Undertowers Thing: The Legimization of Fantasy

[Ephtariat]

Can't you see how he's stating that Old English has precious little to do with his Elves? "Not bridged by learning" to me says that there's not even room for a comparison. Not that it's a different playground, but it's not even the same sport.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Can't you see how he's stating that Old English has precious little to do with his Elves? "Not bridged by learning" to me says that there's not even room for a comparison. Not that it's a different playground, but it's not even the same sport.

Hmmm. As I said, I find your resistance fascinating.

'Not bridged by learning' may suggest that one who seeks a bridge to cross must look elsewhere than learning. What does your heart tell you? (Well, clearly it seems to tell you the opposite of what mine tells me, or so it seems).

And yet I surmise that Tolkien spent possibly more of his life pondering what was going on with the Beowulf poet's attitude to Elves than any other question. His complicated answer is written from Baywater to Rohan, and captured by the very idea of the Elf-towers to the west of the Shire.

[Ephtariat]

All I wish to point out is you are not demonstrating much (if any) comprehension of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' (1936), the key text in any discussion of Tolkien and Beowulf.

Am I inventing if I say that you take the beginning of the lecture as the key point whereas I take the end as that? And do you think that Tolkien perhaps makes his most important statements at the end of his lectures? Can't you think of other examples? Eucatastrophe in OFS? Courtesy and morals in the lecture on SGGK? "Felix peccatum Babel" in English and Welsh? Are we really discussing this?

[Ephtariat]

And yet I surmise that Tolkien spent possibly more of his life pondering what was going on with the Beowulf poet's attitude to Elves than any other question.

He actually wrote more on Middle English than on Old English. I'm sure he had better things to do than coming to terms with that nonsense. But of course he had to explain why we had that nonsense and why it was wrong.

[Ephtariat]

What does your heart tell you?

If my heart tells me something, am I not learning? Is there anything in life that's not learnt?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OK. I think we reached the end of that discussion on Beowulf (again). I am not sure, though, where it leaves me on your thesis on women, fairies, and adultery. I will have to think on it all some more.

If you wish to spell out some more your take on adultery and idolatory I would be happy to read.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

(1) I don't think that the fusion of the Bible with Germanic Paganism is understood by Tolkien as having to do with actual monsters or demons.

(2) I think he understands the monsters as allegories of human vices, and that is the sense in which I told you I read Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics as consistent with the W.P. Ker lecture on SGGK: in both cases, you have to do with adultery and idolatry, either "externalized" through monsters or internalized in Gawain's mind.

(3) Of course Tolkien says he's fascinated by the idea of actual monsters and real dragons, but that's because it is easier to wield a sword and slay an abomination than having to fight an inner battle with one's own mind, in my opinion. It is easier to fight an open enemy than a hidden enemy.

Possibly you are now less grumpy? I try to clarify by numbering your points above.

(1) I don't think that the fusion of the Bible with Germanic Paganism is understood by Tolkien as having to do with actual monsters or demons.
-- We simply disagree. The fusion is all about the Anglo-Saxon poet recognizing in the story of Cain a familiar tale of fratricide, exile, and the unspeakable couplings that occur when humans meet monsters in the shadow lands of exile.

(2) I think he understands the monsters as allegories of human vices, and that is the sense in which I told you I read Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics as consistent with the W.P. Ker lecture on SGGK: in both cases, you have to do with adultery and idolatry, either "externalized" through monsters or internalized in Gawain's mind.
-- We simply disagree. Tolkien in 1936 is saying precisely that in 'Beowulf' we have all the elements that will become allegory but as yet are not - the monsters are flesh and blood. Actually, this is the starting-point of Tolkien's actual literary criticism of the poem, in which he delights in the poet's crafting of ambiguities as he balances the flesh and blood monsters with a new Christian idea of Eternity - an idea that will dissolve the monsters into allegory, but has not yet.

(3) Of course Tolkien says he's fascinated by the idea of actual monsters and real dragons, but that's because it is easier to wield a sword and slay an abomination than having to fight an inner battle with one's own mind, in my opinion. It is easier to fight an open enemy than a hidden enemy.
-- Tolkien is surely fascinated by monsters and dragons because they are creatures of Fairy, of the other realm. But I agree with you that the real emphasis in Tolkien's own stories is with treachery and the enemy within - be it within an individual or a city, and I also think you are completely on the right track in relating this inner struggle with sexual themes like lust and adultery. Hence, for example, I regard the Mirror scene and temptation of Galadriel as the very heart of LotR.
--- Where I demur from your thesis (as I follow so far) is precisely because of our disagreements on (1) and (2). My sense is that the sexual struggle as we find it in LotR is an extension of the struggle to find courage and stand in the face of a raging monster. The same will power is required in both cases, as well as the same certainty of what is right. And my sense is also that this connection within LotR reflects Tolkien's sense of a continuity from the Beowulf to the Gawain poet, such that the chivalry of the Christian Gawain is (to some degree) latent already within the heathen hero Beowulf.

[Ephtariat]

@Hill You misunderstand me on 1) and 2). I'm sure that things are as you say, it's just that what you say does not contraddict what I say. Tolkien liked how the Beowulf-Poet depicted actual monsters of flesh and blood, but he did not believe that those monsters really existed (as he believes fairies do instead). That's why I said that the Beowulf-Poet's monsters are allegories (not to the Beowulf-Poet, or at least only partially) but to Tolkien, and so are the monsters in the Legendarium. That's why I said that the real fusion is northern courage in a Christian light. Also, I was grumpy earlier because my neighbours kept me up all night with their music...

[Ephtariat]

The only disagreement is that you seem to think that Tolkien is worried about sex with monsters/demons, which I find quite puzzling...

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I have to think on your first reply above. It seems to come back to your neutral Elves, and a conviction that Tolkien belived that fairies were real. (For myself, I do suspect that he did, but don't hang anything on it - which may be my mistake.)

On the second, I'm not sure what you mean by 'worried'. Probably I should take Tolkien's own faith more into account, but I tend to think much more in terms of his interest in an old art (telling a fantastic story) and also a genuine desire of the scholar to perceive the now lost myths of the ancient North. The 'fusion' that Tolkien points to is also a moment of scholarly discovery: we have before us the Bible and Beowulf and from the 'fusion' in the latter can infer something of the otherwise (largely) lost northern traditions.

There are two things you do not (yet) get.

(1) Tolkien also sees in 'Beowulf' that the Anglo-Saxon poet is not simply hiding the gods and showing the monsters but actually pointing at the old gods, who reside on the other side of the sea, and indicating that the way of the monsters - the way of the helrun or 'necromancer' - is somehow a mirror opposite of the way of the gods. That is how we step from 'Beowulf', with its notion of necromantic copulation commencing with Cain the human in exile and hints of those beyond the sea whose way the monsters have twisted, to The Lord of the Rings, where necromancers breed Orcs by black magic and the occasional Elf mates with a mortal man.

(2) Tolkien sees that the poet saw this Mirror and placed it at the heart of the design of 'Beowulf', and as such had inferred (not recalled) an already faded heart of the ancient pagan traditions. But Tolkien also sees that by his day the poet could no longer see who were the Elves. That knowledge had been too utterly lost. And just this process of estrangement from the Elves that culminates with 'Beowulf' is depicted in a much earlier moment with the Riders of Rohan and the Hobbits of the Shire.

[Ephtariat]

That's the problem: thinking that one's own mindset and personal views do not bear on his scholarship and literary creation. I don't think so. On the contrary, the first thing I ask myself whenever I read anything is: "Who's speaking?" I don't believe in impersonality.

Concerning Beowulf, the gods in Tolkien's view are simply angels, as his Valar show. That the way of the gods is opposed to the dark lord is simply the pagan understanding of the fact that the way of God is opposed to Satan. I simply cannot stress enough how much Cain has nothing to do with Elves, except as a human confusion. You are correct in pointing out the Riders of Rohan, since they call Galadriel a Witch. That's the same confusion of the Beowulf-Poet, and Tolkien was not at all inspired by that for Elf-Man relationships. Orc breeding may have to do with it, but that's another matter, and I repeat that it was problematic to Tolkien since it did not agree with Christian theology.

I always thought that Sauron is called the Necromancer as he is stated to be "lord of phantoms". There's really no point using the term necromancy unless it involves the dead.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Ephtariat, we are getting grumpy and nowhere. Let's try again tomorrow or in a few days, when we have both slept some.

[Ephtariat]

I think it's you who does not understand what I'm saying. I'm not getting grumpy. I shall try and explain better still. Tolkien says:

The key to the fusion-point of imagination that produced this poem lies, therefore, in those very references to Cain which have often been used as a stick to beat an ass - taken as an evident sign (were any needed) of the muddled heads of early Anglo-Saxons. They could not, it was said, keep Scandinavian bogies and the Scriptures separate in their puzzled brains. The New Testament was beyond their comprehension.

Then he quotes the excerpt on Beowulf and the Odyssey and adds:

So regarded Beowulf is, of course, an historical document of the first order for the study of the mood and thought of the period and one perhaps too little used for the purpose by professed historians.17 But it is the mood of the author, the essential cast of his imaginative apprehension of the world, that is my concern, not history for its own sake; I am interested in that time of fusion only as it may help us to understand the poem. And in the poem I think we may observe not confusion, a half-hearted or a muddled business, but a fusion that has occurred at a given point of contact between old and new, a product of thought and deep emotion.
One of the most potent elements in that fusion is the Northern courage: the theory of courage, which is the great contribution of early Northern literature. (...) I refer rather to the central position the creed of unyielding will holds in the North. With due reserve we may turn to the tradition of pagan imagination as it survived in Icelandic. Of English pre- Christian mythology we know practically nothing. But the fundamentally similar heroic temper of ancient England and Scandinavia cannot have been founded on (or perhaps rather, cannot have generated) mythologies divergent on this essential point. ‘The Northern Gods’, Ker said, ‘have an exultant extravagance in their warfare which makes them more like Titans than Olympians ; only they are on the right side, though it is not the side that wins. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason - mythologically, the monsters - ‘but the gods, who are defeated, think that defeat no refutation"

So, Tolkien knows that the Anglosaxons were confused (he does say "an evident sign (were any needed) of the muddled heads of early Anglo-Saxons"), the problems is that their confusion is not that "they could not, it was said, keep Scandinavian bogies and the Scriptures separate in their puzzled brains" and "the New Testament was beyond their comprehension". Those were not the points on which they were confused, or at least not here. Scripture does not say anything about Elves, so one could have Scripture and the New Testament very clear and still know nothing about Elves. Scripture never textually says that there is no evil birth (even though in Isaiah you read: "In the womb of your mother I formed you"), so one may understand (at least the letter of) Scripture and still think that monsters and men beget children.
You are yourself confused, @Hill, because you think that the references to Cain are key to the fusion in the sense that they are the main point of the fusion. But actually they are key simply because they are the most direct reference to the Bible in Beowulf. Nothing more, nothing less. They are both key and completely wrong and off track: the two things are not in contraddiction. The point of the fusion instead is Northern courage, on which Tolkien effuses throughout the rest of his lecture. The fact that he says "One of the most potent elements in that fusion is the Northern courage" should not be read as "Now that we're at it, let's talk about this other thing too", but as a rather weak admission by Tolkien that it is the real point. Indeed, Cain is barely mentioned in the lecture, whereas he dedicates pages to Northern courage. But that's not even why I say it's the real point. It's the real point because it finds application throughout: it finds application in Pagan Germanism, in Anglosaxon England, in Beowulf, in Tolkien's own works, in his personal life, and, if we let it, in ours as readers. Sex with monsters, comparatively, is a rather weird notion that means precious little to us, to Tolkien, and, let me say, even to the Beowulf-Poet, that simply uses it as way to legitimize his inclusion of monsters in the poem. I mean, can you derive any wisdom from the idea? Like, "When you meet a monster, don't have sex with it"? "Oh, thanks, I'll remind it!" I'm joking to make my point clearer.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

So, Tolkien knows that the Anglosaxons were confused (he does say "an evident sign (were any needed) of the muddled heads of early Anglo-Saxons"), the problems is that their confusion is not that "they could not, it was said, keep Scandinavian bogies and the Scriptures separate in their puzzled brains" and "the New Testament was beyond their comprehension".

But wait, these quotes are Tolkien ironically paraphrasing the critics that he is criticizing. As the quote you give above shows, his argument is that what has been deemed confusion is rather a sign of fusion. It is the opposite of what you say just here.

[Ephtariat]

Yes, he is ironically paraphrasing, but the irony is not in the "were any needed". That's serious. He knows they were confused, and it does not get one anywhere to deny the facts or to abscribe said denial to Tolkien.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

You are yourself confused, @Hill, because you think that the references to Cain are key to the fusion in the sense that they are the main point of the fusion.

We simply disagree. Tolkien says the references to Cain in Beowulf are key. To understand what he means by fusion, however, it is necessary to attend to the pagan side as well (hence, e.g. Jordanes on the story of the Gothic witches and the Huns). By fusion, Tolkien means that the Anglo-Saxon poet discovered that the Biblical story and the fragmented Germanic traditions complemented each other, each revealing a hidden side of the other.

[Ephtariat]

the Biblical story and the fragmented Germanic traditions complemented each other, each revealing a hidden side of the other

In some aspects, yes. Like the existence of Elves. Not in their supposed ascendancy from Cain. And the main contribution of Germanism is the courage in defeat.

[Ephtariat]

Tolkien says that the Cain nonsense is key because it opens the door to one's realizing that the Beowulf-Poet saw no contraddiction between Christianity and Northern Paganism. Really, that's it. It's key as a reference but it remains sheer nonsense in its content.

[Ephtariat]

I'll give you a counter example: if I say that Alcuin's question "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?" is key to understanding Alcuin's notion of incompatibility between Christianity and Northern Paganism, am I also saying that I agree with Alcuin, that I doubt that Ingeld has anything to do with Christ, and that Christianity and Northern Paganism are really incompatible for me? Should a future scholar who studies my thought (unmodest hypothesis, but it's the context bringing me to it) cite that statement of mine as proof that I believed that Alcuin has nothing to do with Christ and that Christianity and Northern Paganism are incompatible? Said scholar could cite me, like you do with Tolkien, saying that "Alcuin's question is key". Would that make the scholar right? In Tolkien's case, we do know that he believed that Christianity and Northern Paganism are compatible, but there is no clear statement of his concerning what he made of the Cain idea. Nonetheless, his notion of the Elves is that they are good, so they cannot be the offspring of Cain, and he was a Catholic, so he could not believe in evil births. On the contrary, he believed that the Incarnation of Christ proves that nothing on earth is irredeemable. Just like the hypothetical scholar would be right if he desumed from my other writings and my Catholic faith that I think that Christianity and Paganism are compatible, and that, since I believe that Christ has a part with anything on earth, I think that Ingeld indeed has to do with Christ.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I have never said that Tolkien considered the Elves the offspring of Cain. I have said that the marriages of Elves and men are to my mind mixed-race unions, and as such the acceptable side of what the northern traditions tell of mixed-race unions with demons and monsters. I have also requested that you get to grips with Tolkien's argument.

At this point, I can only suggest that we return to the Halls of Injustice, this time for real, and with you charging me with being wrong and confused. Alternatively, as I suggested above, we could sleep on it and try again in a day or so.

[Ephtariat]

The point is the neutral angels again. If Elves are neutral angels, and you're on the Elves's side, you don't connect them with demons and monsters, but with angels, so to save them. What you say is simply unthinkable to me, let alone wrong. That being said, I hope my neighbours let me sleep tonight.

[Ephtariat]

By the way, it's always good to reread Tolkien, even when you know his works by heart, but I don't think I need to come to terms with his writings. I think you isolate single sentences from their general context, so losing both the big picture and the details you're concerned with.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Ephtariat: That is something I struggled in the past too - the isolation of sentences in quotes - in discussions with Chrys about the OFS and Monsters Book (all of the other Tolkien essays). I went always back to the sources they came from, and see what kind of relation they had (with)in the text, or what the text was about? Despite I had a good time discussing with him and learned to understand Tolkien's works much better by reading and summarising them myself. I moved on from the discussions, because at a point I was done with analysing those essays and my interest went on to other subjects.

5) Concerning realism: I believe in historical criticism, which means that a literary work is a key to its historical context and author, and conversely the historical context and author are key to the understanding of a literary work.

I feel this is something I can fully agree with you, as it should be. It is not always easy to have an understanding, but in the very sense I feel you can trust the criticism to be true and logical, and not a fantasy of the mind. I too am not fully objective when viewing over Tolkien literary works and try to set central what the text is about in a few sentences. Studying his works was more for me to discover if I still the ability to single out the central points out of examples. And I feel I did quite well, though other have the right to disagree. I read through the entire thread, before adding this comment.

[Ephtariat]

Thanks, @Aikári Salmarinian. I have a background in Philosophy, and my training is summarizable in what I said before with the addition of this: when considering a word, always start from the etymology. I think it is very logical and fireproof.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Ephtariat: Oh you are a philosopher? That is really cool! A few things I can definite learn from your point of view, that will enhance my own. My background is the social academy, and social administration at university. But I have not a degree in administration. Yes, the best way is to go back to the root of word. There are often hidden facts to it, one don't know yet or is not aware off. I observed of what you wrote.

[Ephtariat]

@Aikári Salmarinian Thanks, your job is cool too. I have been studying Tolkien at the intersection between Philosophy and Literature these last ten years, and I'm loving it! Like, the idea that every good story expresses a philosophy, and every sound philosophy can be explained through a story. Tolkien himself says something along these lines, although he uses the word "allegory" instead of "philosophy". But I think that the two can be equated, as they're both identifiable in the meaning of the story.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Ephtariat: Indeed. Tolkien didn't like allegories. He even says so in the interview of 1965. I watched it.

According the Cambridge Dictionary online:
1. An allegory is term that refers to a story, play, poem, picture, or other work in which the characters and events represent particular qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion, or politics: The play can be read as allegory.
2. Philosophy is the use of reason in understanding such things as the nature of the real world and existence, the use and limits of knowledge, and the principles of moral judgment.

I think they are related, but not (entirely) the same. I like allegories in general, they enrich language. But not everyone understands what an allegory truly is. Philosophy I learned from simple understanding from a teacher at the socia academy: it is a question, where an answer is found upon and that turns to a new question. But yes, it far more complicated than this. Philosophy in my understanding in the discussion that takes place of matters as the definition says above.

NB: You can call me Aiks too, if you want. The whole notify is off with me.

[Ephtariat]

Great, Aiks. What I meant is that if you say that the philosophy of a story is pacifist, for example, it does not go too far from saying that the story is an allegory of peace. Of course the two could be different, but not in all cases. In some cases they could indeed be the same thing.
You can call me Eph, if you want.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Ephtariat, coming at yesterday from a different angel, here is what I think you are not seeing.

The basic deal with magic is that it is a counterfeit of enchantment. This is what OFS sets out, and it is found in practice in the stories. The point to take from Beowulf here is the relationship between the monsters at the center and the gods who are hidden over the sea. They are opposite, not simply different but opposites. So far as I can see, the conception of Elves and gods in relation to the monsters in Tolkien's universe is the same. Therefore, just as we learn something of, say, Galadriel, by looking at Sauron, so in the same way we may learn something of Elves by looking at the monsters.

And simply put, though you resist it like a dose of plague, one thing that Tolkien appears to have done is take the ancient notion of human-monster sex breeding monsters and pulled out its mirror opposite, with Elf-human sex breeding a line of kings.

[Ephtariat]

I don't buy it. There's actual unions between elves and men in folklore. He was inspired by that. Didn't need to do this acrobatics.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OK. You buy what you will. I'll return for another try later.
:)

[Ephtariat]

In the 12th century, Walter Map in his De Nugis Curialium recounts as many as five narratives of Fairy wives: the tales of Gwestin of Gwestiniog, Edric the Wild, the Breton Knight, Henno cum dentibus, and Gerbert d’Aurillac. According to Alberto Varvaro, this sort of tale may be summarized thus:

1) the hero meets in a fated time (midday or night) one or more women in a deserted place;
2) he possesses one of them and marries her;
3) the woman promises him love and fortune at a condition (not to talk about her origins, not to hit her, etc.);
4) the woman is fertile (and presumably also obedient and faithful);
5) the condition is not respected;
6) as a consequence the woman disappears, leaving one or more children behind, usually unhappy.
(Varvaro 1994: 74)

However, it should be added to such a scheme that sometimes the wife and her husband are reunited and end up happily ever after, such as in the lay of Marie de France titled Lanval, of which there is also a Middle English version titled Launfal, the text of which was edited in 1960 by Tolkien’s former pupil A.J. Bliss. Besides, Tolkien and Gordon cited Lanval in their edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK n. 43), and Cilli reports that three editions of the Lais were owned by Tolkien (TL 183-184). Indeed, the Fairy marriage we are discussing is not necessarily canonical, since “it is characteristic of this motif that, with relatively few exceptions, the Fairy offers sexual intercourse to the hero without any demand for the commitment of marriage and without stipulating any directly connected negative consequences” (Byrne 2016: 99).

Varvaro further points out that the Fairy wives are called by Walter Map fantastica apparitio (fantastic apparition), fantasma (phantasm), fantastica illusio (fantastic illusion), fata (Fairy), fatalitas (fatality/fairness/Fairy nature), portentum (portent) and prodigium (prodigy). Summing up, he claims (Varvaro 1994: 99) that they are located in an intermediate position between Le Goff’s categories of magical (demonic) and marvelous (non-Christian). Indeed, Walter Map himself explains that:

those apparitions that devils sometimes make on their own, after having had permission from God, pass either without damage or with damage, depending on whether the Lord, by bringing them, protects those who are subject to the apparitions or abandons them and allows them to be tempted (Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium II.13)

In other words, Map is here advocating St. Augustine’s notion of the permissio Domini, or the permission the Lord may accord demons to tempt in order for them to be able to do so, a permission that is mysteriously accorded in relation to God’s plan of salvation for mankind and the single person6. The notion was also known to the author of the Ancrene Riwle, who stated: “This is the fifth comfort: that he [the Devil] can do nothing to us except with God’s permission” (Salu 1955: 102). Since Tolkien was an expert on the Ancrene Riwle as well as the author of the preface to Salu’s translation, he was certainly aware of the concept of permissio Domini as well. Besides, in the fourteenth century, one also reads in John Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon that “fendes mowe nouƺt do but at Goddes suffraunce” [fiends may do nothing unless they have God’s permission] (John Trevisa, Higden's Polychronicon II in 1869: 427).

Another concept by Augustine that is clearly advocated in the Irish sources is that of “lustless sex in a prelapsarian world” (Byrne 2016: 101)7. Indeed, in two works from tenth century Ireland, in Tochmarch Étaíne the Fairy Midir describes “a land where people are eternally youthful”, a place where one finds those whom the Irish medieval writer calls “stately folk without blemish, conception without sin, without lust”, who, according to Imramm Brain, “operate according to a different moral law”, playing what the Irish medieval author calls “a beautiful game, most delightful, [. . .] sitting at the luxurious wine, men and gentle women under a bush, without sin, without crime” (Byrne 2016: 101).

In the fourteenth century the French author Jean d’Arras wrote his Roman de Melusine, the most famous Fairy mistress of the Middle Ages, since the Lusignan family held her story as their family foundation8. D’Arras in the prologue recounts the Melusinian tale that he found in the 13th century Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury:

Gervase [of Tilbury] himself gives us the example of a knight named Roger [in Gervase, Raymond] of Castel de Rousset, in the province of Aix, who came upon a Fairy and wanted her for his wife. She consented, on condition that he never see her naked. They remained together for a very long time, and the knight’s prosperity increased greatly. Then, much later, it so happened that when the Fairy was bathing, his curiosity made him want to see her, whereupon she plunged her head into the water, became a serpent, and was never seen again. The knight slowly lost all his prosperity and possessions (D’Arras 2012: 21)

Gervase himself had written about the subject also in more general terms, offering his testimony to the presumed credibility of the accounts and the usual explanation of the fairies’s nature as fallen angels, although he credits a version of such an explanation that comes close to arguing in favor of the so-called neutral angels, or a third party of angels who neither were faithful to God nor took Lucifer’s parts in his rebellion:

This fact [union of ghosts and human beings] is confirmed every day by people of absolute credibility: we have heard that some men have fallen in love with this kind of 'larvae' they call fairies and that they, wanting to marry other women, died before joining the new companions; instead we have seen that most of them lived in absolute earthly happiness; some then, when they have escaped the embraces of these fairies or have publicly revealed their nature, not only have they lost material prosperity, but also any comfort to their miserable life. I do not know what the meaning of these things is [...] I only know that those of the sinner angels who least seriously boasted with the devil are reserved for apparitions of this type, to bring trouble to men (Otia Imperialia III.86)

Marriages between men and fairies were not at all uncommon in Celtic folklore, as for instance the Welsh tale known as Llyn-y-Fan Fach bears witness, the oldest written version of which is preserved in the British Library.1 In this Lady of the Lake tale, a girl who rises out of the lake agrees to marry a local young man on condition that he will not hit her three times. Of course, he does, and she disappears back into the lake. Another example is the leannan sidhe in Ireland, literally ‘the sweetheart Fairy’, who offers artistic inspiration in return for love.

The whole corpus of tales involving the Fairy-marriage motif is classified as Thompson F302, and there is no doubt that Tolkien knew the tale in some or another version, be it an original Celtic story (Tolkien owned a private Celtic library) or some later retelling, such as the Middle English Sir Launfal, itself inspired by the Old French Lanval, one of the Lais of Marie de France, in which Sir Launfal meets the daughter of the King of Faerie, who bestows on him a magical source of wealth, and will visit him whenever he wants, so long as he never tells anybody about her. Going further back, the nymph Calypso, who keeps Odysseus on her island Ogygia on an attempt to make him her immortal husband, can be taken as a further (and older) version of the same motif.

Associated with the Fairy or fée is the notion of Féerie or Faërie. The realm of Faërie is consistently portrayed in English folktales as a place endowed with a different timeline from our own, one such that travelers returning home from Faërie often find that centuries have passed while they were "away with the fairies" and everyone they knew and loved is gone. Conceived in the Irish Echtra Condla as the place where there is no death, no strife, no sin, and no table-service, Faërie erases the whole of what time negatively entails, including the possibility of disagreement as well as social inequality. Thus it follows that the tales wherein the human lover joins the Fairy in the Otherworld are tales of time joining timelessness for a while or, in other words, tales of time being paused, or even, as in the Echtra Condla stopped once and for all. On the other hand, in the Fairy-marriage tales, wherein the Fairy joins her husband in this world, it is possible to think of the Fairy-marriage as vinculated to conditions, which may even be a clear prohibition of some sort, whose setting constitutes the beginning of the time-window wherein the marriage itself may last, before the count-down reaches zero when inevitably the prohibition is ignored and the conditions are therefore violated. These are then tales of timelessness joining time for a while or, in other words, tales of timelessness set in motion, usually only for a while.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I don't buy it. There's actual unions between elves and men in folklore. He was inspired by that. Didn't need to do this acrobatics.

Appreciate that you have said more since that I have not yet read, but was thinking on this in a Friday bath (which just goes to show how seriously I take this discussion). I perceive irresponsibility of rhetoric and direction on my own part, which follow my reporting a discovery, what I found in the philology, which concerns the monsters of 'Beowulf'. But we were in the midst of a discussion of Elf-humans, and I should have begun with these pairings.

Let us take the Elf-human unions of Tolkien's imagination as a given starting-point. He can have been inspired by anything you like. Then the significance of the acrobatics is that they save the appearances. Starting from this 'truth' (of the imagination, of folklore, of ancient myth, what have you) of Elf-mortal union, then with this acrobatics we arrive at the recorded imagination of the Anglo-Saxon poet, who saw Elves as monsters and monsters as a begatting of death in the wastelands when humans, rather than fight the monsters, trade, truck, have intercourse of one kind or another - become necromancers, Wormtongues of history, Ringwraiths of Myth.

What the acrobatics give is an illustration of what Tolkien means when he talks of black magic as an imitation of real enchantment, of how the noble truth becomes a twisted memory of recorded history.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Hey Eph! Indeed if the nature/philosophy of the tale is pacifistic, yeah it is an allegory for peace. Interesting naming of some other old fairy tales from the deep past. Maybe it is nice to find a book of various writers, where these fairytales are in? I think it is nice to read these old fairytales of other lands. Just for pleasure. Thanks for naming all these ancient fairytales, I never knew of their existence.

I never considered the elves as monsters. They are like fairies or angles to me, if that can be compared. I was always fond of them.

[Ephtariat]

You cannot convince me, @Hill. I would say that you cannot because you are completely wrong, but if you prefer to explain it otherwise, go for it. I'm getting tired of both of us repeating the same thing over and over.

[Ephtariat]

Hi, Aiks. I agree, they have nothing to do with monsters.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

You cannot convince me, @Hill. I would say that you cannot because you are completely wrong, but if you prefer to explain it otherwise, go for it. I'm getting tired of both of us repeating the same thing over and over.

Yeah! I sure know what you mean. We will have to accept this vast gulf between us, and hope we may still remain friends.

Have a good weekend!

[Ephtariat]

@Hill have a good weekend, you too!