Sierra provides a lucid metaphysical analysis that transforms a technical lore question into a profound exploration of ontological sacrifice and fate. His scholarly rigor offers a definitive look at the complex intersection of spirit and flesh within Tolkien’s legendarium.
Install our extension to search inside any video instantly.
Answering Your Tolkien Questions Episode 155: Did Melian Become Incarnate When Marrying Thingol?Added:
[music] [music] [music] >> Hello, hello, hello everyone. My name is John Sierra, and I'm your Tolkien scholar. And what that means is that I study the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. And in doing this, I pass along all of the knowledge and the wisdom and insights that I gain to you in the form of answering your questions mostly, and that's what I'm here to do. I've been doing this for a while now, and it's so much fun.
And our community is growing.
And I'm just absolutely loving it. Um A few things have changed on YouTube, and I'm going to talk about that very briefly.
But first, let me say just the normal things, which please like the video, comment on the video, subscribe if you haven't already, and consider membership. We'll talk about that more at the end of the video when you've had a chance to really take it in and make the the more informed decision of whether or not you should do those things.
Anyway, we have eight questions to get to, which is not a very high number, but they're Some of them are very lengthy and quite complex. As a matter of fact, one of them actually came through in a comment. And normally, when I get questions in a comment, I answer right there in a comment, and I say, "Well, if you want to be in a video and it's more complicated, there's other ways to submit questions." But this was I said to the guy I replied, and I said, "Well, this is deeper than you think, and I'm going to have to take some time to really do this, and it's going to be in whatever episode this is. I believe we're on episode 155.
If what I'm saying is not matching the number on the screen, then you'll know that I'm wrong.
They're recorded ahead of time, so I'm never sure exactly which one I'm doing.
Anyway, if you do want to ask a question, you can ask right there in the comments section and normally I will answer you right there unless it is something that is like a lot deeper than that and has to be handled in a video, in which case I'll just let you know which episode to be on the lookout for.
Um if you have something that you do want to be featured in the video or you do feel that it is something that is not going to be a quick and easy answer, you can do so two ways. One way is through a website called Quora. Quora is a knowledge sharing website where you could ask any sort of question about any sort of subject and have people with relevant knowledge or experience or wisdom or expertise or education answer your question. And of course, if you ask a token question, if you ask any question, you're going to get a list of people who know about that topic, but if you ask about Token, you're going to get that list. I'm going to be at or near the top of the list or you can very easily just go to my Quora account and ask me there. There's a link directly to my Quora account in the description as well as a link to my Quora space, which is called the Grey Havens and you can ask questions there as well. Everybody that writes on the Grey Havens and is allowed to answer questions on there is somebody that I vetted and really knows their stuff as well. So it's not just me, it's me and a lot of other people as well.
Uh that being said, you could also do it through YouTube and up until now I've been saying that you have to do it through the YouTube mobile app. Now, I'm not sure when it changed, but the other day I was looking and I realized that you can now submit user posts for questions and you don't have to be on the on the mobile app. So whether you're on the mobile app or whether you're right here on the website version, the web version on my account, just click the little icon that says community and there's like a little picture of like people on there Um, and that's where you can leave a post and I will consider that a submission for a question to be asked in a in a in a video.
That being said, um, I'm I'm sitting here in Dunharrow. If you were wondering what the backdrop is, I'm in Dunharrow, very close to the Paths of the Dead. As a matter of fact, if I put my ring on real quick and and make myself disappear there, you can actually see the entrance to the Paths of the Dead there. But let's let's come back and take the ring off because it has all these sort of negative effects.
Um, and one of our questions, as a matter of fact, I do believe it is our very first question that we're going to, um, talk about a little bit about the Paths of the Dead. Um, it's not like our biggest topic this week, of course. Uh, it's just that I don't think I'd used a Dunharrow backdrop before and I thought it would be fun to do so.
So, I am going to do a reading for you and here I have uh, the collected poems of J.R.R. Tolkien. This is volume two of three, which covers the years of 1919 to 1931.
And I thought it would be fun to go to the 74th poem on here, The Nameless Land, The Song of Eärendil.
Uh, which was written, um, started it in 1924 to 1955. So, this is one that he kept coming back to and there is a lot of text here and there's a lot of different versions of it and such.
Uh, but what I think is I'll read the preamble here and then I'll read the first version, version A and I'll read version B uh, and and sort of compare them and then we'll we'll move on. We won't read any more than that. There's a version C as well and uh, there's a I mean, let's see. How how many are there?
Because this goes on for quite a bit.
This is one of his what like I said, he he wrote this poem over the course of like 30 years. But, that's really the cool thing about getting this is that you not only get all of his poems, you get all the versions of his poems and the commentary from Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scott. So, let's do the reading here.
The earliest extant version of this poem is a typescript made with a purple ribbon and inscribed Leeds, May 1924, rewritten Darnley Road, two verses added to August 1924, inspired by reading Pearl for examination purposes. Darnley Road was Tolkien's address at the time.
The inspiration he refers to, Pearl, is an alliterative poem in Middle English attributed to the same anonymous 14th-century writer who produced Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Its subject is the speaker's daughter, his precious Pearl, who died as a child.
Falling asleep at her grave, he dreams of a land of marvels, and his daughter appears to him, now grown to maturity.
She upbraids him for excessive grief, and she is now in a blissful state of grace, a bride of Christ in a heavenly city of light.
Reassured by the vision, the speaker wakes with his heart at ease. Tolkien was well acquainted with Pearl from his studies, and it was on the curriculum at Leeds when he taught there in the English school. Hence, his review of the work for examinations, as he explained to to his Aunt Janice, Pearl is absurdly complex in technical form. The stanzas have 12 lines with only three rhymes, an octave of four couplets rhyming AB and a quartet rhyming BC.
In addition, each line has an internal alliteration. It occasionally, but rarely, fails in the original. And if that is not enough, the poem is divided into five, i.e., groups of five stanzas, except for one in which there are six.
Within a five-stanza group, the chief word of the last line must be echoed in the first line of the following stanza.
The last line of the five group is echoed at the beginning of the next, and the first line of all is to wind up echoed in the last line of all.
Scholars, he added, judged that the metrical form of Pearl was almost impossibly difficult to write to write in, though the Pearl poet managed 101 stanzas and quite impossible to render in modern English. No scholars or nowadays poets have any experience in composing themselves in exacting meters.
I made up a few stanzas in the meter to show that composition in what it was not at any rate impossible, though the result might today be thought bad.
And that is uh from uh 18th July 1962 in the letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, page 448. In its first incarnation, Tolkien called his work The Nameless Land.
We give the earliest text of the poem as A, incorporating corrections Tolkien made in manuscript, as well as his replacement for line 29, the original reading of which he obscured beyond recovery.
>> [clears throat] >> There lingering lights do golden lie on grass more green than in gardens here, on trees more tall to touch the sky with silver leaves as swinging clear. By magic dude, they may not die, where fades nor falls the endless year. Where ageless afternoon goes by, or mead and mound and silent mere, where draws no dusk of evening near, but birds do sing in blazing choir, do shrill with quenching voices sheer, and the woods are filled with wandering fire.
With wandering fire the woods do fill, with sudden gleams that glint and go, with music sweet but mournful still, that trembling shakes where shadows grow. In rustling green and gurgling rill, more soft, more faint than fading slow, in dell and deep like dew doth spill, like footfalls dancing to and fro. Like voices lost that veiled and low now sing unseen to muted lyre, like winds of yesteryear that blow and wake to flame a wandering fire.
A wandering fire with tongues of flame whose quenches colors quiver clear on leaf and land without a name no heart may hope to anchor near. A dreamless land I'm sorry, a dreamless dark no stars proclaim, a moonless night its marches drear, a water wide no feet may tame, a sea with shores encircled sheer, a thousand leagues it lies from here and the foam doth flower upon the sea 'neath cliffs of crystal carven clear on shining beaches flowing free.
Their blowing free unbraided hair it's meshed with light of moon and sun and tangled with those tresses fair a golden silver sheen is spun. Their feet do beat and white and bare do listen limbs and dances run. Their robes the wind their raiment air such loveliness to look upon. No brand no brand and ever one whose foam beyond the furthest sea did dare and dipped behind the sun on winds on earth they want wafted free.
Then Tir na nOg more fair and free than paradise more faint and far.
O land forlorn where lost things be where my laughter and longing are. My dreams and echo all the sea of solemn surges on the bar beyond the world's end waft to me in sleep I see a wayward star. Then beacon towers and Gondobar more fair when faint upon the sky on hills imagine-less and far the light of longing flare and die.
The wayward star in line 56 is the planet Venus.
The morning star or evening star that is wayward in the sense of wandering as all planets appear to do in their celestial paths from an earthly point of view.
Tolkien marked the second stanza of text A to be deleted and in the course of two pages of manuscript workings developed a replacement. This is in version B which would start on line 13. With wandering fires the woods do fill and glades forever green they glow.
Those dells immortal dews distill in fragrance of all flowers that grow.
Their melodies of music spill and falling fountains plash and flow and water white leaps down the hill to seek the sea no sail doth know. Its voices fill the valleys low where breathing keen unbent and brier the winds beyond the world's edge blow and wake to flame a wandering fire.
Uh so that's the end of version B which is just a a minor correction where he took out a part and then decided to replace it.
Basically take you know just replacing the entire second stanza which you could see of course since the first stanza ended with and the woods are filled with wandering fire he began with with wandering fires the woods do fill which is uh the same as the original.
And then of course he ends with and wake to flame a wandering fire which is the same as well. There's only minor differences in version B there uh because of course this the next stanza starts with a wandering fire with tongues of flame.
Um there are many many versions of this and I thought well maybe if we skip ahead a bit we can sort of uh go to the last version of it.
Oh here we are.
I went too far.
Here we are.
So I'm going to read without the commentary just to show you um how far it goes in terms of its improvements and much much later. This is version G.
So, this is you know we still we read A and B and so we're skipping C and D and E and F and this is version G. So, I'm going to read that now. Eärendil Eärendil their elven lights still gleaming lie on grass more green than in gardens here on trees more tall to touch the sky with swinging leaves of silver clear. While world endures they will not die nor fade nor fall their timeless year as morn unmeasured passes by or mead and mound and shining mere.
When endless eve undimmed is near or harp and chant and hidden choir a sudden voice of soaring sheer in woods awakens the wandering fire.
With wandering fire the woodlands fill and glades forever green and glows in a dell where dreaming niphredil as star awakened and gleaming grows and ever murmured music spills for there the fountain mortal flows. Its water of white leaps down the hill by silver stairs it singing goes to the fields of the unfading rose where breathing on the glowing briar the wind beyond the world's end blows to living flame the wandering fire. The wandering fire with quickening flame of sil of living light illumines clear that land unknown by mortal name beyond the shadow dark and drear and waters wild no ship may tame no man may ever anchor near to haven none his hope may aim through starless night his way to steer.
Uncounted leagues it lies from here in wind on beaches blowing free neath cliffs of carven crystal sheet the foam there flowers upon the sea. O shore beyond the shadowy sea O land still the ethel ar O haven where my heart would be the waves still beat upon by bar. The white birds wheel their flowers the tree. Again I glimpse them long afar, then rising west of west I see beyond the world the wayward star that beacons bright in Gondobar more fair and keen more clean and high. O star that shadow may not mar nor ever darkness doomed to die.
So, what's really interesting here is is that you see that where he starts is not all that connected to his legendarium, you know. He's not even writing about person named Elfwine or about Tol Eressëa in the Undying Lands.
He's just writing about the sea and and and such and and just sort of being poetic because he's trying to do something similar to Pearl and showing that it is possible to write poetry in that way in modern English which is, you know, was thought impossible by some scholars and poets and such and he's saying, "Well, I can do it. It may not be the greatest thing ever written. It might even be bad, but it can be done."
And then we see where now he is very entrenched in the legendarium. And of course he's talking about the straight road that goes from the Grey Havens to Tol Eressëa in the Undying Lands.
And we hear multiple allusions and even it beginning with that cry, "Eressëa, Eressëa."
And we we see more of the Elvish language creep in there as well. So, you know, and of course it became a poem about Elfwine who was said to be somebody who came from the Undying Lands to Albion. Um the way he originally wrote it he was coming to to Luthien or Luscean which is the Isle of Albion or Great Britain. Of course, like he said he used that that name Luthien for a lot of different ways. He settled on it being Thingol and Melian's daughter, of course, but there were a lot of other Lúthien's before that. There were five other Lúthien's before her, and one of them was Great Britain itself. Um and what's interesting is that all of the other Lúthien's, other than, you know, the island, were were men. Or not mortal men, but that they were male. Like one of them was one of the one of the Valar, I believe, a grandson of Tulkas, I believe. Um I I think are we talking about that this week or did we talk about that last week? I'm looking through the um the uh stuff that we're talking about today.
Um I I think we might have talked about it last week. But anyway, there is a bit of the collected poems of J.R.R. Tolkien. If you're interested in seeing how his mind works, and reading a lot of poetry that is related to the um the legendarium that wasn't included in the books that you might have, like Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, including um multiple versions of each poem, which is absolutely spectacular. Um I I highly recommend you get it. Uh it's quite the pricey uh book uh in three volumes, but I I got it on sale. It was half off, and I had a bunch of uh gift cards in my Amazon account from, you know, this past uh holiday season.
So, I was able to to get that pretty easily.
Anyway, that being said, we have a lot of questions Well, I don't have a lot of questions, but we have a lot to get to in terms of some of these questions are rather deep, and we're going to have to talk about them quite a bit. So, that being said, uh we're going to move on to your first question.
>> [music] >> Our first question comes in by the request of Louis Gulibo, who asks, "Was Théoden afraid watching Aragorn head down the Paths of the Dead, especially knowing what happened to his ancestor?"
Um well, no. For Théoden to be afraid watching Aragorn head down the Paths of the dead. He would have needed to have been there to witness such a thing and he was not.
Uh, let's examine the big error before we talk about the emotions involved and I will talk about that. Firstly, no one witnessed Aragorn take the paths of the dead other than those that were with him, which would be Gimli and Legolas and Elladan and Elrohir and Halbarad and about 30 or so unnamed Dúnedain Rangers.
Théoden was not even aware that Aragorn was doing this until it had already happened. The idea of taking this path had occurred to Aragorn, but in the last resort sort of way. He knew that it was something that he could likely do uh if he had no other option. Messages that came in from Elrond and from Arwen, combined with what he had seen in the Palantír, convinced him that he had no other option.
In Rohan, uh he only told Éowyn where he was heading and she was grieved as she thought it was certain death. And she had this, you know, huge crush on Aragorn. She didn't wish for something uh someone, I should say, who was so noble and who was so fair to have something terrible happen to him, perhaps him die and especially to die needlessly in her estimation. When it became obvious that he was going to go no matter what, she tried to join him, but of course he refused because uh at this point she's still in charge um and she needed to, you know, stay in charge until Théoden returned.
And when Théoden and Éomer and Merry and the rest arrived, she told them that Aragorn had left, though she initially did not say where. Théoden noticed that she was visibly upset, so he got it out of her. Aragorn had gone down the paths of the dead. Théoden and Éomer both had the same sort of reaction. Well, boy, that's a shame.
Uh no one had ever gone down that path and come back. Uh it was assumed to be certain death. Eomer felt it was a shame due to the fact that he really wanted to fight alongside Aragorn. Uh well, Theoden just thought the loss of such a mighty man was a was a boon for Sauron.
Note that at this point in the book, we already know that Aragorn had survived the paths. Now, lastly, I should talk about this whole idea of Theoden's ancestor. Um it's the the word ancestor it could be used in a few different ways and it's a little bit murky here. Some people will tell you that it could mean anybody that's in your family in the past, but it really is meant to mean anybody that you are directly descended from. Now, Theoden is of course he's the king.
And in the past, one of the princes of Rohan went into the paths of the dead.
And he never returned. And his name was Baldor. He was the son of Brego. Now, Brego was the second king after his father Eorl the Young.
Uh we can use this information to fill in a gap that was actually left in the previous chapter that the uh rather large skeleton that Aragorn had seen near a closed door in the Paths of the Dead was Baldor. Um Aragorn never went through that door. It wasn't in his path and he never found out what was beyond it or what Baldor was looking for.
Theoden is not descended from Baldor. Uh though Baldor was likely fairly young when he died and he had no children. Uh so, Brego's second son Aldor became the next king. This was not considered a breaking of the line as Aldor was still Eorl the Young's grandson.
The line did wind up breaking, however, with the death of Helm Hammerhand uh and all of his sons. Uh so uh, there were no viable male heirs. So, the Helm's nephew, that is to say the son of his sister, who is named uh, no, not the sister, but his nephew is named Frealaf Hilderson, and he became the king.
The line actually got broken again uh, when Théoden died, actually, because his son Théodred was also dead. And so, his nephew, uh, which would be the son of Théoden's youngest sister, Théodwin, he had a bunch of sisters, uh, he became the king. Interestingly, Eomir's father, Eomund, was descended from Brego's third son, Elfric. So, while Baldor was uh, sort of his distant uncle, uh, he would not be considered Théoden's ancestor in the um, in the very strictest sense of it. And we should mention that he, you know, Théoden doesn't really know what happened to Baldor. He just knows that Baldor took the Paths of the Dead, never returned, was assumed dead. And of course, we know that he is dead. We don't know exactly what he was trying to accomplish. We don't know, you know, how exactly he died. We just know that he did die. And um, I don't think Théoden ever finds out about that, because, you know, by the time Aragorn rejoins them, Théoden has passed away.
So, there you have it. Unless he meets Baldor in the afterlife.
All right. Let's move on to the next question.
>> [music] >> Our next question comes in by the request of Danny Linda, who asks, "In your opinion, in what way was Fëanor the greatest in subtlety?" Yeah, well, in my opinion, he wasn't, at least not in the stories that we know.
Um, I believe that there is, I would say, a common confusion about Fëanor, that he really lived up to the hype shown in the passages you're alluding to. And let's let's talk about that.
Let's read that passage, which is from The Silmarillion. I'm going to read it for you right now.
It is told that after the flight of the Melkor, the Valar sat long unmoved upon their thrones in the Ring of Doom. But they were not idle as Fëanor declared in the folly of his heart. For the Valar may work many things with thought rather than with hands and without voices in silence. They may hold counsel with one another.
Thus they held vigil in the night of Valinor.
And their thought passed back beyond Eä and forth to the end.
And neither power nor wisdom assuaged their grief and the knowing of evil in the hour of its being.
And they mourned not more for the death of the trees than for the marring of Fëanor of the works Melkor, one of the most evil.
For Fëanor was made the mightiest in all parts, body and mind, in valor and endurance, in beauty and understanding, in skill, in strength, and in subtlety alike.
Of all the children of Ilúvatar.
And a bright flame was in him.
The works of wonder for the glory of Arda that he might otherwise have wrought only Manwë might in some measure conceive.
So this is essentially a lament of the Valar of what they considered to be Melkor's foulest deed or one of his most foul deeds, the ruination of Fëanor. And he was said to be made to be the greatest in all of these metrics. Now we can see a bit of some of these in The Silmarillion stories. Certainly we see examples of his valor, his endurance, his strength. Beauty is a bit more subjective, sort of an informed trait as it is. Um his skill is doubtless. He was one of if not the greatest linguist in the world. He created a perfect writing system that could be used for any language. He was also possibly the creator of the palantíri. Uh we never really get full confirmation of that, but Gandalf said that it might have been him.
When we look at some of these others, understanding and subtlety stand out.
We don't get examples of Fëanor being subtle or understanding.
Um and of course, you know, subtlety and and a lot of people in court are quick are quick to point this out. It has a more archaic meaning of just meaning to be very very smart, but as I'm going to get into um we don't really see that many examples of that. We we see it in in his knowledge and his wisdom, but not so much his subtlety.
And and we're going to get into that in his um the way that Melkor sort of just played him. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit. But he certainly understanding, let's talk about that first. He certainly doesn't understand how Melkor plays him like a fiddle.
Let's get into the understanding right now. He even manages to manipulate the likes of Galadriel through him. That is I'm saying that Melkor manipulates Galadriel through Fëanor. And there's degrees of hatred all throughout that that we're going to talk about as well.
And Melk you know, and so whether subtlety, you know, whether you're going by the old meaning or the new meaning, Fëanor is certainly not subtle enough to notice this and he's certainly not understanding what's happening and and we see the same with the passage that we just read that he is foolish, the folly in his heart. Now of course he's going through a lot of grief and everything, but he thinks that if the Valar are sitting there still and they're not saying anything, then they're not doing anything.
And he starts whipping himself into a frenzy about that and winds up doing some extremely catastrophically rash things. Now we must understand a few things about Fëanor. One is that this is speaking not of who he was as a at a person at that moment, but the passage was talking about his potential. He was made to be the greatest in all those metrics. That isn't to say that he attained it. As a matter of fact, I would say that the point of the passage is that he did not, in fact, attain his potential. Not uh most especially the mind ones, as Melkor had successfully poisoned his mind and that this was the result of it.
You could also state that he should have used his talents of understanding and subtlety to see what Melkor was trying to do. There are two layers to this. One is the covering up of a good con with a bad con idea. Melkor's bad con was showing up at Formenos and asking for the Silmarils.
They would be safer with him.
Fëanor doesn't fall for this con. He tells Melkor basically to take a hike.
However, he falls for the much more subtle con.
Letting Melkor's words get to him. He had already gotten into the situation that he was in, where he was temporarily exiled from Tirion for threatening Fingolfin, due to Melkor putting it in his head that Fingolfin was going to usurp him. Now, Fëanor, once again, he didn't fall for the obvious in that he that Fingolfin would usurp his place as next in line as King of the Noldor in the case that Finwë decides to step down, but he himself started to believe that Fingolfin would usurp him in the heart of their father. The fact that everyone actually likes Fingolfin a lot more than him adds to that, though I should mention that the reason is because Fëanor is sort of already known, uh you know, all throughout the Undying Lands as a jerk. Uh so, that accounts for that. Now, he might tell Melkor, "Well, I'm smarter than that. Don't try any funny business with me, Jack. You're not getting my Silmarils." Um but, he let some of Melkor's very carefully chosen words get to him.
Let's take a look at what Melkor actually said to Fëanor at Formenos. I'm going to read you another passage from The Silmarillion.
"Behold the truth of all that I have spoken, and how thou art banished unjustly.
But if in the heart Fëanor is yet free and bold as were his words in Tirion, then I will aid him and bring him far from this narrow land. For am I not Vala also?
Yes, and more than those who still sit in pride in Valimar. And I have ever been a friend to the Noldor, most skilled and most valiant of the people of Arda." Now, what's most telling here is that Fëanor's rebuke is not exactly swift. He isn't as steely as Farmer Maggot was in The Lord of the Rings. He actually ponders it for a little while.
He wonders, "Well, could I actually trust Melkor?
And, you know, he's coming to me with words of friendship. He's agreeing that my banishment was harsh." Melkor did well until he mentioned taking the Silmarils, and that set off Fëanor, just as Melkor knew that it would. This was, of course, what Melkor wanted to happen.
What really gets to Fëanor in this is that not Melkor's feigned empathy or his flattery, but rather what he said about himself. "For am I not Vala also?" This inextricably links Melkor to the rest of the Valar in his mind, and he came to believe that if push comes to shove, they're going to side with Melkor rather than any elf. And, of course, that's hogwash.
The Valar had already fought an entire war against Melkor for the sake of the elves, but this was before Fëanor's time. It was in a place that he had never been to, and in a war that The Silmarillion does go out of its way to tell us the elves don't know very much about.
Another thing that affected Fëanor was Melkor referring to Aman as a narrow land. Aman is a big banana-shaped continent, but it's nowhere near as large as Middle-earth.
These seeds got planted into Fëanor's mind, and such subtlety was used.
And soon he started talking about going to Middle-earth to stop Melkor.
Because he didn't perceive that the Valar were doing anything.
That they were going to just let him get away with it all, and all the horrible things that he did are just going to fall by the wayside, because he lacks the understanding to know that yeah, just because they're sitting in silence doesn't mean that they're not in deep council.
He started firing people up about how the elves were taken out of their rightful lands and brought to this much smaller land, and though they hold titles like kings and queens and such, they're always under the watchful eye of those that were greater than them. While in Middle-earth, they could do as they would. And this got to Galadriel even, and she hated Fëanor just as Melkor had gotten to Fëanor despite the fact that Fëanor hated him. Melkor played him like a fiddle so well that he probably thought it was his idea and not something that he was manipulated into. So, Fëanor is a lot of lost, unreached potential, but it is very important in my estimation not to think that if he had reached his potential that he would have sussed Melkor out, because Melkor was far greater than him in subtlety and understanding and and so much more in guile. And that's what we have to understand that even if he had reached his potential, he's still not one of the Valar. He's still not on that level. So, that's really important as well to mention.
All right, let's move on to the next question.
>> [music] >> Our next question also comes in by the request of Donny Linder who asks, "According to Dr. Emily Wilson, all translations are composed of words that are 100% different from those of the original. Do you think Tolkien would agree with that?"
Um I think that Tolkien would agree with what she actually said, which is not that. Uh you're you're misrepresenting what she's saying. Dr. Emily Wilson, uh for those who are not aware, uh she is uh a very very talented translator who's actually from sort of my neck of the woods. She's She uh works at the University of Pennsylvania.
Um and she knows a fair bit about translations because she translated some incredibly important works such as the Odyssey and the Iliad. Uh she sometimes comes under fire because her translations are not very literal, which is just absolutely infuriating.
Translations are not meant to be literal. And this was something that Tolkien absolutely 100% uh understood and agreed with. Wilson and Tolkien are sort of kindred spirits in the sense both of them translated very important works. You know, I mentioned of course she did the Odyssey, she did the Iliad.
He did Beowulf, he did Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, he dabbled in some Norse myths, he touched on the Jerusalem Bible. Uh Tolkien, I would say outstrips her in just sheer philology.
Um I mean, he was an actual contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary. But there's one important way that Wilson outstrips Tolkien. Her translations got published within her own lifetime.
If you ever ask yourself, "Well, why is and I have it right here, why is Tolkien's Beowulf, which is a translation that he completed in 1926, why was it published in 2014?"
A full 88 years after it was completed 41 years after his death. The gap between him completing the translation and it being published was actually 7 years longer than the span of his actual life.
Now, so like Wilson, Tolkien had in his time come under fire for not being literal, for making alterations and changes. He was too creative in his work.
The academic heads of the time thought that he should be literal and that he should be purist and that he should practically deify these texts. Tolkien's reply would likely be, "Well, if you want to be a purist, then go ahead and read it in the original language.
Translations are their own works." And that is what Wilson said. She did not imply that every single word has to be changed in a sentence for it to be a translation. That would be incorrect and it would be, I think, very naive. So many languages share words due to borrowing words or they have the same root language. English in particular is is just a very strange language. Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. That's actually a complete and grammatically correct sentence in English. It isn't something that you would say in any sort of conversation. You know, I'm saying it here to to highlight something, but it isn't something that you would normally say.
Some languages are very reliant on inflection. For example, Japanese, it doesn't have curse words, but rather a curse word would be translated from the inflection of an exclamation such as you. So, translating is so much more complex than simply figuring, "Well, well, this is what this word means and that's what that word means." And then you you know, and then you change it into the target language. That's that's a transliteration.
Let me give you an example of one translation very very relevant to Tolkien. I'm going to read you a line from Beowulf in Old English.
Thæt ic wíde gefrægen foldan hwær cwicra manna cynn weorces weard wære, swá he þæt ærest gesceóp, þá hé middangeard monncynne frætlan.
Now, I If you take every word there, that's Old English, and you translate it to Modern English. And these are two very, you know, obviously very closely related languages. This is what you get.
There is widely reported work ordered many family beyond this world meeting place adorned.
Now, every word is changed.
That's not a translation, because it doesn't make sense. Okay, maybe you can argue, okay, the word work wasn't translated, but it it's the same. It's only pronounced the same. It's actually spelled very differently. In Old English, it was w e o r c, and in Modern English, it's w o r k. Um so, it's spelled differently.
And my point still stands here. We have to, in translation, consider grammar, consider structure, and we have to consider culture. To translate anything to Modern English, whether you're going from another modern contemporary language or an ancient one, you have to have it make sense in Modern English.
Tolkien's translation of this line that I just read is as follows.
There I have heard that far and wide to many a kindred on this Middle-earth was that work proclaimed, the adorning of that dwelling of men.
So, Tolkien doesn't only change the words and the structure uh the sentence to make it make sense.
He alters it a bit. He adds it to it, he subtracts from it. He gives us something that preserves the beauty of the original. And this is especially difficult and important in poetry, which is why I read some poems for you earlier. Um Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is is a bit of poetry that he has to not only translate it from Middle English to Modern English, but he also has to have it make sense. It has to rhyme, and it has to fit the meter of the original poem, and he altered words to preserve poetical alliteration.
Tolkien was, you know, too creative in his translations at the time, so they sat until long after he was dead.
And it's because he understood the same thing that Rilke understood. Literal translations are garbage.
A translation of a work is a work onto itself, which is what we should take away from what Rilke said.
So, there you have it.
All right, let's move on to the next question.
>> [music] >> Our next question comes in by the request of Nick Smith, uh who asks, "How far in miles did they travel in The Lord of the Rings?" And before I get to my answer, I actually wanted to share with you a part of a comment that he left me because he said that he was having an argument with his son. Well, I should say not an argument.
He didn't say argument. He said it was a They were just talking. It was a discussion. And they were trying to figure this out, and they guessed that uh the travel was about 200 miles. And then they said, "Well, let's ask somebody who would who might know." And uh well, you'll see how close they were and how not close they were. Keep in mind, the guess was 200 miles. So, um when you ask how far in miles did they travel in The Lord of the Rings, it really sort of depends on who they are. Um I'm just assuming here that you mean the individual members of the fellowship.
But, they all split up, and they took different routes even in the start. So, there's a lot of questions. I want to put an image up uh up here.
And this shows what is essentially the route that was taken by Frodo and Sam, who never really at all split up through the entire journey. The distance that they traveled from Frodo's front door in Hobbiton to Sammath Naur inside Mount Doom is roughly around 1,800 miles.
From this, you could extrapolate very rough ideas for the others, but it still won't be exact, except maybe in the case of Pippin.
Pippin was the only character other than Frodo and Sam who left from the same starting point that Frodo and Sam did.
But, of course, he did split from the fellowship along with Merry and then he split with Mary to travel with Gandalf.
And this doesn't include the journey home, which all of the hobbits took together and Gandalf went most of the way with them.
You could make estimations for all of the other characters, but there's a complexity to this. The site that I used to generate that map, which was called LOTR Project, they have ways to track all of the rest of the fellowship, as well as Thorin and Bilbo, but the issue is it doesn't start them where they would be at the start of the book.
For example, Aragorn on their map actually starts in Rivendell, despite the fact that he was moving around quite a lot before Frodo and company met him and Gandalf even mentions having met him in the Shire at some point earlier.
Gimli and Legolas and Boromir are all also starting Rivendell, not in their journeys to Rivendell. Partly this is due to not knowing the exact routes for Gimli and Legolas. We have a pretty good idea of the way that Boromir went. I would state that the hobbits actually traveled the longest. Frodo and Sam actually went to Mordor and Merry and Pippin were sort of zigzagging across the Southlands. In the end, any figure that you see from anyone online telling you, "Well, this is how far a character traveled. It's going to be surmised.
1,800 miles is the best surmise for Frodo and Sam.
Uh but it would be very poor surmise for any other character uh to come up with a specific number, especially like Sir Gandalf, because he zips around like crazy. And the site that I used there actually starts him at Isengard, uh not accounting for his travels before that.
I mean, at the beginning of the book, he's in the Shire. And then he leaves, and then he comes back to the Shire. So, actually, maybe Gandalf traveled the fastest cuz he was going all over the place. But it's difficult to track him because we always don't know he's know the exact routes that he took.
Anyway, let's move on to the next question.
Our next question comes in by uh request of LCR, who actually just left me a comment on a video. I was talking about this earlier. He left me a comment on a video. Very quick question. And I was like, "Ooh, this is This is a deep one.
It's deeper than you think it is, and I have a lot to say about it, so it's going to have to be a whole section."
And uh so, here we are. Um on the subject of incarnate Ainu, and those who are wearing their body as a cloth, so to speak, in which category does Melian land? Uh so, what you're essentially asking is is Melian was Melian incarnate or not? And this is actually pretty deep.
And the answer seems to be that Melian was voluntarily incarnated, and it was in fact part of her fate.
Uh it's a rather issue, and it invites many questions. If Melian was incarnate, was she stuck like that forever until her body died? Can the Ainu have children without becoming incarnate?
Can they have children with each other in this fashion, but need to incarnate to have children with elves or men? Is this sort of thing allowed, and what are the rules? These are the questions that are implied, and these are the questions that I'm going to tackle.
The Silmarillion doesn't say any of this.
It merely states that Melian, who is sometimes known by her Sindarin name Meliana, met Elwe, who was also known as Thingol, in the woods, and they fell in love, and they conceived a child who was Lúthien.
There are no other examples given of Ainor having children in the published Silmarillion, but it also does not say that this is unusual or that it's a one-time-only thing.
In Tolkien's older versions, when the Valar were called the gods and the Maiar were not yet a thing, uh they they fell into sort of these vague terms of spirits of the gods. The Valar certainly had children. These children of the gods, later revised to children of the Valar, were considered Valar themselves.
When Tolkien later revised it so that the Valar did not have children, while not saying that they couldn't, just that they don't, he changed things up. Many of the second generation Valar became first generation, such as Oromë and Nessa. Originally, they were the son and the daughter of Varda and Yavanna.
Some, like Fionwe and Ilmarë, the son and daughter of Manwë and Varda, were changed to Maiar, and they were renamed uh Eönwë and Ilmarë.
Others were just removed from the story fully.
Valar having children with those not of their own race was also a thing. Uh Melko, who was later renamed to Melkor, had a child with an ogress named Ulbandi, and that was a son who was named Kalimbor. Ulbandi and all of the ogres, in fact, were removed in revision, and Kalimbor, he'd already been named Gothmog at some point, he became a Maia. And we're going to talk more about Balrogs a little bit later, too. Some of the Valar even had grandchildren, such as Tulkas and Nessa.
They had a son named Telemacar Sorry, Telemectar. And then he had a son named Lithian. Not to be confused with all the other Lithians in Tolkien's work, and certainly not Melian's daughter, Lithian. The Valar certainly do practice marriage because we see it with Manwë and Varda, Aulë and Yavanna, Tulkas and Nessa, Oromë and Vána, Irmo and Nienna, Namo and Vairë.
Some of them are considered siblings to each other. Manwë and Melkor are brothers, Vána and Yavanna are sisters, Oromë and Nessa are brother and sister, and then Namo, Irmo, and Nienna are two brothers and a sister.
Now, I bring this up to point out that the Valar in The Silmarillion, they have family structures, they have siblings, they get married, they don't have children.
And now we can't be sure whether this is of an inability to do so at or a choice that they made. At least we can't be sure just by going by The Silmarillion. I'm going to get deeper into it, and then we will be sure. I would state with strong surmise that it was a choice, however, due to Melian.
We're going to talk about that. Maiar and Valar are not different in any real way other than a magnitude of power.
The Valar are more powerful than the Maiar, and they are the kings and the queens of the world. We do know of Maiar who marry each other, or at least we know of one instance, which was Ossë and Uinen. They were both Maiar of the Vala Ulmo, although it seems to actually an Aulë that played matchmaker in this instance.
As Ossë had switched his allegiance to Melkor, and Aulë had the idea that if he fell in love, he might see the light again, which turned out to be correct.
The thing is, we know so little about the Maiar in general. We don't know how many there are, and there are so few named Maiar out there. There are 15 Maiar that have names, which comprises the five wizards, Gothmog, [snorts] but not Durin's Bane because that's not exactly a name, the aforementioned examples that I gave Melian, Eönwë, Ilmarë, Ossë and Uinen, as well as the carriers of the Sun and the Moon, that's Arien and Tilion, and of course there's Sauron and Salmar.
There are edge cases like Huan.
Originally, he was conceived as a Maia and then Tolkien changed his mind.
The Eagles were similar in that they were all originally Maiar, but then he changed his mind. And then, very curiously, he changed his mind back to his original thought. So, his last thought was that the Eagles were indeed Maiar, and that changes a lot because Gwaihir, the Great Eagle in The Lord of the Rings, is said to be a descendant of Thorondor.
And that he also has several brothers.
The Eagles are explicitly stated to be incarnate Maiar in the book The Nature of Middle-earth.
And Thorondor apparently had multiple children, which would also be Maiar considering the passage mentions specifically the Eagles of the Third Age being Maiar.
There is no doubt, however, that the Eagles are incarnate. They are said to eat in The Hobbit. They are said to tire in The Lord of the Rings. They fear bodily harm and they need healing when they are injured. While Tolkien explicitly changed his mind on the Eagles, we don't know if he intended to change Huan to a Maia again. We don't know if other noble animals, such as Nahar, the horse of Oromë, were they Maia spirits or not. So, we know for a fact that incarnate Maiar can absolutely have children. But, is incarnation necessary to bear children? I would surmise that it is, so we're going to do a little research. We're going to talk about or I've already done the research.
I'm just going to tell you the results of it. Let's see how we can back it up.
>> [snorts] >> In an early version of The Silmarillion, in which Maia was actually still spelled with a Y at this point, Tolkien says the following about Melian. So, I'm going to read you a little bit of the book The Peoples of Middle-earth from the section The Shibboleth of Fëanor.
The world has grown old in long years since then, but it may be that their line is not yet ended. Lúthien was, through her mother, Melian, descended also from the Maya, the people of the Valar, whose being began before the world was made. Melian alone of all those spirits assumed a bodily form, not only as a raiment, but as a permanent habitation in form and powers like to the bodies of the Elves.
So, here we get a fairly definitive clue. Melian alone of the Maiar assumed a bodily form that was permanent habitation in form and powers like to the bodies of Elves, meaning that she was indeed incarnate at that point and permanently so. In the book Morgoth's Ring, he states that spirits who become incarnate are unable to return to spirit state, even demon form, until released by death or killing, and they would dwindle in force. This is speaking in that instance more about Balrogs and Bulldogs, but Melian does come up in the same paragraph just prior to that quote, mentioning that by practicing embodied procreation, using Melian as an example, Bulldogs would become more and more earthbound.
So, the nature of Middle-earth gives us the definitive answer. The lore master, Pengolodh, states that the longer one inhabits a body, the more accustomed to it they become.
Thus, a raiment or a fana becomes a habit, customary garb. The relationships of spirits with hröa, which are real bodies that they become bound to, is stated to be the longer they are in this form, the harder it will be for them to function without it. Pengolodh seems to hold the opinion that a spirit is not that is not incarnate can unwittingly become so by certain habits, such as eating and drinking. And he notes that most binding is begetting or conceiving.
This tells us that if Melian was not incarnate when she endeavored to conceive a child with Thingol, the very act of doing so made her incarnate.
As to the rules about it, let's look at the following passage. It takes place directly after this revelation, which as I mentioned is in the book the Was it the nature the nature of Middle-earth?
We do not know the Axani laws, rules as primarily proceeding from Eru, that would that were laid down upon the Valar with particular reference to their state.
But it seems clear that there was no Axan against these things. Nonetheless, it appears to be an Axan or maybe necessary consequence that if they are done, then the spirit must dwell in the body that is used and under the same necessities as the incarnate.
The only case that is known in the histories of the Eldar is that of Melian, who became the spouse of King Elu Thingol.
This certainly was not evil or against the will of Eru, and though it led to sorrow, both elves and men were enriched. The great Valar do not do these things. They do not, neither do they eat and drink save at the high Axani or festivals in token of their lordship and dwellings of Arda and for the blessings and sustenance of the children.
So, an Axan, you heard that Axan and Axani, Axani being the plural. That's a law that is passed down from Ilúvatar, and Pengolodh here admits, "Well, I don't know if there's any such laws that Ilúvatar put out there dictating this behavior, but he has observed the customs of the Ainu and surmises very strongly that if they are not forbidden.
The Valar do not beget.
Possibly due to the fact that it would incarnate them.
Though that would not be against God's will.
It is something that they don't have a desire to do, at least as far as this point is concerned. It is possible for my own surmise that the Valar may decide to beget children at a later point, especially as we are not told of any of the goings-on in the Undying Lands very much after the flight of the Noldor. I'm not saying that it did happen or that it will happen, but I'm just pointing out that it can.
As the Valar endeavor to understand people more and more and their invitation of certain mortals in the Fourth Age shows that they're starting to, they may decide to become even more like people themselves, especially as they later diminish in importance on the world stage.
Pengolodh goes out of his way to state that Melian becoming incarnate and marrying a child of Ilúvatar and even having a baby with him is not forbidden and it's accepted, but he doesn't go into why. Going back to a different book, The Peoples of Middle-earth, um if I follow from the passage from earlier, it states that Melian and Thingol's marriage was indeed the will of Eru and part of the music. This is part of a claim that uh a chain of fate that resolves with the marriage of Aragorn and Lúthien.
Aragorn and Lúthien. Aragorn, I wrote that, by the way. I just want to point out that I wrote that. I'm going to fix it right after that. Aragorn and Arwen.
He, you know, he did he did call her Tinúviel at one point, but she's not Lúthien.
Which brings together the lines of the three, you know, the three kings of the High Elves, uh with Arwen having ancestry from the Vanyar and the Noldor and the Falmari and the Sindar side, uh the fourth kind of Elf coming from Aragorn's descent from Thingol.
Um the line became known thereafter as the Children of Lúthien. So, to sum it all up, Melian became incarnate, though the exact moment is not known when. She might have been incarnated as soon as she beheld Thingol, uh, but certainly the act of conception would have incarnated her. She is thus bound to that body unless it is killed, which seems very unlikely.
Um, as Thingol would come out of Mandos after a time, they would be reunited in the Undying Lands, and I would strongly presume that Melian would thereafter live as an elf.
All right.
Let's move on to the next question.
Our next question comes in by the request of Nick Certeso, who asks, "What additional powers could be awakened out of a palantír if a Ring of Power wielding Aragorn, Durin, Galadriel, or Gandalf used it?"
None.
The palantír, uh, the palantíri, they do not have a secret menu. Is the easiest way I could say that. Gandalf tells Pippin that the palantíri were made a long time ago, and they were made in Eldamar, uh, which is a country in the Undying Lands. He states definitively that the Noldor created the stones, and he surmises that it might have been Fëanor himself. He actually mentioned that just a little while ago.
If Gandalf can reasonably muse that Fëanor may have created the palantíri in Eldamar, that means they were created during the Years of the Trees, thousands of years before the One Ring or any of the Rings of Power.
In Unfinished Tales, the chapter The Palantíri gives us all the known practical information about them, such as how many there were, and, uh, where they were all located, and what happened to each one, and most importantly, how they work.
It does mention the concept of will in using them, especially in contesting with another user. Most notably, uh, this comes up with Sauron and Denethor.
Um, and Sauron and Aragorn as well.
Aragorn was able to wrest control of the Orthanc stone from Sauron, and furthermore, Sauron did indeed assume that Aragorn possessed the One Ring, but it's not due to that fact. Sauron made the assumption due to the fact that Saruman was supposed to have the stone.
And then suddenly, somehow, it appears in it, which Sauron assumes is the ring bearer.
And when he sends a Nazgûl to Isengard to retrieve the ring and its bearer, he finds no ring, he finds no hobbit.
The place is wrecked, and Saruman doesn't even have the palantír anymore.
The next person to use it is this guy waving around a lendil sword. So, Sauron did not come to the belief that Aragorn had the ring due to him using the ring to overpower the palantír. Um, Aragorn overcame him because he was the rightful owner of the palantír, both the one that he held and the one that Sauron held, which once belonged to Isildur.
The palantír have no, we'll say, hidden functions that could be unlocked using the ring or any ring.
Fëanor or any other Noldor, for that matter, would not have created something that would respond to Sauron's relic.
One could make the argument that Sauron could have fooled Celebrimbor or another elf of Eregion into making something that would respond to his ring.
But there's two reasons that doesn't work. For one, Gandalf stated the palantíri were far older than that, and they were not of Middle-earth. While the other is that Sauron already got those guys to make something that responds to his ring.
The Rings of Power.
The most successful user of the palantíri is Aragorn. He is not only able to continue to use the Orthanc stone, but he's even able to use the Anor stone, which was heavily damaged in the pyre of Denethor, uh Aragorn uses them not for the communication that we see with he does use it not only for the communication that we see that Denethor used uh it for and Sauron used it for and Sauron used it for, but he also used them to look outwards to survey his kingdom, which is a really neat thing that he could do with it.
Anyway, let's move on to the next question.
Our next question comes in by the request of the Oski Boski who asks me, "Are there any female Balrogs among all of them? Seven were said to exist."
So, let's talk about this. Let's talk about the Ainur and their genders.
The Ainur, and that's translated from Quenya Elvish as the holy ones, they are spirits in Tolkien's mythos uh or what we would refer to as angels.
>> [music] >> The Ainur started out in the early writings as a very different sort of headspace for Tolkien. He originally wrote about a pantheon of lesser gods known as the Valar, and then there were lesser spirits below them that fell into various categories. Later, as he decided that there was one god and only one god in his mythos, he reframed the Valar as being the highest order of angelic spirits, and he cobbled most of the rest of the spirits together as Maiar, the lesser angels. The Maiar were said to be of the same order as the Valar, just lesser in power. Some of the other spirits became sort of houseless ghosts that would occasionally inhabit various creatures or objects, but they were not angelic in nature. Uh we see one such example in The Lord of the Rings as Old Man Willow, which is a spirit that became trapped in a tree. Some of the more malevolent spirits were sometimes referred to as demons, such as the Wargs, which Tolkien described as demonic wolves in his letters. Now, before the creation of the world, all of the spirits did not have forms that you or I could find visible.
We didn't get a description of what the Valar or the Maiar actually look like, mostly because the point was that they're they were something beyond the comprehension of people.
But even though they were not biological creatures and thus did not have uh sexes, they did have genders. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien describes that the Ainar all had the temperaments of either male or female, which is actually the precise definition of a gender. And when they saw visions of what the children of Ilúvatar, that is to say the Elves and the Men, were going to look like, this led to the Ainar expressing their genders in a physical way.
They took shape and hue, meaning that they gave themselves bodies, which Tolkien referred to as fanar.
Thus, characters like Manwë and Melkor and Tulkas and Ossë and Taurandor, to name a few, they would take male bodies to match and to express the male temperament that they had, while other characters, like Varda and Yavanna and Nessa and Uinen and Melian, they would take female bodies to match and express their female gender. The fanar were in most cases not permanent.
Now, you're going to tell that I very um pointedly put this question right after the last one uh for a good reason because it covers a lot of the same ground here when we talk about fanar and incarnation.
Uh the fanar were often used, but they could be discarded at any point and then the Ainar would be naked. They would be without a form visible to the children of Ilúvatar. They could also cloak themselves in any form that they wished, forms of majesty, forms of dread. Now, what is important to understand here is that their bodies could become habits over time, less like clothes, more like an accustomed form. They could even become stuck, incarnated into real flesh, if they stayed in a form for a very long time or they partook too often in human behavior like eating or drinking or sleeping, uh one sure fire way to become incarnate, as we mentioned when we talked about Melian earlier, was to conceive or bear a child. We saw that happen with her. Once an Ainu becomes stuck like that, their body is now no longer a fana, it's a hroa. Not just a physical body but that they could wear, but a physical body that is actually part of them. And if that physical body comes to harm, it actually harms them.
It cannot be changed by normal means. Uh though some became masters of shape and hue and they could change their hroa into different forms. Uh Aravindil was really good at that. That's Radagast the Brown.
Now, if we look at any given Balrog, it's not actually easy to discern their gender.
Tolkien mentioned the actual shape of a Balrog was difficult to discern, though they were man-shaped. Now, that doesn't mean that they were shaped like males, but that they were humanoid. They had two arms, they had two legs, they had zero wings, zero horns, zero tails. So, one cannot very easily assume the gender of a Balrog uh because they're kind of hard to see with all this shadow and flame around them. Now, let's talk about linguistics. Usually, it's simple to determine the gender of any literary character by examining what pronouns are used. An author doesn't need to tell you that a character is male. Uh he The author could just refer to the character as he, and that tells you what you need to know.
>> [music] >> Uh the Elvish language, though, is different. It doesn't actually have gender pronouns. I'm going to read you a brief bit of The Nature of Middle-earth.
The Elvish languages did not distinguish grammatically between male, masculine, and female, feminine. Thus, si meant he or she. But there was a distinction made between animate and inanimate. Animates included not only rational creatures, speaking people, but all living all things living and reproducing their kind. To these were applied the pronouns such as he or she.
So, while there are differing pronouns in the Elvish language, they're not referring to male or female, but rather to people and objects. In other words, there are things that are he or she, and there are things that are it. Uh that is not to say that there are not gendered elements in Elvish languages. There absolutely are. For example, you may notice that a lot of names end with el or en. These are suffixes in the names of many Elf women, and it essentially means daughter of, but is poetically maiden or lady in translation. The male version of this would be ion. Um lady examples would include likes of Galadriel or Lúthien.
Well, male examples would be Ingwion and Fingwion, although Fingwion usually went by another name. He was usually called Fëanor. So, while Elves did not have separate words for he or she, they did have plenty of linguistic markers that denote gender beyond even their names.
They would have words for brother, sister, son, daughter, niece, nephew, mother, father, and such.
That being said, it is most difficult to assume the gender of, for example, Durin's Bane.
As in The Lord of the Rings, the Balrog is only ever referred to as it.
This doesn't go into the earlier discussion of animates and inanimates.
The Balrog is 100% inanimate. It is a Maia, just like Gandalf is. It is also not a translation of some Elvish text.
Even in the conceit of the author in which he is merely the, you know, the translator of the Book of Westmarch, Frodo's parts would be written in Westron, which is the common tongue of Middle-earth, which is not Elvish in origin and it absolutely does have gendered pronouns. Frodo himself refers to characters as he or she, but he refers to the Balrog as it. And this can simply possibly be chalked up to Frodo just doesn't really know what a Balrog is other than that it's a big scary monster.
The Silmarillion isn't actually much help in this matter. Uh there's Gothmog, Lord of the Balrogs. The name Lord does somewhat suggest that Gothmog is male, but I wouldn't call that definitive.
In the earlier drafts, Gothmog was explicitly male. We talked about this a little while ago. Uh he was Melkor's son, but that was thrown out of the window when Melkor had no children.
The character that became Gothmog was not even named Gothmog un- until much later. He was called Kalimbao, the Balrog that Glorfindel faces is only ever referred to as a Balrog, not he, not she, not even it. Uh the only pronoun used in that passage is the plural they, referring to the fact that both the Balrog and Glorfindel fell into the abyss. In the oldest version though, the Balrog is gendered as male, which I'm going to read you a brief bit of The Book of Lost Tales Part 2.
Then Glorfindel leapt forward upon him, and his golden armor gleamed strangely in the moon, and he hewed at that demon, and it leapt again upon a great boulder, and Glorfindel after. Now, I should mention it does use it in there, but it also uses him. Uh leapt forward upon him.
Uh but we actually can't assume that that carries over to later versions of the story because this was written back when Balrogs were explicitly not spirits. They were not the Ainur. They were just a race of monsters that Melkor bred. So, in this instance, the Balrog that Glorfindel tussled with is very much male.
>> [music] >> But in all revisions in which the Balrog are Mair spirits, no pronouns are used at all, not even it uh in this passage. I mentioned earlier that all of the Ainu took forms to match their temperament, but I also mentioned that these forms are temporary and that they could cloak themselves in forms of dread. The Balrogs are cloaked in forms of dread and they have become incarnates that they're stuck in those forms. They release to their spirit forms only upon death and then greatly reduced as the body had become part of them. Thus, any of the Balrogs, of which Tolkien did not specifically, by the way, say that there were seven, but that seven was the maximum that there possibly could have been, they could have had a male temperament or they could have had a female temperament and before the creation of the world, they may have had male or female forms at some point, but at the point that they chose to become thralls of Melkor, they took forms of dread.
Their bodies don't exist to express their gender, they exist to express terror.
Uh, even the name Balrog uh, or in Quenya, Valarauko, it it's not gender specific, it means powerful demon.
That being said, all of the Balrogs are said to be spirits of flame.
And even before they were incarnated, they were spirits of flame. And we know that there were both male and female spirits of flame. We don't get many examples of fire spirits who did not become Balrogs, mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of the Maiar are unnamed and unseen characters, but we do have Arien.
Arien is very much a lady through and through, you see it in her name even, it has that EN suffix. In this case, it's literally fire maiden, uh, usually poetically referred to as lady of the sun as she does wind up carrying the sun through the sky, although she had that name before the creation of the sun. Her being a fire spirit uh, did not mean that she had any proclivities towards evil. She was entrusted to tend to the two trees and to carry the Sun, and she rebuffed Melkor's romantic advances pretty furiously. She was said to be so beautiful and radiant that it was hard to look at her. And uh that when her lover Tilion, who carries the Moon, comes close to her, his ship gets singed by her heat. Arien is not a Balrog by any means. She isn't the good Balrog, as the name Balrog itself implies a demonic force.
But they once were brethren in the sense that before they were evil, they were like her.
Perhaps some of them were women, perhaps none of them were women. In the end, it doesn't really matter because their form serves their function, that of dread.
Whatever they were before is something that they cast aside quite willingly becoming into form of dread >> [music] >> uh was more important to them than expressing whatever gender they may have had in the past.
So, there you have it. We have one more question to get to. Let's get to that one now.
>> [music] >> Our final question came in from uh Rogerio Porto. When I saw this one, I was a bit confused. I suppose some you could come to a conclusion like this, but I I find it strange. So, let's talk about this. Here's the question.
Don't you think that Tolkien explained too much about Middle-earth after The Lord of the Rings, destroying the mystery and part of the magic of his world? Um well, you know, I I mean, I guess depending on who you talk to, he either explained too much or maybe he didn't explain enough. Uh and this really depends on who you are, but I would say no uh either way. He didn't explain too much. He certainly didn't destroy the mystique of it. There is so much about Middle-earth that is mostly unexplained.
In The Lord of the Rings, the first book, meaning the the first half of Fellowship of the Ring, you get asked so many questions that almost have no answer at all.
Or there are answers that nobody is going to find satisfactory.
What is the nature of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry?
What is Old Man Willow?
Gildor says he's of the house of Finrod.
How exactly is he related to Finrod?
Uh and then you read the rest of the book, and then you think back to elements that were introduced early on that don't have a definitive answer. Was the figure that Sam spoke about his cousin Hal seeing a hillman, an Ent, a troll, or something else entirely? Or was his cousin lying? Or was his cousin drunk? Or was his cousin dreaming?
What does Glorfindel do after the Fellowship leaves Rivendell? Do Elledan and Elrohir become mortal? Where did Radagast go after he left Rhosgobel?
Then of course there are the big [music] questions that even Tolkien asked or was asked and would not give a real answer.
What happened to the Entwives?
Professor, I don't know. Then there are elements he changed his mind on, and there are so many of those I couldn't even name them all. Are the Eagles Mair spirits or talking animals? He started with Mair, he changed his mind, he changed it back.
When he changed his mind the first time, he also included Huan, but did he also change his mind back about Huan? Maglor was sent said to wander the shores, sometimes even with Elrond as a temporary companion, but then he decided that Maglor cast himself into the sea.
We talked about that, you know, last week.
So, is Elrond holding his harp at the end of the book? What's up with that?
Then we have things that are just, you know, there's a lack of information. Who is Legolas's mother? How old is Legolas?
Uh Legolas and Gimli and Sam are all set to sail to the west. Do they make it there? When Círdan sails to the west, it's implied he's with two others. One is certainly Celeborn. Who is the other?
Why did dwarves who eventually reclaim Moria eventually disappear from history?
And what happened to the hobbits as well?
So, yes, Tolkien gave us a lot.
And maybe some people would say that he gave us too much, but he also left so many mysteries open because he wanted his world to feel real. Not real like realistic, but real like a living world in which we don't know the answer to every question.
So many times I get a question on here, whether it's Quora or YouTube, or sometimes it's other places, and people ask me for information that just doesn't actually exist.
It's just not there, and the best that I can do is present what we do know and use some very strong surmise to fill in the blank, and I have to be careful to make sure that people know that I'm using surmise.
Sometimes the answer is so backed up by what does exist that it becomes very accepted, and other times it's hotly contested and rightfully so because there's a lot that's open to interpretation. In the end, it's difficult for me to state that Tolkien told us too much that it takes away the mystery when we don't even know if Legolas had light hair or dark hair.
He's one of the, you know, the nine walkers. He's a member of the Fellowship of the Ring. We don't even know what color his hair was. Um, I could point out some evidence that points to him having light hair. We talked about this on the Council of Tolkien a few months ago.
But that's just a probability.
It's not a certainty.
Either way, if there was no mystery left, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be on Quora answering questions or on YouTube doing these videos, at least not this long.
After a while, you start running out of things where you can simply point to a passage and say, "Well, there's the answer." Even Tolkien's letters, a lot of them are great sources of lore, and sometimes he's just writing to his daughter to talk about it, the haircut he had, or the curry he was eating. Not every single one of them gives us thoughts into insights of Middle-earth, and his letters are where he was most likely to say, "I don't know."
in various ways. Eventually, the questions fade away that are simple ones that you can answer just by opening one book and pointing to one passage, and then you're wound up with a lot of these deeper questions that require a lot of cross-referencing between books like the Mellion question and like the Balrog question.
Um and most people won't read these books. You know, a lot Okay, so Now, The Hobbit, everybody's going to read that, right? That's very popular, one of the one of the highest-selling books of all time. Lord of the Rings, I'm just going to pull up one of them.
That's Fellowship. A lot of people going to read that. The Silmarillion, I think a good amount of people are going to read this. It's It's not as popular as the other two, but still the best-seller. Unfinished Tales, I've had so many people tell me, "Well, I won't read that just because it's just the tales are unfinished." The Silmarillion's unfinished.
And you read that, right? Um it's just a name. But then we get into things like, you know, and I I I I wound up having to bring this one out quite a lot this week, which is The Nature of Middle-earth. This only came out a few years ago, and it's surprising me how many how few people actually know about this book and how all of the great information that's stored in there. Not to mention the history of Middle-earth. I mean, just today we quoted Morgoth's Ring, we quoted um The Peoples of Middle-earth, we quoted um I think the uh not The Nature of Middle-earth, but um we quoted Morgoth's Ring, we quoted the the the the Peoples of Middle-earth, and I think we also quoted Oh, yes, The Book of Lost Tales, both parts of it, I believe. So, um you know, you know, that's the first and second one as well as like the, you know, uh 10th and 11th, so, you know, or 10th and 12th, I should say. So, there's a lot in between there. There's a lot more obscure works out there, you know? So, not everybody's going to do that. Um so, it comes down to somebody like me to interpret these things as best you can.
If every question already had an answer, I wouldn't still be here doing this.
It wouldn't be a thing.
So, no, he didn't give us too much. As a matter of fact, in a lot of ways, he didn't give us enough. Anyway, that's the final question for this week. Um I'm so tired right now, you guys would believe how little I slept this week.
I'm going to try and get some sleep right after I finish doing this. But first, before I do that, we have to do the quiz review, which is all about Appendix A. Let's do that.
Okay, so we we finished like going through like The Hobbit. We we had a week of quizzes on The Hobbit. Then we had a week of quizzes for every book in The Lord of the Rings, up through chapter six. And now we have the appendices, and there's so much information jam-packed in these little appendices that I've decided to break them each up into a week of quizzes. So, we have an entire week of quizzes based on Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings.
So, here's our first one. Let's see how you guys did. And I I resisted the urge to look at these. So, let's see what we have here.
Tolkien mentions three unions of the Eldar and Edain. Which of these unions was not included in the examples given?
So, 2% of you said Beren and Lúthien. Uh that's incorrect. 15% of you said Tuor and Idril. Also incorrect. 66% of you said Imrazôr and Mithrellas. That is correct. And then Aldarion and Erendis.
Uh 17% of you said that. That's incorrect. So, 66% A good 2/3, a nice majority, got that right. Imrazôr and Mithrellas. Uh that was in the Third Age. Imrazôr was a man of Gondor. He was often called the Númenórean, not because he was from Númenor. Of course, Númenor was long gone. Uh but because he was just so very Númenórean, and he met Mithrellas, and uh she was a Sylvan Elf.
That is to say, one of the wood elves.
And they got married, they had two children, she vanished, we don't really know what happened to her. I have a long-suffering fan fiction I've been writing about those two for ages that I have to finish at some point and present to you guys. It's It's actually pretty good. Uh it's just that I have like the the beginning part and the and the end part really nailed down. Middle part is where it kind of suffers a lot. I'm still working on that part. But anyway, uh yeah, you guys did well on this one.
Comment here from uh Rim Services who said, "And some of the Tooks, according to the local legends, of course, there is a legend that there was a Took ancestor that married a fairy, which might have been what the hobbits would have referred to in Elvish. Um although, of course, the hobbits are not exactly the Edain. That it specifically does mean the noble men of Middle-earth."
All right, let's uh move on to the next one here. "What is said to happen to the line of kings of Númenor after Tar-Minastir?"
So, 25% of you got this right, uh which was they became greedy for wealth and power. Uh 14% of you said they started to allow women to rule. That had actually already happened after the rule of Tar-Eldarion. He didn't have any sons, he only had a daughter. And so, he you know, he had decided to go to the council and rewrite the laws to make it so that women could rule so that his daughter could become the ruling queen instead of um one of his cousins becoming the king. And he he was rather happy to do that, although she didn't turn out to be very good queen, uh mostly because she married this uh guy who was a bit of a dimwit, and he sort of um you know, uh made a lot of decisions for her, and they weren't so great. She should have just ruled by herself, I guess. Uh 45% of you said they stopped using Elvish names and switched to Adûnaic. That actually happened later on. And 16% of you said they stopped accepting visitors from the Undying Lands. That also happened a little bit later on. So, there you have it.
25% Not amazing, but that was kind of a tough one, I think.
All right, here's our next one. Which of the three realms of fractured Arnor was the closest to Rivendell? Uh so, 25% of you said it was Arthedain.
Uh 23% of you said it was Cardolan. 43% of you got it right. It It was Rhudaur, which was described as being between the Ettinmoors and the Weather Hills and the Misty Mountains. Arthedain was further to the west, like the Shire and Breeland. Cardolan was in the south. 8% of you said Dunland, which which I I typoed there. Write these on my phone sometimes. Dunland um is is not even part of Arnor, really.
So, there you have it.
I just had to put something there to have four choices.
All right, here's our next one. What event caused the Snowmen of Lossoth to become more friendly to the exiled king Arvedui?
38% of you said he gave them the Ring of Barahir. He did give them the Ring of Barahir, but that's not what caused them to become more friendly to him. 6% of you said he gave them jewels. He did attempt to give them jewels, but they weren't really interested in the jewels.
They didn't really uh use money in their society, and they weren't interested.
32% of you got it right. The arrival of Círdan's mighty ships to rescue him awed and amazed them. And >> [music] >> uh when he realized because they thought these these these giant sea monsters had come to take you away from us. We're going to protect you. And he realized that they had become friends, and that's afterwards he gave them the Ring of Barahir. 24% of you he said he spoke at length with their chief. Of course, he had spoken at length with them uh the chief in the past, but uh really it was Círdan's ships arriving that did the trick for them. So, 32% a pretty even spread between three of the answers, and they're the three most plausible answers. So, there is that.
All right, here's our next one. Which fact about Sam's daughter Eleanor is revealed in Appendix A? Uh Uh, of you got this right, a good plurality that she was one of the maids of Queen Evenstar.
Uh, so that was revealed in Appendix A.
16% of you said that she was named by Frodo, that was actually revealed in Book Six of The Lord of the Rings, not in the appendix.
31% of you said, uh, that it was that she had blonde hair, which was also, uh, revealed in Book Six of The Lord of the Rings, not so much that, um, in the appendix. And 7% of you said that her first son was named Elfstan, which was actually revealed in Appendix B. So, uh, you did pretty good there. Not a majority, but a plurality.
All right, here's our next one.
Who was the first Steward of Gondor whose name was recorded in the records?
And this is a really fun one because they're all Hurin. Uh, so 24% of you thought it was Hurin the First.
That's wrong.
24% of you as well thought it was Hurin Thalion. That is also wrong.
19% of you thought it was Lord Hurin.
That was also wrong. And 32% of you, the small plurality, thought it was Hurin of Emyn Arnen.
And that is correct. So, who Hurin of Emyn Arnen was not the first Steward, but he was the first Steward whose name was recorded in the records. Um, Hurin the First came a bit later. There was also a He was a Steward of Gondor. Hurin the Second as well. Obviously, nobody was going to vote for that, so I didn't put Hurin the Second in there. Hurin Thalion is not anything to do with Gondor. That was the First Age, Beleriand, Children of Hurin, uh, that story. And Lord Hurin was a character in The Lord of the Rings. He was the the guy who kept all the keys in Gondor. So, obviously, he wasn't the Steward.
Uh, but you got That was a pretty even spread there, you know? I I think that's pretty cool when I get an even spread, but the plurality got it right.
All right, one more, and here it is.
What did Aragorn call Arwen when he first met her?
So, 16 I'm sorry, 18% of you said he called her Evenstar.
Uh she is called Evenstar, but not by Aragorn. He did not call her that in that scene. Uh 62% of you got it absolutely correct, a nice majority.
Tinúviel, he he he thought he was seeing Lúthien and he called out to her like Beren did, Tinúviel Tinúviel, and she turned to look at him like, "What?"
And then he explained himself when they got to know each other. 18% of you said Undómiel, which is another name that she has, but it was not something that I I'm Aragorn came up with. And 2% of you, I couldn't think of another plausible one, so I put a joke in there, and sometimes you guys do vote for the jokes. Uh 2% of you said he called her Toots, which I just I I think if he did that, they wouldn't be married, right? Let's see, what do the comments say? Joshua had said, "Are you sure it wasn't Toots?"
Skeptical Smurf says, "Does fries come with that shake?" Oh my god, if he had said that in the That would be like a Lord of the Rings uh parody there. Deb says, "Hey, babe, you going my way?"
Which I I read that in Lenny Kravitz's voice, you know, "Are you going to go my way?"
Um I thought that was funny. 2% of you actually voted [laughter] for that.
You guys are funny.
Uh that being said, uh nice overwhelming overwhelming majority, 62% of you got that right. So, good job. These were a little bit because it is the the appendix, uh it is a little more difficult. Appendix B, I think, might be a little easier because that's a shorter uh thing, and it's just a tale of years, uh which is basically the chronology of everything from the beginning of the Second Age to as far in the Fourth Age as concerns the fellowship members, not further than that. There are things further than that, but they don't concern fellowship members.
But anyway, guys, we're at the end of the video here, so I'm going to ask you guys to do all the normal things again.
Like the video, comment on the video, hit the hype button if you see it, subscribe if you haven't already, and made it to the end of the video and you haven't subscribed, I think you're morally obligated to do so. I think that if you don't subscribe at this point, you get to feel a little bop in the back of your head. It's your ancestors saying, "What is wrong with you? Hit that button."
And and ring the bell and all that stuff. Turn on notifications, all the stuff that we YouTubers have to say.
Also, consider membership. Membership helps me out a lot. It's only $5 a month. It's not a lot of money for you to spend. It's not a lot of money for me to get. It But it does help fuel the algorithm if we get more and more channel members. And we have been getting more and more channel members, by the way. I remember there was a point where I only had like six channel members and now we have nearly 30. So, that's just really cool. And a lot of the people who are members of the channel have been members of the channel for a really long time, which is really cool because I designed the badge that you get when you join, which is the Gandalf G rune to evolve over time. Like when you reach I think it's 6 months, you get like a little moon icon. When you reach a year, it's a little sun icon. And it can actually go up to four suns, which is, by the way, the way that Gandalf would draw the rune. He drew the G with four stars around it.
You know, and that would signify four years. We haven't even doing this four years. Much has been partnered for four years. But eventually that, you know, you can get a badge like that. It's not a lot of money, but it helps me out and you get to see all of the videos early, which is really cool, I think.
And there were going to be some videos here and there that are going to be members only. Not a lot of them because I don't like to deprive non-members of a lot of important stuff. But, for example, the play that we're going to be doing very soon or maybe by the time this comes out it's happened already.
Um you know, we're we're going to have behind-the-scenes and rehearsal footage and stuff like that. That's going to be members only. So, stuff like that.
Anyway, guys, we're going to stop right here and we'll see you guys next time.
Related Videos
Mark Your Territory: A Limerick for Expansion
TricksMyDogTaughtMe
115 views•2026-06-07
L'amore usa e getta | Frédéric Beigbeder, L'amore dura tre anni, 2002 | #shorts
CrescitaPositiva
15K views•2026-06-07
Going Over Catelyn XI, A Game of Thrones
PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin
1K views•2026-06-05
Romantasy: Ranked & Roasted
gregowen2022
352 views•2026-06-09
Tolkien poems that spark that Magic Forest Feeling
lonelyreaderposts
209 views•2026-06-04
The Pilgrim's Progress Ch01
GGVTreasures
121 views•2026-06-03
Tsleeveless - CAP (Corny Ass Poet) @ Voices In Power | Spoken Word Poetry
VoicesInPower
123 views•2026-06-08
The Fisherman Who Returned Without His Catch | A Hamish Macbeth Mystery
FiresideMysteriess
184 views•2026-06-03
Trending
How Old Diamonds REALLY Are
CleoAbram
1093K views•2026-06-08
The Riskiest Moment of the AI Bubble
hankschannel
379K views•2026-06-09
DOOM Neo Geo progress...You guys are insane...
ModernVintageGamer
153K views•2026-06-08
Bricks and Minifigs CEO Went on Fox 5 News... And Made Everything Worse
LEGOEmpire-o3q
204K views•2026-06-09