legolas's hair

[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.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

In this context it's worth bringing up the meaning of Vanyar, a name which replaced Lindar in the revisions to QS ca 1951 (and somewhat before Maeglin was first written*).

According to 'Quendi and Eldar' (XI.382) Vanyar "Fair Ones" expressly meant "fair" as in "light-complected, blonde," and was given by the Noldo specifically because of the preponderance of golden or yellow hair amongst the First Kindred (who continued to refer to themselves as Minyar).

Now Q&E was written about 1959-60 and so post-dates the texts in question. It's worth noting that around this time, on the 1958 LQ2 typescript, Tolkien went back and changed "High Elves" (ref the Vanyar) to "Fair Elves" throughout.

The App F passage at issue, describing the Noldor (later Eldar), first appeared in the draft Foreword which was done not later than mid-1950, and in any event certainly predated the post-LR work on the First Age material- it doesn't in its original form include any "House of Finrod" exception. So there isn't any particular reason to think that when first written (applied then to the Noldor) there had yet arisen the idea of a particular golden-haired ethnicity among the Elves, even though individual blonde Elves had.

So when did the idea of (1) blonde Vanyar and (2) a blonde Vanyarin-derived branch of the House of Finwe, come to be?

(1) The D-text of Ainulindale and the Quenta Silmarillion revision both have Lindar, later emended to Vanyar. The Annals of Aman has Vanyar as written, so this change can be pretty well pinned down to 1951, or later than the draft Foreword. This date sequencing is reinforced by the fact that Ainu D already uses Teleri, whereas the draft Foreword still uses Lembi.

There's no evidence to set against the assumption that Vanyar had the same meaning from the time of its introduction as it had in Q&E. But we can't be sure of it, either, although the fact that T saw fit to change an old name is suggestive.** But obviously this isn't definitive; it is interesting though to observe that an addition to the A-text of QS includes, referencing the Noldor, "Dark was their hue and grey were their eyes," which at least implies that at this time T thought that this was a distinctive Gnomish coloration and, presumably, other Kindreds were not necessarily dark-haired. However, one would think T would also have added a note on the golden hair of the Lindar had the concept then existed- but, again, arguing from the absence of evidence is a shaky business. They were, however, still Lindar "Singers" not Vanyar "Fair Ones."

I think therefore it's clear that dark-haired Noldor arose before golden-haired Vanyar.



BUT- it's unquestionably the case that the original 1951 text of Maeglin refers to golden-haired Vanyar. Still, note what it actually says: Idril's hair "was golden as the Vanyar, her mother's kindred." In other words, we are not here dealing with the Indis-Finarfin line, but rather Turgon's marriage to a Vanya, Alaire -> Anaire -> Elenwe, who according to the original text would not leave Valinor, (much) later changed to a death in the Grinding Ice.

This episode is interesting- QS as rewritten makes no mention of Turgon's wife, nor does the original text of AAm.*** It seems as far as I can tell that the idea that Turgon married a Vanya, who bequeathed her fair hair to her daughter, arose ab initio with the expanded Maeglin story. But it also seems that we can with some assurance conclude that the Vanyar were blonde from at least the same time-frame as that in which their new name was coined, and I would submit therefore that the new name had the meaning "Fair (blonde) Ones" from the start.

But that doesn't get us to the House of Finarfin....


(2) In the QS and AAm texts of this period, there is no suggestion that Finwe had two wives or that his sons were other than full brothers; and certainly no mention of Finarfin's line being blonde. But, continuing a tradition, Celegorn "the fair" is contrasted with Cranthir "the dark"; and for the first time in the Sil matter Galadriel appears, her hair "lit with gold as though it had caught in a mesh the radiance of Laurelin." In other words, although T was at about the same time introducing the idea of the Noldor as *generally* dark-haired, individual blonde Noldor were certainly still included. But were they individual exceptions to a rule, or was there a new House of Finrod or Vanyarin Descent sub-rule at this time?

I can't come up with any text which introduces the death of Miriel and Finwe's remarriage to Indis of the Vanyar before the "second post-LR phase" of work on the matter of the Elder Days- work of uncertain date, but which was almost certainly done after the publication of the LR and not later than 1958. Yet already by the text F3 of the later Appendix F - which unquestionably *predated* the Grey Annals (and thus also Maeglin) - the "golden house of Finrod" has entered.

An interesting view of that House at the same time appears in text T4 of the Tale of Years, which was made at about the same time as the early F-texts: Galadriel here makes her earliest appearance in relation to the wider mythology, and is said to be the "sister of Gil-galad," soon after amended to "sister of Felagund Gil-galad's sire." The idea that Gil-galad was Felagund's son was abandoned by the time of the Grey Annals, again demonstrating how early this text and the contemporaneous Golden House notion appear to be. But nothing in the TY suggests hair-color for anyone.

In fact, and this is worth looking at, it was with the revised QS of 1951 that two new twists occur with regard to the Teleri: A) Elwe becomes Thingol and the former Elwe is renamed Olwe, and the two of them are said respectively to have had silver-grey and white hair; and B) Finrod (-> Finarphin) marries Olwe's daughter. A is noteworthy because IIRC this is the first time in the legends of the First Age that *any* elven hair-color had been mentioned other than "yellow-haired Glorfindel" and Luthien's raven locks.**** B is perhaps of significance because, in emphasizing the Finrodians' kinship and good relations with Thingol, it seems to be the first time that Tolkien appears to attach importance to the in-laws: marital ties (indeed wives) don't seem to have had any role in the pre-LR versions of the mythos.

Where does all this lead us? Well, my roughly-formed hypothesis- and it is only that - is that here is another case where Tolkien's efforts to answer a relatively small question grew organically into having much wider significance.

The question was "Why does Galadriel have golden hair?"

It seems that at this time, circa 1950 with the LR written, it was easy enough for Tolkien to slot in his new royal Noldorin characters, Galadriel and Gil-galad, with his favorite branch of the house of Finwe, that of the noble Felagund. But it seems also that at this same time, for reasons never really explained, Tolkien decided that the Noldor on the whole had dark hair and grey eyes.

Is it possible that in his first cut at the problem, when revising QS, he reckoned that a dark-haired Finrod marrying a silver-haired Earwen would have had golden-haired children, the original notion behind the first appearance of the Golden House of Finrod?????

Whether or not that notion crossed his mind, it does seem to be the case that roughly a year after the Noldor were ruled dark, the former Lindar were renamed Vanyar and got fair hair to match. And almost as an aside Tolkien introduced what seems to be a new but trivial element: he decided Idril should be blonde, and was so through a Vanyarin mother. Why? It isn't important politically, since said mother was back in Valinor. It isn't really important at all. My only wild-hare guess is that for whatever reason T felt it was a visual indication of Nordic Tuor being a better match for her than dark, dark Maeglin, but that's rawest speculation. More important is simply the fact that he did it, and I think from it came the idea that his Golden House of Finrod could also arise from a Vanyarin marriage.

But for that to happen, Finwe's first wife had to be got out of the way. Notes of uncertain date suggest he toyed with the idea of Feanor having been born in Cuivienen, firstborn of all the Children of Iluvatar, and his mother (named Indis!) later lost on the Great March; but instead he took the path he did, which created a huge and I think much enriching upheaval of the story, not only in the House of Finwe's Peyton Place dynamics, but even in his conceptions of fea and hroa, death and immortality.







* in the ca 1950-52 'phase' the order of composition was Ainulindale - Quenta Silmarillion - (some overlap) - Annals of Aman - Grey Annals- "long Tuor" - Maeglin. Alterations to the Grey Annals to incorporate the Maeglin material were made using leaves from a November 1951 calendar.

** I've asked Carl Hostetter whether there's a note on the meaning of Vanyar which is any earlier than Q&E.

*** The 1959 genealogies as written had her as a Vanya who remained behind, altered later to "lost in the ice."

**** Unless we count "Celegorn the fair and Cranthir the dark")


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Of course, in Quendi and Eldar he had the space to state the obvious, which was that these genetic hair markers were only predominant, not universal; in similar wise we speak of Swedes being blonde and Italians dark, but are perfectly well aware that there are dark Swedes and blonde Italians.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

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.

There is no need to pick only one of these two possibilities as there is no contradiction between them. They speak of different times and different places.

In The War of the Jewels (HoME 11) in the article “Quendi and Eldar”, which Christopher Tolkien dates to 1959–60, there are some mentions of hair colour which you have not quoted though they tend to support you.

The first is from page 382 with bold italics and material in square brackets added by me:

The name [Vanyar] referred to the hair of the Minyar, which was in nearly all members of the clan yellow or deep golden. This was regarded as a beautiful feature by the Ñoldor (who loved gold), though they were themselves mostly dark-haired. Owing to intermarriage the golden hair of the Vanyar sometimes later appeared among the Ñoldor: notably in the case of Finarfin, and in his children Finrod and Galadriel, in whom it came from King Finwë’s second wife, Indis of the Vanyar.

The second is from page 384, again with bold italics added by me:

Elwe himself had indeed long and beautiful hair of silver hue, but this does not seem or have been a common feature of the Sindar, though it was found among them occasionally, especially in the nearer or remoter kin of Elwe (as in the case of Cirdan). In general the Sindar appear to have closely resembled the Exiles, being dark-haired, strong and tall, but lithe.

These quotations support your idea that the Vanyar were only mostly fair-haired and that the other kindreds were only mostly dark-haired.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by jallanite

[/INDENT]These quotations support your idea that the Vanyar were only mostly fair-haired and that the other kindreds were only mostly dark-haired.

That's actually what I was referencing in my last (hard to see) line: "Of course, in Quendi and Eldar he had the space to state the obvious, which was that these genetic hair markers were only predominant, not universal; in similar wise we speak of Swedes being blonde and Italians dark, but are perfectly well aware that there are dark Swedes and blonde Italians."

[Galin]

** I've asked Carl Hostetter whether there's a note on the meaning of Vanyar which is any earlier than Q&E.

Carl will certainly know better, but we do have a base BAN- in Etymologies from which Q. vanya beautiful and 'Cf. vanima 'fair' (also noting Aragorn's words in Lothlorien about Arwen).

And as far back as the early Qenya Lexicon we have 'vane (i) fair, lovely.' I didn't stumble across anything in these earlier accounts (quick search however) that certainly noted 'pale, light coloured' as we find connected to the Q&E stem WAN (where it's noted that the implication of beauty was secondary).

In Words Phrases And Passages Tolkien notes BAN- 'beauty' and a distinct stem WAN- 'fair-haired (yellow to golden). This was reason for name of the Mindi. But since later Q wanya/vanya, late Q vanya became almost an exact synonym of English 'fair' = just, good, right, prosperous, blessed, fine (weather) -- blond [but it never meant 'moderate, mediocre'] For 'beautiful' late Q used vanya.'

This is probably somewhat connected to Q&E I think. Also see note 4 to Dangweth Pengolodh (Banyai)

[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.