# Fellowship of the Rings minor question
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** middle-earth, movies
**Created:** [May 29, 2023, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715 "2023-05-29T00:43:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/1 "2023-05-29T00:43:42Z")
I’m rewatching the extended version, and during the Hobbitses first confrontation with the Nazgul Sam says “Back, you devils!” What’s a devil to a Hobbit?
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/2 "2023-05-29T00:58:33Z")
Tolkien never uses the term. But I don’t think we need read too much into it: The hobbits surely had folklore of supernatural baddies, regardless of whether such folklore were actually based on any real (in that world) baddies, and we can just assume that Sam was referring to one of them.
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### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/3 "2023-05-29T01:02:14Z")
That makes sense. A garbled story of a Balrog, perhaps, or a hobbit myth. I didn’t remember if that was in the book as well.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/4 "2023-05-29T01:17:09Z")
It should also be remembered that the notion of a strict taxonomy of supernatural creatures is a relatively modern notion. For most of history, a goblin was a puck was a sprite was a devil was an ifrit. Sam needn’t have been referring to any specific sort of boggum, there.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/5 "2023-05-29T01:54:34Z")
I’d certainly consider a barrow wight to be devilish. Re-animated corpses of dunedain from Cardolin inhabited by evil spirits summoned by the witch king seems sorta devilish.
But then again the barrow wights didn’t appear in the film.
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### Author:  [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/6 "2023-05-29T02:20:24Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Tolkien never uses the term.
Gandalf does mention “devilry”, though Boromir says it in the movie:
"When they came to the arch Gandalf went through, signing to them to wait. As he stood just beyond the opening they saw his face lit by a red glow. Quickly he stepped back. “There is some new devilry here,’ he said, ‘devised for our welcome, no doubt.”
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### Author:  [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/7 "2023-05-29T03:11:54Z")
What about Pseudo-Dionysius?
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### Author:  [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/8 "2023-05-29T03:12:39Z")
A long, long time ago, Gandalf had some devils as friends.
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/9 "2023-05-29T03:35:38Z")
Then too, don’t forget we’re reading/hearing all this in translation from the original language(s) spoken in Middle Earth.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/10 "2023-05-29T07:26:49Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#):
>
> What’s a devil to a Hobbit?
I imagine, given these are _hobbits_, it’s a boiled egg half with various spicy seasonings.
Probably mayo, and mustard. Maybe pepper, cumin, coriander at the Took’s table. _Murri_ might even enter the picture, as a distant Southern influence.
They have potatoes and tobacco, so I suppose paprika or even cayenne are possibilities.
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### Author:  [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/11 "2023-05-29T07:43:09Z")
There is the possibility that ‘devil’ is simply the polite hobbitesque version of ‘motherfucker’ that they use in mixed company, with no original supernatural referent at all. Perhaps the term comes from devilled eggs - transferring the concept of good things that have become corrupted and spicy?
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### Author:  [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/12 "2023-05-29T08:55:25Z")
My Thesis
The One Ring: A Moral And Psychological Dab Of Tabasco?
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/13 "2023-05-29T12:36:06Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> They have potatoes and tobacco, so I suppose paprika or even cayenne are possibilities.
“Potatoes” is presumed to be used as a translation of some other Old-World plant, not widely known to modern gardeners (nor, in fact, to most gardeners at that time, other than hobbits and a few dwarves). There’s a dwarf character in The Silmarillion that has stores of a vegetable unknown to most Middle-Earthers, and which is referred to as “earth-bread”: This is probably the same plant as the Hobbitish “potato”.
Pipe-weed, I don’t know, but that’s never even referred to as “tobacco”, so it could be pretty much anything that you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Maybe pepper, cumin, coriander at the Took’s table.
Because the Tooks are rich, or because they’re adventurous?
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/14 "2023-05-29T12:56:36Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> “Potatoes” is presumed to be used as a translation of some other Old-World plant
Why? Tolkien “translated” this one very unambiguously. Hell, he even has fish-and-chips. I’m going by the text as it stands, or else maybe “ponies” are some kind of riding marsupial, and “Eagles” are actually giant dragonflies, etc, etc.
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Pipe-weed, I don’t know, but that’s never even referred to as “tobacco”,
“They imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, **a variety probably of Nicotiana.** ”
Close enough.
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Because the Tooks are rich, or because they’re adventurous?
Rich.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/15 "2023-05-29T13:53:23Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#):
>
> I’m rewatching the extended version, and during the Hobbitses first confrontation with the Nazgul Sam says “Back, you devils!” What’s a devil to a Hobbit?
And, of course, the movie version you’re talking about was written well after Tolkien died by Jackson and two other people who are, all three, two generations younger than Tolkien and who each never lived in any of the countries (England and South Africa) that Tolkien lived in. Asking about the relationship of the novel and the movie is like asking about a version of _War and Peace_ written and directed by American screenwriters and a director born in the early twentieth century and its relationship to the novel. I don’t think it’s a good idea to use anything in the Jackson movies to interpret the novel. As someone who read the novel (and _The Hobbit_) twelve years before the first Jackson movie came out, I am bothered by people who think that because the movies are famous that they are some kind of useful reference for the movies. Incidentally, Tolkien began creating the world of Middle-earth in 1914, well before Jackson, the other screenwriters, and me were born. _The Lord of the Rings_ was already one of the best-selling novels of all time before the Jackson movies were released.
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### Author:  [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/16 "2023-05-29T13:57:56Z")
‘I don’t know what people see in the LotR novelizations! This Tolkien guy is such a bad writer he didn’t even try to write the wonderful actions scenes that were so pivotal in both the character and plot development. Tolkien is a hack.’
~ A future critic of the LotR franchise
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/17 "2023-05-29T14:06:07Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Why? Tolkien “translated” this one very unambiguously. Hell, he even has fish-and-chips. I’m going by the text as it stands, or else maybe “ponies” are some kind of riding marsupial, and “Eagles” are actually giant dragonflies, etc, etc.
Tolkien specifically wanted Middle Earth to be Europe, just Europe from a different time. And he did revise away one mention of “tomatoes” in The Hobbit, when he realized that that was a new-world food and which hence would not have been available in Third Age Middle Earth. Europe has and had ponies and eagles (not bald eagles, but that was a liberty taken by the movies), so they’re no problem, but Europe did not have tomatoes, potatoes, or tobacco.
That said, I had forgotten about the foreword where he says that pipeweed was likely a variety of Nicotiana. I’m not sure what his justification was for that.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/18 "2023-05-29T14:12:45Z")
His justification was that he really like his pipe.
Sure, he revised tomato to pickle, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as easy to change potatoes to, say, turnips and have it still make the same sense in the convo with Gollum. So potatoes are canonical, as far as I’m concerned, right there with mantelpiece clocks, umbrellas and talking foxes.
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### Author:  [@Mikkel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikkel)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/19 "2023-05-29T14:39:18Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> talking foxes.
Well, thinking foxes, except if there is another place where one talks.
> [@The Fellowship of the Ring](#):
>
> A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.
> “Hobbits!” he thought. "Well, what next?
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2023, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fellowship-of-the-rings-minor-question/984715/20 "2023-05-29T16:29:05Z")
No, you’re right, I misremembered it as him talking to himself.
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