Zifnab, thank you for all those wonderful quotes! (I hope you have a scanner, and our not typing those all out.)
Seems like the swans did not play an unimportant role, since they were obviously sent to remind Tuor...of what? Where was Tuor suppose to be going? (I got to find a used copy of the Silm, but they seem to be flying off the shelves these days. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] )
As for the rest of you: get off the Disney kick! Animals have played a major role in the mythology of all of earth's cultures, until modern man reduced their role to "kiddie books".
I'm glad to learn that Tolkien did acknowledge this in his other writings. A Middle Earth without an Animal Spirit would be a souless world.
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