Thinking about the injuries that the WETA people decided to add to the design of Gollum / Sméagol and imagining what would be the story behind them 🤔
Among the numerous scrapes, he has that big red scar on the back of his head. He’s also missing his left ear lobe! By this point in his life he would only have met other Stoors and some goblins. Mordor, Elven King’s halls, chasing the fellowship all came later.
In all that time under the misty mountains he must have had some accidents on the dangerous terrain. Or maybe he tried to attack some goblins that fought back too strongly. Poor little guy just trying to survive.
Maybe we’ll see some flashbacks to this time in the new movie? As much as I love the previous movies I really hope this one will be Gollum centric and not another hero story where he is just a side character. I can’t get me enough Gollum content!
What happened to him, eh? Well, I don't know. I can tell you about him. My side only. Never say I said - but I will tell you only my side, if only to reflect. It matters not. I've long needed to confess this. Though it matters not.
I saw Sméagol often in my life, very often. Even as we were little ones, he was always 'round. He wasn't a bad child. He wasn't rough and tough, I mean. He wasn't unkind. I say it's my side - he wasn't unkind to me. We all know his grandmother - we did then, and we do even now. The old crone, now. She's our elder; we trust in her. We have all reason to trust in her... it was her decision, of course. So we - so I follow her wisdom.
They say misery is a butterfly, what spreads its heavy wings, and flies 'round even the coziest of dwellings. Those flutterings can take you right away - take o'er a gentle mind.
We were friends, me and him. As children, too, we played sometimes. Often enough. We would meet in a field and clasp hands and I'd beg him to spin me as hard as he could until we both fell away in dizziness, and then start back again. But I'd not gotten to know him better until... Well, once, when we were a long while older, I was making my way toward the river Anduin with my gear, and I saw him on the way out, rummaging through someone's open back window. He was struggling to climb up into it. I saw that it was the hut of the baker.
"Hey-o, Sméagol, what are you up to?" I called to him from the pathway. At this, I recall, he jumped back, and locked his wide-eyes on me. At first, he was startled, and looked so irate, but then he smiled in his friendly way and waved to me. I recall him. I had something soft in me for those large blue eyes - so unlike his grandmother's that we all mused about where he might've got 'em. Some of the men joked thru their tobacco pipes, with their hairy arms crossed, that the lad likely stole 'em. In the sunlight, his eyes...they reflected like pools of water - pools small as any Stoor's eye, but deeper beyond what any of us could dive. That's what I say on it, mind you.
"No matter, no matter," he called back quickly, abandoning whatever it was he was doing, and then he set toward me. "Where does it go?"
I had pointed into the trees, and I told him "a-fishin'."
I recall him. He was what the others called "obsessive". And you ask me, what did they mean? After that day, when he went a-fishin' with me, he stood nearby that baker's hut, by the pathway into the woods, every single day, and at the same time every day. For a while, yes, he did this. And it so happened that I was always heading out to go fishin'. I recall him; he'd begun to grab ahold my hand and lead me to that river each time, regardless that I already knew the way myself. If I wasn't as quick-footed as he, he pulled, almost to drag me along with him. But, I tell you, I liked him. I liked him so. Somehow, he knew exactly what I wanted: I wanted to share in his enthusiasms and schemes.
I recall him. He could plant his feet in a running stream and know exactly when to catch a fish, what slinked between the stones - and with his own hands he'd catch a few, or many, and throw them to me on the wet grass. I became obsessive, too. I would watch him do this, a-marvelin'. I began to desire nothing more than to sit nearby him - and watch him do anything, closely, for hours. He watched me closely, too.
For a Stoor, he was small. Unlike us all, he had little color to him except for the tops of his rather large ears - I mean, he was so milky pale that, under breath, it was his grandmother who got the censure from us ("shading the boy like that under her wing, that's what did it!"). As we aged, he did not grow out his beard, but for the long sideburns that framed his face, and so he looked a youth through his years; and he did not suffer any grit, the way we all did. He kept his dark grown-out hair long and free; his clothing sinched, buttoned and tucked well; his neckerchief (a strip of paisley from his grandmother's own skirts) knotted neatly at his throat. Who did he think he was, eh?
The menfolk would make more of an issue of it, had Sméagol not been of a sturdy nature. Nothing yet would make him cower, and it was difficult to push him over. He was able to swim and fish better than most. He was much stronger than he looked. All fealty and respect we gave him, for he was the grandson of our elder. In the shelter of her reputation, he did as he wished without any serious questionings (Though I do recall my sibling telling me once, "I watch out for Sméagol - he creeps a little too much for my comfort").
But it was merely common envy what made anyone else cross about him. He was a darling, and rather handsome despite the peculiarities. Honestly, we considered him a friend on the whole. He could be very generous and sweet, we knew it. This is how I knew him before.
And he was always adorned with trinkets. These he would let me see, let me examine. He handed me, once, a lengthy chain, longer than could be wrapped 'round someone so small as he. From out his pocket, like a magician, he pulled it, unending collection. Dangling from each link were his findings, which, he at once whispered to me, were secrets. What looked like shells, glazed buttons, beastly teeth, some fish bones dipped in silver, green and red beads of glass, a miniature bell, and many finely crafted fish hooks - these Sméagol coiled into my open palms, and he looked satisfied as I examined.
"A true fisherman's catch," I remember the compliment I gave to him. My admiration of these charms - the way they tinkled in my hands - seemed to excite him at length, vicarious. I heard him sigh, and he quietly said to me, in a way he'd not spoken to me before -
"Do these shiny things speak to it, my love?"
(Cont. below)
Sometimes Sméagol would lead us beyond the River Anduin, some ways beyond its shore, into a meadow of baby grass that would flood whene'er it rained. It would leave behind many long lasting puddles and muddy ground. Insects gathered here - though they weren't the pestering, bothersome, stinging kind. These I would not swat; Sméagol said it was where moths and butterflies came to swoop and drink, for they lived in some of the damp, rotting, fallen oaks by the thousands.
One of these days, he lazed about against a tree trunk as I roused families of butterflies, hoping to see them fly. They were busy with their drink, but with my persistence, I managed to set a group high into the air. They climbed up, fluttering their wings, you could almost hear them, a stampede. And through their ascent, I saw Sméagol over there, watching me. The man had a way about him, even the burly menfolk would admit. His gaze, so intense, could stand you still in your boots. It was the gaze of both a hunter and the hunted. And while you wonder on it, on what he might be about to say, or what he might mean by it, you realize that the silence between you and him had already gone on far too long for anyone to move.
I recall him. Without breaking from my own eyes, he reached into one of his many pockets and slid out his long pipe, stuffed it, lit it and puffed it. Then he grinned, in that satisfied way. Through the fluttering of many blue-and-green-and-black butterfly wings, the smoke and the sunlight, I felt his gravity. Sméagol had a voice which mesmerized any listener. At once blithe and hushed; erratic and shrill. Through any emotion he expressed, it pierced through you. In the beams of sunshine through the leaves, I heard him softly call. "Come to me, my love." I recall myself. I swear I was in love.
The smoke from his pipe was a fine scent, but I hadn't known him to smoke that kind.
"Where'd y'get this pipeweed, Sméagol?" I asked him, and I sat beside him in the new grass. He tutted.
"Questions, eh? Why must it always ask me 'where'?" He asked this with some exasperation, pipe clenched between teeth. "Why must it ask - when see! I've already got it here, in my hands," He smiled meekly, finally lowering his gaze, and gently pressed the small sachet of fine pipeweed into my palm, and closed my fingers 'round it. "All for you, see?"
And I recall myself, and himself, sitting in the grass together, smoking.
That day in this meadow beyond the river, he had suddenly grasped hold of my face. It was so very sudden, I could not think. He turned my head roughly to him as if I'd said something insulting - as if there was something inside my mouth he wanted me to spit out for him immediately, and it startled me good. It hurt only a little. My heart jumped up my throat. Like a snake - and I mean this in good faith, though I struggle to describe it any other way - a snake with a squirrel in its coils, he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me closer, and closer. I could not get away from his impending embrace, but I recall myself - I did not wish to break free from it. On that squirrel's dying day, it felt euphoria in the grass.
--
Deeply, deeply. Both awake and asleep. Unearth. Expose the bones to gnaw. One ultimate trinket to posess, I gave myself up to him. How can I ignore it? he says to me. It draws me into it, he says to me. I only want him to enjoy, I say to him. Perhaps this wasn't done, even in our backwoods society, but I recall myself letting him inside. He pried open my palms and pinned them each to damp, black earth. He nailed me to the ground with eyes of blue. Even before he touched me, he had me. No worm, nor spider, nor giant centipede in my hair could interrupt us; no boiling sun could bake and redden our skin there. Handfuls of my hair in gentle fists. Only the fluttering of wings and green o'er us, and the nighttime shade he provided me with his dark hair, cascading. He was no brute, and so I let us go 'til we ached. I recall myself; thoughts of drowning sweetly in the river Anduin with him. I hear the trinkets in his coat pockets jangle like fairy bells. And in the afterward, we lay entangled, enmeshed, unwilling to let the other go away. If he pulled even an inch, I felt I would dig my fingers into his flesh, like claws. I have not felt this way since.
The day he left me for good, it was my birthday. But he'd promised to go fishing with his cousin, Déagol. And Sméagol was honorable in the way he would always keep a promise. He would always figure it out, some way to give a gift, some way to make good on his word, some way to follow through and atone. He'd learned this from his wise grandmother. That day, he promised me a birthday gift like I'd not received before, but he had to go and see Déagol. To compromise us both, he'd handed me a little bundle of cloth, an early gift, and I said good-bye to him there on the stoop of my burrow.
--
I told you my side of it. The rest is known-fact. I don't care to go over it again and again and again. I don't know what happened to him after that, and it was difficult enough that it all happened, you see? I don't know what came over him, I have not seen him ever since they made him go away. But I had unwrapped the bundle he gave me for my birthday, and saw it was a glass - but, it was really made of jewels - butterfly. Blue-and-green-and-black wings, and silver legs. Though it matters not, I've wondered for ages where he'd gotten it.
Tolkien was a devout Christian, religious thinker and author of The Lord of the Rings and its prequel, The Hobbit. Christian themes such as
Tolkien was a devout Christian, religious thinker and author of The Lord of the Rings and its prequel, The Hobbit. Christian themes such as darkness and light, mercy and justice, fellowship, authority, repentance, free will and sacrifice are found throughout Tolkien’s epic.
The most common comparison that’s been going around lately has been between the names of hobbits belonging to the Baggins family and the Took family. There is quite a distinct difference between the names, so it’s understandable that it seems a bit jarring to go from something simple like, say, Longo to something more noble-sounding like Isengrim.
In comparison, the names given to girls are very different. True, there are a few more nonsensical ones, like Belba. But there are also plenty of flower- or gem-names. This also gives a very odd contrast between the names of male hobbits and those of female hobbits.
However, there is a bit of reasoning behind the names, at least those belonging to hobbits from families with Fallohide blood. Those are not taken out of thin air. They were oftentimes given names evoking figures of legend (whether this means figures of legend in our world or in Middle-earth is hard to say, but it’s certainly not mistaken either way).
So allow me to begin with the grand one himself, Gerontius Took, also known as the Old Took. His name is of some debated origin, with some ties to Greek, Latin, and Welsh. In Greek, the element geron means “old”. The name is also an actual Latin name from the Late Roman Empire, and in Welsh it is rendered as Geraint; put quite simply, the name means “old man”.
Let me also bring up two of his sons - let’s go with Isengrim and Hildibrand. To start with the eldest, Isengrim, his name is Anglo-Saxon in origin and consists of isen, meaning “iron”, and grim, meaning “fierce”. There is a chance that Tolkien actually named him after a wolf that appears in the medieval story of Reynard the Fox. Then we have Hildibrand, whose name is likely of Lombardic origin and consists of hild, meaning battle, and brand, meaning sword. He was probably named after a character of Germanic legend.
Then, let me point at the Bolgers. They were also a family with Fallohide blood, and followed the same naming customs. For instance, Odovacar Bolger, Fatty Bolger’s father, shares name with a Germanic king of Rome. Fredegar himself (Fatty, that is) has a name that combines two elements that are either Old High German, Old Saxon, or Old English - fridu, or frithu, which means “peace”, and gār or gēr meaning “spear”.
But it is not only families with Fallohide blood that have different-sounding names. The Brandybuck family, which can be claimed to have Stoor blood, have a naming convention of their own that likely reflects their old connection to the Men of Dunland. The names are somewhat Celtic in sound, though not all of them have actual meanings.
Let me begin with our main man, Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck. His name is, in fact, Welsh and means roughly “Great Lord”. The names of his great-great-grandfather and his great-great-great-grandfather, Marmadoc and Madoc, are also Celtic in origin, with Madoc being found among Welsh names and Marmadoc being derived from the old Irish Máel Máedóc (roughly “follower of Saint Malachy”). Fun fact: the name Marmaduke is from the same one as Marmadoc.
So how about the Brandybuck names that sound Celtic, but have no meaning? Well, we have an excellent example in Merry’s uncle Merimac, younger brother of Saradoc Brandybuck. The name Merimac has the Celtic mac in it, which at the very least in Irish means “son” (I can’t answer for Scottish Gaelic or for Welsh, I only know a little bit of Irish). However, the prefix meri does not appear to have a meaning in modern day languages; though Tolkien did have some Westron words written out, and meri could simply be a sort of “translation” of the Westron kali, which would indicate that it means essentially “jolly”.
Actually, Saradoc’s name is of personal interest to me. I’ve found a note claiming that the name is derived from the Welsh Caradoc, the name of a semi-legendary ancestor to the kings of Gwent. Which at least in my opinion is pretty cool. But I can’t find any links that may confirm the claim, so it shall, for now, remain a dream.
BUT. What about the nonsensical names that appear in various families? Well, there is the post going around about how these names are Baggins names, which is an outright false claim. Yes, they sound odd, and since people mostly pay attention to the Bagginses they’ll only really see them there. But fact is, that the names are everywhere. The Proudfoots have them, the Hornblowers have them, the Boffins, the Burrowses, the Chubbs, the Goodbodies - they’re everywhere. They are, therefore, presumably very common. And it’s not just the male names either.
Look at the female names as well. Belba? Chica? Tanta? No, it’s not just the male hobbits that have odd nonsensical names, even if flower- or gem-names are more common for female hobbits (with the gem-names being more specifically for upper-class female hobbits). But then we also have the names Belladonna, Donnamira, and Mirabella - the names of Gerontius Took’s three daughters. These three names are distinctly different; Belladonna is of Italian origin, as is Mirabella - I can’t actually find a definite origin for Donnamira, but since both halves of her name are Italian/Latin in origin, I’m willing to wager that’s the intention there. Odd bit of contrast, no?
Either way, I’m willing to bet that these nonsensical names that keep popping up in so many families are something of a custom in hobbit families with Harfoot blood. That’s not to say that it is the only custom; we don’t know if the Gamgee family had Harfoot blood or otherwise, as it’s never stated, but it appears to be heavily implied - and most of them appear to have Old English names.
Note also that the nonsensical names have a tendency to sound very similar - chances are that later names on the family tree are derived from earlier ones, such as the names Uffo and Gruffo on the Boffin family tree, quite clearly derived from the name of Uffo’s great-grandfather Buffo.
For that matter, why not bring up the name of our dear Bilbo Baggins? His great-grandfather was named Balbo. I daresay Bilbo’s name was derived from there.
So - nonsensical names? Sure, they sound weird. But there is clearly some form of meaning to them, even if it is just a certain naming convention or a wish to pay homage to relatives. I ask that you do not dismiss them, but instead view them as what they clearly are: a hobbit tradition, and perhaps a specific Harfoot custom.
