Elves worship as elves, Man as man and Hobbits as ?

 I believe most of us would make good hobbits. Indeed, it’s not for no reason that Tolkien presents this story from the view of the Hobbits, they are the race we can most readily identify with: they do not seem all that honorable like Numenoreans, nor vicious like orcs, nor all that down to gain military glory like some man in Middle Earth. Hobbits like good tiled earth, good pipe-weed, good celebrations, good food and they generally like to be left to themselves: think of Bilbo at the beginning of the Hobbit who just wanted to have yet another day of drinking tea and sorting his house affairs. Being insular in their nature, they had little contact with ‘queer folk’ and had thus little, or rather no knowledge of the worship practices of Middle Earth. Outside folk had also forgotten about the hobbits. But were Hobbits sinful and had they no appreciation for creation? What of this changes with the destruction of the ring and the Scourging of the Shire?

Are Hobbits lazy like Saruman and his ruffians thought? As the prologue to The Lord of the Rings says, they did not like complicated machinery although they were skillful with their hands. They do like good food, good beer, good pipe-weed and seem to favor tea over climbing trees, but I don’t think we have textual evidence that they are generally actually lazy – as I once thought. Hobbits just didn’t fall for the regime of ‘total-work’ Pieper describes as being the norm in the modern world and this seems to be compatible with the association of the Shire with rural England. Indeed, I think we ought to see their natural tendency to comfort as not wholly evil. Although this isolates them from the outside world and its worship practices, Hobbits also end up preserving a taste for leisure and saw work as a means for life rather than the other way around. One can think that because of their size and the strength of others, maybe it was for the best that Hobbits – who, descending from pre-Numenorean man, might not have had more intentional worship in the first place – isolated themselves since that allowed them to preserve at least their leisurely life. Hobbits’ non-dominating attitude towards nature, their appreciation of nature and leisure are rustic forms of appreciating creation, although not particularly conscious of the transcendental origin of nature and leisure. In this way, I think it’s fair to say that, to some extent, in The Lord of the Rings their love of food and parties, for instance, is not for the sake of their work, that it’s also a contemplative celebration of the ale brewed, the pipe-weed grown and an attitude of not being busy, which is in Aristotle and Medieval Christianity seen as proper leisure and fundamental in itself for man’s life. (Leisure, p.64, 67, 69) But, Hobbits’ leisure is not faultless, indeed, their lack of conscious worship would be an important shortcoming in their leisure following Pieper’s ideas. Now, we move to what the War of the Rings accomplished for the Shire and how that impacts their worship, and consequently leisure.

From both the prologue and the last few books of The Lord of the Rings we can see that the four Hobbits are both acknowledged, for instance, by Gondor for their deeds and thus put their race on the map so to speak. Ioreth recognizes their worth, ‘they are small, but they are valiant,’ and in Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry, the halfings are praised: ‘Long live the Halflings!’ (LOTR, Steward and The King) In their worship, ‘fulfilling the chief purpose of life’, Gondor would call on all created things to join in their chorus, ‘all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing’ and halflings. (Sanct. Myth, p.10) In this way already, halflings are part of the ‘church militant’ of middle earth that one is united to when praising God and the splendor of creation. But is this true from the Shire-folk’s perspective, that they are more united in worship to the outside world after the War of the Ring? In class, we explored the idea that, indeed, they are. It’s clear that the hobbits that went on the quest of the ring are drawn out of the shire and towards man’s and elvish worship of creation. Maybe the clearest example is that of Frodo and Sam who adopt throughout their travel into Mordor the elvish practice of invoking Elbereth and experience first-hand the power of prayer, and also when Frodo replies to Faramir that hobbits have no custom akin to that of looking towards Numenor before meals, Frodo feels ‘strangely rustic and untutored’ and joins them. In the persons of Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam, the Shire joins the wider practices of worship and praise in Middle Earth. But does it stop there? No, the events of the War of the Ring, specially the Battle of Bywater, bring the outside world to the Shire. Not only do these awaken in the Hobbits a desire to write down their traditions, ‘the greater families were also concerned with events in the Kingdom at large, and many of their members studied its ancient histories and legends,’ which might be seen as a door to praising the deeds of Men and Elves and consequently to calling on them to join the Shire’s chorus in praising the splendor of creation. Additionally, those that fought in the Battle of Bywater had in that joined Aragorn’s, Gimli’s and Legola’s rejection of the evil of Sauron and proclaimed the greatness of unmarred and well-tended creation. Those who died had a martyr’s death. An important difficulty in this view that the Shire is brought into communion with the rest of Middle Earth is discussed below.

But the Shire-folk at large seemingly didn’t change their habbits with the Scourging of the Shire and the destruction of the Ring. They continue keen in their love of celebrations, ale, pipe-weed and at the same time they do not invoke or sing of Elbereth, and, as far as the text goes, do not say grace before eating. So, the extent to which the four hobbits’ experience of these and other forms of worship in the outside world impact the Shire is at first glance limited. This seeming failure of the Hobbits to save the Shire from ignorance of worship has been explored in a previous post that partially called into question the reading we did in class of the hobbit’s travel as a pilgrimage that connected their people to the worshipful world outside the Shire. There a proposition is made: we don’t need to lose our Hobbit-ness to worship. This is getting at an important thing the Scourging of the Shire and the destruction of the ring accomplish for the Shire-folk. Their leisure is sanctified. In the reconstruction of the Shire, they are doing God’s work more intentionally; they are actively choosing for the good and the beautiful against the evil that Saruman brought. And so, when resting, I can only imagine that they will all the more look at Creation and say: it is Good, a contemplative celebration which Pieper – not Pippin – points out as one of the essential attitudes of leisure. (Leisure, p.68) In learning about and praising Merry and Pippin’s adventures in parties, the Hobbits will be praising their and the fellowship’s great virtuous deeds and, in a way, they will be praising proto-saints or at least proto-apostles.  If not of Christ’s passion, their deeds can be seen as at least a prefigurement of the early Christians fighting the ‘good fight.’ So even if the Shire didn’t, or couldn’t, adopt the elvish praise of Elebereth and their lembas, nor Gondor’s saying grace, their leisure was sanctified so that it constitutes not lazyness or praise of a good, quiet material life, but a more conscious praising of the good, beautiful and the truth in creation. 

Hobbits worship as Hobbits, not as elves or man. Going to Gondor, Rohan, Lothlorien and Mordor, and these coming to the Shire, the fellowship united their people with the outside world in worship. But, they are in communion with middle earth not because they worship in the same way as other peoples, but because at the end of the day they worship the same One, which in the primary reality is the God of the sabbath.

-PT

Works Cited:

Pieper, Josef. Leisure : the basis of culture ; The philosophical act. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009. Print.

Birzer, Bradley J. J.R.R. Tolkien's sanctifying myth : understanding Middle-earth. Wilmington, Del: ISI Book, 2003. Print.

Tolkien, J. R. R., and Douglas A. Anderson. The Hobbit and the lord of the rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Print.