Fair vs Fair: A Meta by StarSpray

Chapter 1

“The seven sons of Fëanor were Maedhros the tall; Maglor the mighty singer, whose voice was heard far over land and sea; Celegorm the fair, and Caranthir the dark; Curufin the crafty, who inherited most his father’s skill of hand; and the youngest Amrod and Amras, who were twin brothers, alike in mood and face” (Silm 77).

Celegorm, with his epithet the fair, is a source of hair controversy in the Silmarillion fandom—does Tolkien mean he is fair-haired, or that he’s just really good looking? The fact that Celegorm is here linked to, and seemingly contrasted with, Caranthir the dark suggests the former, but without another descriptor one way or the other, it’s easy to say that it’s the latter.

Thinking about this, combined with a similar discussion in Dr. Corey Olsen’s Exploring the Lord of the Rings class, got me curious about Tolkien’s use of the word ‘fair.’ Dr. Olsen asked his class’s attendees if someone could do a study of ‘fair’ in The Lord of the Rings, discounting The Silmarillion because it’s written in a different register and style, and someone did—so I decided to look at The Silmarillion myself.

For the purposes of simplicity I am splitting “fair” into two definitions: to mean beautiful/good, or to refer to hair color/complexion; and for the numbers, I am counting hits from the entirety of my Silmarillion ebook text, including the excerpt from Tolkien’s 1951 letter to Milton Waldman, “The Akallabêth,” and “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age,” and the glossary.

In total, the word ‘fair’ is used as an adjective 114 times in The Silmarillion. Of those 144 uses, 46 refer to people, 32 to places, 31 to things or objects, and 5 to words.

Overwhelmingly the word is used to describe something or someone as beautiful. The Silmarils, for example, are called “the fairest of all gems,” and the Swanships of the Teleri are “the fairest vessels that ever sailed the sea” (Silm 53, 110). Gondolin and Tirion especially are fair cities, and Menegroth is “the fairest dwelling of any king that has ever been east of the Sea” (Silm 113).

Since it was Celegorm who inspired this study, I will focus going forward on the people described as fair. Of these 46 instances, 15 describe groups of people, and 31 describe individuals. It is among the groups that I found the only instance of “fair” referring explicitly and only to hair color in the glossary under the entry for the Vanyar: “The name (singular Vanya) means ‘the Fair’, referring to the golden hair of the Vanyar” (Silm 364).

Regarding the individuals, these 31 instances break down thusly:
Sauron: 8
Lúthien: 5
Celegorm: 2
Finrod: 2
Dior: 2
Thingol: 1
Elendil: 1
Finarfin: 1
Fëanor: 1
Indis: 1
Aredhel: 1
Idril: 1
Turin: 1
Elwing: 1
Tar-Míriel: 1
Melkor: 1
Galadriel: 1

Of these 17 individuals, only 5 are explicitly blond: Finrod*, Finarfin, Indis, Idril, and Galadriel, all of whom are descended at least in part from the Vanyar. So in these cases “fair” can be interpreted to have a double meaning, both fair-haired and beautiful.

*Finrod’s description of golden-haired comes not from The Silmarillion itself, but from “The Shibboleth of Fëanor”, where he is described as “like his father in his fair face and golden hair” (Peoples 337).

Of the rest, Fëanor, Túrin, Aredhel, Lúthien, and Thingol explicitly do not have blond hair. All are dark-haired except for silver-haired Thingol, so in their cases “fair” only means that they are beautiful.

The remaining characters never receive more detailed physical descriptions, although in several cases, such as Dior and Elwing, it is unlikely that they would be blond, as their ancestors are either dark- or silver-haired. One could also argue that Tar-Míriel and/or Elendil are dark-haired, based upon descriptions of the Dúnedain in other texts like The Lord of the Rings, but there could also be also a case made for their being fair-haired based upon “Aldarion and Erendis" in Unfinished Tales, where of Erendis it is said that her beauty is “of a kind seldom seen in Númenor…and Erendis was dark-haired and of slender grace, with the clear grey eyes of her kin” (UT 177), which suggests that at least at one time the majority of Númenóreans were blond-haired.

There are also 5 characters who are referred to as “the fair.” These are: Celegorm, Indis, Dior, Elwing, and Elendil. Of these, Indis is the only one who is definitely blond-haired, as she is one of the Vanyar.

Most surprising is that Sauron by far gets the most “fair”s of the lot. These occur primarily in “The Akallabêth” and “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age,” and once in the letter to Waldmen. Also in the letter, interestingly, Tolkien notes that Sauron “lingers in Middle-earth. Very slowly, beginning with fair motives: the reorganizing and rehabilitation of the ruin of middle-earth, ‘neglected by the gods’, he becomes a re-incarnation of Evil…” (Silm 21, emphasis mine); this is the only instance of the word fair, (though it does not describe Sauron himself but his motives, so I did not count it among the 8), that is genuine and not a way to highlight his appearance and deceitfulness in his interactions with the Elves of Eregion.

Much less surprising is that Lúthien comes in second, as she is of course the “fairest of all the Children of Ilúvatar that was or ever shall be” (Silm 72). But of these two, Lúthien is definitely and explicitly dark-haired, and Sauron is a Maia, and so his hair color could be anything he wants—and most often what is referred to as fair is his “hue” or “seeming” or that he is “fair to the eye” (Silm 305, 308, 309), all of which refer to his overall appearance and presentation.

Based on all of this, my conclusion is that when Tolkien calls something or someone “fair,” he is definitely saying that it/they is beautiful, and where coloring has been made explicit he may use it to refer to blond hair or pale skin in addition to the previous meaning. So as a clue to specific physical appearance, “fair” is not a good word to rely on.

You can make other arguments for Celegorm’s complexion and/or hair color based on his juxtaposition with “Caranthir the dark” in that list, but as far as I can tell the only certainty is that Celegorm is the prettiest of Fëanor’s sons.

Chapter End Notes

For anyone interested, here is Zephen12's post on the use of the word in LotR.

My Sources:

The Silmarillion

Unfinished Tales

Peoples of Middle-earth