Ethuil'waew

-------------
Footnotes
-------------

#1 Legolas' age
Tolkien states that Elves are considered adults with 50 and usually marry almost immediately. Which makes my Legolas a pregnant 17-year-old in a society where most people marry with 20 and may have become betrothed during childhood already - which is not a good situation to be in, but would not be all that strange in ordinary circumstances.

“Not until the fiftieth year did the Eldar attain the stature and shape in which their lives would afterwards endure, and for some a hundred years would pass before they were full-grown. The Eldar wedded for the most part in their youth and soon after their fiftieth year. [...] Those who would afterwards become wedded might choose one another early in youth, even as children (and indeed this happened often in days of peace)...” (p. 210)
Tolkien, JRR. Morgoth's Ring: The History of Middle Earth Volume 10. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 1994.

#2 Referring to a male elf as a man
I have decided to have Legolas refer to Glorfindel as a man, not as an elf (note: man, not Man). Elf after all always implies The Other, with Human as the norm, whereas this is an elf-centric story with Legolas as protagonist, to whom mortal is The Other to which he would pay special attention. It is, after all, only deviation from the norm we are used to which makes us pay special attention to such a fact. Thus Legolas would never note that the person in front of him is an elf, no more than you would think of another person you meet on this planet as 'a human' - from what little information Legolas has about this stranger he meets, he has no other way to think of him but in terms of his gender and physical appearance.

#3 Horses in Mirkwood:
One thing that made me add these footnotes to the revised version of my story is that you often encounter people on the net who tout as canon facts they have not even bothered to research themselves. Unless you believe that Thranduil and his men rode wargs to the hunt, I can assure you that the elves of Mirkwood did indeed keep horses:
"Companies of the Wood-elves, sometimes with the king at their head, would from time to time ride out to hunt, or to other business in the woods and in the lands to the East." (p.161)
Tolkien, JRR. The Hobbit. London: HarperCollins, 1999.

#4 LACE and my take on it
Can "Laws and Customs among the Eldar", Tolkien's (infamous among fanfiction writers) essay about Eldarin customs, even be taken as canon? Like all of the History of Middle-earth, I do not consider it canon, although I often look to his 'uncanonical' writings for inspiration. Yet there is a particular sentence in this essay that I like very much: "Even when in after days, as the histories reveal, many of the Eldar in Middle-earth became corrupted, and their hearts darkened by the shadow that lies upon Arda, seldom is any tale told of deeds of lust among them.(5)" (Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring, p. 210) I like to think of the story of Glorfindel and Legolas as exactly that: one of those seldom-told tales of a deed of lust.

Christopher Tolkien also gives us a differing version of this passage from a former, completed manuscript:

The Eldar wedded once for all. Many, as the histories reveal,
could become estranged from good, for nothing can wholly
escape from the evil shadow that lies upon Arda. Some fell into
pride, and self-will, and could be guilty of deeds of malice,
enmity, greed and jealousy. But among all these evils there is no
record of any among the Elves that took another's spouse by
force; for this was wholly against their nature, and one so
forced would have rejected bodily life and passed to Mandos.
Guile or trickery in this matter was scarcely possible (even if it
could be thought that any Elf would purpose to use it); for the
Eldar can read at once in the eyes and voice of another whether
they be wed or unwed.(Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring, p. 228)

Here, Tolkien did not even say that deeds of lust were rare; instead he apparently did play with the thought that some Eldar could be guilty of the pride and greed Glorfindel displays in this story. Interestingly enough, Tolkien does not even rule out rape here, only points out that no Eldar would take "another's spouse" by force.

Also, for those interested in further reading on homoeroticism and subtext in The Lord of the Rings, I recommend the following two essays:
Saxey, Esther. "Homoeroticism." Reading The Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolkien's Classic. Ed. Robert Eaglestone. London: Continuum, 2006. 124-137.
Smol, Anna. "'Oh...Oh...Frodo!': Readings of Male Intimacy in The Lord of the Rings." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 50.4 (2004): 949-979.

#5 Sinda, Sindar, Sindarin; or Sindarin is not just a language
Sinda refers to one single Grey Elf, Sindar means two or more Grey Elves, or even the entire people. Sindarin is the name of their language, yes - but moreso, Sindarin is an adjective which can be used to describe any sort of noun.
For better illustration, take a look at corresponding English words: for instance Spaniard, Spaniards, Spanish. Spanish is an adjective that does, like Sindarin, refer to the language spoken in Spain - but it is also used as an adjective to describe things that come from Spain. You would say "a Spaniard", but you use the adjective to describe a noun; thus it is "the Spanish Prince" instead of "the Spaniard Prince". It is the same with the adjective "Sindarin" - it refers to a language, but also to any other noun you want to describe; so it is "the Sindarin Prince" instead of "the Sinda Prince".


#6 In-depth explanation of Sindarin phrases, titles and names

Ethuil'waew (spring-wind, spring-storm) is a compound of the following two Sindarin words:
ethuil S. n. Cal. season of spring ◇ LotR/D, SD/129-31
gwaew N. n. wind ◇ Ety/387
In a compound, the second word often undergoes lenition, thus gwaew is lenited to 'waew here.

adar S., N. pl. edair S. (eder N., edeir N.) n. m. father ◇ Ety/349, PM/324, MR/373, LotR/II:II, VT/44:21-22, X/EI

ada N. n. m. hypo. of adar, father, daddy ◇ Ety/349

muindor N. pl. muindyr N. n. m. brother ◇ Ety/394 ◇ muin+tôr

ellon S. n. m. elf ◇ WJ/363-364

talan S. pl. telain S. n. wooden platform (in the trees of Lothlórien where the Galadhrim dwelt) ◇ UT/465, LotR/II:VI

pen neth = young one
pen II S. pron. one, somebody, anybody ◇ WJ/376
neth I N. adj. young ◇ Ety/377

hên lend = sweet child
hên II S. pl. hîn S. n. child (mostly used as a prefix in patronymics or metronymics) ◇ WJ/403 ◈ chîn S. nasal mut. pl.
†lend II *S. (lhend N.) adj. tuneful, sweet ◇ Ety/369, X/LH, X/ND1

leithio nin = release me, free me
nin S. [nin] pron. me ◇ LotR/IV:X, RGEO/72
leithio is the imperative of:
leithia- N. (lheitho N.) v. to release ◇ Ety/368, X/LH

fëa = spirit (pl. fëar attested, MR:363) [Quenya]

Galuron: blessed one
†galu *S. (galw N.) n. (?) blessings, (?) blessedness, (?) good fortune (meaning not entirely clear) ◇ Ety/357, X/W

Celeirdúr: compound of celeir and tûr (lenited to dûr): brilliant victory
†celair *S. (celeir N.) adj. brilliant ◇ Ety/362, X/EI
tûr N. n. mastery, victory ◇ Ety/395

Drauglaur: wolf-glory (claur lenited to glaur, draugglaur -> drauglaur due to assimilation of double consonants, see T. Renk's "Compounds in the Noldorin of the Etymologies" http://www.phy.duke.edu/~trenk/elvish/noldorin/compounds.html )
draug S., N. n. Zool. wolf ◇ Ety/354, S/430
claur N. n. Poet. splendour, glory ◇ Ety/362

Lainiell: free girl
†lain I *S. (lhein N., lhain N.) adj. free, freed ◇ Ety/368, X/LH
iell N. n. f. 1. daughter ○ 2. girl, maid ◇ Ety/385, Ety/400 ◈ Stated to be an alteration of sell, remodelled after ion "son" (OS *jondo). It was "a change assisted by the loss of s in compounds and patronymics", hence the ending -iel in several feminine words