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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 28 2010, 6:59pm
Post #1 of 65
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At the Sign of The Prancing Pony -- A Fine Mess
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Summary
Tolkien starts the chapter with a description of Bree-land, including the villages of Bree, Staddle, Combe, and Archet and a small country of fields and "tamed woodland" in the immediate area. Unlike anywhere else in Middle-earth, in Bree-land Big Folk (regular-sized humans) and Little Folk (hobbits) co-exist happily. Furthermore the Breelanders also are friendly and familiar with Dwarves, Elves, and inhabitants of the world around them, including the mysterious tall, dark, wandering Rangers -- although "friendly" does not mean they are friends, and Tolkien specifically says the Breelanders did not call the Rangers friends. Both big and little Breelanders claimed to be the original Big and Little Folk inhabiting the land, with the Big Folk there before the Kings returned over the sea and the Little Folk there before the hobbits settled the Shire.
Yet the Bree-folk, although unusually familiar with travelers, did not travel much themselves. Apparently the hobbits of Buckland and Bree remembered a time when there was much coming and going between the two lands, but "even that was becoming less and less usual." Here Tolkien remarks that there might be other Outsiders who were "no better than tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them," but in Bree-land the hobbits were decent, prosperous, and no more rustic than the hobbits of the Shire.
Tolkien then describes the village of Bree in more detail, with about a hundred stone houses on a hillside facing west, a dike and hedge below the hill, and gates to the west and the south. The Road from the Shire came in the west gate and out the south gate, and where it turned to avoid the hill sat a large inn, built when traffic was far greater. Just outside the west gate sat a crossroads where the Road from the Shire crossed a road traveling from the South to the North. The North Road was now called the Greenway, since it had long ago become covered with grass due to disuse. But the Inn of Bree was still there, and the innkeeper an important person, host to idle, talkative, and inquisitive residents, wanderers such as Rangers, and travellers such as dwarves.
The hobbits come to the west gate after dark, and Harry the gatekeeper asks their names and business. Frodo refuses to answer, “not liking the look of the man or the tone of his voice.” Harry lets them in and goes back to his gatehouse, after which “a dark figure climbed quickly in over the gate and melted into the shadows of the village street.”
Sam doesn’t like the look of the three-storey inn, and suggests that they ask to stay with hobbit folk, but Frodo says Bombadil recommended the inn. Above an arch leading to the inn’s courtyard hung a signboard depicting “a fat white pony reared up on its hind legs,” and over a door was written “The Prancing Pony by Barliman Butterbur.” The hobbits led their ponies under the arch, heard singing inside the inn, and nearly bump into “a short fat man with a bald head and a red face” with “a white apron on … bustling out of one door and in through another, carrying a tray laden with full mugs.” It’s Butterbur.
Butterbur is very busy but returns and talks with Frodo, then calls Nob, a hobbit, and tells Nob to have Bob take care of the ponies. Butterbur explains that three companies of travelers have come to the inn that night, a party from the south, dwarves from the east, and now hobbits from the west. Fortunately, he has rooms available because they were built especially for hobbits.
Butterbur talks almost without stopping despite his claims that he has no time to talk. Nob and Butterbur supply the hobbits’ room and serve supper, and Butterbur invites them to join the company and tell news, stories, or songs.
Frodo, Pippin, and Sam decide to join the company, and Merry decides to sit for a while and go for a walk later. Merry warns the others that they are supposed to be escaping in secret, and Pippin warns Merry that it is safer indoors.
The hobbits enter the crowded common room and are welcomed by the Bree-landers:
The Men of Bree seemed all to have rather botanical (and to the Shire-folk rather odd) names, like Rushlight, Goatleaf, Heathertoes, Appledore, Thistlewool and Ferny (not to mention Butterbur). Some of the hobbits had similar names. The Mugworts, for instance, seemed numerous. But most of them had natural names, such as Banks, Brockhouse, Longholes, Sandheaver, and Tunnelly, many of which were used in the Shire. There were several Underhills from Saddle, and as they could not imagine sharing a name without being related, they took Frodo to their hearts as a long-lost cousin.
The Bree-hobbits start asking questions and Frodo improvised, saying he was thinking of writing a book and wanted to collect information about hobbits living outside the Shire. At first he was overwhelmed with information, but when he did not prove communicative, was left alone in a corner. As Frodo listens, he learns that the men from the south were fleeing trouble. One of the travelers is a “squint-eyed ill-favoured fellow” who asserts that room must be found for newcomers from the south or else they will take it for themselves.
The hobbits were not concerned with the Big Folk, but were chatting with Sam and Pippin. Pippin was telling stories, and one of the hobbits was asking about the Underhills, which made Frodo uneasy.
Frodo noticed a “strange-looking weather-beaten” man listening to the hobbits. He asks Butterbur about him, but Butterbur only knows that he is a Ranger known as Strider, because he “[g]oes about at a great pace on his long shanks.” Butterbur is about to say more when he is called away. Frodo notices that Strider is now looking at him and waves Frodo over. Strider throws back his hood, “showing a shaggy head of dark hair necked with grey, and in a pale stem face a pair of keen grey eyes.” He hints that he knows Underhill is not really Frodo’s name, and then warns him to stop his young friends from talking too much.
Frodo realizes that Pippin is telling the story of Bilbo’s farewell speech. Strider urges him to do something quick, so Frodo jumps on a table and says a few words, all the while fingering the Ring and feeling an urge to slip it on “as if the suggestion came to him from outside, from someone or something in the room.” One of the hobbits calls for a song, and Frodo, in desperation, obliges with a song that seems like a distant ancestor of the nursery rhymes “Hey Diddle, Diddle” and “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon.” And indeed, the narrator states that “[o]nly a few words of it are now, as a rule, remembered.”
Frodo gets through the song once, and it is such a success that they ask for it again. Frodo no longer feels like disappearing, but he dies feel pleased with himself and dances as he sings, leaping in the air as he sings about the cow jumping over the Moon, falls, rolls off the table, and disappears. The crowd, all ready to laugh, instead falls silent.
The crowd calls for Barliman and moves away from Pippin and Sam. A swarthy Bree-lander looks at them with a knowing and half-mocking expression, and then he and the squinty-eyed southerner slip out the door, followed by Harry the gatekeeper.
Frodo crawls to a dark corner by Strider and takes off the Ring. Strider rebukes him, and clearly knows about the Ring. He also says he wants a word with him, and calls him Mr. Baggins. Frodo agrees to talk later. A Mr. Mugwort and Butterbur are meanwhile arguing about what happened, and Frodo speaks up and says there’s been a mistake and that he crawled away after he fell. He does not convince anyone, and all but Butterbur and Strider depart in a huff. Butterbur does not seem too put out, apparently anticipating future business, but does tell Frodo he should be more careful in the future, and also asks for a word with him later. Frodo says yes, but does not look forward to his private talks with Strider and Butterbur.
Analysis
This relatively-short chapter includes a good deal of dialogue and interaction with other men and hobbits. It introduces Butterbur and Strider, although at the end of the chapter it is unclear which of those characters is more important, or whether they are on the hobbits’ side. It also introduces three suspicious characters, a swarthy Bree-lander, a squinty-eyed southerner, and a gruff and inquisitive gatekeeper called Harry.
Like the chapter set in Buckland, the chapter set in Bree starts with a history of Bree, and continues with a description of the town and lists of family names, for Big Folk and Little, all of which is completely unnecessary but adds depth to the story. Bree feels real, and what is more, at the end of the tale, in Book VI, Bree regains its status as a busy crossroads. Plus, along with the history of Bree Tolkien slips information about the Rangers which will prove highly significant. Tolkien also slips in the surname of Ferny, although in this chapter he does not yet link it with the swarthy Bree-lander.
What does it mean that Bree-land encompasses “tame woodland”? How do you tame a woodland? Send all the trees to sleep? Tend them like a garden? Plant new trees and reassure old ones? Why couldn’t the hobbits in Buckland tame the Old Forest? Or were they on their way to doing so, and it would just take another few centuries? How long did it take the Bree-landers to tame their woodland? Centuries? Or did a hero or magician or elf or friendly ent(wife) or Bombadil do it long ago? Did the woods grow tame because the Breelanders were tame, and set a tame example? Or did the Bree-landers and the woods battle in the distant past? Or is the woods tame simply because there are no bad influences around? Would the Old Forest be tame, minus Old Man Willow?
Bree is in some ways as insular as the Shire. Bree-landers rarely travel and are suspicious of Outsiders. But Bree-land is home to both Big Folk and Little Folk. The narrator tells us that no place else in the world do Big Fold and Little Folk co-exist. And Bree-landers are more familiar with travelers than the residents of the Shire, and more tolerant of them. That’s especially true in the inn, where Bree-landers come to hear news and stories and songs.
As an aside, the narrator speculates about the existence of “tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them." Are there really tramp hobbits? Or is the narrator referring to the ruffians we meet during the Scouring of the Shire? Digging a hole in a bank sounds like hobbits, but it’s hard to tell whether there really are tramp hobbits in Middle-earth. Maybe Gollum would qualify as a tramp hobbit, although I don’t think we ever see him dig a hole in a bank. Also, “tramp” sounds like a very dangerous occupation in Middle-earth.
Sam is correctly concerned about the inn, although perhaps for the wrong reasons, and perhaps the hobbits would have been better off to look for lodging with a friendly hobbit. But Bombadil recommended the inn. Why did he do that? Because he knew Aragorn would look for them there? Because he knew Bombadil had a letter for them from Gandalf? Or just because he trusted Butterbur and knew he had rooms for hobbits? Hard to say.
The sign of the Prancing Pony was typical of English inns before literacy was common, when a picture might work better than written words. Now it is more of a quaint affectation, but at one time it was necessary for business.
Butterbur is a fun character. Tolkien has a knack for creating memorable characters by giving them endearing faults. Butterbur’s endearing fault is non-stop chatter, even when he is busy.
Nob is a very minor character, but reinforces the relationship between hobbits and men in Bree. By the way, Bob is likely human, since he works with horses and ponies. I believe that Bob is called human in one of the drafts for this chapter.
It’s ironic, of course, that Merry warns the others to be discreet and Pippin warns Merry to stay inside. Both are right. Why did the hobbits join the common room if they wanted to remain anonymous? Just as with their ill-fated lunch on the Barrow-mounds, the hobbits’ excursion into the inn’s common room looks like trouble from the start, which makes it that much more exciting for the reader. It turns what looks like a pleasant but boring evening into a tense scene, full of hidden dangers.
At this point it is hard to know what to make of Strider. Quick readers might connect him with the dark figure that climbs over the gate when Harry’s back is turned. Strider likes to sit in the dark with a hood over his face in a hot room, which makes him seem suspicious. On the other hand, Strider tries to help Frodo stop Pippin, and scolds Frodo when he makes an even worse mess. And Strider seems to know Frodo’s name and business. One would think that an enemy would hardly offer advice – although perhaps that would have been a good move, considering the trusting nature of the hobbits. If Bill Ferny had just asked to speak to Frodo privately, he might have been able to take the Ring. But Bill is not his own master, and needs to consult with someone first, someone uncomfortable with the crowd in the common room of the inn.
Strider seems a little harsh, first pushing Frodo to make a spectacle of himself, then rebuking him when he makes a mess of it. Yet Strider does not want to make his own role too obvious. Still, the mess at the end of the chapter is, arguably, in part Strider’s fault. Perhaps there was another way he could have handled it. What would Gandalf have done?
I love the song in this chapter. I love it because it feels real, and also feels like a genuine ancestor to two well-known nursery rhymes. It’s a neat trick to create a new work that feels so old. In a way, it’s like LotR itself, a modern song/story written like a translation from an ancient source. But Tolkien also slips in references to a male, not entirely reliable Moon and a female Sun, which means that the song also draws upon the legends in The Silmarillion.
On the other hand, as he introduces the song the narrator slips in an aside to the modern reader, saying “[o]nly a few words of it are now, as a rule, remembered.” This is not a hobbit narrator from Frodo’s era speaking, but a modern narrator, presumably the “translator.” This kind of aside to the modern reader is rare in LotR, but common in The Hobbit. In LotR, it is less rare in the Shire and Bree. Bree, like the Shire, still feels a bit modern, if pre-industrial. From here on out that frail connection with the modern world will fade.
There's slapstick humor involved in Frodo's pratfall. Frodo is the least likely of the hobbits to perform such a stunt, and my heart goes out to him in his embarassment. But of course his pratfall also lands him in danger. Frodo feels like someone or something was urging him to slip on the Ring at the most inappropriate moment -- was that the Black Riders? The Ring itself? Frodo himself? Some combination thereof? Was this a temptation or seduction, or more like a possession or enchantment? If the Ring was involved, was it aware that the Black Riders were nearby, and had spies in the room? Is it that aware and calculating? If the Black Riders are involved, how do they know what Frodo is doing?
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Hamfast Gamgee
Dor-Lomin
Jul 28 2010, 11:43pm
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True, but if the travellors had found any willing Hobbit lodgings, how would they have met up with Strider?
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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 29 2010, 1:37am
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Strider would have tracked them down.//
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FarFromHome
Doriath
Jul 29 2010, 12:13pm
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What does it mean that Bree-land encompasses “tame woodland”?
In medieval times, it would be woodland that was tended and harvested, and probably used as grazing for animals (pigs are supposed to love grazing acorns in oak-woods, I believe). That would be in contrast to the great tracts of wild forest that had never been tended, and where people could get lost or worse (robbers and "masterless men" aka the homeless and unemployed - or Robin Hood himself, maybe...).
As an aside, the narrator speculates about the existence of “tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them." Are there really tramp hobbits?
I would say that there really are tramp hobbits, and that the view we get of hobbits in general is really a very limited one. It's an interesting idea that hobbits might just dig temporary holes and live rough, but why not really? They are pretty good at avoiding unwanted attention, so among Big People they would be as able to survive as squirrels and rabbits do - providing they could catch said squirrels and rabbits to keep themselves fed!
Strider seems a little harsh, first pushing Frodo to make a spectacle of himself, then rebuking him when he makes a mess of it. Yet Strider does not want to make his own role too obvious. Still, the mess at the end of the chapter is, arguably, in part Strider’s fault. Perhaps there was another way he could have handled it. What would Gandalf have done?
Which Gandalf? The Gandalf of The Hobbit might have behaved like this - leading the hobbits further into trouble before bailing them out - and we've just seen Tom Bombadil letting the hobbits get into trouble too, rather than spoon-feeding them. It seems to be a common trait in Middle-earth leaders and teachers. Strider, of course, claims that he wasn't sure about the hobbits at first, which his excuse for not being more straightforward in his dealings. But I'm not sure we can blame him for Frodo's decision to get onto a table and sing a song, let alone his disappearing act... Some perverse mood was on Frodo, which we can assume, if we like, was the Ring talking.
I love the song in this chapter. I love it because it feels real, and also feels like a genuine ancestor to two well-known nursery rhymes. It’s a neat trick to create a new work that feels so old. In a way, it’s like LotR itself, a modern song/story written like a translation from an ancient source. But Tolkien also slips in references to a male, not entirely reliable Moon and a female Sun, which means that the song also draws upon the legends in The Silmarillion.
Yes, I agree about this song, and about your comparison to LotR itself. I wouldn't say "translation from an ancient source...But... draws upon the legends in The Silmarillion", though. The Silmarillion is the ancient source of the legends of Middle-earth, I think - and in this chapter we are told that Bilbo was the author of the words of Frodo's song, so the Silmarillion influence is perhaps not surprising. But Tolkien does link those legends with a real-world nursery rhyme, suggesting that echoes of the Silmarillion legends have survived to our own time, which is very evocative, I find.
On the other hand, as he introduces the song the narrator slips in an aside to the modern reader, saying “[o]nly a few words of it are now, as a rule, remembered.” This is not a hobbit narrator from Frodo’s era speaking, but a modern narrator, presumably the “translator.” This kind of aside to the modern reader is rare in LotR, but common in The Hobbit. In LotR, it is less rare in the Shire and Bree. Bree, like the Shire, still feels a bit modern, if pre-industrial. From here on out that frail connection with the modern world will fade.
Agreed that this is the modern "translator" pointing out that Frodo's song is a precursor of a rhyme we know. I'm not sure that has anything to do with Bree still feeling a bit "modern", although perhaps it's a sign that we aren't far into Faerie yet, so that remarks by the modern "translator" don't jar as they might later on.
Frodo feels like someone or something was urging him to slip on the Ring at the most inappropriate moment -- was that the Black Riders? The Ring itself? Frodo himself? Some combination thereof? Was this a temptation or seduction, or more like a possession or enchantment?
Take your pick. This is the kind of "magic" that can never be pinned down - can never even be clearly shown to be magic at all. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that Frodo might have been led on by ordinary social pressures - the inn is so welcoming, the audience so appreciative, and the whole thing is such a relief after their adventures. Or it might have been the Ring trying to show itself. Or the Black Riders calling to it. Or any combination of the above. It's one of Tolkien's most powerful techniques that he is able to leave the reader wondering - in both meanings of the word.
(By the way, Frodo's performance in the Prancing Pony, ending with his disappearance, reminds me a lot of Bilbo's performance at the Long-expected Party. It's interesting that Frodo's performance was in fact an attempt to prevent Pippin giving an account of Bilbo's!)
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 29 2010, 1:28pm
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Butterbur also prevented Strider
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from seeing the hobbits before they entered the common room, and apparently even refused to take a message. Refusing to take a message seems extreme, but I'll comment further when I get to the next chapter.
I'm not sure Strider is quite as good as Gandalf at manipulating a situation without appearing to do so, at least at this point in the story. Strider is not as familiar with hobbits, let alone with these particular hobbits. By the time he speaks with Merry and Pippin in the Houses of Healing, Strider has a much better understanding of hobbits and how to handle them. If he had that understanding in Bree perhaps he could have suggested something for Frodo to do, rather than just urging him to do something.
As I understand it, woodlands in England were at first preserved for the pleasure of the nobility, so they could hunt, and later were tended and harvested for the wood used to make fleets of ships. Very few English woods were anything but tame. But that's England, not Middle-earth. How would a wild wood like the Old Forest transition to a tame woods like Woody End?
Actually, is there such a thing as a wild woods in Middle-earth? The Old Forest, Mirkwood, Lothlorien, and Fangorn are all more or less under someone's care or control -- only in the case of the Old Forest that someone, Old Man Willow, is hostile to hobbits, and in the case of Mirkwood that someone -- Sauron or his delegate -- is pure evil.
If by "wild" we mean chaotic and out of control, I'm not sure that anywhere in Middle-earth fits that description at this time, when Sauron is firmly in control of the forces of evil and the Free Peoples are allying against him. In The Hobbit it was different -- the goblins and wargs and giant spiders and Smaug did not acknowledge the Necromancer as their master, and the free peoples came close to fighting amongst themselves before the goblin attack briefly united them.
If there are tramp hobbits wandering outside of Bree and the Shire, the narrator doesn't seem to think much of them, or pity them. Are they ruffian hobbits? Thieves and worse, like Gollum? Have they been exiled as Smeagol was?
I agree, "and" would be more appropriate than "but" in my comment on the song and its feigned ancient sources.
I think the Shire and Bree are just as much a part of Faerie as Rohan and Gondor. In some ways, they are more so, since the elves and dwarves travel through there regularly. But it is a part of Faerie that feels more familiar, because the lands and their residents, whether by the trick of the translator or by the choice of the author, feel more modern and contemporary. Or maybe it's just that the story still feels like a sequel to The Hobbit, where asides to the modern reader were common, and Tolkien is slow to abandon those asides.
I agree that it is impossible to pin down what happens to Frodo in the Prancing Pony. Based on other encounters with the Black Riders, though, I think the Ring was responding to the Black Riders. Even when the Black Riders are not aware of Frodo's presence, and even after Frodo understands that the Ring will not hide him at all, he still feels a perverse urge to wear the Ring in their presence. This is true even in Morgul Vale, when the Witch-king has long since given up the search for the hobbit. So it seems to me that the Ring is acting here in response to the nearby presence of the Black Riders and their servants, which the Ring can somehow sense. It may make it easier that Frodo sticks his hand in his pocket of his own volition, but Frodo must realize that disappearing when all eyes are on him will just attract the worst kind of attention. We know that the Ring can act upon a ringbearer, and this seems to me an example of the Ring in action.
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FarFromHome
Doriath
Jul 29 2010, 2:23pm
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I'm not sure Strider is quite as good as Gandalf at manipulating a situation without appearing to do so, at least at this point in the story. Yes, I agree with that. My comment was more about a similarity in the plotting or storytelling, not in the motivations and/or expertise of the characters driving the plot. Perhaps Strider puts the hobbits to the test less deliberately than Gandalf, but the result, storywise, is very similar from the hobbits' point of view.
As I understand it, woodlands in England were at first preserved for the pleasure of the nobility, so they could hunt, and later were tended and harvested for the wood used to make fleets of ships. I believe there's more to it than that. It's true that the nobility owned many forests, especially after the Norman conquest, since the Normans loved to hunt for pleasure. But the common law (probably surviving from Saxon times, although I don't really know) allowed peasants to graze their animals and gather firewood from these woodlands. There were certainly other tracts of forest, at least in Saxon times, that were not "tamed", had no fixed paths through them and were dangerous to cross. It may seem odd when you look at modern England, but distances appeared much different back then - most people never travelled more than ten miles from home in their lives.
Actually, is there such a thing as a wild woods in Middle-earth? The Old Forest, Mirkwood, Lothlorien, and Fangorn are all more or less under someone's care or control -- only in the case of the Old Forest that someone, Old Man Willow, is hostile to hobbits, and in the case of Mirkwood that someone -- Sauron or his delegate -- is pure evil.
Well, that would have been how things seemed in the early medieval period too - woodland or nature spirits inhabited all the mysterious, unexplored parts of every locality, and many of the tales about them are still remembered. I'm not sure the idea of "chaotic" as we might understand it would have occurred to people at that time - since almost everything was inexplicable to them (in the scientific way we explain things), mysterious forces and beings could be imagined to account for whatever "chaotic" event might occur.
If by "wild" we mean chaotic and out of control, I'm not sure that anywhere in Middle-earth fits that description at this time, when Sauron is firmly in control of the forces of evil and the Free Peoples are allying against him. In The Hobbit it was different -- the goblins and wargs and giant spiders and Smaug did not acknowledge the Necromancer as their master, and the free peoples came close to fighting amongst themselves before the goblin attack briefly united them. That's an interesting point, that this story is told as a "binary" struggle, more so than The Hobbit where the creatures are less obviously allied to the powers of good or evil.
Of course, not all the evil creatures are aligned with Sauron - Old Man Willow, Caradhras, Shelob are said not to be under his control, and Saruman rebels. Theoden is not aligned with the forces of good until Gandalf intervenes, and Denethor appears to be aligned but is being hollowed out from the inside. There are plenty of misunderstandings too - Dwarves versus Elves, and Men suspicious of both. And the Ents are slow to align themselves too - might never have done so without Merry and Pippin. The story is told in a more "geopolitical" way than The Hobbit, where we see things linearly and simply, the Bilbo-eye view, until geopolitics rears its head in the final part of the story to show that things are more connected than they may have appeared.
If there are tramp hobbits wandering outside of Bree and the Shire, the narrator doesn't seem to think much of them, or pity them. Are they ruffian hobbits? Thieves and worse, like Gollum? Have they been exiled as Smeagol was?
Well, we are told that "there were probably many more Outsiders scattered about in the West of the World in those days than the people of the Shire imagined", so if the Shire hobbits thought about these Outsiders at all, no doubt they thought of them as quite separate from themselves, and felt no need to pity them or sympathize with them, or even to imagine what their lives might be like. Which means there's nothing in the story to tell us why or how these Outsider hobbits came to be living that way. "Respectable" hobbits probably felt about the Outsiders much as Butterbur feels about Rangers - they are an unknown, and therefore not to be trusted. We find out what's really going on with the Rangers, of course, but we never hear any more about the hobbit Outsiders. Are they ruffians or adventurers? I guess we can imagine whatever we like.
I think the Shire and Bree are just as much a part of Faerie as Rohan and Gondor.
Yes, perhaps you're right. Rohan and Gondor also reflect real-world civilizations, but much older ones than the one the Shire and Bree are based on. Perhaps that's why the "translator's" voice seems less out of place here than it would later in the story.
Based on other encounters with the Black Riders, though, I think the Ring was responding to the Black Riders. Even when the Black Riders are not aware of Frodo's presence, and even after Frodo understands that the Ring will not hide him at all, he still feels a perverse urge to wear the Ring in their presence.
Yes, I agree. That's what we're meant to believe, and we do so quite happily, and perhaps all the more happily because we have never been told we are supposed to believe it!
It may make it easier that Frodo sticks his hand in his pocket of his own volition, but Frodo must realize that disappearing when all eyes are on him will just attract the worst kind of attention.
Yes, but Frodo doesn't do it "of his own volition" after all - he does it subconsciously, while thinking about his song. That's how our minds work, and it can seem as if we're being "tempted" or "inspired" by forces outside ourselves when we do something that we logically know to be the wrong thing. But people have always imagined their subconscious through ideas of "inspiration", and since Middle-earth is the imagination made concrete, it happens in spades here.
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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squire
Gondolin
Jul 29 2010, 6:41pm
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Can I riff on your comment: "In a way, it’s like LotR itself, a modern song/story written like a translation from an ancient source. But Tolkien also slips in references to a male, not entirely reliable Moon and a female Sun, which means that the song also draws upon the legends in The Silmarillion."
I was interested in the degree to which Tolkien's "female" sun occurs in his works, based on the footnote to Frodo's song, which says "*Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She."
In the Silmarillion, as you note, the myth of the Sun and the Moon in Chapter 11 establishes the femininity of the Sun and the masculinity of the Moon in Elven legend, by calling the luminous bodies in the sky mystical vehicles that are "steered" by two definitely gendered Maia spirits.
Interestingly, in the two places in the rest of the book where the Sun is referred to by a pronoun, the ungendered impersonal "it" is used:
…the first Sun arose in the West, and the opening eyes of Men were turned towards it, (Sil 12)
…all the people of Gondolin were upon the walls to await the rising sun, and sing their songs at its uplifting (Sil 23) This pattern is universally followed in The Hobbit, which was written in the same decade as most of the Quenta Silmarillion (although the latter was not, of course, published until much later, and not by the author):
But they don’t like the sun: it makes their legs wobble and their heads giddy (Hobbit V)
The sun had only just turned west when they started, and till evening it lay golden on the land about them. (Hobbit VII)
The sun was shining brilliantly, and it was a long while before he could bear it. (Hobbit VIII)
The sun sank lower and lower, and their hopes fell. It sank into a belt of reddened cloud and disappeared. (Hobbit XI)
A misty sun sent its pale light between the arms of the Mountain, (Hobbit XIII) And again, in The Lord of the Rings, and even in the short Silmarillion revisions he wrote after LotR (which appear in Unfinished Tales), "it" is (almost) always the Sun's referential pronoun:
The sun escaping from the breaking clouds, as it sank towards the hills they had left, was now shining brightly again. (LotR I.4)
The sun was not, however, high enough yet to shine down into the clearing, though its light was on the tree-tops. (LotR I.6)
Even as they looked out in dismay towards the setting sun, it sank before their eyes into a white sea, (LotR I.8)
…clouds creeping out of the East had now overtaken the sun, as it began to go down. (LotR I.11)
The sun was now high, and it shone down through the half-stripped branches of the trees (LotR I.12)
The sun grew misty as the day grew old, until it gleamed in a pale sky like a high white pearl. (LotR II.8)
The rising sun lit them from beneath with flames of murky red; but soon it climbed above them into a clear sky. (LotR II.10)
They were flagging in the rays of the bright sun, winter sun shining in a pale cool sky though it was; (LotR III.3)
The sun had now risen high enough to look over the high hedge: it gleamed on the tops of the birches (LotR III.4)
A smoke seemed to rise up and darken the sun’s disc to the hue of blood, as if it had kindled the grass as it passed down under the rim of earth. (LotR III.5)
The sun was already westering as they rode from Edoras, and the light of it was in their eyes, (LotR III.7)
The rising sun was hazy, and behind it, following it slowly up the sky, there was a growing darkness, (LotR III.7)
The sun had set, already it had sunk behind the rim of the world; (LotR III.8)
Far above the rot and vapours of the world the Sun was riding high and golden now in a serene country with floors of dazzling foam, but only a passing ghost of her could they see below, bleared, pale, giving no colour and no warmth. But even at this faint reminder of her presence Gollum scowled and flinched. (LotR IV.2)
Gollum, in any case, would not move under the Yellow Face. Soon it would look over the dark ridges of the Ephel Dúath, (LotR IV.4)
At that moment he saw the sun rise out of the reek, or haze, or dark shadow, or whatever it was, that lay ever to the east, and it sent its golden beams down upon the trees and glades about him. (LotR IV.4)
The sun rose till it neared the South. (LotR IV.4)
And even at that moment the sun for a second faltered and was obscured, as though a dark wing had passed across it. (LotR V.1)
So they talked until the sun reached its height, (LotR V.1)
…only as it sank at last into the Sea did the Sun escape to send out a brief farewell gleam before the night, even as Frodo saw it at the Cross-roads touching the head of the fallen king. (LotR V.4)…but the sun now climbing towards the South was veiled in the reeks of Mordor, and through a threatening haze it gleamed, remote, a sullen red, (LotR V.10)
Turambar looked out over the falls of Celebros and saw the sun going down to its setting, (UT, Children of Hurin)
For whereas [the Elessar] of Enerdhil was lit by the Sun in its youth, already many years had passed ere Celebrimbor began his work, (UT, Galadriel and Celeborn)
…above the distant mountains clouds were gathering, reddened by the misty sun as it drew down towards them; (UT, Gladden Fields)
The red rim of the sun gleamed out from the clouds as it went down behind the mountains; night would soon be falling. (UT, Gladden Fields)
Huh - just once, in the scene in the Dead Marshes (marked in bold), does the narration change mode and call the Sun "her"! Otherwise, the Sun is never female, as far as the story-telling is concerned. So why does Tolkien write his asterisked note to explain the word choice in Frodo's song? Well, look at the other half my list: below are all the instances of dialogue in The Lord of the Rings in which the Sun is gendered by reference:
‘He wondered at it, for he had almost forgotten about the Sun. Then for the last time he looked up and shook his fist at her.’ (Gandalf speaking, LotR I.2)
‘Sun won’t show her face much today. I’m thinking.’ (Bombadil speaking, LotR I.7)
The round Moon rolled behind the hill
as the Sun raised up her head.
She hardly believed her fiery eyes;
For though it was day, to her surprise
they all went back to bed! (Frodo singing, LotR I.9)
‘I have not brought the Sun. She is walking in the blue fields of the South,…’ (Legolas speaking, LotR II.3)
‘The Sun must have run into a cloud while we’ve been under these trees, and now she has run out again; or else she has climbed high enough to look down through some opening.’ (Merry speaking, LotR III.4)
‘Couldn’t we sit here together in the sun, while it lasts?’ (Merry speaking, LotR III.4)
‘It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman’s Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it.’ (Treebeard speaking, LotR III.4)
‘You are not wise to be glad of the Yellow Face,’ said Gollum. ‘It shows you up.' (LotR IV.2)
'When Sun comes we feel her, even when she is hidden. Already she climbs over East-mountains.’ (Ghan buri-Ghan speaking, LotR V.5)
Ah. In almost all dialogue references to the Sun, "she" is used. It's a rather consistent literary device, then. For better or worse, in all of Tolkien's stories whether Elf-oriented, Hobbit-oriented, or even Man-oriented (the tales of Turin or Isildur), the third-person narration uses conventional English in referring to the Sun as "it". But whenever one of the characters is quoted in speech (even those who are not hobbits or Elves), he refers to the Sun as "she". We can then conclude that the fiction of the modern "translator" is being observed for prose, but to capture the authenticity of the original tales, the spoken dialogue about the Sun preserves the original gendered sense that is native to Middle-earth (basically Elven) culture and mythology.
What then of the exceptions? Why does the narrator call the Sun "she" when describing the hobbits' journey through the Marshes? Interestingly, Gollum in the same chapter speaks of the Sun (or the "Yellow Face", in his terms) as "it". And equally puzzling, why do both Merry and Treebeard speak of the Sun as "it" (in LotR III.4, marked in bold above) - especially when just pages before, Merry has spoken of the Sun (correctly, so to speak) as "she"? The only discontinuities from an otherwise clearly observed convention, then, occur at closely spaced intervals in just two chapters of LotR.
Why? I can't see any pattern that really explains these variations at just these points in the story. As can be seen, the occurrence of the Sun as a pronoun in dialogue is extraordinarily rare, compared to the (still quite rare) instances in the narrative prose. I have to assume the the relative consistency of effect is quite conscious on Tolkien's part, certainly after he composed the asterisk-note to Frodo's song*. It seems to be a minor mystery of composition or a set of minor errors in revision.
*Tolkien revised the song for inclusion in The Lord of the Rings, and deliberately made the Sun female at that time. When it was first composed in 1923, it was as a joke in the context of his professional interest in English literature, language, and folk-ways. It had no direct connection to his Elvish legends, in which the Sun was already a female entity. The original final stanza does not gender the Sun:
The round moon rolled off the hill,
But only just in time,
For the Sun looked up with fiery head,
And ordered everyone back to bed,
And the ending of the rhyme. (History of Middle-earth, VI.9)
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Desicon9
Nevrast
Jul 29 2010, 8:15pm
Post #9 of 65
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RE Curious' --
"As an aside, the narrator speculates about the existence of �tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them." Are there really tramp hobbits? Or is the narrator referring to the ruffians we meet during the Scouring of the Shire? Digging a hole in a bank sounds like hobbits, but it�s hard to tell whether there really are tramp hobbits in Middle-earth."
I never had much trouble here, I always assumed that JRRT was indeed referring to a Hobbit subclass of Outsider when he penned this passage. Especially if one looks at the context of the relevant sentence with the next following:
"Some, doubtless, were no better than tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them. But, in the Bree-land at any rate, the hobbits were decent and prosperous, and no more rustic than most of their distant relatives Inside." (FotR, p. 206)
To me, this second sentence makes it clear that we are talking about hobbits only, not Men, but, I must admit Tolkien did not add a specific note at this point to ensure there would be absolutely no confusion. So, while I am convinced that the tramps (hole diggers too) are meant by JRRT to be rustic/ uncivilised outsider hobbits, others may not be so sure.
So just who are the "Outsiders?" Tolkien makes this a bit complex by altering the meaning of the term "Outsider" according to the one using the term. For Shire hobbits anyone living outside the boundaries of the Shire was an "Outsider," consequently all of the Big-folk/ Men were outsiders, whether Bree-men, rangers, or Southerners. Dwarves were "Outsiders," as would be even the Elves and such itinerant wizard types as Gandalf. Included among the Outsiders, from the Shire perspective, were all the hobbits of Bree. For the Breelanders (both Bree-hobbits and Bree Big-folk) the Shire-hobbits would be classed with the Outsiders. Additionally, for both the Bree-folk and the Shire-hobbits, all those hobbits who were not accepted as resident-members of the Shire communities or the Bree village complexes were yet another group of Outsiders. So, from the Shire-hobbit point of view there were two groups of Hobbit Outsiders, 1) the settled/ civilized hobbits of the Breeland villages and farms, and 2) the rustic/ uncivilized "tramping-hobbits" to whom the passage that Curious quotes (FotR, p 206) must refer.
There is yet another mention of Outsiders in LotR that should, I think, help us to see that the wandering/ nuisance tramps included at least a number of "vagabond" hobbits:
"The Shirriffs was the name that the Hobbits gave to their police, or the nearest equivalent that they possessed. ... There were in all the Shire only 12 of them, three in each Farthing, for Inside Work. A rather larger body, varying at need, was employed to 'beat the bounds', and see that Outsiders of any kind, great or small, did not make themselves a nuisance." (FotR, p 31 my emphasis)
"At the time when this story begins the Bounders, as they were called, had been greatly increased. There were many reports and complaints of strange persons and creatures prowling about the borders, or over them..." (FotR, p. 31)
I think we can accept that Tolkien consistently uses the terms "great/ large" as synonymous with his Big-folk Men, and "small" as a designation specific to the Hobbit-kind. If this point of definition is acceptable, then we have a situation where official Shire-police interactions are taking place with Outsiders, both Big-folk (Men) and Small-folk (hobbits). So, both Men and those Hobbits who were not recognized members of the Shire's settled community life were considered undesirables; and both the large and the small Outsiders (Men and Hobbits) were being turned away from the borders by the Shirriff-Bounders.
But, if this does not convince die-hard skeptics, and, as I said earlier, the exact connection may not be pellucidly clear in the published version of LotR, is there any other source that might allow us to further support the proposition that the tramps of p. 206 were meant to be seen as hobbits? Yes! We are lucky here to have several early versions of this material. So, this involves us in a check of the preceding draft versions where we might hope to find further clarification of the issue concerning the existence of "tramping-hobbits."
In the four volume The History of the Lord of the Rings, especially volume 1 The Return of the Shadow, chapter VIII "Arrival at Bree," Christopher Tolkien presents us with two early versions of the material found in FotR, "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony."
In the first version, the description of Bree outlines a very small community of 50 houses and an Inn. This village of Bree was built by the Big People (Men) though a number of hobbits had moved there at an undetermined time in the past. So far the published version in FotR and this one are in agreement -- but there is a significant alteration in this "Early Version One" that does not show up so clearly in FotR. On page 132 The Return of the Shadow, Tolkien stops talking about the general, mixed population of Bree and launches a discussion specifically about the hobbits:
"There were hobbits about, of course -- some higher up on the slopes of Bree-hill itself, and many in the valley of Combe on the east side. For not all hobbits lived in the Shire by any means. But the Outsiders* were a rustic, not to say (though in the Shire it was said) uncivilized sort. Some were in fact no better than tramps and wanderers, ready to dig a hole in any bank, and to stay there just as long or short a time as it suited them. So the folk of Bree were, you see, familiar enough with hobbits, civilised or otherwise..." (The Return of the Shadow, chpt 8 pp 132-133.)
*Here, in "Early Version One," "Outsider" simply means Hobbits dwelling outside the Shire, and the term Outsider is not as all-inclusive as it is in LotR where Outsider means all peoples, Men, Elves, Dwarves, Wizards, and Hobbits living outside the Shire. So from the very beginning, JRRT meant the Outsider-Tramps who dig temporary holes to be Hobbit-outsiders, not Men.
Later, JRRT seems to have made the decision to "hobbitize" his narrative even further. In "Early Version Two," all mention of Men, or Big-folk is dropped, and even Strider/ Aragorn (called Trotter here) and Barliman Butterburr (called Barnabas Butterburr) were hobbits.
"It will be seen at the beginning of this text that the presence of Men at Bree had been temporarily abandoned, and the description of their appearance in the rejected passage just given is now applied to the hobbits of Bree-land; the innkeeper is a hobbit, and The Prancing Pony has a round front door leading into the side of Bree-hill." (Chris Tolkien note, RotS, p. 133)
What does not change in this hobbitized version, is the existence of a rustic/ uncivilised group of Outsider-hobbits to whom the passage now refers specifically and solely:
"Not all the hobbits lived in the Shire by any means, but the Outsiders were a rustic, not to say (though in the Shire it was often said) uncivilised lot, and not held in much account. There were probably a good many more of them scattered about in the West of the world in those days than the people of the Shire imagined, though many were indeed no better than tramps and wanderers, ready to dig a rough hole in any bank, and stay only as long as suited them. The villagers of Bree, Combe, and Archet, however, were settled folk (in reality not more rustic than most of their distant relations in Hobbiton) - but they were rather odd and independent, and belonged to nobody but themselves." (RotS, "Arrival at Bree," pp 133-34, emphasis mine).
At this point, I would say, we can see that Tolkien meant the "tramps in rough holes" to refer to hobbits from the beginning of his composition, and by the time he arrived at the final published version there are yet enough strong "hints" left in the narrative to make it almost certain he still meant us to see these "hole-dwelling," outsiders as Hobbit-tramps, not as Men.
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acheron
Mithlond
Jul 29 2010, 8:16pm
Post #10 of 65
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Merry's change seems to be in referring to "sitting in the sun" as in "sunshine", as in "not the shadow or dark", and he refers to it as "it". His other reference to the sun as "her" is about the sun itself (or herself), not the light coming from the sun. Treebeard sounds the same way.
Gollum is referring to the sun per se as "it" though, but he's Gollum.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars, and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man, for precisely the same reasons. -- Douglas Adams
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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 29 2010, 9:48pm
Post #11 of 65
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that there would be a significant number of wandering hobbits in Middle-earth. Hobbits seem so unadventurous, and wandering around Middle-earth seems like an invitation to adventure, if not disaster.
Yet if there are a significant number of wandering hobbits, I also find it strange that the narrator does not number them among the decent folk of Middle-earth. I could see that judgment coming from the Gaffer or Butterbur, but it seems strange to hear it from the narrator. Certainly the narrator never makes that judgment about the Rangers, even though they, too, wander.
It implies that the tramp hobbits are outcasts from society like Gollum or the ruffians, as opposed to adventurers like the Rangers, or like Frodo and his friends, who after all will spend the next several months sleeping on the ground. Have the tramp hobbits been banished from the Shire and Bree, as Gollum was banished from his family? If not, why would bounders be needed to make sure they don't become a nuisance? And what did they do to deserve banishment, which, as far as the hobbits are concerned, would seem like a death sentence?
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FarFromHome
Doriath
Jul 29 2010, 10:07pm
Post #12 of 65
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Thanks for finding all those examples. It really makes it clear how carefully Tolkien chooses his words to create his effects.
I agree with acheron's point about the examples you found where the Sun is "it" in speech. They seem to refer to the light of the sun rather than the sun as a character. In fact, if you substitute "her" in those cases you can see that it would change the sense quite substantially.
In Norse mythology, and in Germanic languages generally (including Old English, I believe), the Sun is feminine and the Moon masculine - the opposite of the classical arrangement with Apollo and Diana. Did Tolkien deliberately echo the Norse conception in his own creation myth? It gives an effect of strangeness to us, with our Latin-based preconceptions, and yet is an authentic tradition in the Northern cultures Tolkien loved.
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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N.E. Brigand
Gondolin
Jul 29 2010, 10:43pm
Post #14 of 65
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In Tolkien Studies 4, on "the Sun as 'She'", which was briefly discussed here.
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Desicon9
Nevrast
Jul 30 2010, 12:45am
Post #16 of 65
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Hobbits of the Frontier, uncouth, unwashed, unloved -- but hard as nails?
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LOL, vagabond, scoundrel, undesirable hobbits! Yeah, does sound very disconcerting, but then we are viewing things through the eyes of some very posh hobbit-types from the "civilized" heartland of the Shire. Our stories, The Hobbit and LotR both open in Hobbiton, not along the borders, and certainly not in the Wilderness. Even Farmer Maggot seems tough and capable in his borderland Marish hold when compared to the Hobbiton crowd. So, we get used to seeing the refined hobbits of the "civilized" sector of their society, fat, complacent, suspicious of anything adventurous. The Bagginses were themselves very "respectable" hobbits (that is doing nothing untoward, nothing adventurous) until Bilbo showed what they might be capable of, if given the chance. But is this really surprising? Keeping in mind such rough and tumble characters as Bullroarer Took, and the Old Took's Three Remarkable Daughters (whose own "non-respectable" adventures are hinted in both The Hobbit and the appendices of LotR) the acceptance of a group of "non-conformist" hobbits capable of living very well on their own in the marginal zones of the wild becomes a bit more believable. When we review hobbit history, we need to keep in mind that these were actually a tough people, migrating all the way from the Gladden Fields/ Mirkwood eves through the Misty Mountains, across Eriador to carve out new homes for themselves in the largely depopulated "semi-wilderness" zones of a declining kingdom of Arnor. They fight white wolves in the Great Winter, and successfully battle an invading army of Orcs -- without assistance from Men.
Additionally here, I wonder how much pressure Tolkien was under to create a new Hobbit-tale. His publishers did not want the heroic Silmarillion with its focus on Men and Elves, they wanted just hobbit stories. I think this is reflected in JRRT's 2nd Early Version, where he wrote Men out of the narrative altogether, and introduces us to a wilderness living, survivalist type of hobbit in the form of the disreputable, wandering, ranger -- Trotter, the hobbit. This hobbit had traveled far, fought hard and long, had even been captured and maimed by Sauron and his minions, hence the wooden shoes he wore. So all the tough-guy, outdoorsman aspects of the Dunedain warrior-ranger Aragorn were first outlined as the characteristics of a hobbit -- a special kind of rough frontiers-hobbit. As the rangers were to be hobbits now, akin to Trotter, there had to be more than just one or two such eccentric figures available. So JRRT, quite early in his composition of LotR, created the "tramp-hobbits," to give Trotter a social background of his own. Had JRRT kept to the "hobbit demands" of his publishers, we might find that the Grey Company would have been a band of very tough, hardened hobbits who would join their chief (Trotter the hobbit) to accompany him on The Paths of the Dead... grin.
(This post was edited by Desicon9 on Jul 30 2010, 12:52am)
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squire
Gondolin
Jul 30 2010, 2:38am
Post #17 of 65
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I agree that there is a side to the hobbit-character that gets underplayed in the general tone of the story, which is that the Four Travellers (Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin) are somehow different from the "absurd", almost effete, Shire-folk who they leave behind. In fact, there is a core of toughness in the entire race of Halflings that Tolkien continually refers to; and the idea of a spectrum of hobbit-adventurers, starting with pub-crawlers who scoff at fairy-tales from Outside and culminating in "vagabonds" who tramp the roads of Middle-earth, is not at all alien to the true idea of hobbitry.
I especially like your idea that the passage about Outside hobbits in the Bree chapter is driven specifically by an attempt to write a Ring story that stars only hobbit questers, so that Trotter has a social context. It explains some of Curious' doubts about the plausibility of the tramps, since Trotter proved unable to carry the story-load assigned to him and disappeared from the story, leaving those hole-digging vagabonds stranded for our puzzlement.
I remember recognizing the moment when I was reading the HoME books: in the pass of Caradhras, threatened by deep snow, Trotter is no more able to cope than are the other four hobbits, and all five hobbits must be saved by the full-sized Legolas and Boromir. I think it was at that point that Tolkien began to re-think the Trotter character as a Man, who could act as a more credible guide and occasional savior of the Four.
I still wonder who Trotter was thinking of when he retold the Tale of Luthien and Beren to the hobbits that night at Weathertop, his eyes gleaming and his brow furrowed with passion for someone who was not Arwen Evenstar.
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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 30 2010, 5:46am
Post #18 of 65
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Black Riders shun crowds, the inn would seem to offer some protection.
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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 30 2010, 5:51am
Post #19 of 65
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of the early drafts, in which Strider the Man was Trotter the Hobbit. But in the final draft the wandering tramp hobbits do not sound anything like Strider and the Rangers; rather, they sound pitiful and dangerous and a bit improbable, like Gollum. I don't think it is any wonder that the ruffians in the Scouring are all Big Folk, and that nothing more is heard of these tramp hobbits.
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NottaSackville
Doriath
Jul 30 2010, 12:34pm
Post #20 of 65
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Couldn't Trotter have wooed the Lady with a good clog dance and perhaps some tulips? Are we being specist here to assume that there could be no elf/hobbit union?
Notta
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NottaSackville
Doriath
Jul 30 2010, 12:39pm
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That would indeed be an interesting twist! Though on the surface I like it as an amusing foil to everything we know about hobbits, deep down I think I don't like it at all, as it ruins a bit of the joy of watching Frodo, Sam, Merry & Pippin rise from their Shire roots to greatness. After all, if hobbits can form the grey company, then our 4 friends are either A) simply rising to something their species should be able to do, or B) much weaker versions of hobbits who somehow are barely up to snuff. I prefer the version where they rise above their fellow hobbits rather than struggle to not be outshone by them.
Notta
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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 30 2010, 2:49pm
Post #22 of 65
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The original version of The Hobbit
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hinted that the Tooks might have fairy blood. According to The Annotated Hobbit, until 1967 the text said:
It had always been said that long ago one of other of the Tooks had married into a fairy family (the less friendly said a goblin family), certainly there was still something not entirely hobbit-like about them.
Since 1967, the narrator dismisses that rumor as ridiculous. But before LotR was published, in the world of The Hobbit, perhaps it was not as ridiculous.
By the way, it seems much more plausible that the Big Folk and Little Folk of Bree would interbreed, although Tolkien never mentions it.
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squire
Gondolin
Jul 30 2010, 7:13pm
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From fairy wife to fairy metaphor - and back again
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The change you speak of - from stating a rumor of a Took-fairy marriage, to saying outright that such rumor is "absurd" - came rather late to Tolkien's consideration. Here is a short review of the textual history of this interesting passage:
A. Here is the first extant draft, from ‘The Bladorthin Typescript’ (c. 1930) as cited in The History of the Hobbit (2007):
It had always been said that long ago some or other of the Tooks had married into a fairy family (goblin family said severer critics); certainly there was something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took hobbits would go and have adventures. They discreetly disappeared and the family hushed it up, but the fact remained that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though they were undoubtedly richer. (HotH I.b, Rateliff ed.)
Rateliff comments at this point that the word ‘fairy’ surely means ‘elf’ in the sense of Tolkien’s general mythology, based on clear parallels in The Book of Lost Tales, rather than being a reference to a new or more child-friendly race distinct to the world of The Hobbit.
B. Here is the final text in the first edition, published in 1937; changes from the draft in bold; the second sentence was unchanged:
It had always been said that long ago one or other of the Tooks had married into a fairy family (the less friendly said a goblin family); certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures. They discreetly disappeared … (The Hobbit, 1937)
The passage is mostly the same as in the draft. Notes on the few differences: the Tooks’ fairy connection is reduced from some to one marriage, minimizing the magicality; the goblin slander is recast from a matter of moral judgment to a matter of gossipy hostility, thus to be taken less seriously; the addition of “still” reinforces the point that any oddness arising from the non-hobbit bloodline was nevertheless powerful enough to be apparent today, not just “long ago”; and “Took-clan” solidifies the idea of Tooks as a family line, not just a hobbit type.
In the second edition of The Hobbit, issued after the War and after The Lord of the Rings was largely completed, Tolkien made almost no changes outside of the crucial rewrite of the ‘Riddles in the Dark’ chapter featuring Gollum.
As has become notorious since The History of The Hobbit was published, Tolkien started a thorough re-write of The Hobbit in 1960, with the goal of making it “consistent” with the world of The Lord of the Rings.
C. Here is his draft revision of the passage in question:
It was often said (in other families) that the Tooks must have some elvish blood in them: which was of course absurd, but there was undoubtedly some thing queer about them, something not quite hobbitlike, according to the manners of the Shire: an outlandish strain maybe from long ago. Every now and then Tooks would go off on adventures. They disappeared, and the family hushed it up. (HotH, 5th Phase, New Ch. 1)
Several things are immediately noticeable: Elvish replaces fairy, to eliminate any childish associations. The entire crack about goblins is gone; goblins are not a joking matter anymore. But now it is “other families” that spread the elvish rumor, so that that becomes the equivalent of the goblin gag in the original. Even as the word absurd is introduced to explicitly quash the elvish connection, the narrator hammers home that something about the Tooks is very strange, with three clauses on the issue (“undoubtedly something queer”, “not quite hobbitlike”, “an outlandish strain maybe from long ago”) compared to one in the original (“not entirely hobbitlike”). The terms “outlandish” and “according to the manners of the Shire” combine to suggest that there are, perhaps, other types of hobbits in Middle-earth besides those of the Shire, which may account for the Tooks’ eccentricity. Finally, the comparison between the respectability and the wealth of the Tooks vs. the Bagginses is omitted.
But Tolkien never completed this work. However, he was compelled to revisit The Hobbit a few years later, for reasons of copyright.
D. For that Third Edition (1966) he produced what is now the final version of this passage:
It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures. They discreetly disappeared, and the family hushed it up; but the fact remained that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though they were undoubtedly richer. (The Hobbit, 1966)
Clearly he decided to stick as closely as possible to the original text, while incorporating the key points of his re-thinking from 1960. After using his new opening in which “It was often said (in other families)…” replaces “It had always been said…”, he changes the famous phrase “one or other of the Tooks had married into a fairy family” into “one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife”. Of course the goblin remark had to go, but the term fairy was retained – why, one wonders, since the censorious “of course, absurd” comment was imposed just as in 1960. After that important authorial note, the rest of the passage was left as it had been since, essentially, it was first written: the adventuring Tooks, the disappearances, the hushing-up, and the stubborn but not-as-respectable wealth of the “not entirely hobbitlike” clan.
John Rateliff makes an interesting observation based on the idea that you can’t mention something and then deny it, without having in some sense, meant it. As he points out, in the 1966 revision the Took-fairy marriage was changed to a more specific legend of a Took male marrying a fairy wife. He points out that this follows Tolkien’s long-observed convention of racial intermarriages in which the bride is of higher rank or status than the groom. Every instance in his stories, from Melian and Thingol to Arwen and Aragorn, agrees with this. As Rateliff implies by his comment, why would Tolkien change the wording of the Took legend in so specific a way, unless (maybe unconsciously) he expected it to retain some credibility even in the face of his own dictate of “absurdity”?
So both the 1960 and the 1966 revisions attempted to keep the idea of elven (or fairy, if you will) blood in a hobbit family alive while simultaneously discounting it. It must have been important to Tolkien on some level, as apparently the option of simply eliminating it was never entertained!
The other interesting difference between the 1960 and the 1966 revision is the emphatic suggestion in 1960 that the Tooks had, instead of elven blood, “outside” blood of some kind. It is an interesting direction for Tolkien to have taken even if he did not stick with it, both with respect to our discussion on the Bree chapter’s hobbit clans and vagabonds, and in relation to another source that should be looked at here: the LotR Prologue.
Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become divided into three somewhat different breeds: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides. … The Fallohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and they were taller and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and of woodlands.
… The Fallohides, the least numerous, were a northerly branch. They were more friendly with Elves than the other Hobbits were, and had more skill in language and song than in handicrafts; and of old they preferred hunting to tilling. They crossed the mountains north of Rivendell and came down the River Hoarwell. In Eriador they soon mingled with the other kinds that had preceded them, but being somewhat bolder and more adventurous, they were often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors. Even in Bilbo’s time the strong Fallohidish strain could still be noted among the greater families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland. (Lord of the Rings, Prologue, “Concerning Hobbits”)
Obviously for The Lord of the Rings Tolkien created a hobbitish anthropology of far greater complexity than can be found in the rather primitive remarks at the beginning of The Hobbit. Yet, aside from the addition of the Brandybucks, this entire passage serves essentially to enlarge upon The Hobbit’s initial division of Bilbo (and thus of all hobbits) into Fallohides (i.e., Tooks), and everyone else. The Fallohides are clearly to be associated, in hobbit-tribal terms, with the Elves. There is no suggestion of cross-breeding, of course – we will be told that would be absurd! – but Tolkien’s habit of creating themes and then layering them hierarchically throughout his legendarium is in evidence here, just as with the later edit that specified the fairy wife. The three primary Free Peoples of the West from the time of the first Lost Tales are Elves, Men, and Dwarves; and the three tribes of hobbits (new to Middle-earth since their invention in the person of Bilbo) oddly follow that tripartite division within their own race. Since the Tooks are Fallohides, and Fallohides are metaphorically Elves, it becomes more clear what Tolkien was driving at in his 1960 revision of Bilbo’s Took ancestry:
…there was undoubtedly some thing queer about them, something not quite hobbitlike, according to the manners of the Shire: an outlandish strain maybe from long ago. (HotH, 5th Phase, New Ch. 1)
Behold the Fallohides: they are “least numerous”, followed a different migratory path to the West, and became “leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors”. If we take the “manners of the Shire” in the passage above as a reference to a Harfoot point of view (Harfoots were “the most normal and representative variety of Hobbit, and far the most numerous”), then to them the Fallohides would certainly seem “not quite hobbitlike” and “outlandish”. Finally, since the Fallohides were “more friendly with Elves than the other Hobbits were”, we can certainly imagine that actual sexual, rather than social, intercourse, might occupy the other hobbits’ imaginations as an explanation for the extraordinary qualities of the Tooks (and other Fallohides – only the Brandybucks are so identified, but their “bolder and more adventurous” traits are conveniently to be spotted among all hobbit “leaders”).
In 1960 Tolkien seems to have come closest to reconciling the fairy marriage of Bilbo's Took ancestor with the true history of the hobbits as he finally imagined it. In 1966, he eliminated the goblin joke and made clear the “absurd” nature of the fairy story, but possibly under the imperative of time, and with a memory that his 1960 revision had been called “not The Hobbit”, he did not change very much else about the passage, except to make the non-marriage more mythical in an obscure way. The idea of making it more metaphorical and thus making its continued presence in the story more understandable, unfortunately, was abandoned.
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Curious
Gondolin
Jul 30 2010, 10:24pm
Post #24 of 65
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Thanks for the detailed history!//
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NottaSackville
Doriath
Jul 31 2010, 2:26am
Post #25 of 65
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I'd never noticed that about males always marrying up in status
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And maybe the real reason Frodo & Bilbo sailed west was not to do with being ring-bearers, but because the choice was their right as peredhil periannath.
Notta
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Or the Black Riders!
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