The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  Curiously enough, one of the sources Wright cites in the English Dialect Dictionary, The Denham Tracts, also contains the only known occurrence of the word ‘hobbit’ before Tolkien; see Appendix I. We have no proof that Tolkien ever read this work, but its frequent citation by Wright – a work Tolkien consulted closely – offers indirect proof that Tolkien was probably at least aware of Denham’s work, though it’s unlikely he was familiar with it. Denham describes a currack known locally as ‘The Lang [long] Man of Bollyhope’ and retells the story relating to it (bracketed additions were probably supplied by the Folk-lore Society’s editor, Dr Hardy):

  THE LANG MAN O’ BOLLYHOPE.

  The warriors on the [mountain] high

  Moving athwart the evening sky,

  Seem’d forms of giant height:

  Their armour as it caught the rays,

  Flash’d back again the western blaze

  In lines of dazzling light.

  Bolliope, or Bollyhope, is a high ridge of black mountains, about four miles from Wolsingham. On the top of this dreary and sterile track is a currack or curragh† [a pillar of stones], known by the name of March stones on the Border. Tradition states that one clear summer’s evening, many long years ago, two tall figures were seen to meet on the top of the ridge, and at once proceed to mortal strife. The clash of arms was heard in the valley, and their forms, being set in relief against the clear blue sky, seemed to dilate to that of the giants of old. One of them was at length seen to fall, and the other, after hovering about for a short space, vanished from sight. On the morrow the mangled corpse of a tall man was found on the spot. No person, however, knew him; neither was there any inquiry made after him. He was buried where he fell, and the pile of stones which was reared on his grave is now know as the

  Lang man o’ Bollyhope!

  † [Denham’s note:] This curragh is on the southernmost edge of Bollyhope.

  —The Denham Tracts, Vol. I [1892], p. 112.

  I have been unable to trace the March Stones, but it’s suggestive that the cairn or currack in this case comes with suggestions of giantism, since the same hints apply to Medwed/Beorn himself. However, in the case of the ‘Lang Man’, Denham is at pains to point out that the dead man and his foe only seemed like ‘giants of old’ because of the length of their shadows, whereas Medwed turns out to be able to assume giant-size in truth (cf. Chapter XVIII).

  Probably closely connected with this is the word hurrock, defined by Denham as ‘a piled-up heap of loose stones or rubbish; in fact, a collection of anything in a loose state’ (Denham Tracts, vol. I, p. 105; italics mine); Denham illustrates the word with a story about a shrewd Scots nobleman who bought a castle cheaply from King James by describing it as ‘only a hurrock of stones’ – only after he had sold it did the king visit and view the ‘noble pile . . . the stately feudal castle, with its many tours [towers] and grete chaumbres [great chambers] and hawles [halls]’, leading him to exclaim to the new owner: ‘Did thou na’ say that Raby Castle was only a hurrock of stanes! Ah! mon, I hae nae sic anither hurrock in a’ ma’ dominions.’ Wright not only lists the word in his English Dialect Dictionary (Volume III, page 289) but cites Denham as his source and repeats the chagrined king’s exclamation.

  Even if we discount the ‘heap of stones’ definition for currock as due to confusion with the similar word hurrock, we still find that Tolkien has, for his own purposes, picked and chosen from among the cluster of meanings given in Joseph Wright and those preserved in modern-day Celtic words descended from it. THE Carrock of Tolkien’s tale is clearly neither a cairn nor a burial place. It’s distinctive enough to serve as a guide for travellers and could easily be used as a huge natural sundial whereby to judge the time of day, but Medwed would not have named it with the thought of strangers in mind, given how much he dislikes visitors, and there are no indications in the text that it serves any time-keeping purposes. A boundary marker seems closer to the mark – at the very least, it is within Medwed/Beorn’s territory: a spot he visits often and one which goblins and wargs shun for that reason.

  These very factors – being easily seen from a long way off, possibly marking the edge of Medwed’s territory, and being within easy walking distance of his steading – account for its being a good place for the eagles to deposit their guests. Note, however, that Tolkien never commits himself to an actual definition of the word ‘carrock’, instead allowing his very detailed description (‘he calls things like that carrocks’) to stand in the place of a formal definition. Presumably the flat top that serves as a handy look-out, the carved steps, the little cave in its base, and even the ford across the river at its foot are all incidentals and it would still be a ‘carrock’ even without these: the key element seems to be an isolated hill surrounded by moving water, just as in the root-word carr (see above), except here transferred from coastal waters to standing alone in a great river that rushes by on either side. We know from the text that other carrocks exist (or what Medwed would call a carrock, which amounts to pretty much the same thing), and we do not have to look far on the map of Middle-earth to find another likely candidate: the island of Tol Brandir, a mountain standing alone in the same river further south (cf. LotR.393 & 414). And in fact in outlines for the chapter ‘Farewell to Lórien’ in The Lord of the Rings (Book Two Chapter VIII) we find the island later known as Tol Brandir was originally called ‘Tolondren the Great Carrock’ (Tol, island; ondren, of stone or perhaps great stone), contrasted by Christopher Tolkien with the ‘Little Carrock’ or ‘Lesser Carrock’ of The Hobbit (HME VII.268–9 & 287). The sheer peak rising out of fast-moving water was an image that appealed strongly to Tolkien, as is also testified by other ‘carrocks’ such as Tol Morwen (Silm.230) and perhaps Himling/Himring (cf. Unfinished Tales, pp. 13–14) left behind after the sinking of Beleriand, not to mention the great shoreless mountain rising from the sea glimpsed by St. Brendan the Navigator in ‘Imram’ (HME IX.297), apparently the remnant of Númenor’s Meneltarma, and the Nameless Isle or Lonely Isle that figured in so much of his early poetry.21 In July 1928, not long before beginning The Hobbit, Tolkien had painted Taniquetil as a great sheer mountain rising from the sea (see p. 21) – like Tol Brandir, a place where no human is allowed to step; like the Meneltarma and the Carrock itself, a climbable peak with a shrine or holy court or at least lookout spot on top.

  Finally, we come to the curious illustration that Tolkien placed at the end of the preceding chapter in the final published book. Although labelled ‘The Misty Mountains looking West from the Eyrie towards Goblin Gate’, it seems to actually be a picture of the Eyrie itself (complete with eagle), with the main line of the Misty Mountains behind it, probably as viewed from atop the Carrock. It’s also possible that it was originally intended as a depiction of the Carrock itself. For one thing, although it lacks the flattened top described in the text, this peak seems separated from the rest of the Misty Mountains by a considerable stretch of lowland. This separation was even more pronounced in the draft illustration (H-S#110) that preceded the one which actually saw print (H-S#111; DAA.158), in which the central mountain is also much nearer the viewer. Note also the rippling lines around the base of the mountain, connected to left and right with fine parallel lines that cross the picture horizontally; it’s possible that these represent the river flowing from north to south, its waters lapping against the base of the Carrock as they flow around it. Finally, as Hammond & Scull point out, the central peak in this picture is a re-drawing of Mount Taniquetil itself (Artist & Illustrator, pp. 119 & 120), Tolkien’s archetype for this recurrent image in his works.

  (v)

  The Dolittle Theme

  One theme or motif that runs throughout the book, having been hinted at in the warg and eagle scenes and later to reappear with the spiders of Mirkwood and in the crow, raven, and thrush scenes at the Lonely Mountain, briefly takes center stage in this chapter: Medwed’s ability to talk to his animals and understand their speech. This is an expression within The Hobbit o
f one of Tolkien’s favorite themes: in Middle-earth, everything talks, from a passing fox (LotR.85) to Túrin’s sword (Silm.225). Hence his ideal race, the elves, are linguists par excellence – Tolkien tells us in the final paragraph of The Lord of the Rings (Appendix F, LotR. 1171) that his elves’ name for themselves is Quendi, or ‘the speakers’. As Treebeard says, ‘Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learning their tree-talk. They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did’ (LotR.489; italics mine). Just how accomplished the elves of old became at this is hinted at in Legolas’s ability to hear the lament of the stones of Hollin for Celebrimbor’s folk: ‘deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone’ (LotR.301); Legolas is also able to assert that ‘the trees and the grass do not now remember them’, so long has it been since the elven folk of that land were destroyed or driven away. Nor is the impulse to communicate limited to the elves: Caradhras, the doors of Moria-gate, and the Silent Watchers at Cirith Ungol may not be able to speak, but all can understand and respond to speech. This makes sense in a world where a mountain like Caradhras or tree like Old Man Willow can have a distinct (and malign) personality and some control over their surroundings, and where a river-spirit (nymph) like Goldberry or genius loci like Bombadil can take on tangible human forms. In all these cases, Tolkien is incorporating into his world over and over again what he called ‘one of the primal “desires” that lie near the heart of Faërie: the desire of men to hold communion with other living things’ (OFS.19).22

  For readers the age of Tolkien’s sons in 1930–31, the generation that formed the original audience for his tale, Medwed’s ability to understand animal-language and his animal-friends acting as servants to set the table for their feast would immediately conjure up memories of another famous character in children’s fantasy, Doctor John Dolittle. Hero of the very popular series beginning with The Story of Doctor Dolittle [1920] and its much more famous sequel, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle ([1922], winner of the 1923 Newbery Award as the best children’s book of the year), Dolittle too has animal friends who keep house for him, even setting the table just as Medwed’s do in this chapter. Dolittle understands animal-language, not because he can assume their form or shares their nature, but because he is a great naturalist who can relate to animals on their own terms. He is in fact a philologist, although that term is never used: the whole focus of the series is on his ability to learn any language (such as, say, shellfish or fruit-fly), and on the unusual adventures to which his linguistic curiosity lead.

  Dolittle himself and his assistant Stubbins (who joins the entourage in the second book and becomes the narrator thereafter, writing down these accounts at the end of a long and busy life – shades of Bilbo, perhaps?) are both very hobbit-like in personality, name, and habits. This is hardly surprising, since both Tolkien and Lofting were modeling their characters on the same originals: the English small-town and country folk of the previous century. Just as Tolkien drew on his childhood memories of growing up near Birmingham, so Lofting based Puddleby-on-the-Marsh on his native Berkshire (the county immediately south of Oxfordshire, whereas Tolkien’s Warwickshire lies on Oxfordshire’s northwest border). Tolkien is deliberately vague about the timing of his tale, as we have seen, although he did admit that ‘The Shire . . . is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee’23’ (JRRT to A&U, 12th December 1955; Letters p. 230), while Lofting says in the opening paragraph of the first book that his story takes place ‘Once upon a time, many years ago – when our grandfathers were little children’ (Story, page 1); a later reference tells us this was back in the days before one of the animals encountered in the book became extinct (ibid., page 81). The second book is more specific, informing us that if we were to visit the site of Stubbins’ parents’ home today, some seventy years later, we would find a historical marker on the wall stating that ‘John Dolittle, the famous naturalist, played the flute in this house in the year 1839’ (Voyages, page 43).24 Thus Lofting’s story is set in the very early years of Victoria’s reign, while Tolkien’s model for Bilbo’s Shire comes from the very end of that same reign.

  Given his own lifelong interest in languages, it is not surprising that Tolkien would incorporate the central theme of the Dolittle books, talking to animals, into his own story at several points, especially since Lofting’s books were favorites of the Tolkien children,25 his original audience for the new story. Of the many other features shared by both men’s work, incidental and otherwise,26 one in particular seems worth noting: that both The Hobbit and the Dolittle books were illustrated by their respective authors in highly distinctive and individualized style. All in all, the Dolittle books were probably the model most in Allen & Unwin’s mind when they asked Tolkien for another hobbit book to turn The Hobbit from a stand-alone into a series, with results that they could not have foreseen.

  (vi)

  Radagast

  ‘. . . perhaps you have heard of my good cousin Radagast who lives near the borders of Mirkwood?’

  With these words is introduced one of the most elusive of all Tolkien’s characters, who never actually appears on-stage at any point in The Hobbit and even in The Lord of the Rings shows up only in references to his absence (LotR.291), one second-hand account that essentially serves as a flashback (LotR. 274–5), and a few brief and not wholly complimentary allusions to his skills and judgement (LotR.276, 278–9). The few additional references to him in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales do not add so much as a single line of dialogue, and he remains a sort of Godot about whom we hear but never really meet. Unusually for Tolkien, we do not even know what language his name may be in, or what it means (see below). Nevertheless, so vast is Tolkien’s legendarium that all those short, passing references added together do tell us a good deal about the character as he evolved over time. In the face of Tolkien’s changing conception, it seems best to approach Radagast layer by layer, to distinguish Tolkien’s initial conception from the character’s later development.

  The first and most important fact about Radagast is that he is claimed by Bladorthin not just as a fellow wizard (apparently one of many) but as a relative: in fact, his cousin. While this claim does not reappear in The Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf simply identifies him as ‘one of my order’ (LotR.274), neither is it removed from later editions of The Hobbit (cf. DAA.167).27 Certainly there is nothing impossible about a wizard like Bladorthin having relatives, any more than Gandalf/Thorin’s having a cousin Dain (see Chapter XV) or Bilbo’s heirs being his cousins the Alibone Baggins (see Chapter XIX). And this remains the case even if we think of Bladorthin as more than merely human (something which the original text cannot resolve one way or the other; cf. the Commentary beginning on p. 49) – note the references by Father Christmas, who is sometimes described as a wizard (p. xxxvi), to his Green Brother (Letters from Father Christmas, 1930 & 1931 letters), not to mention their father, Grandfather Yule (ibid., 1930 letter). In the earliest stage of the mythology, at least some among the Maiar were the Valar’s children (cf. The Book of Lost Tales), and this conception lingered into the period when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit, as shown by references to ‘Fionwë and the sons of the Valar’ in the 1930 Quenta (HME IV.164) and to the ‘Children of the Valar’ in the ‘(Earliest) Annals of Valinor’ (HME IV.293). Nevertheless, in a world where there seem to have been many wizards (see pp. 688 & 696–7), Radagast is the closest thing to another Bladorthin: the latter refers to him as his good cousin, and Radagast is liked even by the unsociable Medwed/Beorn (‘not a bad fellow; I know him well’). And, while the plot notes make it clear that at the time he drafted this chapter Tolkien had no particular idea of where Bladorthin went or why, looking back from the end of the book we can see that in light of Tolkien’s eventual answer to those questions it seems very likely in retrospect that Bladorthin leaves Bilbo & Company at this point in order to go see Radagast, since he lives nearby,28 to plan toget
her how to drive away the Necromancer (about whom Radagast could expect to be well-informed, since he lives near his dark tower).

  The Lord of the Rings adds a good deal more information about Radagast – who now becomes Radagast the Brown,29 no longer Gandalf’s ‘cousin’ but one of my order; that is, one of the Five Wizards or Istari (LotR.606 & 1121; emphasis mine), and a fellow member of the White Council. The old idea that there are many wizards in the world gives way to the concept that there are only five, all Maiar (see also Unfinished Tales pp. 393 & 395). But the earlier concept is not entirely abandoned, and it reoccurs in Tolkien’s essay on the Istari drafted in 1954–5 as part of the very final stage of his work on The Lord of the Rings, the unfinished Index:

  Of this Order the number is unknown; but of those that came to the North of Middle-earth . . . the chiefs were five.

  —Unfinished Tales, p. 389.

  Tolkien intended at one point for Radagast to play a larger role in Bilbo’s new adventure, but exactly what that role would have been cannot now be guessed. In outlines and plot notes written in August of 1939, when Tolkien was contemplating a fresh start on ‘The New Hobbit’ and thinking of such radical changes as recasting the story with Bilbo rather than Bingo/Frodo as the hero, he includes Radagast’s name in a list of plot-elements, such as bringing a dragon to the Shire (shades of Farmer Giles!):