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Archiver > TMG > 2003-03 > 1046502492


From: "Darrell A. Martin" <>
Subject: [TMG] OT!! Tolkien, Hobbit genealogy, and prepositions
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 01:08:12 -0600
References: <0HB200DXT2IYOB@l-daemon><032001c2dfa5$9bb937c0$347e36d2@your28lfnfecba>
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20030301010139.0aac2130@mail.whollygenes.com>


At 01:05 AM 3/1/03 -0500, you wrote:
>Ask me when I'm a little less pre-occupied and I'll give you a TMG data
>set with the genealogies of hobbits, elves, dragons, and such. It is
>about 8 years old but I think that I got through the first two (of four)
>books before I decided that the time would be better spent on my own family.
>
>-Bob

Hi, Bob:

I for one would love to see it.

"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. 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: they liked
to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and
square with no contradictions."

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"The Lord of the Rings", Prologue 1, "Concerning Hobbits"
pg. 20, de luxe edition (India paper, entire LotR less than 1" thick)

I should probably resist, but note that Tolkien the philologist, professor
of Old English for years at Oxford (for which work he was knighted), ended
the third sentence in the above quotation thus: "... at the time which
these tales tell of."

Darrell


Darrell Allen MARTIN
a native Vermonter currently in exile in Addison, Illinois
www.darrell-martin.net/genealogy/


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