Thursday, April 26, 2018

A-Z Challenge: W is for Watcher in the Water

We are at the letter W today for the AtoZ Challenge. Whew! We're down to the final letters on for this challenge. Yes!  For the Under the Sea Myths & Legends, I thought about many different myths such as another type of Water Sprites and other types of whales but then decided to post about a fictional creature who embodies the idea of myth.

Watcher in the Water


 J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy series The Lord of the Ring took the concept of myth with it's fictional Middle-earth world of creatures, places, and beings and created an epic tale that felt mysterious, ancient and a tad real at times. This series is a masterpiece on how a fictional story can create the illusion of lore and legends. 


The sea monster, Watcher of the Water appears in The Fellowship of the Ring, where he's lives in a lake near the entrance to the dwarf-realm Moria. The description of the creature is a monstrous underwater beast with mass amounts of tentacles and a head that could be comparable to that of a spider. He has razor sharp teeth and his tentacles can slice it's prey dead. That's the general appearance of the monster, but usually, when it came to Tolkien, he could take a creature like an octopus and revamp it into something that could devour a Kraken.

I found this in-depth character review of the Watcher of the Water. It's incredibly entertaining and I highly recommend it if you're a fantasy-geek like me.



In this video, it references one of Gandolf's famous quotes about the unknown darkness that lurks deep within the Moria mountain and on Middle-Earth. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandolf says, "There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world." When I think about the sea and the vast amounts of creatures burrowed deep--both known and unknown, I can't help but wonder the very same thing. I suspect Tolkien thought the same thing.

That's it for the letter W. If you missed yesterday, check out another Slavic lore creature called Vodyanoy.

See you tomorrow for the letter X!

Mina Burrows

1 comment:

mshatch said...

I remember that thing and I've always thought the same thing about the sea. So much of it is still unexplored. Who knows what's down there?!