It May Be That We Fled From A Fear Of The Dark

Primarily The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin but I do lots of LOTR and general Tolkien stuff too! Feel free to ask questions!

My username is a reference to The Wanderings of Húrin, I do not remember why I chose it

areas of interest to me are world building (environment/nature/society/culture/etc) of Beleriand, Middle Earth and Valinor as well as Angband ! Please ask questions about this! I now have a masterlist for environmental world building here and one for societal world building here and my Newest Masterlist: Aerin and post Nírnaeth Hithlum HCs with other CoH lists! My tags are often more reliable though because I can be slow to update the masterlists

I am autistic. I get over excited so sometimes come off as rambling, awkward or repetitive. Please tell me if I’m interacting in a way that’s annoying or if I’m talking over you. I do love talking with others so feel free to message me!

Masterlist of tags and topics

My Neologisms

updated note about commissions

According to the in universe narrator in LaCE, the child is given a name by their father and usually though not always by their mother. As they grow up they also took on one or more chosen names. It was also said that some elven mothers had a sense of foresight, and this was sometimes a component in the mother-names. These names were considered especially powerful and were called essi terencenyë or names of foresight

There was a ceremony dedicated to the chosen names called Essecilmë (name choosing). It was held after the child had developed what was called lámatyávë, meaning “sound taste”, which was defined as individual pleasure in the sounds and forms of words. Elven children were said to develop this at around seven years of age and could then take pleasure in word play and phonetic arts. This itself is such a cool concept to me!

Assuming the context is this post of mine asking everyone what their favorite parts of the Legendarium that were discarded I’ve talked about all of these probably too much but I’m delighted to again anyways!

1. Morwen confronting Glaurung in the Book of Lost Tales, insulting him, and telling him bluntly to torture her and spare Niënor. It’s an act of profound courage and selflessness but it’s also so harrowing and kind of upsetting to me. Morwen clearly fears imprisonment and torture far more than death. This is the version where she asks Thingol for a knife with the intention of killing herself if the alternative is capture.

My Morwen in the shadow of Glaurung piece from a couple days ago had this on my mind again.

2. This line about Aerin’s motivation for exiling Túrin to find Morwen and Niënor “and Aerin suffered it not for the love of Morwen, hoping yet to join those twain mother and son in happiness” 🩵🩵🩵🩵 she deserved to join Morwen in happiness…(used the later names for ease but the quote does of course say Airin and Mavwin)

2.5 Not sure if I should count this as its own point but there’s so many great Aerin lines in BoLT. I love her almost sardonic dialogue and Christopher Tolkien’s description of her dealing justice with wisdom and vigor.

3. As seen above, Morwen asking Thingol for a knife. It’s really fascinating to see her character evolve throughout the course of the Lost Tales. In her first mentions, she’s not quite recognizable yet as the reserved, courageous and proud figure she is in the final version. But by a couple scenes in the end of Túrin’s chapter in BoLT2, you see glimpses. This is one notable one in my opinion. It’s very fitting with Morwen’s later character and it mirrors Húrin taking Manthor’s knife in The Wanderings. I’ve always said Morwen can be vicious if cornered and this is such a fascinating aspect of that.

4. Maedhros’s testimony of Finwë’s murder from Morgoth’s Ring. It’s a fantastic little horror piece and I’m always going back to it. The descriptions of the tense atmosphere before darkness fell, the horror of the Fëanorians trapped and forced to hear their grandfather’s murder! My horror tag is named from Maedhros’s iconic “blood and darkness!” cry!

5. The “horror of her life” line about Aerin. I think about it and the wording almost every day.

Elven words for rain and mist

These are elven words for and snow and frost including poetic and archaic words

More in the linguistic resources and word of the day (wotd) tags! Let me know if there are any topics you would like to see covered

Lossë in Quenya is both a noun and an adjective meaning snow and snowy.

Loss is the Sindarin word for snow. Both derive from g(los) meaning snow or snow white.

Hrissë in Quenya means fall of snow, derived from sris, another root for snow.

Helca in Quenya means icy or icy cold. It derives from khelek meaning ice

Heleg means ice in Sindarin. The verbal form is hel meaning to freeze

Helcelimbë, literally ice drop, is a Quenya word for icicle.

Aeglos is the Sindarin word for icicle, meaning snow point. The word is most famous for being the name of the spear of Gil Galad and of a flower that grew upon Amon Rhûdh in The Children of Húrin

Nixë means frost but is sometimes used to mean a flake of snow or use. Niqu is the verb meaning to freeze.

Niquis in Quenya means a snowflake or a petal of a white flower.

Niquessë (Q) means frost patterns, translating literally to chill feather

Ith is an early Sindarin word for fine snow. Is is the Quenya cognate. Both derive from ibi meaning light snow ❄️

Helfileg in early Sindarin means frost on panes. It translates literally to freezing ferns.

In the comments or tags, share what aspects of the Legendarium you find the most mysterious, complicated, unclear or strange!

It can be something like the Oath of Fëanor, Ósanwë, figures like Ungoliant or Tom Bombadil, a mysterious place, or something broader like the existence of magic more generally or elven re embodiment.

It’s so simple and so final and she’s right. She says that until the other Valar decide to intervene, “how could even the elder children overthrow one of the powers”. In the end, that is exactly what needs to happen at the end of the War of Wrath, decades after Morwen herself is dead.

And it makes her pre Nírnaeth conversation and her farewell to Húrin even more sad and dread inducing. Húrin says they ride with greater hope than ever before and she knows as strongly as anything else that it’s a losing battle.

x x x x x x x x x

Capta from Quenya

Meaning “to startle, to make scatter”

Derived from kapa meaning leap

See also Captha in early Sindarin meaning to startle

There is another tragedy in that Aerin has no say over how she’s remembered, and so many parts of her, especially of her before the Nírnaeth, are forgotten.

But of course Aerin was not the last person to be subjected to forced marriage or abuse, whose people were oppressed or enslaved.

Aerin as a whisper, a warning, a promise, a threat.

I think about fires that are lit in her memory, and of men’s houses that are burned with her in the shadows of someone’s mind. I think of those seeing the fires from far away like Túrin saw that red light and those beside him knew at once who set it.

I just also think about the people who remained enslaved in Hithlum and who escaped to Sirion who remember her. Some of them might have survived because of her defiance and loyalty.

There are some depictions in the late first age and early second age made from descriptions from survivors of Hithlum who managed to escape to Sirion. Some of these depict her with goldenrod, a species not common in Hithlum but common in the later years, their flowers appearing almost like flames

The birthplace of the monsters Morgoth bred and where demons like balrogs first gathered strength. The place of some of Morgoth’s first atrocities, the looming threat in the early days of the elves, before they even had a name for the being that inhabited it.

The hell that some disappeared to forever.

The surrounding forests that “grew dark and perilous, the haunts of fear” and stayed so for centuries after Utumno was razed. Some of their darkest corners are still avoided by the Avari and Green Elves who live in the region. Birds avoid flying over the remains.

Falasael from Sindarin

This is a neologism for tide pool translating to shore pools or coastal pools 🐚🪸🌊

From falas meaning shore or coast and ael meaning pool

See also sarofarn, a canonical word from early Sindarin for the seashore, often used in poetry

I think about the stories she heard as a young child before the Bragollach, of the monster that the elven king had driven back cowering.

Of the unimaginable dizzying shock of being trapped in the path of Glaurung’s wreckage at the age of eleven or twelve. Fires raging around her. Her mother dying before her eyes. The earth cracking around the monstrous claw of the dragon.

And her nightmares after. The half formed images of the monster that destroyed everything. That wrought her home and helped killed her people

And that moment of utter horror when decades later Morwen sees Glaurung emerging from the mists around Nargothrond. Far from a distorted or exaggerated childish fear, Glaurung,is even worse than she remembered

The last vestiges of Laurelin spreading out over the world, nurtured by Yavanna and carried by Arien. The strange light permeating homes and crevices and forests. New colors tangled in the sky that had been dark for so long.

The awe and wonder and uncertainty and fear! For both the elves of Valinor and those of Beleriand and Middle Earth, their reality is reshaped in hours. Some fled or hid. Some stood transfixed for hours. Some believed it to be the end of the world.

Elven words for clouds and wind

These are elven words for and rain and mist including poetic and archaic words 🌧️ 🌫️⛈️

More in the linguistic resources and word of the day (wotd) tags! Let me know if there are any topics you would like to see covered

Ul in Quenya means to rain. Ulo is the noun form. It derives from ul meaning pour out or flow

Rossë means rain or foam and is generally understood to refer to light or brief rain. It derives from ros meaning spindrift or spray. Mistë also means light rain or drizzle, derived from mizdi meaning fine rain or dew

Ross is used in Sindarin to mean rain generally. Rost is the adjective form

Meord is a word meaning fine rain in Ossiriandic, the language of the green elves of Ossiriand. It is one of only nineteen known words in this language. It derives from the word mizdi.

Tibli is an archaic Sindarin word for drizzle or sleet, it derives from tipi meaning spray

Timpínea, derived from tipi also, is an older Quenya word meaning full of fine rain or showers

Spenna is one of the only other known words of Ossiriandic! It means white fog and derives from span meaning white

In the face of both interpersonal violence and devastating cultural suppression, Aerin holds onto what she can, even when it’s like clinging to broken shards. She holds them even as they cut so deeply because of what she’s afraid of losing if she lets go, even for a moment.

It’s a constant battle where there is no way to win. Any aspect of herself or her culture she maintains has to be constantly weighed against retaliation, to herself or others, against the fact that it is incompatible with the position she’s forced into and thus how she will suffer because of it, and against her own exhaustion.

What’s your favourite part of the Legendarium that was abandoned, discarded or otherwise not considered strictly canon? It can be a character, timeline or event or even something more abstract like a name change or just a line!

Feel free to use your own preference and discretion as I know discussion of what is canon can be thorny!