Jail-Crow of Mandos

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by The Silmarillion

And Fëanor looked upon Melkor with eyes that burned through his fair semblance and pierced the cloaks of his mind, perceiving there his fierce lust for the Silmarils. Then hate overcame Fëanor's fear, and he cursed Melkor and bade him be gone, saying: 'Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos!' And he shut the doors of his house in the face of the mightiest of all the dwellers in Eä.

Wait... what?

Fëanor's words are echoing the relatively common English term 'jailbird', as in someone who has previously been a prisoner. But... why does Fëanor have a colloquial term for a prisoner ready to hand, in a land where we're told of Finwë after his wife's death, 'alone in all the Blessed Realm he was deprived of joy'? Did Valinor have a secret unmentioned criminal justice system?

The Gnomish Lexicon suggests yes. From Eldamo, it includes a whole set of words based on 'fedh-':

Originally Posted by Gnomish Lexicon

difedhin adj. and n. “*outlaw” see nifedhin

fedhin n. and adj. “bound by agreement; ally, friend”
fedhir n. “law; properly bond, convention, agreement”
fedhirweg n. “lawman, lawyer”
fedhra- v. “to unite in a band”
fedhril n. “one bound by oath [f.]”
fedhrog n. “one bound by oath”
fedhwed adj. “lawful”
fedhwen n. “treaty”

gofedhin adj. “united, allied, ‘friends’”
gofedhra- v. “to unite in a band”
gofedhrog n. “ally”

nifedhin adj. and n. “outlaw, outcast”

ufedhron n. “lawless man”
ufedhwed adj. “lawless”

The lexicon even provides a Primitive Elvish root on which these are all based, FEDE, meaning law or bond.

It's possible that Tolkien envisaged this legal system as being a Beleriandic concept (where we know from Turin that outlaws were a thing, and from Finrod that allies were something House Feanor didn't really get), but the Qenya Lexicon also has a relevant word: kos (kost-) n. “quarrel, dispute, the matter disputed, legal action”. Kos stems from a different Primitive Elvish root, GOÞO ('GOTHO'), which is connected to anger and fighting. So if anything, the Qenya word is more antagonistic than the Gnomish, which could have originally been about property disputes or something.

Am I completely off-track in imagining a Valinorean legal system (perhaps it only came into play after Melkor was out and making trouble?)? Is there any more evidence either way as to what it looked like?

hS