Appendices
Appendix I
The Denham Tracts
One of the recurring questions Tolkien faced from the first publication of The Hobbit to the end of his life was ‘where did you get the name “hobbits”?’ While there seems little doubt that he was telling the truth when he said he simply made it up, the issue was confused in the mid-1970s by the discovery, in a nineteenth-century collection of North Country folklore, of the word ‘hobbit’ among a long list of fairies, spirits, creatures from classical mythology, and other imaginary beings. The discovery was made by Katharine Briggs, the leading expert of her time on traditional fairy folklore (and author of a superb fantasy novel, Hobberdy Dick [1955], incorporating many of those beliefs), who reprinted the list in her A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures [1976], pages 93–94. Briggs herself did not comment on the appearance of hobbits in the list,1 but her discovery was soon picked up on by an outside reader for the OED and thence reported in various newspapers (including most notably Philip Howard’s piece ‘Tracking the Hobbit Down to Earth’, which appeared in The Times on 31st May 1977), but for the most part without crediting Briggs for her role in the discovery.
The list itself had appeared in a miscellany published by the Folk-Lore Society, the full title of which was The Denham Tracts: A Collection of Folklore by Michael Aislabie Denham, and reprinted from the original tracts and pamphlets printed by Mr. Denham between 1846 and 1859. Edited by Dr. James Hardy (with the assistance of Laurence Gomme, who also wrote the prefaces), this had been issued in two volumes in 1892 and 1895, with our list appearing as the final item in Tract VIII, ‘Folklore, or Manners and Customs, of the North of England’ (Vol. II pages [1]–80). Denham himself had been a mid-19th-century amateur antiquarian who collected sayings, tales, and customs from the north of England, issuing them in little self-published pamphlets or ‘tracts’. These tracts went through multiple editions, expanding as he came across new material – for example, the specific tract in which our list appears went through several versions, and the word ‘hobbit’ did not appear in the earliest of these.2 It thus becomes important to look at Denham’s sources and the way he put these lists together.
In this particular case, the list of fantastic and folklore creatures had originally† been published as an article in the 23rd December 1848 issue of The Literary Gazette: Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. (London; No. 1666, page 849). Denham’s primary source was a list of ‘vaine apparitions’ compiled by the skeptic Reginald Scot more than two and a half centuries before in The Discoverie of Witchcraft [1584], an eloquent and impassioned refutation of the superstitions of his day. In Book VII of that work, after discussing the Oracle at Delphi and the Witch of Endor (1st Samuel 28. 3–25), Scot gives the following mingling of classical lore with old wives’ tales:
Chapter XV. Of vaine apparitions, how people have beene brought to feare bugges, which is partlie reformed by preaching of the gospell, the true effect of Christes miracle.
. . . It is a common saieng [saying]; A lion feareth no bugs [bugbears, boogiemen]. But in our childhood our mothers maids have so terrified us with an ouglie [ugly] divell having hornes on this head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breech . . . and a voice roring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough [Boo!]: and they have so fraied us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens, kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changlings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, the mare [i.e., nightmare], the man in the oke [oak], the hell waine, the fierdrake [firedrake, dragon], the puckle [puck, pooka], Tom thome, hob gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our owne shadowes . . . [S]ome never feare the divell, but in a darke night . . . speciallie in a churchyard, where a right hardie man heretofore scant durst passe by night, but his haire would stand upright.
—1972 Dover facsimile reproduction of the 1930 Montague Summers edition, page 86
Denham took Scot’s list and expanded it from thirty-three items (thirty-four if we follow Denham in including the generic name ‘bugs’) to a hundred and twenty-nine, adding in new names from literary sources (e.g. the poetry of Robert Burns, from which he took cutties),3 the folklore researches of others (including, for later versions of the list, Th. Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology [1850], from which he derived korigan), and his own researches, which had focused on the local beliefs in Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. His inclusion of every item from Scot’s list explains the otherwise rather odd appearance of conjurors alongside (classical) nymphs and (faerie) changlings. Denham also took from Scot the deliberate jumbling of material from very different sources: his organizational principle seems not to group together related material but instead to deliberately juxtapose creatures from different traditions to stress their diversity, although small clumps of related creatures do appear here and there in the mix. Denham also seems to have deliberately padded out his list by including simple variants in spelling as separate entries, as in the case of hobthrush and hobthurst (both covered by a single footnote), freith and freit, hobby-lanthorn and hob-and-lanthorn, &c. In other cases, he takes the name of an individual (e.g., Tom Thumb, Peg Powler, Robin Goodfellow, Dick-a-Tuesday, Gyl-burnt-tail, &c.) and ‘genericizes’ it, so to speak, extrapolating from a proper name into a creature type.
In the following text of the final form of Denham’s piece (from the 1895 posthumous collection), I have marked items deriving from Reginald Scot’s 1584 list with an asterisk (*); those appearing in Denham’s original 1848 list appear in normal (roman) type, while those added by the time of the final (1895) version are given in italics. I do not, however, record all the minor variants between Denham’s earliest and latest versions – e.g. hobgoblins [1848] vs hob-goblins [1895], Pans vs. pans, pegpoulers vs. Peg-powlers, &c. Two names appearing in the 1848 list (breen, bull-bears) disappear from the final version, three (fairies, thrummy-caps, and cutties) are displaced from early in the old list to near the end of the newer one for reasons that are not apparent, and the total is increased to one hundred and ninety-seven names, four of which (fiends, hobgoblins, imps, and korreds) are duplications of names already found elsewhere in the list (as opposed to only one duplication – imps – in the original list); these repetitions are a sign that, as Tolkien wrote of Bilbo, Denham was ‘not . . . an orderly narrator, and his account is involved and discursive, and sometimes confused’ (Foreword to the first edition of The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I page [7]). To distinguish authorial comments from my own annotation, Denham’s notes from the 1895 reprint are given as D1, D2, and so forth, while my own notes on his material are given as1, 2.
GHOSTS NEVER APPEAR ON CHRISTMAS EVE!
‘Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planet strikes,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.’
Marcellus.
‘So have I heard and do in part believe it.’
Horatio.
So says the immortal Shakespeare;4 and the truth thereof few now-a-days, I hope, will call in question. Grose observes,5 too, that those born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits; which is another incontrovertible fact. What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago6 and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles,D1 bloody-bones, spirits,* demons, ignis fatui,7 brownies,D2 bugbears, black dogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches,* wizards, barguests,D3 Robin-Goodfellows,*D4 hags,*D5 night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hob-goblin
s, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies,D6 hob-thrusts,D7 fetches,D8 kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars,D9 mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins,* satyrs,* pans,* fauns,* sirens,(*)8 tritons,* centaurs,* calcars,* nymphs,* imps,* incubusses,* spoorns,* men-in-the-oak,* hell-wains,* fire-drakes,* kit-a-can-sticks,* Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tails, knockers, elves,*D10 raw-heads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-fooits, pixies, pictrees,D11 giants,* dwarfs,*9 Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets,10 spunks, conjurers,* thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes,D12 tints, tod-lowries,11 Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings,* redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs,* black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs,* bull-beggars,* bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags,12 wraithes,D13 waffs,D14 flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses,* Peg-powlers,D15 pucks, fays, kidnappers, gally-beggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars’ lanthorns, silkies,D16 cauld-lads,D17 death-hearses, goblins,D18 hob-headlesses,D19 buggaboes, kowsD20 or cowes, nickies, nacks [necks], waiths,D21 miffies, buckies, gholes, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins [Gyre-carling], pigmies, chittifaces, nixies,D22 Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers,D23 boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men,D24 cowies, dunnies,D25 wirrikows,D26 alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares,* korreds, puckles,* korigans, sylvans, succubuses, black-men, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles,D27 corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sybils, nick-nevins,D28 whitewomen, fairies,*D29 thrummy-caps,D30 cutties,D31 and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind, and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its spectre, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and cross-roads, were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit! [See Lit. Gaz. for December 1848, p. 849.]
DENHAM’S NOTES
D1 Boggle-house, parish of Sedgefield. Bellingham Boggle-Hole, Northd. [Bogle-houses in Lowick Forest, Northumberland.]
D2 There is also a river of this name in the Bishopric of Durham. Also at York is Browny Dike, a portion of the Foss.
D3 The York Barguest. See Memoirs of R. Surtees, Esq.; new ed., p. 80, 1852.
D4 This merry fay acted the part of fool or jester, at the court of Oberon, the fairy monarch.
D5 Hag-House. A farmstead near Brancepeth.
D6 The Mortham Dobby. A Teesdale goblin.
D7 Hob-o-t’-Hursts, i.e. spirits of the woods. Hobthrush Rook, Farndale, Yorkshire.
D8 The spirit or double of a dying person.
D9 Mock-beggar Hall. Of houses, rocks, etc., bearing this name we meet with many instances.
D10 Elf-Hills, parish of Hutton-in-the-Forest, Cumberland. Elf-How, parish of Kendal. Elf-Hills, near Cambo.
D11 There is a village of this name near Chester-le-Street; and singular enough a ghost story, called the ‘Picktree Bragg,’ is attached to it. See Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, Bohn’s ed. p. 310.13
D12 The spirit or double of a dying person.14
D13 The spirit or double of a dying person.
D14 The spirit or double of a dying person.
D15 This oulde ladye is the evil goddess of the Tees. I also meet with a Nanny Powler, at Darlington, who from the identity of their sirnames, is, I judge, a sister, or it may be a daughter of Peg’s. Nanny Powler, aforesaid, haunts the Skerne, a tributary of the Tees.
D16 The Heddon Silky, and Silky’s Brig, near Heddon. See Richardson’s Table Book, Leg.Div., vol. ii., p. 181.
D17 Occasionally, we may hear Cowed, or rather Cowd Lad. The meaning, however, is the same; Cowd being a variation of the more refined word, cold.
D18 Goblin Field, near Mold, Flintshire.
D19 Hob-Cross-Hill. A place near Doncaster.
D20 ‘The Hedley Kow,’ a Northumberland ghost story.
D21 The spirit or double of a dying person.
D22 ‘Know you the nixies, gay and fair?
Their eyes are black, and green their hair,
They lurk in sedgy waters.’
—Keightley
D23 The spirit or double of a dying person.
D24 See ghost story of the ‘Brown Man of the Moor.’ Richardson’s Table Book.
D25 The Hazelrigg Dunny. An excellent Northumberland ghost story.
D26 ‘Frae gudame’s mouth auld warld tale they hear,
O’ warlocks louping round the wirriknow.’
—The works of Robt. Fergusson, ed. by A. B. Grossart, Edin., 1851, p. 61.
D27 The spirit or double of a dying person.
D28 Mother witches.
D29 Fairy Dean, two miles above Melrose. Fairy Stone, near Fourstones, in the parish of Warden, Northumberland. This stone, in which is a secret cavity, has attained a celebrity in history owing to the letters being placed therein, to and from the unfortunate Earl of Derwent-water, during the ’15.15
D30 Thrummy Hills, near Catterick. The name of this sprite is met with in the Fairy tales of Northumberland.
D31 These are a certain class of female Boggles, not altogether peculiar to Scotland, who wore their lower robes, at least, a-la-bloomer. They are named by Burns, in his inimitable poem Tam-o’-Shanter. Mr. Halliwell gives the word as localized in Somersetshire.
Mr. Denham’s Hobbit
Given the evidence of Denham’s list, and the inclusion of ‘hobbits’ within it, the question then becomes threefold: what were these hobbits, where did Denham get the word, and did Tolkien know about Denham’s work? So far as the first point goes, there is no doubt that hobbits were a kind of hob (also sometimes known as brownies or, more rarely, lobs), like the hob-goblins, hob-thrushes/hob-thrusts,16 hobhoulards, hob-headless, and hob-and-lanthorns/hobby-lanthorns (a kind of Will o’ the Wisp) who also appear in the list – in fact, hob names make up nine of the hundred and ninety-seven items, or roughly five percent of the whole, the largest grouping within the entire list, whereas they had been represented by a single entry (hob gobblin) in Reginald Scot’s 1584 account. The traditional hob of English folklore was a solitary creature, sometimes described as a little brown man a few feet high, who attached himself to a farm or manor and, although seldom if ever seen, did chores and sometimes helped the family in times of crisis. His payment was traditionally a small cake or bannock or a bowl of milk or cream left out each night; if this was ever neglected or if he was given a gift of clothes he left forever. Hobbit seems to be a typical variation on the name, but one recorded nowhere else, so we cannot tell if it was a proper name of a specific hob ‘genericized’ by Denham (as he demonstratably does in the case of Hob Headless, another in his list, whose story is briefly retold by Briggs – A Dictionary of Fairies page 222) or a type of hob, like hobthrusts or hobgoblins.
As for Denham’s immediate source, unfortunately the industrious folklore collector provided no note explaining where he had found the name hobbit. Since like several others in Denham’s list the name is not recorded elsewhere, it almost certainly came through his own first-hand collection of old folklore in the Durham region or its neighboring counties – a region particularly rich in hob-stories, as Briggs notes (ibid.).17 But the exact source has proved elusive and will probably remain so. As Tolkien says of his own hobbits, ‘it is clear that Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk became even aware of them . . . the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count’ (Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, p.14), and the same is analogous of the actual folklore creature tha
t shared the name of Tolkien’s creation, which was recorded only by chance in this single instance; any associated story or stories have long since been forgotten beyond recovery.
Adding to the mystery, as we have already noted the name does not appear in the original [1848] article but was added to the list sometime between then and its posthumous appearance, long after Denham’s death in 1859, in the Folk-Lore Society volumes. Given the free hand the miscellany’s editor, Dr. Hardy, allowed himself for silently adding or re-arranging material (see Note 2), for a time I investigated the possibility that it had been added by Hardy himself as late as 1892–1895, but this turns out not to have been the case. As discovered by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, & Edmund Weiner, who examined some of the original tracts from which the book was compiled (the most complete collection of which is a single bound volume assembled by one ‘W.S.’ in 1860, now part of the Opie Collection in the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington), the 1848 article was followed by an independent 1851 tract in which hobbit is still absent, but the word does appear in an 1853 version of that same tract, which in turn seems to have provided the base copy for the 1895 text (The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary [2006], pages 147–148); this pushes back the word’s first recorded appearance from 1895 to 1853, beyond which its origins once again fade into obscurity.18
The final question of whether Tolkien knew about Denham’s inclusion of the name is equally murky. Certainly he knew about Reginald Scot’s list, which was reproduced and discussed by C. S. Lewis in The Discarded Image.19 In addition, The Denham Tracts was one of the primary sources from which Joseph Wright drew for his English Dialect Dictionary [six volumes, 1898 –1905], a work Tolkien greatly admired,20 but this is not to say that Tolkien ever had reason to examine this specific source-volume for himself. If he had (and this is a big if), then he would almost certainly have discovered Denham’s list, since Gomme explicitly draws attention to it in the Preface to the second volume in tantalizing terms:
The History of the Hobbit Page 104