Caliban an elf? Oh, come on. If anything Caliban is more like an orc.
Gandalf being a wizard, he would have had access to all kinds of technology unknown to other denizens of Middle-Earth. Specifically (but unbeknownst to readers of The Hobbit), he held Narya, the Fire Ring, one of The Three. Besides, he was the fireworks expert — what do you suppose powered his fireworks?
Why “dwarves” and not “dwarfs”? Tolkien’s keen sense of historical linguistics made him point out that dwarves, strictly etymologically speaking, should be “dwerrows,” but since that word would be too unfamiliar to most readers, he substituted dwarves. Perhaps he preferred the (unusual) spelling with v because it’s closer to the form with w. The proto-Germanic etymon he had in mind was dwerg.
Off-topic: Tolkien’s remark about goblins
reminded me I visited the Kahlil Gibran Memorial Garden today, and one quote from him inscribed there went something like this: “From your body we take the materials to make guns and bombs; from our bodies you produce lilies and roses. How patient and forgiving you are, O Earth!”
And here we are in the most important chapter of the book (and in a sense, the most important “chapter” of Lord of the Rings, too). Here Bilbo gets himself lost in the catacombs of the goblins’ lair, finds a ring of power on the floor and has his encounter with Gollum.
Much, much later in the narrative (not even in this book, in fact) we learn that Gollum was originally a hobbit himself, before he was twisted and warped (mentally as well as physically) by the Ring. For all the talk about how Tolkien didn’t originally intend for this book to tie in with Lord of the Rings, it’s interesting to note what he tells us about Gollum and his history doesn’t conflict with the later assertion that Gollum used to be a hobbit. I assert that even here J.R.R. was thinking ahead, unless this chapter was among those later heavily edited.
Several of the riddles told by Bilbo and Gollum, according to Tolkien, were “easy.” Not for me, a 35-year-old American reading in 2001. So…
Are these popular, hence “easy” riddles in England but not the US? Or
Were they popular, hence “easy” during Tolkien’s lifetime? Or
Yes, but Bilbo’s the point of view character, and therefore Bilbo’s knowledge is his “gold standard” for explaining all that happens in the book. Even when relating events that Bilbo was not present for, Tolkien excuses himself with “although Bilbo didn’t know this was happening…” or “Bilbo would later learn that…”
Surely you don’t believe anachronistic words wouldn’t spoil the mood. Would you have the Misty Mountains described as “taller than any skyscraper?” Would it be okay if Smaug’s breath was “like a flamethrower?”
So the eagles have saved our company from the goblins and wargs, and deposited them atop the Carrock near (we will learn) Beorn’s demesnes.
Gandalf tells the dwarves the detour through the goblin-warren has left them farther north than he’d meant them to be. We know they will come to take the elf-path through Mirkwood, so looking at my map, I reckon they’d originally meant to cross the river at the “Old Ford” and go through the evil forest on the Old Forest Road.
This would have let them miss the giant spiders, the Enchanted River, and the troublesome wood-elves. And there may have been helpful woodmen at the western edge of the forest as well. But of course, this wouldn’t have made for an adventure worth reading!
I missed this detail when I read the book as a child. I always pictured the road out of Hobbiton as the same road which passed through Rivendell, over the mountains, across Wilderland to become the elf-path and eventually the entrance to the Lonely Mountain.
I loved this (erroneous) idea back then: that a single road could stretch so far, and go through so many different worlds. I lived next to a similar road, I believed: Highway 78. From where I lived it went east to Athens, and as far as I knew South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean; and it also went west at least to Alabama, but I pretended it went all the way to the Pacific.
Of course there were no trolls or wizards or Elf-Friends on Highway 78, but to a ten-year-old who’d never even been on a plane, anything I found would have been just as exciting.
That’s one of the great things about Tolkien’s writing. He didn’t write The Hobbit for me, an American boy in the 70s. He wrote it for English children in the 30s. But still it captured my imagination.
Those “easy” riddles would be easy for any scholar who was well-versed in the old Anglo-Saxon Riddle Lore. Apparently riddling was a favorite form of entertainment among the Anglo-Saxons, and some texts survive. Tolkien’s expertise in ancient Germanic lore formed the background to the Riddle Game, as with so much else in Middle-Earth.
That said, The Hobbit is plainly more directly influenced by Anglo-Saxon legends than The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion. In the two larger works Tolkien fully deployed his powers of subcreation to weave a whole universe that took in a far greater scope than ancient Germanic culture. The Riddermark of Rohan was where Anglo-Saxon influence came through the strongest, however much Tolkien denied that he based it on the Anglo-Saxons: of course he did!
(Am I the only one actually reading the book? It seems like most of you are just reacting to my posts, not sharing thoughts on your own simultaneous reading.)
This is the chapter that always creeped me out the most as a kid. And now, again, I see my creeped-outedness was based on a misunderstanding of the text. The spiders in this chapter are large, to be sure, but in context I think they can’t be any larger than a suitcase. As a kid I thought they were as big as automobiles. They’re still pretty nasty when you consider Tolkien tells us there were over fifty of them, but maybe not quite faint-from-fright fearsome.
Gandalf was offstage in this chapter, of course, because he had to attend to “pressing business away south.” So the dwarves had to get on without him, and of course they didn’t do all that well: Bombur fell into the enchanted stream and was magicked into a coma, they were all nearly eaten by giant spiders, and then they were captured by the wood-elves.
In each case Bilbo either saved the dwarves outright or managed to lessen the damage for each calamity. This was the first time Bilbo has been truly useful to the party, and this fact is lost on neither Bilbo nor the dwarves. The hobbit who killed and tricked dozens of spiders with stones, Sting and songs is already very different from the clueless fellow who let himself get caught by three trolls some months ago. It’s fun to watch his development.
[inhale]I intended to reread with you, but my spouse packed my four volume set of TH and TLOTR in a box of his books and took it to the attic! The excess of books in our house is completely and entirely his fault, not mine and I’ve nagged him about retrieving the set for me since you started the thread but he has yet to get off his “I’m tired because I just ran six miles” butt and get it out of the attic for me (I don’t know which of the 20 feakin’ boxes it’s in and he does).[/exhale]
Anyway, your posts are fine for reacting to. For instance, you’ve mentioned the riddles and the giant spiders, both of which are echoed in the Harry Potter books I’m reading with my 8-year old. I’d agree that the riddles are not easy; this again seems to hark to a more “golden” past where even hobbit popular culture had some substance. Riddles as magical tests have a glorious history, of course, back to the sphinx (appropriate because they look two ways–ordinary and surprising); I’d be interested in a sample of a traditional Anglo-Saxon riddle if Jomo Mojo or anyone else has one handy.
And Bartman, I’m sorry if I led you into trouble–I knew you didn’t really mean it about the Keebler elves.
Now that I’ve finally managed to find my copy, I’m catching up–I just finished “Riddles in the Dark” last night. I should be in Mirkwood this evening.
I wouldn’t say that the incidents in Mirkwoodare the first place where he was useful, though they certainly mark the point where he finally took it upon himself to get them through their adventures. The first place where he did something particularly significant was in the cave in the Misty Mountains–when he alerted Gandalf to the goblin ambush. I don’t have the book with me here to quote, but the text implies that Gandalf needed this warning; granted, Bilbo didn’t rescue them with his own two hobbity hands, but he played an important role.
I’ve been watching for the same major shift in character that you noted, but I have to conclude that (except for a few Tookish moments) that it doesn’t really appear until RitD. It’s the first occasion when Bilbo is truly on his own–up until then, Gandalf and the dwarves are always around, or have a good idea where he is; he has backup, and that lends a certain sense of security. In RitD, there’s no reasonable way in which anyone could be expected to come to his aid; he had to make his own way. The fact that he succeeded in doing so set the stage for his later actions. This is yet another reason to consider RitD to be “the important chapter”.
Concerning the riddles themselves:
I found them fairly easy when I first read them (around age 8), but I had a significant edge. I grew up in a family full of fantasy fans, amateur historians, and riddle lovers–some of whom were well-versed in the relevant lore. I had encountered riddles of this type (though not these particular riddles–there was an unspoken agreement not to spoil the game for anyone who hadn’t yet read The Hobbit) on many occasions. The form was familiar to me, and the particular mental approach to solving them was well-ingrained. Having sprung my own riddles on many hapless gamers since, I realize that these would make terrible posers for most people.
In that case, Balance, maybe growing up in your family gave you some insight into this puzzle: Bilbo taunts the spiders by calling them “Attercop” and “Tomnoddy,” and Tolkien tells us “Attercop” is terribly offensive to spiders, and “of course Tomnoddy is offensive to anyone.”
Well, not to me, but again I wasn’t J.R.R’s intended audience. Would a British child in the 30s have known what these words meant?
I’m not sure how common the words would have been among children at the time of publishing (or some time before), though I suspect “tomnoddy” lingered on longer than “attercop”–children (and adults) delight in having many different ways to call someone a fool.
At any rate, “tomnoddy” refers to a fool or silly person, and is clearly insulting. I suspect the derivation is partially from “Tom” as a common generic name in Britain (hence the “Tommies” and “Thomas Atkins” nicknames applied to British soldiers at the time–“Thomas Atkins” was used on example forms much the way we use “John Doe”). “Noddy” has connotations of simple or silly characteristics in some usages even today (mainly among hackers–a “noddy” program is one so simple that it can be coded without planning and work properly). If I were to make an EEWAG (etymological extremely-wild-ass guess), I might suggest this meaning of “noddy” could have come from the rocking or “nodding” behavior associated with autism. Alternatively, it might have been made up out of whole cloth by the monkeys flying out of my butt (IOW, I just made that up on the spot ).
“Attercop” is from Old English, and means “spider”–it’s derived from the O.E. words “atter” (“poison”) and “cappe” (“head”). I suppose the archaic term could have taken on insulting connotations–I wouldn’t much appreciate being called a “poison-head”–but it seems unlikely that this would be clear to Tolkiens ostensible audience. Maybe that’s why he explained that it was insulting to the spiders. The insult in “tomnoddy” would likely have been much clearer, as implied in the text.
Here’s a link to all the riddles in the Exeter Book, with translations if you don’t read Old English. (I read OE! Not that well, though. ;)) It does not, unfortunately, give the answers, although I can tell you that the ones that sound like they’re about penises are generally about keys or onions or some such thing.
It’s also worth pointing out that all but one of Bilbo’s and Gollum’s riddles are in fact traditional, though sometimes reworded by Tolkien. Tom Shippey points out that Bilbo’s riddles are still pretty current (as riddles told by children) while Gollum’s hark back to the OE tradition – but they’re two sides of the same coin, and Bilbo is operating within a larger tradition which he doesn’t fully realize. This continues the theme of transition from the “everyday” world of the Shire to the rest of Middle-earth.
Sorry to post twice, but since I wasn’t very clear, here’s the relevant quote:
(I’m not sure this chimes completely with the fact that Gollum was once a hobbit himself – but he’s also very, very old, so the idea works well enough, and as Shippey himself points out, Tolkien’s idea of Gollum changed considerably over the writing of TH and LotR.)
Right after reading this I did what I should have done yesterday: went to google, typed in “tomnoddy” as a search term, and immediately found this link, which includes the following:
It’s just some guy’s web page, but he seems to know what he’s talking about and he referenced Tolkien’s actual writings. Interesting.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess the modern term “adder” for a poisonous snake also comes from the OE “atter” for “poison.”
I might have made the same guess, but I’m afraid Merriam-Webster doesn’t agree–apparently it’s from O.E. “n[AE]ddre”, which may be related to Latin “natrix” (“water snake”).
The “cop” part of “attercop” is certainly related to “cobweb” and possibly to “cap” (as in headgear or in reference to putting a top on something).
Sorry for the delay; I’ve been reading but not posting. I’ll try to catch up to myself this week.
I must say the elves act very un-elflike in this chapter. Everywhere else we see elves they are unfailingly Good and Noble, but not here. The Elvenking himself comes across as petty and suspicious, and the butler and watchmen getting drunk and passing out together is not something we see anywhere else in Tolkien’s work.
And elves living in tunnels in a mountain? Who ever heard of such a thing?
I guess we see elves living in these circumstances and exhibiting this behavior only because the plot needed them to. For obvious reasons the dwarves’ captors couldn’t have been goblins or other dwarves; still, making them elves is problematic.
Ah, but the escape devised by Bilbo (and Tolkien) was brilliant! I’ve always loved the idea of barrels, both for their intended use and as flotation devices. What fun it would have been to be Bilbo (but not the dwarves) in this situation! Riding down a river under a canopy of trees…all he needed was a sixpack and we could call it a rafting trip!
You or I might enjoy it, Fiver, but remember: Bilbo doesn’t know how to swim. Also, he’s smaller and lighter than most adult humans, so he’d be prone to getting tossed and battered around more than we would. Bruises and cold water are an unpleasant mix.
The wood-elves have always bothered me as well, although Tolkien does make some excuses for them. They never went over the sea like the others, and are correspondingly less advanced and civilized–they’re much more human-like than their kin. As for the king’s suspicious and petty actions–don’t forget that this was at the peak of the Necromancer’s (Sauron’s) power in Mirkwood. The forest was becoming twisted, dark, and dangerous as a result, and the king didn’t have the power or resources of an Elrond or Gandalf to fight it. It’s only natural that he would be wary of attack and suspicious of close-mouthed strangers. It’s hard to say, but he seems to have been a much more decent fellow after the fall of Dol Goldur; remember his refusal to go to war over treasure and the immediate assistance he provided to the people of Lake-Town.
The butler and the guard-captain were caught off-guard by the potency of the wine. They were accustomed to drinking a great deal of wine with little effect (c’mon, all elves like to party), and they drank too much before they knew it. I think the Plot Device spiked the wine, too.
According to the Silmarillion, many elves have a long history of delving and living underground. For example, a group of the Noldor lived in a large underground fortress in Nargothrond (IIRC). In fact, many of the Noldor spent quite a bit of time with Aule, didn’t they? Admittedly, it would be strange for wood elves to live in a hole in a ground, it wouldn’t be atypical for the species as a whole.
Balance, where was it stated in The Hobbit that Bilbo cannot swim? I don’t doubt you’re right, I just don’t know where that was presented.
And what’s Dol Goldur? This is the first time I’ve read Tolkien in at least 15 years, and others in this thread may be reading him for the very first time.
For instance, you’ve mentioned the riddles and the giant spiders, both of which are echoed in the Harry Potter books I’m reading with my 8-year old. I’d agree that the riddles are not easy; this again seems to hark to a more “golden” past where even hobbit popular culture had some substance. Riddles as magical tests have a glorious history, of course, back to the sphinx (appropriate because they look two ways–ordinary and surprising); I’d be interested in a sample of a traditional Anglo-Saxon riddle if Jomo Mojo or anyone else has one handy.