Beasts and Birds

The living things of Arda

When the Valar entered the world they found it empty, and much of their labour in the first ages was the making of a home for living things. Yavanna is the giver of fruits and the lover of all that grows, and her care extends to what the Elves call the kelvar, the creatures that move, as well as the olvar, the things rooted in the earth. Oromë, the huntsman of the Valar, loved the beasts of the wild and rode among them in the dark of Middle-earth before ever the Elves awoke, and it was his horse Nahar whose hoofbeats first announced the Powers to the newly wakened Quendi at Cuiviénen. Beasts, then, are older than the Children of Ilúvatar in the world, and Tolkien's tales treat them not as scenery but as a people of their own, with rights that Yavanna herself pleaded for before the throne of Manwë.

That plea, recorded in The Silmarillion, matters for everything in this category. Yavanna feared that the Dwarves and the Children would fell her trees and hunt her beasts without thought, and she asked that some of her works be given the power to defend themselves. Manwë answered that the Eagles of the Lords of the West would dwell in the mountains and hear the voices of those who called on them, and that in the forests the shepherds of the trees would walk. So the Great Eagles came to be understood as more than birds: they are the eyes and messengers of Manwë, and in every age they intervene at the moments when the Free Peoples are most helpless.

Beasts with speech and understanding

A recurring pattern in the legendarium is the beast that understands the speech of Elves and Men, and sometimes answers it. Some of these kindreds are plainly of the West. The Eagles speak with Elves and with Gandalf as equals. Huan, the great hound whom Oromë gave to Celegorm, was permitted to speak with words three times before his death, and his counsel decided the fate of Beren and Lúthien. The Mearas, the princely horses of Rohan, were said by the Rohirrim to descend from horses brought out of the West by Béma, their name for Oromë; Felaróf understood every word said to him, and Shadowfax would suffer no rider but one.

Others are humbler but no less remarkable. The Ravens of Erebor were long-lived and wise, and their chieftain Roäc spoke the Common Tongue to Thorin with the memory of a hundred and fifty years behind him. The thrushes of the Lonely Mountain could not be understood by Hobbits, but the Men of Dale had once learned their speech, and it was an old thrush that carried the secret of Smaug's weakness to Bard. Beorn kept horses, dogs and sheep that served him at table and understood his commands, and Radagast was a friend of birds and beasts who could send news by wing across the whole North. Even in the Shire the narrator pauses to record what a fox thought when it saw three hobbits sleeping under a tree.

How far these gifts reflect a Maiarin nature is a question the published texts leave open. Huan came from Valinor with Oromë's hounds; the Eagles were sent by Manwë; Nahar was the steed of a Vala. The books do not say in so many words that any of them were spirits clothed in animal form, and the Atlas follows the texts in describing what they did rather than what they were.

Beasts of burden and war

Most of the animals in the tales are ordinary creatures doing ordinary work, and Tolkien gives them the same care as his heroes. Ponies carry Bilbo to the edge of Mirkwood and Frodo to Rivendell, and Bill the pony, bought half-starved from Bill Ferny in Bree, becomes a member of the Fellowship in all but name. The horses of the Rohirrim are the foundation of an entire culture, and the grief of Théoden for Snowmane is given its own mound on the Pelennor. The Elves of Rivendell ride horses like Asfaloth, swift and sure enough to outrun the Nazgûl.

On the other side of the wars stand the great beasts of the South and East. The Mûmakil of the Haradrim, the oliphaunts of Sam's rhyme, carried towers of archers into the battle of the Pelennor Fields. The wild white Kine of Araw roamed the shores of the Sea of Rhûn, and from one of them the Great Horn of the Stewards of Gondor was made. The black crows called crebain flew as spies over Hollin and Rohan in the service of Isengard.

What is not here

Creatures bred, twisted or raised by Melkor and Sauron are treated in the category of monsters and servants of the Shadow: the Dragons, Wargs, werewolves, vampires, Great Spiders, the fell beasts of the Nazgûl and the nameless things under the mountains. The line is not always sharp. The wolves that howled in Hollin and the bats that flew over the Battle of Five Armies were animals in body, but their masters were of the Shadow, and the texts often hint that something worse than an animal looked out of their eyes.

Beasts by age

In the Years of the Trees the beasts of Middle-earth lived under starlight, hunted by Oromë and troubled by the monsters of Utumno. In the First Age the great kindreds of the West enter the wars of Beleriand: Thorondor and his eagles keep watch over Gondolin and rescue Maedhros, Fingon, Húrin and Beren; Huan fights Sauron and Carcharoth. The Second Age is quieter; the Eagles of Manwë nested on the Meneltarma in Númenor and were honoured as witnesses of the Vala, and their shapes in the clouds warned the Númenóreans of their folly. In the Third Age the animals of the North come into their own in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: the Eagles of the Misty Mountains, the ravens and thrushes of Erebor, the Mearas of Rohan, the horses of the Elves and the ponies of the Shire.

Fate

Ordinary beasts and birds continue into the Fourth Age unchanged. The noble kindreds fade with the passing of the Elves and the Wizards. Gwaihir and his eagles are last seen at the Field of Cormallen; Shadowfax is last seen bearing Gandalf, and the texts used by the Atlas do not say whether he passed over the Sea with his rider. The Mearas remain in Rohan under the kings of Eorl's line, and the ravens and thrushes presumably keep their perches on the Mountain, but the age in which a bird might carry a message from a Vala has ended.

The category spans every animal form: eagles with wingspans measured in fathoms, horses that outpace any steed of Men, hounds the size of small horses, ravens and thrushes of ordinary shape but unusual age and wisdom, and oliphaunts larger than any elephant. What the noble kindreds share is longevity and intelligence far beyond their ordinary cousins, and in the case of the Eagles and Huan a strength that lets them fight the servants of Morgoth on even terms.

Beasts have no culture of their own in the texts, but several kindreds have customs and hierarchies. The Great Eagles are ruled by a King or Lord and keep eyries for many generations. The Ravens of Erebor keep a chieftaincy passed from Carc to Roäc and remember the friendship of the Dwarves across centuries. Beorn's animals serve him in an ordered household. The Mearas are the property of the kings of Rohan alone, and it was a breach of custom for Théoden to give one away. Where beasts speak, they speak the tongues of the peoples they live among: the Eagles the speech of Elves and Wizards, the ravens Westron, the thrushes the old tongue of Dale.

The beasts were foreseen in the Music of the Ainur and given form when the Valar shaped Arda. Yavanna nurtured them under the Lamps and again under the Trees, and Oromë hunted the fell things that Melkor set among them. The Great Eagles were sent by Manwë in answer to Yavanna's plea that her creatures have defenders. The Hounds of Valinor were Oromë's. The Mearas were said by the Rohirrim to descend from horses brought from the West.

Ordinary animals persist. The kindreds touched by the West dwindle or withdraw after the War of the Ring, and by the Fourth Age no more is heard of speaking birds or horses that choose their riders.