A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Canon - Page 4
© Michael Martinez
Of course, Turin and Morgoth have little relevance to The Lord of the Rings, as they are barely mentioned in it. But the Second Prophecy is not mentioned or referred to in any way in The Silmarillion. It's not even pointed to in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, but there are pious souls who reverently insist it is a vital part of the canon. Woe unto he who points out that the Turin of The Silmarillion cannot become a Vala, even at the end of Time. And never mind the fact that all references to a Last Battle are obscure and incomplete, making no mention of Turin.
Other bizarre ideas have gotten thrown into the canonical soup, such as the "fact" that Elves have pointed ears. There is nothing in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Road Goes Ever On, The Silmarillion, or Unfinished Tales which suggests or hints that they might have pointed ears. From 1937 until 1987, the world of Tolkien scholarship had no reason to believe or suspect that any Tolkien Elf might have an ear which didn't look like the ear of a man. Tolkien's characters distinguished between Elves and Men by looking at their eyes, their faces, or listening to their voices.
But in 1987, Christopher Tolkien published The Lost Road and Other Writings; included in its profound revelations was "The Etymologies", an attempt by JRRT to document the Elven languages he was using in the pre-LOTR years. He updated some portions of "The Etymologies" in the first years of writing The Lord of the Rings, but eventually abandoned the work. And in "The Etymologies", one finds the bombshell "las-" entry where are inscribed the fateful words "Some think this is related to the next and *lasse 'ear'. The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than [?human]."
That "[?human]" construction at the end of the sentence is not from J.R.R. Tolkien. It's from Christopher Tolkien. In his introduction to "The Etymologies", Christopher writes "My own contributions are always enclosed within square brackets. A question mark standing within such brackets indicates doubt as to the correctness of my reading, but in other cases is original." Well, some people insist, if JRRT didn't mean to write "human", what could he have intended? Who knows? It's not clear from the text that he intended the remark to stand. He was certainly introducing his own doubt about the allegation with the first sentence "Some think this is related to the next and *lasse 'ear'." Little did the old boy know how seriously his philologist's sense of humor would be taken.
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