Boldogs, Gothmogs and Sauron's New Clothes

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

How can we be sure that the list that you give is a complete list of all sentient beings within, or indeed without, Arda?

What about the Stone Giants that Bilbo sees in the Misty Mountains and Gandalf refers to?

What about the infamous fox that noticed the Hobbits' journey through the Shire?

They can be explained by putting them down to the fictional author's whimsy, but that is only one explanation.

And what about Huan, the Eagles and Shadowfax? Can we be sure that they were Maiarin in origin?

Moreover, Neithan's helpful (for me) explanation of Ealar indicates that there were spirits originating outside Arda who were not Ainur.

Your points are all well taken, but in the case of Ungoliant at least, the implications seem obvious to me, if to no one else. Call in a deeply-engrained thought-habit, if you like.

I'd also like to see the references for these ealar. Not just hte quotes, but where to find them. Cause I've never heard of them before, and I consider myself fairly well-read Tolkienwise. Not that a new text to devour would go amiss, by any means, and certainly I don't have the entire HoME commited to memor, but I'm still completely unable to recall having heard of them before...

[obloquy]

Discussion of ealar is in the latter three HoMe volumes, but which texts specifically I cannot recall at the moment. Tomorrow I may be able to provide more specific information.

Saucepan Man is right, though. There is no evidence of other classes of ealar besides Ainur, but there is also no reason to believe Ainur were the only kind of ealar. Why call them Ainur if they're the only kind of ealar anyway? Wouldn't one term or the other suffice?

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by obloquy

Discussion of ealar is in the latter three HoMe volumes, but which texts specifically I cannot recall at the moment. Tomorrow I may be able to provide more specific information.

Saucepan Man is right, though. There is no evidence of other classes of ealar besides Ainur, but there is also no reason to believe Ainur were the only kind of ealar. Why call them Ainur if they're the only kind of ealar anyway? Wouldn't one term or the other suffice?

Hmm... Now I'm REALLY curious about these references, because I both own and have read (multiple times) the last few volumes of the HoME. And I can't remember a thing....

As for the variation of terms...

Different languages, different applications... Think humans vs. people. They're the same things in our world, right? But we have two words. In the same language.

Besides which, one has to remember that Tolkien often replaced terms with new words, then switched back, or forgot, or invented yet another term...

Whatever the case, I'm looking forward to seeing this reference.

[obloquy]

In my phatty thread (linked to above) I cite HoMe X, p165 (hardback edition) as the source for the term ëalar. It's possible that this is the only text in which it occurs, but I honestly can't remember.

Here it is:

Commentary on Chapter 3, ‘Of the Coming of the Elves'

LQ 1 is here again, as in the previous chapter, virtually the final text, for the later typescript LQ 2 was scarcely touched, and there was no further enlargement or expansion.

§18 In AAm §30 (p. 70) it is said that Melkor ‘wrought’ the Balrogs in Utumno during the long darkness after the fall of the Lamps; but in an interpolation to AAm there enters the view that Melkor, after his rebellion, could make nothing that had life of its own (§45, see pp. 74, 78), and in AAm*, the second version of the opening of AAm (p. 79, §30), the Balrogs become the chief of ‘the evil spirits that followed him, the Umaiar’, whom at that time he multiplied. The statement in QS §18 that the Balrogs were ‘the first made of his creatures' survived through all the texts of the later revision of the Quenta, but in the margin of one of the copies of LQ 2 my father wrote: ‘See Valaquenta for true account.’ This is a reference to the passage which appears in the published Silmarillion on p. 31:

For of the Maiar many were drawn to his splendour in the days of his greatness, and remained in that allegiance down into his darkness; and others he corrupted afterwards to his service with lies and treacherous gifts. Dreadful among these spirits were the Valaraukar, the scourges of fire that in Middle-earth were called the Balrogs, demons of terror.

The actual text of LQ 2 my father emended at this time very hastily to read:

These were the (ëalar) spirits who first adhered to him in the days of his splendour, and became most like him in his corruption: their hearts were of fire, but they were cloaked in darkness, and terror went before them; they had whips of flame. Balrogs they were named by the Noldor in later days. And in that dark time Melkor bred many other monsters of divers shapes and kinds that long troubled the world; and his realm spread now ever southward over the Middle-earth. But the Orks, mockeries and perversions of the Children of Eru, did not appear until after the Awakening of the Elves.

There is a footnote to the word ëalar in this passage:

‘spirit’ (not incarnate, which was fëa, Sindarin] fae). ëala ‘being’.

[Neithan]

Well the quote I was trying to find but couldn't said something about other beings outside Arda other than the Ainur. I don't think that it said that they were Ealar but I assumed that they were.

[davem]

Re: Ealar

It seems from this that these 'evil 'ealar' were the Balrogs only. I can't see from this passage (unless there's another one I've missed - there isn't a reference to 'ealar' in the index) that Ungoliant could be an ealar.

I do find the reference to 'other monsters of divers shapes and kinds' interesting. It may, of course, only refer to the dragons, werewolve & vampires of the later legends, but there's an interesting passage in 'Tolkien & the Great War:

Tolkien had listed several monstrous creatures in the 'Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarrissa & its ethnological chart: tauler, tyulqin, and sarqin, names which in Qenya indicate tree-like stature or an appetite for flesh. . . All these new races of monsters proved transitory, bar two: the Balrogs and the Orcs. Orcs were bred in 'the subterranean heat and slime' by Melko: 'Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed; foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of the clash of metal. . .' The name had been taken from the Old English orc, 'demon', but only because it was phonetically suitable. The role of demon properly belongs to Balrogs, whose Goldogrin name means 'cruel demon' or 'demon of anguish'. These are Melko's flame-wielding shock troops and battlefield captains, the cohorts of Evil.

(Edited for clarification)

[Neithan]

I can't see from this passage (unless there's another one I've missed - there isn't a reference to 'ealar' in the index) that Ungoliant could be an ealar.

To be fair there is no conclusive evidence either way. Personally, I believe, as stated before, that she was an Ainur of light like Varda. She would be a powerful Ainu probably as great as some of the Valar. Then when she turned evil she became a thing of darkness rather than light but she still craved light even as she hated it.

[davem]

I can't help but speculate that rather than being an ealar Ungoliant seems more like a kind of 'manifestation' of the 'Void'. She comes across as an 'absence' rather than a 'presence' in so many ways. She swallows, consumes, the light.

This is pure speculation, but I wonder, as it seems the 'Void' was a 'place' where Melkor could wander before the creation of Arda, whether something of that 'emptiness' entered into the Music through him, that it was some part of the theme that he introduced - the place where he sought the Secret Fire but failed to find it. She exists because Melkor sang her into being...

Of course, this drags into the realm of metaphysics in a big way

This could account for Ungoliant's 'existence'...or it may just be a mad idea