Q: Is There Gambling in Middle-earth?
ANSWER: The short answer is, YES, there is gambling in Middle-earth. Most readers who try to answer this question often overlook several references to gambling in the texts. However, in my opinion it seems to me that Tolkien was lapsing into idiomatic writing in all except one example. By “idiomatic writing” I mean that I feel he was probably writing in a mode that was comfortable to a modern reader and not necessarily a mode he intended to include in the narrative structure of his stories.
Gambling is defined as taking an action that entails a risk of loss or profit beyond the skill of the actor. That is, you are wagering something of value against an action beyond your own control. It could be as simple as betting that the next person to walk around a corner is a woman, or that if you throw a paper airplane from a rooftop the wind will carry it across the street. You cannot predict with 100% reliability the outcome of the event you are wagering against.
Some people have argued that a war or an athletic competition might resemble forms of gambling. However, unless there is an accompanying wager it is hard to justify such an identification. War, which incurs a loss of life and allows a victor to claim territory, take slaves, or despoil his vanquished foes, does seem to conform with the classic definition of gambling. Still, war is usually arbitrarily excluded from the literal sense of
The references to games of chance in J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories are relatively few. The most famous example is, of course, the Riddle Game between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit. Gollum first asks Bilbo a simple riddle. Bilbo guesses the answer quickly. Gollum then proposes they play a game of wits: the stakes are Bilbo’s life against his freedom.
But what other references might there be? One such reference is to be found in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, in the chapter “The Quest of Erebor”, where Gandalf says:
“But that was not enough for me. I knew in my heart that Bilbo must go with him, or the whole quest would be a failure – or, as I should say now, the far more important events by the way would not come to pass. So I had still to persuade Thorin to take him. There were many difficulties on the road afterwards, but for me this was the most difficult part of the whole affair. Though I argued with him far into the night after Bilbo had retired, it was not finally settled until early the next morning. “Thorin was contemptuous and suspicious. ‘He is soft,’ he snorted. ‘Soft as the mud of his Shire, and silly. His mother died too soon. You are playing some crooked game of your own, Master Gandalf. I am sure that you have other purposes than helping me.
Thorin’s suggestion that Gandalf is playing a crooked game is a metaphor borrowed from the practice of rigged games of chance or skill. One does not cheat at a game if there is no stake at risk. Another reference from the same book is found in the story of Turin, where his father Hurin says:
“Prudence, not doubt,” said Húrin; yet he looked troubled. “But one who looks forward must see this: that things will not remain as they were. This will be a great throw, and one side must fall lower than it now stands. If it be the Elven-kings that fall, then it must go evilly with the Edain; and we dwell nearest to the Enemy. But if things do go ill, I will not say to you: Do not be afraid! For you fear what should be feared, and that only; and fear does not dismay you. But I say: Do not wait! I shall return to you as I may, but do not wait! Go south as swiftly as you can; and I shall follow, and I shall find you, though I have to search through all Beleriand.”
In The Lord of the Rings there are several references to gambling. For example, as the Fellowship are passing through Eregion and they hear the howling of wolves, Sam says:
‘My heart’s right down in my toes, Mr. Pippin,’ said Sam. ‘But we aren’t etten yet, and there are some stout folk here with us. Whatever may be in store for old Gandalf, I’ll wager it isn’t a wolf’s belly.’
Further on, in the chapter “The Passage of the Marshes”, Sam uses a similar expression again:
These words only made more pressing to Sam’s mind a problem that had been troubling him from the moment when he understood that hir master was going to adopt Gollum as a guide: the problem of food. It did not occur to him that his master might also have thought of it. hut he supposed Gollum had. Indeed how had Gollum kept himself in all his lonely wandering? ‘Not too well,’ thought Sam. ‘He looks fair famished. Not too dainty to try what hobbit tastes like if there ain’t no fish, I’ll wager — supposing as he could catch us napping. Well, he won’t: not Sam Gamgee for one.’
And still later when Pippin meets Bergil son of Beregond, Bergil says:
‘Twenty-nine!’ said the lad and whistled. ‘Why, you are quite old! As old as my uncle Iorlas. Still,’ he added hopefully, ‘I wager I could stand you on your head or lay you on your back.’
Frodo and Sam, having escaped from the Tower of Cirth Ungol, overhear two Orcs (an Uruk and a Tracker) in this exchange:
‘Who says there’s bad news?’ shouted the soldier.
‘Ar! Who says there isn’t?’
‘That’s cursed rebel-talk, and I’ll stick you, if you don’t shut it down, see?’
‘All right, all right!’ said the tracker. ‘I’ll say no more and go on thinking. But what’s the black sneak got to do with it all? That gobbler with the flapping hands?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing, maybe. But he’s up to no good, nosing around, I’ll wager. Curse him! No sooner had he slipped us and run off than word came he’s wanted alive, wanted quick.’
Gandalf also indulges in the use of gambling metaphor, as when he confronts Grima Wormtongue in Meduseld:
‘Nay, Éomer, you do not fully understand the mind of Master Wormtongue,’ said
Gandalf, turning his piercing glance upon him. ‘He is bold and cunning. Even now he
plays a game with peril and wins a throw. Hours of my precious time he has wasted
already….
Another passage in “The Last Debate” is not so clearly using “throw” in a gambling sense, for there are many passages where the narrative speaks of someone throwing all his forces into battle. Still, some readers point to this passage:
‘As Aragorn has begun, so we must go on. We must push Sauron to his last throw. We must call out his hidden strength, so that he shall empty his land. We must march out to meet him at once. We must make ourselves the bait, though his jaws should close on us. He will take that bait, in hope and in greed, for he will think that in such rashness he sees the pride of the new Ringlord: and he will say: “So! he pushes out his neck too soon and too far. Let him come on, and behold I will have him in a trap from which he cannot escape. There I will crush him, and what he has taken in his insolence shall be mine again for ever.”
This somewhat ambiguous terminology is used again at the beginning of the chapter “The Black Gate Opens”:
Two days later the army of the West was all assembled on the Pelennor. The host of Orcs and Easterlings had turned back out of Anórien, but harried and scattered by the Rohirrim they had broken and fled with little fighting towards Cair Andros; and with that threat destroyed and new strength arriving out of the South the City was as well manned as might be. Scouts reported that no enemies remained upon the roads east as far as the Cross-roads of the Fallen King. All now was ready for the last throw.
Curiously, Tolkien also used Chess-related metaphor in the narrative. Chess is seen as a game of skill rather than chance, but one can easily make a wager on the outcome of any game of skill. In the chapter “Minas Tirith” Gandalf says to Pippin:
He fell silent and sighed. ‘Well, no need to brood on what tomorrow may bring. For one thing, tomorrow will be certain to bring worse than today, for many days to come. And there is nothing more that I can do to help it. The board is set, and the pieces are moving. One piece that I greatly desire to find is Faramir, now the heir of Denethor. I do not think that he is in the City; but I have had no time to gather news. I must go. Pippin. I must go to this lords’ council and learn what I can. But the Enemy has the move, and he is about to open his full game. And pawns are likely to see as much of it as any, Peregrin son of Paladin, soldier of Gondor. Sharpen your blade!’
In his conversation with Beregond, Pippin continues the reference to Chess:
Pippin looked at him: tall and proud and noble, as all the men that he had yet seen in that land; and with a glitter in his eye as he thought of the battle. ‘Alas! my own hand feels as light as a feather,’ he thought, but he said nothing. ‘A pawn did Gandalf say? Perhaps but on the wrong chessboard.’
At the end of “The Last Debate” Aragorn says:
‘Neither shall we,’ said Aragorn. ‘If this be jest, then it is too bitter for laughter. Nay, it is the last move in a great jeopardy, and for one side or the other it will bring the end of the game.’ Then he drew Andúril and held it up glittering in the sun. ‘You shall not be sheathed again until the last battle is fought;’ he said.
Tolkien’s use of the word jeopardy is intentional (and unusual, for it is derived from French). The Old French expression jeu parti is translated into English as “a divided game, game with even chances” by the Etymology Online Dictionary.
Finally, some people have suggested that the deadly game Gimli and Legolas played against each other — counting coup on Orcs at the Battle of Helm’s Deep — might be seen as a form of gambling. I’m not convinced, although it was certainly an impromptu competition. They took risks but there was no wager and neither had to settle up with the other afterward. Nonetheless, one can imagine the common soldiers of various realms making wagers on the basis of expected kills before going into battle.
Sam’s comments suggest that Hobbits of the Shire either played games of chance or had once done so; or perhaps their dialect simply preserved a memory of an ancient practice. But I think it more likely that Tolkien was using a convenient expression that sounded more colloquial and “hobbity” than something like “I deduce” or “I guess” (expressions Gandalf used in other situations). That is, Sam’s open-ended “wagers” may only have been phrased to express his deductions in a narrative style that was less formal and precise than Gandalf’s deductions.
As for the references to Chess and “throws” and “crooked games”, one might infer that Tolkien intended them to relate to some types of games that would be popular in Middle-earth but not necessarily equivalent to games of chance or skill from historical times.
The Riddle Game alone seems to be inarguably a betting game, conducted (as the narrative says) according to ancient rules that were held so sacred that even evil creatures dared not cheat. The wager, once made, could not be withdrawn and the stakes were the highest possible. It may be no mistake that Tolkien based this game on an Old English practice — one which seems to have been handed down from the proto-Germanic ancestors of the English to their descendants, for the Roman writer Tacitus records (whether accurately or not we cannot say) that the ancient Germans were so fond of gambling they would sometimes wager their own freedom against the outcome of games of chance. Such stakes are steep and would have altered the fortunes of one’s descendants. The rules of ancient wagering may indeed have been considered inviolate by all who invoked them for many generations.
Thus we can say with certainty that there is “gambling in Middle-earth”, or at least the practice of wagering and conducting games of chance. But I don’t think we can say that such practices would have been conducted for entertainment. The stakes would have been extremely high, and perhaps the only stakes allowed might have been those concerning death and freedom.
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