When Did Hobbits become Divided into Fallohides, Stoors, and Harfoots?

Q: When Did Hobbits become Divided into Fallohides, Stoors, and Harfoots?

ANSWER: This is an amalgam of questions I’ve been receiving going back to at least 2013, and for which I’ve never attempted to provide an answer because questions about Hobbit origins are so difficult to answer. Tolkien never provided any definitive historical notes for Hobbits. Here’s a question I received in April 2015:

Hi Michael I’m rereading LOTR for the first time in about 20 years and I came across an interesting paragraph just before the Hobbits arrived in Bree. “The Shire-Hobbits referred to those of Bree, and to any others that lived beyond the borders, as Outsiders…there were probably many more Outsiders scattered about in the West of the World in those days than the people of the Shire imagined. Some, doubtless, were no better than tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them.”

It seems that Tolkien was speaking about Hobbits other than those living in the Shire or Bree-land. Other than maybe some Stoors who might still live along the Anduin, do you know of anything about these ‘Outsiders’? I’ve never seen this particular passage referenced anywhere so it caught my attention.

First of all, I apologize for waiting more than 8 years to take up this question (and others like it).

These questions are all connected to the concept or idea that there may be a coherent “history of Hobbits” buried somewhere in J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings. However, if there is such a history I’ve never found it. And if you’re wondering how much information there is in The Nature of Middle-earth (concerning Hobbits), not much.

The Literary History of Hobbit Kindreds

If you dig into Tolkien’s notes, you’ll find that he didn’t distinguish between Hobbit groups when he was first writing The Lord of the Rings. The early chapters assumed there were only Hobbits, although one passage hinted the Hobbits of the Marish might have non-Hobbitish ancestry mixed with Hobbitish ancestry. But that all changed once Tolkien devised the concept of the Harfoots, Fallohides, and Stoors.

In his discussion of Hobbits in The Peoples of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien writes:

…Moreover it is seen from the history of this text how much of the account of Hobbits and their origins actually emerged after the narrative of The Lord of the Rings was completed – most notably, perhaps, the idea of their division into Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides, which entered from the earliest version of the appendix on languages (p. 10). Some of these new elements were then introduced into the existing narrative, such as smials into the chapter Treebeard (p. 11), or Stoors into the chapter The Shadow of the Past (p. 66, $20).

So the division of Hobbits into 3 kindreds was a retcon that Tolkien introduced after he wrote the main story. Christopher notes that his father filled in details of Hobbit history as he revised various portions of the book.

There is a passage in the essay “Of Dwarves and Men” that provides clues about the Hobbits’ time in the Vales of Anduin, prior to the westward migrations that began in the 11th century of the Third Age:

The vague tradition preserved by the Hobbits of the Shire was that they had dwelt once in lands by a Great River, but long ago had left them, and found their way through or round high mountains, when they no longer felt at ease in their homes because of the multiplication of the Big Folk and of a shadow of fear that had fallen on the Forest. This evidently reflects the troubles of Gondor in the earlier part of the Third Age. The increase in Men was not the normal increase of those with whom they had lived in friendship, but the steady increase of invaders from the East, further south held in check by Gondor, but in the North beyond the bounds of the Kingdom harassing the older ‘Atanic’ inhabitants, and even in places occupying the Forest and coming through it into the Anduin valley. But the shadow of which the tradition spoke was not solely due to human invasion. Plainly the Hobbits had sensed, even before the Wizards and the Eldar had become fully aware of it, the awakening of Sauron and his occupation of Dol Guldur.

Based on this essay, I’ve occasionally inferred that the Hobbits arrived in the Vales of Anduin sometime between Third Age year 1 and Third Age year 1050 (when the Harfoots crossed the Misty Mountains). There is no mention of any peoples like the Hobbits in Tolkien’s Second Age notes and stories; also, the ancestors of the Northmen who had lived along the Anduin were destroyed and driven away during the War of the Elves and Sauron (ending their ancient alliance with the Longbeard Dwarves). The survivors became known as “the Free Men of the North” by the end of the Second Age. But there were also Woodmen living in the middle of Greenwood the Great whom Isildur considered to be friendly, according to “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields”.

The fact Tolkien doesn’t even hint at Hobbits living in or near the Gladden Fields at the start of the Third Age suggests that they hadn’t yet arrived. But it could also be that he might have intended to write more about them, possibly linking them somehow to the Gladden Fields by the start of the Third Age, but he never got around to it.

At best we can assume that the literary history of Hobbits is incomplete. At worst, it only implies that Hobbits arrived in the Vales of Anduin after Isildur’s death.

The Etymology of Hobbit Nomenclature

We know that Tolkien associated the word hobbit with Old English holbytla (hole-builder), both in-story and in the appendices. These words, of course, represent translations of “actual” (Shire-Westron) kuduk and (Rohirric) Kûd-dûkan.

I don’t know of any “actual” translations for Harfoots, Stoors, or Fallohides. But these are all historical words found in English or related languages.

Harfoot is historically derived from “hare-foot” (meaning fleet-footed). There is a Scandinavian cognate harfótr associated with Harold Harefoot, son of Cnut. Tolkien implies the name Harfoot has something to do with the hair on the feet of these, the most common group of Hobbits. So I think he was making a linguistic joke here, implying that their ability to hide so well included some fleetness of foot.

Fallohide is usually denoted as a combination of fallow and hide by Tolkien fans and scholars. Tolkien Gateway says the modern equivalent would be “pale-skin”. In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes: “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.” Etymology Online traces the adjective fallow to Old English fealu, meaning “‘reddish yellow, yellowish-brown, tawny, dusk-colored’ (of flame, birds’ feet, a horse, withered grass or leaves, waters, roads), from Proto-Germanic *falwa- (source also of Old Saxon falu, Old Norse fölr, Middle Dutch valu, Dutch vaal, Old High German falo, German falb), from PIE root *pel- (1) ‘pale.'”

However, there is also a Latin word fallo meaning “I deceive, beguile, or mistake”. The word hide can have several meanings, including “to conceal or bury”. I just can’t help but wonder if Tolkien didn’t chuckle at the possible double/triple meanings one could see in this name.

NOTE: I agree that he intended fallohide to mean something like “[yellowish] [lighter] brown skin”. I don’t think he meant that the Fallohides were white skinned as Tolkien usually describes white skin for characters in The Lord of the Rings, including Goldberry, Arwen, and Galadriel. The Uruk-hai describe the Rohirrim as “Whiteskins”, too. When Frodo meets Faramir’s men in Ithilien, the narrative says they are “pale-skinned”, and when Pippin meets Denethor he is said to have “skin like ivory”. The Appendices say the Eldar were “tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed” (although not all Elves had fair skin – but I digress).

Stoors can have multiple meanings, but these are different words with different origins. I think Tolkien intended his Stoor, Stoors to be derived from Scottish stour (“strong” or “hardy”). Readers often associate Tolkien’s Stoors with Celtic influences, in part because of their family names, but also because the Stoors of the Shire spent time in Dunland (which many people feel was modeled on northern Celtic culture).

In an early text for “On Translation” (Appendix F in The Lord of the Rings) Tolkien wrote:

These I have often left unaltered, for if queer now, they were queer in their own day. Some I have given a Celtic cast, notably Meriadoc and Gorhendad. There is some reason for this. Many of the actual Buckland (and Bree) names had something of that style: such as Marroc, Madoc, Seredic; and they often ended in ac, ic, oc. Also the relation of, say, Welsh or British to English was somewhat similar to that of the older language of the Stoors and Bree-men to the Westron.

Thus Bree, Combe, Archet, and Chetwood are modelled on British relics in English place-names, chosen by sense: bree ‘hill’, chet ‘wood’. Similarly Gorhendad represents a name Ogforgad which according to Stoor-tradition had once meant ‘greatgrandfather or ancestor’. While Meriadoc was chosen to fit the fact that this character’s shortened name meant ‘jolly, gay’ in Westron kili, though it was actually an abbreviation of Kilimanac [> kali, Kalamanac].

Speculating On What It All Means

I don’t think we can infer much about Hobbit divisions (into kindreds) from the group names. The Stoors appear to have brought with them a dialectal name for themselves (they were the “large” Hobbits). I’m guessing that Tolkien’s thought was that this name was derived from the language of Dunland. But he didn’t provide an untranslated source for that name, so we can’t be sure. I just think it highly unlikely that Tolkien intended for any kind of Celtic-like culture or representation east of the Misty Mountains.

Hence, I don’t think Gollum’s people would have called themselves Stoors. And that may explain why Gandalf said to Frodo: “Long after, but still very long ago, there lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of Wilderland a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind; akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors, for they loved the River, and often swam in it, or made little boats of reeds.” They apparently didn’t think of themselves as hobbits, either, because Gollum referred to Frodo and Sam as hobbitses (seeming to imply he thought it was a name that didn’t apply to himself).

The Appendices speak of “the Stoors of the Gladden Fields”, but this is an identification that could represent a Fourth Age point of view (either an identification/equivocation made by the Shire-folk or someone in Gondor). Since Gollum died with the One Ring, and since the story doesn’t mention anyone asking Gollum what his people called themselves, I think it unlikely that the self-given name of Gollum’s people was recorded or known to the characters at the end of the Third Age/start of the Fourth Age.

Hence, my opinion is that the three divisions had to have emerged before the Harfoots migrated into Eriador. Or maybe that is when the divisions began. The Fallohides were friendlier to Elves than the other groups. They could have been forest-dwellers who didn’t expose themselves to the sun as much as the other groups. They would have retained some of their ancestral dark skin. And Tolkien says they were often found as leaders among the other clans. That kind of makes sense, because they might have been inspired by their contact with Elves (even if only Wood-elves of Greenwood and Lorien) to be more curious and outgoing. As their late Third Age descendants liked to travel (go adventuring), they must have wandered around more than other Hobbits.

My deduction is that there must have been a migratory period early in the Third Age that brought groups of Hobbits to the Vales of Anduin. But from where? It had to be far to the east of Greenwood. The Fall of Sauron at the end of the Second Age would have disrupted the eastern peoples who were loyal to him. Power struggles among tribes and nations might have erupted and forced the Hobbits to leave their most ancient homelands, seeking safer lands near peoples who wouldn’t threaten them. The Wood-elves and the Northmen were generally peaceful, friendly peoples.

As for the Stoors, if they settled closest to the Anduin and traded with Dwarves, maybe that was due to their being larger of stature than most Hobbits. They could not only fit in with other peoples but also take on some of the more arduous tasks (like rowing boats on a great river).

Assuming Tolkien might have accepted my speculation (perhaps with a twinkle in his eye), let’s say that the ancestors of the Fallohides started the earlier migration first. They could have settled in Greenwood when they found Elves living there. The ancestors of the Harfoots and Stoors might have passed through Greenwood via the Old Forest Road (not yet abandoned). The Stoors could have favored the riverlands in the east and the Harfoots could have favored more open lands suitable for farming.

Pressed by unfriendly Easterlings, they moved through Greenwood to the Vales of Anduin by Third Age year 480-ish. The Tale of Years says the Easterlings began invading Gondor’s dominion in T.A. 490. Romendacil I defeated these early Easterlings in the year 500, which would have given the early Third Age Hobbits at least 500 years of general peace in which to become known to the Elves and Woodmen.

Sometime between T.A. 500 and T.A. 1248 Gondor had settled Northmen in the lands south of Greenwood. Minalcar learned at that time that some of the Northmen were helping Easterlings; but this was about 200 years after the Harfoots had migrated west to Eriador. So I think there must have been Northmen (maybe only Woodmen) living close to the (proto-)Harfoots (and maybe the proto-Stoors) by no later than T.A. 1050.

The Éothéod were established far too late to be the ancestors whom Theoden referred to when he met Merry and Pippin. But the Éothéod were descended from both Northmen of Rhovanion (the kingdom that had flourish to the east of Greenwood/Mirkwood) and Woodmen. So Theoden’s holbytla must be Tolkien’s implication that there was an older word (maybe something like groba + bauan), although Tolkien refrained from constructing such a more ancient word. He probably didn’t see the need to do so, or maybe Gothic is so different from English in that respect that it wouldn’t make as much sense as holbytla -> hobbit.

See Also

How Many Independent Hobbit Countries Were There In Middle-earth?

What Is the Earliest Date the Hobbits Could Have Settled in the Vales of Anduin?

Did Hobbits Ever Live in Tribes?

Did Hobbits Live by the Anduin?

Where Did Hobbits Live in the First Age?

Why Didn’t Treebeard Know about Hobbits?

Where Do Hobbits Come From?

Who Created The Hobbits?

Charting the Shire Lines (Classic Essay)

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