Are Elves vegatarian?

[Lotrelf]

Did Professor mean Elves to be vegatarian? I'm on the 8th chapter in The Hobbit, Flies and Spiders. The Hobbit and the Dwarves find some elves while journeying in Mirkwood, and they are mentioned eating "meat". Meat has only one meaning. I thought Elves were vegies, weren't they?

[Inziladun]

The Noldor in Beleriand in the First Age were said to be hunters, and I would presume that they did not hunt only for skins. Elves in general did not shun eating meat, but perhaps certain communities, like the Green-elves of Ossiriand, who used the excuse that arriving Men from the east were "hunters of beasts" as a reason to dislike them, might have stuck with vegetarianism.

[Lotrelf]

Elves were spiritual, and spiritual people/creatures refrain killing others for their own benefit, be it for food. Elves, being First Born, were not supposed to do so, as they did not smoke.

[tom the eldest]

But they do drink wine,like galion,thranduil and the wood elves.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

Elves were spiritual, and spiritual people/creatures refrain killing others for their own benefit, be it for food. Elves, being First Born, were not supposed to do so, as they did not smoke.

Yet, they did hunt. I see no evidence that their status as the Firstborn precluded hunting, or using animals in other ways. They simply would not have been wasteful, or indiscriminate with what they killed. Elves were also in tune with forests and trees, yet they used wood for fires, tools, and building.

As for the smoking, that was a habit peculiar to western Eriador, attributable to Hobbits, that had not even been introduced until the Third Age. Only those, like the Men of Bree and the Dwarves who commonly dealt with Hobbits, were likely to have taken it up, or even known of it.

[mhagain]

Post-LotR work on the Silmarillion (published in Morgoth's Ring) indicates that the Elves certainly did hunt, the most telling quote being:

The Elves had before possessed only weapons of the chase, spears and bows and arrows.

There's also Aule's reply to Yavanna after his making of the Dwarves:

That shall also be true of the Children of Iluvatar; for they will eat and they will build. And though the things of thy realm have worth in themselves, and would have worth if no Children were to come, yet Eru will give them dominion, and they shall use all that they find in Arda: though not, by the purpose of Eru, without respect or without gratitude.

The concept of Elves as vegetarian hippies living in commune with nature is true only of the Nandor, but is otherwise largely a later trope, perhaps a case of a D&D-ism working backwards and infecting Tolkien, but in Tolkien's own writings there's no grounds for this trope.

[Lotrelf]

I did not say being Firstborn would keep them from killing or hunting. It was a general question since Elves were the most spiritual creatures, and they loved nature. So their affection towards natural things i.e. Trees and Animals etc. would be dear to them. They instead of hunting or killing, would preserve them.

[Ivriniel]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

Elves were spiritual, and spiritual people/creatures refrain killing others for their own benefit, be it for food. Elves, being First Born, were not supposed to do so, as they did not smoke.

Elves ate meat. Slaughtered, spat, swore - and no doubt had body odour. Their hair got matted, tangled, and dreaded like anyone's in the wild. Eol had a hunched back, from working the smithies.

They were quite perverse in their own way, when you look at the race with some caveats--even weirdos at times. They're also Elf-tossers: Turgon threw Eol off the crags in Gondolin after Aredhel was slain by a poison arrow.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

Did Professor mean Elves to be vegatarian? I'm on the 8th chapter in The Hobbit, Flies and Spiders. The Hobbit and the Dwarves find some elves while journeying in Mirkwood, and they are mentioned eating "meat". Meat has only one meaning. I thought Elves were vegies, weren't they?

Tolkien's Elves appear to eat meat in The Hobbit, as you note, and according to the earlier stages of the legendarium. From The Lay of the Children of Hurin, for example:

On a time was Turin at the table of Thingol
there was laughter long and the loud clamour
of a countless company that quaffed the mead,
amid the wine of Dor-Winion that went ungrudged
in their golden goblets; and goodly meats
there burdened the boards, neath the blazing torches
...

The question might be: did JRRT change his mind with respect to The Lord of the Rings and later? For myself I do not think so. I see no reason to think that Legolas did not partake of all the 'flotsam and jetsam meal' for instance. And I think it's implied in The Fall of Gondolin (early 1950s version) that Voronwe and Tuor will eat meat in order to survive.

An argument might be made for the Green Elves of Ossiriand however: according to the Quenta tradition, the Nandor of Ossiriand heard that a lord of the Eldar from over the Sea was among Men, and they sent messages concerning these new folk, part of which included: 'And these folk are hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore we are their unfriends,...'

But it was Finrod who had met Beor and his Men due to hunting with Maglor and Maedros, so if these Green Elves did not hunt, others did. Of course I realize that hunting and eating meat are not the same thing, but for myself I would need some fairly convincing argument to split that particular hair.

I say yes, Elves ate meat

[Elyna of Rivendell]

I'd imagine that Elves would eat meat. I don't think the majority of them would have had an issue with killing animals for food- It is completely natural to do so. I think they would have shunned at hunting purely for pleasure or sport but for something as, dare i say, useful as food... i think it would have been okay.

However, like humans nowadays, there would have been elves who were vegetarians, but, like today, it probably would have been an individual's choice.

(p.s. no offence to anyone who does hunting as a sport. I did not mean to offend you and if i did i sincerely apologise)