The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien [283]
Learn now the lore of Living Creatures!
First name the four, the free peoples:
Eldest of all, the elf-children;
Dwarf the delver, dark are his houses;
Ent the earthborn, old as mountains;
Man the mortal, master of horses:
Hm, hm, hm.
Beaver the builder, buck the leaper,
Bear bee-hunter, boar the fighter;
Hound is hungry, hare is fearful . . .
hm, hm.
Eagle in eyrie, ox in pasture,
Hart horn-crownéd; hawk is swiftest,
Swan the whitest, serpent coldest . . .
Hoom, hm; hoom, hm, how did it go? Room tum, room tum, roomty toom tum. It was a long list. But anyway you do not seem to fit in anywhere!’
‘We always seem to have got left out of the old lists, and the old stories,’ said Merry. ‘Yet we’ve been about for quite a long time. We’re hobbits.’
‘Why not make a new line?’ said Pippin.
‘Half-grown hobbits, the hole-dwellers.
Put us in amongst the four, next to Man (the Big People) and you’ve got it.’
‘Hm! Not bad, not bad,’ said Treebeard. ‘That would do. So you live in holes, eh? It sounds very right and proper. Who calls you hobbits, though? That does not sound Elvish to me. Elves made all the old words: they began it.’
‘Nobody else calls us hobbits; we call ourselves that,’ said Pippin.
‘Hoom, hmm! Come now! Not so hasty! You call yourselves hobbits? But you should not go telling just anybody. You’ll be letting out your own right names if you’re not careful.’
‘We aren’t careful about that,’ said Merry. ‘As a matter of fact I’m a Brandybuck, Meriadoc Brandybuck, though most people call me just Merry.’
‘And I’m a Took, Peregrin Took, but I’m generally called Pippin, or even Pip.’
‘Hm, but you are hasty folk, I see,’ said Treebeard. ‘I am honoured by your confidence; but you should not be too free all at once. There are Ents and Ents, you know; or there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain’t, as you might say. I’ll call you Merry and Pippin, if you please – nice names. For I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.’ A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look came with a green flicker into his eyes. ‘For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.
‘But now,’ and the eyes became very bright and ‘present’, seeming to grow smaller and almost sharp, ‘what is going on? What are you doing in it all? I can see and hear (and smell and feel) a great deal from this, from this, from this a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lind-or-burúmë. Excuse me: that is a part of my name for it; I do not know what the word is in the outside languages: you know, the thing we are on, where I stand and look out on fine mornings, and think about the Sun, and the grass beyond the wood, and the horses, and the clouds, and the unfolding of the world. What is going on? What is Gandalf up to? And these – burárum,’ he made a deep rumbling noise like a discord on a great organ – ‘these Orcs, and young Saruman down at Isengard? I like news. But not too quick now.’
‘There is quite a lot going on,’ said Merry; ‘and even if we tried to be quick, it would take a long time to tell. But you told us not to be hasty. Ought we to tell you anything so soon? Would you think it rude, if we asked what you are going to do with us, and which side you are on? And did you know Gandalf ?’
‘Yes, I do know him: the only wizard that really cares about trees,’ said Treebeard. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Yes,’ said Pippin sadly, ‘we did. He was a great friend, and he was our guide.’
‘Then I can answer