THE TRUE ORIGIN OF “HOBBIT”and

THE STORY OF THE HOBBIT

Stan V. McDaniel

[Tolkien]... takes the position that mythology contains spiritual and foundational truths, while myth-making... helps narrate and disclose those truths.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythopoeia_(poem)]

The Unconscious Origin of Hobbit

Tolkien said of his stories that they grow "like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of themind," and that his own personal "compost-heap" was made "largely of linguistic matter." The wordhobbit came out of that inner ferment. It was not a piece of accidental trivia. It came to him in a raremoment of insight. He was busy grading examination papers when the word popped into his mind,not alone but as part of a whole sentence: (1)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

When a name popped up in this surprising manner, Tolkien has said that he usually gave ita very careful look. What he meant by a “very careful look” was that he would subject the name to“a severe philological scrutiny” (Philology being the study of words and their origins). He lovedwords and their sounds, and he was especially interested in what meanings the sounds might suggestto his imagination. And this case was especially interesting because a whole sentence was involved,with not just one but two words in particular: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

What on earth is a “hobbit” and why should it (or he or she?) live in a hole? So he said ofthe occasion, "Eventually I thought I'd better find out what hobbits were like." For Tolkien, an expertin the history of words, this meant something different than it would for most of us. Instead of justmaking something up out of thin air, and instead of thinking that “hobbits” must be something like“rabbits” because the words sound the same (and then making up a story about rabbits),Tolkienwould do research. If a name had little interest as far as the history of words goes, he did not thinkit to be anything special. (2) But in this case his study turned out to be of very great interest.

Yet there are no detailed remarks by Tolkien about the language study which, consideringhis own testimony about his usual procedure, he certainly had to have done and how it influencedthe story of the “hobbit,” who we all now know was Mr. Bilbo Baggins, Esq., of Hobbiton in theShire. What I propose to do here is to reconstruct what Tolkien would have found out, and explainhow this involves the story he created out of his philological discoveries.

The Fictional account of “Hobbit”

In Tolkien's great trilogy The Lord of the Rings. there is of course a purely fictional accountof the origin of hobbit. Tolkien represents himself as the translator of ancient manuscripts (just asthe wizard Gandalf translates ancient manuscripts in The Fellowship of the Ring to find out moreabout the history of the One Ring). In those manuscripts (the story goes) the name hobbits used torefer to themselves was kuduk. This was supposed to be a “worn-down” form of a much, much oldername for hobbits in the land of Rohan, kud-dukan, which means "hole dweller." Since the mysterioussentence that had popped into his mind was “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” that wouldexplain the name used in Rohan. A “hobbit” is a “hole-dweller.” And some part of kud-dukan musthave meant “hole.” Was it the first part, kud ? And why should it be that? And is there any way totell?

Well, yes there is, and I will show you exactly how. But to reveal the secret, I will have totake you on a very brief excursion into a few things having to do with the way words evolve fromother words, and how they often change into “worn-down” forms. This sort of thing is primarily ofinterest only to those like Tolkien, fascinated with, and very familiar with, the ways in which wordschange and yet keep certain things in common over long periods of time. It is called the study ofcognates – words which belong to a kind of word-family which can trace its ancestry back into thedistant past. Anyone who wants to understand what Tolkien understood, will have to pursue thislinguistic detective story to its conclusion – just as Tolkien himself must have done.

Most Words Come from Older Words

Since Tolkien had represented himself as the “translator” of an old manuscript, he neededto invent "English" words to use as fictional translations of kud-dukan and kuduk. He had alreadydecided that the English translation of kuduk was to be “hobbit,” and since the language of Rohanwas supposed to be very old, he decided to make the translation of kud-dukan be a word that mighthave existed in Old English. So he made up an "Old English" sounding word, holbytla (forhole-builder), as his "English translation" of kud-dukan. Then he could say that hobbit is a"worn-down" form of holbytla.(3)

Kuduk and kud-dukan, then, are what are called “cognates.” This means that they have afamily relation. We might think of kuduk as a great-great-great-great grandchild of kud-dukan! Likelots of similar cases in the actual histories of words, the connection between the older and laternames was through the consonants they share in common. The vowels may change or even bedropped out. And sometimes even the consonants get “worn down.” These of course are thingswhich Tolkien already knew about. So above we see the fictional account of the origin of hobbit. Itdoes not represent the actual origin,which was unplanned, and which just “popped into” Tolkien’shead before any of the names kud-dukan, kuduk, or holbytla had even been thought of. And thisprovides a clue to our mystery. The clue is that Kuduk and kud-dukan came after hobbit. First thesentence with hobbit popped into his mind, and then he invented kuduk. Considering what he knew,and his usual procedure, his choice had to have been influenced by language considerations suchas those mentioned above. After all, he said he would have to submit the mystery sentence to a“severe philological scrutiny.” And certainly he did.

Hobbit's True Relatives

When he began this scrutiny, Tolkien would have had no difficulty zeroing in on the correctlinguistic situation. He had written an Icelandic dictionary and he was fluent in Latin, Greek, Gothic,and Anglo-Saxon. He knew lots of words in related languages as well, such as Old High German andSwedish. His biographer reports that when Tolkien first encountered Gothic he did not merely learnthe language, he suggested possible Gothic words that might have existed, but were not recorded.(7)

He liked to “invent” words that were consistent with the language. And in just that way the soundof hobbit slides into the list on the rightwith convincing ease.(8) All of the wordsthere were ones Tolkien could easily thinkof right “off the top of his head” as heconsidered hobbit from the point of viewof its sound. How could he help but noticethat the name was so close to the OldHigh German word houbit ? Once thisconnection was noticed, all the others fallinto place.

But what was especially puzzlingwas the meanings! All of the words mean“head.” What could that have to do withsomething that lived in a hole in theground? And what about caput, the Latinword for “head.” How did that get inthere? Actually as far as sound goes, allthese terms are variations on the sameconsonantal pattern.(9) The C of caput has“softened” to the H of head, the T hasbecome the much softer D and the middleconsonant P has simply been lost in thesands of time. And every one of these words descended, as cognates, from caput. There is a directline of ancestry from caput to head. So this list of cognate words, where hobbit fits so well,suggests that "hobbits" must have something to do with "heads." What possible relation can therebe between the idea of a "head" and the story of the hobbit?

The entire sentence was In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Translated, this yields"In a hole in the ground there lived a head" – seeming nonsense! Most persons would dismiss theway hobbit fits into the list as accidental and having nothing to do with the story. Unfortunately thisway out is not open to a philologist like Tolkien. He had to note the rather startling fact that headtraces its family line beyond Latin caput all the way back to an even more ancient Sanskrit wordfrom old India, gupa, which means – now hold your breath – "a hole in the ground."

This undisputed fact makes it impossible, without doing linguistic violence and denyingTolkien's expertise and denying his acknowledged procedure for choosing names, to separate hobbitfrom the words meaning "head." In fact, if you replace hobbit and hole with their ancestral cognates,our mystery sentence becomes "In a gupa there lived a caput," a sentence with an exciting kind ofpoetic alliteration. But again, we must ask: why should a “head” live in a “hole?”

King Golfimbul's Folly

Fortunately, Tolkien has told us right up front that the above analysis is correct. He put theconfirmation right into his story for anyone who deciphers the philological key to find. In the veryfirst chapter of The Hobbit he inserted an anec-dote about exactly the connection we havediscovered. The anecdote, in fact, uses themeanings of four words from the "head" familyand includes a suggestion regarding two morewords from that family. Readers familiar withthe book, or for that matter the recent PeterJackson motion picture of The Hobbit, willrecall the story (told dramatically by the wizardGandalf in the movie) of the unfortunate gob-lin-king whose CAPUT was knocked off by aKUFR, whereupon it sailed a hundred yardsthrough the air like a GUDA, landing finally ina GUPA. You can determine the English mean-ing of this scenario by using the list of cognates (Figure 2). (Tolkien probably figured it out in aboutten minutes).

There is a lot more to this story of the goblin-king than meets the eye (or the ear, of course).Golfimbul was the name Tolkien chose for the goblin-king. He gave the nameTook (hobbit spelling:Tuk) to the fierce hobbit whose club stroke knocked off the king's head. This particular Took wasBandobras "Bullroarer" Took, one of Bilbo Baggins' ancestors. The name of the king, Golfimbul,turns the anecdote into an awkward pun. Tolkien says in that first chapter that when Golf -imbul'shead flew into the hole, the game of golf was invented – an apparently silly joke. Tolkien seems tohave gone out of his way to give the Goblin a name with the word golf in it, just for the sake ofpunning on the English word. And if this were Tolkien's usual style, it might be excused. But as amatter of fact there are no comparably bad word-plays in the book. Furthermore, Tolkien laterrevised the book and removed from many of the passages he considered "childish" in the firstedition. Why did he not remove this contrary-to-style pun? Was it important for some reason?

A bit of linguistic detective-work reveals that it was very important indeed! The connectionbetween golf and goblin turns out to be an arrow pointing directly to the "head" family of words.Here is how: Both terms are listed as of “obscure origin,” and the best speculation by philologistswas that they probably belong to the same family as caput and gupa. Indeed, golf is thought by someexperts to be related to an obscure English word goaf, or golf, as it is spelled in Icelandic or Swedish,means a bay, a bin, or a concavity (e.g. a hole) in which material is stored, or to the stored materialitself. A treasure may be sheltered in a hole on a pirate island; A ship may be sheltered in the curveof a bay; corn may be stored in a bin for the winter. And goaf, or golf, names not just the container.but what is protected within.

Now goaf is cognate with gupa and also takes the form gob. And goblin has been traced toMedieval Latin cobalus, from a probable Old Teutonic expression kobwalt "house ruler." The firstelement of this, kob "cove, house," is also cognate with gupa, “hole.” (10) Here we find a directlinguistic connection between “hole” and “house.” The connection between a concavity (which isa kind of hole) and a house (a kind of safe harbor) is exactly the point made right at the very

Gudaka: G » D º KGutika: G » T º KKuduk: K » D » K

beginning: “It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.” So to draw attention to golf and goblinin a context of heads, holes, balls, clubs and houses – houbets, gupas, gudas, kufrs, kobs and coves– is an unmistakable linguistic signal that the focus of interest is the "head" family of words. Theawkward pun has a serious philological point. Tolkien was not about to edit it out of his book.

The Exuberant Tooks

As to Bullroarer Took (Tuk), the sturdy kuduk whose kufr knocked off the king's head witha single blow: Tuk is an English word, an old way of spelling tuck. And tuck means just what it oughtto mean in this situation, that is, "stroke" or "blow" – exactly what Bullroarer Took did toGolfimbul's head. So the next step in our detective story is to look at the words cognate with tuk andtuck.

Tuck is cognate with Italian tocco"knock, stroke" and stocco "truncheon, club." (Recall FriarTuck in Robin Hood, who bests Robin with a blow from his trusty staff and thus lives up to hisname.) Clearly Tolkien chose the name to suit the action (and disposition) of the character.(11) Sothe names Golfimbul and Took are there for a philological reason. They not only reflect the actionof the story through the meanings in their cognate family, but they also alert the interested readernow to two word-families, the "head" family and the "tuck" family.

Kuduk Puts It All Together

Now we have found the secret of kuduk. Although it may not look so to the modern eye,kuduk nestles phonetically right inside the "head" family along with hobbit. It is possible to constructan unbroken phonetic/cognate chain linking hobbit with kuduk.

This chain "happens" first because caput “head” and gupa “hole” trace right back to anancient Sanskrit root-expression gu- which means “curve.” And second because from this very sameSanskrit sound sprang a number of other words which are examples of a common linguisticphenomenon called "echoing" or “reduplication” of consonants. We see examples of such echoingin the Sanskrit cognates gudaka "ball" and gutika "cocoon." In these words, the guttural consonantsG and K(sounds produced at the back of the throat) reflect right and left off the central dental soundsD or T (sounds produced near the teeth). In the case of kuduk, the echoing is perfect: K-D-K.

So the chain of cognates starts with hobbit, moves back in history to the Indo-European rootof all the "head" words, gu- "curve," then goes forward from that ancestral word to all the “protectivecurve” words in the same cognate family, and ends with kuduk comfortably at home among itsechoic relatives gutika and gudaka. All this places Hobbits in a tight linguistic-phonetic relationshipwith heads, “holes” and protective enclosures (Figure 3).

Now there is a leading idea nestled deep inside in this flow of words, which are all part ofa single family history (except of course for Tolkien’s clever additions to the list). They are relatedin sound and in meaning, so we have to pay attention to what holds the meanings together. Both endsof this flow are connected in the middle by “curve” because that is the root-sound of both the “head”words and on each side are the words meaning "guard, preserve." What does curve have to do withguarding and preserving? Particularly, guarding and preserving a “head?”

Our search through the thickets of word histories has found a theme that runs through theentire story of The Hobbit. One of the meanings above in particular, “mouthful,” will add vividly toour confirmation that Tolkien had these expressions in mind. We will take a look at that in just alittle while. But first...

The Sheltering Curve

The leading idea of the Sheltering Curve has to do with curvature in its role as theindispensable requirement for anything which must curve back upon itself in order to be what it is(like a ball, or a tree-trunk, or a planet); and with guarding, the preservation of that rounded thing,especially when it is a living thing like a mouse or a dragon within an enclosure that matches its ownbodily curvature. Figure 3 gives several examples: A pearl inside the shell of an oyster (gutika); asilkworm inside its cocoon (gutika); a kernel safe inside the enclosing nutshell (gudaka); even a“mouthful” (gudaka) inside the mouth ( mother crocodiles shelter hatchlings in their jaws); one'sown body protected from the elements by clothing (gudh-); one’s head protected by a helmet or ahood; and a very special head, the "head" (hobbit) within the “hole.”

Knowing this background, we can easily explain Bilbo's dwelling-place: Kob "house" iscognate with gupa "hole in the ground," we can now understand the following linguistically correct(though multilingual) version of Tolkien's original inspiration: The houbet's kob is a gupa --that is,"The head's house is a hole in the ground." Each term belongs to the same family of words.

Why the emphasis is on the head

For those familiar with mythology (as was Tolkien), the answer is not difficult to see. Thefocus is on birth, just as in The Hobbit a “head” that has been hiding in a round hole in the groundbehind the very, very safe borders of The Shire is prompted by circumstances (given a push out thedoor by a wizard) to leave his realm of safety and become reborn, as we might say, in the widerworld outside his hole. Until the wizard comes along, as Tolkien tells us, this hobbit “had in factapparently settled down immovably.” For Bilbo Baggins, adventures – which meant leaving his holeand going out into the wide world – were “nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late fordinner!” and so he says to the bothersome Wizard, “We don’t want any adventures here, thank you!”

In the symbol systems of the ancient world of myth, the emphasis in birth is placed upon thehead, for it is the rounded head, the crest of a thing, that first pushes its way out of the birth-matrix.Consider the boil or pimple, which first raises a rounded lump on the skin, then "comes to a head"at its peak moment of change. Accordingly among the descendants of the "curve" root gu-we findguga and guzas "boil, pustule, knot." A newborn child emerges from the womb head first, the headcovered over by a protective membrane called a caul, derived from cap, thence from caput “head.”And a coif is "a close-fitting hat" while the gu- cognate kuif means "the top of the head"

Kuif is also the crest, top, or growing tip of a tree. In mythological tradition, childbirth wasthought of as analogous to the oozing of rounded globules of sap seeping out of the trunk of a coniferlike little pearls or "heads." Thus gu- cognates Kott and copal refer to pine sap. For this among otherreasons, the fir tree was the birth-tree of Northern Europe.(12)

There are several confirmations of this birth-context in The Hobbit. One of them is theriddling answer Bilbo gives when Smaug the dragon asks, "Who are you, and where do you comefrom?" Bilbo says, "I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me." (13) This is a riddle, likethe riddles Bilbo asked of Gollum, and the ancient riddle-game played by Hobbits for centuries.Smaug could not decipher it, but for us the answer is quite clear. It is something that developswithin, and is born from, a womb.(14) That is only the way one can “come out of a bag” while “no bagwent over me.” It is true of all of us! And that is certainly why Bilbo’s name is Baggins and why helived in Bag End. (But he has another name on his mother’s side, and that is something we will

consider in due time.)So the head represents the birth, the identity, the integrity, and especially the growing-point

of an individual. An individual is something that curves upon itself, and must be protected bycurving shelters of various sorts, from the containing curve of the skin to caps, helmets, caves,houses, and hobbit-holes. This then is the leading idea of the Sheltering Curve. A hobbit-hole, duginto a hillside with arched ceilings, round doors, round windows, protecting the hobbit or rounded"head" within, is a classic case of the Sheltering Curve.

Fly Away, Little Bird !

As if this were not enough, there is another confirmation of the birth-context in The Hobbit.It is found in the chapter "Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire." Here Bilbo and his companions arechased up some trees (fir, larch, and pine) by Wargs, the fierce wolves who live on the Edge of theWild in the forests of the Misty Mountains and who consort with goblins. Gandalf the wizard triesto frighten the Wargs away by magically setting fire to pine-cones and hurling them down amongthe beasts. But goblins, who are not as frightened as the Wargs, arrive just in time and turn the fireagainst the trapped company, setting the trees ablaze beneath them.(15) Just as all seems lost the greateagles of the Misty Mountains, led by Gwaihir the Wind-Lord, swoop down, plucking the companyfrom the treetops and taking them to safety in their mountain eyries.

As explained above, the fir-tree (especially the silver fir) was the principal birth-tree ofNorthern Europe. The old Irish word for the silver fir was ailm, a word also applied to the palm tree.And the palm is the birth-tree of the Middle East in which the Phoenix-bird is born, consumed byfire, and reborn.(16) The Greek name for the silver fir was elate,a component of the name Eileithyia(Elate-Thuia) given to the Great Mother as the goddess of childbirth. The goddess was typicallydepicted with one arm raised holding a pine-torch.(17)

It is. then, the pine-torch of the Birth Goddess that the goblins invoke when in their wildchanting they refer to the burning trees as exactly that, a burning torch.

A fizzling torch / To light the night for our delight / Ya hey!(18)

If we are right, we should expect the hobbit and his friends, like the Phoenix that is reborn in itsfiery ailm, to be compared to birds. And Tolkien does not disappoint us. The goblins chant,

Fifteen birds in five firtrees / Their feathers were fanned in a fiery breeze!(19)

And as though to make sure we get the point,

Fly away little birds! Come down little birds! Sing, sing little birds!(20)

To complete the birth-tree image, the "little birds" do fly away--with the help of the great eaglesof the Misty Mountains, whose wings bear them aloft.

The Tree-Alphabet and the Christmas Tree

Tolkien gives added dimension to this spectacular version of the rebirth of the Phoenix in theailm-tree by means of an important element of the story: the number of travelers. When BilboBaggins is selected to accompany the dwarves on their journey, it is explained that they want himalong not only because he is to be their "burglar" but also because there are thirteen dwarves, anunlucky number.(21) Bilbo brought the company up to fourteen, and with the temporary addition ofthe wizard there were fifteen. This circumstance is what allows the goblins to sing the crucial line"Fifteen birds in five firtrees!" And it is no coincidence. It is the numbers fifteen and five thatadditionally confirm the birth-context.

The Celtic goddess who presided over the mythical Cauldron of Rebirth was Cerridwen, andher cauldron, in which slain warriors were reborn, was known by many names including The SweetCauldron of the Five Trees. In general the number five was sacred to the Great Goddess.(22) Byplacing Bilbo and his friends in "five trees" Tolkien has situated them symbolically within thecauldron of rebirth. And Tolkien certainly knew Celtic folklore easily as well as he knew things like Icelandic, Latin, Greek, Gothic, and Anglo-Saxon (with a large serving of Old High German andSwedish as well)!

What then is the significance of the number fifteen? It is a reference to the linguis-tic-alphabetic mysteries which were part of the symbol-system of the goddess. In the ancient traditiontrees were closely associated with letters. Robert Graves quotes Davies as noting that "in all Celticlanguages trees means letters," and that "the most ancient Irish alphabet takes its name from a seriesof trees."(23) The five "trees" of the Cauldron of Rebirth stood for the five vowels of thetree-alphabet, the first of which was the birth-vowel "A" and was named ailm, after the silver fir.(24)

In this alphabet, the number of consonants was fifteen. Tolkien must have been considerably amusedby his image of fifteen bedraggled "consonants" clinging desperately to five fiery vowels.

Today, unfortunately, such things as letters and alphabets are thought of as rigid andmechanical, having nothing to do with matters of life, death, and rebirth. But in the ancient way thiswas not true. Letters of the tree-alphabet were part of a calendar system that marked the seasonalcycles of change as affirmations of the powers of renewal. Rebirth, and therefore continuation ofexistence, was possible because of the cyclic order. Beyond the rebirth of Bilbo Baggins we candiscern Tolkien's own magnificent contribution: His works have within them the power of rebirthfor the spoken and written word. At the deepest levels he has given us a means for experiencinganew the ancient vitality of speech – lest we forget.

And here it is at last, the Christmas Tree! A fir tree for Christmas, to celebrate the WinterSolstice, the return of the sun to start the world anew, and in Christianity adopted to celebrate thebirth of the child of renewal and eternal life; enshrined here by Tolkien in his little “children’s tale.”The greatness of J. R. R. Tolkien runs deep: It has deep roots, and they are not “touched by thefrost.” Nor will they ever be.

The Double Personality of Bilbo Baggins

It is a well-known fact that any curve has two sides: Curves may be either concave or convex.And it is also well known that the hobbit Bilbo Baggins has two sides to his personality. His fatherwas Bungo Baggins, not a very formidable hobbit; but his mother was Belladonna Took, a directdescendant of fierce Bullroarer Took’s fierce brother Ferumbras.

The struggle between the Baggins and the Took side of his ancestry is for Bilbo the effort toreconcile comfort and security with adventure and growth. In both cases,shelter looms importantly;but shelter on the road may take quite different forms than the friendly curves of the hobbit-hole. Thereflection of this lies in the two curves, concave and convex, like cocoons and clubs, that have theirrepresentatives in the linguistic family. These complementary curves represent polarity, the mutualsupport of opposite inclinations. And in kuduk the polarity is represented in two ways: Through thesound, by the reduplication of consonants as a kind of mirror-image,

and through meaning, by the contact of the reflected sides with cognate forms. We discover thatKuduk is a brilliantly crafted piece of philological invention. It not only meshes tightly with the"head" words as shown earlier, but it splits the word-stream into two branches, one describing theBaggins side, the other the Took side (Fig. 4). All the words on each side (except for Tolkien’sinvented ones) are accepted members of the same two word-families.

In this figure the polar character of the Curve is expressed as two modes of protection:defensive arch and attacking bow; defensive concealment and attacking thrust; defensive hole andattacking "knock" (sharp blow). This is the result of intruding kuduk into the stream of sounds and

meanings. And finally, the meanings that divide the two branches describe perfectly the characterof the two clans of hobbits, Bilbo's dual ancestry. On the kud- side of the family we have the fatbellies and the concealing arches of the Bagginses and their hobbit-holes. Even Bilbo's greedyrelatives, the Sackville-Bagginses, are represented through Welsh cwd (pronounced "kood") andEnglish cod: "sack" and "bag."

On the -duk side are the signs of the rambunctious Tooks. If anything might be the emblemof that clan, it is the tuck or rapier, a small double-edged sword used for thrusting. Bilbo of coursewas very much involved with such a sword. He called his small sword Sting, and it was a chief signof his ability to take on the world and grow. At the very beginning of The Hobbit, when Bilbo'spride is challenged by the dwarves who doubt his courage,

Something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains and hear

the pine trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves,and wear a sword instead of a walking stick.(25)

A sword instead of a walking stick! Interesting comparison, between a weapon and a crutch!What kind of a sword? For Bilbo it turned out to be a tuck. Why compare it with a stick? Becausestick is cognate with tuck. Both words come from Sanskrit stij-or tij- "be sharp." And why did Bilbocall his sword Sting? Because stachel, in Middle High German, cognate with tuck, stij- and stick,means "sting."

Here again, the structure of the paragraph reflects the linguistic ground. The walking-stick,the sword, the name of the sword, and the name of the adventurous branch of Bilbo's family, allbelong to the same etymological/phonetic configuration: stick, tuck, stachel, tij-, took, and sting.

Action, Plot, and Philology

This ingenious weave of sounds and meanings, based upon the polarity of curve, is whatallows Tolkien to construct passages like the following one about Bilbo, where he literally fits theaction to the Philology.

He took from the box a small sword. "This is Sting," he said, and thrust it without effort deep into a wooden beam.(26)

What an odd thing for a Baggins to do! Hardly polite of Bilbo to damage one of the posts inElrond's fine house where Bilbo is an honored guest. Yet not so strange for the odd son ofBelladonna Took! In six ways Bilbo's action (otherwise unaccountable) expresses the philology oftuck. Compare the group of cognates below with the passage from The Hobbit just given, and youwill see the singular way in which Tolkien has brought together meaning, behavior, and philology(Figure 5).

We can easily construct a complete sentence out of this stream: “Bilbo, the fierce Tûk, thrusthis sharp small sword ‘Sting’ into a wooden post.” This is only a relatively minor example of whatturns out to be the book's essential literary texture. The "head" words alone represent a group ofmeanings that uniquely identify the story of Bilbo Baggins. Below is a summary of importantstory-elements in The Hobbit. Beneath each paragraph are the corresponding terms from the "head"family. All the terms below are cognates.

The Story of the Kuduk

Kuduks, also known as Hobbits, are short plump persons with very big appetites, who hide veryquickly and easily.

They seek comfort and security, living in tube-shaped underground dwellings having circular doorsand windows. One of them, Bilbo, lives in the finest of these at the top of the highest hill inHobbiton.

They sport curly hair on feet and head, and boast quaint family names like Chub andSackville-Baggins.

Bilbo serves a party of dwarves almost everything in his pantries, including someround seed-cakesof which he is especially fond.

The dwarves doubt Bilbo's courage, so he reminds them of his ancestor Bullroarer Took, whoknocked off King Golfimbul's head with a wooden club, the head sailing through the air like a balland landing in a rabbit hole.

Bilbo goes away with the dwarves, borrowing a hood and cloak. During his adventure he hides incaves, treetops, andeagle's nests.

He finds a magic ring, which protects him by concealing him from view. He uses the ringin his heroic fight with giant spiders, which he calls attercops and crazy cobs.(27) He is eyed as foodby the spiders and others (including trolls), who refer to him as a tasty morsel and a mouthful.

He rides on barrel-bellied ponies, and even on barrels: these latter being casks in which fruit hasbeen stored, upon which Bilbo floats down a stream to escape captivity.

The Literary Result

One perceptive reviewer made the interesting comment that Tolkien's novels are not so muchfantasy as they are "super science fiction." Although Tolkien is not working with the hard sciencesthat are the usual basis of science fiction, his speculative development of philological theory placeshis work within that literary type. The framing of his works in the mode of fantasy or fairytale maybe viewed as a result of its philological base: the extrapolation of the world from the science. ForTolkien, philology comes first, fantasy after.

Tolkien's hobbit-stories may be thought of as a pivotal point in the history of science fictionand fantasy, by establishing for them more firmly than ever a base in the symbol-forming activityof human consciousness. If so, Tolkien has indeed written super science fiction. And we are onlybeginning to discover how super it really is.

Copyright © 1994, 2000 by Stan McDaniel all rights reserved

NOTES

1. Carpenter, Humphrey: Tolkien: The Authorized Biography, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston,1977, page 172. (return)2. The account of Tolkien's creative process given in this and the previous paragraphs is fromCarpenter, Op. Cit., pages 94, 126, 172. (return)3. Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Return of the King, Geo. Allen & Unwin, London, 1955. Appendix E,page 487; Appendix F, pages 519-20. (return)4. I have coined the expression eidophonetic (idea + sound) because I find no other general, ortheory-neutral, term for this phenomenon. See Barfield, Owen:Poetic Diction: A Study inMeaning, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964 (esp. Ch. IV, pages 86-89). (return)5. Kugler, Paul: "Image and Sound: An Archetypal Approach to Language" Spring,1978, p. 143.Kugler's view is based upon the results of actual experiments in word association carried out byFreud and Jung. (return)6. I use the more general term "leading idea" rather than "archetypal image" so as to remainrelatively neutral with regard to the perspectives of archetypal psychology. (return)7. Carpenter, Humphrey, Op. Cit., page 48. (return)8. In this and similar typographical displays the words are not presented in linear historicalsequence but are arranged so as to give the best presentation of the topic. (return)9. Here we see the hard p of caput softened to b in haubith,f in hufudh, and disappearing in head.Compare also Span. cabeza, "head." (return)10. Etymological references include: The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary(Oxford University Press, 1971), The Century Dictionary and Encyclopedia, ed. Wm. D.Whitney (Century Co., New York, 1899), A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, ed. Monier-Williams(Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1970),An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, ed. ErnestWeekly (Dover Publications, New York, 1967), and similar reference works. (return)11. Although Tolkien states in his "Guide to the Names in the Lord of the Rings" that Took is "ofunknown origin," this refers to its fictional status. He has, to the contrary, given a clear statementthat Took is to be associated with tuckby means of his map of The Shire, where, in the areasettled by the Took clan of hobbits he places the villages of Tookbank and Tuckborough next toeach other. He also names the large town in that area, from which the Tooks probably migratedacross the Brandywine river into Buckland, Stock, which is the English synonym and cognate oftocco, stocco, and tuck. (return)12. Pine resin was considered sacred, and has been called the Fluid of Life or the "Tears ofHelen." Cf. Graves, Robert: The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Farrar,Strauss & Giroux, New York, 1948, page 190; and Allegro, John M.: The Sacred Mushroom andthe Cross, Doubleday & Co., New York, 1970, page 74. (return)13. Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Hobbit, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1966. Page 235. (return)14. Cp. Gu- cognates: Low German kutte "womb" and Old English kite "belly, stomach." (return)15. Ibid., Chapter VI. (return)16. Graves, op. cit., page 190. (return)17. Allegro, op. cit., pages 72-74, page 250 endnote 60. According to Allegro, bothElate and

Thuia appear in Greek names for the pine. Allegro cites the botanist Theophrastus as reportingthat the prophets call the resin of the silver fir "the menses of Eileithyia." (return)18. Tolkien, op. cit., page 116. (return)19. Ibid. (return)20. Ibid. (return)21. Ibid., page 27. (return)22. Graves, op. cit., page 189. (return)23. Ibid., page 38. (return)24. Ibid., pages 189-193. (return)25. Ibid., page 24. (return)26. Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Fellowship of the Ring, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, and Geo. Allen& Unwin, London, 1954, page 290. It may not be entirely coincidental that a bilbo is a type ofSpanish sword (so named because of its manufacture at Bilbao, a city in Northern Spain). (return)27. Old English attercoppe, "spider," is a combination of attor "poison" andcoppe, cop "head."(Cf. Ryan, John S., "The Shaping of Middle-Earth's Maker," American Tolkien Society, 1992,page 37.) A spider seems to be "all head" and has a sting. Thus in the story one "poison-head"(the hobbit carrying a sting) is pitted against another (the attercop): Bilbo's vanquishing of thespiders marks a kind of self-overcoming. (return)