Hobbits and the Valar (or The Forgotten People)
 

I have always wondered about the fact that - as Pippin said - Hobbits were never on "the old lists". The Elves and dwarves were aware of their existence, but other than that, they were pretty much forgotten by all others in Middle Earth, including the Ents!

They are not mentioned in any of the Creation stories, and they themselves seem to have no stories of their beginnings, far-fetched as that sounds. And yet, one of the Istari takes an interest in these people, long before the discovery of the One Ring would warrant it. (Remember too, that the after Isilder, the only possessers of the Ring were Hobbits.)

I never could believe that Tolkien simply "forgot" to creat a history for Hobbits. Do you think that Hobbits being a "Forgotten People" may have in some way been intentional?

[ February 23, 2002: Message edited by: Birdland ]

Wow. That's a good question. I would like to know the answer as well (sorry I can't help you out [img]smilies/frown.gif[/img] )

They were a sub-race of Men.
In "Of Dwarves and Men" in Peoples of Middle Earth (HoME vol 12) it says: In the same article, still speaking of Men: In Letters, 131, the Professor says Letters, no 316, says:

Wow, Bruce, I gotta get to the library. Apparently Tolkien wrote more about the subject then I had thought.

I only have one "reference" work: The Tolkien Companion, and it doesn't mention Durgs. Are these the same as Wose, or the Pukel-Men?

Yes, the Wose are Third Age relations of the First Age Druedain (Drug) and (I believe) Second Age Pukel-men. Unfinished Tales has a chapter about them which explains how they were allied with the Third House of Men, the folk of Haleth.

I agree with Bruce. They belong to the Younger Children of Iluvatar.

Speaking of Iluvatar, I had a laugh yesterday when my spell-check changed his name to Elevator. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Hup. That seems res. But stop using that huge pic. It's really anoying! [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img]

I wouldn't ay that they are forgotten. They were just unknown. :)

The Rohirrim, who at some point (while living in the North) encountered hobbits, preserved memmory of them in tales. Those that lived or travelled by the Shire/Bree knew about them. Other races (eg Ents, like you said) probably never saw a hobbit before LOTR times.

I wouldn't even say they were unknown...unusal perhaps, and though of as a myth, but if the Rohirrim, Elves, Dwarves, and at least some of the men of Gondor, as well as the men around Hobbiton and presumably the men of Laketown following Bilbo's adventure, are aware of Halflings/Hobbits, the Ents look more like the minority then the majority, at least among the learned members of the other races by the time of the War of the Ring.

Well, I still say that the Rohirrim and the few Men, Dwarves, and Elves that knew about hobbits were the minority.

I think the "problem" lies in the fact that hobbits were never recorded in the great histories of ME before the War, even if they were known to exist. Faramir, who spent lots of time in the library, never heard of a hobbit until he met Frodo. I think it's safe to say that most Men of Gondor did not know of hobbits. A "perian" is literally "halfling" in elvish (or, at least, I think it is), and wouldn't that be the natural thing to call a race that is half your size? I think that that name did not exist before Pippin was brought to Gondor, unless it was in some "old wives' tale" taken from the Rohirrim.

Moreover, there are many people inhabiting ME that don't know about hobbits - Dunlendings, Haradrim, orcs, and many others that did not come in contact with them. Even Sauron had no idea that hobbits existed until Gollum was caught.

I was thinking (admittedly, just speculation) and there may be another reason why Hobbits were not on the old lists.

It may be simply because they *WERE* the OLD Lists. That is, Hobbits don't seem to enter into any records until sometime in the Third Age and the lists may well have been made far back in the First Age (or before). Even if they were updated in the Second Age, the Third Age was the time of Fading for the Elves and they may simply not have bothered officially updating the lists (and passing the updates along to Ents & others) by that time.
The Ents, of course, had already lost the Entwives and seem to have been going more insular themselves (as Men continued expanding). Yet one more reason why, even if some elves somewhere had thought of updating the lists, any changes wouldn't become widely known by Ents.

Just a speculation.

Faramir had however heard of halflings, for he says, "For this is not the first halfling that I have seen walking [b]out of northern legends into the Southlands"[b/]- and from the way Gandalf speaks to Ingold when entering Gondor with Pippin, it seems that halfling, without any other descriptive words, is a good enough answer to the question what is a hobbit. And to quote Beregond, "For never before have we seen a halfling in this land and though we have hear rumour of them,, little is said of them in any tale that we know."

So they had been heard of in Gondor at least, and not only by the learned. Though, they seem to have been thought of as legends - much like fairies would be thought of today...

To address the fact that the Haradrim and such had never heard of Hobbits. To me, this adds a sense of realism to the books. In our recent history, prior to the invention of the airplane and such, many cultures were unknown due to lack of ways to reach the outskirts and such to see them, except by those who lived near them...For Sauron, well, evil has a way of being shortsighted, and causing its own defeat....

Edited to add: Puddleglum has a good point - the Ents seem to be rather insular. They don't know much about anything outside their lands, that isn't ancient history it seems like. And, even if the elves were updating the lists - who's going to make the trip to tell Treebeard? Celeborn doesn't seem too fond of the idea of traveling through Fangorn, judging by his comment to Boromir, Elrond isn't going to pop over the mountains, nor would Cirdan, and Thranduil had more concerns then finding an Ent to tell them the news that halflings were discovered...

Probbly via Rohirric tales...

Seconded.

True. And you said it yourself: you don't know about a race unless you live near them or come in contact with them during travels. Most people of ME who know about hobbits know them from rumors and stories, often exaggerated - like the hopeful "Ernil-i-pheriannath" myth.