...to Faerie in the West. There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft in the making of beautiful and marvellous things, before some came back into the Wide World.
Faerie was the lands of the Elves in Aman as known in Westron in the folklore of the Hobbits.[1] It is possible that it referred to what is known as Eldamar (translated as 'Elvenhome', 'Elvenland' or 'Elvenesse').
Bilbo Baggins' poem Errantry mentions the lands of Aerie and Faerie; Elven paladins challenged the mariner character of the song.[2]
Inspiration
The idea of Faërie actually encapsulates a much more profound notion explored by Tolkien in his lecture and essay On Fairy-Stories, where it represents a realm on the edge of human experience in which fantastical creatures dwell.
- Faërie. Possibly the single most important term in Tolkien's critical lexicon, with a complex of referents. He used it to mean the Otherworld beyond the five senses - a parallel reality tangential in time and space to the ordinary world; he used it to mean the practice of enchantment or magic, especially through the use of words, for example spells or charms; and he used it to mean the altered mental or psychological state brought about by such practise. Tolkien deliberately employed the variant spelling in place of the more conventional "fairy", to distance himself and his reader from that spelling's connotations of daintiness and prettiness. Over the course of time, he experimented with various but always archaic spellings, including Faery and Fayery, but remained ever faithful to the same set of meanings.
The name 'Faerie' belongs to an early period of Tolkien's writings, and is never seen in The Lord of the Rings, but it does survive in a single usage in the earlier book The Hobbit where this high idea takes on a more concrete form, and there it relates specifically to the realms occupied by the Elves beyond the Great Sea.[3]
See also