Sorry, it is a tie between the Techie and the Green as my favorite Valar.
For non-canon it was the Lord of Cats, Tevildo if he counts. He might not have been a Valar however. Considering he was replaced by Sauron in the narratives. I guess I don’t have a favorite non-canon Valar.
As to Cirdan, the beard is the give away. Everyone knows that only the wisest where beards.
Jim
Well, he certainly had better sense of self-preservation than the rest of them. “Here’s a pretty ring, Olorin. I’ll be hanging here by these boats for the next 1100 years if you need anything. Don’t go getting yourself resurrected.”
I can’t help myself, I must nitpick.
Gandalf arrived around 1000 TA, so more like 2000 years.
Huh, I’d found a reference that I misread as T.A. 1975 (I recall Ford was president) for Cirdan yokeling Gandalf with that troublesome ring. But you’re right, Cirdan must have given it to him in T.A. 1000. Gandalf was fresh off the boat, its a wonder Cirdan didn’t sell him a bridge as well.
Where beards? There beards. There elven ship.
:dubious:
[sub]I thought you wanted to. You started it[/sub]
I think you had to be a pretty old elf to sport chin whiskers. Cirdan was the only elf I know of still extant in ME in the 4th age who had awakened in Cuivienen.
One of my long-standing questions has always been what variety of leaf Bilbo was smoking when he transcribed the first elvensong he heard in Rivendell.
I figure he was out of his regular pipeweed, so he just picked some random fungus growing by the side of the road and hoped for the best. “The faggots are burning! The bannocks are baking! O Tra-la-la-lally!” Yeah, that’s an Elvish song. Bilbo, you were so high…
I’ve also occasionally wondered what the deal was with Beorn’s anthropomorphic dog servants. So apparently, hidden away in some remote corner of Middle-Earth, there lives a race of intelligent bipedal dogs.
It’s these little things, mentioned lightly in passing, that fascinate me about Tolkien’s work. Because if he’d lived another several decades, there’s a chance that he’d eventually have gotten back around to flesh it out. Then there’d be Dog legends and Dog language and translations from the Book of Dogs and so on.
We don’t know with Celeborn, do we? It is possible he was another. His silver hair was very rare. He was a kinsman of Thingol.
Did you find a passage somewhere that cites Cirdan awakened in Cuivienen? I never found that.
Now, that was funny.
I thought the dogs were just highly trained, intelligent and motivated, not anthropomorphic. I have seen enough dogs capable of the tricks described, to think along the lines of a Standard Poodle & Border Collie hybrid.
Many of Tolkein’s animals had hightened intelligence. I would even argue most. Let’s not forget the Fox whose thoughts we got to listen in on back in the Shire.
Jim
At the time of his death, JRRT was re-writing the Galadriel legendarum, converting Celeborn into a Teleri, and having Galadriel not rebelling against the Valar, but being granted permission for her and Celeborn to return to ME. But then the whole slaying of the Two Trees happened…
So nothing can really be said to be cast in stone about Celeborn’s origins, I guess
It’s a synthesis assumption based on JRRT’s early writings, which stated that the Eldar who undertook the journey didn’t start having kids until they reached Valinor, or until they dropped out. Given that Cirdan was definitely on the journey, and reached the far shore, the tacit assumption was that he’d awakened at Cuivienen.
However, in one of the latest HOMES books (XI I think) JRRT introduced the idea that originally only 72 pairs of elves (nissi and neri, aka female and male) awoke at Cuivienen. The implication is that they then started having offspring there.
So once again, nothing case in stone, only indications of how JRRT was re-writing the mythology in his later years.
Good reasoning. This is what I lack with but a single reading of the Histories.
Jim
All those great Elvish names sure sound different when one realizes they were meant to have a hard C, eh? (Same with Latin & Greek!) Kirdan. Keleborn. Kerebus. Kaiser.
But… capable of setting the table for dinner? My grandfather trained his Weimaraner to balance a biscuit on her nose, but I’m afraid I can’t make the leap to waiting tables without YouTube documentation.
This is true. Restauranteur dogs, exalted horses, talking birds, talking spiders, talking wolves, Were-wolves, Were-bears, Were-worms… Tolkien was a closet furry wasn’t he?
Mild hijack, but speaking of Tolkien canids: is there any hint in the texts about what modern breed Huan of Valinor might have most closely resembled? He’s identified as a “wolfhound,” but I’m wondering if Tolkien had anything more specific in mind. The Irish Wolfhound does not, to my eye, immediately suggest the unearthly beauty and grace one might expect of a breed native to the Undying Lands. Personally I have always envisioned Huan as a really big greyhound. Is this wrong of me?
I don’t know why, but I always pictured Huan as a silver version of Gmork from The Neverending Story. This Ted Nasmith drawing is pretty close to what I imagined:
I’m not sure what modern dog that would most closely resemble.
Is that really how to pronounce Cerberus? I’ve always heard that name said with a soft C.
Mine’s Manwe and Tom Bombadil.
I thought Tom was a maia? Then again, I guess we don’t know what the hell he is, since Tolkien said as much.
Ancient Greek doesn’t have a soft C. Actually, it doesn’t have a C at all. The name should properly be spelled ‘Kerberos’. Κέρβερος.
And just to be (vaguely) on topic - Favorite Valar: Nienna. Non-canon: Makar and Meassa.
Tolkien said Tom was an enigma. Many have conjectured that he was Manwë, a stray Maia, Eru Ilúvatar himself or some other Ainu. Goldberry herself is described as the River’s Daughter. It sounds like she is the Middle-Earth equivalent of a Naiad or at least some minor Ainu.
I like the idea of some spirit that never aligned himself with the Valar or Morgoth.
Jim
No, those are the Eagles that wrote Hotel California. 
The Hobbit was my all-time favorite book as a kid, way before it was popular or even well-known. I was introduced to it not long after it was written, but before LOTR was. Much later in life I read LOTR, or tried to. I guess I go more for the simple, as LOTR was way over the top in “wordiness” to my taste, and I never liked it much. The difference was night and day.
So I’m hoping the next Hobbit movie is more like the original.
Wait, how old are you? The Hobbit was printed in the US in 1938.
You read it in the 40s? I never had a clue you were in your 70s.
Well, since Tolkein did say Tom was outside the normal system of fantasy creatures we have to accept him as such. But he was not a Maia because a Maia would have been affected by the Ring*, and maybe would not have been powerful enough to rescue them so swiftly from the Barrows.
*Of course, it’s possible that he was a Maia and the Ring DID affect him immensely, but did not completely corrupt him because even though he was powerful he shared with the Hobbits a non-desire to wield this power, and it was all the character he could muster to treat it as a mere trinket 