“You’re a jerk, Baggins. A complete kneebiter.”
Didn’t Tolkien describe Smeagol as ‘river folk, not unlike a hobbit’ in the trilogy? That would imply a later split between hobbits and the rest of men.
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That was a quote from Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, who is obviously *Gandalf’s *HHG analog.
How about this:
“You’re a multiple-me murderer Baggins! What do you want from me? Blood?!?”
Nah. Your was funnier
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He has Gandalf describe Smeagol’s people as “of hobbit-kind, akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors”
Gollum was Stoorish in nature. In other words very close to the Hobbits. Far closer than he was to men. Whenever the split happens the Hobbits escaped the notice of history until part way through the third age. The Drúedain (Woses) at least were in the historical record of the first age and even a smallish group in Númenor. Some believe the Númenoran Drúedain fled Númenor long before the downfall and rejoined their kin in Middle Earth. The Drúedain are explicitly stated to be men though. The Hobbits may well be sharers in the gift of men without absolutely ever having branched off of men.
(because my edit time is up) I think his people are conceptualized as a group of Stoors who fled east of the Misty Mountains (Maybe fleeing Angamar’s attack on the Northern Dunedain?) and settling down by the River Gladden. They were probably destroyed as a people in one of the wars between the dwarves and the orcs.
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Wowbagger isn’t HHG’s Gandalf analogue; Slartibartfast is.
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So, Doper pedants observe, a nit
Hath smaller nits which on him sit;
And these have smaller still for pickin’
‘Til bystanders deem your ass needs kickin.’
Jonathan Swift is to blame
Well, I’d go beyond saying “very close to the Hobbits” and say that he WAS a Hobbit…that that the Stoors were a nation of Hobbits.
Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the early history of the Races of Men before the Houses of the Edain.
I feel as though Tolkien was careful treating Smeagol’s people as slightly separate from the Hobbits of the Shire and Bree. So I choose to follow his lead. I’ll settle for Stoorish as opposed to Hobbits. Maybe what made Hobbits, Hobbits was the blending of the three types together.