Dimitra Fimi's book entitled
Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History offers a very interesting study of how Tolkien's ideas about the fay world changed from his very earliest poems through the First, Second, and Third Ages, leading ultimately to SWM. I can't recommend it highly enough.
But perhaps this passage might be of interest here. It comes from Tolkien's public lecture
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, on the medieval poem of the same name. He is discussing Gawain's acceptance of the the Lady's girdle and the effects of Gawain's confession, before Gawain goes off to face his fate with the Green Knight. This is about an explicitly Christian work, which Tolkien's is not, and so it could refer just to the Gawain poem.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Tolkien
And so, while Gawain does not accept the Girdle solely out of courtesy, and is tempted by the hope of magic aid, and when arming does not forget it, but puts it on for gode of hymseluen and to sauen hymself, this motive is minimised, and Gawain is not represented as relying on it at all when coming to the desperate point--for it, no less than the horrible Green Knight, and his faierie, and all faierie, is ultimately under God. A reflexion which makes the magic Girdle seem rather feeble, as no doubt the poet intended that it should.
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The lecture was delivered in 1953.