The downfall of the hobbit-folk
 

First of all I would like to start with the customary apology for being unable to use the Search function of this site properly, but I THINK there are no other threads on this topic. Now, I must say that while I think I came up with this idea, it is mostly inspired by something Lalwendë said in Here

My bolding, of course

Now, this brings up an interesting point… The Professor says that the hobbits dwindled and diminished as the fourth age came along and men took over Middle Earth. Yet why would a people so hardy when pressed, so entrenched with all the forces of life become a shadow of their former self and finally disappear for all intents and purposes?

It might have been Tolkien trying to reconciliate the fact that he presented Lord Of The Rings as an alternate history of mankind and as we all know there are no hobbits to be found nowadays. Even if some people has us wondering if… maybe… perhaps… but I digress.

Yet it might have been something else. Perhaps, as I thought after reading Lalwendë’s post, the marring of the Shire (in spite of Sam’s best efforts) started the beginning of the end for the Hobbit folk. Perhaps The Shire (which as far as I know was the main hobbit-only settlement of Middle Earth) was never exactly the same and maybe this caused a change in the people that lived there. Maybe Mormegil is right when he says that the destruction caused by Saruman may have taken away the innocence from the Hobbits in general, something that neither Sam’s nor Pippin’s nor Merry’s best efforts could ever heal. Possibly because they had also lost their innocence somewhere along their adventure.

I must say that up until now I thought that my first argument was the most likely one. There are no hobbits nowadays so the Professor had to find something to explain why the hobbits had disappeared. Even if he says that there may still be some hobbits around yet they are so skilful in avoiding us that we would never know it, for all intents and purposes he is telling us that hobbits are nowhere to be found, as far as we are concerned. Yet the more I think about it, the more I see that the very same thing that made The Shire unlike any other place, even Bree (that had a high hobbit population) was their innocence. They were completely and blissfully unaware of the world outside their little parcels of land and that ignorance was what permitted their society to work as well as it did. Yet whether they liked it or not, they had had a first-hand experience of the “real” world with Saruman and his ruffians and that was something that could probably not have been forgotten so easily.

I am not as versed in Tolkienism (or should it be Tolkienity? :p) as some of my fellow posters here, but as far as I know we have no information on what happened on The Shire after Sam’s lifetime. Isn’t it possible that their society collapsed, their innocence taken away by the spite of Saruman? Wouldn’t that plausibly explain what happened with the hobbits much better than a simple notion that “They don’t really liked the big noisy men so they retreated into the forest, slowly loosing all knowledge of the arts that they once had. Nowadays, should any hobbits be found, they would probably be concerned only with their most primal needs, which one of them happens to be avoiding us humans” (Which is, very very paraphrased, what I understand Tolkien is telling us)

Perhaps he meant dwindled as in declined in population? Either by lack of reproduction, mixing with other races, or left Middle-earth? For the men of Numenour in Gondor, it was the first two.

If lack of reproduction was the problem, there must have been some very great changes after Sam and Rosie's time!! :eek:

Well, as I recall Saruman wasn't their first experience of the world outside the Shire. Their has been the Fell Winter when the wolves crossed the river Isen and had to be fought be the Hobbits. THe Hobbits had also fought a battle against the orcs of mount Gundabad (when the Bullroarer invented the game of golf by hitting an orc's so hard it flew a hundred yards into the air and vanished in a rabbithole). And last, the passing of the Ringwraiths through the Shire would be an experience to remember as well, especially since buckland raised the alarm for the first time in ages. So, I don't think the Hobbits actually lost their innocence in this matter.

What did happen I don't know. It could have been a hundred things. I mean, look at the Ents. The have been around for ages and now they lost the Entwives and are dying out.

However, even Tolkien doesn't know wether their are Hobbits nowadays. When he gives an explanation about them in the Hobbit he says:

greetings,
lathspell

I'm not sure I follow. Please elaborate at length, in full detail, preferably with images to aid understanding.

bombariffic

Now I shall certainly keep an eye on this thread... or two eyes, as often as I can spare them.

I think the difference is that in the Saruman period some Hobbits went over to the 'other side' (Lotho, Sandyman, some of the Shirrifs, etc). It wasn't the fact that they'd suffered under Saruman & the ruffians, but the fact that they weren't a 'united folk' anymore. It was no longer a case of all pulling together to get through the bad times - some Hobbits would turn on their own for their own benefit. It would have been that betrayal that shocked them out of their innocence & complacency - which Hobbits could be trusted if a similar situation recurred?

Believe me, you don't want images. The idea behind my words is simple math - at a rate of two children per couple, a population does not die out - it remains the same (does remembering the term "Zero Population Growth" date me terribly?). Sam and Rosie had thirteen. Other Hobbits listed in the family trees were also prone to engender large families. Only a natural catastrophe or an annihilation of huge proportion could have wiped out such a people. There is absolutely no comparison to the Gondorian situation.

davem makes a very interesting point concerning the division of Hobbit society following Sharkey's rule. Could the seed of mistrust been sown then?

When Aragorn became king he passed a law forbidding anyone, himself included, from passing into the Shire. Could this account for the hobbits rarity? Perhaps they did not dwindle literally, they just dwindled from the memory and lore of the humans. I at least have always favored this idea, I would find myself terribly distraught in a world without thier kind.

I am more than Halfbit a Hobbit
 

Maybe they just re-intergrated back into the species Man, This could have been caused by introducing into the gene pool the Ent-draughts that Merry and Pippin drank, causing their offspring to grow ever taller, have you noticed how big the kids are today................................

Memories of Fletcher 'reading' to Ives from 'Little Women'......

Well, the Professor DOES give us a little insight on what happened to the hobbits... namely that they don't like big people. How could they re-integrate with the big people (the species of Man) if they disliked them?

I think Davem is on to something, the other times a "disaster" happened in The Shire the hobbits responded as an united front to repell the enemy. Also, they did it by themselves. Now, I am sure we all agree that Merry, Pippin, Sam and Frodo were not "normal" hobbits, yet their coming was needed to spark the revolution in The Shire.

The other times the hobbits responded by themselves, but this time they needed forces from the outside. Maybe it is, as Davem said, because the seed of mistrust had ben sown among them.

I must say I was not aware of such law. Could you perhaps expand on it? Why did he say so? Did it actually mean that no-one should go to the Shire or that no-one should bother them?

Tale of Years entry for 1427: 'King Elessar issues an edict that Men are not to enter the Shire, and he makes it a Free Land under the protection of the Northern Sceptre.'

Now that's an interesting point. As the third age comes to an end and the elves leave Middle Earth, the only ones in charge of keeping record of history are men themselves, who are banned from entering The Shire. Is it possible then that something else happened to the hobbits that we are not aware of because men did not know?

Possibly - though Hobbits were free to leave the Shire - Sam, Merry & Pippin certainly did, travelling to Gondor & Rohan.

Yes, but we know that those were the exception rather than the rule. I tend to think that even if the lands were completely safe (which probably was not quite the case) the hobbits would much rather stay in their shire than go off in adventures. After all, they didn't really know much about the world outside anyway during the third age and still they did not dare to leave their Shire

There's also this passage from one version of Tolkien's unpublished Epilogue to LotR (downloadable here

Fareal I wasn't suggesting that The Fourth Age Age Hobbits instantly started to settle down and marry the Big Folk. It is said that Hobbits were closely related to Man in origin, what else can they be, some offshoot of The Druedain or a unreported union of Man and Dwarf. Tolkiens Origin of Species is quite informative, that is until we come to Hobbits. The Halflings are totally unnoticed until well into The Third Age, if by mutation a species of The Atani has become smaller, then by mutation it can grow larger ie: Ent Draughts. If you introduce things into a Gene Pool you can get Native American Indians with blue eyes, or Grass that we now call Wheat. Peoples can be traced in origin by language, Tolkien knew this, so what is the language stem of the Holbytla.

There are several possible ways the Hobbits could have disappeared from the view of Big Folk.

Firstly, it could simply be as has been said that they reintegrated back into the larger human population either by means of evolution or by intermarriage. Yes, Aragorn may have set a ban on Big Folk entering The Shire, but Aragorn did not live forever, nor would all his descendants have been so scrupulous.

It is also possible that Hobbits simply left The Shire; presuming that those who left were the more enterprising and adventurous, that would leave only the parochially minded back home, and the society could have declined. That gives food for thought for the Big Folk on t'other side of the pond. ;)

Or it could be that Aragorn's ban on Big Folk entering The Shire actually did cause the Hobbits to disappear from our perception and history. In this way they may have passed back into the realms of myth and legend and been forgotten, even if they did still (and do still?) exist. In some historic cases of aboriginal peoples being put into reservations ostensibly to protect them, this move has actually destroyed their cultures; the young see the poverty around them and instead choose to leave for the wider world and a life of opportunity, thus even further hastening the decline of those traditional cultures.

If you want to be pessimistic there are a lot of reasons why the Hobbits may simply have grown extinct. Yes, that seed was sown which may have destroyed their innocence. They did indeed have battles before the time of the WotR, but these were battles within The Shire, not events from that war brought into their little world. After Saruman and Frodo (because Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin also brought the outside world into the Shire with its 'fancy foreign talk and fancy foreign ways') would Hobbits ever be the same? No longer a parochial race, globalisation (trading pipeweed for Lembas like trading coffee beans for Coke?) had hit this corner of Middle-earth. It wouldn't be long before they succumbed to a more homogenised Middle-earth.

There is also the more poetic explanation that the world of The Hobbits simply disappeared from our sight. That idea has been inspired by reading Mists of Avalaon, where the world of the druids and descendants of Atlantis did not get wiped out but remains hidden behind the mists and is ready to find for those who wish to find it. That would mean The Shire is now in Faerie. In Mists of Avalon and a whole lot of other literature there are many references to little people who may or may not be remnants of older cultures, Picts, the Fir Bolg, Boggarts, Pixies etc. Tolkien was only building on the myth and legend of older peoples as many before him have done when he created The Hobbits. So from that point of view, the Hobbits are still there, are still living in The Shire, but you will only find it if you really really want to find it. You might catch a fleeting glimpse of a Hobbit out of the corner of your eye at the end of the garden, amongst the trees or you might smell tobacco wafting mysteriously from somewhere and not see a smoker. That might be a Hobbit.

I like the last one best but all those ideas are possible.

Well Lal, this thread started when I expanded on something you said and now I guess I'll steal from your ideas again.

Perhaps the hobbits have indeed retreated into the world of faerie, a world that is not quite the one we live in and at the same time not quite another one. In a way it makes me think of a Valinor for those of us who believe in "magic" or however you want to call it. Maybe some day we will be allowed to take "the straightest road" west and find ourselves among Hobbits in The Shire or Elves in Lorien or having councel with the mighty Valar. Yet until then we can only move along with our lives, paying attention to those little glimpses of the other, fairer (and faerier) world that we get from time to time.

Yes, I rather like that explanation. Much less sad than the hobbits becoming extinct and much more 'poetical' than the hobbits simply getting (re-)adsorved into mankind.

There is a pronounced theme of the 'underworld' running through Tolkien's work. Valinor is unique amongst 'retreats' in Arda, other races and even some of the Elves seem to favour retreat to the underground places.

Hobbits live in 'hollow hills', so it is not a difficult thing to imagine that as the years pass by they seek the underground places as suitable hideaways from the Big Folk. Dwarves too seek out caves, and with the retreat of the Balrog, maybe Moria became inhabited again. Elves historically had a liking for underground realms, and the Wood Elves of Mirkwood still lived that way. Even Men, in the case of the dead men of Dunharrow, find a suitable retreat in the underworld.

There is also a significant theme running through Tolkien's work where entrance to the Underworld leads to actual or symbolic rebirth, e.g. Gandalf in Moria and Frodo in the Barrow. It is a place at once of both safety and peril. This is very true to the ideas seen in myths and folklore.

Tolkien's conceit that his work is a translation of an ancient history of our own world mirrors real world myth and legend that Faerie can be found in the underworld. I suppose it is a case of trying to find the right door to enter that world.

It is interesting that he also used the idea of a mythical Western land far out to sea in the form of Valinor. That is a very Celtic idea, having both the Western, lost land and the land within the land.

"he also used the idea of a mythical Western land far out to sea in the form of Valinor. That is a very Celtic idea, having both the Western, lost land and the land within the land." Never heard of that. That's interesting.

But we can only dspeculate what caused Hobbits to 'dissapear'. Unless Christopher decides to do a sequel to The Lord of the Rings, lol!

Even the hardiest can not endure everything.

I would add one more theory to why hobbits were lost. Maybe the Shire became unfertile and the hobbits either wandered away or perished in famine. Maybe Saruman's work had marred Shire too deeply. Or maybe the hobbits used the land too much. Or maybe there was a natural disaster.

In the CbC (LotR: Book 6, Ch.9) davem made me think of the fading of the Shire from a new angle. After the scouring the Shire was in a pretty bad shape, but with hard work and a bit of dust from Galadriel it looked like things could have been mended. Year 1420 was wonderful in its "air of richness and growth, and a gleam of beauty beyond that of mortal summers".

When the One Ring had been destroyed and Galadriel and Nenya left Middle-earth, Lothlorien began to fade. A lot of good had been done with the the gift that Sam had received from Galadriel, but if the dust had got its powers from Nenya, I'd assume that the things that had been made with the aid of it started to fade as well.

I rather like Lal's poetic explanation, too. Perhaps with a little of "Elf-magic" the Shire became the mysterious place that it now is, out of ordinary people's reach.

So maybe the world split, beginning with the Fall of Numenor. The flat, Elven, world moves further & further away from the round, human, world. While the Elven Rings retain their power they hold the worlds together at certain points, but when they fail the last 'nails' are drawn & the two worlds drift apart. Galadriel's gift draws the Shire into the Elven world & it is lost to us. Yet it was also once part of the Human world, so maybe its the nearest part of Faerie to us.

Some of Tolkien's comments on the relationship of this world & Faery are interesting in this context. (This is from his essay on Smith of Wooton Major)

It makes sense that The Shire was drawn into Faerie, after all, the inhabitants, Hobbits, remind us of the 'little people'. They are like the creatures of Fairy Tales, boggarts, hobgoblins, pucks. Maybe The Shire really is there, just inside Faerie, which is why these little creatures pop out now and then to play games with us. ;) Perhaps Valinor too is there, but further in, only to be visited by those mad or brave enough to really venture far...

A couple of interesting points struck me from what Tolkien said in the passage davem used, though I'm not sure how useful or relevant they are. I'll post my thoughts anyway. ;) Firstly, why a Smith? The smith was in ancient times often associated with magic; he would take stone and turn it into swords through his craft. Smiths are a common figure in mythology too, symbolic of both strength and magic - e.g. Wayland, Vulcan. Why did Tolkien choose a Smith over say, a farmer?

Secondly, does Tolkien seem to deny the underworld as a possible entrance to Faerie? His work does not bear this out, as it filled with those symbols and images. But he then lays claim to the woodland as his own entrance to Faerie. What interests me here is that the Druidic religion revered the woodland, worshipped there instead of using man made buildings.

This was pointed out in a review of 'LotR: A Reader's Companion' in the latest Amon Hen. Its from a paper Tolkien wrote circa 1969 & is now in the Bodleian Library:

How 'canonical' this statement is, is open to question. It seems very 'negative', & perhaps Tolkien was in one of his 'depressed' phases. Certainly, though, he seems to have been pessimistic about the Hobbits' ultimate fate. It seems that Tolkien's words regarding Hobbits in the Prologue to LotR, about them still being around even now were not meant to be taken to mean that they are still around living as they did at the end of the Third Age, in their comfortable Hobbit Holes, but rather as existing in a state little better than the Druedain, scraping a bare existence from their surroundings & living in fear us 'Big Folk' hunting them for sport.