[drigel]

And to rural peoples everywhere.

Here as well to a certain extent. No fairies, but plenty of ghosts and spririts, mothmen and Jersey Devils. I probably shouldnt use ignorant as a descriptor. But, come to think of it, saying that tsunamis and hurricanes and earthquakes happen to people because God is angry with them is way, way ignorant IMO.

And so we have Smith, in itself & particularly in the Smith essay. This particular 'Secondary World' & its inhabitants is another 'betwixt & between' realm, but this time it stands 'betwixt & between' the 'High', 'Christian' Faerie of the Legendarium & the simple 'rural' Faery of tradition. Yet even so it is closer to Middle-earth than to the 'Fair Elfland' of True Thomas. Perhaps if he had lived he would have moved even closer to the traditional Faery.

It's what makes this all the more interesting - reading that I find that physicality of Faery in the essay very real. And the people and objects transitioning between here and there very real and mostly ordinary. It's almost approaching a middle ground of sorts in SOWM. Facinating! I agree with your conclusion here, and would find it much more interesting to see how he would evolve and/or combine these seemingly disparate Faeries, than reading anything about a 4th age "New Shadow". Alas..

Tolkien says that a fairy story is not about the people who live there, but about the place.

He says that 'pigwiggenry' ought to have no place in a good fairy story, but that doesn't mean it would have no place in Faerie

We seem to see in Tolkien a conflicted artist - 'torn in two'.

So is my brain trying to work this out. Is the stigma of validating things pagan too much of a conflict? Would it have been not so if Tolkien was Protestant? Agnostic?