In yesterday's post, I brought up a dream I had where my sister and brother-in-law mentioned having been in "Mellow G", but not really having any ideas as to its meaning.
Honestly, with the big "G", my mind first went to Gandalf. In the Hobbit, Gandalf leaves a rune for the letter G on Bilbo's door, so it wouldn't be out of the question for him to be known as G. Additionally, at Durin's Door, he spoke the word "Mellon", which is kind of like Mellow, to open the door.
That was the best guess I had at the time, but it seemed 'not quite right' enough that I didn't bother putting it down as a guess. Besides, this Mellow G seemed to be a place - somewhere where the two Beings represented by my sister and brother-in-law had been, and not a person. So, although I can't rule out Gandalf, I guess, my mind was still looking for other solutions.
After publishing the post, I thought a bit more on Mellow G. Between a combination of thoughts last night, as well as some additional things this morning, I think I have arrived at a reasonable solution, or at least something that works for now.
In looking up 'mellow' on etymonline.com, it seems its original and primary meaning back in the day was about ripeness, fruit, etc. Here is the first part of the definition:
mid-15c., melwe, of fruit, "soft, sweet, juicy" (especially from ripeness), perhaps a variant of merow "soft, tender," from Old English mearu "soft, tender."
The mention of fruit had my mind go to a tree. This may have been also partially driven by the fact that last night, after being only able to take so much of the Vikings game before throwing it in, I was playing a game called "Ori and the Will of the Wisps", where Ori is a Being of Light who is trying to restore light to a tree that has died (Obvious ties to the death of the Two Trees and Melkor and Ungoliant's theft of the Light of Valinor). So, I had 'tree' on my mind already, I suppose, so reading about mellow meaning ripe fruit had me thinking of a tree.
The tree I specifically thought of was the tree of Lehi and Nephi's visions in the Book of Mormon, but as I am typing this, my mind also goes to Alma's words about the fruit of the tree that comes from the seed that we plant. As another interesting aside, the word "Ori" from the game I mention above is also an Elvish word, or derivation of one, and it has come up before in prior posts. One was this post where I talk about the Sun of Righteousness (Faramir-Abinadi, in this case) after going through some strange symbols and meanings building off of Nabisco and Oreos, of all things. So, this Ori name is like the Ore word, but would be the plural form of it (given the -i ending). Interestingly, as I mention in that post, Ore can also mean "seed", and it is that tie I am thinking of right now. Ori = seeds... seeds of light (Stones? Beings?). In the game, Ori is a shining, white Being of Light (also interesting to note is that the Ori games are made by a group called "Moon Studios")
In any case, last night my mind latched on to this notion of 'tree' as being associated with the Mellow G, primarily at this point due to ripeness and fruit. In Lehi, Nephi, and even Alma's discussion of their trees, it is the fruit that is focused on primarily, and it is described as "white" and "sweet". Here is Alma's description, for example:
And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof, which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet, and which is white above all that is white, yea, and pure above all that is pure; and ye shall feast upon this fruit even until ye are filled, that ye hunger not, neither shall ye thirst. (Alma 32)
And Lehi's description:
And it came to pass that I did go forth and partake of the fruit thereof; and I beheld that it was most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted. Yea, and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen.
So, pretty consistent descriptions, and Nephi would also assert to the tree and fruit's 'whiteness', and its preciousness. Alma tends to be more allegorical with his tree, in that it is something planted in our hearts. Lehi is on the other end of the spectrum, describing it something more of a place or actual thing that people needed to physically get to (one to which Laman and Lemuel refused to come), and Nephi kind of bridges the gap between the two, describing the tree in both allegorical as well as place-location descriptions.
Anyways, this is what began going through my mind, again potentially aided by Ori on the Xbox, as I specifically thought of the Trees, and then going to the Two Trees of Valinor, and specifically the White Tree, or Silver Tree. This was then further aided by the G in more searches, and in looking up, what else, more names.
The Two Trees had names. The gold tree was named Laurelin, while the silver tree was named Telperion. I have associated silver with white, but it is still admittedly a stretch to say that silver is white, thus trying to say that Telperion is perhaps a version, if not the, White Tree seen by these Book of Mormon characters was also maybe a stretch.
However, in looking up these names and refreshing myself as to their meaning last night, I stumbled upon the original, or earlier version, of Telperion's name. That name was Galathilion. This name literally translates into "White Tree", and was glossed by Tolkien as meaning further "The White Tree of Valinor". In seeing this, I had at least an excuse between tying the Silver Tree to the White Tree as potentially being the same thing. Given the name starts with "G", it is also a clear candidate for this Mellow G (Sweet Galathilion).
But, it got more interesting. It turns out that Galathilion is also the name for a tree that was made in the image of THE Galathilion-Telperion for the Elves who lived in Tirion (our Jerusalem, as a reminder, for the time being). Here is a brief description from Tolkien Gateway:
Galathilion, the White Tree, was a tree made by Yavanna for the Elves of the city of Tirion. It was made in the image of Telperion, as the Amanyar loved it most of the Two Trees, although Galathilion gave no light
It grew in the Great Square, a high open courtyard beneath the Mindon Eldaliéva, and had many seedlings in Eldamar. From it came Celeborn, the White Tree of Tol Eressëa; through which it became the ancestor of Nimloth of Númenor and the White Tree of Gondor.
The location in Tirion obviously caught my attention based on how much of my new, strange story is focusing on this place as a place of gathering (potentially).
What was just as interesting, however, is to what was tied to Galathilion. Galathilion was 'made' by Yavanna, but was also described as being a descendant or offspring of Telperion (perhaps Yavanna making it was fashioning some graft of the tree). What you will notice in the second paragraph of the above, is that Galathilion is one tree in a link all the way from Valinor to Middle Earth. I have written in the past of separate worlds being separated but needing to be reunited in some fashion - linked together - and from this Tree we have at least one kind of link across worlds. Valinor, Eressea, Numenor, and Middle Earth - all of the worlds that will need to be re-established in this great chain - have (or had) in common the existence of at least one "White Tree" that had its ancestry tie all the way back to the original White Tree, Telperion.
Ok, so all that is interesting, but I left off last night in this thought path of just thinking that it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that by Mellow G, my sister in the dream had meant that she had been in Valinor, and potentially specifically Tirion. It seemed, however, like a few steps of creative thinking to get there, so I wasn't really sure as to whether this was the way to go, and left it off at that.
This morning, however, I woke up with an additional thought that this line of thinking may be correct (or at least ought not to be dismissed just yet).
In my post yesterday, I related that "Mellow G" seemed to be a play on words of "Melody", as in a musical tune. I openly wondered why not "D", as in "Mellow D" if that is the case. As I went through above, if G is meant to actually refer to a proper name, and that name is Galathilion, that that is the simple answer for why G and not D.
So, it struck me this morning that, just as I wrote above, another word for melody is 'tune". And the other name for Tirion, which I have used on several occasions in this blog, is Tun, pronounced the same way as Tune but just with the silent 'e' at the end.
This seems to make sense to me, then, as Mellow G being another one of those clever riddle words or phrases that means multiple things, all relating to each other. Mellow G would refer to both the tree (the "sweet/ ripe Galathilion") as well as the place the tree would have resided (Tirion-Tun).
I don't know - again, it makes sense to me - enough so that I wanted to get it down in a post, and I am not too motivated currently to look for alternative explanations, but rather see what implications flow from this particular riddle solution.
Some of those implications include confirming story elements I have been working on, as well as answer some lingering questions I have. (though some things, as always, remain ambiguous!). I will get to those in a follow up post - maybe me next one (we will see!), but for now my summary of the dream and my proposed solution is that the Beings I spoke to in the dream were saying that they had come from Tirion-Tun when they indicated to me they had been in Mellow G.
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