Greetings and welcome
Try
www.dragonsfoot.com for a group playing OD&D.
Well...
This is not touchy but rather cabbage that's been chewed more than once. Still, I'll comment here. If you wish, refer readers of the thread in question to this one.
I did indeed use names that Tolkien used in his LotR books in order to attract potential players to the D&D game. When it was being written, was published, early in the 70s the Rings Triology was surely the best known fantasy work around. That said, compare the elves of the D&D game with those that JRRT extoled. Quite a difference between the two, eh?
From where did I get my take on elves? Mainly from fairy tales such as the one in which the 12 princesses went through a secret door into Elfland every night, dancd with elven princes so as to have holes in their slippers. Also, the folklore about etering the world of elves through a secret way under a stone that depicts elves as human-like in many respects. Much authored fantasy also treats elves in like manner, including their being soul-les.
I read literally thousands of SF, fantasy, folklore, and mythology books beginning in 1950. I can not recall exact references after so many years have passed, but I can assure all that Tolkien was not the first autor to consider elves as something other than tiny little fairy folk. In point of fact, fairies in fairy tales, and the French
Lutin fair folk, are usually more like JRRT's version of elves than any other sort of folklore "race" other than perhaps the Norse
lysoalfar, the "light elves." Of course, as Tolkien borrowed much from Norse mythology, it is likely that both his dwarves and elves came from there. I know my dwarves surely did.
Cheers,
Gary
