Unfinished Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien [158]
21 Compare the description of the Elfstone in The Fellowship of the Ring II 8: ‘Then [Galadriel] lifted from her lap a great stone of a clear green, set in a silver brooch that was wrought in the likeness of an eagle with outspread wings; and as she held it up the gem flashed like the sun shining through the leaves of spring.’
22 But in The Return of the King VI 9, where the Blue Ring is seen on Elrond’s finger, it is called ‘Vilya, mightiest of the Three’.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
THE SILVAN ELVES AND THEIR SPEECH
According to The Silmarillion (p. 94) some of the Nandor, the Telerin Elves who abandoned the march of the Eldar on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains, ‘dwelt age-long in the woods of the Vale of the Great River’ (while others, it is said, went down Anduin to its mouths, and yet others entered Eriador: from these last came the Green-elves of Ossiriand).
In a late etymological discussion of the names Galadriel, Cele-born, and Lórien the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood and Lórien are specifically declared to be descended from the Telerin Elves who remained in the Vale of Anduin:
The Silvan Elves (Tawarwaith) were in origin Teleri, and so remoter kin of the Sindar, though even longer separated from them than the Teleri of Valinor. They were descended from those of the Teleri who, on the Great Journey, were daunted by the Misty Mountains and lingered in the Vale of Anduin, and so never reached Beleriand or the Sea. They were thus closer akin to the Nandor (otherwise called the Green-elves) of Ossiriand, who eventually crossed the mountains and came at last into Beleriand.
The Silvan Elves hid themselves in woodland fastnesses beyond the Misty Mountains, and became small and scattered peoples, hardly to be distinguished from Avari;
but they still remembered that they were in origin Eldar, members of the Third Clan, and they welcomed those of the Noldor and especially the Sindar who did not pass over the Sea but migrated eastward [i.e. at the beginning of the Second Age]. Under the leadership of these they became again ordered folk and increased in wisdom. Thranduil father of Legolas of the Nine Walkers was Sindarin, and that tongue was used in his house, though not by all his folk.
In Lórien, where many of the people were Sindar in origin, or Noldor, survivors from Eregion [see p. 314], Sindarin had become the language of all the people. In what way their Sindarin differed from the forms of Beleriand – see The Fellowship of the Ring II 6, where Frodo reports that the speech of the Silvan folk that they used among themselves was unlike that of the West – is not of course now known. It probably differed in little more than what would now be popularly called ‘accent’: mainly differences of vowel-sounds and intonation sufficient to mislead one who, as Frodo, was not well acquainted with purer Sindarin. There may of course also have been some local words and other features ultimately due to the influence of the former Silvan tongue. Lórien had long been much isolated from the outside world. Certainly some names preserved from its past, such as Amroth and Nimrodel, cannot be fully explained from Sindarin, though fitting it in form. Caras seems to be an old word for a moated fortress, not found in Sindarin. Lórien is probably an alteration of an older name now lost [though earlier the original Silvan or Nandorin name was stated to be Lórinand; see p. 327, note 5].
With these remarks on Silvan names compare Appendix F (I) to The Lord of the Rings, section ‘Of the Elves’, footnote (appearing only in the revised edition).
Another general statement concerning Silvan Elvish is found