Talk:Hobbit/Archive 2

Hobbit's disapearance?
I haven't read many of Tolkiens notes, but if I recall correctly it states in "The Hobbit" that hobbits are hard to find these days because they are smaller and good at hiding from big people like us who go trampling about like a herd of elephants that hobbits can hear from a mile away, and that in "Unfinished Tales" it says that the hobbits dwindled in size, forgeting their arts and hiding away from men in holes? I see no reference that says they leave middle earth, so we can presume they are still there today, unless there is some other source, so can we remove the line saying that they disappeared after the fourth age? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.61.79.83 (talk • contribs) 2006-03-10 17:34:06 (UTC)

T2T MUD
The "Games" section fails to mention http://t2tmud.org/ which was an online multiplayer dungeon in the 90s and still exists today!

Origin of term "hobbit"
Tom Shippey's dismissal of The Denham Tracts as a source of the term 'hobbit' is dubious. In reviewing his work, his rebuttal rests entirely on his claim that in The Denham Tracts 'hobbit' is included "in a run of distinctly insubstantial creatures which hardly correspond to Tolkien's almost pig-headedly solid and earthbound race." (The Road to Middle-Earth, 2005 edition, p.76). I have reviewed the book and this is the entirety of the argument, the sole reason Shippey provides to doubt it is that the creatures on the list are insubstantial (ie, incorporeal), while Toklein's hobbits are flesh and blood. This is dubious for at least two seasons. (1) Of the 200+ unique entries on the list, Shippey quotes only four of them, including hobbit. Entries that he does not quote include the following: witches, wizards, hags, warlocks, satyrs, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, fire-drakes, elves, giants, dwarfs, conjurers, trolls, and goblins among others. These beings are clearly not thought of as being incorporeal, in general. They are typically seen as being flesh and blood. So Shippey's claim that the list is made up of incorporeal creatures seems dubious at best - and these examples all fall between the beginning of the list that Shippey quotes, and the entry for hobbit. (2) Moreover, even if all of those creatures were to be considered incorporeal, the list includes elves, dwarves, goblins and trolls, all of which are terms used by Tolkien in Middle-Earth to represent flesh and blood creatures. As such, if the list were made up entirely of incorporeal creatures in The Denham Tracts, then Tolkien demonstrated he had no issue using the names to represent corporeal creatures, and as such that fact cannot be used to rebut the idea that hobbit derives from it. Ifyffe (talk) 23:09, 15 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Ifyffe, whatever you think, believe, or argue about what a major Tolkien scholar has written in a reliable source is of no concern to Wikipedia: we call that original research, and it is strictly forbidden. If you can find major Tolkien scholars who have argued decisively that Shippey was wrong, then we can cite them. At the moment, there aren't any. Please stop wasting time here, it is getting very close to disruptive behaviour. Many thanks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:39, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I believe I have followed wikipedia's guidance on dubious claims. One of the stated purposes of the dubious tag is "to question the veracity, accuracy, or methodology employed by a given source" which is precisely what I'm doing. I have explained why the methodology used by Shippey's is questionable. He seems to be misrepresenting the content of The Denham Tracts. I have used to lowest level of disagreement available - I'm not directly challenging the claim, instead pointing out that the reasoning is dubious, and explaining why here on the Talk page. I'm not challenging the editor's summary of Shippey's claim, because the summary of it is accurate. Just pointing out that the claim itself does not seem to follow from the source that Shippey is using to make it (ie, The Denham Tracts). If you believe the claim is not dubious, please provide your explanation as to why, preferably with verifiable sources. This is not original research, this is following the guidelines for dubious claims. Even major scholars can make specific claims that are dubious. We shouldn't simply assume they're correct in everything they say simply because they're a major scholar. Ifyffe (talk) 16:35, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * No, you haven't. I am not saying I trust Shippey simply because he is a major scholar, though he is; I trust him because the whole community of Tolkien scholars trusts him, and they have very rarely found fault with anything he has written in the past 40 years or so. The article is reliably cited, which means it properly per Wikipedia's core verifiability policy, WP:V, systematically cites high-quality scholarly sources, WP:RS. Your coming up with your own WP:OR "Original Research" theories which disagree with the best scholarship available is not a reason to suppose that an article is dubious. I am therefore removing the tag at once. I would be grateful if you could carefully study the policies I have linked, as these are central to the workings of the encyclopedia, before you do anything else here on Wikipedia. Many thanks, Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:59, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * It's not an article that's dubious, it's one specific claim that's dubious, specifically the one that was tagged as dubious and explained here on this page. I believe you are demonstrably incorrect in your interpretation here. The guidelines on dubious claims specifically state "Add after a specific statement or alleged fact that is sourced but that nevertheless seems dubious or unlikely." Note the reference to "a specific statement." Your mentioning that it's properly cited is irrelevant, because the dubious tag does not challenge the propriety of the citation - there is another tag for that, which I did not use. So it seem your understanding of the policies in question are not as complete as you might think. Fortunately I have now found a peer-reviewed source that renders Shippey's argument on this matter entirely moot, and I will work on an edit to bring the arguments from that source into the discussion so that Shippey's inadequate response can be removed entirely, superceded by a better source on this one particular claim (ie, that Tolkien may have gotten the term from The Denham Tracts), one that actually addresses the idea in detail rather than dismissing it out-of-hand. Ifyffe (talk) 17:09, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm very glad you are looking for sources rather than arguing from what you believe, something that is *never* usable in articles. I'll help format the citation and edit the text as needed. However, the source will have to be from a known scholar, or in a major journal, or preferably both - we can't use a student paper or blog, for instance. Given the case, I think it unlikely we'll simply remove Shippey's statement, but if the new source is reliable then we will qualify what is said. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:13, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * We certainly shouldn't remove Shippey because of Flowers, who does not claim to be a scholar. I've added two more sources, which show that ["hobbet" = seed-basket, measure of quantity] was known to Tolkienists many years before Flowers, and further that they had already observed that the term with its non-living-thing meaning had no connection with Tolkien's hobbits. Must admit, I'd seen the papers long ago, and thought "hobbet" not worth mentioning as it clearly wasn't a living thing (nor even an undead one). I've edited the material down a bit. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:52, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Based on wikipedia's own page of what a scholar is, Flowers is a scholar. He has a master's degree in literature, and an article in peer-reviewed journal, among other contributions to Tolkien research. "Scholar" includes "acadamic", but is not synonymous with academic. Minor point, but again you seem to be using your own personal definitions of things rather than what's present on wikipedia. Retaining Shippey's dubious claim - and it is a dubious claim, you have done no work to demonstrate otherwise - actually undermines the stated conclusions of scholars. He addressed The Denham Tracts in passing, and dismissed it with an inaccurate statement. Other Tolkien scholars addressed The Denham Tracts in some detail, which Shippey did not, so it makes little sense to retain his comment when he doesn't really address the issue, while other scholars have. Anyone who bothers to click on the link to The Denham Tracts will find, if they have any knowledge of folklore, that it is not in fact a list of incorporeal creatures. As such, Shippey's claim potentially harms the case of scholars rather than supporting it, because he uses dubious reasoning. People may question the conclusion because of his specious reasoning, when other scholars have provided a much more thorough analysis. If you wish to retain Shippey's comment, it should be marked with a dubious tag, which is why it is better to remove itentirely, since there is other scholarship that arrives at the same conclusion via non-dubious means. Ifyffe (talk) 19:12, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * There is certainly no consensus to remove Shippey's statement (you have been reverted by two other editors, not by me), nor any reason to. As for Flowers, he says of himself "I am a self-employed wildlife guide." and makes no claim whatsoever to scholarship; and on this evidence, it's just as well, really. As for specious reasoning, we've now got both "sides" in there, which is balanced, and readers can judge for themselves what seems at all plausible. There is no call whatsoever for a "dubious" tag, on any of the grounds listed in the policy (nearly all of them don't apply here, and the effective-scholarly-challenge ground doesn't really seem to work either, so that makes precisely NO reason to tag). Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:16, 16 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I am not at all keen on engaging in what philosophers would call "object-level" discussion of whether Shippey was correct to say the various boggles and goblin-words in the Denham Tracts denote insubstantial figures, as we have no procedure for agreeing such matters, nor is it Wikipedia policy (talk pages are not forums for such discussions). However, for what it's worth, I suggest that any uninvolved reader who happened to scan the list in that article would certainly agree with Shippey that the overwhelming impression is of insubstantial and ghostly beings, sounds in the night rather than flesh-and-blood animals. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:43, 17 February 2022 (UTC)


 * By the way, I think we've all missed the note at the top of the section "Further information: Hobbit (word)". All of the material is highly relevant to that article, and only marginally relevant to this one. I suggest that we remove the 'Agriculture' subsection as being of interest only to Hobbit (word). Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:43, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Brandybucks - Mostly Stoors or mostly Fallowhide?
Two sentences in the "Types" section are contradictory:

"Never very numerous, the Fallohides intermixed with and were largely absorbed by the Harfoots during this time, though several prominent families such as the Tooks and Brandybucks tended to be of mostly Fallohide descent."

compared to:

"The Brandybucks had mostly Stoor ancestry, though also some Fallohide descent as the three groups intermixed."

In my mind one of these must be wrong, Brandybucks can't "mostly" be both. Or am I missing something? 119.224.72.253 (talk) 22:01, 18 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing that out. The "Prologue: Concerning Hobbits" at the start of The Lord of the Rings says that the Fallohides were "the least numerous" and "a northerly branch" (originally); that "they were often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors"; and that "Even in Bilbo's time the strong Fallohidish strain could still be noted among the greater families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland." It also says that the hobbits of the Marish in the Eastfarthing "were well known to be Stoors in a large part of their blood", indicated by their downy chins, whereas "No Harfoot or Fallohide had any trace of a beard"; and "the folk of the Marish, and of Buckland, east of the River, which they afterwards occupied...", indicating that the ordinary hobbits of Buckland were Stoors. Tolkien doesn't say "mostly", so I'll remove that now; he also doesn't say that all Tooks or Brandybucks whatever their rank were Fallohidish. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:24, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Where hobbits live
The opening section suggests that most hobbits live in houses built into the side of hills. Strictly speaking only the very well off (eg. Bilbo and Frodo) and the very poor Hobbits live underground. The vast majority live in relatively normal houses with thatched or turfed roofs, made with brick and wood and stone.

See: LOTR introduction Concerning Hobbits 82.35.50.110 (talk) 18:40, 5 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Edited. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)