You say 'Faeries' & I say 'Fairies'

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

As the 'primary' races of the Archetypal (Fairies) & devolved (Human) worlds, our task is perhaps to find a way to re-establish the harmony that once existed - perhaps that original harmony was what Tolkien was describing in his mythology. The two worlds are 'out of synch' & that may be the explanation for the disharmony.

Indeed I can quite understand your attempts here to explain your experience, but what I find interesting is this idea that once there was harmony, but now is disarray. What was it in your experience that caused you to perceive this state? Is it not possible that things always were in this state of disharmony and our desire for something Other suggests to us the possibility of rapproachment?

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

There's so much we don't perceive; a blind man can't prove the existence of green.

Very much so. Yet, yet, a blind man can smell green and sense it on the air and touch it, no? For some, sensations compensate for other loses.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Yet, yet, a blind man can smell green and sense it on the air and touch it, no? For some, sensations compensate for other losses.

And so it is with us and Faery? It seems that way, does it not?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bb

Indeed I can quite understand your attempts here to explain your experience, but what I find interesting is this idea that once there was harmony, but now is disarray. What was it in your experience that caused you to perceive this state? Is it not possible that things always were in this state of disharmony and our desire for something Other suggests to us the possibility of rapproachment?

My feeling is that all things arose out of a state of primal unity, & it also seems that according to all the traditional accounts Faery it is a world/realm that is closer to its natural state than our own. Hence, it seems to me that Faery represents some archetypal state which still exists & can be passed into & out of. To this extent it is very close to what we find in SoWM, but there is still an element missing from Tolkien's Faery, & that is the 'chaotic' dimension, the absence of 'rules' (I don't mean of rule breaking - which we find in his Orcs, Balrogs, Dragons, etc, but the absence of any rules to be broken).

(By the way, for anyone who's interested, the whole of Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies can be found here)

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by davem

I don't mean of rule breaking - which we find in his Orcs, Balrogs, Dragons, etc, but the absence of any rules to be broken.

I know what you mean. It's the kind of thing that I really want to write about, but seems just beyond my grasp. Still, there can't be complete chaos, or Faery would be unliveable and not only in regard to humans. But cause & effect, immutability of solids (if you take my meaning); these would be up for grabs; transformation would be typical. And words fail to adequately convey my meaning.

[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

I know what you mean. It's the kind of thing that I really want to write about, but seems just beyond my grasp. Still, there can't be complete chaos, or Faery would be unliveable and not only in regard to humans. But cause & effect, immutability of solids (if you take my meaning); these would be up for grabs; transformation would be typical. And words fail to adequately convey my meaning.

I suppose it could be that Faery has different rules, which would seem entirely logical to its inhabitants, but not to humans, just as it may be that it has its own laws & moral codes. Tolkien presents us with a Faery whose rules, laws & morality are the same as our (Christian) ones.

I'm referring to things like 'Geasa' (taboos),

Irish taboo, and inferentially all Celtic taboo, dates back to an unknown pagan antiquity. It is imposed at or before birth, or again during life, usually at some critical period, and when broken brings disaster and death to the breaker. Its whole background appears to rest on a supernatural relationship between divine men and the Otherworld of the Tuatha De Danann; and it is very certain that this ancient relationship survives in the living Fairy-Faith as one between ordinary men and the fairy-world. Therefore, almost all taboos surviving among Celts ought to be interpreted psychologically or even psychically, and not as ordinary social regulationshttp://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt...30.htm#fr_236/

where, for instance in the story of Cuchulain the hero was forbidden to eat the flesh of a dog, & when he is tricked into doing so his fate is sealed - there's no logical reason for that to be a consequence, but once he has eaten it there is no way to avoid his fate. Or we could look to the story of Baldur in Norse Myth - he could only be slain by a spear of misletoe. There are similar things in the Legendarium (Turin, for instance, seems to to have a number of Geasa imposed on him by Morgoth) but nothing like the traditional accounts of Faeries stealing babies & replacing them with changelings, or Selkies leaving their seal skins on the beach & appearing as young women.

Of course Geasa are rules, so maybe I'm now arguing against myself, but what I was referring to was the absence of what we would call 'rules' or 'laws' of nature - like cause & effect, thermodynamics, logical consistency. As I say, Tolkien does have something similar to geasa in Turin's story, but he gives it a 'logical reason - Morgoth's malice - rather than simply having it as a 'given' in his world that heroes have strange fates, that Faeries are an unknown quantity & that Faery is just a place where wierd stuff happens...

[littlemanpoet]

It now begins to seem to me that Tolkien the modern made Faery acceptable to a modern, and therefore, scientific mind. Our contemporary imagination, having been baptized by Tolkien, has thereby been freed to move beyond the scientific mind to Faery as it is/was.

Which means, in a sense, that as the Star was to Smith, allowing passage to Faery, and as Faery was to Wootton Major, so Tolkien's Middle Earth is for us, allowing our minds to conceive of Faery as it is, and thus Faery can be to us as it was to Wootton Major? I don't know, but I hope so.

[davem]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

It now begins to seem to me that Tolkien the modern made Faery acceptable to a modern, and therefore, scientific mind. Our contemporary imagination, having been baptized by Tolkien, has thereby been freed to move beyond the scientific mind to Faery as it is/was.

Which means, in a sense, that as the Star was to Smith, allowing passage to Faery, and as Faery was to Wootton Major, so Tolkien's Middle Earth is for us, allowing our minds to conceive of Faery as it is, and thus Faery can be to us as it was to Wootton Major? I don't know, but I hope so.

Perhaps what Tolkien did was to make Faery 'acceptable' not the modern, scientific, mind but to the minds of people who, whether they are Christians or not, are products of 2,000 years of Christianity & have grown up with a Christian worldview.

In traditional. pre-Christian belief, there was no Satan, no personification of moral evil - there was life & death, good & bad, but no Good vs Evil. Tolkien 'Christianises' Faery by introducing Morgoth, a fallen Angel, & introduces a (Judeo) Christian element which from then on determines & defines that Faery as a Christian one - it couldn't have been otherwise once he'd made that decision.

The consequence was that Middle-earth would become the battleground in a moral war. Rather than the battle being an eternal one between light & dark, order & chaos, summer & winter which never ends, it becomes an extended war which will one day end in the victory of Good over Evil. There will be winners & losers.

We have all, Christian or not, absorbed that worldview, & so would have expected it, I suppose, in the Faery that Tolkien gave us. Yet, it is not traditional Faery - it is, for whatever (good?) reasons Tolkien had - an invention of his own. As I've repeatedly stated, though, what interests me is why he staked such a claim to traditional Faery (particularly in OFS), & presented himself as a writer within the tradition. He may have acted as a mediator between Faery & modern readers brought up in a Christian world, but was that his intention - is that how he saw his role? Did he think of himself as someone opening a door to traditional Faery, so that we could enter into that 'pre-Christian' world, 'freeing' us from Christian 'indoctrination' - or did he actually want to make Faery Christian - or at least make us see it in that way, as 'the best introduction to the Mountains'? Was he using Faery for his own, evangelical, purposes- we know that that was his original motivation (one only has to read Garth's book) but was that desire something he left behind?

I think its clear that Lewis desired to use Faery to evangelise (the Narnia stories at some points are little other than 'parables' designed to inspire/encourage their readers to be good Christians) - did Tolkien intend the same thing? I think its clear from his letters that if he didn't exactly intend it, he would not have been upset by the prospect.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by davem

We have all, Christian or not, absorbed that worldview, & so would have expected it, I suppose, in the Faery that Tolkien gave us. Yet, it is not traditional Faery - it is, for whatever (good?) reasons Tolkien had - an invention of his own. As I've repeatedly stated, though, what interests me is why he staked such a claim to traditional Faery (particularly in OFS), & presented himself as a writer within the tradition.

Is it possible that he did indeed see himself that way, and saw no tension or contradiction, because the distinction you see had not been perceived in his time?

He may have acted as a mediator between Faery & modern readers brought up in a Christian world, but was that his intention - is that how he saw his role? ... Was he using Faery for his own, evangelical, purposes- we know that that was his original motivation (one only has to read Garth's book) but was that desire something he left behind?

I haven't read Garth, so your reference to him that he intended to evangelize, is something new to me. All other readings about Tolkien seemed to declare pretty strongly that Tolkien was actually against such efforts, and steered clear of it himself.

Did he think of himself as someone opening a door to traditional Faery, so that we could enter into that 'pre-Christian' world, 'freeing' us from Christian 'indoctrination' - or did he actually want to make Faery Christian - or at least make us see it in that way, as 'the best introduction to the Mountains'?

Yes to the former, no to the latter, in my opinion. However, Christianity was so ingrained in him that he couldn't write any other way and be true to himself.

[davem]

Originally Posted by LMP

I haven't read Garth, so your reference to him that he intended to evangelize, is something new to me. All other readings about Tolkien seemed to declare pretty strongly that Tolkien was actually against such efforts, and steered clear of it himself.

An old post of mine from the dreaded Canonicity thread :http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...&postcount=248

Of course, this was the young Tolkien, & he may have changed in his later years, but I think it shows that 'once upon a time' (before his crest fell) he certainly was inspired by a desire to 'evangelise' his fellow countrymen.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

Of course, this was the young Tolkien, & he may have changed in his later years, but I think it shows that 'once upon a time' (before his crest fell) he certainly was inspired by a desire to 'evangelise' his fellow countrymen.

Well, we do know that Tolkien insisted that Edith convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism to marry him at a time when the Church itself (herself?) never required that of Catholic spouses. The only requirement was to agree to raise the children Catholic. And according to Carpenter, Tolkien apparently had little sympathy for or was unable to appreciate the difficulties Edith faced because of that decision.

Yet this seems to be contradicted by Tolkien's statement of "consciously so in the revision", as that would suggest he only late in his long writerly thought came to see that.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Yet this seems to be contradicted by Tolkien's statement of "consciously so in the revision", as that would suggest he only late in his long writerly thought came to see that.

So much in SoWM seems to reflect a kind of post-Reformation Catholic yearning for 'Merrie England'. Once upon a time England had been Catholic, there was dancing & singing (& faeries) in the Greenwood & Morris Men & a Maypole on the Green. But then things changed & the wonder went away. Its so close to what happened in the Shire. Things had been perfect - before the Lotho's & Sharkeys came along, & made everything dull & bleak. The Elves were, in a roundabout way, responsible for the Shire's renaissance through Galadriel's gift to Sam, as they were in SoWM.

Tolkien's own 'allegorical' interpretation of SoWM makes this pretty blatant. Wooton Major has suffered its own reformation.

Well, we do know that Tolkien insisted that Edith convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism to marry him at a time when the Church itself (herself?) never required that of Catholic spouses. The only requirement was to agree to raise the children Catholic. And according to Carpenter, Tolkien apparently had little sympathy for or was unable to appreciate the difficulties Edith faced because of that decision.

I wonder whether Tolkien saw Edith's conversion as necesary in order to confirm her 'committment to the cause'. Certainly he seemed to consider Catholicism to be, if not the only, then definitely the best & purest form of Christianity (cf his disappointment when Lewis went back to the Anglicanism of his childhood rather than Catholicism - of course, he didn't have the same leverage with Jack as he had had with Edith )

[Lalwendë]

I think it is not entirely surprising that Tolkien was an ardent Catholic, seeing as his guardian as a child was a priest; not only that, but his mother's conversion and consequent struggle seems to have acquired mythical status. I also think that his request that Edith convert must have been partly due to keeping his guardian happy; it would have been the 'done thing' in his mind. Maybe had he been ten years older when he married he might have been less insistent.

Having had two grandmothers who were raised as Catholics and who 'became' Anglicans at marriage, I know for a fact that conversion may be an act put on to appease a partner, as one Grandmother remained in her heart a Catholic (and was buried with Rosary beads, in an Anglican graveyard). My point being that the Church a person outwardly belongs to is not necessarily all that important and other factors have a bearing.

Ronald Hutton raised the point that Tolkien himself seemed to allow his faith to lapse during the 20s and 30s, not going to mass or confession. He clearly had his own reasons for this, but it suggests that he may not have always been the devout Catholic we take him to be. Therefore, we might place too much importance on his Catholicism.

I think that rather than his Catholicism having a bearing on how he created and developed the Legendarium, it might be more appropriate to look at his own morals and how they came to bear on it. His Catholicism definitely shows through in some aspects (and I also think that in SOWM, in the light of what we now know about it, reference to his Catholicism is very appropriate), but his morals (wherever they may come from, Catholicism, Christianity as a whole, upbringing, experience etc.) are the larger influence.

I find that SOWM is different to the other texts as it seems to have hidden subtexts which have clear spiritual messages, whereas in LotR, The Sil etc., he has created something more self contained, with a morality and spirituality which can be understood without reference to his own beliefs. SOWM, on the other hand, is improved by application of other information.

[Amanaduial the archer]

Originally Posted by Lalwende

What interests me is why Fairies were ever perceived as dangerous. The natural world at one time presented greater dangers than it does today

Why are children afraid of the dark? Fear is not always rational; indeed, more often than not it is irrational – a fear of tiny, harmless spiders or grass snakes is hardly uncommon. Yet the unknown, even for the most rational of beings, has always presented a challenge to humans – space, darkness, science…fairies. They are an unknown quantity, and in times when people were far more superstitious and belief in such beings was far more widespread, certainly tales of fairies were not always of benevolent creatures ‘bestowing powers’ – the Morrigan, for example, a figure of Irish Mythology, has been described by some as a kind of fairy, yet by others she is likened to a hag, a crone, a witch, even a devil-like/ ‘wicked’ character. Certainly not someone you want to meet on a dark night. And the tales of fairies were so elaborated over time – from peasant storytelling, into folk-lore, and even into the works of essayists and scholars, and telling of everything from through kidnap, mutation, bearing illnesses, or simply playing havoc with the every day lives of humanity – that it is easy to see why fairies, this unknown, changeable quantity, were feared. Indeed, they were considered even to be part of the natural world, and were worse than animals in some respects because they had that one thing over animals that made they all the more terrifying because it is the one thing that we as humans have over the animal world: intelligence which is far more than simply instinct. They have this, as well as the power of the natural world – and when you consider the power that this gives them, the consequences could be pretty scary.

This idea of the ‘unknown’ is retained to some extent, in the reactions of other characters to the elves: they are wondering and even a little afraid of these creatures who seem so ‘noble’. There is much Men do not seem to know about the race of elves (with the exception of Aragorn, naturally), and this causes fear and even distrust.

Earlier in the thread, the mention of Angels came up – the traditional, religious sense of angels, that is. This is a particularly interesting point, especially in relation to Tolkien’s elves. Consider: they are immortal and do not age, they cannot catch disease, they are incredibly wise, and what is more, they have some knowledge beyond that of men into Eru – who is basically a God-figure, the creator of Arda (although for a deeper discussion on that, consider Fordim’s ‘Is Eru God’ discussion! ). What is more, they are beautiful and glorious to the eyes of men. These are all angelic traits, traditionally. Even the idea that elves and humans could come together and have children is one that fits: in Genesis, angels and the ‘daughters of men’ had children, the Nephilim, who “were the heroes of old, men of renown.” (sorry, that was a slight deviation, admittedly). So maybe Tolkien’s elves are more reminiscent of the Judeo-Christian angels rather than of traditional ideas of fairies. However…the two ideas are not mutually exclusive: in Elizabethan times, there were two main theories on fairies (which Shakespeare especially took into consideration in his writing of such fairy characters as Puck in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Ariel in ‘The Tempest’), one classifying them into folklore ideas of nymphs, driads, fauns etc – and the other considering them to be fallen angels. Tolkien even, in one of his early works, refers to “The Holy fairies and immortal Elves” on this subject, and they are related to heavenly ideas such as the stars – the name Eldar, for example, and the roles of Galadriel and Arwen ‘Evenstar’. So maybe the similarities between Tolkien’s elves to fairies could also be a comparison to angels…?

However, this does naturally present a few problems – such as the slightly glaringly obvious fact that the fallen angels were those who fell with Lucifer and were therefore against God rather than with him. Bother. However…maybe this was intentional on Tolkien’s part, to give the elves something more of humanity? After all, for all their loftiness, their distance, their mystery, the elves are still, at heart, very human creatures.

[davem]

The Elves of BoLT were quite 'Angelic'. It seems they were to represent ideal beings, the teachers of Mankind through Aelfwine/Eriol. Its only over time that they develop increasingly negative traits: they become 'embalmers', etc. Yet they never move completely away from Tolkien's original conception. Hence, they remain moral beings. The Fairies of tradition are amoral.

[littlemanpoet]

In some traditions, including early English ones, some of the angels exiled from Heaven with Satan became devils, but others, more undecided or more neutral, became elves. At Judgement Day some of these may regain forgiveness and salvation and return to their old home, as Galadriel does at the very end of The Return of the King. This still does not make Galadriel into an angel, even in the sense of a messenger, in the way that Gandalf is; but one can imagine how a human being, looking back at the events of the Third Age and the First Age 'from a historical distance', .... could be confused, could put together Galadriel the Noldo exiled by the Valar and Gandalf the Maiar sent by the Valar (both of them allowed in the end to return) and no longer be able to see much difference.

Tom Shippey, from J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

[Amanaduial the archer]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Tom Shippey, from J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

Thank you. You have no idea how much you may have just helped me with me English Literature coursework

[davem]

Found this interesting:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/s...215993,00.html

The wild ones


Fairies and other spirits have long haunted the words and images of English literature. AS Byatt looks beyond the bright-cheeked children and pretty dolls of Edwardian illustrators to explore the menace that lurks beneath

Interesting reading & more importantly it calls into question Tolkien's statements re fairy stories being reduced to 'children's literature' & relegated to the nursery in OFS - he attacks Victorian/Edwardian fairy stories for trivalising Faerie. Yet, as we see here, there was a very dark, threatening, aspect to the fairy literature of the time - a whole dimension which Tolkien chooses to ignore.

And yet, its influence is not entirely absent in his own work:

Reading about all these people, grown-up boys with a sly interest in cruelty, incompetent grown-ups attracted by an imaginary world in which real horrors lurked, clubmen reproducing in their fastnesses the stodgy food of the schools where they had tortured and been tortured, the bright Edwardian nursery frieze can be seen with real goblins and greenteeths, wurricoes and strangling willows just visible behind the bright-cheeked children in their aprons with their nice apples and dolls.

'Greenteeths & strangling willows do indeed haunt the Old Forest ('Greenteeth' is a reference to Jinny Greenteeth, a female river spirit of British folklore with a tendency to drown unwary travellers, as Goldberry attempted with Tom on their first meeting).

I wonder why Tolkien leaves all this kind of faerie literature out of OFS? Is it because it would completely destroy his argument re 'Escape' - who would choose this dark Faerie world of animal torture & babies being buried alive as a place of Escape:

Take Maurice Hewlett, whose book The Lore of Proserpine is an apparently factual account of his relations with the fairy world. As a small boy he saw in the woods a fairy child his own age. It is throttling a rabbit, for pleasure, "the way children squeeze a snap-dragon flower to make it open or shut its mouth". Hewlett observed that the fairy's "cruel fingers, as if by habit, continued the torture, and that in some way he derived pleasure from the performance". Hewlett is interested in the fairies precisely because their nature has other laws, which include indifference to cruelty.

John Anster Fitzgerald painted a series of sleeping figures - an artist, some young girls - dreaming drugged visions of wraiths, demons and insect-like tormentors. He painted rats, white mice and sinister-looking flowers. His world is brightly coloured, almost hectic. His fairies are not kind. They persecute small creatures, torture snails and robins. If their faces are doll-like, it is because their feelings are alien. His Ariel lies on a branch of blossoming hawthorn in a diaphanous, flowery garment that seems to sprout out of him/her. It has a pretty face and mad, protuberant blue eyes - like a china doll come unpleasantly to life. It is not human. It is weird. The creatures relate to that disturbing Victorian poem, "Goblin Market", which attracted illustrators from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Housman and Rackham. Housman's goblins have things in common with Grahame's human animals, except that they are nasty: half-mole, half-imp, or half-rat, half-dwarf. They have dangerous rodent teeth in black visages. Rackham's goblins have a certain comic, nursery quaintness, a darker version of Beatrix Potter.

Barrie's chilling portrayal of Peter's inhumanity almost gets out of hand - the narrator sweetly describes the little graves Peter makes in the gardens for babies who fall out of the perambulators and die, but he then insinuates that Peter may sometimes have buried them alive. "I do hope that Peter is not too ready with his spade. It is all rather sad." Worse is his own heartlessness. He is annoyed with David's mother for discovering that he has put David's combinations on with the buttons at the front. He punishes her by sending a photo he has taken of David being hanged from a tree. Executions again.

As I say, this kind of thing hovers just on the edge of M-e, in the darker parts of the Old Forest, but in the main we don't see it - though we could imagine Orcs indulging in such things, in their case they would find an evil joy in it, rather than an amused, if slightly detatched, pleasure from the exercise.