Elves, Fairies and Neutral Angels

[Ephtariat]

@Chrysophylax Dives in another post brought the attention upon the apocryphal narrative of the Watchers, or angels lusting after human women. The account is found in the Book of Enoch and is founded on Genesis 6. I'd like to elaborate on the matter, and ask for your contributions to my reflections, that not only have to bear with Tom Bombadil, to which the aforesaid post is dedicated, but with the very notion of the Two Races of the Children of Iluvatar (Elves as an intermediate race between Angels and Men, considering that fairies and elves are often identified).

Gervase of Tilbury offered his testimony to the presumed credibility of the accounts of fairy marriages 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)

The belief in neutral angels is a non canonical doctrine, arguably developed in medieval Christianity after The Voyage of St. Brendan, the Irish account of the navigation of the saint in search for his Promised Land. In this voyage, Brendan came to an island that was peopled by talking birds, and they told him: “We wander through various regions of the air and the firmament and the earth...But on holy days and Sundays we are given bodies such as you now see so that we may stay here and praise our creator” (O’Meara 1976: 21). As Coree Newman wrote, “Evidence of widespread belief in the neutral angels also can be found in an early thirteenth-century poem from Germany. Composed by the Minnesanger Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival is one of the earliest literary grail legends. (…) Though briefy mentioned in the poem, the neutral angels play a significant role in Parzival as the immortal guardians of the Holy Grail. Their exile for their lack of vigilance and incomplete loyalty to God, however, is intrinsic to the overall theme of the narrative” (Newman 2018: 113). Newman then adds:

Like the Voyage of Saint Brendan, Wolfram’s work was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages. The neutral angels appear briefly in other medieval texts, including the Old German version of the Vienna Genesis, the Christherre Chronik, Jansen Enikel’s Weltchronik, Heinrich von München’s Weltchronik, and Salman und Morolf. In each of these contexts, the neutral angels appear to be an accepted and important part of medieval cosmology. Indeed even so canonical a text as Dante’s Inferno, composed in the early fourteenth century, made a contribution to the literary legacy of the neutral angels (Newman 2018: 115)

Most importantly, “these neutral angels also seem to share much in common with a variety of preternatural entities that originated in pre-Christian mythologies. Occupying a liminal space, passive angels, much like fairies and elves, could more readily interact with humans” (Newman 2018: 108-109), which is confirmed by a “tradition [that] finds the origin of fairies in the ‘neutral angels’” (32) and is attested by both Thomas Crofton Croker and Walter Evans-Wentz. Croker, in his 1825 study Fairy Legends and Traditions, reports that “it is said by those who ought to under-stand such things, that the good people, or the fairies, are some of the angels who were turned out of heaven, and who landed on their feet in this world, while the rest of their companions, who had more sin to sink them, went down further to a worse place” (Croker 1825: 37). Thomas Keightley, an Irish historian and Folklore scholar, in his 1870 The Fairy Mythology testifies to “the popular belief in Ireland” according to which “the Fairies are a portion of the fallen angels, who, being less guilty than the rest, were not driven to hell, but were suffered to dwell on earth. They are supposed to be very uneasy respecting their condition after the final judgement” (Keightley 1892: 363). Jeremiah Curtin in his 1895 Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World attests that “pious men” in Ireland:

...tell us that when the Lord cast down the rebel angels the chief of them all and the ringleaders went to the place of eternal punishment, but that the Lord stopped His hand while a great many were on the way. Wherever they were when He stopped His hand there they are to this day. Some of these angels are under the earth; others are on the earth, and still others in the air. People say that they are among us at all times, that they know everything that is going on, that they have great hope of being forgiven at the day of judgment by the Lord and restored to heaven, and that if they hadn’t that hope they would destroy this world and all that’s in it (Curtin 1895: 42).

W.Y. Evans-Wentz informs us of a report he had heard from a certain Father MacDonald, according to whom the fairies “were those who left Heaven after the fallen angels; […] those going out after the fallen angels had gone out were so numerous and kept going so long that St. Michael notified Christ that the throne was fast emptying, and when Christ saw the state of affairs he ordered the doors of Heaven to be closed at once, saying as he gave the order, ‘Who is out is out and who is in is in’. And the fairies are as numerous now as ever they were before the beginning of the world” (Evans-Wentz 1911: 105). Another variant of the same tale was told by Andrew Boord, physician of Henry VIII, concerning Welsh, as Tolkien recalls very soon after his usual captatio benevolentiae in his lecture about “English and Welsh” (MC 164).

The idea that the heavens were losing an evergrowing number of angels may furthermore find an echo in Tolkien's Ainulindalë, as, with Eru proposing each new theme, Melkor's dissonance captures or confuses an evergrowing number of Ainur, until Eru claps his hands and the Music is brought to an end.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Ephtariat, I am very glad you are now a plaza member posting in Lore! I have yet to have a conversation with a Tolkien friend about the Watchers. It seems to me that with this story we likely have the roots of what Tolkien was up to, but it is going to take some very nice upicking and unpacking.

From my own perspective, the Watchers of the Book of Enoch are vital to comprehending what is going on with Tolkien's Beowulf scholarship in general and his 1936 British Academy lecture in general. There are a couple of reasons for this, with the scholarship of R.H. Charles of the British Academy and its implications no less important that the key theme of the 1936 lecture, which is the reading of Genesis 6:4 that, as Charles had demonstrated, the story of the Watchers in Enoch illuminates. I'm (more than) happy to elaborate but maybe point me to where you wish to go with it?

By the way, if you look center below you see an option 'Full Editor & Preview'. If you select it you get the ability to add emoticons and format the text (putting quotes as quotes I find useful myself.)

[Ephtariat]

Thanks for pointing me to 'Full Editor & Preview'.

As for where I'd like to go with this, I think that Tolkien thought of the Elves as they are depicted in the Voyage of St. Brendan, as a third race between men and angels. Since we know from the drafts of OFS that he actually believed (if only as an hypothesis) in the existence of Elves as spirits of nature (see quote below), don't you think that he could read the Children of God of Genesis 6,4 as Elves, and read the union between women and the Children of God (Elves) as good instead of evil? Could the story of Beren and Luthien and their birthgiving to Dior (as much as all the other stories of Half-Elves in the Legendarium) be an original commentary to Genesis 6,4 and Enoch? He would have the medieval traditions reported above as precedents.

Leaving aside the Question of the Real (objective) existence of Fairies, I will tell you what I think about that. If Fairies really exist - independently of Men - then very few of our fairy-stories have any relation to them: as little, or less than our ghost-stories have to the real events that may befall human personality (or form) after death. If Fairies exist they are bound by the Moral Law as is all the created Universe; but their duties and functions are not ours. They are not spirits of the dead, nor a branch of the human race, nor devils in fair shapes whose chief object is our deception and ruin. These are either human ideas out of which the Elf-idea has been separated, or if Elves really exist mere human hypotheses (or confusions). They are a quite separate creation living in another mode. They appear to us in human form (with hands, faces, voices and language similar to our own): this may be their real form and their difference reside in something other than form, or it may be (probably is) only the way in which their presence affects us. Rabbits and eagles may be aware of them quite otherwise. For lack of a better word they may be called spirits, daemons: inherent powers of the created world, deriving more directly and 'earlier' (in terrestrial history) from the creating will of God, but nonetheless created, subject to Moral Law, capable of good and evil, and possibly (in this fallen world) actually sometimes evil. They are in fact non-incarnate minds (or souls) of a stature and even nature more near to that of Man (in some cases possibly less, in many maybe greater) than any other rational creatures, known or guessed by us. They can take form at will, or they could do so: they have or had a choice. Thus a tree-fairy (or a dryad) is, or was, a minor spirit in the process of creation who aided as 'agent' in the making effective of the divine Tree-idea or some part of it, or of even of some one particular example: some tree. He is therefore now bound by use and love to Trees (or a tree), immortal while the world (and trees) last - never to escape, until the End. It is a dreadful Doom (to human minds if they are wise) in exchange for a splendid power. What fate awaits him beyond the Confines of the World, we cannot know. It is likely that the Fairy does not know himself. It is possible that nothing awaits him - outside the World and the Cycle of Story and of Time. (OFS 254-255)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

As for where I'd like to go with this, I think that Tolkien thought of the Elves as they are depicted in the Voyage of St. Brendan, as a third race between men and angels... Could the story of Beren and Luthien and their birthgiving to Dior (as much as all the other stories of Half-Elves in the Legendarium) be an original commentary to Genesis 6,4 and Enoch? He would have the medieval traditions reported above as precedents.

Look, I like very much to read you on Tolkien because you bring extensive knowledge of the Middle English tradition that is usually neglected, and along with this comes chaste courtly love and Christian allegory, both of which I'm more than happy to learn more about. But by the same token, my sense is that you would benefit from a deeper sense of what Tolkien got from Beowulf and his Old English studies. So far as I can make out, the medieval take on fairies has them as either children of Cain (so flesh and blood) or fallen angels (hence spirit), and there is nothing in this discussion that is not to be found in Tolkien considering the Anglo-Saxon poet's reading of Genesis 6:4. For the sake of others reading this thread I'll quote the KJV, but remember the Anglo-Saxon was reading the Latin Vulgate.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

What one has to do here is: (a) establish how the Anglo-Saxon poet read these lines; (b) establish how Tolkien read these lines now that R.H. Charles had unearthed the story of the Watchers. But the historical picture remains cloudy unless we also see the wider significance of what Charles did for Biblical studies in this era. And only then, I suggest, it is helpful to ask about Elves. Because for sure as day, or least all my instinct tells me, we have a road here to Beren and Lúthien, but untill we get all the angles pinned down with Tolkien on Beowulf we will fail to see the wood from the trees.

[Ephtariat]

I don't agree, and I think that Tolkien would not either. See when he says that they are not "devils in fair shapes whose chief object is our deception and ruin"? What he means by this is that he does not buy into the theory that they were Children of Cain nor that they were fallen angels, but rather neutral angels, as I explained above.

[Ephtariat]

Perhaps the term "daemon" that Tolkien uses is passible of misunderstandings. I will try to explain.

“Leaving aside the Question of the Real (objective) existence of Fairies, I will tell you what I think about that. If Fairies really exist – independently of Men – then very few of our fairy-stories have any relation to them: as little, or less than our ghost-stories have to the real events that may befall human personality (or form) after death. If Fairies exist they are bound by the Moral Law as is all the created Universe; but their duties and functions are not ours. They are not spirits of the dead, nor a branch of the human race, nor devils in fair shapes whose chief object is our deception and ruin. These are either human ideas out of which the Elf-idea has been separated, or if Elves really exist mere human hypotheses (or confusions). They are a quite separate creation living in another mode. They appear to us in human form (with hands, faces, voices and language similar to our own): this may be their real form and their difference reside in something other than form, or it may be (probably is) only the way in which their presence affects us. Rabbits and eagles may be aware of them quite otherwise. For lack of a better word they may be called spirits, daemons: inherent powers of the created world, deriving more directly and ‘earlier’ (in terrestrial history) from the creating will of God, but nonetheless created, subject to Moral Law, capable of good and evil, and possibly (in this fallen world) actually sometimes evil. They are in fact non-incarnate minds (or souls) of a stature and even nature more near to that of Man (in some cases possibly less, in many maybe greater) than any other rational creatures, known or guessed by us. They can take form at will, or they could do so: they have or had a choice. Thus a tree-fairy (or a dryad) is, or was, a minor spirit in the process of creation who aided as ‘agent’ in the making effective of the divine Tree-idea or some part of it, or of even of some one particular example: some tree. He is therefore now bound by use and love to Trees (or a tree), immortal while the world (and trees) last – never to escape, until the End. It is a dreadful Doom (to human minds if they are wise) in exchange for a splendid power. What fate awaits him beyond the Confines of the World, we cannot know. It is likely that the Fairy does not know himself. It is possible that nothing awaits him – outside the World and the Cycle of Story and of Time.” (OFS 254-255)

A possibility such as contemplating the actual existence of Elves/Fairies may seem ludicrous to some of us, either because it does not fit within the rational scientific mindset of modern times, or because it does not have a scriptural basis widely recognized in Tolkien’s Catholicism (nor in most of the Christian major denominations).

Nonetheless, Tolkien’s definition of Elves/Fairies as daemons implies a reference to the Ancient Greek notion of daemon as a mediator between gods and men, neither good nor evil by default. It is a notion that reaches us through Plato’s dialogue Symposium, where Love is defined as such a mediator:

Diotima: “‘But you have admitted that Love, from lack of good and beautiful things, desires these very things that he lacks.’
Socrates: “‘Yes, I have.’
Diotima: “‘How then can he be a god, if he is devoid of things beautiful and good?’
Socrates: “‘By no means, it appears.’
Diotima: “‘So you see, you are a person who does not consider Love to be a god.’
Socrates: “‘What then, can Love be? A mortal?’
Diotima: “‘Anything but that.’
Socrates: “‘Well what?’
Diotima: “‘As I previously suggested, something between a mortal and an immortal.’
Socrates: “‘And what is that, Diotima?’
Diotima: “‘A great daemon, Socrates: for the whole of the daemonic is between divine and mortal.’
Socrates: “‘Possessing what power?’
Diotima: “‘Interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above: being midway between, it makes each to supplement the other, so that the whole is combined in one. Through it are conveyed all divination and priestcraft concerning sacrifice and ritual and incantations, and all soothsaying and sorcery. God with man does not mingle: but the daemonic is the means of all society and converse of men with gods and of gods with men, whether waking or asleep. Whosoever has skill in these affairs is a daemonic man to have it in other matters, as in common arts and crafts, is for the mechanical. Many and multifarious are these daemons, and one of them is Love.’ (Symposium 202d-203a)

Tolkien’s notion that these daemons or spirits may be guardians of nature finds a parallel in a Christian author of the 3rd century, Origen of Alexandria, who stated:

“We indeed also maintain with regard not only to the fruits of the earth, but to every flowing stream and every breath of air that the ground brings forth those things which are said to grow up naturally — that the water springs in fountains, and refreshes the earth with running streams — that the air is kept pure, and supports the life of those who breathe it, only in consequence of the agency and control of certain beings whom we may call invisible husbandmen and guardians; but we deny that those invisible agents are demons (the evil ones, to be distinguished from daemons who are not necessarily evil, my note)” (Origen, Contra Celsos 8.31)

So, while Tolkien would not share scientific reductionism, he seems to have found his own way to accomodate the hypothesis of the existence of Elves/Fairies within a Christian Catholic frame, through the references to Plato and Origen who are both, after all, central in the historical development of ecclesiastical thought.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I did not understand what specifically you disagreed with, nor how the quote related to that disagreement. Could you elaborate?

[Ephtariat]

I mean that the view according to which Elves were evil, in any form (children of Cain or fallen angels), is something that Tolkien considers to be a human legend, so that in my opinion he would consider Enoch to be rightly apocryphal, meaning uninspired by God besides non-canonical, insofar as it traces the origin of evil in the unions between angels and women, the children of which would be condemned alongside both angels and women (as we read in Enoch). In my opinion Tolkien considered Genesis 6 not to be a text explaining the origin of evil, but on the contrary a text describing a past age of glory when heroes such as his own Half-Elven characters roamed the world.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Thank you. Well, I vaguely trace your reasoning. As I said above, I think you stumble sometimes because you are unfamiliar with Tolkien's Beowulf scholarship. If I may say as a general point, the situation seems typical of the wider scholarship situation these days. By now we have a number of people who have explored this or that strand of Tolkien's thought, but they don't talk to each other and each seems to project this one strand too far and fall into error through lack of communication with the others. Back around June I returned to social media after a few years break and with my head very focused on my particular Beowulf research. What I soon learned, here as elsewhere, was that there was many Silmarillion things I was not taking on board, and that they had the potential to radically reshape my conclusions. So I've been trying to learn what I don't know.

You are quite welcome to argue the point about Genesis 6.4 without reference to Beowulf and to R.H. Charles. For myself, I don't see the point. This to me is obviously the starting-point of Tolkien's thought on these matters, at least by the 1930s.

[Ephtariat]

I read some time ago a quote by Tolkien straightforwardly saying that the views on Elves by the Beowulf-Poet were mistaken, but I can't seem to recall where precisely did I read the quote (I did not take notes, because it didn't surprise me at all, as much as he would not take too literally the notion of the Gawain-Poet that the Green Knight was "elvish", by which he simply meant supernatural).

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I never said that Tolkien shared the view of the Beowulf-poet on Elves. Obviously he did not given that the poet classifies Elves as monsters along with other nasties. What I did say was that Tolkien appears to have worked out what he was about by way of his engagement with the Beowulf-poet on Elves.

You must appreciate that the central plank of the 1936 lecture on Beowulf is Genesis 6.4. This is at the heart of how Tolkien reads Beowulf. And his reading, or such is my conclusion, must be set against the context of the scholarship of R.H. Charles.

[Ephtariat]

I give you my reading of the 1936 lecture on Beowulf. His lecture and essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics was such a triumph that it changed the field of Old English studies once and for all. Its chief argument is that monsters and the fight against them are worthy of attention as the focus of an epic poem, in the light of the survival of Paganism in the Christian-Pagan melange of the anonymous poet’s age. Since Tolkien straightforwardly says that in his works monsters represent evil incarnate (Letters 207), whereas in the real world there are only evil dispositions, and since idolatry and adultery are seen by Tolkien as the truly evil dispositions (although often depicted in his fiction in the form of greed), one can say that Tolkien’s monsters and devils, from Morgoth, Sauron, Dragons and Balrogs all the way down until Gollum, are figures of the idolater and adulterer, and that he gathered the notion chiefly from Beowulf, where the monster Grendel and his mother are said to descend from Cain the idolater, and the dragon equally stands for betrayal of both God and troth. In another of his most resounding academic writings, Ofermod, Tolkien discusses the later Old English poem The Battle of Maldon by pointing out that the anonymous poet represents a turning point in the history of chivalry between Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. While in the former the evil dispositions are externalized in the form of monsters, in the latter the presence of monsters is secondary in a plot revolving around the protagonist’s inner fight against his own disposition to idolatry and adultery. In The Battle of Maldon for the first time an English poet shows to be aware of the difference.

[Ephtariat]

I don't see how to work one's way from this interpretation of the lecture to any notion of the Elves, not even if we take into account Genesis 6:4, because you would have to say that unions between angels and women are adultery, and this would take Elves entirely out of the picture.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I don't see how to work one's way from this interpretation of the lecture to any notion of the Elves, not even if we take into account Genesis 6:4, because you would have to say that unions between angels and women are adultery, and this would take Elves entirely out of the picture.

OK. Maybe I was unclear from the start. What I tried to say is that to get to the places where you want to be - namely, Elves - I think one has to start from the ground up, namely Tolkien's reading of the Anglo-Saxon poet on Genesis 6.4 in the context of the scholarship of R.H. Charles. If one does this I am guessing that one ends up clear on your stuff, but I am not certain as I have not got all the way to the end on that side of things.

Basically, given that Charles transformed British academic readings of Genesis 6.4 in the early years of the 20th century, to me it makes no sense even talking about Tolkien and the Watchers of the Book of Enoch without first establishing what Charles had done and what it might have meant to Tolkien. But this is just my way as a historian, and a rare way among Tolkien scholars.

[Ephtariat]

I understand what you're saying, but I don't see a point in doing that, given what I said above. I hope you're not disappointed if I say so. In case you follow this track, though, I would be curious to see if you unearth something interesting. As for me, I am tired of hearing of Genesis 6 read in connection with Enoch since I have a close friend with whom I've been arguing against this theory while he passionately defends it as the only way to read Genesis 6 that makes sense canonically and historically, so... You may perhaps understand me better on this point now.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I mean that the view according to which Elves were evil, in any form (children of Cain or fallen angels), is something that Tolkien considers to be a human legend, so that in my opinion he would consider Enoch to be rightly apocryphal, meaning uninspired by God besides non-canonical, insofar as it traces the origin of evil in the unions between angels and women, the children of which would be condemned alongside both angels and women (as we read in Enoch). In my opinion Tolkien considered Genesis 6 not to be a text explaining the origin of evil, but on the contrary a text describing a past age of glory when heroes such as his own Half-Elven characters roamed the world.

Maybe it is worth teasing this out. I had thought not, because we have a simple disagreement (I think it all begins with Beowulf, you do not - we agree to differ). But I find it curious to read you on this material and, even though you are fed up discussing Genesis 6 with your friend, would like to push you to expand a little on the above. Here are some quibbles with your passage above.

1. Tolkien "would consider Enoch to be rightly apocryphal" if he believed that it cast the Elves as evil; but Enoch does not mention Elves (so your point is valid only if you first establish that Tolkien was reading Elves into the text).

2. "Tolkien considers to be a human legend" - but it is all human legend. I assume you mean 'uninspired human legend'?

3. "...Enoch to be rightly apocryphal, meaning uninspired by God besides non-canonical" - what Charles did was to show the Apocrypha as a sort of missing link between Judaism and Christianity. He did so by rewriting Jewish history because he demonstrated that the non-canonical Enoch gave what had in 2nd Temple times been the mainstream reading of the story of the Flood. This point relates to the above - it is all human myth and legend, and those stories have a history. While I absolutely acknowledge the significance of Tolkien's faith I also am certain of the significance to his thought of Biblical scholarship and the historicization of religious doctrine that it had established by his day.

4. "In my opinion Tolkien considered Genesis 6 not to be a text explaining the origin of evil, but on the contrary a text describing a past age of glory when heroes such as his own Half-Elven characters roamed the world." I'm half with you on that, but find it hard to add more because my mind is screaming 'Beowulf'.

But the real thing that I wonder on with all this is why you want to see the Elves as angels. Surely if we draw a connection with the Watchers and such stories then the angles are the Ainur?

[Ephtariat]

1. Indeed, but I believe we have good reasons to do so.

2. Well, there's also human history, Elven legend, Elven history, there's the knowledge the Valar gave to the Eldar, and then there's the Word of God.

3. I'm aware that the main consensus in the early centuries of Christianity was to read the bene Elohim as fallen angels, but surely there must be an early origin of the doctrine of neutral angels, perhaps even a Jewish origin, although that may have not reached us in written form. I think that the correct reading of Genesis 6,4 is precisely that the bene Elohim were neutral angels, and that Tolkien also read the text this way, thus disagreeing with Charles's interpretation, despite its importance for Biblical Studies. Indeed I think that his expression Eruhini is meant to parallel bene Elohim in Hebrew, which is why he gives it all the importance he gives it.

4. I think that Beowulf has very little to do with it.

I connect the bene Elohim with the Elves simply because Tolkien describes the Elves in The Death of St Brendan in the way they are described in The Voyage of St Brendan, as a third people between angels and men, a people of angels who fell from Heaven but fell on earth and not in Hell. Besides, only Elves have children with Men, not the Valar (except the Maia Melian), and certainly not the Ainur who did not enter Arda.

[Ephtariat]

I also have an observation on Enoch: he is asked to petition for saving the fallen angels. Where does this idea of petitioning for the fallen angels's cause originates, if not from an idea of the existence of neutral angels?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I find this conversation difficult to engage in, I guess because we have completely different ideas and talk past each other. I am curious as to what you are saying but find it hard to follow. It would help considerably if you gave quotations to illustrate and demonstrate. For example:

I connect the bene Elohim with the Elves simply because Tolkien describes the Elves in The Death of St Brendan in the way they are described in The Voyage of St Brendan, as a third people between angels and men, a people of angels who fell from Heaven but fell on earth and not in Hell.

I don't doubt you, but I have never read this and unless I can read Tolkien's words for myself I am not in a position to comment.

[Ephtariat]

In Tolkien's poem "The Death of St. Brendan" we read that the saint and his companions in their sea travels come to an island where they find birds on a tree and then:

From the sky came dropping down on high
a music not of bird,
not voice of man, nor angel's voice;
but maybe there is a third
fair kindred in the world yet lingers
beyond the foundered land.
(Tolkien's poem "The Death of St. Brendan", lines 97-102, in Sauron Defeated 263)

The original text of the medieval "Voyage of St. Brendan" has these same birds say:

"One time we were every one of us angels, but when our master Lucifer fell from heaven for his high pride we fell along with him, some higher and some lower. And because our offence was but a little one our Lord has put us here without pain in great joy and merriment to serve what way we can upon that tree." (The Voyage of St. Brendan, Book VI)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I must say that this plaza has a weird thing going on with birds!
Thank you @Ephtariat. Tomorrow I will look up the poem and try to digest what you are saying.

[Ephtariat]

Birds are fascinating creatures.
You're welcome. Looking forward to your thoughts on the matter.

[Silky Gooseness]

I’m quite ignorant on all of this and will need some time to properly digest: but may I first ask, when you say neutral, do you mean - incapable of good or evil, or capable of choosing either good or evil?

[Ephtariat]

@Silky Gooseness It means capable of choosing good or evil, and differently from man they don't just have a lifetime to make their choice but the whole duration of the world, at the end of which they are judged by God to be either saved or damned.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

In Tolkien's poem "The Death of St. Brendan" we read that the saint and his companions in their sea travels come to an island where they find birds on a tree and then:

From the sky came dropping down on high
a music not of bird,
not voice of man, nor angel's voice;
but maybe there is a third
fair kindred in the world yet lingers
beyond the foundered land.
(Tolkien's poem "The Death of St. Brendan", lines 97-102, in Sauron Defeated 263)

Hi Ephtariat,
The lines that you quote establish that the music is "not of bird" (and in fact the birds have all flown from the tree before the music is heard). Certainly the third kind that is neither angel nor mortal points at Elves. But Tolkien has substituted Elves in place of birds. Still, I can see why you make the connection. But the wider context is crucial. The poem comes from The Notion Club papers, which are a weird reconception of The Lost Road. In both, what we find Tolkien doing is taking old legends of the North and tweaking or revising them so that they fit his Silmarillion vision of the most ancient days. Here is the discussion among the Notion Club members that follows the poem:

'I read the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, of course, once upon a time, years ago, as well as; that early Anglo-French thing, Benedeit’s Vita. But I've not looked at them again — though perhaps if I did, I might find them less dull and disappointing than I remember them.’

'I don’t think you would,’ said Lowdham; ‘they’re rather dismal. Whatever merits they may have, any glimmer of a perception of what they are talking about is not one of them, trundling the magnificent theme to market like bunches of neatly cut and dried flowers. The Old French thing may be very interesting linguistically, but you won’t learn much about the West from that.'

‘Still that seems to be where you got your Volcano and Tree from. But you’ve given them a twist that’s not in your source. You’ve put them in a different order, I think, making the Tree further west; and your Volcano is not a hell-smithy, but apparently a last peak of some Atlantis. And the Tree in St. Brendan was covered with white birds that were fallen angels. The one really interesting idea in the whole thing, I thought: they were angels that lived in a kind of limbo, because they were only lesser spirits that followed Satan only as their feudal overlord, and had no real part, by will or design, in the Great Rebellion. But you make them a third fair race.’ (Sauron Defeated, p. 265)

I assume that you read the very last line as Tolkien making the birds a third fair race? I can see why one might conclude this from this line alone. But from the rest of the poem, the discussion of it, and fundamentally the basic idea of The Notion Club papers, I'm not as yet convinced. My own reading would be that Tolkien identified the medieval idea of birds as neutral angels as a distant and corrupted memory of the Elves.

[Ephtariat]

In the excerpt from the OFS draft that I cited above we read:

"They are in fact non-incarnate minds (or souls) of a stature and even nature more near to that of Man (in some cases possibly less, in many maybe greater) than any other rational creatures, known or guessed by us".

But we know Middle-earth Elves as incarnate beings. This means that we have to take separately his idea of the Elves as they may possibly exist from his Elves of Middle-earth. And he may think of the "real" Elves as neutral angels while Middle-earth Elves are not. Indeed, in Thomistic philosophy angels are non-incarnate.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

“Leaving aside the Question of the Real (objective) existence of Fairies, I will tell you what I think about that. If Fairies really exist – independently of Men – then very few of our fairy-stories have any relation to them: as little, or less than our ghost-stories have to the real events that may befall human personality (or form) after death. If Fairies exist they are bound by the Moral Law as is all the created Universe; but their duties and functions are not ours. They are not spirits of the dead, nor a branch of the human race, nor devils in fair shapes whose chief object is our deception and ruin. These are either human ideas out of which the Elf-idea has been separated, or if Elves really exist mere human hypotheses (or confusions). They are a quite separate creation living in another mode. They appear to us in human form (with hands, faces, voices and language similar to our own): this may be their real form and their difference reside in something other than form, or it may be (probably is) only the way in which their presence affects us. Rabbits and eagles may be aware of them quite otherwise. For lack of a better word they may be called spirits, daemons: inherent powers of the created world, deriving more directly and ‘earlier’ (in terrestrial history) from the creating will of God, but nonetheless created, subject to Moral Law, capable of good and evil, and possibly (in this fallen world) actually sometimes evil. They are in fact non-incarnate minds (or souls) of a stature and even nature more near to that of Man (in some cases possibly less, in many maybe greater) than any other rational creatures, known or guessed by us. They can take form at will, or they could do so: they have or had a choice. Thus a tree-fairy (or a dryad) is, or was, a minor spirit in the process of creation who aided as ‘agent’ in the making effective of the divine Tree-idea or some part of it, or of even of some one particular example: some tree. He is therefore now bound by use and love to Trees (or a tree), immortal while the world (and trees) last – never to escape, until the End. It is a dreadful Doom (to human minds if they are wise) in exchange for a splendid power. What fate awaits him beyond the Confines of the World, we cannot know. It is likely that the Fairy does not know himself. It is possible that nothing awaits him – outside the World and the Cycle of Story and of Time.” (OFS 254-255)

So it is the 'non-incarnate minds (or souls)' that prompts you to connect fairies with angels, right?

We have to be careful in this discussion because it is calling up all the deep issues. Now we have to consider the draft OFS text that you quote above. My first response is that 'fairy' here is not a synonym for 'Elf'. If anything, we seem to have here Old Man Willow and possibly the Ents.

But the real issue concerns how one steps between an academic essay and the stories. One reason that OFS is so difficult to make sense of, I think, is that Tolkien steps between a scholarly perspective and that of his stories and it is not easy to see how the two perspectives quite fit together. I think they do, and I know that you do too. But however the attempt is made, we both appear to agree that the idea of 'Fairies' given here is a long way from that given in the stories - where the Elves are one part of the Incarnate children of God.

Which is all to say that I am starting to find this conversation interesting, but do please go slowly!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

If you are saying that Tolkien believed in Fairies (or at least the possibility) as defined in the draft of OFS then I would guess that you are probably correct. Where I get stuck is the connection between these 'real' Fairies and the Elves of the stories.

[Ephtariat]

@Chrysophylax Dives But you are aware that he does equate Fairies with Elves in this very passage (and elsewhere), aren't you?

These are either human ideas out of which the Elf-idea has been separated, or if Elves really exist mere human hypotheses (or confusions).

[Ephtariat]

If my preceding analysis is correct, however, I think that we have:

1) Elves (Fairies) in God's creation (the real world) as neutral angels and spirits of nature = non-incarnate rational beings who have something akin to "serial longevity" (they are tied to the tree, rock, wind, etc., they are appointed as guardian of until the end of times)

2) Elves in Tolkien's subcreation as the elder race of the Children of Eru = incarnate rational beings who have "serial longevity" (their life lasts until the end of times) and perhaps may be reincarnated (Tolkien never came to a final pronouncement on the matter)

If this is the picture, then the relation between real and subcreated Elves would be essentially that Tolkien phantasized their existence as a separate race of rational incarnates, in his being inspired by nature appointed them the representatives of the best of human artistic faculties, and, since he says that at the end of times men will be granted the Flame Imperishable so that their fantasies may become real, he wished that God would grant his fantasy to become true in the end, i.e. that the neutral angels may be saved and made siblings of men, to share in the making of Art in the world to come.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

All right, I have to digest this. Am still confused on the birds to be honest (are they neutral angels/Elves?). It is a pity that Silky Gooseness is so busy because her analytical mind would help here. But I will keep thinking on this.

[Ephtariat]

I think that Tolkien there is leaving us a clear indicator that neutral angels have to do with Elves, but no, in his rewriting of the story of St. Brendan I now suppose (after you convinced me) that the birds are neither Elves nor neutral angels, and that St. Brendan simply came close enough to Tol Eressea to hear the Elves singing.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

If this is the picture, then the relation between real and subcreated Elves would be essentially that Tolkien phantasized their existence as a separate race of rational incarnates, in his being inspired by nature appointed them the representatives of the best of human artistic faculties, and, since he says that at the end of times men will be granted the Flame Imperishable so that their fantasies may become real, he wished that God would grant his fantasy to become true in the end, i.e. that the neutral angels may be saved and made siblings of men, to share in the making of Art in the world to come.

I'm just posting this to (a) let you know that I am thinking on it (but might need to sleep on it) and (b) to fix just what is to be thought about. It is a very interesting line of thought. (And I'm glad we have left Enoch behind because my own research on R.H. Charles and the like made it almost impossible for me to grasp what you were getting at.)

Edit. That last was not a suggestion that we return to the Book of Enoch! I can see how you would connect it ultimately, but please let us not return to that until we are clear on the above.

Edit edit: I'm going to have to dig out OFS and read through those earlier drafts again.

[Ephtariat]

Sounds good!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Been reading Manuscript B and have tried to make a post - but far too tired. Still, I do now at least want to thank you for prompting me to pick up OFS once again, and even more for pointing me to this passage about the 'objective' reality of Fairies - the only point I think where we find Tolkien venturing his opinion on this question, which makes it especially valuable. You have I think illuminated an element of OFS I have never got my head around before - but each time I try and formulate what it is the post ends up a mess. Some more thought and I'll be back to you, but probably not today!

Morning edit: @Ephtariat Just to say, I've got to get through a load of work before I can return to this. Most of my posts are made in breaks from work but I need to dedicate full attention so probably will not be posting here before the late afternoon at the earliest.

[Ephtariat]

I'm glad that you've found the passage interesting. Looking forward to your thoughts when you find the time.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

My thoughts remain uncollected. For the moment I'm focusing solely on the objective existence of Fairies as non-incarnate minds (putting aside for the moment questions of their origin and eventual fate, and also their relationship to Tolkien's literary Elves). So far, all I have are questions. Here are three, and I'd be most interested to hear what you have to say to each.

1. Am I correct that the passage that you quote is the only place in all the OFS material (and perhaps all of Tolkien's writings) in which he talks of the objective reality of Fairies?

2. How do you think this objective statement relates, if at all, to the main theses of OFS? In particular, do you think that the notion of the realm of Fairie as the place where desires may be immediately realized is the same notion as set out in the passage you quote above? (My inclination is that it is, and that we should thereby qualify the statement early in the essay that mortal are supernatural and fairies are natural by noting that 'nature' includes an invisible 'magical' realm. But I wish to think on this more.)

3. What to make of the prayers that are found in this Manuscript B draft material? Michael Milburn, in an influential but confused essay in Tolkien Studies volume 7, argues that these prayers assert the preeminence of God, which is in conflict with the 'occult' idea of nature entailed in the idea of Fairies actually existing, and infers that this is the point at which Tolkien abandoned this line of thought and dismissed the idea that Fairies might be real.
On this last, I am aware that you disagree, so please don't go into detail about why Milburn is wrong (I've already done that!) What I'd really like to know is what you make of the prayers, in and of themselves, and specifically as written down in these drafts.

[Ephtariat]

1. There are a number of passages where he says that he will not get into the question of whether fairies exist. Then there is this, that in my opinion excludes that fairies can be anything except angels or devils:

Fairies exist in faierie and whether they are diabolical or angelic hardly affects the question. The question is (for some) whether faierie exists independent of man, or whether it is creation. (OFS 268)

If fairies can be either angels or devils, and we know that they can't be devils, then they may only be angels. But the only kind of angels they may be is neutral angels, because otherwise they would be in Heaven, not on earth.

2. This is complicated, because it must be considered with regards to the omnipotence of God. In Thomas Aquinas's thought, God's omnipotence exists in the potentia absoluta (absolute power) but not in the potentia ordinata (ordered power). The potentia ordinata is limited by the laws governing the created world, which have been set at the beginning and cannot be broken except by miracles. Now, if fairies are angels and guardians of nature their power is certainly limited within the realm of worldly existence that belongs to the potentia ordinata (even they cannot perform miracles unless it is God's will that they do). However, their power exceeds that of men, and they are able to do things that are impossible to us (although some of those things may be possible to a magician, in Tolkien's opinion). For example, they may "incarnate" temporarily at will, or they may exert an influence upon an object at distance, without being in contact with it. In this sense, I believe, Tolkien may attribute to the fairies the ability to make wishes come true, because most of our wishes are satisfied without necessity to require an actual miracle. But, if we take him literally, no, the fairies cannot make ANY wish come true, because of the distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata.

3. I think that Tolkien's writing those prayers to ask for divine and angelic illumination in his writing. It is especially interesting to take into account that one of these prayers focuses on the angels and their hierarchies (seraphim, cherubim). I believe that his focus on the angels indicates that he thought he was discussing a matter of angelic pertinence.

te deum laudamus te dominum confitemur te aeternum patrem
omnis terra veneratur tibi omnes angeli tibi caeli et universi
potestates tibi cherubim et seraphim incessabili voce proclamant (OFS 264)

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I am so glad you are here on the plaza! When I read you talking about Aquinas my intuition here (as in your commentary on OFS) is that you are more than likely on the right track, as opposed to this from Milburn:

These prayers do not flow logically out of what is said before them or into what is said after them and cannot have been meant by Tolkien for inclusion in the final text even at the time (257-58, 263-64). Rather, Tolkien was, in fact, praying these prayers, but writing them down as he prayed them instead of (or in addition to) speaking them, with the curious result that we now have a record of what he prayed. Flieger and Anderson have identified the three prayers as most of the Gloria, the last portion of the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer (i.e. “Sanctus sanctus,” etc.) and the Te Deum (OFS 298-99). All three are prayers of worship that assert the preeminence of God, precisely that point of monotheistic religion with which the “occult” definition of Faery would be “in opposition” (qtd. in OFS 298-99). In keeping with these prayers, Tolkien removes any serious consideration of the existence of fairies from the final version of his text, and when he defines Faery years later in his essay on “Smith of Wootton Major,” it is imagination of which he speaks, not any “occult power” behind nature (OFS 27-84; Smith 84-101).

On this quote, do please feel free to unleash as much critical commentary as you wish. For one thing it will give me a chance to read your post above carefully. But I also have an instinct that what is going on here is reflective of a wider failure of imagination in the reading of Tolkien.

[Ephtariat]

More about 2.

That Tolkien distinguishes between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata is made clear by the passage when he discusses miracle and magic (here taken as an equivalent of faierie):

Miracle and magic are not so easy to distinguish from one another. They have in fact only become distinguished by Christian theology. The profundity of the cleavage that separates them both from the merely marvellous, novel, or ingeniously devised seems to establish a close relation between them, that obscures their radical difference. The miracle produces real effects, and alters either the past or the future or both. It is effected, as a creative or recreative act, only by God, or by the power specifically and for the nonce delegated by God transcendent, outside the World but master of it. It can therefore only be (humanly speaking) good, in purpose and in ultimate effect. It is essentially moral. It is not possible to perform miracles, it is not possible to be the agent for miracles for an immoral purpose, or a frivolous purpose, or for no purpose at all. God performs miracles in answer to prayer, or through the mediation of a person (human or angelic) who is in that particular operation the agent of a specific divine purpose. The power comes from outside the world, and is 'supernatural'.
Magic does not come from outside the world. Magic is the special use (real, imagined, or pretended) of powers that, though they must derive ultimately from God, are inherent in the created world, exterior to God. (OFS 252-253)

To better clarify on what he means by magic, he distinguishes from scientific operations in the immediate following, but it is more useful to quote in this respect another passage:

In essence faierie is the occult power in nature behind the usable and tangible appearances of things which may tend or pretend to tap, but in which and by which fairies have their being. (OFS 264)

[Ephtariat]

Concerning your last comment, you write:

But I also have an instinct that what is going on here is reflective of a wider failure of imagination in the reading of Tolkien.

I could not agree more. It is like taking the whole of OFS and throwing it in the bin.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Well, I'll be blunt. And I'm not sure I could justify this, or not without a lot of thought, it is more gut instinct. But I read this and indeed all of Milburn's essay as endemic of a North American Protestant reading of Tolkien, where by Protestant I mean a broad spectrum that includes much of the supposedly secular discourse of the universities. This was also what I was trying to get at when I wrote on the other thread about William Ridgeway's racist attitude to southern Europe. The two things are different, but they combine in still prevalent attitudes. And to be totally blunt, my feeling is that this combination is what you encountered in the review of your work by that nitwit editor whose name we shall pass over.

But all of this is a side note, because not only will it get us off track with OFS but is liable to engender annoyed comments from others.

[Ephtariat]

All three are prayers of worship that assert the preeminence of God, precisely that point of monotheistic religion with which the “occult” definition of Faery would be “in opposition” (qtd. in OFS 298-99). In keeping with these prayers, Tolkien removes any serious consideration of the existence of fairies from the final version of his text, and when he defines Faery years later in his essay on “Smith of Wootton Major,” it is imagination of which he speaks, not any “occult power” behind nature (OFS 27-84; Smith 84-101).

Concerning this point, since you invite further comment, I think that he removed his consideration of the existence of fairies only because he was worried of the rationalist critique he would be opening himself to, not because of any fear of excommunication or anything related to religion.

[Ephtariat]

Well, I'll be blunt. And I'm not sure I could justify this, or not without a lot of thought, it is more gut instinct. But I read this and indeed all of Milburn's essay as endemic of a North American Protestant reading of Tolkien, where by Protestant I mean a broad spectrum that includes much of the supposedly secular discourse of the universities. This was also what I was trying to get at when I wrote on the other thread about William Ridgeway's racist attitude to southern Europe. The two things are different, but they combine in still prevalent attitudes. And to be totally blunt, my feeling is that this combination is what you encountered in the review of your work by that nitwit editor whose name we shall pass over.

But all of this is a side note, because not only will it get us off track with OFS but is liable to engender annoyed comments from others.

Thanks for the last comment, I see what you mean but it's ok to leave at that as you suggest.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

All three are prayers of worship that assert the preeminence of God, precisely that point of monotheistic religion with which the “occult” definition of Faery would be “in opposition” (qtd. in OFS 298-99). In keeping with these prayers, Tolkien removes any serious consideration of the existence of fairies from the final version of his text, and when he defines Faery years later in his essay on “Smith of Wootton Major,” it is imagination of which he speaks, not any “occult power” behind nature (OFS 27-84; Smith 84-101).

Concerning this point, since you invite further comment, I think that he removed his consideration of the existence of fairies only because he was worried of the rationalist critique he would be opening himself to, not because of any fear of excommunication or anything related to religion.

You are aware that for some years Milburn's essay provided the consensus reading of OFS? After a while, I got fed up with reviewers telling me that I needed to read it and decided to demonstrate why I was not referring to it by taking apart its basic claim that Fairy = Imagination, as defined by Coleridge. This I did in my TS essay that I know you have read. I confined my attention only to the Coleridge side of his argument, was aware that I thereby undermined what he said about Tolkien rejecting the real existence of Fairies, but did not know how to think about that (also, I was a bit mentally exhausted from what I did manage!) I'll add that the first draft of my TS essay received such a mind-blowingly stupid peer review that even though it was accepted for publication I kept it back a year because I felt I must be missing something. That was the last time I submitted something to an academic Tolkien journal. It just seemed to me a waste of time - nobody out there appeared to have a clue. And then out of the blue you wrote to me about your OFS commentary...

This I tell you because it provides some context for my wondering what is wrong with all these scholars that they just will not or cannot enter into the Catholic side of Tolkien's thought, and hence my reflections on biases above.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

OK. So I am coming round to your views. Be patient! I want to go and read the quotes you give in the book (to get the wider context). I'm starting to glimpse how this 'objective' stuff may relate to elements of the stories, but I want to hold that off until I am clearer on the angels.

[Ephtariat]

By the way, did you receive my e-mail concerning Honegger's review on Hither Shore 19? He is rather more complimentary, criticizes me for not including the whole of your articles in the bibliography, but calls "The Road" insightful.

[Ephtariat]

@Aelfwine Welcome to the Plaza! I am under a different alias here, but I'm the Green Girdle. I would appreciate if you could contribute to this thread by offering us your view on the following quote from the edition of On Fairy-stories by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson:

Fairies exist in faierie and whether they are diabolical or angelic hardly affects the question. The question is (for some) whether faierie exists independent of man, or whether it is creation. (OFS 268)

As I read it, Tolkien sees no third option but that Fairies, if they exist, must be either angels or devils. There are a series of places in the drafts of OFS where he contemplates the possibility of the real existence of the Fairies/Elves, so we know that it was a real possibility to him, but of course he needed to accomodate the hypothesis in his Catholic worldview, so I suppose that he might see them as the neutral angels of some medieval accounts he was familiar with (like The Voyage of St. Brendan). Fairies surely can't be devils in his opinion, but that can neither simply be angels, because otherwise they would live in Heaven, not on Earth, and he is clear that Fairies/Elves live on Earth, like neutral angels who were banished to Earth, not to Hell. What do you think?

[Priya]

Hello Ephtariat

On “neutral angels and fairies” - I think it’s worthwhile taking a step back and looking at the historical development of Tolkien’s mythology.

In the late 1910’s and early 1920’s he invented a bunch of beings who accompanied the ‘gods’ to the planet. An enlightening early statement, depicting the function of some of them is found in BoLT I.

“About them fared a great host who are the sprites of trees and woods, of dale and forest and
mountain-side, or those that sing amid the grass at morning and chant among the standing corn at eve. These are the Nermir and the Tavari, Nandini and Orossi, brownies, fays, pixies, leprawns, and what else are they not called, for their number is very great: yet they must not be confused with the Eldar, for they were born before the world and are older than its oldest, and are not of it, but laugh at it much, for they had not somewhat to do with its making, so that it is for the most part a play for them; ...”.

These beings, we must admit, were divine - due to their existence with God before the making of the World. We also must acknowledge that some were based on folklore and fairy tale type mythical creatures. And really - they had little to do, with religious beliefs. A few, to us in the real-world, can perhaps be categorized as fays or fairy-folk. So what I see is that many of these creatures - because of their love of the natural world - were, as it were, “neutral” by default. In other words ‘angelic beings’ who were generally disinterested in getting involved in the affairs of the Children of God, but instead preferred to ‘watch’ and enjoy the earthly drama.

Also, around the early 1920’s Tolkien defined the beings to inhabit the planet in The Creatures of the Earth (PE 14). Again we see these fay-type beings crop up.

And then again for The Hobbit in the late 1920’s to mid 1930’s - Tolkien’s selection of mythological creatures for the story is very much classic fairy tale based. Even in the on-going ‘background’ Silmarillion works (History of the Elves) - we don’t see too much focus on angelic beings other than the gods themselves. Which is hardly suprising.

It is only when we get to TLotR in the late 1930’s that I believe serious consideration was given to including/linking-in Christian angel theology - more directly relatable to the Bible and associated apocryphal texts. Both Bombadil and Goldberry were, I believe, the early vehicles used to convey such intent.

Surely Tolkien thought of them as incarnate ‘creatures’ and assigned them an in-mythology ‘type’? They weren’t elves, but were they initially conceived as fairies (fays)? And if so, does it logically follow that they were ‘angelic’, yet in the vein of the above BoLT I quote - mainly interested in nature? Thus, again - by default - pseudo-neutral? Indeed, did Tolkien discard the early hierarchical Creatures of the Earth - or did he build upon it? And how, if it all, does OFS shed light on the matter? Was his interchangeable use of fairies and elves a product of man’s confusion? Was it deliberately done because he was lecturing to an audience not familiar with his mythology? Is it because they both are inhabitants of Faërie and technically fairy-folk. And where is this Faërie?

These are the sorts of the questions that need resolving in my mind, and are equally important as trying to pin down and tie-in specific biblical and apocryphal literary writings/quotes to his opus.

Chrysophylax Dives - I hope you don’t mind me omitting conversation about Beowulf - at least for the moment!

[Ephtariat]

@Priya You should read Dimitra Fimi's "Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History". There she argues, rightly I think, that fays are simply the early version of Maiar. Indeed, you have Gwendeling (future Melian) described as a fay.

Now, Tolkien in his earlier writings of BoLT (and coeval writings) calls the Valar Gods and the Maiar fays. But does this mean that they are not angels? I don't think so. It's not like he was a Neo-Pagan in the 1920s-1930s who then converted to Catholicism. He, and his mythology, were Catholic all along. In fact he calls the fairies in BoLT "the holy fairies" and in the Gnomish and Qenya Lexicons there are terms of Christian theology being glossed.

The interchangeable use of "fairies" and "Elves" is not just a feature of OFS: it's in BoLT too. It was only in his late years that Tolkien decided that he would call the Elves only so, and it was a decision he took when writing LotR. Faërie is not a geographical place but a state of mind.