Dumb question about 🐲dragons

[Elthir]

Did Somebody say Galadriel? I'm in!

But first I note the following revision from JRRT (The Hobbit, third edition), concerning the☀

"[ . . . ] before they came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon; and afterwards they wandered in the forests that grew beneath the sunrise."

Changed by JRRT to read: "[ . . . ] before some came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars;"

Both Galadriel and Gandalf refer to a time before the rising of the sun, when the Two Trees were in bloom and only the stars shone in Middle-earth. There were Orcs in those days. So what is the origin of those Orcs? Are they mindless automatons, are they Umaiar, or are they warped Elves?

Hate to be a pain, but I'd like to know the specific Gandalf/Galadriel quotes here before I comment slash blather on. Do you mean one of Galadriel's songs, for example?

[As an aside concerning something you raised, I believe that Saruman employed Uruk-hai "[great] Orc-folk" . . . and Half-orcs, with these latter, in my opinion, being the result of Saruman breeding Orcs with Men.]

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[Alcuin]

When the Company first meets Galadriel,

For the Lord of the Galadhrim [Celeborn] is accounted the wisest of the Elves of Middle-earth … He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted…
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Gandalf telling Pippin about the palantíri:

The palantíri came from beyond Westernesse from Eldamar. The Noldor made them. Fëanor himself, maybe, wrought them, in days so long ago that the time cannot be measured in years.
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Gandalf also mentions a time when “both the White Tree and the Golden were in flower!”

From “The House of Tom Bombadil”,

[Tom] … wandered into strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider, and the seas flowed straight to the western Shore; and still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight, when only the Elf-sires were awake. … “… When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. …”
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Appendix A begins,

Fëanor … wrought the Three Jewels, the Silmarilli, and filled them with the radiance of the Two Trees, Telperion and Laurelin, that gave light to the land of the Valar.
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The narrator’s description of Merry and Pippin watching the Riders of Rohan battle the Orcs,

Out of the shadows the hobbits peeped, gazing back down the slope: little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn.
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I think there are other references, too, but these are some that I can remember fairly quickly. It isn’t made explicit in LotR that after Morgoth and Ungoliant attacked the Two Trees that the Valar made from them the Sun and Moon before the death of the Trees, but I don’t think there is any (reasonable) question that this was the shape of the mythology at the time the story was published.

And that brings us back to Galadriel. There is little question that Tolkien’s view of her when he wrote and published Lord of the Rings – not to mention Road Goes Ever On! – that her return to Eldamar had been forbidden, and she believed her exile was permanent. I believe the myth at the time of publication (and for many years after) certainly stood so that there were only stars when the Elves awoke at Cuiviénen, no sun or moon; that the Two Trees were the principal source of light; that the sun and moon were made from their final flowering; and that Men awoke in Hildórien with the first rising of the sun. This, I suspect, was Tolkien’s view until the final years of his life, for his view of Galadriel lasted until at least the publication of Road Goes Ever On in 1967.

Besides, Lord of the Rings and its whole legendarium are fantasy and myth: why muck them up with science? Each has its proper place in life.

 

[Elthir]

Thanks Alcuin. And I hope you don't mind if I respond to these one by one.

Looking back at Tolkien's 1960s revision to The Hobbit for a moment, it seems to me that the author has removed a fairly explicit, easy to understand reference to Elves living in a world before the Sun. But explicit is the key here, and that's why I think Tolkien altered this.

With respect to your first two examples, I'd have no problem using Galadriel's phrase "days of dawn" to mean "long ago", or similarly, Gandalf's "so long ago that time cannot be measured in years" to mean a very long time ago.

And here's a point I often raise about Bombadil's description with respect to Round World Mythology (a description you raise below): there's a difference between interpreting what Tolkien published, and interpreting what Tolkien published informed by ideas from posthumously published texts.

I say "PPT" need not inform the reader, and I think of Tolkien's perspective about what a given description necessarily means -- in other words, I imagine a first time reader, reading without information gleaned from posthumously published sources -- again, sources which Tolkien himself was not bound by, no matter the overarching context in which a given passage was originally written.

Gandalf also mentions a time when “both the White Tree and the Golden were in flower!”

The Two Trees are part of Elvish history in my opinion. I also adopt Tolkien's post-Lord of the Rings text The Awakening of Quendi [published in The War of the Jewels] into my personal legendarium, which is, as you know, an Elvish fairy tale mixed with counting lore, in which the Sun exists before the Elves awaken.

[Tom] … wandered into strange regions beyond their memory and beyond their waking thought, into times when the world was wider, and the seas flowed straight to the western Shore; and still on and back Tom went singing out into ancient starlight, when only the Elf-sires were awake. … “… When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. …”

Again I'd have little problem writing that the Elves awoke before Men, and thus lived under an ancient starlight. And what does the "bent seas" refer to explicitly, to a first time reader who picks up Fellowship of the Ring?

I'm guessing that upon my first read of The Lord of the Rings I didn't interpret any of this to mean that the Elves lived in a sunless time or on a once flat earth -- at least not for certain I'm guessing, however I interpreted this back in the dawn of time when the stars were young.

Fëanor … wrought the Three Jewels, the Silmarilli, and filled them with the radiance of the Two Trees, Telperion and Laurelin, that gave light to the land of the Valar.

Even without bringing up the Dome of Varda here, the Two Trees did give light of course, but I don't see this as necessarily problematic.

Out of the shadows the hobbits peeped, gazing back down the slope: little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn.

Another nice description. But does this necessarily reflect Elvish history though, or history at all? Maybe it's Frodo's attempt a being "poetic" with something based on Mannish Myth?

According to PPT, Durin awoke before the Two Trees were slain, and yet (from A Journey In The Dark, The Fellowship of the Ring), we seem to have a moon before the Two Trees were slain. Or maybe there's another interpretation of the following, but even if so, that's part of my point here.

The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.

​

Or there is Treebeard's tale of the Entwives (edited here by me): "When the world was young, and the woods were wide and wild, the Ents and the Entwives -- and there were Entmaidens then . . . (snip for brevity) they walked together and they housed together. But out hearts (snip for brevity) The Ents ( . . . ) learned of the Elves and spoke with the trees. But the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees, and to the meads in the sunshine beyond the feet of the forests.

Before moving on here, I note the earlier chronology according to Treebeard, who says that the Elves began waking up trees and teaching them to speak, and that the old Elves wished to talk to everything. "But then the Great Darkness came, and they passed over the sea, or fled into far valleys . . ."

The Elves passed over the sea. And to continue with Treebeard's story -- after he's already explained the meads in sunshine -- the Ent goes on to note the various seasons, with the Entwives making gardens to live in, while the Ents went on wandering, only coming to the gardens now and again. "Then when the Darkness came in the North, the Entwives crossed the Great River, and made new gardens . . ."

What's this Darkness? Hammond and Scull give their opinion that it related to Morgoth, and that the Ents and Entwives separated millennia before we meet them in the story.

Anyway, can all this be interpreted differently too? Perhaps. Maybe Treebeard is jumping around and skipping great lengths of time or something, but the point is, I don't think an interpretation of a young world with sunshine in it, before the Eldar crossed the Sea (thus before the Two Trees were slain), would necessarily be incorrect.

It isn’t made explicit in LotR that after Morgoth and Ungoliant attacked the Two Trees that the Valar made from them the Sun and Moon before the death of the Trees, but I don’t think there is any (reasonable) question that this was the shape of the mythology at the time the story was published.

Agreed, not explicit, and so arguably not needing the same type of revision as we see in The Hobbit in my earlier post. For Tolkien's readership, in his day and as far as he knew anyway, the larger shape of the mythology is still hidden behind the sun (to try to wax poetic again), which allows JRRT to alter it, or save certain beloved ideas by characterizing the legendarium as a multi-perspective collection of accounts.

If or when I get the time, I'll respond to your section about Galadriel's ban and so on, in a different post.

 

[Elthir]

And that brings us back to Galadriel. There is little question that Tolkien’s view of her when he wrote and published Lord of the Rings – not to mention Road Goes Ever On! – that her return to Eldamar had been forbidden, and she believed her exile was permanent.

We see Christopher Tolkien questioning whether or not Galadriel's ban was necessarily in place when The Lord of the Rings was written -- but yes, RGEO is quite clear in any case, I agree, and I always support this version of Galadriel's history (a banned leader of the Exiles) as canon.

I believe the myth at the time of publication (and for many years after) certainly stood so that there were only stars when the Elves awoke at Cuiviénen, no sun or moon; that the Two Trees were the principal source of light; that the sun and moon were made from their final flowering; and that Men awoke in Hildórien with the first rising of the sun. This, I suspect, was Tolkien’s view until the final years of his life, for his view of Galadriel lasted until at least the publication of Road Goes Ever On in 1967.

I might be being thick-headed at the moment, sorry if so, but how is Galadriel being employed here with respect to the larger argument?

Besides, Lord of the Rings and its whole legendarium are fantasy and myth: why muck them up with science? Each has its proper place in life.

I'd say that a multi-perspective legendarium saves the notion of the Two Trees, and saves the Awakening of Men with the Sun's rising. And if one thinks the Elvish myths are more "true" with respect to the Sun (or the original shape of the world), the Dome of Varda and the Star Imagines, are not scientific in my opinion. Well, for two examples anyway.

Granted it's more scientific to have an already existing Sun, but we have (in theory) a legendarium which concerns a lot of Sun Years in any case. In other words, when reading The Children of Hurin for example, or The Fall of Gondolin, or a notable chunk of Quenta Silmarillion even, are you thinking about the Sun? Second Age, Third Age?

I agree, the notion of the Sun from one of the Trees casts a nice shadow in an overarching sense, but that part of this sentence also allowed for a pun, so I couldn't resist anyway.

And again, if anyone wants to imagine a starless age with Valian Years, I think Tolkien's choice of a multi-perspective legendarium allows this. In other words, in my opinion, Tolkien has saved his older ideas from "too much" science, while simultaneously allowing folks who ask, or might ask: but how . . . without the Sun!?! And receive an answer, if needed.

Personally I don't feel a great need to ask, but if someone's looking for it, said "answer" also need not be "super" obvious -- although granted that's subjective.

From The Shibboleth of Feanor: "In the night Feanor, filled with malice, aroused Curufin, and with him and a few of those most close to Feanor in obedience he went to the ships and set them all aflame, and the dark sky was red as with a terrible dawn."

A terrible what?

"In the morning the host was mustered, but of Feanor's seven sons only six were to be found. Then Ambarussa went pale with fear. "Did you not then rouse Ambarussa my brother (whom you call Ambarto)?" he said. "He would not come ashore to sleep (he said) in discomfort."

It seems as though Elves are sleeping at night here, mustered in the morning, after the dark sky was made red as a terrible . . . dawn. Compare to a mostly Mannish Silmarillion, wherein Fingolfin sees the light of the burning ships from afar, not like a terrible "dawn" but "red beneath the clouds"

Admittedly, here I'm (not JRRT) characterizing these two passages from The Shibboleth of Feanor as part of an Elvish rendition, but only as a possible illustration that things need not be obvious. After all, we readers are humans who are used to reading about the sun, dawn, morning, seasons . . .

. . . and especially swept up in a great tale of fantasy and myth, would we "notice" these words as "inconsistent" with something from another passage or account? Or if we do, can't we say that they are only part of a translation, and don't necessarily mean that the Sun had actually risen before Fingolfin arrove in Middle-earth?

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[Alcuin]

The point here is that where you and I agree that Galadriel as a leader in the Rebellion of the Noldor, seemingly permanently exiled from Aman, underlies the story told in LotR despite Tolkien’s work to alter this telling later in his life, yet remained unpublished during his life, so also I prefer the underlying tale of the sunless, moonless, starry sky of the Valian Years. Do I think 300 years enough time to fill the ranks of the Edain before they first entered Beleriand? Hardly. Do I find unpalatable the premise of sun and moon made from the last fruits of Telperion and Laurelin and led by chariots steered by Maiar, one of whom is wayward and somewhat unreliable, “primitive” and smacking of “superstition”? Yeah, I do. Does it bother me? No, not at all: I am not reading about the “real” world that we inhabit. I am reading myth, and I rather enjoy it as an escape from the “real” world.

“... If memento mori is sauce for the individual, I do not know why the species should be spared the taste of it. Stories of this kind may explain the hardly disguised political rancor which I thought I detected in one article on science fiction. The insinuation was that those who read or wrote it were probably Fascists. ... [Such stories] are as refreshing as that ... where the man ... realizes that most of the inhabitants of India do not care how India is governed. Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of ‘escape’. I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, ‘What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?’ and gave the obvious answer: jailers. The charge of Fascism is, to be sure, mere mud-flinging. Fascists, as well as Communists, are jailers; both would assure us that the proper study of prisoners is prison. But there is perhaps this truth behind it: that those who brood much on the remote past or future, or stare long at the night sky, are less likely than others to be ardent or orthodox partisans.”

– C.S. Lewis, “On Science Fiction”​

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[Hisoka Morrow]

For a quick response at the moment: in Myths Transformed text X [Orcs from Men plus Maiar orcs], the Awakening of Men is altered to provide for numerous Orcs upon Morgoth's return to Middle-earth.

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It's also absolutely unnecessary to twist humans into orcs, for obviously orcs suck much more on all kinds of aspects in comparison with humans, such as intelligence, combat ability, and so forth. Of course it's another matter that if Morgoth emphasizes much more on "Birth rate" and "Military logistic cost XD, the only Orcish advantage in comparison with humans, for Morgoth seem prefer "Spamming strategy" XDDD

 

[Elthir]

The point here is that where you and I agree (snip for brevity) so also I prefer the underlying tale of the sunless, moonless, starry sky of the Valian Years.

Ah, I get it now. Thanks. And I not only prefer the banned Galadriel tale, but Tolkien published it,
so for me it's the story no matter my preference.

That said, at the moment I can't recall any description published by Tolkien himself that explicitly represents an initially Sunless World, or a Flat-to-Round-World scenario [outside of The Hobbit passage noted above, again, later revised in any case].

Do I think 300 years (snip for brevity) “primitive” and smacking of “superstition”? Yeah, I do. Does it bother me? No, not at all: I am not reading about the “real” world that we inhabit. I am reading myth, and I rather enjoy it as an escape from the “real” world.

I too prefer the tale of the Sun and Moon hailing from the Two Trees. And I much enjoy imagining the long years of the Elves living under the stars. I'm certainly not arguing for the overthrow of the older cosmology . . .

. . . what I'm putting forth is that Tolkien saw a problem with some of his (externally) old ideas and found a way to preserve them -- in my opinion he abandoned a new Quenta Silmarillion if favor of re-characterizing the legendarium . . .

. . . and I'm further suggesting that by doing so, JRRT not only saved some of his "primitive" cosmology, but also allowed an imaginative out, so to speak, for anyone that did, or might, have a problem with a world without a sun (even if only at first without a sun).

With respect to JRRT's "You cannot do this anymore" in Myths Transformed Text I, Christopher Tolkien writes: "It is remarkable that he [his father] never at this time seems to have felt that what he said in this present note provided a resolution of the problem that he believed to exist: . . ."

I agree, it does seem remarkable, and thus, in my opinion, it's not that remarkable that Tolkien should later realize that the present note did provide the resolution. I think he realized this, and thus we find a number of late and fairly consistent characterizations of a legendarium that includes mixed and mannish texts or ideas, along with (at least the possibility of) Elvish texts like AQ.

Keeping in mind too, with respect to the internal transmission of the tales and what-have-you, that ultimately Ælfwine was out, and the Numenorean slash Bilbo transmission stepped in. To my mind, this fits with Tolkien's later re-characterization of QS and other works.

The Later Quenta Silmarillion II, section 57:

"But now upon the mountain-top dark Ungoliante lay. For a while she rested, and with eyes faint from labour she saw the glimmer of the stars in the dome of Varda and the radiance of Valmar far away. Slowly her eyes wakened and took fire, and her lust increased until it overcame her fear. She began in stealth to creep down into the Blessed Realm."

That quoted, for anyone possibly reading this post, anything odd stand out in this section?

And let's imagine that after reading Quenta Silmarillion, those who might find a sunless world too hard to swallow (even if few, but in any case, keeping in mind that the hope is that JRRT's work will continue to outlive him for generations of readers yet unborn), might read The Awakening of the Quendi next (or at some point), and find an interesting "inconsistency" within a text that Christopher Tolkien described as:

"It seems that my father had resolved (at least for the purposes of the "fairy-tale") the problem of the name "Star-folk" of the Elves (see p. 417, note 6) in a beautifully simple way: the first Elves awoke in the late night under skies of unclouded stars, and the stars were their earliest memory."

And I suggest that Tolkien had resolved his perceived problems on a large scale, and could thus preserve this account in the same legendarium as the "initially Sunless" Quenta Silmarillion.

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