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Old 06-09-2019, 06:01 PM   #1
Balfrog
Haunting Spirit
 
Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 87
Balfrog has just left Hobbiton.
Stone-giants – Finally a Credible Source

Tucked away in footnote 4 of one Ms. Seth's essays on Goldberry is what I believe is a highly significant find which deserves to be brought out into the open.


https://priyasethtolkienfan.wordpres...17/01/16/3579/


Finally after 80+ years there appears to be a credible link to 'our world's mythology' of stone-giants and those in The Hobbit. The source itself is: River Legends by E. Huggessen and the tale of*The Giant Bramble-Buffer
Ms. Seth's footnote discusses the similarities of the Stone-giants of the Alps with those in The Hobbit in more detail. But extracted below are where she found most commonality:

From The Hobbit:

“… the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them … They could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides. … ‘… we shall be picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football.’ ”.

From River Legends:

The giants of interest were described as ‘mountain giants’ and vocal ‘Daddyroarers’:
“Sometimes they would … fling enormous stones at each other in sport, which was pastime anything but delightful to their neighbours whose lives and property were thereby grievously imperilled.”
One particular mountain giant, Bramble-Buffer:
“… if he met a man he generally gave him a kick, which sent him off fifty yards up in the air, and in most instances proved fatal.”

There isn't an awful lot said about the Stone-giants in The Hobbit. But what there is seems to match that in River Legends pretty well. I don't think we are likely to get any closer.

Others of course may disagree!
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