This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a
reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history.
Further information will also be found in the selection from the Red Book of
Westmarch that has already been published, under the title of The Hobbit.
That story was derived from the earlier chapters of the Red Book, composed
by Bilbo himself, the first Hobbit to become famous in the world at large,
and called by him There and Back Again, since they told of his journey into
the East and his return: an adventure which later involved all the Hobbits
in the great events of that Age that are here related.

Many, however, may wish to know more about this remarkable people
from

the outset, while some may not possess the earlier book. For such readers a
few notes on the more important points are here collected from Hobbit-lore,
and the first adventure is briefly recalled.

Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous
formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled
earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt.
They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a
forge -bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with
tools. Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of 'the Big Folk', as
they call us, and now they avoid us with dismay and are becoming hard to
find. They are quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and though they are inclined
to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and
deft in their movements. They possessed from the first the art of
disappearing swiftly and silently, when large folk whom they do not wish to
meet come blundering by; and this an they have developed until to Men it may
seem magical. But Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind,
and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that heredity
and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered




inimitable by bigger and clumsier races.

For they are a little people, smaller than Dwarves: less tout and
stocky, that is, even when they are not actually much shorter. Their height
is variable, ranging between two and four feet of our measure. They seldom
now reach three feet; but they hive dwindled, they say, and in ancient days
they were taller. According to the Red Book, Bandobras Took (Bullroarer),
son of Isengrim the Second, was four foot five and able to ride a horse. He
was surpassed in all Hobbit records only by two famous characters of old;
but that curious matter is dealt with in this book.

As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned,
in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk. They
dressed in bright colours, being notably fond of yellow and green; but they
seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough leathery soles and were clad
in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads, which was
commonly brown. Thus, the only craft little practised among them was
shoe-making; but they had long and skilful fingers and could make many other
useful and comely things. Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather
than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to
laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and
drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of
six meals a day (when they could get them). They were hospitable and
delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and
eagerly accepted.

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are
relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old
they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and
disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship
is can no longer be discovered. The beginning of Hobbits lies far back in
the Elder Days that are now lost and forgotten. Only the Elves still
preserve any records of that vanished time, and their traditions are
concerned almost entirely with their own history, in which Men appear seldom
and Hobbits are not mentioned at all. Yet 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. And the world being after all full of strange
creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little
importance. But in the days of Bilbo, and of Frodo his heir, they suddenly
became, by no wish of their own, both important and renowned, and troubled




the counsels of the Wise and the Great.

Those days, the Third Age of Middle -earth, are now long past, and the
shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then
lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the
North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea. Of their original home the
Hobbits in Bilbo's time preserved no knowledge. A love of learning (other
than genealogical lore) was far from general among them, but there remained
still a few in the older families who studied their own books, and even
gathered reports of old times and distant lands from Elves, Dwarves, and
Men. Their own records began only after the settlement of the Shire, and
their most ancient legends hardly looked further back than their Wandering
Days. It is clear, nonetheless, from these legends, and from the evidence of
their peculiar words and customs, that like many other folk Hobbits had in
the distant past moved westward. Their earliest tales seem to glimpse a time
when they dwelt in the upper vales of Anduin, between the eaves of
Greenwood

the Great and the Misty Mountains. Why they later undertook the hard and
perilous crossing of the mountains into Eriador is no longer certain. Their
own accounts speak of the multiplying of Men in the land, and of a shadow
that fell on the forest, so that it became darkened and its new name was
Mirkwood.

Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become
divided into three somewhat different breeds: Harfoots, Stoors, and
Fallohides. The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and
they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble;
and they preferred highlands and hillsides. The Stoors were broader, heavier
in build; their feet and hands were larger, and they preferred flat lands
and riversides. The Fallohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and
they were taller and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and
of woodlands.

The Harfoots had much to do with Dwarves in ancient times, and long
lived in the foothills of the mountains. They moved westward early, and
roamed over Eriador as far as Weathertop while the others were still in the
Wilderland. They were the most normal and representative variety of Hobbit,
and far the most numerous. They were the most inclined to settle in one
place, and longest preserved their ancestral habit of living in tunnels and
holes.




The Stoors lingered long by the banks of the Great River Anduin, and
were less shy of Men. They came west after the Harfoots and followed the
course of the Loudwater southwards; and there many of them long dwelt
between Tharbad and the borders of Dunland before they moved north again.

The Fallohides, the least numerous, were a northerly branch. They were
more friendly with Elves than the other Hobbits were, and had more skill in
language and song than in handicrafts; and of old they preferred hunting to
tilling. They crossed the mountains north of Rivendell and came down the
River Hoarwell. In Eriador they soon mingled with the other kinds that had
preceded them, but being somewhat bolder and more adventurous, they were
often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors. Even
in Bilbo's time the strong Fallohidish strain could still be noted among the
greater families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland.

In the westlands of Eriador, between the Misty Mountains and the
Mountains of Lune, the Hobbits found both Men and Elves. Indeed, a remnant
still dwelt there of the D®nedain, the kings of Men that came over the Sea
out of Westernesse; but they were dwindling fast and the lands of their
North Kingdom were falling far and wide into waste. There was room and to
spare for incomers, and ere long the Hobbits began to settle in ordered
communities. Most of their earlier settlements had long disappeared and been
forgotten in Bilbo's time; but one of the first to become important still
endured, though reduced in size; this was at Bree and in the Chetwood that
lay round about, some forty miles east of the Shire.

It was in these early days, doubtless, that the Hobbits learned their
letters and began to write after the manner of the D®nedain, who had in
their turn long before learned the art from the Elves. And in those days
also they forgot whatever languages they had used before, and spoke ever
after the Common Speech, the Westron as it was named, that was current
through all the lands of the kings from Arnor to Gondor, and about all the
coasts of the Sea from B elf alas to Lune. Yet they kept a few words of their
own, as well as their own names of months and days, and a great store of
personal names out of the past.

About this time legend among the Hobbits first becomes history with a
reckoning of years. For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first
year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set
out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at
Fornostl, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of




Hobbits. They passed over the Bridge of Stonebows, that had been built in
the days of the power of the North Kingdom, and they took ail the land
beyond to dwell in, between the river and the Far Downs. All that was
demanded of them was that they should keep the Great Bridge in repair, and
all other bridges and roads, speed the king's messengers, and acknowledge
his lordship.

Thus began the Shire-reckoning, for the year of the crossing of the
Brandywine (as the Hobbits turned the name) became Year One of the Shire,
and all later dates were reckoned from it. 2 At once the western Hobbits fell
in love with their new land, and they remained there, and soon passed once
more out of the history of Men and of Elves. While there was still a king
they were in name his subjects, but they were, in fact, ruled by their own
chieftains and meddled not at all with events in the world outside. To the
last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen
to the aid of the king, or so they maintained, though no tales of Men record
it. But in that war the North Kingdom ended; and then the Hobbits took the
land for their own, and they chose from their own chiefs a Thain to hold the
authority of the king that was gone. There for a thousand years they were
little troubled by wars, and they prospered and multiplied after the Dark
Plague (S.R. 37) until the disaster of the Long Winter and the famine that
followed it. Many thousands then perished, but the Days of Dearth (1158-60)
were at the time of this tale long past and the Hobbits had again become
accustomed to plenty. The land was rich and kindly, and though it had long
been deserted when they entered it, it had before been well tilled, and
there the king had once had many farms, cornlands, vineyards, and woods.

Forty leagues it stretched from the Far Downs to the Brandywine Bridge,
and fifty from the northern moors to the marshes in the south. The Hobbits
named it the Shire, as the region of the authority of their Thain, and a
district of well-ordered business; and there in that pleasant comer of the
world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less
and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think
that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all
sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the
Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of
the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember
it.

At no time had Hobbits of any kind been warlike, and they had never




fought among themselves. In olden days they had, of course, been often
obliged to fight to maintain themselves in a hard world; but in Bilbo's time
that was very ancient history. The last battle, before this story opens, and
indeed the only one that had ever been fought within the borders of the
Shire, was beyond living memory: the Battle of Greenfields, S.R. 1147, in
which Bandobras Took routed an invasion of Ores. Even the weathers had
grown

milder, and the wolves that had once come ravening out of the North in
bitter white winters were now only a grandfather's tale. So, though there
was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as
trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at
Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits
had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a
mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms,
and

many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that son.