The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  . . . the only way to study folk-lore is to treat each recorded item separately. For this purpose there will be found very interesting features here which are not to be found elsewhere. The names for the different classes of spirits (on pp. 77–78) is very full, and needs some investigation philologically and mythologically . . .

  —Preface, Vol. II page ix

  The names in question are of course those making up Denham’s list reprinted on pages 844–46 above. And, of course, one might say that taking a single item from that list (the otherwise unknown name ‘hobbit’) and investigating it philologically (what might the word mean? what might a ‘hobbit’ be like?) and mythologically (what sort of tales might be told about such a creature?) is exactly what Tolkien does in The Hobbit. Such a chain of events would make Tolkien’s hobbits his personal adaptation of actual folklore survivals just like the elves, dwarfs (or dwarves), wizards, goblins, giants, fire-drakes (dragons), trolls and hob-goblins, all of which occur both in The Hobbit and in Denham’s list and all of which are given distinctly Tolkienian interpretations.21 The possibility is tantalizing, but it remains only a possibility, with no direct evidence to back it up. Certainly if Tolkien did ever read The Denham Tracts, it must have been during his early years studying with Wright [1911–1915] or when himself compiling A Middle English Vocabulary [1919ff] or editing Middle English texts like Sir Gawain & the Green Knight [circa 1922–1925] at Leeds, since he had forgotten about it completely by 1930 when he actually came to write down that solitary sentence In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

  Unfortunately, this attractive little scenario can hardly represent what really happened, for it runs counter to the most important evidence of all: Tolkien’s own account of how he created the name, repeated over and over with great consistency over a number of years (see pages xii–xiii), and his attempts late in life (detailed in Appendix II) to find any possible earlier occurance of the name. Had Tolkien deliberately acted on the hint in Gomme’s preface, it is wildly improbable that he would have completely forgotten about it and gone to such lengths, which included not just his own researches into the topic but corresponding with his old pupils Robert Burchfield, then the editor of the OED, and Roger Lancelyn Green, whom he recruited to try to track down any nineteenth-century fairy-story that might have included the name (see pp. 860–62). Therefore, despite its apparent plausibility, it is highly unlikely that The Denham Tracts was actually Tolkien’s source for hobbit.

  How then do we explain the coincidence? For one thing, English folklore traditions about hobs obviously played a part in Tolkien’s creation, including the name, and since this is the case it is not so very surprising to find that Tolkien’s invention, his own personal variant, can be matched by an actual example from the historical record, albeit an obscure one. Tolkien’s gift for nomenclature was posited on creating words that sounded like real ones, creating matches of sound and sense that felt as if they were actual words drawn from the vast body of old lore that had somehow failed to otherwise be recorded. That his invention should match actual obscure historical words was inevitable provided he did his work well enough, as is also attested by the accidental resemblance of his place-name Gondor (inspired by the actual historic word ond [‘stone’], which had once been thought to be a fragment of a lost pre-IndoEuropean language of the British isles)22 to both the real-world Gondar (a city in northern Ethiopia, also sometimes spelled Gonder, once that country’s capital; see Letters p. 409) and the imaginary Gondour (a utopia invented by Mark Twain in the story ‘The Curious Republic of Gondour’ [1870]; see my essay in the Blackwelder festschrift, p. 93 Note 24, for more detail). It is a tribute to Tolkien’s skill with word-building that his invented hobbit should prove to have indeed had a real-world predecessor, though Tolkien himself probably never knew of it. For more on Tolkien’s investigation into real-world antecedents of the hobbit, see Appendix II.

  * * *

  † see Note page 854

  Appendix II

  Tolkien’s Letter to the Observer(The Hobyahs)

  In addition to the undoubted appearance of the word hobbits in Denham’s list, although Tolkien probably was not aware of the fact (see Appendix I), the issue of whether or not Tolkien invented the name outright has long been confused by a vague claim that it might have come from a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century fairy tale. This claim was first raised by a pseudonymous letter to the editor of the British newspaper The Observer, printed on 16th January 1938, just four months after The Hobbit had been published.

  Sir: Dr. Julian Huxley, in one of his recent lectures, referred to the ‘little furry men’ seen in Africa by natives and, although dimly in moonlight, by at least one scientist.

  What I should like to know is whether these creatures provided the inspiration for Professor Tolkien’s attractive hobbit, the newest visitor to so many of our nurseries this Christmas. Naturally, I always read my children’s books before giving them to them, and I noticed that the characters in the hobbit were nearly all drawn from real animal life or from real mythology. Few of them appeared to be invented.

  On mentioning the hairy-footed hobbit, rather like a rabbit, to one of my contemporaries, I was amazed to see her shudder. She said she remembered an old fairy tale called ‘The Hobbit’ in a collection read about 1904. This creature, she said, was definitely frightening, unlike Professor Tolkien’s. Would the Professor be persuaded to tell us some more about the name and inception of the intriguing hero of his book? It would save so many research students so very much trouble in the generations to come. And, by the way, is the hobbit’s stealing of the dragon’s cup based on the cup-stealing episode in Beowulf? I hope so, since one of the book’s charms appears to be its Spenserian harmonising of the brilliant threads of so many branches of epic, mythology, and Victorian fairy literature. – Yours, etc.

  ‘HABIT.’

  This brief letter inspired a long, detailed reply which is so important as a statement of how Tolkien felt about The Hobbit immediately following its first publication, and so full of information about his sources and the writing of the book, that I give it here in full.

  Although written within days of the publication of Habit’s letter (Letters p. 35), Tolkien’s reply was not printed until the Sunday, 20th February 1938 issue.1

  HOBBITS

  Sir. – I need no persuasion: I am as susceptible as a dragon to flattery, and would gladly show off my diamond waistcoat, and even discuss its sources, since the Habit (more inquisitive than the Hobbit) has not only professed to admire it, but has also asked where I got it from. But would not that be rather unfair to the research students? To save them trouble is to rob them of any excuse for existing.

  However, with regard to the Habit’s principal question, there is no danger: I do not remember anything about the name and inception of the hero. I could guess, of course, but the guesses would have no more authority than those of future researchers, and I leave the game to them.

  I was born in Africa, and have read several books on African exploration. I have, since about 1896, read even more books of fairy-tales of the genuine kind. Both the facts produced by the Habit would appear, therefore, to be significant. But are they? I have no waking recollection of furry pygmies (in book or moonlight), nor of any Hobbit bogey in print by 1904. I suspect that the two hobbits are accidental homophones, and am content† that they are not (it would seem) synonyms.2 And I protest that my hobbit did not live in Africa, and was not furry, except about the feet. Nor indeed was he like a rabbit. He was a prosperous, well-fed young bachelor of independent means. Calling him a ‘nasty little rabbit’ was a piece of vulgar trollery, just as ‘descendant of rats’ was a piece of dwarfish malice – deliberate insults to his size and feet, which he deeply resented. His feet, if conveniently clad and shod by nature, were as elegant as his long, clever fingers.

  As for the rest of the tale it is, as the Habit suggests, derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story – no
t, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George Macdonald is the chief exception. Beowulf is among my most valued sources, though it was not consciously present to the mind in the process of writing, in which the episode of the theft arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at that point. I fancy the author of Beowulf would say much the same.

  My tale is not consciously based on any other book – save one, and that is unpublished: the ‘Silmarillion’, a history of the Elves, to which frequent allusion is made. I had not thought of the future researchers, and as there is only one manuscript there seems at the moment small chance of this reference proving useful.

  But these questions are mere preliminaries. Now that I have been made to see Mr. Baggins’s adventures as the subject of future enquiry I realise that a lot of work will be needed. There is the question of nomenclature. The dwarf-names, and the wizard’s, are from the Elder Edda. The hobbit-names from Obvious Sources proper to their kind. The full list of their wealthier families is: Baggins, Boffin, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Brandybuck, Burrowes, Chubb, Grubb, Hornblower, Proudfoot, Sackville, and Took. The dragon bears as name – a pseudonym – the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan*, to squeeze through a hole: a low philological jest. The rest of the names are of the Ancient and Elvish World, and have not been modernized.

  And why dwarves? Grammar prescribes dwarfs; philology suggests that dwarrows would be the historical form. The real answer is that I knew no better. But dwarves goes well with elves; and, in any case, elf, gnome, goblin, dwarf are only approximate translations of the Old Elvish names3 for beings of not quite the same kinds and functions.

  These dwarves are not quite the dwarfs of better known lore. They have been given Scandinavian names, it is true; but that is an editorial concession. Too many names in the tongues proper to the period might have been alarming. Dwarvish was both complicated and cacophonous. Even early elvish philologists avoided it, and the dwarves were obliged to use other languages, except for entirely private conversations. The language of hobbits was remarkably like English, as one would expect: they only lived on the borders of the Wild, and were mostly unaware of it. Their family names remain for the most part well known and justly respected in this island as they were in Hobbiton and Bywater.

  There is the matter of the Runes. Those used by Thorin and Co., for special purpose, were comprised in an alphabet of thirty-two letters (full list on application), similar to, but not identical, with the runes of Anglo-Saxon inscriptions. There is doubtless an historical connection between the two. The Fëanorian alphabet, generally used at the time, was of Elvish origin. It appears in the curse inscribed on the pot of gold in the picture of Smaug’s lair, but had otherwise been transcribed (a facsimile of the original letter left on the mantelpiece can be supplied).4

  And what of the Riddles? There is work to be done here on the sources and analogues. I should not be at all surprised to learn that both the hobbit and Gollum will find their claim to have invented any of them disallowed.

  Finally, I present the future researcher with a little problem. The tale halted in the telling for about a year at two separate points: where are they? But probably that would have been discovered anyway. And suddenly I remember that the hobbit thought ‘Old fool,’ when the dragon succumbed to blandishment. I fear that the Habit’s comment (and yours) will already be the same. But you must admit that the temptation was strong. – Yours, etc.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  20 Northmoor-road, Oxford.

  † [Tolkien’s note:] Not quite. I should like, if possible, to learn more about the fairy-tale connection, c. 1904.

  No reply being forthcoming from ‘Habit’, there the matter rested for more than thirty years. It was only in the last years of Tolkien’s life that he turned again to the question of possible antecedents to his invention of the word hobbit, as testified in letters to two of his former pupils, Robert Burchfield and Roger Lancelyn Green. The immediate impetus was the decision by Burchfield, now the senior Editor of the OED, to include ‘hobbit’ in the Supplement to the OED he was preparing. According to Gilliver, Marshall, & Weiner’s The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary [2006], Burchfield sent Tolkien a proposed entry on the word in December 1969 to see if it met with his approval. Tolkien replied on 11th September 1970:

  The matter of hobbits is not very important, but I may be forgiven for taking a personal interest in it and being anxious that the meaning intended by me should be made clear.

  Unfortunately, as all lexicographers know, ‘don’t look into things, unless you are looking for trouble: they nearly always turn out to be less simple than you thought’. You will shortly be receiving a long letter on hobbit and related matters, of which, even if it is in time, only a small part may be useful or interesting to you.

  For the moment this is held up, because I am having the matter of the etymology: ‘invented by J. R. R. Tolkien’: investigated by experts. I knew that the claim was not clear, but I had not troubled to look into it, until faced by the inclusion of hobbit in the Supplement.

  In the meanwhile I submit for your consideration the following definition:

  One of an imaginary people, a small variety of the human race, that gave themselves this name (meaning ‘hole-dweller’) but were called by others halflings, since they were half the height of normal Men.

  This assumes that the etymology can stand.5 If not it may be necessary to modify it: e.g. by substituting after ‘race’

  ; in the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien said to have given themselves this name, though others called them . . .

  If it stands, as I think it will even if an alleged older story called ‘The Hobbit’ can be traced, then the ‘(meaning “hole-dweller”)’ could be transferred to the etymology.

  This definition, since it is more than twice as long as the one that you submitted and differs from it widely, will need some justification. I will supply it.6

  Unfortunately, the promised ‘long letter on hobbit and related matters’ never followed, and probably was never written. It is not clear who the experts Tolkien engaged to research the matter for him were, but within a few months he consulted with Roger Lancelyn Green, another former pupil who had become the biographer of such important Victorian and Edwardian writers for children as Lewis Carroll, James Barrie, and Andrew Lang (and later, of course, of C. S. Lewis), as well as a recognized authority on the history of children’s literature in England; cf. his book Tellers of Tales: Favourite Children’s Authors and Their Books of the Last 100 Years [1946; updated, revised, and expanded in five distinct editions between 1946 and 1969 to eventually cover the period 1800–1968], which contained short biographies of the life and works of both major (Lear, Nesbit, MacDonald) and relatively minor (Mrs. Molesworth, S. R. Crockett) figures. Accordingly, Tolkien wrote to Green on 8th January 1971 (Letters p. 406–407):

  The Ox. E. D. has in preparation of its Second Supplement got to Hobbit, which it proposes to include together with its progeny: hobbitry, -ish, etc. I have had, therefore, to justify my claim to have invented the word. My claim rests really on my ‘nude parole’ or unsupported assertion that I remember the occasion of its invention (by me); and that I had not then any knowledge of Hobberdy, Hobbaty, Hobberdy Dick etc. (for ‘house-sprites’);† and that my ‘hobbits’ were in any case of wholly dissimilar sort, a diminutive branch of the human race. Also that the only E.[nglish] word that influenced the invention was ‘hole’; that granted the description of hobbits, the trolls’ use of rabbit was merely an obvious insult, of no more etymological significance than Thorin’s insult to Bilbo ‘descendant of rats!’ However, doubt was cast on this as far back as 1938. A review appeared in The Observer 16 Jan 1938, signed ‘Habit’ . . . ‘Habit’ asserted that a friend claimed to have read, about 20 years earlier (sc. c. 1918)7 an old ‘fairy story’ (in a collection of such tales) called The Hobbit, though the creature was very �
�frightening’. I asked for more information, but have never received any; and recent intensive research has not discovered the ‘collection’. I think it is probable that the friend’s memory was inaccurate (after 20 years), and the creature probably had a name of the Hobberdy, Hobbaty class. However, one cannot exclude the possibility that buried childhood memories might suddenly rise to the surface long after (in my case after 35–40 years), though they might be quite differently applied. I told the researchers that I used (before 1900) to be read to from an ‘old collection’ – tattered and without cover or title-page – of which all I can now remember was that (I think) it was by Bulwer Lytton, and contained one story I was then very fond of called ‘Puss Cat Mew’. They have not discovered it. I wonder if you, the most learned of living scholars in this region, can say anything. Esp. for my own satisfaction about Puss Cat Mew – I do not suppose you have found a name precisely hobbit or you would have mentioned it. Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

  † [Tolkien’s note:] I have now! Probably more than most other folk; and find myself in a v. tangled wood – the clue to which is, however, the belief in incubi and ‘changelings’. Alas! one conclusion is that the statement that hobgoblins were ‘a larger kind’ is the reverse of the original truth.

  Green was able to identify the collection from which ‘Puss Cat Mew’ came as Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen’s Stories for My Children [1869] (Letters p. 453), the American edition of which is actually titled Puss-Cat Mew, and other Stories for my Children [1871]. Knatchbull-Hugessen (1829–1893) was, in addition to the author of several such books of stories for children, the son of one of Jane Austen’s nieces (Fanny Knight) and a reasonably prominent politician of his day, serving in Parliament and as Under-Secretary of State under several administrations, including Gladstone’s, eventually being ennobled [1880] as the first Lord Brabourne. But Green’s identification did not resolve the issue, since there is no story in this collection remotely answering the description of Habit’s friend and no hobbits to be found therein.8