legolas's hair

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Beware pigeonholes and absolute rules!

For example, it's often said (with citations) that ALL Noldor (save Finarfin's descendants) are dark-haired; yet we learn later that Feanor's wife Nerdanel and at least two of her sons were redheads.

We also know that Glorfindel is blonde (his very name means "Golden Hair"), yet he's indisputably a Noldo.

There is also a nameless Elf of Lorien (the one who catches Haldir's rope) who has golden hair.

[jallanite]

Fëanor’s three (not two) red-headed sons (Maedhros, Amrod, and Amras) and their mother’s family may have had darkish red hair, in which case there is no contradiction to Tolkien’s rule that among the Noldor their locks were dark save in the golden house of Finrod.

Glorfindel is more of a problem. One can speculate that Glorfindel had a mother of the Vanyar, possibly sister or other close relative of the Vanyarin Elf Amarië who married Finrod. If so, Glorfindel could be loosely reckoned as belonging to the golden house of Finrod. No pure-bred Vanyar joined the host of the Noldor on their return to Middle-earth, in which case Glorfindel’s closest relatives in Middle-earth would probably be Finrod’s sons.

Most of the folk of Lórien were of Silvan origin. The Silvan Elves of Lórien were mainly of Nandorin descent but also mixed with Avari and Sindar. Presumably this golden-haired elf of Lórien would be of Avari origin from outside the “People of the Great Journey/People of the Stars” about whom Tolkien is writing when he discusses hair colour.

There is also Celegorm the Fair, one of the sons of Finrod.

Considering that Tolkien later decided that the Silmarillion and associated tales were to be understood as somewhat garbled Mannish tradition, perhaps indeed we must understand that the tradition that Tolkien presents about dark-haired Noldor has been over-regularized. The Noldor were only mostly dark-haired.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"in which case Glorfindel’s closest relatives in Middle-earth would probably be Finrod’s sons."

If that were the case, though, why would he be one of Turgon's folk in Gondolin?

"we must understand that the tradition that Tolkien presents about dark-haired Noldor has been over-regularized. The Noldor were only mostly dark-haired."

Bingo.

[Galin]

For example, it's often said (with citations) that ALL Noldor (save Finarfin's descendants) are dark-haired; yet we learn later that Feanor's wife Nerdanel and at least two of her sons were redheads.

If I recall correctly Nerdanel herself is noted as having brown hair and a ruddy complexion. As already noted, Maedros, Amros and Amros have the rare red-brown hair of Nerdanel's kin (using the forms of the names that go with this notion).

Just to note it: the Appendix F description (dark-haired save for the House of Finarfin) actually concerns the Eldar, not merely the Noldor, but I fully agree that this is a general description in any case, allowing for exceptions.

And I don't think we necessarily need any of the Silvan Elves to be Avari to be golden haired, as according to The Lord of the Rings at least, the Silvan Elves of Lorien and Mirkwood are not considered Eldar in any case.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Re: Appendix F- yes, but.

As I'm sure you know, that description was written of the Noldor, but somehow, apparently through inadvertence in the rush to get RK to the publishers, it was transmuted into a reference to the Eldar as a whole; a general ascription which we know to be inaccurate, given the Vanyar and the royal House (at least) of the Teleri.

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I agree with regard to Lorien and Avari; IIRC Tolkien somewhere wrote that by the end of the Third Age there were no Avari to be found in the West (if they ever got so far, being by definition those who refused to leave Cuivienen). The Silvans if I'm not mistaken were on the whole Nandor, Eldar who baled out before reaching Beleriand, some of whom later continued on and became the Green-Elves; these "Vale Elves" of course were augmented by Sindar escaping the ruin of Beleriand.

(The "Danian" tongues were posited as close relatives of Doriathrin, although T also wrote that even the Silvan language had given way to Sindarin by the time of the War of the Ring, and that Frodo's inability to understand the Elves of Lorien was more due to 'accent').

[Galin]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Re: Appendix F- yes, but.

As I'm sure you know, that description was written of the Noldor, but somehow, apparently through inadvertence in the rush to get RK to the publishers, it was transmuted into a reference to the Eldar as a whole; a general ascription which we know to be inaccurate, given the Vanyar and the royal House (at least) of the Teleri.

I'm not sure there is a mistake here due to rushing however. CJRT even raised the idea that the golden-haired Vanyar might have arisen before the ultimate version of Appendix F...

... but in any case, he also notes his father 'carefully' remodeled the passage to refer to the Eldar (instead of the Noldor).


For the second edition, Tolkien even altered Finrod without changing the meaning of the passage. He may not have been focused on the 'Vanyar' question here -- or perhaps he meant the 'Eldar of Middle-earth' since the Vanyar had very early on left Middle-earth (total guess by that might explain things, or at least arguably allow for his later idea about the golden Vanyar).

I agree with regard to Lorien and Avari; IIRC Tolkien somewhere wrote that by the end of the Third Age there were no Avari to be found in the West (if they ever got so far, being by definition those who refused to leave Cuivienen). The Silvans if I'm not mistaken were on the whole Nandor, Eldar who baled out before reaching Beleriand, some of whom later continued on and became the Green-Elves; these "Vale Elves" of course were augmented by Sindar escaping the ruin of Beleriand.

Plus The Lord of the Rings itself 'defines' or describes the Eldar as those who crossed the Sea, including only the Sindar. These are the West Elves or Eldar -- while the Silvan Elves are the East-elves whose languages are not Eldarin (Appendix F).

I knw this isn't the scenario as depicted in The Silmarillion, but it's the one JRRT himself published anyway.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Now we're getting into two really separate questions which run through an overlap of texts; but I'll split them up, turning to hair first.

The notorious passage from Appendix F remained a description of the Noldor even in the penultimate version of that text: "I have sometimes (not in this book) used Gnomes for Noldor, and Gnomish for Noldorin. This has been done...." etc. Note that this was several iterations after the "golden house of Finrod" line had first appeared. This vanished in the final text for the publishers, apparently since it seemed (in CT's word) otiose to talk about terminology which T had scrubbed from the LR. When preparing BOLT 1, Christopher was at a loss to explain it; "I am unable to determine how this extraordinary perversion of meaning arose." A dozen years later, after intensely studying the Appendices texts, he was more measured in expressing his puzzlement but no less puzzled: "it does indeed seem 'extraordinary' that he should have failed to observe this point [the Vanyar's hair]." He goes on with a speculation that Vanyarin hair-color had not yet arisen; but then, in a footnote (CT, it should be noted, often adds late corrections via footnote rather than disturb galley-proofs), shoots his own argument down, observing that the Golden Hair already existed in the first draft of the Tale of Maeglin, which is definitely older than the text at issue.

However carefully Tolkien emended "Noldor" to "Quendi" and "Eldar", and however attentive he was in emending Finrod to Finarfin in the 2nd Ed, it's still noteworthy that this 'care' didn't extend to noticing that his statement as re-applied was simply wrong. Homer does sometimes nod! (remember the Thror/Thrain mixup?) It becomes even more confusing when one observes that the passage is actually unclear as to whether "They" actually refers back to Eldar or to Quendi; grammatically and logically it could be either.

"In the final typescript, that sent to the printer, many changes entered that were not, as was almost invariably my father's practice when proceeding from one draft to the next, anticipated by corrections made to the preceding text: they seem in fact to have entered as he typed. There is no suggestion in Text B ... of the alteration of the passage concerning the word Gnomes so that it should apply to the word Elves, and the placing of it at the end of the text instead of preceding the discussion of Dwarves. Nothing could show more clearly the extreme pressure my father was under."

In short, the fact that a particular set of words appeared in print, while entitled to a presumption in its favor, doesn't get an irrebuttable presumption that this, absolutely, was precisely what Tolkien meant, especially since we know that T could in fact goof, or express himself elliptically, and further was capable of changing his mind about aspects of his world large and small. For example, App F as printed contains the statement that "The Westron was...in origin the language of those whom the Eldar called the Atani or Edain"- a shorthand which is not, strictly, accurate. The fact that the veteran Patience-player late in life set himself a 'rule' regarding printed matter, as in the Question of Ros, doesn't alter the freedom which on other occasions he exercised, nor the fact that Tolkien may have been the Creator of Arda but he wasn't the infallible Iluvatar.

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This Appendix was written and re-written during the period of the Great Linguistic Shift, the momentous decision, marked by the 'discursus' added to the Grey Annals, to convert the Noldorin of the Exiles into the Sindarin of Beleriand.

This required a complete recasting of the family tree of languages which had been in effect since Lammasthen, and which had still been 'valid' when the LR narrative was written. It took Tolkien a while to sort out what had become a real problem for him: whereas before "Doriathrin" and other Elf-tongues of Middle-earth could be classed as East-elven (and largely ignored), now he had to bring 'Danian' languages into a close relationship with Sindarin, a native Beleriandic language rather than a devolved Exilic Quenya. And the linguistic question necessarily redounds upon the 'ethnic question' (inevitably for the old philologist); if Sindarin was an Eldarin tongue then related languages must also in some way be 'Eldarin' and not Avarin, and the folk who spoke them likewise.

To be sure, even before the GLS T had hedged his bets somewhat, stating that Noldorin in Beleriand had "drawn closer" to the Doriathrin tongue of the natives; but even there of course Doriathrin was seen as a West-elven or Eldarin dialect. Yet Tolkien had in the 30s decided already that the Green-elves and their relatives east of the Blue Mountains were *not* Avari, but Pereldar . The Danas were "not counted among the Eldar, nor yet among the Lembi [->Avari]...nor was their tongue like the tongues of the Lembi, but was of its own kind, different from the tongues of Valinor and of the Lembi, and most like that of Doriath." This is I think an important conception for the future; remember that at this time and throughout the writing of LR there was apparently no connection at all between the Laiquendi and the Elves of the Vales of Anduin.

There is no question of course that at the time Tolkien wrote the Lorien chapters the woodland Elves were conceived as speaking an 'alien tongue' that none of the company save Legolas apparently can understand, especially so when one reflects that then and for a very long time thereafter T conceived of the Common Speech as being a sort of demotic Numenorean Noldorin; Rumil's inability to communicate in CS, and Haldir's hesitancy, indicate a native speech completely unconnected to Noldorin. Even as late as Text F4 of the Appendix, which came after the GLS, T explicitly tells us that the majority of the Elves of Mirkwood were "Eastern Elves that had hearkened to no summons to the Sea;" i.e. Avari. And yet, and yet: whereas earlier App F texts repeated the idea that personal and place-names from Mirkwood and Lorien were of Silvan or 'Lemberin' origin, in F4 he declares them to be Sindarin. It was at this time Thranduil and Legolas (and Celeborn) became Sindar of Beleriandic origin, and the Silvans had become "Sindarized" by their incoming ruling caste.

So in the text rushed to the printers in 1955 he simply draws a bright line between West-Elven and East-Elven tongues, the latter absent since former 'Silvan' vocabulary has become Sindarin (remarkably easily). But the history was moving apace. Most significantly for our purposes, the 1951 revision of the Quenta Silmarillion takes up the story of Dan and his breakaway, but expressly changes the neither-nor staus of QS and Lammasethen to make them Eldar and Alamanyar just like the (newly-renamed) Sindar. The Annals of Aman, contemporaneous but slightly later, makes it explicit for the first time that it was at the Anduin and the barrier of the Hithaeglir that the Nandor (now so named) broke away: again, a pregnant notion, but its import not yet realised ca. 1955; it would be by the time of Quendi and Eldar, about 4 years later, that the identity of the Silvan Elves with the Nandor becomes explicit.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I agree with regard to Lorien and Avari; IIRC Tolkien somewhere wrote that by the end of the Third Age there were no Avari to be found in the West (if they ever got so far, being by definition those who refused to leave Cuivienen).

I don’t recall the passage you mentioned claiming that no Avari were to be found in the West. But from The War of the Jewels (HoME 11), page 381:

For in contrast the Lindarin elements in the western Avari were friendly to the Eldar, and willing to learn from them; and so close was the feeling of kinship between the remnants of the Sindar, the Nandor, and the Lindarin Avari, that later in Eriador and the Vales of Anduin they often merged together.

This very strongly suggests that Avari were included among the Elves of Lórien, at least in Tolkien’s thought at one time.

From the same article, page 410:

The form penni is cited as coming from the ‘Wood-elven’ speech of the Vales of Anduin, and these Elves were among the most friendly to the fugitives from Beleriand, and held themselves akin to the remnants of the Sindar.

Penni was one of the five Avari names meaning “Elves”.

[Morthoron]

Only the Elves could be embroiled in such hirsute minutiae.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Oh, certainly Tolkien never could make up his mind. That's rather the point: any discussion about Middle-earth really contains within it the question "when?" The publication of one book plus its cursory revision simply cut through an ongoing development transversely in time. When he wrote The Lord of the Rings T clearly thought the Wood-elves to be Avari; but in the History of Galadriel and Celeborn "They were descended from those of the Teleri who, on the Great Journey, were daunted by the Misty Mountains and lingered in the Vale of Anduin...but they still remembered that they were in origin Eldar."

Yet still at the same time T could give us Mithrellas, an Elf of Lorien who, according to the Appendix A statement that there were only three marriages of Eldar and Edain, by definition could not be Eldarin.

Even that is less solid than it appears; the 1st Edition text has it that there were three marriages "between High Elves and Men" - a statement which was an error when he wrote it because Luthien, however lofty her maternal lineage, was never a High Elf.

Similarly the Silvan tongue: when T wrote the chapter, Frodo simply couldn't understand the Avarin dialect of Lorien. By the Second Edition, a footnote tells us F was listening to Sindarin spoken with a Silvan accent. Two late essays state that A) Thranduil's household spoke Sindarin but not his Silvan-speaking people, and B) Silvan was no longer spoken in Mirkwood/Lorien by the late Third Age. Pick one.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

"in which case Glorfindel’s closest relatives in Middle-earth would probably be Finrod’s sons."

If that were the case, though, why would he be one of Turgon's folk in Gondolin?

Easily answered. Glorfindel’s father might well have been an Elf of Turgon’s people. Think it through.

"we must understand that the tradition that Tolkien presents about dark-haired Noldor has been over-regularized. The Noldor were only mostly dark-haired."

Bingo.

Hardly. If you attribute this is quotation to me then you ought to have included the beginning of my quotation:

Considering that Tolkien later decided that the Silmarillion and associated tales were to be understood as somewhat garbled Mannish tradition, perhaps indeed …

The words “perhaps indeed″ are important to my thought and should not have been omitted.

When attempting to argue about any fictional story it is important to remember that it is just a story and that in apparent discrepancies within the story one should consider all reasonable possibilities. I presented one possibility only here.

Not “Bingo.″

Originally Posted by Galin

If I recall correctly Nerdanel herself is noted as having brown hair and a ruddy complexion. As already noted, Maedros, Amros and Amros have the rare red-brown hair of Nerdanel's kin (using the forms of the names that go with this notion).

Quite correct and I mentioned that “… their mother’s family may have had darkish red hair″, the main emphasis on the word “darkish″. It would have been clearer if I had italicized “darkish”.

Just to note it: the Appendix F description (dark-haired save for the House of Finarfin) actually concerns the Eldar, not merely the Noldor, but I fully agree that this is a general description in any case, allowing for exceptions.

Yes, for the Appendix F description taken by itself. But Christopher Tolkien notes in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (HoME 1), pages 43–44, and in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME 12), page 77, that earlier forms of this passage in earlier writings applied to the Noldor only and that it was originally in an aborted forward to The Lord of the Rings as given in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME 12), page 23, that Tolkien first modified this description so that it applied to all the Eldar.

This problem first came to a head when The Silmarillion was published in which the Vanyar were all (or mostly) fair-haired which very much conflicted with the statement in The Lord of the Rings which indicated that the locks of all of the Eldar were dark, save in the golden house of Finrod.

This description published in The Lord of the Rings creates problems with all the Vanyar who would now also have dark locks and possibly with the silver-haired Celeborn. It is commonly understood to be an unintentional error by Tolken. William Cloud Hicklin appeared to be taking the earlier description as a base of argument and I accepted that.

And I don't think we necessarily need any of the Silvan Elves to be Avari to be golden haired, as according to The Lord of the Rings at least, the Silvan Elves of Lorien and Mirkwood are not considered Eldar in any case.

No, the golden haired Elf of Lothlórien need not necessarily be an Avari. But he could be from all we are told, which makes mention of him irrelevant in William Cloud Hicklin’s list of Elves of anomalous hair-colouring. That was my intended point.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Jallanite

Yes, for the Appendix F description taken by itself. But Christopher Tolkien notes in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (HoME 1), pages 43–44, and in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME 12), page 77, that earlier forms of this passage in earlier writings applied to the Noldor only and that it was originally in an aborted forward to The Lord of the Rings as given in The Peoples of Middle-earth (HoME 12), page 23, that Tolkien first modified this description so that it applied to all the Eldar.

But this 'but' merely refers to a rejected draft version, and considering that Christopher Tolkien also noted that his father carefully revised the passage to refer to the Eldar...

(...) This description published in The Lord of the Rings creates problems with all the Vanyar who would now also have dark locks and possibly with the silver-haired Celeborn. It is commonly understood to be an unintentional error by Tolken.

... looking at things another way maybe: the description published in The Silmarillion creates the 'problem' in my opinion. And even Christopher Tolkien is not wholly sure Tolkien had made an unintentional error when he wrote Appendix F. CJRT mused on the possibility that Tolkien had not, at this point, landed upon the idea that most of the Vanyar were imagined as golden-haired -- although admittedly he cites (but) one example that appears to pre-date the final form of Appendix F -- but even here we can't be sure that that idea was yet 'concrete' in the early 1950s.


There is, of course, nothing wrong with Appendix F as revised until one compares it to later, but never published (by the author himself), descriptions concerning the Vanyar.

Why not see the 'private' description as the error instead of The Lord of the Rings? I think Tolkien himself would arguably weight The Lord of the Rings, it being already published and never revised on this point, if he realized the problem and attempted to solve it. Either that or he could claim that he meant the Eldar of Middle-earth were dark-haired -- but the point is, no one really knows how Tolkien himself would have handled this.

The Vanyar were the smallest clan, living in Aman since before the Exile of the Noldor. If they too were mostly dark-haired, Middle-earth is not shaken to its foundations (hyperbole alert). And golden hair could even be said to be more rare among the Eldar, if so. It's not necessary that the Vanyar explain the House of Finarfin's golden locks, it's just part of the corpus that remained private, essentially draft text, until made public by Christopher Tolkien.

They don't even have to be called the Vanyar that I'm aware of, considering what it means according to Quendi And Eldar for example.

Anyway I'm just trying to raise a different perspective compared to saying that this author-published description is commonly understood as an (even unintentional) error. It's only so from a certain point of view in my opinion, even if Tolkien had forgotten about the Vanyar when he first wrote the passage (again if the idea was certain at the time), and even if he had again forgotten when he chose to revise Finrod to (ultimately) Finarfin* in the very same passage.

Did JRRT miss this twice? Maybe. It would seem so in that he never appears to address the matter. And even if Tolkien might have characterized Appendix F as the error here in general, it's not necessarily a given that the characterization would be: the mistake was that only the Noldor were meant...

... as according to later text, the Sindar themselves were mostly dark-haired too. Only the Vanyar needed explaining here according to CJRT -- again if considering the same sort of comparison that creates the 'problem' under discussion: comparing what had been published versus what had been written at a later point, but still remained private from Tolkien's perspective.

__________
*a revision itself that was hardly necessary, even if desired, incidentally.

[Mithalwen]

Or he might have meant the Eldar in Middle Earth maybe? Given that they are the ones that the readers of LOTR would need to know about and given the translator conceit, the ones that the scribes in Gondor (whose work IIRC the appendices were meant to be) was aware of,

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Galin

Anyway I'm just trying to raise a different perspective compared to saying that this author-published description is commonly understood as an (even unintentional) error.

William Cloud Hicklin wrote “it's often said (with citations) that ALL Noldor (save Finarfin's descendants) are dark-haired.” I recognized that when using the words “ALL Noldor” William Cloud Hicklin was assuming the common understanding of a passage mentioning hair colour and its common understood emendation in The Lord of the Rings.

I naturally followed his common assumption. I have long been aware that various other meta-theories are possible but did not see fit to muddy the water when this part of the thread was concerned with Tolkien’s works as generally interpreted.

Your discussion is quite valid on its own. But it throws things so open that almost nothing can be discussed because nothing is certain. Perhaps Orodreth was a woman.