Meeting Hobbits in the Elder Days and the Mystery of Untranslated Texts

Our picture of hobbits is so shaped by the Third Age that it can genuinely feel like an adventure to go back thousands of years before the War of the Ring in search of the Little Folk to find them hiding on the margins of some of the Great Tales. As Professor Tolkien explains:

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own 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. - J.R.R. Tolkien, Concerning Hobbits

Imagine yourself picking blackberries somewhere near the East Sea, where some say Men were awakened, and noticing a sandy path leading to a little hole in the ground, with a smooth stone perched outside it rather like the bench that would one day stand in the dooryard of a certain Mr. Baggins. The smial is surrounded by edible coastal plants, like wild radish and carrot, dune waxcap mushrooms, sea buckthorn, dock, beach strawberry, sea purslane and sea aster, sorrel and a few wild oats. You hear nothing but the distant sound of waves and gulls, but because you are are very still and observant, you suddenly realize that two pairs of shining eyes are peering out at you from amid the bracken.

Clad in moss and fern and wreathed in leaves and flowers, the hobbits you are quietly regarding are the progenitors whose descendants will go unnoticed in the written records of Men and even in the old lists of the Ents until the Third Age. Perhaps it was during these long-ago years that they developed their skills of walking almost noiselessly and hiding with such rapidity that it seems almost like magic. Surrounded by far larger folk of uncertain intent, it's easy to see why hobbits of the Elder Days might have needed to be shy and secretive. Yet, the sympathetic eye will readily detect the good-nature that is already plain in their little faces.

I hope, like me, that you immediately warm to this half-glimpsed couple and find yourself wondering what you might say or do to invite them to come out for a chat or a walking-party.

Two mysteries of Tolkien's translations of hobbit lorebooks

This is as far back as my 2025 deep dive into hobbit history and culture has been able to take me. As I have been working hard at painting and writing for my hoped-for second book all this year, this scene is the most distant faint echo I can catch from the texts on the origin of hobbits. My adventure has raised two questions for me - one an in-universe mystery and the other, an observation which I've not heard voiced by fellow readers.

Pre-migratory Harfoots, Fallohides and Stoors - Miriam Ellis

1) Like Men, hobbits don't really know when or where they began

This first mystery isn't much of a surprise, but it is a very historical-feeling detail that hobbits' own memories of their origins went no further back than their days in the Vales of Anduin.

There, the three hobbit kindreds dwelt separately but alongside one another prior to Greenwood the Great darkening and becoming known as Mirkwood. At that point, the Harfoots began their Wandering Days over the Misty Mountains, followed by the Fallohides and then the Stoors by a different route, eventually arriving in Eriador and into written history.

The question here is how they got from their suggested awakening-place, in the far east, to these green valleys between the tall mountain range and the broad forest. What caused them to journey westward? Was it a sudden event, or was their great migration a gradual drift? I'd love to know your ideas on this if you follow me on social media.

It's a question we can only speculate about, of course, because no answer that I know of exists in the texts. The scenario is quite reminiscent of our own as Big Folk. Religions and sciences may speculate about where Man came into being, but no one living remembers back that far. This is one of those facets of the lore that has "the inner consistency of reality" which Professor Tolkien admired.

2. Which source materials did Professor Tolkien lack the time to translate?

This is the big mystery that I've gradually come to recognize as I've been reading and painting my way through hobbit history.

As cherished tradition has it, J.R.R. Tolkien merely acted as translator of hobbit texts that he came upon in an undisclosed way. His scribal duties brought us The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and a bit more information related to hobbits that was subsequently published by Christopher Tolkien in volumes like The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.

Detail, "Three Books of Lore" - Miriam Ellis

I feel on fairly firm ground surmising that what Professor Tolkien "found" was some version of the hobbit lore books that were begun by Bilbo Baggins, enlarged by Frodo Baggins, and added to by Sam Gamgee and the Fairbairns of Westmarch, Merry Brandybuck, and perhaps a few other writers. Tolkien came upon something like the set of volumes known as the Red Book of Westmarch.

But, clearly, the Professor did not translate all that he found when he published his own main books. Why do I think this?

Because his letters are filled with additional information about the hobbits that appears nowhere in the manuscripts that Tolkien sent to his publishers. Time after time, fan mail from readers asks hobbit questions, and Tolkien was frequently able to respond with an authoritative answer that wasn't covered in his published books. My conclusion: he must have been drawing these answers from parts of the found texts that never made it into the official publications.

We know that serious concerns surrounded publication; book length, reader interest, and even the cost of paper may have had caused the Professor to pick and choose what he included in the canon. But he had so much more to tell readers in his letters, about hobbit birthday customs, clan leadership, languages, etc.

"Hidden Hobbits" - Miriam Ellis

Keeping within the found text tradition, and thinking of dear Christopher Tolkien whose birthday we just observed this week, I think we are left with a big mystery of what the untranslated texts might have been. Did Christopher have them? Were there passages as long as The Quest of Erebor that we'll never read because we are now without these two great men?

I know I could never read enough "concerning hobbits" and wish there had been time for further translations, but at least we have the letters which immeasurably enrich our picture of the Little Folk who had become so hard to find by the 20th century.

I hope I can at least add a little to the experience of fellow readers by offering this rare glimpse of hobbits of the Elder Days, long before they had pocket handkerchiefs and "umberellas," but, perhaps, from a time when their love of eating made them good at finding homes amongst edible plants, leading to the eventual skills of cultivation that made their gardeners famous in later years. Please, enjoy this video short and the joy of imagining a sighting of ancient hobbits somewhere far away and long ago beside the sea.