Should these life forms be considered real in Tolkien's universe?

[Þráinn Þórhallsson]

The beings are as follows.

Fairies.

Wereworms.

Stone giants.

Saying that one of the male Tooks most have taken a fairy as a wife given their reduced size a couple of generations back, always sounded like a joke to me. Likewise wareworms seems like the types of monsters that Hobbits of all people would tale legends about given that worms are about as scary and threating of a greature as the hobbits have ever encountered.

The stone giants on the other hand are beings that I never thought were meant to be metaphors for the weather in the books as I have seen suggested especially since Tolkien himself stated that he hated metaphors, even if I myself is guilty of wanting to interperet the sentence about Balrogs having wings as metaphorical given of silly I think it is that those corrupted Maiar spirits would have wings when two of them famously fall down in battle against their respective apponent. Also how would a wind strong enough to toss stones between the mountains not grap both Bilbo and the dwarfs? Honestly the only reason for me to think that stone giants do not exist would be that they are not mentioned in the silmarillion. However neither are fell beasts and the creatures that drag Gront forward, so that is not much to go by.

But what do you think? Should any of these creature be considered to literally exist or all they all just fairy tales within a fairy tale?

 

[Erurávennë]

Tolkien referred to the elves as fairies early on. There might be more on fairies in Tolkien's universe someone could share that I cannot think of.

Aren't wereworms and stone giants just in Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies?

 

[Þráinn Þórhallsson]

Tolkien referred to the elves as fairies early on. There might be more on fairies in Tolkien's universe someone could share that I cannot think of.

Aren't wereworms and stone giants just in Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies?

No, they are mentioned in the books. Although there is nothing to suggest that wereworms are real as supposed to a legend among Hobbits.

 

[Erurávennë]

No, they are mentioned in the books. Although there is nothing to suggest that wereworms are real as supposed to a legend among Hobbits.

👍

 

[Eljorahir]

After they're out of the frying pan but before falling into the fire, Gandalf refers to the cave where the goblins trapped them...

'I must see if I can't find a more or less decent giant to block it up again, or soon there will be no getting over the mountains at all.'

So, real giants are confirmed, I believe.

edit:
There's a metaphor Tolkien apparently didn't mind so much: Out of the Frying-pan and Into the Fire

 

[Starbrow]

I agree that Stone Giants actually exist in ME. This quote from "Over Hill and Under Hill" doesn't sound like a ME legend.
"When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out, and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang."

 

[Elthir]

I note Tolkien's revision to the 1960 Hobbit, where the word fairy is excised for elvish:

"It was often said (in other families) that the Tooks must have had some elvish blood in them: which was of course absurd, but. . ." JRRT, A Well-Planned Party, The 1960 Hobbit

As for giants, they are also mentioned in The Lord of the Rings (At The Sign of The Prancing Pony), with Sam imagining (at least) meeting giants taller than trees , and other creatures even more terrifying, at some point in his journey.

Also, question: is there some detail I can't recall that makes it necessary that the Stone Giants actually be "made" of stone?

If not, I know a Stone Mason who isn't, for example.

Anyway, in a land that has Little Folk (compared to Men) it seems okay that there also be "giants" too, compared to Most Men, in addition to Ents and some strikingly tall Elves.

 

[Elthir]

Were-worms and Wire Worms

This idea began as Bilbo walking from ". . . here to [Hindu Kush] > the Great Desert of Gobi and fighting the Wild Wire worms of the Chinese." JRRT, The Pryftan Fragment

Revised to: ". . . here to the last desert in the East and fight the Wild Wireworms of the Chinese." The Bladorthin Typescript

Published as: "Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert."

JRRT seems to have let this description stand in the 1960 Hobbit.

So that clears that up.

When I hear Were-worm I think of a Man taking the form of a Dragon (a being, anyway, called Fáfnir took the form of a Dragon), but that doesn't mean I think that's what Tolkien meant here in The Hobbit — I'm just trying to end this unhelpful post by saying. . . something.

 

[HALETH✒🗡]

By the way, there is a theory that we can't call something fantasy if for the main hero the existence of magic is not surprising and is just okay for his world. It is hard to classify LOTR based on this theory. On the one hand, Frodo knew that elves and wizards existed. However, on the other hand I wouldn't say that to meet them personally wasn't surprising for him.

 

[Amalcarin]

Concerning the stone giants, not that this has any bearing on whether they were real or not, but The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (pp. 535–7) quotes a very curious discussion of the Gondorian toponym Achad Tarlang “Tarlang’s Neck”, which says that Tarlang (tarch-lang,“stiff neck”) was originally the name of the ridge given to it because the road over it was hard and laborious, but later it was reinterpreted as a personal name and there grew up a local legend to explain it:

It was said that when ‘in ancient days’ some giants were building the White Mountains as a wall to keep Men out of their land by the Sea, one of them called Tarlang tripped and fell on his face and as he was carrying a heavy load of rocks on his head he broke his neck and was killed. The other giants used his body to complete the wall at that point, but left his neck lying southward, leading to the three mountains of the spur: Dol Tarlang ‘Tarlang’s Head’, Cûl Veleg ‘Bigload’ and Cûl Bîn ‘Little Load’. The break in his neck was shown by a depression in the ridge, near the junction with Tarlang’s Head, over which the road went. In consequence the Tarlang was called Achad Tarlang using another word for ‘neck’ (Q[uenya] axo), properly referring only to the bony vertebral part and not including the throat, this was generally called in the vernacular C[ommon] S[peech] Tarlang’s Neck.

 

[d4rk3lf]

I don't think PJ Stone Giants and Tolkien Stone Giants are in any way similar.

I think Tolkien giants are something like trolls, hurling stones into the air (playing Tanks game, one might say).
PJ are literally mountains fighting.
He always find a way to exaggerate beyond measure, and any taste.

As for the Were-worms... similar story.... I just don't recall Tolkien mentioned them at all anywhere.

 

[CCC]

Stone giants.

The stone giants on the other hand are beings that I never thought were meant to be metaphors for the weather in the books as I have seen suggested especially since Tolkien himself stated that he hated metaphors,

I've always thought they were metaphors for scary thunder, but as you say, Tolkien disliked metaphor. Unless the Stone giants were conjured up like the storm of Caradhras in LOTR, designed to drive the Company into Goblin caves?

Stephen Donaldson uses a similar effect in Lord Foul's Bane, where the Dark Lord has a very loud and threatening voice like, the crushing of boulders!

 

[Elthir]

According to draft texts for The Lord of the Rings, at least, certain giants were seemingly distinguished from Trolls.

"Trolls of a new and most malevolent kind were abroad; giants were spoken of, a Big Folk only far bigger and stronger than Men the [?ordinary] Big Folk, and no stupider, indeed often full of cunning and wizardry."

Revised by Tolkien to: "Trolls and giants were abroad, of a new and more malevolent kind, no longer dull-witted but full of cunning and wizardry."

And the revision for the published text: "Trolls were abroad, no longer dull-witted, but cunning and armed with dreadful weapons"

Anyway, the story also tells that Bilbo sat in the dark: "thinking of all the horrible names of all the giants and ogres he had ever heard told of in tales".

But in any case, as already posted by Eljorahir, one would also have to consider that Gandalf thinks he can find a "more or less decent giant" — which to me suggests that the Wizard thinks that "giants" are real enough.

 

[Glorfindel Goldtress]

Gandalf thinks he can find a "more or less decent giant" — which to me suggests that the Wizard thinks that "giants" are real enough.

Perhaps a giant cat.

 

[Elthir]

Which, of course, do exist.

 

[Ent]

An interesting thread on several points.
One thing Ent doesn't see mentioned - at least not overtly - is to remember the essential difference between The Hobbit and The Lord Of the Rings.
These were written primarily as 'historical recitatin of events.' Not as 'mythology' as SIL was.
Bilbo is recounting very real, very current happenings, when he discusses the Stone-giants - and his very real, 1st hand impressions of them and the situation.

This is not even 'historical recitation heard from 3rd partys.'
As to Sam's comment in the Green Dragon, we need to take the whole - "But what about these "Tree-men, these giants as you might call them?"
Sam is referring to just one thing - with both "Tree-men and giants 'as you might call them'. An Ent, in such a case.
"They do say that one bigger than a tree was seen....."
So the "they" make it second hand - and though Ents were, in general, shorter than the trees they shepherded, it does not mean that some weren't taller than the trees 'they did not resemble.' So one COULD be seen, actually taller than whatever trees it happened to be passing through.

Personally, for Ent, the weight of evidence lies with the very real sole encounter of the Stone-giants in very real time, seen only during the flashes of lightning enabling it - and with Gandalf's comment about finding a 'more or less decent Giant to block it up.' (Again a 'first hand' comment speaking of accomplishing events in real time, using actual available resources, to accomplish a necessary real-time event.)

History. Not allegory or speculation.

As to the 'faeries' issue there is no evidence of anything but gossip and speculation there - Ent hasn't found anything to substantiate this other than the potential allusions to the elf=faerie possibility.

Ent isn't done researching the issue of the wereworms - but knowing the Dragons 'evolved' in their forced development by Melkor, Ent wonders if the wereworms were an early part of their evolution, eventually twisted into the dragons such as Ancalagon who could not fly, and ultimately to the 'winged dragons.'
The jury is still out on the wereworms issue for Ent. (not that it matters in the least, but well... there it is.)

 

[Ugluk]

Which, of course, do exist.

Kitten Kong!