[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by doug*platypus

No, Sam's cousin Hal sees one striding across the moors of the Northfarthing... at least he thinks that he does.

‘But what about these Tree-men, these giants, as you might call them? They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen up away beyond the North Moors not long back.’

Christopher Tolkien speculates in Return of the Shadow, “Ancient History”, that this passage in FotR “Shadow of the Past” might be a foreshadowing of the ents of Two Towers, but he also notes that they appear “in connection with the voyages of Eärendil” in Book of Lost Tales II, where “Tree-men” are mentioned in two outlines as some of the creatures and dangers encountered by Eärendil in his journeys to find the West.

Separately in Return of the Shadow, “From Weathertop to the Ford”, Christopher Tolkien notes in a passage entitled “Note on the Entish Lands” in regards to the Ettendales and Ettenmoors north of Rivendell that

Entish here was used in the Old English sense of ent, ‘giant’; the Entish Lands were the ‘troll-lands’ …, and are in no way associated with the Ents of The Lord of the Rings.

Which begs the question of the identity of the creatures in The Hobbit:

…the stone-giants were out and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness…

Are these “stone-giants” also “trolls” like the stone-trolls Bill, Bert and Tom whom Gandalf tricked into staying out too late so that they turned to stone when the sun arose?

Originally Posted by Annatar!

Luthien transforms herself into Thuringwethil, Sindarin for 'woman of secret shadow'. She was a messenger of Saurons in the first age who i believe only took the form of a giant vampire bat, not actually being a vampire. Perhaps this ability to transform also indicates that she too was a 'corrupted' Maiar or another enigma or anomoly of the story.

Shortly before Lúthien transformed herself into the likeness of Thuringwethil, there is this passage in Silmarillion, “Of Beren and Lúthien”, when Huan defeats Sauron in werewolf form:

…Sauron yielded himself, and Lúthien took the mastery of the isle and all that was there; and Huan released him. And immediately he took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees, and came to Tar-nu-Fuin, and dwelt there, filling it with horror.

Later in this chapter, when Beren sought to leave Lúthien behind as he ventured closer to Angband,

Huan ... had pondered in his heart what counsel he could devise for the lightning of the peril of these two whom he loved. He turned aside therefore at Sauron's isle, as they ran northward again, and he took thence the ghastly wolf-hame of Draugluin, and the bat-fell of Thuringwethil. She was the messenger of Sauron, and was wont to fly in vampire's form to Angband; and her great fingered wings were barbed at each joint's end with and iron claw. Clad in these dreadful garments Huan and Lúthien ran through Taur-nu-Fuin, and all things fled before them.

A hame is an animal skin, as is the fell in this passage: Draugluin was killed by Huan, and it sounds as if Thuringwethil had been, too: in any case, Huan has her mortal remains, i.e., the remains of her incarnate form if, as I agree, Annatar! is correct that Thuringwethil was a lesser Maia of some sort. A question here might concern what sort of spirits inhabited the werewolves of Angband. Draugluin is described (op. cit.) as “a dread beast, old in evil, lord and sire of the werewolves of Angband.” Sire would mean that he was perhaps the first, but at least the physical father of others of his kind; some have argued that these are identical with the wargs of Lord of the Rings, and though this does not ring true to my ear, it is accepted by Hammond and Scull in Reader’s Companion (discussion of wargs, p. 201, and the attack of the wolves in Eregion upon the Nine Walkers (in “Journey in the Dark”), p. 276 of Reader’s Companion). Besides this, one of Sauron’s titles was “Lord of Werewolves.”

The origin of Carcharoth, greatest of the werewolves, is described in this fashion in “Of Beren and Lúthien”:

Morgoth … chose one from among the whelps of the race of Draugluin; and he fed him with his own hand upon living flesh, and put his power upon him. Swiftly the wolf grew, until he could creep into no den, but lay huge and hungry before the feet of Morgoth. There the fire and anguish of hell entered into him, and he became filled with a devouring spirit, tormented, terrible, and strong. Carcharoth, the Red Maw, he is named…

When Carcharoth “became filled with a devouring spirit, tormented, terrible, and strong,” was this a spirit external to his original, physical being, a lesser Maia or the unhoused fëa of a fallen Elf sent to inhabit and empower the physical form of the wolf; or does it describe the state of Carcharoth’s condition, that his own, highly intelligent animal spirit, strengthened beyond its native abilities by Morgoth’s evil will and fiendish personal attentions, “became … a devouring spirit”? To my mind, there is a considerable difference in the implication, purport, and dread of the story between the two situations: a possessing evil spirit from outside, or the twisting of a natural spirit from the inside.

This same argument can be made of the dragons: are they natural creatures pushed beyond natural bounds by unnatural means; or are they, or at least some of them, natural creatures inhabited by spirits sent to possess the bodies of the worms? In the case of dragons, it would seem the first explanation is the better; but do they not also use “magic” of some sort? Glaurung enchanted both Turin and Nienor; and Bilbo “was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell,” so that he was nearly overcome by “an unaccountable desire [that] seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug.” (The Hobbit, “Inside Information”) The use of such enchantment seems hardly the stuff of “natural” critters, unless we ascribe to them the kind power described in folk-tales that cobras (and other serpents) possess to “hypnotize” their prey who see them.

It is easy enough to describe Ungoliant, Thuringwethil, and even Tom Bombadil as Maiar of one sort or another, in terms of Ainur who are not Valar but are in Arda; who while not allied to Manwë and his adherents or to Morgoth and his, are aligned with or at least more apt to cooperate with one side or the other. It seems to me that this technique works in all the cases in which we are presented with some primeval critter in Tolkien’s stories that otherwise defies explanation; but the method may cast too broad a net, since it might also include the Ents, who do not seem to be Maiar, but rather the olvar counterparts of Dwarves; and perhaps such creatures as Shelob, who is unquestionably powerful and deadly, but also seems to be something other than a Maia.