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09-26-2018, 05:47 AM | #1 | |
Woman of Secret Shadow
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: in hollow halls beneath the fells
Posts: 4,607
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Did the Eldar eat Dwarves?
"Ha ha, very funny," you must be thinking.
But I'm not joking. I think the Elves may actually have eaten Petty-Dwarves. I've brought this argument forward before (in a thread about Elven vegetarianism), but I think it merits more discussion. We have evidence that the Eldar hunted the Petty-Dwarves nearly to extinction: Quote:
I can think of three possible reasons to hunt:
In The Hobbit, the Dwarves hear the noise of Thranduil's folk on a "great hunt" (Flies and Spiders) and later smell the roast meats of the Wood-elf feast, so there's proof that Elves did hunt for food. Oromë - who presumably taught the Eldar to hunt - mainly hunted monsters and evil creatures, and one could argue that the Eldar thought they were simply defending themselves when hunting the Petty-Dwarves. I'm assuming nobody ate the evil creatures (orcs etc) they killed, but is it a different matter when you kill a potentially dangerous animal (which the Elves thought the Petty-Dwarves were) to defend yourself? I'd say it depends. We may not eat wolf, but we (at least us Finns) eat bear. And wolf skins may be used for clothes even if they are not eaten, so this is also a possibility regarding the Petty-Dwarves. We also know of other Elven hunters - Beleg, Mablung, Celegorm, and Aredhel. The fact that so many are named implies that hunting was a popular Elven pastime, regardless of what they did to the bodies. Celegorm knew some of the languages of birds and beasts, so I take it the Elves had no qualms about killing something that had a consciousness - which they presumably did not know about the Petty-Dwarves, who "had never declared themselves to the Eldar" (ibid.) There's obviously no written record of the Eldar actually eating the Petty-Dwarves, and I somehow doubt it would have occurred to the Professor, anyway. One of the (great) Dwarves' grievances against the Eldar was that "they had hunted and slain their lesser kin" (ibid.), but there's no mention of consuming their bodies. Then again I don't think the Elves would tell them about it, and chances are that the surviving Petty-Dwarves wouldn't know what happened with the bodies of their hunted companions, either. When I last brought this up during a meady night at Oxonmoot, somebody proposed that the Elves value life so much as not to take it needlessly. Many people also seem to have the gut feeling that they wouldn't hunt for sport, although I don't think there's definite proof of that. But if this is the case, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Eldar would have eaten and/or skinned the Petty-Dwarves they hunted. Rest in peace, precious Dwarves.
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09-26-2018, 06:08 AM | #2 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
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The evidence of the passage you quote seems to be that they hunted them because they were dangerous: They only became aware of their existence indeed when they attacked the Eldar by stealth at night. If the Petty-Dwarves were as 'non-civilised' as Tolkien seems to suggest, then they might well have looked basically like cones of hair/fur: long beards and long hair combining together and practically reaching the ground. If something like that started attacking your campsite, you'd certainly hunt it afterwards!
I think there are a few arguments against skinning or eating. For the former, I feel like the first time an elven hunter found hands under all that fur - or clothes! Do we have any reason to think the Petty-Dwarves didn't wear clothes? It seems somewhat foolhardy when you live underground - the jig would have been up. For the latter, while Finns may well eat bear, and I know my mother has eaten crocodile, carnivore meat is generally less eaten. (For one thing, it's a lot easier to get parasites from something that has eaten multiple other animals.) Even assuming the elves did eat carnivores, how common is it to eat cave-dwelling animals? I'm guessing not very. It's very interesting that Tolkien (/Pengolodh - Quendi and Eldar contains the statement that ' All that has here been said concerning the Elvish names and their origins, and concerning the views of the older loremasters, is derived directly or indirectly from Pengolodh.') uses the word 'animals' rather than 'monsters'. The Silm contains this interesting quote: Quote:
But they'd still surely have noticed the clothes, right? hS |
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09-26-2018, 01:00 PM | #3 |
Gruesome Spectre
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Heaven's doorstep
Posts: 8,058
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Now this is a nice, meaty topic.
I don't really have anything to add to what I said in the earlier thread Agan referenced, however... One would think! Unless the Petty-dwarves...no....surely they did wear clothes! Could the clothing of the early ones though have been so rudimentary, maybe just unadorned animal skins, that the Elves would just attack first? And the beards so wild and unkempt no facial details were apparent? I think that would support a "no eat" argument though: the Elves killed them for safety reasons and let them lie, with no close scrutiny.
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09-26-2018, 02:01 PM | #4 | |
Dead Serious
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Quote:
I suppose it's possible that the Elves might have dug graves and hurriedly dumped the Petty-Dwarven corpses in without examining them, but we're either dealing with spectacularly unlovely Dwarves or with spectacularly inobservant (squeamish?) Elves if the idea that the Petty-Dwarves were beasts wasn't quickly disproven. Indeed, it almost makes more sense if you accept an early date for the creation of Orks--i.e. before the fall of Utumno. Even if Orks hadn't really been seen by the Eldar in Beleriand and might only belong to murky legends from Cuivienen, the idea of inhuman (inelven?) roughly human-shaped beasts as a perversion to be shot on sight would fit well.
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09-26-2018, 04:41 PM | #5 |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Ensconced in curmudgeonly pursuits
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Yes, the Elves did indeed eat petty-Dwarves, which is where the term "Petit Fours" was derived (Petit = Petty, Fours being the dwarves' height in feet). And after all, Petit Fours are an appetizer, and thus would be the original "finger food".
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09-27-2018, 10:39 AM | #6 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
Posts: 10,299
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Quote:
I think that safety / monster hunting was the predominant motivation for hunting the Petty-Dwarves; that is not to say we know what Elves did with them after killing. I picture their appearance as a sort of raccoon infestation that has to be cleared away if you don't want your settlement perpetually harassed, even if raccoons can be cute and everything. But what to do with the bodies? Is it possible the Elves haven't seen that many dead bodies? Would the dwarves try to rescue the bodies of their fallen comrades to prevent the Elves getting them?
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09-27-2018, 03:12 PM | #7 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: The Deepest Forges of Ered Luin
Posts: 746
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Yes, weren't we discussing here, in the past... perhaps several times... the common ancestry between elves and orcs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6PkDHuaXi8
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09-28-2018, 02:13 PM | #8 |
Spectre of Decay
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Well, it may not be a coincidence that Tad-dail is so similar to Tarka Dal. Best be careful what you eat at a Noldorin barbeque.
Although it's not expressly denied in any text, this idea of the Noldor eating dwarves feels wrong to me. I think that it's suggested by the word hunt, which Tolkien uses fairly regularly to describe chasing down enemies. For example, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas become the Three Hunters when chasing Uglúk's merry band, but I don't recall them toasting up Uruk burgers on the edge of Fangorn. Huinesoron has identified the possibility of either clothing or hands identifying the quarry as something more than an animal, and it would seem to me that a butcher gets a fairly close look at the kill. Enough at least to constitute catching sight of it in a clear light. Anything left lying dead in the wilderness will be eaten very quickly (nature tidies up well), so I doubt that abandoned bodies would constitute much of a health risk. Also I'm by no means convinced that if the hunting itself can become widely known among the Dwarves, feasting on the corpses can be kept a secret. Even Mîm has no record of it in his litany of grievances, yet it seems that the hunts are common knowledge. Who would need to be kept in the dark anyway? These were mere cunning animals after all: who hides their bacon from a pig? All this is conjecture, though. To be honest, dark though he could be when the mood took him, Elves eating Dwarves doesn't sound much like Tolkien. He called the Noldor Gnomes for years to emphasise their wisdom, and where they fall into evil he portrays it as tragic. Cannibalism, even the eating of other rational beings, is something he assigns to Gollum and Orcs, and has Saruman ascribe to Wormtongue. It's something bestial, sub rather than superhuman, not consistent with his apparent view of the Eldar. While it might have been as unknowing as Túrin's incest, something tells me that this idea is one so serious that he would have done something with it had it occurred to him.
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10-10-2018, 11:06 AM | #9 |
Wight
Join Date: Jun 2017
Posts: 118
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They likely hunted them both in response to attacks and for sport, not food.
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09-27-2018, 02:58 PM | #10 | |||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: The Deepest Forges of Ered Luin
Posts: 746
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Quote:
Quote:
Hunting "for sport" can be a subjective term, too. There was always some degree of "sport" in hunting, even when it was done to put food on the table (deer, boar, pheasant, et al) in the age before supermarkets and industrial farms. What we know about the Sons of Feanor, for example, allows us to infer several things. We know that Celegorm, Amrod, and Amras were considered great hunters: Quote:
We also know that the Sons of Feanor were monarchs in their own rights, ruling the lands in the north of Beleriand. These weren't monarchs of subsistence-level, hunter-gatherer, skin-wearing tribes, either; they were powerful, with steel (or better) weapons, armor, and armies at their command. Being monarchs of realms which had the capability of fielding armies with the latest and greatest in weaponry, they could, therefore, have gotten meat upon their tables simply by decree. Yet, instead of sitting back and living the good life of being waited upon, they chose to hunt (for "sport", one could say), and received great renown for their prowess.
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