Elven Characteristics

[Galin]

Originally Posted by cellurdur

No, but it is published in the UT and Christopher Tolkien has the right himself to define what is cannon. A right he usually does not choose to use, but anything what he publishes should have a fair amount of weight behind it.

A far as I know Christopher Tolkien has never defined canon. Are you here suggesting that what Christopher Tolkien published in Unfinished Tales for example, has more weight than what Hammond and Scull have published somewhere else?

If so I can't agree. It's all posthumously published material, including the material published by the Linguistic Editorial Team for instance [Vinyar Tengwar, Parma Eldalamberon] which contains more than pure linguistic information about Middle-earth.

Isildur was undoubtedly very tall himself, but his incredible height was never a distinguishing feature for him as it was his father. (...) Tolkien published the prologue of the Hobbits (...) Even from that one rough note, the Numenoreans must have been close to 7ft.

I'm aware of all this information [edited here for brevity]. Again, if the artwork quote represents a different notion, what Tolkien wrote elsewhere but never published himself can be forgotten or easily revised. At the moment I'm not aware that Tolkien published the history of 'halfling' anywhere [outside of the word Banakil and that 'Men' called the Hobbits Halflings], but as I say I think his description noted by Hammond and Scull works well enough given the date the term was coined, which also works well enough with the Eldarin 'artwork description' in my opinion.

This though is really not that important, because being a couple of inches taller than the average is unlikely to get you a nickname as Tall. (...) Being a couple of inches taller than average as I said is really not a great distinction. To put it into context the average height for a British Male is about 5'10. Somebody, who is 6'2 is not going to get the nickname Tall.

Is it unlikely? I'm not so sure, especially when dealing with an already tall folk in general, with the 'tallest' of the already tall being a fairly prominent person in history.

In general nicknames can be funny things. For example, growing up in a relatively small group of friends the tallest person among us received a nickname to represent this. His sister was tallish too, and she awas given a nickname 'to match'.

Taking the artwork statement as true and literal creates a problem on several things as we have been through. These were some of Tolkiens latest writings on the subject and not brief notes which accompanied the artwork. He wrote entire essays such as Of Dwarves of Men or Numeanorean Linear Measure. Even if you want to insist that there is a contradiction in the sources, which is more likely to be correct: the short brief note about a picture or two separate essays he wrote on the subject?

Not all of Tolkien's reaction to the artwork has even been published yet.

But for a different example we have a relatively brief marginal note where Tolkien appears to toss away decades of thinking that there were very many Balrogs, in favour of 3 or at most 7 ever existing. Which idea is more likely to be correct in this case?

One can gather up a number of quotes to illustrate hosts of Balrogs existing, or Balrogs 'one thousand' even, and together they might seem quite a strong case by comparison to one marginal note, and one revision to a text which itself [the revision] yet mentions no certain number. Of course the 'older' quotes will be consistent with each other as to number, but JRRT kows that his readership only knows so much about Durin's Bane, and he is thus free to radically alter the conception, making all the earlier descriptions part of a discarded notion.

I'm not saying I know this to be true with respect to the artwork description, but I feel it's a reasonable possibility given the phrasing employed.

And yes Of Dwarves And Men is an 'entire essay' but the remark on Eldarin height compared to Numenoreans [along with the Halfling reference] is one sentence within it if I recall correctly -- or if not one sentence it's brief enough, and obviously the essay is about much more. And Christopher Tolkien characterizes Numenorean Linear Measures [NLM] as: 'A note associated with the passage in 'The Disaster of the Gladden Fields'...'


Incidentally, when writing NLM I wonder if Tolkien had remembered what he had already published about Eomer [and Eowyn] in Appendix A! I won't go into it here but in my opinion this is another [at least] arguable glitch of some measure, even though in the tale proper [The Lord of the Rings] Eomer does seem to be tall, generally speaking.