Thread: Bilbo related to half-elven?
In the hobbit book it mentions that there is a rumor that one of Bilbo’s Took ancestors had had “a fairy wife”. Even though the narrator immediately dismissed this as ridiculous, what if it were true? What if one of the Took ancestors did marry an elf? (Elves and fairies are synonymous, basically, in The Hobbit).
This might mean that hobbits (who from hints in LotR appear to be related to humans) have some relation way back with the half-elven - that is, Elrond, Aragorn, and all their family.
What do you think?
Well, I'll say this for it: it makes as much sense as Dwarf-Elf romance in the movie version! Seriously though, that is a part of the story from the time when The Hobbit was a fairy tale, unrelated to the legendarium. I've not seen the recently published pages of Tolkien's attempt at revision; does anyone know if he took it out?
I was thinking not so much of a hobbit-elf romance as of hobbits being descended from humans (cf Rohirrim and hobbit language similarities), and that somewhere along the line, the humans who would eventually be Took ancestors were related to Elrond and Aragorn's family.
Though I suppose, it might make as much sense to suppose that the Tooks are related to Tom and Goldberry as to Elrond and Family.
I believe the Hobbit/ Rohirrim language connection is supposed to derive from the fact that the ancestors of both races once dwelt in proximity to each other, in the Vales of Anduin and northwards, and not to any "cross-species" connection, if you will.
Of course, it could be objected that Tolkien himself, in the prologue to LOTR, says that Hobbits are "relatives of ours", but this is the voice of the editor of the Red Book, not the "actual" Tolkien. The real connection is a literary one: hobbits are us, modern (or more accurately, Edwardian) humans. They are, to use Northrop Frye's term, the Low Mimetic characters that Tolkien used to allow 20th Century readers to reenter Romance. The proliferation of fantasy as a genre since then has made it difficult to recognize what a stroke of genius that was.
Given that the Tooks were quite different from other Hobbits in that they had a tendency for adventures, it might have been a way for other hobbits to jokingly exlpain this, thus this allusion (a bit similar as we say something is out of this world when we see something extraordinary).
As for a relation between elves and hobbit I do think it very unlikely, especially when you consider how 'young' hobbits are as a race compared to the other inhabitants of Middle-Earth.
