Q: What is the Significance of the Thrush in the Hobbit?
ANSWER: Thrushes are one of the most common types of birds around the world. The scientific family name for thrushes is Turdidae, and the family is divided into 21 genera of which the main genus is Turdus (“True Thrushes”). There are 65 recorded species in the Turdus genus. Thrushes occur in many different colors and their survival behaviors are influenced by the local ecologies where they live.
The thrush in The Hobbit is described as being almost coal-black with pale yellow spots on its breast. This description could match many different species of thrush throughout the world, including several types of Robins. It is possible that Tolkien’s thrush is intended to be a member of the Common Blackbird species. However, Tolkien’s thrush also eats snails, and it could be that he had the Song Thrush species (Turdus philomelos) in mind when describing this bird. Other types of thrushes eat snails but Song Thrushes seem to be most commonly associated with snail eating.
Tolkien’s thrush is also “enormous”, suggesting it may have been oversized for its species. In this case it may be that Tolkien was inventing an imaginary species of thrush that combined the necessary elements of different members of the Blackbird or Thrush family.
Thrushes and blackbirds occur frequently in European folklore. They are often associated with good luck and dreariness. In December 1900, Thomas Hardy, the author of Tess of the D’Urbervilles (then being about 60 years old, which was quite advanced age for his time), published the poem “The Darkling Thrush”, which was somewhat depressing and perhaps representative of his mood at that time in his life. The poem has received much commentary through the past 110 years.
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Hardy’s fiction was usually based in Wessex, which while not a place in modern England was essentially based on Dorchester in Dorset. Some of the themes that Hardy explored, such as the rejection of a “poor” suitor for a daughter’s hand in marriage (A Pair of Blue Eyes, 1873) and remorse over infidelities and betrayals (Far From The Madding Crowd, 1874), may sound familiar to Tolkien readers. I don’t know if Tolkien ever read Hardy’s books or what he would have thought of them, but several of Tolkien’s characters end up in similar situations (though Tolkien does not write about adultery and out-of-wedlock births).
Tolkien most notably writes about changing the status quo and The Hobbit is exemplary of this type of thematic writing. Bilbo leaves his quiet homeland to become a “burglar”, going off on a wild, unimaginable adventure with 13 dwarves that would, in reality, terrify nearly every able-bodied man. Bard the Bowman (who listens to the thrush later in the story) is elevated from the status of mere Captain of the Guards in Laketown to “King of Dale”. Thorin rises from exiled wanderer to King Under the Mountain. And Bilbo, among his many achievements, is admitted to the ranks of the Elf-friends, the most legendary of heroes.
One might ask if the connection between Thomas Hardy and The Hobbit is really all that. And yet, reading the passage where Bilbo first sees the thrush, one feels a deep sense of loneliness and despair:
That night he was very miserable and hardly slept. Next day the dwarves all went wandering off in various directions; some were exercising the ponies down below, some were roving about the mountain-side. All day Bilbo sat gloomily in the grassy bay gazing at the stone, or out west through the narrow opening. He had a queer feeling that he was waiting for something. “Perhaps the wizard will suddenly come back today,” he thought.
If he lifted his head he could see a glimpse of the distant forest. As the sun turned west there was a gleam of yellow upon its far roof, as if the light caught the last pale leaves. Soon he saw the orange ball of the sun sinking towards the level of his eyes. He went to the opening and there pale and faint was a thin new moon above the rim of Earth. At that very moment he heard a sharp crack behind him. There on the grey stone in the grass was an enormous thrush, nearly coal black, its pale yellow breast freckled (with) dark spots. Crack! It had caught a snail and was knocking it on the stone. Crack! Crack!
That this thrush is special, even a fantasy creature, becomes evident when Bilbo grows suspicious and paranoid of its presence (because the thrush has been listening to everything Bilbo and the Dwarves have said to each other). Thorin admonishes Bilbo not to be cruel to the bird:
“Leave him alone!” said Thorin. “The thrushes are good and friendly-this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundreds years or more ago. The Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the Lake and elsewhere.”
The thrush intervenes in the battle between the Men of Laketown and Smaug just as Bard is about to loose his last arrow:
Their captain was Bard, grim-voiced and grim-faced, whose friends had accused him of prophesying floods and poisoned fish, though they knew his worth and courage. He was a descendant in long line of Girion, Lord of Dale, whose wife and child had escaped down the Running River from the ruin long ago. Now he shot with a great yew bow, till all his arrows but one were spent. The flames were near him. His companions were leaving him. He bent his bow for the last time. Suddenly out of the dark something fluttered to his shoulder. He started-but it was only an old thrush. Unafraid it perched by his ear and it brought him news. Marvelling he found he could understand its tongue, for he was of the race of Dale.
“Wait! Wait!” it said to him. “The moon is rising. Look for the hollow of the left breast as he flies and turns above you!” And while Bard paused in wonder it told him of tidings up in the Mountain and of all that it had heard. Then Bard drew his bow-string to his ear. The dragon was circling back, flying low, and as he came the moon rose above the eastern shore and silvered his great wings.
In some folklore and mythology thrushes are associated with death. If a thrush flies into your window, people used to say in England, the bird was portending a death in the house. But thrushes (especially robins) have also been accorded a holy place in myth and folklore. As sacred birds they are held in special regard in ancient European mythology from Greece to Scandinavia. Thor is said to have been associated with thrushes. And, of course, the relationship between the Men of Dale (whose language is loosely based on Old Norse) and the magical thrushes is a key element of the story.
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