Elves in Middle-earth

As soon as I was old enough to eat grass, my mother used to go out to work in the daytime and come back in the evening.

That could be elves.

Elves could have written that, honestly.

Yeah.

No, that is.

And Melkor starts fucking up the world, right? And it's some of the same stuff that we saw last time.

Kind of a rerun or repatterning of a lot of the basic evental stuff that we learned about from last time.

Elves appear in the world.

In the western foothills of the Misty Mountains, where the river Bruinen comes tumbling down from the High Country, there lies a hidden valley, long known among elves and men as Imladris, though in the common speech it is called Rivendell.

Founded by Elrond Half-Elven in the Second Age, it is endured through many long years as a refuge from the troubles of the wider world.

There, beneath the pine-covered heights, stands, as they say, the last homely house where travelers find rest, song, and story.

It is Rivendell where much wisdom of the Elder Days is preserved.

Together, these three refined what has come to be called by travelers the elvish manner of pipe making.

They never claimed to have vented the pipe, nor even to have improved upon it, for the hobbits would surely dispute both claims.

Rather, theirs was simply another tradition of the craft, born beneath the trees and waterfalls of Imladris and shaped according to the tastes of those who dwell there, the Elven people.

From these craftsmen arose in the early years of the Fourth Age a gathering which has become known as the Pipe-Making Seminar of Rivendell.

Not only because he's unknown to Frodo.

Surely, at the time in which he meets Legolas... on day two after he woke up there are still a lot of elves of Rivendell that are strange to him in the sense that he hasn't met them before right like strangers not yet familiar not yet introduced um Legolas is a strange elf in a deeper sense he's from a different people he's a whole different category of elf he's a a wood elf and Rivendell has been tied on multiple occasions both in the Hobbit even and then especially in the Fellowship of the Ring so far through Gildor and Glorfindel Rivendell has been connected with the High Elves with the Noldor and Legolas is strange only because those Elves are the the ones we've met yeah yeah anyway um so Yeah, yeah.

No, Bob, no apologies.

This is an important thing to bring out.

"I remember well the splendor of their banners," he said.

"It recalled to me the glory of the Elder Days and the hosts of Beleriand "So many great princes and captains were assembled, and yet not so many, nor so fair, as when Thangorodrim was broken and the Elves deemed that evil was ended for ever.

And it was not so." "You remember," said Frodo, speaking his thought aloud in his astonishment.

"But I thought..." he stammered as Elrond turned towards him.

They were called Menegroth, the Thousand Caves.

But being incarnate, Morgoth was afraid.

My father wrote of him, 'As he grew in malice and sent forth from himself the evil that he conceived in lies and creatures of wickedness, his power passed into them and was dispersed, and he himself became ever more earthbound, unwilling to issue from his dark strongholds.' Thus, when Fingolfin, High King of the Ñoldorin Elves, rode alone to Angband to challenge Morgoth to combat, he cried at the gate, 'Come forth, thou coward king, to fight with thine own hand.

Den-dweller, wielder of thralls, liar and lurker, foe of gods and elves, come, for I would see thy craven face.' Then it is told Morgoth came, for he could not refuse such a challenge before the face of his captains.

where he's kind of snapped out of it.

He's snapped out of it by the beauty of the day and by his thoughts against his will be dragged to Doriath and remembering the Elven tongue.

And then all of a sudden, this situation has sprung upon him, the very same situation that he was part of.

I mean, a parallel of that situation that he was a part of in Doriath, except now it's clear to him that he's Mablung and Androg is him.

Later in the Silmarillion, we read this about the vala Orome discovering the elves.

And Orome loved the Quendi and named them in their own tongue Eldar, the people of the stars.

But that name was afterborn only by those who followed him upon the westward road.

So every time on this podcast that you've heard me reference the word Eldar, I'm saying basically the starfolk.

Okay.

Elves and Valar.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I just didn't think hard enough about it.

What are the categories again?

Hobbits and Whizzies, Elves and Valar, Dwarves and Men, Baddies and Random.

Let's do Dwarves and Men, 100.