[Kalimac]

This is a really neat question, Eol (I'm also amused because I'm currently working on an article about arsenic murders). I don't think there's any definite answer to this question, though - to the best of my memory, Tolkien never had an Elf character poisoned or made a definite pronouncement one way or the other. My first instinct would be to say "Of course they can be poisoned - they can be murdered, and poisoning someone is murder." However, there are a few things to consider which might make this a shakier statement than it seems.

1. Tolkien doesn't use the word "murder" he uses "slay." "Slay", according to my dictionary, means "to kill violently." Poison is the antithesis of violent murder - the murderer doesn't even have to be in the same country as the victim when the victim actually ingests the poison. (This isn't to say that the victim doesn't experience any less pain than someone who gets run through with a sword; often they have more. But the point is that the murderer is not *directly* inflicting it). It's very, very unusual to hear of someone being "slain by poison" - though there are instances, old, highly romanticized, and related to important people, such as Hercules - since the poisonous element, which was the direct actor, didn't have any malevolent intent, and the poisoner, who of course did, is not the direct actor.

The question now arises: was Tolkien using "slain" in the same way the dictionary defines it? It might seem like a silly question, and probably is, since he was a professional philologist and probably knew more about language than most of the population of the Downs. However, he was also writing in a deliberately archaic style, and "slay" is seen as a much more old-fashioned word than "murder". It's not, for example, considered completely ridiculous to say that "Hercules was slain by his enemies" even though Hercules died by putting on a poisoned shirt and thus does not technically fall within the definition of slayage. On the other hand, it sounds vaguely off-kilter to refer to Jeffrey Dahmer's victims as "slain" even though they fulfilled every criterion of the dictionary definition. So "slain" is very effective as a means to convey "archaic." And let's face it, "Elves may be slain" sounds a lot better than "Elves can be murdered."

For me, the jury is out on this question - if anyone has any opinions, or any clearer instances of how Tolkien defined "slay" it would be great to see them.

2) Elves' biology. They live forever, they're largely (though not entirely) immune to heat and cold. However, they cannot survive an indisputably violent death such as decapitation by an enemy sword. To me this would suggest that they have, first of all, immense natural strength and second of all, immune systems the likes of which we can't even imagine. This would imply that their bodies an amazing ability to restore themselves; if their red blood-cell count is threatened with a disease that would make a human's count drop drastically, somehow they block it; cancers simply never grow, etc. However, their powers of regeneration aren't total, e.g. a decapitated Elf can't sprout a new head in the way that a crab who loses a leg can grow a new one. (I don't see any reason to believe that an Elf could regrow not-so-vital limbs such as arms, either). So we can conclude that if one part of an Elf's body is physically severed from the other, they do not have the power to rejoin or grow new ones. However, they can do pretty much everything else.

Now, there's no poison in the world that will sever someone's head, cut out a vital organ, or anything similar. What they do is attack different parts of the body in ways which are often similar to natural diseases, albeit often with odd symptoms, or much more severe effects. Poisoning someone with foxglove, for example, can cause them to die of heart failure, because the poison brought on the same symptoms in the body and, in fact, *caused* a real instance of heart failure - it's just that the real instance was artificially induced. Similarly, back when it was common to certify deaths from "gastritis" and similar ills without doing a post-mortem, arsenic was a popular poison because what it did was basically produce gastritis symptoms so severe that it was impossible to live through them. It didn't cause real gastritis in the way that foxglove caused real heart failure, but the method was the same - interfere with body's red blood cells, workings of the stomach, workings of the lungs.

This leans me towards the conclusion that Elves could not be poisoned, at least not without extraordinary effort. Their immune systems would have been able to prevent the poison's effects in ways that human systems could never do. But I'm still back and forth on the question. (Part of me is starting to wonder about other versions of "slaying" - could Elves be burned to death, for example? Hmmm...I lean towards yes on that one, but OTOH it doesn't involve any severing. Have to think about that more).

Just my $0.04.