Eldar, and the East-elves are not (though not necessarily Avari). Tolkien never revised these author-published descriptions.


And so the legend of Mithrellas ('Grey-leaf'?), if true, did not include a High Elf in 1955, nor an Elda in the revised editions.