A note on A Short Cut to Mushrooms: In 1938 after writing the first few chapters of “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Tolkien wrote up notes on the visit with Tom Bombadil, and there he toyed with the idea of making Farmer Maggot “not a hobbit, but some other kind of creature – not a dwarf, but akin to Tom Bombadil.” He subsequently had Bombadil refer to Maggot as “kinsfolk… distantly and far back.” He penciled in some notes describing Maggot as “rather large” with “hair under his chin” – characteristics that he later transferred to the Stoors. And in the second version of this chapter, Tolkien made Maggot into a bitter enemy of the Baggins family – a hobbit, but very ill-tempered. In one scene he had Bilbo bash the head of one of Maggot’s wolf-dogs and Maggot lifting Bilbo and throwing him over a hedge and then hefting Bingo (the original Frodo) for a similar fate, but then merely threatening to break poor Bingos neck if he ever dared to reappear at Maggots farm. Tolkien scholar Mark Hooker speculates that Tolkien may have drawn inspiration for Farmer Maggot from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of Britain and the description there of Goëmagot, the Cornish name of the leader of the giants who originally peopled the British Isles.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 17:48:18 +0000
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