Some aspects can readily be reconciled, Shippey writes, since "Beauty is itself dangerous". All the same, an Icelandic woman could be frið sem álfkona, "fair as an elf-woman", while the Anglo-Saxons might call a very fair woman ælfscýne, "elf-beautiful". Another danger was wæterælfádl, "water-elf disease", perhaps meaning dropsy, while a third condition was ælfsogoða, "elf-pain", glossed by Shippey as "lunacy". Tolkien takes "elf-shot" as a hint to make his elves skilful in archery. Įlves were directly dangerous, too: the medical condition " elf-shot", described in the spell Gif hors ofscoten sie, "if a horse is elf-shot", meaning some kind of internal injury, was associated both with neolithic flint arrowheads and the temptations of the devil. In his 1939 essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien wrote that "English words such as elf have long been influenced by French (from which fay and faërie, fairy are derived) but in later times, through their use in translation, fairy and elf have acquired much of the atmosphere of German, Scandinavian, and Celtic tales, and many characteristics of the huldu-fólk, the daoine-sithe, and the tylwyth-teg." Įlf-shot, associated with " elf arrows", neolithic flint arrowheads sometimes used as amulets, was one of the hints Tolkien used to create his Elves. According to Marjorie Burns, Tolkien eventually but hesitantly chose the term elf over fairy. Tolkien had been gently warned against the term 'fairy', which John Garth supposes may have been due to its growing association with homosexuality, but Tolkien continued to use it. By 1915, when Tolkien was writing his first elven poems, the words elf, fairy and gnome had many divergent and contradictory associations. Illustrated posters of Robert Louis Stevenson's poem Land of Nod had been sent out by a philanthropist to brighten servicemen's quarters, and Faery was used in other contexts as an image of " Old England" to inspire patriotism. One of the last of the Victorian Fairy-paintings, The Piper of Dreams by Estella Canziani, sold 250,000 copies and was well known within the trenches of World War I where Tolkien saw active service. Titania and Bottom, 1851īy the late 19th century, the term 'fairy' had been taken up as a utopian theme, and was used to critique social and religious values, a tradition which Tolkien and T. Victorian era Fairy painting: Edwin Landseer, Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Shippey's view, the Silmarillion resolved the Middle English puzzle, letting Elves go not to Heaven but to the halfway house of the Halls of Mandos on Valinor. So, did they have souls, Shippey asks? Since they could not leave the world, the answer was no but given that they didn't disappear completely on death, the answer had to have been yes. Similarly, some of the Legendary 's Eluene are on Earth, others in the " Earthly Paradise".
The Elf-queen Galadriel indeed has been expelled from Valinor, much like the fallen Melkor, though she is clearly good, and much like an angel. Some of Tolkien's Elves are in the "undying lands" of Valinor, home of the godlike Valar, while others are in Middle-earth. Those are the wretched spirits: that were taken out of Heaven,Īnd at Doomsday many of them shall come to rest. These are called Elves: and often they come to townĪnd by day they are much in the woods: by night up on the high downs. Men see great numbers of them: dancing and sporting. Īnd often shaped like women: On many secret paths Þat beoth þe wrechche gostes : Þat out of heuene weren i-nome,Īnd manie of heom a-domesday : Ʒeot schullen to reste come. Þat Eluene beoth i-cleopede : and ofte heo comiez to toune,Īnd bi daye muche in wodes heo beoth : and bi niƺte ope heiƺe dounes. Grete compaygnie mon i-seoth of heom : boþe hoppie and pleiƺe, 1250, describes elves much as Tolkien does: South English LegendaryĪnd ofte in fourme of wommane : In many derne weye The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that one Middle English source which he presumes Tolkien must have read, the South English Legendary from c. Tolkien made it clear in a letter that his Elves differed from those "of the better known lore" of Scandinavian mythology. Numerous types of elves appear in Germanic mythology the West Germanic concept appears to have come to differ from the Scandinavian notion in the early Middle Ages, and the Anglo-Saxon concept diverged even further, possibly under Celtic influence. The modern English word elf derives from the Old English word ælf (which has cognates in all other Germanic languages).