What colour is Legolas` hair?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Legolas' hare was probably black at first until he got bunnied by Christopher Tolkien at which point the hare became blonde. Of course, Legolas was almost late for the Council of Elrond, which would seem to imply that his hare was white.

[The Barrow-Wight]

Since the original question has been answered many times in the past and properly linked to, this topic now belongs in Mirth. I'm moving it there. Thanks a lot, Squatter

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I resent my research being consigned to Mirth just because nobody else has the HoME extended edition.

Fordim has a very good point there: Legolas may well have had a white hare, which was the ancient symbol of poor timekeeping among the Sindar. It's possible, though, that he would have given any such pet a blue rinse. In his footnote, Tolkien says: "In fact Legolas was particularly fond of purple, especially as an artificial hair colour. His liking for it was so pronounced even for Thranduil's folk that it marked him out from his fellows from an early age."

Pets in Middle-earth were rare, particularly rodents, which have a tendency to eat beatifully crafted furniture and nibble perfect flowing locks. One of the few characters who does possess a dog, at least in early draughts of LotR, is Aragorn, whose West Highland Terrier would earn him drinks by balancing peanuts on its nose.

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Indeed Squatter, I believe Aragorn's dog was named Charles. He was a delightful fellow, I hear.

This thread surprises me, insofar as it is hard for me to imagine Legolas owning a hare. This is due to a little known passage in early drafts of 'The Ring goes South' where Legolas steps on and crushes a rabbit, and curses at it for making his shoes all bloody.

[Mad Baggins]

He may have received it from Rivendell as one of their many hare messengers. Then Legolas, being the greedy sod he is, may have kept it after reading the note tied to its ears. As punishment, his father Thranduil made him go to the Council of Elrond. It was white when it reached Mirkwood, but according to his purple fetish Legolas may have dyed it.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Or even in a pathetic attempt to disguise his theft. Legolas was terribly vain about his position in society, and did everything to maintain his respectability short of actually being respectable.

The use of messenger hares among the Eldar is quite well documented. It was an early idea, which was later replaced with Osanwë-Kenta. However, Tolkien does remark in a letter to Kenneth Williams that "When they became fatigued through the use of this technique, they would turn at last to the faithful hares, who had ever been their staunchest allies at need".

Círdan the Shipwright had used his awesome carpentry skills to construct a number of high-rise hutch-flets in the trees around the Grey Havens, where the rodent allies of the departing Eldar might reside until the Elves had need of them. Of course, rabbit pie is as good a foodstuff as any when you run out of Lembas. Círdan was nothing if not practical.

[Saraphim]

I do not doubt that the hare, upon the time of its birth, was white.

But Legolas, after experimenting with different colors for his own head at an early age and finding that it only made his beutiful locks brittle and lackluster, would have recieved the rabbit and then proceeded to dye it whatever color the esteemed elven princling had an urge for.

At the time of the War, it was obviously purple, as Legolas would have wanted his hare to be his favorite color to comfort his thoughts on the long nights he spent in travel.

[The Only Real Estel]

I'm fairly certain that the hare started out as black. Legolas captured it in one of his many raiding party adventures, as recounted in The Complete Tale of Legolas & Co.'s Adventures; Vol. 3. Then, as I've found in my extensive search through the 1,000 page documentary Obsecure Side-Plots of The Lord of the Rings, he trained it to sniff out dwarves that happened to be traveling through the Mirkwood Forest. One particular dwarf had the singular misfortune of having most of his blue beard hacked off, so that Legolas could expierement with fur-transfusions. Thus, Legolas's hare came to be blue, though it can be argued that Legolas later found a way to make him purple, like other posters have mentioned here.

Pets in Middle-earth were rare, particularly rodents, which have a tendency to eat beatifully crafted furniture and nibble perfect flowing locks. One of the few characters who does possess a dog, at least in early draughts of LotR, is Aragorn, whose West Highland Terrier would earn him drinks by balancing peanuts on its nose.

Aragorn was one of the few to have a dog, but Sam was the only non-Haradrim being to ever own an Oliphaunt. His journey to the Grey Havens was partially brought on by the stress of trying to keep his 'Ollie' (as he named it), & keeping all of his beloved trees safe, no easy task. In The Supposed Tales That Are Still Unfinished, it says that Sam brought Ollie across the water with him on a barge, & so the two came to the Undying Lands together. That, of course, is only partially verified-take it with a grain of salt.