Boldogs, Gothmogs and Sauron's New Clothes

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by obloquy

Discussion of ealar is in the latter three HoMe volumes, but which texts specifically I cannot recall at the moment. Tomorrow I may be able to provide more specific information.

Saucepan Man is right, though. There is no evidence of other classes of ealar besides Ainur, but there is also no reason to believe Ainur were the only kind of ealar. Why call them Ainur if they're the only kind of ealar anyway? Wouldn't one term or the other suffice?

Hmm... Now I'm REALLY curious about these references, because I both own and have read (multiple times) the last few volumes of the HoME. And I can't remember a thing....

As for the variation of terms...

Different languages, different applications... Think humans vs. people. They're the same things in our world, right? But we have two words. In the same language.

Besides which, one has to remember that Tolkien often replaced terms with new words, then switched back, or forgot, or invented yet another term...

Whatever the case, I'm looking forward to seeing this reference.

[obloquy]

In my phatty thread (linked to above) I cite HoMe X, p165 (hardback edition) as the source for the term ëalar. It's possible that this is the only text in which it occurs, but I honestly can't remember.

Here it is:

Commentary on Chapter 3, ‘Of the Coming of the Elves'

LQ 1 is here again, as in the previous chapter, virtually the final text, for the later typescript LQ 2 was scarcely touched, and there was no further enlargement or expansion.

§18 In AAm §30 (p. 70) it is said that Melkor ‘wrought’ the Balrogs in Utumno during the long darkness after the fall of the Lamps; but in an interpolation to AAm there enters the view that Melkor, after his rebellion, could make nothing that had life of its own (§45, see pp. 74, 78), and in AAm*, the second version of the opening of AAm (p. 79, §30), the Balrogs become the chief of ‘the evil spirits that followed him, the Umaiar’, whom at that time he multiplied. The statement in QS §18 that the Balrogs were ‘the first made of his creatures' survived through all the texts of the later revision of the Quenta, but in the margin of one of the copies of LQ 2 my father wrote: ‘See Valaquenta for true account.’ This is a reference to the passage which appears in the published Silmarillion on p. 31:

For of the Maiar many were drawn to his splendour in the days of his greatness, and remained in that allegiance down into his darkness; and others he corrupted afterwards to his service with lies and treacherous gifts. Dreadful among these spirits were the Valaraukar, the scourges of fire that in Middle-earth were called the Balrogs, demons of terror.

The actual text of LQ 2 my father emended at this time very hastily to read:

These were the (ëalar) spirits who first adhered to him in the days of his splendour, and became most like him in his corruption: their hearts were of fire, but they were cloaked in darkness, and terror went before them; they had whips of flame. Balrogs they were named by the Noldor in later days. And in that dark time Melkor bred many other monsters of divers shapes and kinds that long troubled the world; and his realm spread now ever southward over the Middle-earth. But the Orks, mockeries and perversions of the Children of Eru, did not appear until after the Awakening of the Elves.

There is a footnote to the word ëalar in this passage:

‘spirit’ (not incarnate, which was fëa, Sindarin] fae). ëala ‘being’.

[Neithan]

Well the quote I was trying to find but couldn't said something about other beings outside Arda other than the Ainur. I don't think that it said that they were Ealar but I assumed that they were.

[davem]

Re: Ealar

It seems from this that these 'evil 'ealar' were the Balrogs only. I can't see from this passage (unless there's another one I've missed - there isn't a reference to 'ealar' in the index) that Ungoliant could be an ealar.

I do find the reference to 'other monsters of divers shapes and kinds' interesting. It may, of course, only refer to the dragons, werewolve & vampires of the later legends, but there's an interesting passage in 'Tolkien & the Great War:

Tolkien had listed several monstrous creatures in the 'Poetic and Mythologic Words of Eldarrissa & its ethnological chart: tauler, tyulqin, and sarqin, names which in Qenya indicate tree-like stature or an appetite for flesh. . . All these new races of monsters proved transitory, bar two: the Balrogs and the Orcs. Orcs were bred in 'the subterranean heat and slime' by Melko: 'Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed; foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of the clash of metal. . .' The name had been taken from the Old English orc, 'demon', but only because it was phonetically suitable. The role of demon properly belongs to Balrogs, whose Goldogrin name means 'cruel demon' or 'demon of anguish'. These are Melko's flame-wielding shock troops and battlefield captains, the cohorts of Evil.

(Edited for clarification)

[Neithan]

I can't see from this passage (unless there's another one I've missed - there isn't a reference to 'ealar' in the index) that Ungoliant could be an ealar.

To be fair there is no conclusive evidence either way. Personally, I believe, as stated before, that she was an Ainur of light like Varda. She would be a powerful Ainu probably as great as some of the Valar. Then when she turned evil she became a thing of darkness rather than light but she still craved light even as she hated it.

[davem]

I can't help but speculate that rather than being an ealar Ungoliant seems more like a kind of 'manifestation' of the 'Void'. She comes across as an 'absence' rather than a 'presence' in so many ways. She swallows, consumes, the light.

This is pure speculation, but I wonder, as it seems the 'Void' was a 'place' where Melkor could wander before the creation of Arda, whether something of that 'emptiness' entered into the Music through him, that it was some part of the theme that he introduced - the place where he sought the Secret Fire but failed to find it. She exists because Melkor sang her into being...

Of course, this drags into the realm of metaphysics in a big way

This could account for Ungoliant's 'existence'...or it may just be a mad idea

[obloquy]

You don't think Ungoliante was a spirit? That's funny.

She was originally discarnate as evidenced by the fact that she is stated to have descended into Arda (the created physical world) from outside (where all things are necessarily incorporeal). She eventually took physical form since she is stated to have produced offspring.

If she was an Ainu, she was an eala. If you believe she existed as Tolkien describes, she was an eala. No two ways about it.

It seems from this that these 'evil 'ealar' were the Balrogs only.

No, the definition of eala is clearly quoted above.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

This is pure speculation, but I wonder, as it seems the 'Void' was a 'place' where Melkor could wander before the creation of Arda, whether something of that 'emptiness' entered into the Music through him, that it was some part of the theme that he introduced - the place where he sought the Secret Fire but failed to find it. She exists because Melkor sang her into being...

An appealing proposition, davem, and one which I do not believe has been considered before.

But, to return to a question which I asked earlier, is there any reason to suppose that Ungoliant was created before Eä? Could she not have come into existence, as part of Melkor's part in the song, at the same time as Eä was created? The extract from the Silmarillion quoted above talks of her descending from the shadows that lay about Arda, but those shadows would have been within Eä, and would therefore have been created with it. So it does not follow from that extract that she pre-existed Eä.

The following is an extract from Of The Flight of the Noldor, in relation to Nan Dungortheb:

For other foul creatures of spider form had dwelt there since the days of the delving of Angband, and [Ungoliant] mated with them, and devoured them; and even after Ungoliant herself departed, and went whither she would into the forgotten south of the world, her offspring abode there and wove their hideus webs.

Perhaps these other creatures were of the same race as Ungoliant, although lesser than her, and they too had crept in from the shadows that lay about Arda.

[Neithan]

Perhaps these other creatures were of the same race as Ungoliant, although lesser than her, and they too had crept in from the shadows that lay about Arda.

Interesting, I had always assumed that these spiders were just creations of Morgoth just like the Orcs and other things but what you say is possable.
Also, Tolkien never said for sure that she "descended from the shadows about Arda" only that the Elves believed that she did. So she could be just about anything.