# Funny and Mysterious events in the Hobbit



## mescaline (Jul 23, 2022)

> Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the
> ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their
> king Gol-firnbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through
> the air and went down a rabbit hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of
> Golf invented at the same moment.



Besdies, was there anything more mentioned about this battle? 



> Not the wandering wizard that gave Old Took a
> pair of magic diamond studs that fastened themselves and never came undone till
> ordered?


Is there anything mentioned about these diamonds or the Old Took? He's a mysterious character.

If there's more I don't remember please tell me! Been a while since I read the Hobbit.


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## Radaghast (Jul 23, 2022)

mescaline said:


> Besdies, was there anything more mentioned about this battle?
> 
> 
> Is there anything mentioned about these diamonds or the Old Took? He's a mysterious character.
> ...


The Prologue and Appendices in _The Lord of the Rings_ both mention Bandobras battle with and defeat of orcs and he is also mentioned a few times in the book itself. This occurred in 2747, 143 years before Bilbo was born. The bit about the invention of golf is an anachronistic joke.

I don't think there is any further lore about the magical studs


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## Elbereth Vala Varda (Jul 23, 2022)

mescaline said:


> Is there anything mentioned about these diamonds or the Old Took? He's a mysterious character..


As far as I am aware there is no further lore on this mysterious old character. I am guessing that it is just some Hobbit who was a hoarder of every kind of jewel, and somehow mysteriously had them all. Tooks were very adventurous, and so it would not be completely out of line for a Took to go trading with a Dwarf for some precious metals or diamonds.


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## Will Whitfoot (Jul 23, 2022)

My understanding is that the Dwarf Mines of the Blue Mountains were only 25 or 30 miles away to the North from the bounds of the North Farthing, and so trade with the Dwarves would have been VERY commonplace! Where else would the dwarves go for foodstuffs? Hobbits would have been the pastoralists and Dwarves the industrialists and mutually beneficial trade would have been commonplace. 

Now as to majick cufflinks... I don't think the Dwarves possessed the ability to create majickal objects, but the Elves did. And I would suggest that there was a significant three-way trade among the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains, the Hobbits of the Shire, and the Elves of the Grey Havens. And so minor "plaything" majick jewels would have been just the sort of thing a wealthy Hobbit might purchase as an indulgence.


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## Elbereth Vala Varda (Jul 23, 2022)

Will Whitfoot said:


> Now as to majick cufflinks... I don't think the Dwarves possessed the ability to create majickal objects, but the Elves did. And I would suggest that there was a significant three-way trade among the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains, the Hobbits of the Shire, and the Elves of the Grey Havens. And so minor "plaything" majick jewels would have been just the sort of thing a wealthy Hobbit might purchase as an indulgence.


Be cautious with that word; magic. The Elves possessed a spiritual power, but it wasn't magic as we think of it today. It was more akin to the beliefs of spiritual beings who are given the ability to harness the beauty and power of their creator. The Valar were given power, and I think that the Elves drew from it all of the grace and beauty needed to achieve and create that which they did, but while magic often calls to mind negative connotations, the Elves spiritual power was only fueled and brought to fruition through their love of the world and all that was good. 

It is a very different magic than the kind used by Saruman, and I often use the word "spiritual element or power" to iterate the difference.

The Dwarves trading would make a lot of sense. The Dwarves were very often extremely attracted to food and to feasting, so this would be only too commonplace I would suspect, but mostly for the Tooks.


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## mescaline (Jul 23, 2022)

Elbereth Vala Varda said:


> Be cautious with that word; magic. The Elves possessed a spiritual power, but it wasn't magic as we think of it today. It was more akin to the beliefs of spiritual beings who are given the ability to harness the beauty and power of their creator. The Valar were given power, and I think that the Elves drew from it all of the grace and beauty needed to achieve and create that which they did, but while magic often calls to mind negative connotations, the Elves spiritual power was only fueled and brought to fruition through their love of the world and all that was good.
> 
> It is a very different magic than the kind used by Saruman, and I often use the word "spiritual element or power" to iterate the difference.
> 
> The Dwarves trading would make a lot of sense. The Dwarves were very often extremely attracted to food and to feasting, so this would be only too commonplace I would suspect, but mostly for the Tooks.


Huh, I always thought of the dwarves as carnivorous. Though it would make sense for them to outsource things like wine and beer which they liked.


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## Will Whitfoot (Jul 23, 2022)

I think of The Shire as the "breadbasket district" of Eriador. A hundred miles more or less, north-south and the same east-west. The Bridgefields and the plains south of the Road were wide and fertile. The plantations of the South Farthing and the Marish grew a great deal more than pipeweed. Probably far more than the Hobbits' own needs. So the fact that they occupied a central district gave them the geographic advantage of "place" in the regional economy. Waymoot sat at the crossing of two major "highways" of their time. To the west lay the Gray Havens only a day's ride away. To the North only a day or two away were the Dwarfish settlements of the Blue Mountains, from where Thorin and the Dwarves were traveling during our first encounter with them in the very beginning of The Hobbit. To the East lay the village of Bree, which was a sort of buffer zone, as it had both small and big folk living together. Beyond Bree of course was Wilderland and sparsely settled and dangerous country. But Bree formed a sort of bulwark against that. And away beyond Sarn Ford along the old South Road perhaps a week's travel away lay the mannish settlements of Dunland and Isengard. So the Hobbits were "protected" as it were from all sides. On the North and West by the Elves and Dwarves, who would have warned of any dangers coming from those directions. From the East by regular "news from Bree". The major dangers lay mostly to the South and Northeast, and though the Hobbits knew it not, the remnants of the Dunedain were patrolling those regions and keeping The Shire secure. So the Hobbits were able to order their land and their society largely without interference from goblins or hobgoblins or others of evil intent for many generations. And this worked out to the benefit of both the Hobbits and their neighbors. For everyone likes a good meal! Dwarves and Elves and Mankind all eat bread... but do they all grow and mill their own wheat? Men do, but Dwarves and Elves? It's probably much easier to buy it in Waymoot! Who made Bilbo's teapot and the clock on his mantlepiece? I rather think that sounds like Dwarfish work. But the Took's cufflinks... that sounds like Elven work to me. 

And yes, the Elves are different... they are effectively immortal for one thing, which means that they can learn a lot over their long lifetimes spanning thousands or even tens of thousands of years. It also means that they may become cautious and risk-averse to the point of being rude or stand-offish. But long life does not confer any special "spiritual" power, it merely confers a very long time to think about things. Elves are just as susceptible to falling into evil and darkness as any other creature... perhaps even more so due to the long time they may have to mull over ancient grievances and resentments. Their ability to make majick objects can be thought of as a very advanced technical knowledge. For instance... with today's technology it might be possible to make a set of cufflinks with wi-fi and micro-circuitry that would be capable of unfastening themselves with a spoken command. This would be majick to the Hobbits, but merely amusing to the Elves, a plaything with no political or spiritual significance whatsoever. 

Now the majicks used by such as Gandalf and Saruman, that was majick of an entirely different sort... done with seriousness of intent. In fact we witness Gandalf chiding Bilbo for using his Ring in a childish way, saying "there are many magic rings in the world.... and none of them should be used lightly!"


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## Ent (Jul 23, 2022)

mescaline said:


> Besdies, was there anything more mentioned about this battle?
> 
> 
> Is there anything mentioned about these diamonds or the Old Took? He's a mysterious character.
> ...




Of course Gerontius Took (the Old Took) and Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took, are two different Tooks. 
Bullroarer is Old Took's great granduncle.

Other than Gerontius being the 14th or 26th Shire Thain (a difference mentioned which I'm going to sort out) and living to 130 (without the help of a ring..!!) and Bandobras being the tallest "Halfling" in Shire history and slaying the leader of the maurading orcs at the Battle, there's naught else about them I can find.

Battle of the Green Fields (Bandobras) - TA 2747 (1147 Shire Reconing).

They provide a bit of comic relief, and of course their family trees provide some equally intriguing characters into the time of Bilbo and Frodo's existences.


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## Will Whitfoot (Jul 23, 2022)

Well-aged Enting said:


> Other than Gerontius being the 26th Shire-Thain and living to 130 (without the help of a ring..!!) and Bandobras being the tallest "Halfling" in Shire history and slaying the leader of the maurading orcs, there's naught else about them I can find.


Well... the Dunedain are long lived... and tall. One might suggest that Gerontius' mother perhaps look a Ranger lover as a lass... such things are not unheard of....


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## Ent (Jul 23, 2022)

Will Whitfoot said:


> Well... the Dunedain are long lived... and tall. One might suggest that Gerontius' mother perhaps look a Ranger lover as a lass... such things are not unheard of....



Indeed could be. Speculations abound where Tolkien was silent. 'Tis the beauty of invention.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jul 23, 2022)

_'As far as he was concerned they were just food-growers who happened to work the fields on either side of the Dwarves' ancestral road to the Mountains.'_
UT, The Quest of Erebor, Appendix

The "he" is Thorin, "they" are the hobbits of the Shire, and the speaker is Gandalf. So the conclusion must be that there was trade between Dwarves and hobbits.

As for the diamond studs, leaving aside the traditional mutual suspicion between the races, I don't think the Elves need be invoked at all. For one thing, we have this, from "A Long-expected Party":


> On this occasion the presents were unusually good. The hobbit-children were so excited that for a while they almost forgot about eating. There were toys the like of which they had never seen before, all beautiful and some obviously magical. Many of them had indeed been ordered a year before, and had come all the way from the Mountain and from Dale, and were of real dwarf-make.


We have to keep in mind that in this first chapter, we are essentially still in the world of _The Hobbit_; the enlargement into the darker tale only begins to emerge at the end. The "magic" in the toys, seen through the eyes of hobbit-children, could easily be attributed to the natural mechanical ingenuity of Dwarves, as alluded to in posts above. It's ambiguous, I grant, and can be considered a toss-up.

But the studs themselves were given by _Gandalf_; a wizard, and at this point still the wizard of _The Hobbit_, who would not be above "magic cufflinks". Whether Dwarves had any connection with them is another question.

Just to point out that Gerontius was Bilbo's maternal grandfather; this partly accounts for Bilbo's "competition", and also perhaps for the resentment at his being "unchanged" more than long-lived. The Tooks, after all, were considered a "remarkable" race; enough so to give rise to the story that "long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife". In fact, the first edition has


> It had always been said that long ago one or another of the Tooks had married into a fairy family (the less friendly said a goblin family)


As far as I know the Shire hobbits had no knowledge of the Dunedain, but if they had, I suppose they might well have been included in the rumors. I'd have serious doubts, myself. 😄


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## Elbereth Vala Varda (Jul 24, 2022)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> _'As far as he was concerned they were just food-growers who happened to work the fields on either side of the Dwarves' ancestral road to the Mountains.'_
> UT, The Quest of Erebor, Appendix
> 
> The "he" is Thorin, "they" are the hobbits of the Shire, and the speaker is Gandalf. So the conclusion must be that there was trade between Dwarves and hobbits.
> ...


Good points, Squint. Thanks.


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