The Green Book of the White Downs: Migrations and monuments: Part 8

Migrations and monuments: the story of the First Age in Eriador and Rhovanion

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“Migrations and monuments” quick links:

📗 Part 8] “Their Wandering Days” – Pre-Shire Hobbits in Rhovanion

It is important to emphasis again that the Eldar (and Tolkien) see the Hobbits as part of the race of Men:

“It was a mark of all kinds of Men who were descendants of those who had abjured the Shadow of Morgoth and his servants and wandered westward to escape it – and certainly included both the races of small stature, Drûgs and Hobbits.”

-- Christopher Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth, Book 12: The Peoples of Middle-earth (Part Two: Late Writings – X. Of Dwarves and Men: II The Atani and their Languages)

Hobbits thus began the migration with the other groups, most likely with the House of Hador. It would make sense that when that northernly migration reached the Greenwood and the Anduin, those that would eventually be called Hobbits separated, moved north and populated the Anduin area. At some point they divided into the three Hobbit groupings of Fallowhides, Harfoots and Stoors with their own cultural and physical distinctiveness. They became a forgotten folk, much like the Drúedain.

"The beginning of Hobbits lies far back in the Elder Days that are now lost and forgotten. Only the Elves still preserve any records of that vanished time, and their traditions are concerned almost entirely with their own history, in which Men appear seldom and Hobbits are not mentioned at all. Yet it is clear that Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk became even aware of them. And the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance"

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Prologue)

Migration into the Vales of Anduin by other groups of (taller) Men led to the Hobbits becoming fearful and restless.

“Their own records began only after the settlement of the Shire, and their most ancient legends hardly looked further back than their Wandering Days. It is clear, nonetheless, from these legends, and from the evidence of their peculiar words and customs, that like many other folk Hobbits had in the distant past moved westward. Their earliest tales seem to glimpse a time when they dwelt in the upper vales of Anduin, between the eaves of Greenwood the Great and the Misty Mountains.”

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Prologue)

The Hobbit movement towards the lands that became the Shire was during the Third Age. Their First Age and Second History Is generally unknown and as Tolkien repeatedly points out in his prologue to “The Lord of the Rings” lost to time.

“The vague tradition preserved by the Hobbits of the Shire was that they had dwelt once in lands by a Great River, but long ago had left them, and found their way through or round high mountains, when they no longer felt at ease in their homes because of the multiplication of the Big Folk and of a shadow of fear that had fallen on the Forest. This evidently reflects the troubles of Gondor in the earlier part of the Third Age.”

-- Christopher Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth, Book 12: The Peoples of Middle-earth (Part Two: Late Writings – X. Of Dwarves and Men: II The Atani and their Languages)

It should noted here that the Amazon Studio’s television series, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” is portraying the Harfoots as a kind of pre-Hobbit race and as a wandering/migratory folk, taking cues from the texts above, who follow a seasonal route between various camps and places of security/food. They are essentially a hunter-gatherer society at this point and I believe we’ll see their change from that to a society dependent on agriculture. This is actually a point J.R.R. Tolkien hints at himself when Merry and Pippin talk to Treebeard in Fangorn Forest.

“Then when the Darkness came in the North, the Entwives crossed the Great River, and made new gardens, and tilled new fields, and we saw them more seldom. After the Darkness was overthrown the land of the Entwives blossomed richly, and their fields were full of corn. Many men learned the crafts of the Entwives and honoured them greatly; but we were only a legend to them, a secret in the heart of the forest. Yet here we still are, while all the gardens of the Entwives are wasted: Men call them the Brown Lands now.”

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Book Three Chapter 4: Treebeard)

Treebeard tells the two Hobbits that Men learned the craft of agriculture from the Entwives. This is an important though overlooked point. Men would have potentially encountered Entwives in the area just south of Greenwood/Mirkwood. This is where the Brown Lands lie, where the now-destroyed gardens of the Entwives were located, east of the River Anduin. It is in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters that a further important detail is stated:

“I think that in fact the Entwives had disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance (Second Age 3429–3441) when Sauron pursued a scorched earth policy and burned their land against the advance of the Allies down the Anduin (vol. II p. 79 refers to it2). They survived only in the ‘agriculture’ transmitted to Men (and Hobbits).”

-- Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Letter 144 To Naomi Mitchison, 25 April 1954)

Treebeard had no knowledge of Hobbits but knew Men had been taught by the Entwives. His knowledge of folk smaller than himself (besides Elves) was somewhat limited, so he can be forgiven for not knowing that Hobbits also benefitted from the knowledge of the Entwives. We know that the gardens are destroyed (they become the Brown Lands) and we also know that happens during the War of the Last Alliance.

When did the Hobbits meet the Entwives? Did they even meet them? If they didn’t, was the skill of agriculture passed to the Hobbits via larger Men who had learned it from the Entwives? The problem is we don’t know when the Hobbits learned how to farm. There is only one pre-Shire reference to Hobbits farming, in the description of the Fallowhides:

“…and of old they preferred hunting to tilling.”

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Prologue)

We can go in two directions with Hobbits, Entwives and agriculture. Firstly that the Hobbits learned the skill from the “Big Folk” who also lived in the Vales of Anduin and those Men had learned it from the Entwives sometime during or after their migration in the First Age but before the destruction of the Entwives’ gardens. Secondly that the Hobbits in the Anduin may have had simple farming skills and hunter-gather capability, but it was only later after meeting the Entwives that they learned the highly skilled agricultural knowledge that we associate with Hobbits during the Third Age.

I propose that the Hobbits likely encountered the Entwives during the Second Age because the Entwives disappear during this time. Just how long were the Hobbit ”Wandering Days”? Could it have been begun in the Second Age and eventually leading to the Hobbits heading over the Misty Mountains into Eriador and eventually founding the Shire during the Third Age? One point that could be made is that it was Men, encountering Hobbits, that passed on the knowledge of the Entwives onto the Hobbits because the statement in the Letter could in theory be read that way.

The event of “their Wandering Days” hints at a long migration and during such a phase Hobbits would likely return to less pastoral habits that they potentially held whilst settled in the Vale of Anduin. There is little or no evidence in Tolkien’s works of how they lived in the Vale: did they dwell in Holes? Did they have farms? We don’t know besides some clues that the Northmen/Rohirrim knew them as “holbytlan” (Hole-builder or Hole-dweller).

We do know who arrived first into Eriador however since Tolkien tells us:

“The Harfoots had much to do with Dwarves in ancient times, and long lived in the foothills of the mountains. They moved westward early, and roamed over Eriador as far as Weathertop while the others were still in Wilderland.”

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Prologue)

The empty spaces in our and also the Hobbits’ own knowledge of their past leaves many questions and only clues to their existence, but they do add valuable information to the First Age migration and population of Rhovanion settlement during that time.

It is towards the Shire that we now turn to examine one of the main examples of a First Age monument left by peoples on their migration westwards…

Next:
📜 Part 9] “Where dead men rest” –Barrow building of the First Age

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“Migrations and monuments” quick links:

Saturday 8 July 2023

Migrations and monuments: Part 8 - Hobbits

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