WikiTreers are all Hobbits

Question

Reading The Lord of the Rings for the 27th time, but the first since joining WikiTree.

Substitute "WikiTreers" for "Hobbits"....

"All Hobbits were, in any case, clannish and reckoned up their relationships with great care. They drew long and elaborate family-trees with innumerable branches. In dealing with Hobbits it is important to remember who is related to whom, and in what degree. It would be impossible in this book to set out a family-tree that included even the more important members of the more important families at the time which these tales tell of. [EuroAristo?] The genealogical trees at the end of the Red Book of Westmarch are a small book in themselves, and all but Hobbits would find them exceedingly dull. Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate: The liked to have books filled with things they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions."

Tolkien, J.R.R., The Lord of the Rings (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994) p. 7.

Comments

I wish we had a Best Question star.

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This passage reminded me of all the charts I drew as a young genealogist, the kind that no program I know of can draw, what with all the intricacies and such.

Does this not describe us to a T, Herbert?

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Absolutely!  A few years ago, I had printed charts for my family for Christmas.  One of them was ten generations of my Cajun grandpa's family.  I color coded it for their birth country and some other things.  That led to some interesting (to me) effects.  Some lines start blue for born in France, then a couple of red generations born in Canada, then one blue generation, followed by several in black for born in the USA, leading to grandpa.  I highlighted the ones I know were deported during the French and Indian War (39 of them).  Pure genealogical geek madness! 

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I have been told I resemble a Hobbit many times, for many reasons.  You've just given me another one.  Thank you Pip! 

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I Physically look like a Hobbit. I am short in stature, with big wide hairy feet, pointed elf ears, and big blue eyes like Elijah Wood.

I just wanted to add that the Music Soundtracks of each movie is what I enjoy listening to while I am doing my thing relaxing while I add data on wikitree.com

Enjoy, from Frodo Baggins

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Keith, I looked at your profile pic, and you are right in every detail! 

Answer 1

This is great! I love Hobbits, therefore I love WikiTreers... and vicey/versey.  And those books are among the best books I've ever read. Thank you for this, Pip.

Comments

Well,  you're cool in my book.  

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Like you Robin I like hobbits too

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I was going to remind people that we had out own Eowyn too, but you've done it for me.

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......

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Thank you, Susan, for the vote!

Answer 2

I was given a 1 volume Lord of the Rings when I was about 13 but it didn't have all the genealogical charts and other extras that are usually at the end of volume 3, so I had to buy just that volume, just for all that genealogy.

Obviously entranced (maddened?) by genealogy at an early age.

Comments

I still look at those charts, repeatedly, while I'm reading. 

Genealogy is a kind of madness, isn't it, John? 

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When a young teenager I use to make trees for the books I was reading - just had to put the characters in their place in the family. I still do sometimes but that is when the plot is getting to involved and I have forgotten who did what and when

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Me, too, Jean! Charting characters helps me to keep up when an earlier person show up again later.

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I had a similar experience with the one volume version, and needing to work it out. Not sure if it was a good feeling entirely when I finally accessed all the "solutions" in the appendices. In Tolkien, as in real medieval history, family connections and "prosopography" more generally can actually be important for understanding why things happened the way they did.

Of course Tolkien was an academic who spent a lot of time reading medieval material in the original languages and knew how difficult it could be to come to scientific understanding of real histories. When he writes about his hobbits, his caricature of rural English people, he is fond of them, but maybe laughing at them just a bit with all their self-importance and narrow-mindedness. (Remember the hobbit heroes in the book are not typical.) His serious personal efforts went into the Silmarillion, which has no hobbits, whereas he wrote the Hobbit for his kids and was surprised how popular it became. His publishers pushed for the "sequels". I am not sure I would be happy with being called a "hobbit genealogist". :)

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“I am not sure I would be happy with being called a "hobbit genealogist". :)”

Well, then, make it into a simile or metaphor! I think Tolkien was using the stuff he was made of or was exposed to. Even as an American, I recognized he was often basing Hobbit characters, particularly the standard Bagginses, Chubbs, Bracegirdles and such on rural English culture and personalities, the Tooks and Brandybucks excepted.

Still, their take on genealogy reminded me so much of WTers who want to get it right! I’m also reminded of the community and culture wherein in I was raised: it was very important in rural Paw Creek to know who was related to whom, and in what degree!

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Frankly Pip my point is that hobbit genealogy is likely to be the type which is self-important and snobby and not particularly worried about the truth, or about thinking beyond whatever sloppy thoughts come most easily, without challenging ourselves or stepping outside our little worlds. 

Of course it is no coincidence, because Tolkien was making a comment on the real world, that these are also tendencies we confront in the real world of genealogy, just as hobbit political problems are also seen every day in real world politics. So in my opinion (sorry everyone) we have to work to some extent against some tendencies which feel safe and natural and hobbitish.

People are naturally attracted to some types of nonsense, and so if we are interested in the truth we need to be conscious of this and reminding ourselves to be careful of anything which seems shiny and attractive in all the murk. All that glitters is not gold. There is an oversupply of glittering nonsense in genealogy. 

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I am proud to be a volunteer at the Mickel Delving Genealogical Society Library.  Mickel Delving was a hotbed of genealogy in the Shire.  It just seems that every hobbit who comes into the library thinks he or she knows everything already.

"MIckel Delving" means "much digging," whether at one's hobbit hole or at one's roots.  It's something hobbits end up doing one way or another.

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Well Margaret that would be Dwarvish. Perhaps I am a Dwarvish genealogist.

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Now there’s another line we could take, Andrew! 

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Pip you asked me if you have to be mad to be a genealogist, and my answer is you only have to look at this question to realise we are all crazy, but in the nicest possible way.

Personally I think Andrew is grossly maligning hobbits, they might like their comfort but they appear basically honest and not inclined to cherish connections to long lost kings, apart from the Tooks who were proud of their connection to their hero Bullroarer Took.

Now the dwarves with their lust for gold and precious gems, I can more easily imagine they might give greater credit to suspect relationships with ancient kings and kingdoms.

As for the elves, if they wrote 'personal knowledge' on a profile that had died 400 years beforehand, we would have to believe them.

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:)

Yes the hobbits are "nicer" than the dwarves.

Anyway yes the Elves are Tolkien's trick for making it easy. They just remembered everything. We don't have them unfortunately.

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Without the elves, they’d been required to look for old documents for the history and the lineages. Oh, that we had elves! :-)

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I am sure our friends in big IT are developing them.

Answer 3

Thanks Pip. That’s great.

Wonder how many other WikiTreers have read Lord of the Rings?

Comments

Does listening to the audio books count?

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Absolutely!

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Yes...How many indeed. *reads book*

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I admit it has been a 'few' years since I made the time to go through and reread the four of them (The Hobbit; FOTR; TT & ROTK)

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My brother has all three movies on dvd. I sat through them all!!

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For a Tolkien purist like me, the movies were a terrible disappointment. Great effects, but, dang it, do the story the way it was written!!!

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And thus began Pip's career as a YouTube reviewer. =)

At least they were better than the Bakshi movies?

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I've read them all once, but now I've just added them to my reading list to read them again -- it's been a long time. The question is: How can you do WikiTree and read as well (or anything else)???

Pip, I agree with you totally about books vs. movies.

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I did enjoy the movies but not what they did with Eowyn.

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In movies from books, someone is always going to change things, leave out  or add stuff. Eowyn’s character in the LOTR book was much more developed, and the story would have been much the less without her, seeing as how the prophesy could not have been fulfilled by a lesser character in such a heroic way. In the movies, director’s freedom rules.

Stick without the books, O Lady of the Shield-arm, White Lady of Rohan.

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Usually books will always be better than the movies. Looking at you Harry Potter franchise. Many of those movies are good. But, a few books were cut for time in the movie versions. Half Blood Prince, the sixth one, had huge swaths taken out in the movie version. There are other things that could have been left in which could have made the movies better.

Answer 4

Yesssss....We hatez the Hobbits.

NO! NO! WE LOVEZ THEM!

HAAATE!

LOVEZ!

They keep us from our preciousssssssss!

You are of course, right. That little bit was for dramatic effect. I kind of wonder if the people who take the Decoursey gedcom as gospel would be Gollum now.....

We lovez the inaccuracy! YESSSSS!

Answer 5

absolutely brilliant!! Describes many of to a T

Answer 6

Wait for it.....Wait for iiit .......

I haven't read Lord Of The Rings!!! 

Comments

https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Towers/dp/0345538374/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1545334564&sr=8-1&keywords=tolkien+books

A very nice break from brickwalls.

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Thanks Pip. I will take a look.

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Not a bad price, actually. I hope you’ll join the cult.... uh..... club! 

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Nice save.

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I can download it to Nook for 9.99. Seems to be an interesting read. Count me in the club, just no long robes, masks or hoods.