Oh god.
Dad, I think I hurt myself laughing at that one…
heh… Melkor’s attack on the nitrogen fixation cycle…
The One Ring would have given him power over the Three, and other lesser Elven rings, which were among other things created to preserve the land. I can see him being tempted to take them, and use them and the One to preserve the land from those nasty farmers and hunters. Then, say, rousing the Ents and Huorns to better protect the lands; then the Eagles, and so on. Assuming Sauron didn’t just take the Ring from him ( which he would ), I could see him turning into the Dark Lord of the ecology, reshaping the land into a Dark Forest that grows over the world and destroys everything else.
I think it suited the Ring not to be found at that time.
Don’t loose sight of the fact that Radagast failed as one of the Istari. All he had to do was chat up the people of Middle-Earth, tell them to keep a stiff upper lip, that sort of thing. But, no. He has to go off to play with the bunnies and birds. That wizard may have been a granola eater, but didn’t have a lot of moral fibre.
Had anyone given Radagast the Ring, he’d have probably sat in his woods and done nothing with it, until the End – much like Tom Bombadil would have done. More likely, Radagast would have squirreled it away with all the other “shineys” I’m sure he’d collected over the centuries.
Also, that’s not an umlaut; it’s a diaresis. It’s there to tell you to voice the “ë”, not to shift its pronounciation.
It’s like your grandpa always said, hon. The devil’s in the details.
I don’t completely buy that only Eru & Sauron could have influenced matters having to do with the Ring. You forget Manwe, just I have forgotten how to make a diaresieis. (Not to mention how to spell it.)
Extant writings by JRRT indicate that Manwë took counsel with himself (and Eru) prior to launching war against Morgoth to retrieve the Sils. And he did similar with the whole Sauron/ring imbroglio, and specifically elected to adopt a ‘hands off’ policy.
At least that’s how I recall it. I lack my source material or the time to reference it at present. So with Manwë, perhaps he can influence the ring, but he won’t.
Keep in mind also that since having been burned trying to order and manipulate the elves around, the Valar followed a similar ‘hands off’ policy towards mortals.
Perhaps I was unclear–well, forget “perhaps.” I was obviously unclear. I’m quite aware that the Valar had a hands-off policy re: Middle-Earth politics (except to the extent of sending the Ishtar) and were not going to intervene directly in the ringwar; Gandalf says as much during the Council of Elrond, saying that, if they were to send the Ring over sea, those on the other side would send it back, as it was the responsibility of the peoples of ME to deal with. However, I was focusing on word “could,” which addresses capability, not willingness. I aver that Manwe or Varda COULD have taken the ring without ill effects to themselves.
Pretend I wrote “Istari” there, everyone. :smack: I don’t think Erish-kigal’s sister cared about Middle-Earth one way or the other.
Any of the Valar could have interfered in the fate of the Ring, but none of them could have done so as sublty as it came to pass. Remember, the last time Manwe interfered directly in the affairs of Middle-Earth, it was at the head of the mightiest army the World had ever known. Ulmo, perhaps, had a bit more subtlety, but his potential influence would have ended when the Ring was taken out of the river. At most, he might have been responsible for it being unfound for so long.
The answer is almost certainly no one.
But Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman could be fans. 
Bwahaha. Love the thread.
?? Honest question–is this just a technical distinction between the mark itself and what the mark does? Or are you saying that there are really two different functions?
A flaming umlaut would be a bronze brazier, with two little smokestacks for the flames–a linguistic eternal funereal flame. (One could stick it on a pole and thrust it at orcs and nazgul and spiders and such in extremis.)
Note that Frodo only carried the ring–no one, not even Frodo, could destroy it in the face of the fires in which it was made.
Well, this is looking like the most successful thread i’ve started. Yay! 
Anyway, I have a further question. What’s stopping Frodo just putting the ring on a chicken or something, and then just carrying the chicken in a box?
“Nuggets…and flame!”
Here’s a nice page on how to interpret JRRT’s diacritical markings: http://www.forodrim.org/daeron/diacritics.html
And it goes on to talk about how mistaking the diaeresis for an umlaut leads to sorrow.
And Lightray? Thanks for opening that particular can of worms! 
That would have brought the Nazgul to him. They came running whenever anyone wore the ring. I think a chciken with its head cut off by a morgal blade would still run around flapping its wings for 30 seconds.
Could you imagine what a chicken would have done with the ring of power? People would have lined up to bring worms, greens and grain to an invisible chicken…
Well, it was a bit of “neëner, neëner”, but it just didn’t feel like a Tolkien discussion without any linguistic indignation.
The same thing that stops him from just carrying the damned thing on a chain around his neck, without actually wearing it. It calls to its wearer, and it’s very difficult to resist that call. If he were to do as you describe, he’d feel the incessant urge to choke the chicken and take the ring back. Plus the difficulty in giving it up in the first place, even though only to an animal.