Origin of Dwarves

">Aule and the Dwarves

(As told by Valier Yavanna)

This is a story about the need to be patient and also of the forgiveness and love of Iluvatar for our efforts.

My beloved Aule loves to tinker. From the day we stepped into this strange and beautiful world, he was focused on building all sorts of amazing contraptions. One day, I found his workshop door closed. I would never invade his privacy and left him to tinker in peace, yet he was in there many days.

I paced and prayed and wondered what would possess him so. I also wondered if he had slipped out when I had not noticed but then I would hear banging and his normal laughter, so knew was fine.

It was the very early time of the world’s history, so I also was busily singing seeds into existence and left him in peace. One day, I was chilled with delight to see Iluvatar appear in the courtyard where I was working. He looked at me with His loving eyes and stomped, for it could only be thought of as stomping, he stomped right past me. He stood for only a moment before the rough hewn door of Aule's workshop and pushed the door open. He walked in and closed the door with a great bang behind Him before I could even glimpse what Aule was building.

Suddenly voices were raised behind that thick door and I could hear Aule and Iluvatar arguing! I had never experienced this before and felt deeply grieved in my heart. I stood and appealed to Iluvatar in my mind, asking for Him to be patient with my beloved Aule. But the shouting continued and the sound of Aule's hammer striking something. The door even seemed to expand and contract with all the emotion behind the door. Then it grew quiet.

I continued my prayer and waited. In a short while that seemed more like an eternity to me, the door opened. Iluvatar walked out, His face a bit red and shiny, but He smiled at me in a strange way and then was gone.

I was unsure what to do and stood transfixed at the door of Aule's workshop waiting for some direction. Aule's voice, ever so quiet spoke to me and bid me to enter his workshop. As I walked in, there around his feet like a cloud stood seven very strange creatures. They clung to him as if for dear life.

I looked into Aule's eyes and saw something I had never seen there before, fear and.... regret. I walked to him and moved the creatures to the side, as I enfolded him in my arms. He was shaking and his face wet with tears. I held him and waited.

This is what he shared with me. He had grown tired of waiting for Iluvatar to create children. You see Aule loves teaching even more than creating things with his hand it seems sometimes to me. And so in his impatience, Aule had worked tirelessly to craft, with many elements and devices, the seven creatures encircling his feet, and now mine. He found behind the closed door of his workshop a way even to animate them so they SEEMED to live, yet they did not actually. For life belongs to Iluvatar to grant and Him only.

He was revelling in delight at his creation and would have been teaching them from that moment, but that is the moment when Iluvatar arrived. And behind the closed door of that workshop, Iluvatar confronted Aule with his betrayal.

You see beautiful First Children, Iluvatar had and has a plan. He understands the value of perfect timing, because He created time and perfection. Yet because Iluvatar entrusted many special tasks to His Valar and Maiar, He also trusted them to follow His time table, as He trusted them to sing the harmonious tunes He had taught each of them.

When Iluvatar confronted Aule He was about to destroy the creatures. The stubby little awkward-looking creatures... Aule begged Iluvatar to forgive him for not trusting Him. Aule offered to take his own hammer and smash the work of his hand into dust to make up for his lack of trust of Iluvatar.

Iluvatar, Aule told me, stood and looked at him and Iluvatar's eyes filled with compassion and love for Aule, for it seemed, according to Aule, that Iluvatar could "feel" the love that Aule had for these seven creatures and took pity on him and the seven.

Iluvatar told Aule to drop his hammer and wait. The Dwarves understood that they were about to be destroyed and clung to Aule for they already loved him.

Iluvatar then said to Aule: "Thy offer I accepted even as it was being made. Doest thou not see that these things have now a life of their own and speak with their own voices? Else they would not have flinched from thy blow, nor from any command of thy will.” For I grant them life, not just the ability to move at will.

Then Aule cast down his hammer and was glad that Iluvatar had compassion on his creation. But Iluvatar spoke again: "Even as I gave being to the thoughts of the Ainur at the beginning of the World, so now I have taken up thy desire and give to it a place therein; but in no other way will I amend your creation. Your hands have made these creatures in such a way that they will find special work.”

For Aule sensed they would come in the days of the power of Melkor, he made them strong to endure. They are “stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity, and they suffer toil and hunger and hurt of body more hardily than all other speaking peoples; and they live long, far beyond the span of the race called Men, yet Dwarves are not eternal.”

Iluvatar, continued, “They shall sleep now in the darkness under stone, and shall not come forth until the First born have awakened upon Earth. And until that time thou and they shall wait, though long it seem. But when the time comes *I* will awaken them, and they shall be to thee as children.”

And then Aule took these Seven Fathers of the Dwarves, and laid them to rest in far-sundered places; and then returned to be with me. A wiser Valar to be sure.

That, dear ones, is how Dwarves came into being. I only wish Aule had been here to share, but it still hurts his heart.


(Quotes from JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Chapter 4)