Robbing the Cradle

[mark12_30]

Being just partway thru the thread, I feel compelled to bring up Lindir's comment: "But mortals have not been our study. We have other business."

Perhaps the question of maturity is, almost, a side-track. Mortals have not been our study. Mortality involves growing old and dying-- does it involve "growing up" as it were? Is that something strange to elves? Or do they retain their childlikenes even as they watch the ages pass and grow in lore and knowledge? What DO elves study? Elrond is a great loremaster and historian; but what had Legolas studied? What had Haldir studied? How youthful, or ageless, or agelong, were they?

And Elves, sir! Elves here, and Elves there! Some like kings, terrible and splendid; and some as merry as children.

Glorfindel was tall and straight; his hair was of shining gold, his face fair and young and fearless and full of joy...The face of Elrond was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful.

and there sat a lady fair to look upon, and so like was she in form of womanhood to Elrond that Frodo guessed that she was one of his close kindred. Young she was and yet not so. ... yet queenly she looked, and thought and knowledge were in her glance, as of one who has known many things that the years bring.

The thought that comes to me with all this is, a human "maturity" is often disdainful of youthfulness, preferring something more like itself. But an elf can hardly afford such an attitude, especially as they live through more and more ages.

What about that elvish joy? "Terrible and splendid" are some of them; "merry as children" the others; and isn't it interesting that once Sam had spent some time with Galadriel, he said that she was both?

Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes like a great tree in flower, sometimes like a white daffadowndilly, small and slender like. Hard as di’monds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime.

I think that when we try to fit elvish "maturity" into a framework of human "maturity" we somehow miss the essence of their elvishness. "Merry as children, terrible and splendid."