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PotbellyHairyfoot
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Post Hiding under a cloak
on: November 25, 2018 05:46
For your thoughts and discussions;

In LOTR Sam and Frodo are able to hide under their Elvish cloaks. So the Elves of Lothlorien have the ability to make them.
In The Fall of Gondolin, Voronwe and Tuor hide under Ulmo's cloak. Not an Elvish design.

Is this an ability that Elves figured out later ; is it something that Melian passed to Galadriel, or is it simply that the earlier works are not 'canon'?

I picture a near invisible Elvish army, at the end of the Second Age, marching towards Sauron's troops under their cloaks.

Maybe having too many cloaks around would just ruin the story, like an Eagle flying Frodo to Mount Doom.

[Edited on 11/26/2018 by PotbellyHairyfoot]
tarcolan
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on: November 25, 2018 08:54
I don't think an army would get away with it. The cloaks didn't make people invisible, that wouldn't do. It would lessen the Great Rings' power. I expect the Noldor brought the technology from Valinor and used it, but kept it quiet. That's why we don't hear about it. (classic conspiracy theory 'evidence'). It would be no good in a battle but allowed them to avoid annoying aunts. The Fellowship were honoured indeed to receive them as gifts.
Lord_Sauron
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on: November 25, 2018 10:01
If the Elves did bring this technology from Valinor and if the cloaks could make people invisible then why didn't the Elves use them in the First Age against Morgoth, Wouldn't have been easier if Feanor and his sons put these cloaks on and walk into Angband and obtain the Silmarils

With regards to Frodo and Sam when they were under the cloak I think it just camouflaged them to look like a boulder.
Perhaps the cloaks would not of worked in Mordor, what Tom Bombadil, Elrond, Galadriel and Sauron all had in common was that they were the Masters of their realms. Also didn't Sauron see through the disguises of Finrod and Beren.

And yes PBHF it would of ruined the story
Gandolorin
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on: November 26, 2018 05:25
Having nagged incessantly at PJ (rightly so, I think) I'll here give him credit where credit is due: When Sam and Frodo slide down the hill and then hide under a cloak, it takes on the aspect of a rock. Camouflage by looking like something else. With some of the stick insects, you sometimes even don't see them even if almost rubbing noses with them - unless they move. Which is the whole point about such camouflage: it only works if what is camouflaged remains motionless. So in anything involving movement, and certainly a huge army marching over open terrain, these cloaks would be useless (though they could cause confusion: "Look, there's thousands of boulders heading or way! What the *bleep* is going on?!?" )

Invisibilty capes (later by misunderstanding changed to caps - in German, if older variants of it!) are to be found in the Sigurd / Siegfried cycle of Norse / Germanic legend. Ending up in Richard Wagner's four-part epic "The Ring of the Nibelung", about which JRRT once famously snapped "both rings are round, and there the similarity ends!" JRRT's gripe was with Wagner's treament of the material, and certainly not with the Nibelungelied from around 1200 A.D. (which does mix stuff in not original to older versions, the whole second part with Etzel / Attila being more concerned with the demise of the Burgundian kingdom of Attila's time), or the Völsunga saga or Poetic Edda, or even older sources. No, the true descendants of these artifacts granting actual invisibility are the Great Rings in JRRT's Middle-earth.

As to the Valinorean origin of the cloaks given to the Fellowship, they are told: "You are indeed high in the favour of the Lady {Galadriel}! For she herself and her maidens wove this stuff; and never before have we clad strangers in the garb of our own people." Galadriel had spent some time in Menegroth in the First Age, and been tutored by Melian, so that is plausible. Naturally, these cloaks could not compare to the cloak of Ulmo mentioned by PotbellyHairyfoot above, under which Voronwe and Tuor hid. But then the Third Age of LoTR was separated from the First Age, Middle-earth's heroic Age (a lousy time to live in for non-heros - or actually, for almost all heros, too) by more than twice the vastness of time as separates us from Greece's heroic (or Mycenaean) age, which ended round about and just after the destruction of Troy around 1200 B.C. The war as such went on for about ten years, and Homer's Iliad basically only covers the last phase - and actually does not cover either the Fall of Troy or even the death of Achilles. These events are described in other, often later documents. Kind of like much of what we consider to be Christmas tradition not being written about in the New Testament. Or for that matter, imagine someone who has only read LoTR, or even additionally the Sil, listening (reading) to us carrying on endlessly about matters covered in UT, HoME, CoH, B&L, FoG ... Letters, Biography, Inklings, "Monsters" ... Shippey, Flieger, Curry, Pearce, Crabbe, Foster, Tyler, Strachey, Fonstad, etc. ad nauseam. Image
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tarcolan
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on: November 26, 2018 06:00
It's a pity PJ didn't show the Three Runners hiding under their cloaks when the Rohirrim turned up.



[Edited on 11/26/2018 by tarcolan]
Gandolorin
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on: November 26, 2018 06:11
tarcolan said:It's a pity PJ didn't show the Three Runners hiding under their cloaks when the Rohirrim turned up.
Has anyone thought of an excuse for Galadriel's blunder?

For once I find a scene for which to praise PJ for, and you have to go and ruin things by mentioning his goof in a similar situation.

Galadriel's blunder? I don't find anything in this thread's posts which would fit the bill. Carry-over from another thread? Or am I missing something? Image

OK. Now your post IS missing something ...

[Edited on 11/26/2018 by Gandolorin]
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