Correct me if I'm wrong, but the edition we have today of this fine fine classic is the revised edition. Somebody back in the 40's had alerted Tolkein to a few leetul glaring nits, and now we find Thrain the Old duly mentioned as the first King Under the Mountain. Now, as it stands on its own, I am proud not to be able to offer a single complaint against this wonderful work.

But alas, nitpickers never bother with little niceties such as standing-on-own. ;-)

Elrond identifies the swords of Gandalf and Thorin as mighty heirlooms of Gondolin, made for the gobin-wars. Both owners seem mildly impressed, and Thorin declares he will keep the blade in honor. No fuss, no ooh-ing and aah-ing, just one remark. Um... has somebody in the kitchen slipped tranquilizers into the food? According to the timetables given in _The Silmarillion_, these swords are 8,000 years old!!! (Our human civilization is only about 6-7,000 years old, by current calculations.) These weapons are mighty mighty heirlooms!

On the same note, I am way way impressed by the history programs at the Misty Mountain Institute for Goblin Education. The entire goblin guard is able to recognize these 8,000-year-old blades by name. These guys must be killer with regards to family feuds. (And no, Glamdring and Orcrist are not historically unique in their ability to glow in the dark when orcs or goblins are present. The modest little dagger which passes for Bilbo's sword also has this property.)

The tale of ill-will between the Wood-elves of Mirkwood and the dwarves offered here is interesting in its perfect resemblence to the unfortunate history of the Nauglamir as told in _The Silmarillion_. Either Thranduil is descended from Thingol's kin and has been holding a grudge these past 9,000 years, or both dwarves and elves could stand to learn from the goblins about the need to study history, 'cuz they're repeating themselves big time!

After all that, I do have two internal nits. Why do the Hobbiton lawyers wait 14 months after the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Baggins before auctioning off his property? And how does Gandalf finace his ittinerant do-gooding lifestyle?

Why do the Hobbiton lawyers wait 14 months after the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Baggins before auctioning off his property?

The Shire is known to have some strange laws. For example, a will must have the signatures of seven witnesses in red ink (see Fellowship of the Ring).

My main nit is on the elves of Rivendell. Can anyone imagine elves from the remainder of Tolkien's works behaving like that?

IIRC, JRRT himself said that if he had it to do over again, he would have made those elves less silly. But I can't remember where I read that -- the letters, maybe?

Ah, well. Perhaps the miruvor was flowing freely that night. ;-)

I believe Thranduil is descended from Thingol's kin, actually. (And he always struck me as having a bad case of Thingol-envy... ;-) ) I need to double-check that, though. (At least, they're both Sindarin.)

And speaking of the Revised Edition -- as we all no doubt know, Chapter Five was completely overhauled when JRRT wrote LotR, to make Gollum's behavior more consistent with the nature of the Ring.

Re: the miruvor
Gildor's folk (who are definitely sober) do get a little giggly a'times. I always thought the Rivendell welcoming committee was just really drunk that night.

Question: were the dwarves who ransacked Thingol's kingdom after the affair of the Nauglamir from Moria? (I remember them being from another tribe, but I'm not sure.) If they were not, Thranduil has no good reason to be so snappish towards well-known Moria-descendent Thorin Oakenshield.

They were from either Nogrod or Belegost. I can't remember which.

Gandalf pays for his life style from the funds of White Council, I'd Imagine. I'm assuming he has other means as he is a Maiar and does have the Ring of Fire.
Norgord killed Thingol.

Thingols only descendents are the line of Dior, Beren's son. Mirkwood is based off Mengoth, but not as much as Lothlorien.

What the H*LL are you talking about, Matt? Lothlorien based on Menegroth (note the spelling!)???????

Lothlorien is open cities up in trees. Menegroth is in a giant cavern. Yeah, Lorien's really based on Menegroth.

Thranduil is a Sindarin Lord. Nobody here stated that he was descended from the LINE of Thingol, only related (remember, Thingol had at least one brother). Thranduil is probably descended from the line of Lenwe.

Lothlorien and Menegroth had a magical barrier around it created by their Queens, both of whom lived in Menegroth during it's height.

Besides everyone knows that all Nolder cities are based off Turin and all Sinder cities are based on Menegroth. (Vanyar live on a mountian writting poetry, so they don't matter.)

Mirkwood elves left the Sinder Migration at the Anduin river. I Checked my Tolkien Encycolpedia and couldn't find anything on their relation.

Matt, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use a spell checker...

It's "Tirion", "Noldor", and "Sindar". Incidentally, the Sindar specifically refer to those of the Teleri who crossed the Ered Luin into Beleriand. The Elves of Mirkwood are probably a combination of the Nandor and Avari.

The Nandor ar the elves who left the Telerin migration at either the Anduin or the Hithaeglir (Misty Mountains) - I can't remember which) and who were led by Lenwe.

The Avari were "The Unwilling", the Elves who did not go on the westward migration.

Do you really think that a spell check could help in these words?

All Avari live by the Eastren sea. They didn't migrate at all. They just shurnk.

That's never stated that they still by the Inland Sea of Helcar. As a matter of fact, it states that "to Cuivienen there is no returning" (Silmarillion, p.48).


Unfinished Tales (pp 256-260) discuss the Silvan Elves and their princes. Apparently the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien are Teleri who did not cross the Misty Mountains, and are therefore related to the Nandor. Further (p.256), the "Silvan Elves hid themself in woodland fastnesses beyond the Misty Mountains, and became small and scattered peoples, hardly to be distinguished from Avari".

Unfinished Tales, (p.257-258) quotes LOTR Appendix B, "before the building of the Barad-dur, many of the Sindar passed eastward and some established realms in the forests far away, where their people were mostly Silvan Elves. Thranduil, king in the north of Greenwood the Great, was one of these." Note that Greenwood the Great is the original name of Mirkwood before the establishment of Dol Guldur.

UT, p.258 also states that Oropher the father of Thranduil was slain at the Battle of Dagorlad.

Regarding the similarities to Menegroth: UT, p.259. "Oropher was of Sindarin origin, and no doubt Thranduil his son was following the example of King Thingol long before, in Doriath; though his halls were not to be compared with Menegroth".

This really doesn't belong in "The Hobbit" anymore, except for the references to Thranduil.

P.S. No a spell-checker wouldn't work, but you could check the spelling yourself (I did - I got my copies of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, esp. because I couldn't remember how to spell Cuivienen).

So where was Legolas when Bilbo and company made
their visit to Mirkwood?
In LOTR he's revealed to have been Thranduil's
son and old enough to have been old enough to
have been of age when the events of THE HOBBIT
take place(also in the council at Elrond's
he seems to act apologetic to what happened to
Bilbo and company).

Lea, you may be amused to hear this, but whenever I think of the scene with the goblins I always think of "When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls" from Ruddigore.

Oh, and I'm sure The Hobbit was slightly revamped (DON'T say: Tolkien didn't use Vampires!!!!), something to do with Bilbo's memory of how he got the ring.

In the FotR it mentions on several occasions that Bilbo lied in the There and Back Againg: A Hobbit's Holiday, or The Hobbit, or the Red Boook of Westmarch, as to how he escaped Gollum. It says in my older copy of The Hobbit that Tolkien has fixed some continuity errors and changed the Gollum chapter to match the TRUTH. I'm usure as to whether Tolkien changed the story after the FotR to match his new story, or if he was just pretending that the Red Book was published before he read it. I tell ya, that's wizard's just a crazy old man.

I believe Thranduil is descended from Thingol's kin, actually. (And he always struck me as having a bad case of Thingol-envy... ;-) ) I need to double-check that, though. (At least, they're both Sindarin.)

(Delayed reaction) Wait a min. . .! Thingol's people (except for his wife) were Sindarin, but wasn't Thingol himself not Sindarin, since he had in fact been to Valinor and seen the light of the Trees?

He was Sindarin, but alone of the Sindar, he was also considered one of the Calaquendi.

I tell ya, that's wizard's just a crazy old man. - Wes Collins

Maybe so, but you gotta admire his ingenuity... in all its levels!

Tolkien did use vampires, but only in the Similarian. See Beran.

That's Beren. And it was Sauron who took the form of a vampire, not Beren.

Wes and Padawan: According to my copy of "Fellowship of the Ring," it says that in the original "Hobbit," Gollum is going to give the Ring to Bilbo as the reward if he wins the riddle contest, but Bilbo already has it anyway. Tolkien apparently realized that there was no way Gollum would give up the ring, so he just had Bilbo steal it.

Bilbo didn't steal the ring per se, he found it in a tunnel. Gollum called him a thief, so he lied to the dwarves to assuage his conscience.

I always thought it very strange that Gandalf was unable to read the runes on Glamdring and Orcrist, and had to wait for Elrond to read them for him. I was under the impression that Elvish script hadn't changed much since it was invented. But in any case, Gandalf seems to have no trouble reading the Moria gate's Elvish writing, and that dates back to the early Second Age. Did Gandalf just finally get around to learning Elvish between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring? I think not.

Even stranger was a nit brought up earlier by Kira Sharp, that the goblins of the Misty Mountains recognized these 7000-8000 year old swords. That started me to thinking, though, and correct me if I'm wrong, that maybe orcs, like elves, have some kind of immortality. That is, they'll live forever unless they're killed off. (That, at least, might account for the rapid manner in which they can multiply.) I had this idea because somewhere (and I forget where)Tolkien suggested that Melkor originally created orcs by corrupting elves, or even mixing the elvish race with some other creatures. If orcs were originally elves, why wouldn't they have the same trait of immortality? At the very least, since we see the Great Goblin and other orcs in this book recognizing Orcrist and Glamdring, isn't it possible that they were alive back in the days when Gondolin was destroyed, and personally saw the swords in action?

He suggested it in The Silmarillion.

Whose dumb idea was it to have the emergency entrance accessible only during a freak luni-solar incident?

And how did Bilbo figure out Gollum's name-- or nickname? Gollum never introduces himself.

I wondered that myself. My idea is that Bilbo just called him the `Gollum creature', for the same reason everyone else does. After all, that's what Frodo thought of him as in The Shadow of the Past (Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 2), and Gollum calls himself `Smeagol', his real name. Of course, that doesn't explain why he's called simply `Gollum' in The Hobbit, which is supposed to be Bilbo's memoirs (There And Back Again)

Nowhere in this book does anyone call the Hobbit homeland The Shire, but somehow between Bilbo's meeting & The Fellowship Of The Ring Gollum somehow learns about it to have it tourtured out of him. Tolkien could have corrected this when he revised chapter 5 but I guess no-one pointed it out.

When reading this at school my Teacher reckoned that 2 Middle Earth years equal 1 of our years, which may help with dating the swords.

Nope. One M.E. Year equals one of our years. See the Appendix to RotK (I think it's Appendix D, but I won't swear to it).

--By Richard Davies on Friday, January 17, 2003 - 04:35 pm: Nowhere in this book does anyone call the Hobbit homeland The Shire, but somehow between Bilbo's meeting & The Fellowship Of The Ring Gollum somehow learns about it to have it tourtured out of him. Tolkien could have corrected this when he revised chapter 5 but I guess no-one pointed it out.--

Actually, in FotR, Gandalf states that Biblo told Gollum his(Bilbo's) name, "and once you know someone's name, it is easy to figure out their country." This nicely covers up that nit.

In the German translation of The Hobbit (or one of them, as there might be several - I'm referring to the Klett-Cotta boxed edition of LOTR and The Hobbit), when Bilbo sings his little song to the Mirkwood spiders, he calls a spider a "b-i-t-c-h" (Schlampe) and advises it to get a "flashlight" (Taschenlampe). It rhymes but I'm pretty sure that Tolkien did not write about flashlights (or bitches). It's almost as bad as the German translations of Terry Pratchett books, where EVERYONE is on first-name terms (as in: "Hi, Ruler of the City, how are you today?)

Side note: Guess who did the German translations for the two TNG nit guides? And who did horrible things there too? Yes, A.B. again. But then his "Du" in the Pratchett books creates a nice little bit of atmosphere.

I'm more inclined to think that it ruins all the atmosphere there is. For example, Lord Vetinari is supposed to be a dangerous person of whom everybody is afraid (Jingo: "He was sitting here with a man even the assassins' guild was afraid of."). Yet people in the German translation act is if he was their old childhood friend! It's disconcerting.

By the way, what is a "Beckmesser" supposed to be? Is there such a word in German? "Nitpicker" makes sense, but "Beckmesser"?

According to Mr. Duden a Beckmesser is a "kleinlicher Tadler und Krittler (nach einer Gestalt aus Wagners Meistersingern)". Not exactly very honorable. Oh, and the "Worst of Brandhorst" can be found at Scheibenwelt.de.

Orcs would be immortal. As Immortality is the gift of the Elves from God, the Vala Melkor does not have the power to take it from them.

I pointed this out elsewhere but its probably worth repeating.
During the Lord of the Rings its pretty well established whenever someone puts on the ring Sauron "sees" them. Yet Bilbo puts on the ring several times (using it continuously for days in Thranduil's kingdom) yet the ringwraiths don't come after him?
Along the same lines Smaug, as a spawn of Melkor, probably knows of the ring. What it can do and the history behind it. I would think he would deduce its presence and make every effort to retrieve it as fast as possible.
I never had a problem with Gollum knowing Bilbo is a hobbit. He was a hobbit himself (sort of) and its fairly well known where hobbits live. His name is Bilbo. He's obvioulsy a hobbit, Hobbits live in The Shire.
How does he know Gollum's name? IIRC it was establish hes called "Gollum" because thats the sound he makes as a coughs and hacks (which he often does.)
Hey, what happened to Gollum's love of riddles?

I presume at this time Sauron's power is too weak to detect the ring. Maybe Gollum gave up on riddles after loosing to Bilbo.

Yeah, plus he was kind of busy getting his rear end kicked out of Dol Guldur at the time as well.

Yeah Guldur, just on the other side of the forest. I'd think he could just tell the wraiths to get busy, assuming they didn't already know to just go get it if it shows up.

I contend that the idea that Sauron can "see" the wearer of the Ring whenever it's being used was never established in the Lord of the Rings books, only in the movies. I doubt the Sauron's abilities to even sense the Ring in typical cases (Amon Hen and Mt. Doom being the exceptions, I think).

The case of Bilbo using the Ring in Mirkwood without being spotted by Sauron isn't unique. Sam used the Ring right at the border of Mordor, without being discovered, or aparently even suspected of having the Ring. If distance from Sauron is a factor in the equation, keep in mind that the closest Bilbo would have come to Dol Guldur was approximately twice as far as the distance Sam was from Barad-dur.

Even if Sauron had a vague inkling of the Ring's use at the time Sam used it, he seemed to be so preoccupied with Aragorn and the siege of Minas Tirith that he didn't bother to follow up on that prompting. Whatever he thought it was, he couldn't have consciously thought the Ring was at Cirith Ungol, or he would have made some attempt to get it back. Likewise, if he had sensed Bilbo and the Ring in some way, as ScottN pointed out, he was probably too concerned with the White Council at that particular moment to give it much thought. Wise fool...

As for the Ringwraiths, I'm even less impressed with their ability to sense the Ring. For instance, though Frodo wasn't using it at the time, the Black Rider having a chat with the Gaffer wasn't the least bit wise to the fact that the Ring was a few mere yards away! OK, weak example, but the only really strong case I can remember of the Ringwraiths' ability to sense the Ring while in use was at Weathertop, when Frodo was standing right in front of them...

I have a question for the experts here:

Why do Gandalf and the dwarves need Bilbo as a "burglar"? Did they just want him to be a patsy during their quest? If so, doesn't this make Gandalf and immoral jerk?

And how did they first learn of Bilbo? Why did they go to the Shire, given that Hobbits generally eschew things like adventure?

It's been a while since I read the book. I know Gandalf pays Bilbo a visit. He then directs the dwarfs to his house (hole in the ground) and Bilbo ends up having no choice in the matter. I don't remember why Gandalf chooses him though.

It's explained in the appendix to the Lord of the Rings. Couple of reasons (IIRC... I don't have my copy here).

* Hobbits move incredibly silently.
* Gandalf thought it would be good for Bilbo.
* It may have been subliminal urging by the Valar.

In the movie, Gandalf states that Hobbits can pass unnoticed when they wish and while the dragon Smaug might know the scent of dwarves, it probably doesn't know the smell of Hobbits, thus further allowing Bilbo to pass unnoticed as the group's burgular.