by Peter Archer
The Unofficial
HOBBIT
HANDBOOK
Everything I Need to Know About Life
I Learned From Tolkien
The Shire Collective
Dedication
Peter
For Mark Sehestedt, who has lived his life on the shores of Middle-earth.
Scott
For Heather and Socktopus with all my love.
Jeff
To everyone who finds in Middle-earth a bit of inspiration for living in our earth.
Acknowledgments
Peter
Thanks to my wife, who threatened physical violence unless I finished my part of the book. Thanks also to Rachel Scheller, who was, as an editor, far more patient with me than I would have been.
Scott
I’d like to thank my fellow Shire collective members Jeff, Ben and
Peter for being great guys to work with. Also, thanks to Phil Sexton for helping brainstorm this whole idea. And many thanks to Claudean Wheeler, Rachel Scheller, and Kim Catanzarite for whipping this thing into shape in the eleventh hour.
Jeff
Thanks to Scott Francis for convincing me I really could offer something of value to this volume.
About the Shire Collective
Peter Archer is an editor at Adams Media in Avon, Massachusetts. He read Tolkien’s works as a boy and continues to re-read The Lord of the Rings every few years so the magic will never fade. He lives in a converted parsonage on the south coast of Massachusetts with his wife and two decorative but essentially useless cats.
Scott Francis is a lifelong fanboy who loves all things sci-fi and fantasy. He is an editor for HOW Books, the author of The Monster Spotter’s Guide to North America, and co-author of The Writer’s Book of Matches.
Jeff Gerke is an editor and author of fiction and nonfiction including such books as the Operation: Firebrand novels and Plot Versus Character: A Balanced Approach to Writing Great Fiction. He is the founder and publisher of Marcher Lord Press, an indie press producing original science fiction and fantasy with a spiritual edge.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1:
Concerning Food, Drink, and Pipeweed
CHAPTER 2:
Hobbit Society and Culture
CHAPTER 3:
Friendship, Fellowship, and Alliances
CHAPTER 4:
Self-Defense: The Art of Running and Hiding
CHAPTER 5:
Survival in the Wild
CHAPTER 6:
Expeditions and Adventures
CHAPTER 7:
Facing Fears and Confronting Evil
CHAPTER 8:
Carrying Rings and Other Responsibilities
CHAPTER 9:
Solving Riddles
CHAPTER 10:
Magic, Wizards, and Other Special Considerations
APPENDIX A:
A Dragon’s Perspective
APPENDIX B:
Hobbit Words and Their Human Equivalents
Introduction
In the times before the race of men, the elves and wizards ruled. Great wars fought between the forces of good and evil shaped the future of things. Evil nearly triumphed, as evil often does, but for the deeds of a few small, courageous creatures known as hobbits.
The hobbits of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth are simple folk, accustomed to living routine lives and enjoying simple pleasures. Their home—the Shire—is a place where everyone knows everyone, where a good day’s work (or a good day’s play) is held in high regard, and where good food, good drink, and good friends are all the riches anyone needs.
Most hobbits are content with their simple lives and rarely seek anything resembling adventure or mischief. But when danger finds its way to their doorstep, or adventure sweeps them up and takes them along its path (as danger and adventure sometimes do), hobbits can summon courage disproportionate to their small stature. Their loyalty and devotion to friends is unwavering. Their sense of right and wrong is unquestionable. They are, quite simply, good and honest folk.
In the age of man, we could stand to learn a thing or two from such creatures. Our world is complicated. It is overrun with politics, violence, corruption, and greed. We are obsessed with money and possessions. We are selfish, too rarely taking time to spend with our family, friends, and neighbors. We are constantly hurried and rush here and there, filling our bodies with fast food instead of taking time to enjoy a finely prepared meal. At the root of these things are the same evils that corrupted Middle-earth and threatened the hobbits and their simple way of life: selfishness, sloth, thirst for power, and greed.
In writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wasn’t just telling an epic story about a mystical realm filled with fantastic creatures. He was creating a timeless parable that we can use to remind ourselves of the way a good and virtuous life should be lived. The hobbits, with their good-natured, trusting, and loyal personalities, represent the good qualities that people can aspire to.
Within the following pages, we’ll examine the lives of hobbits and the lessons they impart. After all, who hasn’t encountered a few “trolls” in their daily lives? Who hasn’t had to outsmart a slimy creature obsessed with riches and power? Who hasn’t had to summon the courage to face evil when they’d really rather sit down to a piping hot breakfast?
In one way or another we all have our own quests, our own burdens to carry, our own monsters to face—our own adventures. We may not be fighting actual dragons, but it can often seem like we are, and when you get right down to it, evil is evil, whatever form it may take. So be inspired by the little folk of the Shire and find your own way to be simple, good, and true … just like a hobbit.
Concerning Food, Drink, and Pipeweed
There was hot soup, cold meats, a blackberry tart, new loaves, slabs of butter, and half a ripe cheese: good plain food, as good as the Shire could show, and homelike enough to dispel the last of Sam’s misgivings (already much relieved by the excellence of the beer).
—From JRR Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring
If there’s one thing hobbits are experts on, it’s food and drink. Not fancy food and drink, mind you, because hobbits like good plain food—but plenty of it. Many of the rooms branching out from Bag End’s central passageway are larders, and both Bilbo and later Frodo kept them well stocked. After receiving the Unexpected Party, which saw thirteen dwarves and one wizard sitting in his front parlor waiting for dinner to be served, Bilbo was always on the alert for guests. Frodo, having his own circle of friends, knew from experience that a lot of food is necessary in order to be considered a polite host.
However, hobbits aren’t the only creatures in Middle-earth concerned with food and drink. Long, rich traditions exist among dwarves, elves, men, and even other creatures (Ents, for instance, know a thing or two about drinks). Let’s consider some elements of this rich culinary tradition and what lessons they may hold for adventurers and travelers.
Hobbits
As earlier mentioned, hobbits eschew fancy foods prepared in rich sauces with exotic garnishes. They like plain food, and they serve it warm from the oven.
Meats
Hobbits raise pigs, cows, and sheep, but cattle are more often used for milk and sheep for wool than as meat sources. However, it’s by no means unusual for hobbits to sit down to a hearty meal of roast beef, stewed to perfection with some herbs, salt, and potatoes. Roast mutton, too, makes a regular appearance in hobbit households, as well as bacon and sausages. There’s a brief mention of cold chicken in The Hobbit, and hobbits are fond of eggs, so there must be chickens somewhere.
Two things that are off the hobbit diet are lamb and veal, so if you stop by t
he Floating Log or the Green Dragon for some evening sustenance, don’t expect to see those dishes on the menu.
Hobbits are experienced hunters; many are capable with bows, and just about any hobbit has skill throwing rocks (and darts and quoits and anything else that requires some skill to throw). The result is that hobbits are well supplied with game, including deer, pheasant, pigeon, boar (rather rare in the Shire), and fox (lean, and not especially good to eat, but palatable in a period of famine).
Dried Meat
Hobbits are skilled at all sorts of meat preparation, including drying meat into jerky as provender for journeys. They don’t make jerky a lot, since hobbits don’t take journeys all that much, but every now and then when some adventurous party of halflings takes it into their heads to ride out to Bree for a couple of nights, it’s handy to take along a few strips of dried meat.
Hobbits also know how to dry fruits for journeys and how to preserve them (see the next page).
Vegetables
In our world, the closest cousins to hobbits are Englishmen from the 1930s and 1940s. Therefore, it’s a given that all hobbit vegetables are cooked only one way: boiled to extinction. It’s a pity, really, because hobbits are expert gardeners and grow wonderful, flavorful produce. However, they are wont to toss shelled peas into a pot of boiling water, add a pinch of salt, and leave them to boil for half an hour. The resulting dull, gray mass can be shoveled down a hobbit’s well-muscled throat in vast quantities.
Cheese
Hobbits are expert cheese makers, and in most hobbit holes, as well as inns along the Road, the weary traveler can find everything from bleu cheese to ripe cheddar. Cheese is usually served with the main meal, not as a separate dish, and can be taken on long journeys, as long as it is left in its rind and wrapped in leaves to keep it from drying out. Hobbits have been known to add such ingredients to their cheeses as beer, horseradish, and port wine, but as a rule they prefer simple cheeses to more complex ones.
Fruits
Hobbits adore fruit, both raw and cooked. In the year 1420, after the scouring of the Shire to remove the servants of the wizard Saruman, hobbit children “sat on the lawns under the plum-trees and ate, until they had made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on.” A strange, ghastly image to accompany gluttony, but there you are.
In addition to gorging themselves on plums, apricots, apples, pears, and peaches, hobbits enjoy strawberries in cream, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries, as well as rare fruits such as quince and persimmons that are scarcely found elsewhere in Middle-earth. Hobbits are adept at baking, creating an array of pies, tarts, scones, and fruit-laden biscuits. Fruit is also the basis of some hobbit wines and liqueurs.
Fruit is an essential part of the supplies of any traveler, and there are no better apples than those found in the orchards of the Shire.
Mushrooms
These are the quintessential hobbit food; as a lad, Frodo Baggins ranges over the Shire in search of them, venturing onto the lands of Farmer Maggot, with dismal consequences (for Frodo, that is). Mushrooms come in many varieties, and hobbits learn at an early age to distinguish between those that are good to eat and those best left alone. They can be cooked into such concoctions as mushroom and bacon pie (enough to feed a farmhouse full of hungry hobbits, and that’s really saying something) and baked mushroom tart. Hobbits have even been known to eat them raw or with a little butter.
Butter, Cream, Jam, and Milk
Speaking of butter, churns are always busy around the Shire, turning out butter and cream. Butter can be wrapped in leaves and stored in a cool place, but it must be used relatively quickly. For this reason, the traveler is advised to forgo butter on his or her bread and to be contented with jam made from berries or quince.
There’s plenty of milk, but alas, like butter, it spoils easily and should be drunk soon after it’s produced. For the traveler, stick to ale or wine—or water, in a pinch.
Baking and Pickling
Hobbits bake constantly; this is necessary, given how much they eat. Bilbo was an experienced baker who produced tarts, pies (both meat and fruit varieties), and cakes (especially seed-cake). Some bakers among hobbits produce their wares for inns, but most hobbits bake what’s necessary for their home consumption. Consequently, many fields of wheat and corn flourish throughout the Shire, and the miller of Hobbiton is a significant personage in the community.
Like all communities not possessed of refrigeration, the hobbits of the Shire are skilled at pickling and preserving in heavy stone crocks. They pickle not only cucumbers but vegetables of all kinds, including tomatoes, onions, beans, and beets.
What to Expect if You Invite a Hobbit to Dinner
Don’t plan on having leftovers. Hobbits will eat until there’s nothing left. They sail through the main meal, polish off dessert, and sit back for coffee and after-dinner drinks while “filling up the corners” with any odd scraps and bits of food within reach. Hobbits aren’t picky about food, so long as there’s plenty of it and it keeps coming.
Dwarves
Dwarves have much the same tastes as hobbits and agree with hobbits that meals are best when they are large and frequent. However, dwarves, much more than hobbits, are prepared to subsist on shortened rations for a long time. They take great pride in their ability to endure long, hard marches with little food or drink. Because of their keen ability to handle fire, dwarves are skilled at cooking (another trait they share with hobbits).
Camping Out With Dwarves
Particularly because of their skill in kindling and maintaining fires (even in the worst conditions) and their tendency to make long journeys on tight rations, dwarves are skilled at outdoor cookery. Give them a few rabbits, hares, and possibly a small sheep, and they can make a meal fit for a king—or even a hungry hobbit. Hobbits are good at cooking, too, but only if the meat has been prepared by the butcher and the vegetables have been picked and washed. Dwarves, however, enjoy the down-and-dirty aspects of cooking, from gutting and skinning an animal to plucking a fowl and cutting it up for roasting. The chief lesson here is that hobbits may be more food-centric, but dwarves make the best cooks.
Cram
For their long journeys, many of which take them to lands and places where food is scarce, dwarves have developed a kind of travel cracker called cram. It lasts practically forever and can be eaten raw, cooked, or dipped in a little wine or water to soften it. Unfortunately, it tastes like compacted sawdust, and even dwarves admit that a steady diet of cram can’t be reasonably endured for more than a few weeks. (It does, however, keep you regular if you eat it constantly.) However, cram contains enough nutrients to keep an adult dwarf on his feet for a long day of marching and fighting.
Dwarf Ale
Dwarves and hobbits seem to have simultaneously developed the art of brewing ale—at any rate, both claim a long pedigree for their practices, so we can assume they were both doing it at about the same time. Dwarf ale tends to be stronger than the varieties hobbits brew (perhaps because the dwarves’ greater body mass can absorb the alcohol). Hobbits, however, create a greater variety of drinks. Not all dwarves like ale; Thorin, for example, drinks red wine when visiting Bilbo, although this seems to be a matter of status as well as taste.
When drinking dwarf ale, drink carefully and slowly. A dwarf, when going strong, is fully capable of drinking you under the table in ten minutes flat. Don’t worry if your dwarf companion is ordering his fourth pint while you’re still working on your first. There’s no rush. Savor the ale going down, and there will be less chance of it coming back up.
Elves
Elves, befitting their ethereal nature, are less attached to food and drink than the other races of Middle-earth. Although they have been known to eat meat, their diet is largely vegetarian—one can imagine elf tofu and other meatless dishes making an appearance at Galadriel’s table.
Elf Feasts
The feast given by Elrond Halfelven at R
ivendell to celebrate the arrival of Frodo and his companions certainly seems substantial enough. Frodo spends a long time concentrating on his plate before he bothers to look up at his surroundings, so we can assume that Elrond has supplied his guests with food to their liking. At the same time, Elrond himself and his companions don’t need much in the way of food.
If you have the good fortune to attend an elf feast, rest assured you will receive a plentiful supply of food that’s to your taste. But don’t be rude and turn your nose up at roasted acorns or sautéed tree sprouts, or some other sylvan fare. You might actually like it.
Eating on the Road
It so happens that Frodo, Pippin, and Sam have an opportunity to sample elven road food when they leave the Shire. Upon encountering Gildor and some of his companions, the hobbits are invited to take part in a feast in the forest late at night. The food includes “bread, surpassing the savour of a fair white loaf to one who is starving; and fruits sweet as wildberries and richer than the tended fruits of gardens.” Not bad for a pick-up meal with a few extra guests. As magical beings, elves don’t seem to worry about keeping anything fresh. However, if you get food for a journey from the elves, don’t expect it to stay good forever. Eat the bread immediately and it will taste almost as good as it did the night before. Leave it for a few days, and you’ll find yourself eating ordinary bread, with just a hint of elvish magic.
