Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

Hobbits loved straightforward rules as long as these supported their interests of food, music, walks, and other simple but fun activities. Their society appeared to be governed by three sets of regulations: written laws similar to those in a medieval feudalist government; unwritten social norms similar to those found in the European Middle Ages, Regency period, and Victorian period; and animal-like behaviors not exhibited by the other “races” in Tolkien’s legendarium. While the rules maintained social order and allowed the hobbits to enjoy their favorite things, including walks, conversation, and smoking, these also excluded some individuals from social participation and upward mobility, not unlike the exclusion of individuals in the Real World. This also created the opportunity for individuals with social power and understanding to subvert the rules to their own advantage, perhaps leading to positive changes.

Roads, Parks, and Hunting

As last discussed in “Prologue 1 Concerning Hobbits”, some written laws were implied to have existed in the Shire even prior to the rules enforced by Saruman through Lotho Baggins as revealed in “The Scouring of the Shire”. The original laws were seemingly based on three simple laws decreed by the Kings of Arthedain, the northernmost kingdom of Dúnedain colonists as described in-depth in “Appendix A, I The Númenórean Kings, (ii) The Realms in Exile”: acknowledge the King as the feudalist ruler, maintain an efficient royal messenger service, and regularly repair bridges and roads. These laws were adapted to benefit contemporary hobbits after the collapse of Arthedain with the Thain and the Master ruling over the Shire, transforming the royal messenger service into a public postal service, and improving roads with a hobbit sense of direction likely to confuse members of other Races.

While I have spoken extensively about feudalism throughout the series and covered the development of modern postal services, I have not thoroughly addressed national highway systems during the medieval period, the Real World era upon which some architecture and transportation systems seem to be based. In “Places: Bywater”, I mentioned how the Roman Empire had created roads throughout its colonized lands, and many modern English roadways were built atop these ancient roads, while across the water in South America, the Inka Empire created a similar system. English kings insisted that their subjects preserve and improve ancient roads, and laws were put into place by the time of Edward I in the late 13^th and early 14^th century.

An early draft of the Prologue mentioned how the Shire had previously been “a royal park and hunting grounds” (The Peoples of Middle-earth, 8), which the king visited three times a year by passing over the Bridge, an ancient stone bridge spanning the Brandywine River. No further detail was given as to why the king allowed the ‘Little People’ to live in his park. Perhaps they were loyal subjects who had earned their own semi-autonomous country within the empire, or he thought they were cute and would make great living decorations on his vacations.

Parks were trendy among the aristocracy during the Middle Ages in England, as they served as possible hunting grounds and a status symbol, described in the succinctly named book Parks in Medieval England by Dr. Stephen A. Mileson of Oxford University. While scholars traditionally believed these areas were used as an exclusive playground (Parks, 5) or a “Deer Park Funland”, modern research implies that the regular purposes were more practical. The king decided who was permitted to hunt and where, who might build artificial warrens for rabbits or stock ponds for fish, who might cut down trees for building materials and fuel, and who could feed their livestock on the property (Parks, 3). Since the Shire was known for its temperate climate, fertile soil, and supply of trees in the neighboring Old Forest, this was an ideal area for a working park.

Regarding the theory of keeping cute little hobbits around for entertainment, this reminded me of the garden or ornamental hermits, unhoused people used as accessories on the grounds of English elite during the 18^th century. These hired hermits commonly lived in an artificial cave, grotto, or treehouse known as a hermitage. Other job requirements included growing out their hair and beard, remaining “in a state of picturesque dirtiness”, going barefoot, and “doddering about amongst the discomforts and pleasures of nature”. Hobbits fit many of these traits, although they rarely grew beards and enjoyed frequent baths.

As adorable and historically supported as these two theories might be, a darker truth is implied in the text. Upon discovering Frodo wore the mithril coat that Thorin had given to Bilbo, Aragorn made an off-hand joke about hunting Shire hobbits for their skins (The Fellowship of the Ring, “Lothlórien”). Gimli followed up with his own teasing remark on hunting hobbits, while other members of the Fellowship made no comment about the inappropriate nature of the joke. Gandalf had already died in Moria and tended to be the only member to correct them. Interracial hunting was a known issue in Middle-earth. Sindar Elves had hunted Petty-dwarves, claiming that since the Petty-dwarves had never made treaties with them in a presumably Elvish custom, they believed that the smaller and bearded people were a type of two-legged animal rather than “Incarnates”, or a humanoid species with free will. Upon allying with the “greater Dwarves”, further justification was given, since Petty-dwarves were considered inferior outcasts from various Dwarf communities (The War of the Jewels, 388-389). This same justification for genocide has repeatedly played out in post-medieval history during Spanish conquest of Latin America, westward expansion in the United States and Canada, and the scramble for Africa.

Readers of a certain age may recall the phrase “Belgians in the Congo” from Billy Joel’s 1989 single “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, which I was forced to listen to as a child in middle school history class instead of receiving a real history lesson. Gripes about the failures of the education system aside, the song mentions an African colony whose rule was considered even more brutal than the norm. King Leopold II of Belgium led Belgian occupation of Central Africa from 1908 to 1960. The area became known internationally for its exaggerated tales spread by European explorers about hunting big game and local cannibalism.

One such adventurer was twenty-three-year-old Reginald Davey Cooper, who published Hunting and Hunted in the Belgian Congo in 1914, four years after his adventure began. Interestingly, Cooper claimed to have written his book to “arouse some little sympathy for my distant Congo friends, dusky though they be… The Belgians treat their natives like vermin; the British official, on the other hand, makes fools of them… the administration of the Belgians is terribly unjust and cruel” (Hunting, “Introduction”). Cooper’s protests about the treatment of indigenous people were more similar to supporting animal welfare than human rights. He justified murdering two “savage cannibals” but genuinely cared for his three “boys” who served him during the trip and called him Bwana, a Swahili honorific similar to “mister” or “master”. His views were not uncommon for the time; in fact, treating people of color with dignity and acknowledging their capability for higher level thought was considered radical. While no currently known textual evidence points to Dúnedain of Arthedain treating hobbits in this way, Dúnedain of Gondor kept Haradrim children as “hostages in the court” (The Return of the King, 356), showing how such behavior towards certain ethnic groups was socially acceptable.

Medieval Chivalry & Courtesy

Older generations have long complained about the manners of their youth falling by the wayside, forgetting that their own teenage years were spent sneaking out of the house to rock’n’roll concerts, lying about their ages to join a war, or eloping with their sweetheart from next door to settle in the West. Throughout the millennia of bad behavior, variations on etiquette have risen and fallen, frequently guarded by the upper classes and enforcing different standards depending on one’s social status in an attempt to maintain the status quo, which was not as rigid as the nobility hoped. Since the Shire is a society, it would be no different.

The familiar term chivalry arose in the Middle Ages and described manners of knighted men during feudalism, as the word chevaler meant “knight” in Old French and was based on the Latin word caballus meaning “horse”. The term “courtesy” was used for people from all walks of life and also came from Old French. In this time period, the “grace of manners” and strict dress code allowed one’s status to be immediately evident. The middle and upper class were taught “letters and manners” as young children typically by a mother or another woman in their village. These would evolve to become “dame schools” by the end of the Middle Ages, a precursor to the one-room school houses from early public education. Local ladies used textbooks written not by their peers but by upper class, educated men who might also serve as a religious leader, a definite way for dominant members of society to enforce status quo at an early age. It was not Sam’s seemingly absent mother but his father’s master, Bilbo, who “learned him his letters” (Fellowship, 24) but perhaps not his manners, as neither Sam nor Bilbo seemed keen to follow social rules. Perhaps Bilbo was testing out a potential textbook.

Manners of the medieval period fell into a few categories. Food manners were important, as medieval people believed foods had medicinal, miraculous, and magical qualities beyond what modern science understands as good nutrition. This stemmed from nearly universal participation in the Eucharist, also known as the Lord’s Supper, a Christian ceremony where participants eat bread (or a gluten-free cracker) and drink wine (or grape juice) to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Since the Fourth Lateran Council met in Rome, Italy in 1215, members of the Catholic Church, to which nearly all Western European Christians belonged, believed in transsubstantiatio or transubstantiation, that the bread and wine were divinely changed into actual body and blood despite being unchanged in appearance. While no food in the Shire appeared to have magical qualities, lembas bread baked by the Elves of Lothlórien could miraculously sustain travelers for several weeks, a subtle nod to this medieval belief.

Other medieval manners were based on appearance. Having “blonde hair, fair skin, and a clear complexion” was an advantage according to independent medieval historian Danièle Cybulskie, but keeping tidy and wearing clothes that fit properly were just as important. A standard morning routine found in Caxton’s Book of Curtesye included saying prayers, washing face and hands, combing hair, trimming nails, and blowing one’s nose. Of course, this runs counter to modern Hollywood depictions of a dirty medieval people wearing rags as children ran wild through the street. Hobbits were generally not religious, but their social norms of cleanliness were the same as real-world medieval people, as seen by Sam’s disgust upon returning to Hobbiton and discovering Ted Sandyman no longer washed himself (Return, “The Scouring of the Shire”).

Regency Rules

During the early 19^th century, a period known as the Regency era in Great Britain, manners turned from a social skill to an art form. Author Jane Austen wrote her satirical books during this period as she made subtle critiques about the unwritten rules of the landed gentry and lower nobility, while 20^th century author Georgette Heyer set her own books in the period. The blog Austenised presented a list of the complex rules followed by people of high standing, which was based on the book Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester.

Many rules involved restrictions on travel and the ability to make friends with other people. While some aspects of the rules were pleasant, such as visiting friends during set times of day and leaving a calling card should the friend not be home, others prohibited members of different social groups from becoming friends, such as men and women or employers and servants. Ranks were firmly held with different language used for “social inferiors” and “equals”, while guests to a dinner were sat in a specific order based on rank. Servants were ignored during meals, and “private business” was not mentioned with them present. The hobbits evidently did not hold to such rules, at least not the younger Tooks. Merry befriended Eowyn when she was both the White Lady and the warrior Dernhelm, while Frodo and Sam were famously best friends. Sam was always part of the cousins’ dinner excursions and at the center of their “private business”, as he was revealed to be the chief spy on Frodo in “A Conspiracy Unmasked”.

Victorian Etiquette Books

By the time of the Victorian era, which began in 1833, etiquette books were a trend for upper and middle class people. While working class people had their own sets of required rules, especially on how to obey their employers, these tended to be passed along orally, and I will cover this in two weeks in a separate essay on the relationships between masters and servants. While the etiquette books had roots in the textbooks written by upper class and well-educated clergy during the medieval period, the authors of these Victorian books were laymen, although the other attributes were the same. Books were frequently updated to spread current etiquette with several new editions a year. Separate volumes for gentlemen and ladies indicated double standards for etiquette, although the claimed gender of the often dubiously attested authors need not align with the gender they were addressing.

A middle-aged hobbit wearing a green suit sits in his office filled with books and busily writes.

Perhaps the funniest parts of the books for a modern reader were “puffs” or exaggerated claims to boast about the supposed author’s competence. Dr. Toni Weller, a historian currently working at De Montfort University Leicester, has argued that the puffery in these books demonstrated rising print culture, which led to information being validated not by a family member, friend, or local leader, as had been the case in previous generations, but by a producer of mass media who claimed authority, not unlike modern influencers. Bilbo was Victorian in spirit when he included a number of puffs in The Hobbit, reminding the readers that he owned a beautiful house, was skilled at a wide range of lawn games, could outwit anyone, and had rooms full of clothes. Perhaps he intended these puffs to prove his authority to write a memoir on his contribution to the Battle of the Five Armies, although he admittedly slept through the actual fighting.

These Little Guys Are Always Smoking

My ever-popular post about pipe-weed and its Real World equivalents talked about the history behind the plant but not the etiquette behind using it. One enduring issue is that those who smoke believe they share a delightful fragrance, and those who do not smoke thinks it smells terrible. The number of those who smoked was much higher in the past than today, likely due to our current knowledge about lung cancer, heart disease, and other adverse effects.

According to statistical research conducted by Prof. Matthew Hilton, perhaps the person with the most knowledge about historical British tobacco usage, around the time of the publication of The Lord of the Rings in the mid-20^th century, four out of five males over age fifteen smoked and two out of five females over age fifteen smoked, or about 70% of the adult population. I was initially surprised that fifteen was considered adult enough to smoke. As an American, the minimum age of tobacco product purchasing in the United States had been eighteen years old since Congress enacted the Synar Amendment in 1992. The recent passing of Tobacco 21 in 2019 raised the age of legal sale to twenty-one years old and took effect in 2024. In the United Kingdom, sales of tobacco products to people purchasing for a child under eighteen were banned in 2015, along with smoking in private vehicles with children.

A tween-aged hobbit with bright blue eyes and a matching blue suit smokes a pipe. A little child hobbit with golden-brown hair and a green suit looks up at him admiringly.

However, smoking was treated differently in centuries past. Smoking culture in the 19^th century was a masculine activity enjoyed by those with disposable income. Middleclass men were targeted with cult-like precision by books and magazine articles that conflated the activity with having an independent, liberal worldview. Real men chomped on cigars and maintained extensive pipe collections, while daintier women might have a cigarette. Smoking was even conflated with great music, as “smoking concerts” became a trend in the late 19^th century. Over in Buckland, Merry likely wrote his pipe-weed publications not just because of his intense special interest, but because his subjects would have viewed him as a progressive hobbit-lad of the people.

Hobbit Traits

Many traits possessed by the hobbits and apparently considered appropriate within their society were unique to them and have not yet been accepted into a dominant culture, at least not a human one. I previously mentioned the rabbit-like trait of stamping in “Races: Hobbits”, which Bilbo employed throughout The Hobbit, and Odo Proudfoot did after Bilbo’s disappearance during the Long-Expected Party (Fellowship, 32). Sam would later stamp out a fire with his bare feet while in the Old Forest (Fellowship, “Fog on the Barrow-downs”).

A family of three male hobbits wearing matching green suits sits in wooden chairs at a wooden table laden with half-eaten food. The grandfather sits in the middle with his feet on the table. The father sits on the right, and the little grandson sits on the left.

Speaking of Odo Proudfoot, he kept his “big hairy feet” on the table, and Bilbo seemed unhappy with him, perhaps due to the location of the feet (Fellowship, 32). However, hobbits might have been comfortable with being close to the feet of an elderly hobbit or would use their feet as extra hands. For the former theory, the practice of upasangrahan or bending down to touch the feet of an elder is a respectful greeting in India and has been used for thousands of years. The elders certainly do not put their feet on the table, but this indicates a comfortability with feet found in a long-lasting society that contrasts the general attitude about feet in the West. As for the latter theory, Legolas reported evidence of gripping behavior in hobbit feet during “The Council of Elrond”, as Gollum enjoyed climbing trees and “he had learned the trick of clinging to boughs with his feet as well as with his hands”. Since Gollum was born as Smeagol five hundred years earlier than the contemporary hobbits and was a Stoors, a “breed” known for their strength, he likely had stronger grip strength in his feet than the “mixed-breed” hobbits of the Shire and Bree.

The Real World parallels to this unique trait are both historical and scientific. For other species with a strong foot grip, bonobos or pygmy chimpanzees are the closest relative to modern humans and stand on average 3'9" (45 inches or 1.15m) in height, just as hobbits were the closest relatives to men and averaged between two and four feet, as mentioned in the Prologue. Strong foot grip in humans has been observed in people born without arms. A 2020 brain study hosted by the Plasticity Lab at University College London revealed that “foot artists” have neurological connections or sensory maps to their toes just as “handed” people have in their fingers. Hobbits would theoretically have a merger of both maps in their brains.

Another seemingly acceptable trait was similarly animal-like. Hobbits enjoyed sniffing the air and did so throughout Fellowship: Bilbo upon leaving Bag End for the final time in “The Long-Expected Party”; Frodo, Sam, and Pippin while stargazing after the small birthday party at “Three Is Company”; Merry during his walk where he encountered the ring-wraiths in “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”; Sam while walking in the gardens of Rivendell with Frodo in “The Council of Elrond”; and Gollum looking for Frodo in “Lothlorien” and “The Great River”.

Conclusion

Like other communal or collectivist cultures, conformance to these rules was crucial for maintaining the structure of their society. Since a legal system did not seem to exist outside of a process for verifying wills, deviant individuals were not sent to the lockholes in the capital Michel Delving but instead implied to be ostracized by all levels of the community. However, a major shift in cultural norms took place during the events of The Lord of the Rings as a new generation of leaders in the Shire chose to honor differences, or at least those beneficial in reconnecting the Shire to the rest of Middle-earth. This shift may have started as a group of rebellious tweens defying their elders to spend time with Frodo and ended up becoming comfortable with Sam since the pair was inseparable. The broken social norms involving interaction with Sam were obvious, as even though he used honorifics while addressing his “betters”, he was still casual in his conversations and sometimes reprimanded them.

A tall, fair hobbit wears a green suit with a golden waistcoat and matching bicorne hat. He stands in front of a round green door embedded in a grassy wall.

However, the broken norms regarding Frodo were somewhat more subtle. Besides potentially being viewed as illegitimate, as described in my essay on “Appendix C: Family Trees”, he scandalously refused to give sufficient answers in polite conversation and never called upon other hobbits of his rank, preferring to spend his time either alone, with Sam and the twenty closest hobbit-friends, or among dwarves and elves. Frodo was capable of understanding both explicit laws and implicit rules, indicated by his correct greetings for elves and dwarves and discussed thoroughly in “Middle-earth Psychology: Case Study #2”, but he disregarded what fellow hobbits considered the basis for their society and accordingly undermined the society at its foundation. As the wealthiest member of his community, if not his country, his shrugs and silence in reply to standard conversation would not have been viewed as mere eccentricity but damage to the social fabric, and Frodo undoubtedly knew what he was doing.

Read past installments of Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical