Servants of the Elves?

[Tinuviel of Denton]

I know it sounds like a foolish question, but did the elves have servants?

I'm trying to write a fanfiction about Eol, and the Silm mentions his servants. Twice, once when setting up his character, and once when Aredhel and Maeglin flee. Also, Thranduil has a butler in The Hobbit.

For some reason, I was under the impression that there were no servants among the elves. Could someone learned enlighten me as to exactly what kind of position a 'servant' would hold in elvish society?

[Birdland]

All we really have is speculation, Tinuviel. Tolkien doesn't go into the small, petty details of Elven society, like who did the laundry and do Elves go to the bathroom. After all, he recorded epic sagas, not slice of life.

Myself - since Elves are immortal and have all the time in the world to learn just about anything they want - I always pictured it that Elves play many different roles in their lifetimes. If an Elf wanted to learn knowledge from an older Elf, he or she would serve as an apprentice to that Elf. Once they learned one craft, they might decide to learn a different set of skills, meaning that they would have to start over at the bottom, so to speak, in order to work with another teacher. (Am I making myself clear?)

Or course, we do seem to have Elves who are considered to be royalty or leaders amongst their people, but I have the feeling that even someone as wise and powerful as Elrond spent his time serving another.

[Kalimac]

Birdland, that sounds like a really good scenario - in fact, when you think about it, it probably be the best way to approach immortality; always something new on the horizon, so to speak, even if the horizon is 500 years away. You'd probably get a few who specialize in one thing only, but everyone else would probably have a rotation.

My only addition to this would be to guess that any serving-elves would largely be younger, rather in the way that in pre-industrial society, children even of fairly well-off families would often go into service for a few years in their teens, to learn how to run a household and save up money/materials for their marriage. While I can't see the monetary consideration being the same, it would make sense for the Elves to do something like this - and it would certainly be good for their rulers to have a youthful experience of having served others.

Besides, Thranduil's butler doesn't sound like, shall we say, the most wise of characters [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. I'd always pictured him as middle-aged, but perhaps he was youngish still and hadn't quite learned his wits yet. Or maybe he was just a slow learner - I'm sure even the Elves had a few.

[ October 25, 2003: Message edited by: Kalimac ]

[Maéglin]

I think the Elves 'government' as such was pretty much like the feudal system. Titles were hereditary and lords and ladies would probably hire servants although their living conditions would probably be much nicer (being Elves and all) than say in the 1600s where the gap between classes were massive. I think there's a misconception going around that the Elves were almost a democratic society where everything is fair and equal!

[Kalimac]

With all due respect, Maeglin, I don't think anyone's under the impression that the Elves were democratic - democracies tend not to have rulers-for-eternal-life like Galadriel and Elrond, or if they do they're pretty much stripped of everything save ceremonial power, a la Great Britain. (I realize that the Queen can do some things, but she couldn't send armies out, let alone command a river to rise [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]).

While I'm not a historian - and if any real historians feel like jumping in to correct me, please do! - society even in the middle ages could shift around somewhat, and that mobility increased with the Renaissance and grew steadily greater afterwards. But even in the earlies people weren't exactly stationary, that is, they didn't have one role and one role only. Granted, a rock-hewing peasant was likely to remain a rock-hewing peasant, but he might have a son who was exceptionally intelligent and lucked into becoming a member of the clergy. A few centuries later, a young man who went into a great house as a scut-cleaner could work his way up to footman. Fagging, in the old British public schools, was a much-abused practice but it certainly gave some fairly moneyed boys the experience of being on the receiving end of unlimited power. And during the Renaissance and after, members even of fairly noble families would be sent to the households of others as pages and maids of honour; consider Anne Boleyn, to pick a random example, who was sent at a young age to be a waiting-woman in France. Granted, she wasn't exactly top-drawer, not a princess, but her family was connected to the ducal Howards, which was nothing to sneeze at. And similarly to the proposed theory about the Elves, page/waiting-woman/stuff like that was not an occupation that lasted your entire life. It was a stage, and you moved on to your "real" occupation later, after the first blush of youth.

Now, obviously, this didn't apply to everyone. Waiting-women did not do the kinds of things that scullery maids did, and a scullery maid was highly unlikely to ever become a waiting woman. But within their own spheres, they could rise, and did. So I think it is reasonable to hypothesize that a large number of the folk waiting on Thranduil et al were younger Elves getting their training, so to speak. As to who did the scullery-type work, there's so little information that I hesitate even to guess. I doubt very much that they would hire outsiders; Rivendell is by far the most outsider-friendly Elvish establishment, and even then you get the impression that they were pretty picky about whom they let in the front door - it wouldn't make sense for them to let unnecessary men and others in through the servants' entrance at the back. So I will take a flying leap and hypothesize that there were spheres of Elves, rather like the spheres of humans earlier, only more simply structured. Not a lower class, not in the sense of eking out a bare living and being subject to your lord's every whim, but basically a noble caste (very few members - basically the rulers of Lorien, Rivendell, Mirkwood, etc and their heirs and immediate relatives) and a common caste (everyone else). Both the children of the noble caste and most of the children of the common caste would start off with basic serving jobs in the enormous communes that seem to be the favoured Elvish method of living. There would be some preference, very likely - can't see Arwen ever up to her elbows in soapsuds, to be honest - but most would work their way up in time - maybe start off with general serving stuff, then as your first talent became apparent, you'd be apprenticed, then work on your own, something like that.

Granted, this is incredibly idealistic and presupposes lots of harmony and agreement and all those other bizarre things [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]. I'm proposing it for two reasons. First of all, they live forever save for violent death. The concept of "I'm stuck in this job for my whole life" does not apply to them, since inevitably there will be younger people coming up behind them whose turn it is to do that job, and yet you still live on. Secondly, they're Elves, dang it! They're so in control of their emotions and actions (most of them, anyway) that it's hard to see an idealistic system failing for them unless someone went to a huge amount of trouble to sabotage it.