Smith of Wootton Major in Middle Earth?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by littlemanpoet

Great observations, Puddleglum & davem. Somehow, though, for me (yes, subjectively), before I had ever heard of Tolkien, Lewis, & Nordic or Celtic myth, I had grown disappointed with Greek and Egyptian myth. There was something flat about it, something dead. When I discovered Nordic & Celtic myth, I found Faery. Granted, this is my experience and thus ideosyncratic.

Your suggestions do not seem entirely to account for that - er - quiddity - that is essential Faery as accessed in the North. I'm reaching for something but I don't know what. Perhaps it is that my ancestry is Celtic/Germanic/Northern and thus Greek/Aegyptian could never speak to me. Don't know, it's a guess.

I think that's a common perception, Elempi.

This is a viewpoint that I share in the book I am writing currently. Egypt and Greece eventually viewed their pantheons with skepticism, if not outright disdain (this cynicism bordering on atheism occuring before the birth of Christ). The traditions faded and their religious rites became ceremonial (and all such tradition was eradicated eventually by Islam and Byzantine Christianity).

However, in the areas where the Celtic tribes remained strong (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany), the rural folk kept their folkloric traditions well past the Enlightenment and the beginning of the Industrial Age. Even the Norse peoples maintained a vestige of their traditions into the Christian Era in Europe, where historical records indicate a reversion to the Old Religion even after conversion to Catholicism, or a duality of Odinic and Christian symbols and rites simultaneously.

It is this immediacy, the nearness in time to an older tradition, that draws us closer to the Faery tradition of the Celts and Norse. This has been further conditioned by the continued retelling and popularity of the Arthurian Cycle, from Chretien de Troyes, Eschenbach and Malory up to T.H. White and Mary Stewart, as well as 18th century Irish folklorists along with authors and poets of the Irish Renaissance (Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Crofton Croker, W.B. Yeats. etc.).