Lament for the Elves

[Lord of Angmar]

Saucepan Man, you said exactly what I meant. It is fine and enjoyable to use humor in RPGs, but I cannot see a Dwarf of Middle-earth using the term "nancy boy". "Lassie," maybe, since I believe it is Middle English in origin, but it is still a stretch.

[Imladris]

I just looked up the word "Nancy." *stunned silence* If I had known it meant that before hand I would definitely had asked the person to edit immediately. Actually, I think that I will ask them edit just because of what it means and because it is definitely anti- canonical.

Just throwing this out because I'm intensely mortifyed, has Tolkien in any of his insults called a man girlish?

[Will Witfoot]

Well I do recognize those quotes *hangs head in shame*, as I am the culprit behind two of them.

I guess I'm just used to the way the Elves are portrayed in Warhammer world (which is one of my obsessions), where they are (at least by my interpretation) quite fastidious and cocky.

My appologies. I shall edit immediately.

[Bêthberry]

I shouldn't think the point of this kind of discussion is to mortify or embarass people and I certainly hope my comments have not been taken to do that. The thread began with a very important point from Imladris, that many things simmer in that cauldron of our imagination, many things that often we are initially unaware of, which can often distract from how others see our writing. A large gap falls between the intention of the writer and the act of reading.


Will Witfoot, you bring a very important acknowledgement out into the open with your recognition that Warhammar spices your Tolkien gaming. If you, and other gamers here, have learnt something about your writing for the RPGs at Barrow Downs from this thread, then all well and good I say.

Imladris, jolly good of you to check out the dictionary meaning of 'Nancy boy.' As to your question of whether Tolkien would have called a man girlish as an insult, let's think a bit about what his style of writing is and what kind of attitude lies behind that original phrase.

I think we would all agree that Middle-earth represents an idealised world. The elves remember a light of purity or wholeness and the other races strive to do justice to that light. Characters can be petty and mean-spirited and fallible (some of the hobbits and Boromir and Denthor, Grima) but the nasty, viscious stuff falls to the orcs and even with them there is a limit to what they say.

Secondly, Tolkien's representation of women is idealistic in that the major female characters are respected, even revered. Frodo's reaction to Goldberry can be seen to include sexual attraction or interest, but it is clearly described and expressed within his growing sense of the significance of the elves. (That, if my memory serves me right, is a topic that has not been discussed here, how LOTR presents the elves, first from the frightful, wild legends reported by the hobbits, to a more serious, exalted role.) Even Eowyn's attraction to Aragorn, which is clearly a young woman's nascent awareness of the attractiveness of male power, is described respectfully. Sexuality in LOTR is not mere lust. The "Mirror of scorn" is not prevalent in Middle-earth, perhaps because of the importance Tolkien places on pity and perhaps because he has chosen to focus upon how good overcomes evil rather than to explore evil itself.

Given this kind of thinking about Middle-earth, it seems very doubtful to me that Tolkien would ever denigrate women by using female terms to deride men (besides the fact that I cannot remember any, but my memory is a faulty spoon with which to stir the broth).

There is a decorum in Tolkien's writing which much in modern writing and, even, modern culture and expression, just does not have.

My apologies if I have rambled on. I think this discussion is very valuable as a way of contributing to our understanding of what the RPG fora are about and particularly what it means for gamers as they move from The Shire through Rohan to Gondor. But perhaps that means I have taken this thread off topic. Sorry, Imladris.

Edit: As a sort of PS, Aman, I would point out that we do have a sense of historical perspective about the timing of Tolkien's world. The War of the Ring occurs at the end of the Third Age, and we are living in the Seventh Age. (hence Child's name). And we can construct how many thousands of years belong to the first ages.

[Lord of Angmar]

I agree wholly with what you have said Bêthberry. Not only would Tolkien never stoop as low in his writing as to have one of his characters insult another by calling them feminine or 'girlish', he probably would not even understand why someone would do so. Calling a man 'womanly', or, as it has been so un-eloquently put, a 'nancy' (which is really a disgusting term when you learn its origins, which I'll admit I did not know before this thread began), connotes the idea that the man being insulted is somehow weak, feeble, cowardly, or just overtly feminine in the traditional sense of the word. Since in Tolkien's writing many of the most powerful characters are women (Galadriel, Eowyn, Luthien, etc.), and since none of his female characters display any of the stereotypical qualities of Victorian femininity, any such insults would be meaningless.

I do not mean any of the above to offend or upset the RPGers who used such terms; it can easily be forgiven since, admittedly, the movies (and traditional mythos behind 'elves') have turned the Lord of the Rings Elves into somewhat effeminate creatures in the eyes of many.

[mark12_30]

THis brings up the issue, then, that if we are going to perform a sweeping edit, we've got to find something else for them to bicker about. In TOlkien's world, what *were* the plausible insults?

"For some elves tease and laugh at them, and most of all at their beards."
"Don't dip your beard in the foam, father! It is long enough without watering it."
"Mind Bilbo doesn't eat all the cakes! He is too fat to fit through key-holes yet."

Old treasure wars?

The laws of hospitality?

Food for thought.

[Bêthberry]

Dear Helen and All,

Ummm, I don't think the point here is to make "sweeping edits" as Helen so names the activity. Will Witfoot offerred to make certain edits, but there has not been a large hue and cry for major reworking of any games. That was certainly not my suggestion. Nor do I think we need to set up a prescribed list of "canonical insults."

Perhaps this link which Aylwen Dreamson provided for the Rohan thread on RPG resources will be helpful in suggesting how to address the issue which Aylwen described by saying, "you can't rightly call another character a name from these days, can you? "

Elizabethan Insults


My point was merely to suggest that people think a little about aspects of language such as tone, modernity, connotations, style, etc. And in the process to point to some of the qualities of writing which distinguish the different RPG fora we have here.

Really, I think SaucepanMan said it best when he commented

But rather because they (or at least some of them) are modern phrases and terms of construction such that I would not imagine denizens of Middle-earth using. But I suppose it is no worse than film Gimli calling film Legolas a "pointy-eared Elf" or referring to an Orc's central nervous system.