Smith of Wootton Major in Middle Earth?

[littlemanpoet]

Wow, Helen. Wow.

That helps me understand why Japanese folk tales and Native American stories can do it for me, too.

And white billowing clouds blown by a north wind in an otherwise blue sky.

And Orion in August just before dawn.

[mark12_30]

Menelvagor of the shining belt. Yes. I can hear you singing...

My husband and I were looking at it two nights ago. He was struck by it, too.

Since it's about glimpses of eternal Beauty, and tasting God's life, that's why I think cultures of death don't fit. So while Ireland has plenty of Faerie, I wouldn't look for Faerie in a typical Irish wake. Yet, for MacDonald, a Scot who sees death in a very different way, death is drenched in Faerie because Death is the doorway to life eternal:

"You have tasted of death now," said the old man. "Is it good?"

"It is good," said Mossy. "It is better than life."

"No," said the old man: "it is only more life.--Your feet will make no holes in the water now."

Wilder and wilder.

Edit: I have to add.... and for C. S. Lewis-- doesn't The Last Battle, when they all go through the door, and then say farewell to Narnia, and then begin to explore where they are, and slowly begin to realize Where They Are-- doesn't your heart just break? ...Wilder and wilder.

"More life."

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by mark12_30

I think Faery happens when we see the beauties that were there all the time, but we did not see, that God put there for us to find, hoping that in them we would be called to His beauty.

Exactly. Like Frodo in the scene on Cerin Amroth you mentioned:

He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.

(Btw isn't it marvellous how Tolkien makes us share Frodo's experience here and, just by naming the colours, evokes them before our inner eye in newborn splendour?)
And I have to echo LMP's Wow!. That whole post was mindblowing.

Originally Posted by mark12_30

Since it's about glimpses of eternal Beauty, and tasting God's life, that's why I think cultures of death don't fit. So while Ireland has plenty of Faerie, I wouldn't look for Faerie in a typical Irish wake. Yet, for MacDonald, a Scot who sees death in a very different way, death is drenched in Faerie because Death is the doorway to life eternal

And isn't Faerie somehow intimately related to Death? At least in some versions of folk belief the fairies are the Dead, or the dead go to live with the fairies, and the Otherworld is also the Underworld (cf Evans-Wentz's The fairy-faith in Celtic countries). In Welsh mythology, Gwyn ap Nudd is king of the Fair Folk and the gatherer of dead souls.

I think the difference with Egypt and Greece is that they kept the world of the Dead safely separated from the world of the Living - at least the Egyptians did, with their pyramids and embalming culture; and Odysseus had to find the entrance to the underworld and make the right offering to conjure up the spirit of Teiresias - , whereas in the North and Northwest the border between the two worlds seems to be thinner, permitting crossovers in both directions.

Not sure how (if at all) this is relevant to Smith - I have to admit it's thirty years since I read it, and my memory's a bit hazy. Time for a reread.

[Galadriel55]

All this talk about death reminds me of a curious little question that came up when I was reading Smith. The Elven Queen seems to be immortal, and has the youth and beauty of the canonical Eldar. But the Elven King lives like a normal man would. In this way, he's more like Gandalf than anyone else from the canon. But he's obviously not a canonical Maia. So, will he die? Or, can he change form, so that he will return his youth? Or, scary thought - maybe Elves in Faerie at that stage were creatures undead? Or having neither death nor (hence) real life?

What makes this more interesting is that, althouh we're not told so, but it seems that he keeps watch over the Star under different guises every generation. So he can be reborn? And/or change shape? The possibilities are endless.

I know this bit is meant to be left as a question mark, but it's just too good a question to stay unasked.