What connection between Goldberry and Ulmo?

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

So, if Arda is marred, if Middle-earth is tainted by the evil and chaos of Melkor, does that not mean that all of the natural world is fallen? Nature cannot therefore be either neutral or positive, but must be something to be fought against, for fear of succumbing to Melkor's taint. And even with the defeat of Melkor, was this pollution repaired? I don't think so but perhaps there is some archane comment in one of the secondary sources that addresses this point.

So, if Goldberry (and Tom) are spirits of the natural world, are they part of this marring? The violence in ATB suggests as much, while the domestic peace of LotR would suggest something else.

Well, the idea that Melkor's evil had infested the very stuff of Arda had not come into being when either AoTB or LotR was written, so neither of them was composed with that idea in mind (& I don't think either of them can sustain the conceit). The idea of Arda being 'Morgoth's Ring' causes problems which were never really addressed. As with a lot of the stuff gathered together under the heading of 'Myths Transformed' in HoM-e 10 it causes numerous difficulties - not least the Tom/Goldberry one Bb points up here.

One of Tolkien's most annoying habits was continually coming up with concepts which had a major effect on the Secondary World & presenting them as 'givens' of M-e but not actually developing, or properly integrating them - & in many cases that's because those ideas conflict with each other to such a degree that they can't be integrated.

Or in short - see me sig...