More Middle Earth Jurisprudence

The first thing which struck me was not exactly legal: it was gladness that I first read this when I was at primary school, long before the word ‘queer’ took on any particular overtone. Tolkein uses ‘queer’ a lot in this book, right from the start.  Bilbo has something ‘a bit queer in his make-up’ (5), Gandalf scratches a ‘queer sign’ on Bilbo’s front door. I wonder if that has prompted a search for the lost rune of gayness.

And in a similar vein, I have to ask, just how stereotypically gay are the elves? Even though he uses ‘merry’ or ‘fair’ as their usual adjectives, rather than ‘gay’ or ‘pretty’, there is so much singing and joking (e.g. 45-6, and the bitchy teasing comments about the dwarves and Bilbo on p.48) that it is hard not to see them as camp creations. And isn’t this just Kenneth Williams (47) ‘Well, well!’ said a voice ‘Just look! Bilbo the hobbit on a pony, my dear! Isn’t it delicious?”. If he was writing today, would he have substituted ‘Ooh, get her?’. Then, equally in keeping with the standard stereotype, we have at p. 47 the snippet that the Elves are ‘wondrous folk for news’ – they seem to be the gossips of Middle Earth.

There are more strictly legal points to note as well, however. First, I notice that the dwarves and Gandalf speak in a strangely anti-legal way at times, of themselves and Bilbo as ‘conspirators’ (16) and ‘burglars’ (18, Bilbo as burglar, passim).

Rather in contrast with the care-free idea of hobbits of the Lord of the Rings, here we see them as ‘respectable’ and even rather legalistic. Bilbo, for example, is keen on having the terms of his employment/partnership with the dwarves put down in writing (21) or at least settled. ‘Thorin and Company’ do set out the terms in their letter, covering profit sharing and funeral expenses in a very clear and lawyerly fashion (28). Also, we get a glimpse of the Hobbit legal system when Bilbo returns from his adventure on p. 270. Their law includes the possibility of presuming somebody dead, and rules for the subsequent disposal of assets – here, by auction (despite the fact that he apparently has living relations in the shape of nephews and nieces, and others). Perhaps the proceeds were to go to ‘his estate’? The presumption of death seems to have come into force fairly early, for Bilbo has not been that long absent from the shire, in human property law terms. Apparently, anyway, the area is heavily legal, as it is noted that ‘The legal bother …. lasted for years’ (270).

Even the Goblins have some idea of law. Their society has a king or Great Goblin, and a habit of obedience. They clothe their imprisonment of Thorin and Company in legal justification, saying that they are suspected of being spies. Their rules, however, are repressive and evil, with the institution of slavery and torture of prisoners (59).
   
The Wood Elves, in some ways similarly to the Goblins, have strict rules against entering their domain without permission. Anti-stranger laws also feature in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Here, the Elvenking (157) states that ‘It is a crime to wander in my realm without leave’.  The imprisonment of the dwarves is fairly harsh. They are kept separate, and the rest of the company not told that Thorin is there.  The imprisonment is indefinite, until somebody ‘sings’ about their purpose in the realm. Thorin is bound and kept in a particularly deep dungeon. The dwarves are fed, though not with fine food. Security of prisoners does not, however, seem to be a strength of the elves, since all the dwarves manage to escape. Even though there was some magic and invisibility involved, there was also drunkenness and incompetence, and a clear need for an inquiry into the security implications of the barrel system. Elves were to prove equally unable to keep Gollum confined (Lord of the Rings).