Where Did THE HOBBITS Originally Come From? | Middle Earth Lore | Hobbit Day 2020

hello and welcome to history of middle earth today we are looking at where the race of hobbits came from my dear bagginses and boffins and my dear tookes and brandy bucks and grubs and chubs and boses and hornblowers and burgers brace curdles good bodies brock houses and proud foots first of all happy hobbit day it is september 22nd which if you had not guessed is hobbit day every single year and this day was chosen in reference to it being the day of bilbo baggins and frodo baggins's shared birthday in fact this entire week is known as tolkien week but now for regular viewers of ours you may have realized that this is not a regular upload day or time for us as this is a part of a very special playlist we have joined the fellowship of several other tolkien creators on youtube to all put out a video related to hobbit day today so i kindly ask of you all obviously after finishing this one please check out the playlist and all of the creators videos too everyone has put in a lot of work into this and there is never such a thing as too much tolkien but now let's just get into ours [Music] now this is a topic that has always entrusted me personally as the hobbits are definitely one of my favorite races and sadly though there is not actually that much known about them especially with their origins but i thought it would be fun to at least take a little look into the little that we can find and maybe try and make some educated assumptions at least now where to begin ah yes so most of the information that was actually written down by tolkien or comes within the prologue of the lord of the rings specifically the section concerning hobbits which is no real surprise but together let's take a look at it so firstly hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people more numerous formerly than they are today for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt so straight away we see that they have definitely been around for a long time as the passage even goes on to say that the beginnings of the hobbits lie back in the elder days which by this point in their history which obviously is the third age this refers to any time from the first stage of middle earth or before however one assumption that can be made is that they were not completely created as their own individual set of beings as they were never mentioned specifically within the stories of the cell meridian in other words at the creation of everything which if you do not know does actually describe the beginnings of all of the likes of elves dwarves and men as well as the world in itself but there is no mention of our good natured and hearty hobbits now there is a theory that i will talk about in a bit which could be very interesting but let's cover a couple of other things first now let's have another look at the concerning hobbits section for our next bit it is plain indeed that in spite of larger estrangement hobbits of relatives of ours far nearer to us than elves or even than dwarves of old they spoke the languages of men after their old fashion and liked and disliked much the same things as men did but what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered the beginning of hobbits lies far back in the elder days that are now lost and forgotten only the elves still preserve any records of that vanished time and their traditions are concerned almost entirely with their own history in which men appear seldom and hobbits are not mentioned at all yet it is clear that hobbits had in fact lived quietly in middle earth for many long years before the falk became even aware of them so from this tolkien does very much apply that they come from men at least this is a lot more likely than that being the case with alves or dwarves however despite saying this the hobbits do seem to share characteristics with each of these beings they speak the same language and possess the same lifespan of men but on the other hand they seem to be closer to the height of dwarfs and their feet are most likely to come from a dwarven-type gene than any of the other two and both also choose mainly to live underground but also they share physical traits with the elves like their ears being more pointed than that of men if we actually go back to the original distinctions of the different hobbits we would find three branches we would have the harfords the stores and the fallow heights these three were different because the harfords were the most by number and were said to be the last to enter eredaw where they lived on the lowest slopes of the misty mountains in hobbit halls dug into the hillsides they were comfortable in their halls and are closest to the kind of hobbits that we meet in the third age in the shire these were also said to be the most friendly with the dwarves then we have the stores who lived on the marshy gladden fields where the gladden river met the anduin they were more comfortable with water living mostly near rivers and were the only of the hobbits that could swim and use boats these were also the only of the hobbits who could actually grow a beard if they wished and finally we have the fallow highs they preferred to live in the woods now under the misty mountains and these were actually the smallest group in number but they were the taller of the hobbits though being more adventurous and having links to the elves so what is really interesting when looking at it and breaking down the three types of hobbit is almost as though each type is linked to a different race the harfords and the dwarves the stores and the men and the fallow heights and the elves so if anything this does the complete opposite of clearing things up they could really have come from anything in fact it has been remarked by some that hobbit's only real passion is for food i actually think now would be a fun time to have a look at that theory that i mentioned earlier now this is not my own made-up theory it is something that i read online but sadly i can't find the original creator of it to give credit to but basically this theory involves a certain mysterious being called tom bombadil the idea starts with how there is not even the slightest of mention of how hobbits appeared to the world as a result of men or elves or dwarves within the silmarillion so it is probably okay to think that they are their own independent race this could mean a valor is behind their creation just like the other races but when you have a being like saron being completely unaware of this race it appears less likely and that is where mary old tom comes into things now different people believe different things about tom some think he's a valor or maya some think he is the embodied version of arrow himself and some think he just appeared from the music of the einer similar to the likes of the evil spider and gollian but obviously just as a nice form and this idea of coming from the music could actually explain his constant singing but that's kind of a subject and a deeper die for another video as for hobbits they do actually share similar traits to tom they like their privacy they like their natural world they love a good song and they care little for the goings-on outside of their own specific homes this is even to the point that most in the shire are unaware of the existence of tom despite him living on their borders but this could be because he doesn't want the general hobbit being aware of his presence as he is the one who sang them into life creating them as a mixture of the other races of men elves and dwarves and giving them their own individual personality closer to that of his own more innocent nature and with his love of all things natural after all several valor had created other races like owly creating the dwarves urvana creating the ants or manway creating the eagles as some examples so if you do think of the idea of tom maybe being one of these or maya or some kind of all-powerful creation even as arrow himself then it is technically plausible but i suppose that is just kind of a bit more of a fun idea than necessarily one with a lot of evidence behind it i thought it would just be a good one to share it is brought home to me it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life now to start rounding this off obviously i will admit that the tom bombadil theory although quite fun i cannot completely believe in myself and this belief does actually come back to a letter of jrr tolkien specifically the letter 131 which he wrote in the 1950s and this letter contains the following information from him in the middle of this age the third age the hobbits appear their origin is unknown even to themselves for they escaped the notice of the great or the civilized people with records and kept none themselves save vague oral traditions until they had migrated from the borders of merkwood fleeing from the shadow and wandered westward coming into contact with the last remnants of the kingdom of arnold the hobbits are of course really meant to be a branch of the specifically human race not elves or dwarves so ending with that letter that pretty much sums up everything that we do know about the origins of the hobbits it is a little strange that they were never given a definitive history by tolkien especially as they were so central to his stories but i do believe at least partly that this was down to the original the hobbit story having been imagined by tolkien separately from his legendarium he was after all working on pieces of what would eventually become the silmarillion long before that he wrote the hobbit so he had actually already imagined origins for the others at that point and maybe he could not just find a way to fit hobbits into this too i mean it wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility that this is something tolkien would have come back to a later time again as we do know he did like to change things later in his life but obviously it might have been something he never got around to but at the end of the day maybe some more mystery and tolkien's work is not exactly a bad thing and now i would like to actually end this story as it is hobbit day after all with a message and that is to tell you that i am immensely fond of you all and that nearly 150 000 subscribers is too short a time to live amongst such excellent and admirable hobbits i do know half of you half as well as i should like and i like less than half of you half as well as you deserve now i know i know ian holm but hopefully you enjoyed that but there we have it a little summary of what we know about the origins of the hobbit race with a little bit of a fun theory added into it but now that that story is all done with i have my question for you today and that is if you were to be part of one of the three types of hobbits which one do you think you would belong to the harfords the stores or the fallow hides let me know which you think you would best belong to in the comments below also it is that time at the end of the video to give a massive shout out to all of our patrons you are the people who keep us going and give us the opportunity to create all of these videos for you every single week and i'd also like to just quickly mention at this point and i promise this will be the last time i do it is that right now we have been able to offer annual memberships on our patreon as well and if you do this you actually get a 10 discount for the annual membership so basically you get more than a month free which is great if you plan on being a patron for that long so if that does interest you the links to our patreon and everything like that are down below in the description so please go check that out and also now is time that i'd love to specifically mention our wizard staff patron tier members and these are lorenzo michael and gemma you three continued to go above and beyond with your support and we just cannot thank you enough 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Channel: History of the Ages

Views: 103,021

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Keywords: Lord of the rings, history of middle earth, middle earth lore, The Hobbit, lord of the rings lore, the hobbit lore, where did the hobbits come from, the origin of the hobbits, who were the first hobbits, are hobbits related to, are hobbits elves, are hobbits men, are hobbits dwarves, different breeds of hobbits, harfoots, stoors, hobbit day, hobbit day 2020, Tolkien week, tolkien YouTube channels, lord of the rings YouTube channels, frodo and Bilbo birthday, fallohides, Baggins

Id: to9w7Jg3Z_g

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020