LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 01 - A Long-Expected Party

[Guinevere]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

I noticed one detail this time around that hadn't particularly stood out to me before - the fact that the Dwarf-made toys are also magical. I've never thought of Dwarves as having magical abilities such as the Elves did, but obviously they must have some. What do you think is the nature of Dwarven magic?

Well, after all, the Dwarves had made the magical secret door to the Lonely Mountain, and Narvi made the secret door to Moria.
In the first age, the Dragon-helm of Dor Lomin was made by the Dwarf Telchar, and so was Narsil, Elendil's Sword, as well as the knife Angrist. All of those items have certain magical qualities.
I think their magic is more like a craft, and apparently only a few of them were so skilled, and much was forgotten later. Thorin & co had no idea how to make the door visible, let alone open it, and Gimli was no help either.

[Rumil]

Hi all,

chapter 1 has been covered very well indeed in this thread!

Guinevere, I agree with you that the Dwarves' magic is tied up in manufacture of magic items, not in casting spells as such. Though I was wondering how much of a market there would be for magical toys and miniature musical instruments in Middle Earth! I guess their presence here shows that Dale had been re-established and was busy distributing goods manufactured by the Dwarves at Erebor.

Pictures are mentioned as being left at Bag End for Frodo. I don't have my copy of The Hobbit on hand at the moment, is there a picture in the drawing of Bilbo's front hall? Anyway, Hobbit art, I wonder what that's like? We know that the Hobbits were skilled craftsmen with nimble fingers, which sounds encouraging. I guess they would have had portraits of ancestors and relations (in the better families naturally!) and maybe landscapes and country scenes, I like the idea of a Hobbit 'Haywain'.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Rumil

I don't have my copy of The Hobbit on hand at the moment, is there a picture in the drawing of Bilbo's front hall?

There are two framed objects which seem to be two mirrors, one on either side of the door - the one on the right reflects the open door & the one on the left shows at tree like one of the two trees just outside the door. However, the one on the left is concave, so it maybe a picture - wouldn't the tree's reflection be upside down in a concave mirror?

[Rumil]

Hi davem,

cheers for that, I thought I remembered something. I think it would be entirely appropriate for Bilbo to commission a painting of his own garden and the tree and hang it in the hallway to cheer himself up during the winter or foul weather perhaps. After all it does seem to be a jolly nice garden!

Getting tangled up in the translator conceit yet again, does anyone know if the illustrations themselves in The Hobbit are directly attributed to Bilbo or are 'imaginative recreations' by that Tolkien fellow who translated the Red Book?

[davem]

This is the original - & if you click on it you can see the coloured version by HE Riddett. http://search.msn.com/images/results...2Fbag_endm.jpg

[Pitchwife]

Legate -

Please explain to me, why is someone called Twofoot? I would understand if a hobbit who lost one leg would be called Onefoot (though it won't be a family name but only his personal nickname), but why Twofoot? Harfoot, Puddifoot, why not, but there is either something I don't understand or we have had a wrong images in our heads all the time and most Hobbits in fact have three legs.

I'd imagine it refers to height: either ol' Daddy himself or one of his ancestors was uncommonly short even for a Hobbit (possibly not literally two feet - maybe just a little under three, and 'Twofoot' was a humorous exaggeration). In German, at least (and for all that I know in English, too), many family names - such as aren't patronymics or refer to the owner's profession - historically started as personal nicknames that became hereditary. Tolkien's own family name is a nice example, being derived from the German adjective tollkühn = 'foolhardy'. I'd suppose one of the Prof's ancestors (let's call him John) earned the name of 'John the Foolhardy' by his rash and daring temperament; now that person's son would be called 'Christopher Foolhardy' in shorthand for 'Christopher, John the Foolhardy's son', and thus the nickname would be passed on to future generations, although few of them, if any, displayed the character trait that inspired the name in the first place.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Ah, truly, truly, Pitchwife. It didn't occur to me. Thank you. (I was probably stemming from the fact that in the translation to my mothertongue, the "Twofoot" is really translated in the sense "Two-legs", so I haven't thought of the other possible interpretation.)

But still, I am not that hasty in accepting this possibility. After all, is there any definite proof in the books that the Hobbits really had usually just two legs?