APPENDIX
(...pancreas, hippocampus, and a bunch of other stuff you'll be snoring through in five minutes)
I fell in love with Legolas when Orlando Bloom was still in diapers (I read LOTR first back in 1978, and have since read most of Tolkien's other works), and while Mr. Bloom has given us the definitive Mr. Greenleaf, this tale is rooted more in the book.
The author is a serious student of Tolkien's works and...ok, well not really, but I have read farther than the Silmarillion. When not chasing my cats off the keyboard, I play with mustangs (equine) run on snow (Siberian huskies and a dogsled helps, although my cousin roped me into snowboarding once) I have decorated underwater Christmas trees and carved the Gourd of the Rings underwater. I've paddled lakes, rivers, and mosquito-infested salt marshes in my 17 1/2 ft. sea kayak, Mak-eh-nuk's Fin. As a volunteer for local wildlife rehabbers I've demonstrated projectile pooping to third graders (with the aid of Thermal, the Wonder Hawk), driven in a closed van with a vomiting vulture, and illustrated a display; "Soil, It's Not Just Dirt" for a local county park (ask me about the dancing salamanders). I learned to swing a broadsword in the SCA, have rowed a viking longship with The Longship Company (Oakley Maryland) and can occasionally hit the broad side of a stack of haybales with an arrow at twenty paces. Anything else you need to know is at on my website ( .com)
A Field Guide to Various Beastes of Middle Earth
(and some other stuff you really didn't need to know...)
Elvish 101: .org (if it's not right, it's my fault, not theirs).
When I started this tale, I had a moment of Geographical Impairment: I thought New Zealand , the real Middle-earth, had the same biology as Tasmania. Oooops. That problem solved, I bent the geography of Middle-earth anyway, (marsupials are native to North and South America, and Australia and Tasmania, period) because thylacines are the coolest thing since ents. Anyway, Fangorn is ancient, and would likely have some very strange things living in it.
"thule" Quenya for "spirit"
"silme" Quenya for starlight
"thulesilme": spirit(of the)starlight...(my compound word) with time, and enough speakers of the common tongue mangling it, it could become "thylacine
On Thulesilme: and convergent evolution
The Tasmanian "wolf" (because of its canine appearance) or "tiger" (because of the vertical stripes running from shoulder to tail) or thylacine (thylacinus cynocephalus) was the largest of the recent (non-fossil, actually co-existing with humans) marsupial carnivores. (In case you missed Biology 101: relatives include the Virginia Possum of North America, the Kangaroo, and the Koala... and oh yeah, the Tasmanian Devil... what? you thought he was just a cartoon?)
Thylacines were about the size of a Siberian Husky (about 30-70lbs., 2ft. high and 6ft. long, including tail). They look rather like a "yellow dog" type like the Dingo, Shiba Inu, or Carolina Dog (think short-haired coyote, or Old Yeller with pricked ears), but in reality, a whale would be more closely related to your dog than this critter; an excellent example of convergent evolution, where unrelated lifeforms end up looking like each other because they live in the same environment, eat the same food, and do the same biological job (like whales, fish, penguins and ichthyosaurs). Thylacines were the color of winter grass (greyish or tawny) with dark vertical tiger stripes from shoulder to tail, the largest, longest stripes over the hips.
They moved more or less like dogs, but could sit upright on their thick-at-the-base tails, like a kangaroo (some observers claim they hopped short distances, though they are not a bit kangaroo-like; their front end is heavier and the hindquarters more lightly muscled compared to a roo). While all dogs' feet are webbed, to hold the toes together while running, the thylacines' toes are not. There are some vague observations of their running gaits which suggest their trot or canter pattern may have been different from dogs'. (dogs do a diagonal trot (L-front and R-rear together), and a rotary gallop/canter, unlike the horse's transverse* gallop.)They could leap 2-3 meters with great agility. One captive specimen was observed leaping into the rafters (nearly eight feet up) of a "small half-finished house" and leaping from crossbeam to crossbeam under the roof like a cat. The proportions of the legs suggest a compromise between a running and bounding animal; the hocks and wrists are set lower than a dog's, making the lower part of the leg shorter (more like a cat). Their body proportions are similar to the clouded leopard.
(*transverse: 3 beats; foot, 2.diagonal pair, foot...
rotary: 3 beats; foot, 2.pair on same side, foot)
There are slight differences in the skull and teeth (thyls have a narrower nose, bigger eye-sockets, smaller brain, and four more teeth, among other things)(wolves have 42 teeth...easy to remember: it's Gimli's orc score at Helm's Deep). There are excellent photos of them "yawning", which may be a threat display. (It is in possums). The stretch of the gape is amazing, no other mammal can open its jaws quite that wide. (There are photos and film clips still in existence, and easily found on the internet).
Little is known about their behavior, even though many were kept in zoos. They seemed to be shy, secretive, rather than aggressive. Their preferred habitat was a mosaic of dry eucalypt forest, wetlands, grasslands, emerging to hunt on grassy plains and open woodlands during the evening, night and early morning (more "crepuscular": dusk active, than "nocturnal": night active). Without the long legs and running feet of the similar wolf, thylacines followed prey at a slower, more relentless pace, and pounced from hiding, like cats. As far as we know, their main diet was wallabies, small mammals and birds.
Females, like all marsupials, carried the young in the pouch till they became too large. (Pouch time recorded by John Gould as 3 months: Richard Owen recorded young to 12 inches long in pouch) There are references to them using "lairs" at least, temporarily, to keep the kids while they hunted, until the young were big enough to follow on the hunt. Males had a rudimentary pouch (unique among marsupials). They generally had 3-5 pups, but with four teats, only that many would ever survive (they spend the early part of their pouch development firmly attached to the teat).
They vanished from Australia long ago, when the first aboriginal humans brought the half-domesticated dogs called dingos (a successful competitor for the same game and habitat) to the continent. They survived in Tasmania, despite European settlement and bounties placed on their heads for presumed sheep killing...until the last known one, a female misnamed Benjamin, died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936.
JRR Tolkien was 44, and the Hobbit had just been accepted for publication.
...once in awhile "dreams and legends spring to life out of the grass"* ...someone will spot a fleeting shadow, a track, a few strange hairs, or report seeing a creature that wasn't quite a dog. Attempts have been made to find living thylacines, but none, so far, has succeded.
(*Eomer, in "The Riders of Rohan" chapter of LOTR)
Typing in "thylacine" as a search engine will get you some interesting stuff.
Foot (er...paw) note:
Smithsonian Magazine, Feb. 2002: "Give the Devil His Due" article on the Tasmanian Devil (a dasyurid, the closest living relatives to the thylacine); Devils were once so rare, they were thought to be extinct. Tasmania is about the size of West Virginia, and there are now about 150,000 Tas-devils in Tasmania. Dr. Menna Jones has been studying them for 12 years, has captured 310 animals and fitted 44 of them with radio collars. In her 12 years of studies, she has only seen half a dozen devils in the wild.
Consider the thylacine sightings you'll find on the web.
...I wonder.
Elvish 102:
Unless otherwise noted this is Sindarin Elvish as put forth in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, or scholars thereof.
LOTR: Lord of the Rings, FOTR: Film of the Rings
Eryn:woods, as in "Eryn Lasgalen" wood of the green leaves, the real name of Mirkwood
Mae govannen, mellon= hail and well met, friend. Like Glorfindel's greeting to Strider (Ai, na vedui dunadan, mae govannen... LOTR), mellon is friend, but you knew that (LOTR, the doors of Moria)
daro= stop, used by Haldir in Lorien (LOTR)
Aniron =desire, as in the Enya song which is the background for the Aragorn/Arwen scene at Imladris in FOTR.
Legolas;"is translated Greenleaf...a suitable name for a Woodland Elf though one of royal and originally Sindarin line...(you) might percieve the relation of the element -las to lassi 'leaves', in Galadriel's lament, lasse-lanta 'leaf-fall' = autumn...and Eryn Lasgalen...Technically Legolas is a compound of Sindarin laeg...fresh and green, and go-lass collection of leaves, foliage."
"Legolas means 'green-leaves', a woodland name - dialectal form of pure Sindarin laegolas: lasse (High elven lasse, S. las(s)) 'leaf; gwalassa/gwa-lassie 'collection of leaves, foliage' (H.E. olassie, S. golas, -olas); laika 'green' - basis LAY as in laire 'summer' (H.E. laica, S. laeg (seldom used, usually replaced by calen, woodland leg).
(J.R.R. Tolkien in The Letters of J.R. by Humphrey Carpenter, 1981)
There you have it, the complete etymology of Legolas' name, from the Master himself.
"Legolas Greenleaf" first appears in The Fall of Gondolin (Book of Lost Tales), the first of the names of the Fellowship to be used in Tolkien's works. He is not, however, the Prince of Mirkwood. Gondolin's Legolas is a Noldorin Elf of the hidden city of Gondolin (whose king, Turgon, original wielder of Glamdring-Gandalf's sword, is Elrond's great-grandfather). He leads the refugees through a particularly hairy bit of wilderness because his "eyes were like cats' for the dark".
Gimli; has its origins in the tongues of the Edain (humans to you), the Dwarves kept their real names to themselves (though I think Legolas might know Gimli's) If you try to translate it into Sindarin, you come up with things like: gern, gem = worn, old, sickly, and liw = fish. I don't hink Legolas tried to turn it into a Sindarin name...
Orlando Bloom, on the other hand raises some interesting possibilities in Sindarin:
bloom; niphredil, mallos, alfirin (uilos), elanor = various flowers of Middle-earth,
loth, elloth, lotheg= one flower, gwaloth = bunch o' flowers, imloth = valley of flowers,
edlothia= bloom (verb) to flower
or= blood, a prefix for names of days of the week, and up-rise-high (I prefer the last one)
ur= heat, fire (oh yeah!)
lang= cutlass, sword, lann = wide, broad (as in Landroval = broad-winged eagle, implying power and stability), lant = clearing in a forest
o= imperative suffix (as in daro! = stop) makening the word a command, or "of"
And if you spell Orlando sideways you get Ronald (minus an "o"), The first "R" of JRR Tolkien is, of course, Ronald. I can see the tabloid headlines now: Tolkien reincarnated as one of his characters (there are a few other eerie similarities between them)...there's a really silly cartoon or fanfic in this.
Cam= hand, cupped as in recieving
Calad= light
Eilian= rainbow
Brethil= silver birch
Celeg= swift
Rhiw= winter
Istil= moon
Lasbelin= autumn
Havo-dad; sit down, Aragorn's line to Leggy in FOTR/Fellowship at the Council of Elrond
Nirnaeth arnoidiad= a famous battle of the Silmarillion
gaear, galadhremmin ennorath; I was searching for a word like "the Force" or "Circle of Life", or "chi" or the Iroquois orenda (which sounds Elvish enough) or mitakuye oyasin. In the Sindarin Dictionary galadhremmin = tree-woven, and ennorath = Middle-earth, making galadhremmin ennorath something logical for an Elf of the woods to use as a "world tree" concept. Gaer = awe, holy, and sounds a bit like gaia. the modern eath goddess concept.
mitakuye oyasin;(mee-TAH-koo-yay oy-AH-sin)(as I remember) Lakota, roughly meaning; all things are related, all my relatives (Lakota, Dakota, Nakota; the Native American people of the plains called by others "Sioux")
lirien; I totally made this one up; but based on liriodendron (the scientific name for the tulip poplar tree, a lovely mallornish sort of tree native to North America). It actually makes a nice golden dye, not blue. Lir = row, ien = maiden, girl in the Dictionary, maybe there's a legend associated with how this tree got its name?.
Sweetgrass; is a sweet-smelling native grass used by many American Indian tribes. It can be woven in baskets, burned like incense, or carried in a dry braid. Melui = sweet, glae = grass. One of my goats had this name.
Noro lim, noro lim! Glorfindel's line to Asfaloth in the Flight to the Ford of Bruinen scene in LOTR, faithfully recaptured by Arwen in FOTR...tearjerker for me as I once trained a grey Welsh-Arab pony to respond to that command...
Glorinn; glor = gold, inn = inner meaning, heart
Finlos, Ancalinte; los = snow, anc = jaws, lint = swift, fin = hair. Snowmane (Theoden's horse) was translated as Lossfin in one poem.
Gwai; wind, as in Gwaihir the windlord...Cal's idea of a funny name for a mule
Gilrandir; gil = star, randir = wanderer (as in Mithrandir)
Araw; is Sindarin for Orome, the vala of the hunt.
Al'hin, mellon...al = no/not, hin = here, now
Sedho thalien, nuitho i 'ruith...sedho = be still, thalion = strong, ien = maiden, nuitho i 'ruith = hold your wrath (Gandalf: FOTR)
beleg angol cherdir erynist...beleg = mighty, angol = wise, cherdir = master, eryn = woods, -ist = lore
urentin nallant nirnaeth arnoded...tin = her/his, uren = heart, nallant = he cried, nirnaeth = tears, arnoded = endless
laur inath arnediad bin revail gelaidh...from a translation in Sindarin of Galadriel's lament in LOTR (with the addition of "laur" = golden)
ura uren= it burns my heart (as in Legolas' line in Two Towers ..."the thought of those merry young folk driven like cattle burns my heart"...), ur = fire, uren = my heart (Aniron, FOTR soundtrack), ura = my guess from words like sila = shines, luitha = enchants, eria = rises
aew= little bird
Cherdir= master (as in teacher, Jedi Master type thing)
urentin cuia eryn; tin = his/her, uren = heart, cuia = lives, eryn = woods
olonnen; my best guess at this one: ol= dream, -nnen = past tense suffix
Man pida gurdh? man = what, pida = is speaking, gur = heart, guren = my heart (in Sindarin Dictionary, uren in Aniron on FOTR soundtrack), -dh = "your"
Man agorthadh; man = what, agor = do, make, -dh = you suffix, -tha = furture suffix (one of several)
hu-lin; hu = dog, -lin = many
agorthadh rochben; agor = make, agorthadh = you will make, rochben = rider
gaurhoth; host of evil werewolves, Men of the North often referred to natural wolves as wargs but properly wargs is only applied to the ones corrupted by the Dark Powers.
araf; appears in the Sindarin Dictionary as a word for wolf, I've used it here for natural wolves. My Anglo Arab was named Saraf, and not by me.
Fearaf Dulinion; fea = spirit, araf = wolf, dulinn = nightingale, ion = son of ( I named a van Fearaf, it carried my "wolfpack" of sled dogs everywhere).
minui= first, tadui = second, nelui = third,
hubeleg= hu = dog, beleg = mighty
suilad= Sindarin greeting
Yeah yeah, I loved Bambi too, and I volunteered with a couple of local wildlife rehabbers, but deer and rabbits are at the bottom of the food pyramid...
Wildlife Rehab 101: the silver-furred tree-climber
The "silver-furred tree climber" mentioned in this tale is the only marsupial I have had direct experience with. I've had the honor of raising a few 'possums (didelphus virginiana) for a local wildlife rehabber (and doing some wildlife lectures on them, with a reluctant possum clinging to a welder's glove on my hand). Their relatives were running around under the feet of and Tyranosaur, the highly successful Virginia Opossum has survived unchanged since the Pleistocene (think hairy mammoths). They have a top speed of about 4mph, thumbs on all fours, (they leave lovely daisy prints in the snow), prehensile tails, dark bright eyes and charming whiskery faces. Their main defense (if not playing possum) is to open their amazingly huge mouths, hissing, and showing you all 50 teeth (more than any other North American mammal), the effect is rather like a small, furry alligator. There is a wonderful photo of a thylacine on one of the websites which shows much the same effect, in giant economy size.
North American 'possums have a dozen or so young in the pouch at once (13 teats)...gestation 12-13 days, pouch time about 2 months, weaned at 4 months. We raise small ones on kitten milk replacer (and a heating pad), and larger ones on cat food (they're actually omnivores, their unspecialized body type is adaptable to a wide range of habitat and food, including carrion, which is why they often end up roadside as carrion themselves). They are tame and easy to handle, but like all wildlife, we do not make pets of them, releasing them back into their native habitat as soon as possible.
The same rehabber raised a few wallabies as well (we won't mention the Great Emu Roundup), making a cloth pouch and "wearing" the wallabies, much as their mothers would, which is where I got the idea for Eryn's pouch in this tale.
A Really Brief History of Middle Earth:
Inspirations for this tale, and other things that relate to it.
On Ithilien: fairest province of Gondor:
Someday my prince will come...into his own kingdom. It is hinted in LOTR that Ithilien and Minas Tirith are part of an eventual Elvish Restoration Project of Epic Proportions.
"And I," said Legolas, "shall walk in the woods of this fair land, which is rest enough. In days to come, if my Elven-lord allows, some of our folk shall remove hither; and when we come it shall be blessed, for awhile. For awhile: a month, a life, a hundred years of Men. But Anduin is near, and Anduin leads down to the Sea. To the Sea!" (The Field of Cormallen, LOTR)
Pent Legolas: "Ar im padathon vi eryn endor vain hen i na idh far. Ned orath i telithar, ae hir nin Edhellen devitha, pin o gwaith vin anglennatha simen; ar im telim natha dor hin i alu, dan na lu thent. Na lu thent: ahad, cuil, haran inath in Edain. Dan Anduin nef, ar Anduin tog dadbenn na Aear. Na Aear!"
(The same paragraph in Sindarin, as translated by Ryszard Derdzinski on Gwaith-i-Phethdain)
And Minas Tirith:
"They need more gardens," said Legolas. "The houses are dead, and there is too little
here that grows and is glad. If Aragorn comes into his own, the people of the Wood shall bring him birds that sing and trees that do not die." (Legolas to Gimli as they enter Minas Tirith for the first time, The Last Debate, The Return of the King, LOTR).
On the Glittering Caves and the Elf/Dwarf Pact:
"Now the guests were ready and they drank the stirrup cup, and with great praise and friendship they departed, and came at length to Helm's Deep, and there they rested two days. Then Legolas repaid his promise to Gimli and went with him to the Glittering Caves; and when they returned he was silent, and would say only that Gimli alone could find fit words to speak of them. "And never before has a Dwarf claimed a victory over an Elf in a contest of words." said he. "Now therefore let us go to Fangorn and set the score right!" (Many Partings, LOTR)
Legolas and Gimli went to the Glittering Caves before they visited Fangorn. I figured there was a lot of time (after the ending of LOTR) for them to wander about while Aragorn was king, for only after he died did Legolas follow his heart and go to the Sea..to the Sea...
...taking his friend Gimli, with him.
the elvish way with all good beasts:
My utterly favorite thing about the Prince of Mirkwood: "A smaller and lighter horse, but restive and fiery, was brought to Legolas. Arod was his name. But Legolas asked them to take off saddle and rein. "I need them not," he said, and leaped lightly up, and to their wonder Arod was tame and willing beneath him, moving here and there with but a spoken word: such was the elvish way with all good beasts." (The Riders of Rohan, LOTR) The main reason I fell for the dude with the longbow back in 1978.
On Wargs:
In The Hobbit at the Battle of Five Armies Gandalf says: "The Goblins are upon you! Bolg of the North is coming, O Dain! whose father you slew in Moria. Behold! the bats are above his army like a sea of locusts. They ride upon wolves and wargs are in their train!"
Tolkien may have been writing wolves from an old-fashioned pre-eco-revolution Eurocentric BigBadWolf perspective (with the idea, like the farmers in this tale, that all of them were Evil), but I have made a distinction between natural wolves and wargs here, assuming wargs to be a corruption of a natural form by the Dark Powers. My view of Wolf is more in line with the American Indian concept of wise teacher, family provider, good hunter, that is, someone to emulate.
In The Hobbit and in LOTR, we see wargs and orcs out in the day, but those are dark, cloudy, evil days. In Fellowship of the Ring, there is a great fight with wargs between the Fellowship's descent of Caradhras and heading for Moria; we see Legolas shoot many straight through the throat, but in the morning, there are no bodies, only Legolas' spent arrows on the ground.
Hyaenodon is an ancient beastie of the early to mid-Eocene that pretty much looks like a warg.
Andrewsarchus is an ancient beastie of the middle Eocene that also pretty much looks like a warg. It sounds a bit like Andy Serkis.
Hyaenodon is Order Hyaenodonta, (hyenas are Order Carnivora), so no relation to Shenzi, or andyserkis.
Andrewsarchus is from an entirely different Order of mammals; an artiodactyl (earlier classified as a mesonychid) which puts it on the family tree of hippos and whales...
Crouching Tasmanian Tiger, Hidden Smaug (or; use the force Legolas)
While trying not to remove the characters too far from what we know of them from LOTR, I have taken a few liberties perhaps. The idea was to expand on the Elvish character/philosophy/"magic", go farther below the surface, and get inside the Elf's head a little. I drew on everything from American Indian philosophy to Asian martial arts and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
On Ents:
"It is not wizardry, but a power far older," said Gandalf: "a power that walked the earth ere elf sang or hammer rang." They appar-ent-ly predate Elves. If you're wondering about the plausability of thylacines in Middle-earth, consider the fact that Fangorn Forest is ancient beyond belief and already has been described as having some strange things lurking in its depths.
The Loreal Conundrum:
lor = gold, ea = "let it be" (the word of Illuvatar/Eru at the Creation), el = elf or star, a = oh!, ach!, ack! (why is my hair green?), al = no!...
I know they gave Legolas blond hair and blue eyes in the film, but in the book, his hair color is never mentioned (miles of discussion thread have been logged on the net in quest of The Final Answer to this Great Question).
Most Elves are dark "save in the golden house of Finarfin" according to Tolkien. I always saw Legolas as blond, largely due to my first sight of him being a very nice Judy King-Reniets illo in an SF/fantasy magazine back in 1978. In the Hobbit, the Elvenking of Mirkwood (who we discover in LOTR is named Thranduil, and sends his kid, Legolas, to the Council of Elrond) is described as "a woodland king with a crown of leaves on his golden hair".
Somewhere in the multitude of appendices and compendiums and field guides to Middle Earth it mentions that Elves have sea-grey eyes (also Rangers, Numenoreans, and pretty much all the rest of the Noble Good Guys). I don't remember Legolas' eye color specifically being mentioned, although they were constantly described as "bright". He ends up quite pale in FOTR, but the constant references to "fair" elves in the book meant "beautiful" not "pale", the inner/spiritual beauty being reflected in their physical beauty. (Tolkien Scholars with a different view can now load their plus-five bows of illiteracy-slaying with several arrows and have at me...dons mithril plate, just in case).
You DO know that Loreal is a top-selling brand of haircolor...
Elrond's Elvish History101:
The best way to make sense of Tolkien's love of geneology and whotheheck is related to who is to look at the charts in the back of the Silmarillion. For those of you who haven't got a copy of this Epic of Biblical Proportions lying about on your microwave; a brief intro to Elves:
Quendi:"the speakers"; all of them ...early on they were divided into Eldar and Avari:
Eldar, Vanyar,
anwered the call (to go to the Uttermost West), sailed to Valinor and stayed put.
Noldor: answered the call, sailed west, got into Big Trouble and returned to Middle Earth as exiles. (something to do with a guy named Feanor, some magic rocks called Silmarils and some stolen/burned ships, as well as some dead Teleri.
Teleri: some answered the call, sailed west, got into Big Whopping Fight with Noldor, lost. Some of the Teleri had stayed behind in Middle Earth and they became
Sindar : (Legolas's people: the Grey Elves) and Nandor (some of whom became Laiquendi/Green Elves/Silvan Elves, or, since they are descended from Grey Elves, does that make them grey-green Elves?).
Avari: "the unwilling" the wood-elves who refused the call and stayed in Middle Earth, also called Dark Elves and East Elves.
The Sindar, Nandor and Laiquendi were also "the Umanyar" or those (Eldar) not of Aman (the Uttermost West, Eldamar).
The Vanyar, Noldor and Teleri-who-went-to-Aman were Calaquendi or "Elves of the Light".
The Avari, Laiquendi, Nandor and Sindar were "Moriquendi" or Elves of the Darkness" because they had not seen the light of the two trees. Although the Sindar, being part of the Eldar-who-at least-started-on-the-great-journey, were called Grey Elves, sort of somewhere in the twilight zone.
So Legolas would be: Quendi, Eldar, Teleri, Sindar, Umanyar, and Moriquendi...?
Confused? Read the Silmarillion, it'll explain everything. Sort of.
And if you want to pass Elrond's Elvish History 102, try the History of Middle Earth (HoME): Lost Tales, Lost Tales 2, Lays of Beleriand, the Shaping of Middle Earth, etc. (to 12 volumes, I belive) all out in paperbacks you don't need a crane to lift.
Wood-elves and the Sea-longing:
From J.E.A. Tyler's New Tolkien Companion (Avon, 1976,1979): "After the passing of the three rings...few indeed of the Eldar...still tarried in mortal lands-though the elven-woods of Wilderland long remained peopled by the lesser kindreds. For in the hearts of the Wood-elves the Sea-longing seldom awoke, and for the most part this people never came to Eldamar. They lingered instead in Middle Earth and eventually declined altogether, sharing the fate of all those whose destiny it remains to dwell on the hither shores."
It seems the Avari can hear the call and sail west like the Eldar,
but many preferred to stay in Middle Earth. Whether they "diminished" in the way European fairy tales have it: becoming small, cute and harmless beings of nursery tales, or whether they simply became more and more bound to the mortal realm, more and more mortal themselves, Tolkien does not say.
Personal theory: they become less "immortal" ...though the Elves I know (see my website: .com), would tell you that nothing is immortal, not the sun or the moon or the stars...except perhaps the spirit ...but retain that deep empathy for other living things, the far sightedness, that sense of "psychic awareness", a love of art, music and dance, and a sense of wonder.
What Galadriel has to say on that matter is this
(Fellowship of the Ring, The Mirror of Galadriel, speaking to Frodo);
"Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlorien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten."
I think there may still be a few Elves about...(look verrrrry closely at that actor...or maybe that park ranger...)
On Dogs:
The ropey haired drover's dogs of this tale are giant sized versions of real-world Comondors. They're about 25" tall, 70 or 80 pounds (about the size of a German Shepard or Malamute), always white, Hungarian in origin. The coat, curly like a poodle's, can be groomed into the ropey effect as it grows...effective against the harsh weather of its native land...and almost as good armor, as dwarf mail. They were originally versatile drover's dogs; companions on the road, guarding flocks, doing some basic herding.
There are two basic types of sheepdog:
The "wolfish" type, like Border Collies, which look and act like predators, with the predatory intincts toned down (unlike my favorite "wolfish" northern dogs, Siberians, Border Collies won't actually eat the sheep). They herd sheep with agility, determination, and speed, responding to a blizzard of whistled commands, putting the precise sheep in the precise corner of the precise pen you want. Some have done sled-dog duty as highly obedient lead dogs.
The guard dog type, which look like sheep (big, white, fluffy) and blend into the flock, but protect it from other predators. The Comondor, the Pyranees, the Hungarian Kuvasz and many others belong to this group. Other diverse members of this "working dog" group; Boxers, Dobermans, Rottweilers, northern dogs like Malamutes and Siberians, Akitas, Mastiffs, Newfoundlands, and St. Bernards.
In some tests, llamas and donkeys have proved to be excellent sheep guardians (they'll drive off predators). But that's another tail.
On Horses:
I'll bet Tolkien (who, as I remember, did log some cavalry time) never tried to ride bareback with someone behind him, especially a stocky, mail-clad Dwarf who is no horseman! I have...the result of a rider bomping around behind you is you are shoved up onto the horse's sharp withers (the mountainous shoulder blade hump)...even worse, I imagine, if you are male.
Therefore: Gimli gets his own horse, as various hobbits (and dwarves in The Hobbit) do in other parts of LOTR. Sweetgrass is an Icelandic pony. They're about 14 hands, generally duns, bays, browns, chestnuts: earth colors, solid of build (like Dwarves) and hairy (like Dwarves). They're known for their smooth "terlte" (or spelled "tolt" but with that funny little dot thingie over the "o")...a running walk (basically a "broken pace" in which the two legs of one side move ALMOST in unison) similar to the pleasant gaits of the Tennesee Walker, the Paso Fino, the Rocky Mountain Horse, and others. (A hand is four inches, and the horse is measured from the ground to the withers, the highest part of the horse's back). 14.2 hands is 14 hands, 2 inches.
I originally thought Legolas might have returned Arod to Rohan, but Arod was one of the "three empty saddles" Legolas saw when he first spotted the Riders of Rohan. Arod's (possibly beloved) Rider is dead. Eomer would likely have gifted Legolas with the horse (fair trade for 41 orcs at Helm's Deep), and they seem to have formed a bond. Legolas calls him "my friend Arod", and Arod follows him into the Paths of the Dead.
My utterly favorite moment in the book was when Legolas first meets Arod and asks the Riders to remove saddle and rein for "I need them not". (I spent a few years training my patient old half-Arab to work that way) It would have been a neat trick for the movie if they could have pulled it off; I've got a book which shows an entire 4-H drill team performing that way, met one Arab stallion (Wazir, of Raintree Egyptian Stud, owner:Betty Notley Moe, Oregon: seen in Robert Vavra's book: All Those Girls in Love With Horses) who could be ridden that way among his mares(!).
The logistics of teaching actors to ride in a few short weeks, much less without tack, would be pretty appalling. As it was, "Legolas" took a nose-dive in one charge and cracked a rib.
I note however, that Shadowfax appears as he did in the book, tackless. But look closely in the stills, and in certain movie scenes, you can see the thin neck rope which is part of how the rider cues him. Perhaps there was more opportunity to use stuntriders here, and they may have wanted Shadowfax to stand out as the only horse ridden that way.
In the book, Arod's color is not mentioned, only that he is "smaller, lighter (in build, I assume) but restive and fiery". Aragorn's Rohirrim horse, Hasufel, is a great dark grey, Shadowfax is described as silver by day and like a shadow or shade at night (medium to light grey horses are like that), I always liked Alan Lee's grey Rohirrim horses, and have a thing for greys myself, so I se Arod as grey. In the film Arod (with his darkish mane) and Shadowfax (who looks white) are grey, most white horses are actually grey: greys are born a normal horse color and grey out, turning white or nearly so by age seven to ten. As in any species, a rare few horses are born white, often with pink skin or no color at all (albino).
Not baaaaaaaad:
It's short, it's stout, it's bearded, it's...a goat?
I've had the pleasure of being owned by several of these charming even-toed ungulates, the latest being a lovely grey horned Pygmy (dwarf-goat) doe named Sweetgrass. A passerby noted our lone goat and asked if we needed another, they had a nice neutered Pygmy male that needed a home. He arrived in the back of an SUV, black as the sky reflected in the pools of Kheled-Zaram, with mithril ears, and a bushy beard, and no horns. Sweetgrass immediately plowed him in the side with her ample hornage and told him just whose pasture it really was.
A few weeks of goat politics later, (goat martial arts involves rearing, twisting sideways and plowing into your adversary, also skipping sideways in mad loops at a great rate of speed, useful against predators, especially if they don't climb rocks as cleverly as goats) the hornless male had demonstrated a marvelously Dwarvish determination and fortitude, turned the tables, and learned to duck under the wicked horns of his new buddy. Who rules the hay pile now!?
Forty-two! Of course I named him Gimli.