This chapter brings in and exits out the infamous “stone-giants” almost unmentioned elsewhere.
Two chapters further on Tolkien remarks:
‘I must see if I can’t find a more or less decent giant to block it up again,’ said Gandalf, ‘or soon there will be no getting over the mountains at all.’
The “giant” here mentioned may be one of these “stone-giants”, for Gandalf would likely be seeking a giant in the vicinity of the cave.
In
The Fellowship of the Rings, Book I, in the chapter “The Shadow of the Past”, Sam Gamgee remarks:
But what about these Tree-men, these giants, as you might call them? They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen up away beyond the North Moors not long back.
Here Sam’s use of the word “Tree-men” suggests that in this case what was seen was not a stone-giant, but rather an Ent, of whom the Hobbits are here imagined to have some tradition, although later on neither Merry nor Pippen seem aware of such traditions.
Possibly the stone-giants of the Misty Mountains are to be imagined as a larger variety of the trolls already encountered in this tale. In
The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F, I,
Trolls, Tolkien explains:
Trolls took such language as they could muster from the Orcs; and in the Westlands the Stone-trolls spoke a debased form of the Common Speech.
Therefore the trolls met with by the dwarves and Bilbo were “Stone-trolls” and, taking the word
giant as usually interpreted in modern English, a Stone-giant was a larger variety of Stone-troll.
These stone-giants in their gleeful tossing of stones appear to be influenced by pure exuberance brought on by the stormy weather. Seemingly the stone-giants don’t notice the dwarves, Bilbo, Gandalf, the ponies, and the single horse. No wonder Sauron didn’t bother with them, especially since they would turn to stone permanently if they ventured into the daylight.