You say 'Faeries' & I say 'Fairies'

[Lalwendë]

I think it is not entirely surprising that Tolkien was an ardent Catholic, seeing as his guardian as a child was a priest; not only that, but his mother's conversion and consequent struggle seems to have acquired mythical status. I also think that his request that Edith convert must have been partly due to keeping his guardian happy; it would have been the 'done thing' in his mind. Maybe had he been ten years older when he married he might have been less insistent.

Having had two grandmothers who were raised as Catholics and who 'became' Anglicans at marriage, I know for a fact that conversion may be an act put on to appease a partner, as one Grandmother remained in her heart a Catholic (and was buried with Rosary beads, in an Anglican graveyard). My point being that the Church a person outwardly belongs to is not necessarily all that important and other factors have a bearing.

Ronald Hutton raised the point that Tolkien himself seemed to allow his faith to lapse during the 20s and 30s, not going to mass or confession. He clearly had his own reasons for this, but it suggests that he may not have always been the devout Catholic we take him to be. Therefore, we might place too much importance on his Catholicism.

I think that rather than his Catholicism having a bearing on how he created and developed the Legendarium, it might be more appropriate to look at his own morals and how they came to bear on it. His Catholicism definitely shows through in some aspects (and I also think that in SOWM, in the light of what we now know about it, reference to his Catholicism is very appropriate), but his morals (wherever they may come from, Catholicism, Christianity as a whole, upbringing, experience etc.) are the larger influence.

I find that SOWM is different to the other texts as it seems to have hidden subtexts which have clear spiritual messages, whereas in LotR, The Sil etc., he has created something more self contained, with a morality and spirituality which can be understood without reference to his own beliefs. SOWM, on the other hand, is improved by application of other information.

[Amanaduial the archer]

Originally Posted by Lalwende

What interests me is why Fairies were ever perceived as dangerous. The natural world at one time presented greater dangers than it does today

Why are children afraid of the dark? Fear is not always rational; indeed, more often than not it is irrational – a fear of tiny, harmless spiders or grass snakes is hardly uncommon. Yet the unknown, even for the most rational of beings, has always presented a challenge to humans – space, darkness, science…fairies. They are an unknown quantity, and in times when people were far more superstitious and belief in such beings was far more widespread, certainly tales of fairies were not always of benevolent creatures ‘bestowing powers’ – the Morrigan, for example, a figure of Irish Mythology, has been described by some as a kind of fairy, yet by others she is likened to a hag, a crone, a witch, even a devil-like/ ‘wicked’ character. Certainly not someone you want to meet on a dark night. And the tales of fairies were so elaborated over time – from peasant storytelling, into folk-lore, and even into the works of essayists and scholars, and telling of everything from through kidnap, mutation, bearing illnesses, or simply playing havoc with the every day lives of humanity – that it is easy to see why fairies, this unknown, changeable quantity, were feared. Indeed, they were considered even to be part of the natural world, and were worse than animals in some respects because they had that one thing over animals that made they all the more terrifying because it is the one thing that we as humans have over the animal world: intelligence which is far more than simply instinct. They have this, as well as the power of the natural world – and when you consider the power that this gives them, the consequences could be pretty scary.

This idea of the ‘unknown’ is retained to some extent, in the reactions of other characters to the elves: they are wondering and even a little afraid of these creatures who seem so ‘noble’. There is much Men do not seem to know about the race of elves (with the exception of Aragorn, naturally), and this causes fear and even distrust.

Earlier in the thread, the mention of Angels came up – the traditional, religious sense of angels, that is. This is a particularly interesting point, especially in relation to Tolkien’s elves. Consider: they are immortal and do not age, they cannot catch disease, they are incredibly wise, and what is more, they have some knowledge beyond that of men into Eru – who is basically a God-figure, the creator of Arda (although for a deeper discussion on that, consider Fordim’s ‘Is Eru God’ discussion! ). What is more, they are beautiful and glorious to the eyes of men. These are all angelic traits, traditionally. Even the idea that elves and humans could come together and have children is one that fits: in Genesis, angels and the ‘daughters of men’ had children, the Nephilim, who “were the heroes of old, men of renown.” (sorry, that was a slight deviation, admittedly). So maybe Tolkien’s elves are more reminiscent of the Judeo-Christian angels rather than of traditional ideas of fairies. However…the two ideas are not mutually exclusive: in Elizabethan times, there were two main theories on fairies (which Shakespeare especially took into consideration in his writing of such fairy characters as Puck in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Ariel in ‘The Tempest’), one classifying them into folklore ideas of nymphs, driads, fauns etc – and the other considering them to be fallen angels. Tolkien even, in one of his early works, refers to “The Holy fairies and immortal Elves” on this subject, and they are related to heavenly ideas such as the stars – the name Eldar, for example, and the roles of Galadriel and Arwen ‘Evenstar’. So maybe the similarities between Tolkien’s elves to fairies could also be a comparison to angels…?

However, this does naturally present a few problems – such as the slightly glaringly obvious fact that the fallen angels were those who fell with Lucifer and were therefore against God rather than with him. Bother. However…maybe this was intentional on Tolkien’s part, to give the elves something more of humanity? After all, for all their loftiness, their distance, their mystery, the elves are still, at heart, very human creatures.

[davem]

The Elves of BoLT were quite 'Angelic'. It seems they were to represent ideal beings, the teachers of Mankind through Aelfwine/Eriol. Its only over time that they develop increasingly negative traits: they become 'embalmers', etc. Yet they never move completely away from Tolkien's original conception. Hence, they remain moral beings. The Fairies of tradition are amoral.

[littlemanpoet]

In some traditions, including early English ones, some of the angels exiled from Heaven with Satan became devils, but others, more undecided or more neutral, became elves. At Judgement Day some of these may regain forgiveness and salvation and return to their old home, as Galadriel does at the very end of The Return of the King. This still does not make Galadriel into an angel, even in the sense of a messenger, in the way that Gandalf is; but one can imagine how a human being, looking back at the events of the Third Age and the First Age 'from a historical distance', .... could be confused, could put together Galadriel the Noldo exiled by the Valar and Gandalf the Maiar sent by the Valar (both of them allowed in the end to return) and no longer be able to see much difference.

Tom Shippey, from J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

[Amanaduial the archer]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Tom Shippey, from J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

Thank you. You have no idea how much you may have just helped me with me English Literature coursework

[davem]

Found this interesting:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/s...215993,00.html

The wild ones


Fairies and other spirits have long haunted the words and images of English literature. AS Byatt looks beyond the bright-cheeked children and pretty dolls of Edwardian illustrators to explore the menace that lurks beneath

Interesting reading & more importantly it calls into question Tolkien's statements re fairy stories being reduced to 'children's literature' & relegated to the nursery in OFS - he attacks Victorian/Edwardian fairy stories for trivalising Faerie. Yet, as we see here, there was a very dark, threatening, aspect to the fairy literature of the time - a whole dimension which Tolkien chooses to ignore.

And yet, its influence is not entirely absent in his own work:

Reading about all these people, grown-up boys with a sly interest in cruelty, incompetent grown-ups attracted by an imaginary world in which real horrors lurked, clubmen reproducing in their fastnesses the stodgy food of the schools where they had tortured and been tortured, the bright Edwardian nursery frieze can be seen with real goblins and greenteeths, wurricoes and strangling willows just visible behind the bright-cheeked children in their aprons with their nice apples and dolls.

'Greenteeths & strangling willows do indeed haunt the Old Forest ('Greenteeth' is a reference to Jinny Greenteeth, a female river spirit of British folklore with a tendency to drown unwary travellers, as Goldberry attempted with Tom on their first meeting).

I wonder why Tolkien leaves all this kind of faerie literature out of OFS? Is it because it would completely destroy his argument re 'Escape' - who would choose this dark Faerie world of animal torture & babies being buried alive as a place of Escape:

Take Maurice Hewlett, whose book The Lore of Proserpine is an apparently factual account of his relations with the fairy world. As a small boy he saw in the woods a fairy child his own age. It is throttling a rabbit, for pleasure, "the way children squeeze a snap-dragon flower to make it open or shut its mouth". Hewlett observed that the fairy's "cruel fingers, as if by habit, continued the torture, and that in some way he derived pleasure from the performance". Hewlett is interested in the fairies precisely because their nature has other laws, which include indifference to cruelty.

John Anster Fitzgerald painted a series of sleeping figures - an artist, some young girls - dreaming drugged visions of wraiths, demons and insect-like tormentors. He painted rats, white mice and sinister-looking flowers. His world is brightly coloured, almost hectic. His fairies are not kind. They persecute small creatures, torture snails and robins. If their faces are doll-like, it is because their feelings are alien. His Ariel lies on a branch of blossoming hawthorn in a diaphanous, flowery garment that seems to sprout out of him/her. It has a pretty face and mad, protuberant blue eyes - like a china doll come unpleasantly to life. It is not human. It is weird. The creatures relate to that disturbing Victorian poem, "Goblin Market", which attracted illustrators from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Housman and Rackham. Housman's goblins have things in common with Grahame's human animals, except that they are nasty: half-mole, half-imp, or half-rat, half-dwarf. They have dangerous rodent teeth in black visages. Rackham's goblins have a certain comic, nursery quaintness, a darker version of Beatrix Potter.

Barrie's chilling portrayal of Peter's inhumanity almost gets out of hand - the narrator sweetly describes the little graves Peter makes in the gardens for babies who fall out of the perambulators and die, but he then insinuates that Peter may sometimes have buried them alive. "I do hope that Peter is not too ready with his spade. It is all rather sad." Worse is his own heartlessness. He is annoyed with David's mother for discovering that he has put David's combinations on with the buttons at the front. He punishes her by sending a photo he has taken of David being hanged from a tree. Executions again.

As I say, this kind of thing hovers just on the edge of M-e, in the darker parts of the Old Forest, but in the main we don't see it - though we could imagine Orcs indulging in such things, in their case they would find an evil joy in it, rather than an amused, if slightly detatched, pleasure from the exercise.