In Tolkien's Middle-earth, Men and Hobbits lived together amicably at Bree, but I recollect no suggestion in The Lord of the Rings that the Big and Little People ever intermarried despite sharing a common culture. Elves and Men, who Tolkien considered to be more different from each other than Hobbits and Men, did intermarry on very rare occasions, and could have children. Presumably a Man and Hobbit could have children together. In any of his extensive writings, did Tolkien ever mention a marriage between a Man (male or female) and a Hobbit?
asked Sep 9, 2021 at 16:19
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1Cartoon Gandalf doesn't rule it out. "...Humans might well wonder 'Is there Hobbit in me?' " youtu.be/kf3RLq_j2wg– lucasbachmannSep 10, 2021 at 0:44
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It would be amusing if the rumored "fairy ancestor" of the Tooks was actually a Druaden, one of the short strange men, and one of the ancestors of that particular Druadan was a more or less typical human, and one of the ancestors of that more or less typical human was a Numenorean, and one of the ancestors of the Numenorean was a member of the royal family descended from Elros. Elros was descended from the chiefs of the 3 houses of the Edain, from Sindar, Noldor, and Vanyar Eleves, and from Melian the Maia.– M. A. GoldingSep 10, 2021 at 16:57
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@M.A.Golding Stranger things have happened. I can trace my ancestry to Charlemagne, but it's a long and bumpy ride in between, and I don't expect to inherit the Holy Roman Empire anytime soon.– Invisible TrihedronSep 10, 2021 at 18:48
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This is more a matter of physics than genetics. A Wolf and a Chihuahua are genetically compatible.– lucasbachmannSep 11, 2021 at 5:17
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@lucasbachmann The difference in stature between Men and Hobbits wasn't supposed to be that extreme. Aside from that, you may be interested to read more about human dwarfism here,– Invisible TrihedronSep 11, 2021 at 12:53
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1 Answer
No, but Tolkien has discussed Hobbits intermarrying with other races
Dating back to one of the original surviving drafts of the opening to The Hobbit, we have a concept that there was at least one Took-Hobbit who married an elf.
It had always been said that long ago some or other of the Tooks had married into a fairy family (goblin family said severer critics); certainly there was something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took hobbits would go and have adventures.
This passage was retained with some minor changes into the original published book:
It had always been said that long ago one or other of the Tooks had married into a fairy family (the less friendly said a goblin family); certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures.
Though after some later revisions, the current third edition text now plays this down a bit specifying that is "absurd".
It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures.
The abandoned "1960 Hobbit", would have also kept it, just with the language changed to be a bit more in the line with The Lord of the Rings.
It was often said (in other families) that the Tooks must have some elvish blood in them: which was of course absurd, but there was undoubtedly some thing queer about them, something not quite hobbitlike, according to the manners of the Shire: an outlandish strain maybe from long ago.
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1In early versions of the lengendarium like the Book of LostTales, there were actually fairies separate from Elves. So as long as fairies remained part of the legendarium, and I don't known when or if they were excluded, a hobbit-fairy marriage would have been theoretically possible. Sep 10, 2021 at 16:52
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@M.A.Golding - Are you sure about that? Most things I'm seeing from BoLT seem to point that fairies are elves.– ibidSep 10, 2021 at 21:42
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@M.A.Golding In the same way that Gwendeling (=Melian) was a "fay" in BoLT, the terminology pre-mid-30s can be quite surprising Sep 11, 2021 at 11:22
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@ibid Thank you for a thoughtful answer. It's interesting that Tolkien phased out the fairies. Unlike C. S. Lewis, he seems to have deliberately limited the variety of humanoids in his work. (One wonders how centaurs, satyrs, fauns, etc. would have lived alongside humans and talking animals in Narnia.) Sep 11, 2021 at 12:49
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Do you think that by goblin he meant, at this time, an Orc? Or were they separate beings at the time of writing these revisions?– WadeSep 12, 2021 at 18:06