Real Orcs Don't Do Windows

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Nov 29, 2002

While doing some research on the Uruk-hai, I came across an interesting fact: there were no Uruk-hai when Tolkien first wrote the chapter which introduced them. He hadn't conceived of them by that point. The original title for the chapter was "An Orc-raid". Well, that doesn't sound very exciting, does it? In fact, by the time Tolkien had reached this point in the story, Uruks (much less Uruk-hai) had yet to appear. Hang on, as Harry Potter might say. Let's back up a bit, and start over. While most people know that "orc" rarely occurs in The Hobbit (Christopher Tolkien was able to find only one occurrence, for example, in the first edition of the book), you can still find a few "orc" passages in the second and third editions. What is significant about the rarity of "orc" in The Hobbit (and the near-rarity of "goblin" in The Lord of the Rings) is that the frequencies of these words represent a fundamental transition in Tolkien's thinking about the creatures which menaced Hobbits. Goblins haunted Tolkien's imagination as far back as his school days. The oldest extant example of Tolkien's use of goblins in literature is the poem "Goblin feet", which was published in the 1915 Oxford Poetry:

I am off down the road Where the fairy lanterns glowed And the little pretty flitter-mice are flying: A slender band of gray It runs creepily away And the hedges and the grass are a-sighing The air is full of wings And of blundery beetle-things That warn you with their whirring and their humming O! I hear the tiny horns Of enchanted leprechauns And the padded feet of many gnomes a-coming O! the lights! O! the gleams! O! the little tinkly sounds: O! the rustle of their noiseless little robes! O! the echo of their feet -- of their happy little feet: O! their swinging lamps in little starlit globes! I must follow in their train Down the crooked fairy lane Where the coney-rabbits long ago have gone And where silvery they sing In a moving moonlit ring All a-twinkle with the jewels they have on They are fadding round the turn Where the glow-worms palely burn And the echo of their padding feet is dying O! It's knocking at my heart -- Let me go! O! Let me start! For the little magic hours are all a-flying O! the warmth! O! the hum! O! the colours in the dark! O! the gauzy winds of golden honey-flies! O! the music of their feet -- of their dancing goblin feet! O! the magic! O! the sorrow when it dies

Goblins are, of course, an old staple of English folklore. They have been there, glorified by Shakespeare and old wives tales, for as long as anyone can remember. And goblins have appeared in Tolkien's poems and tales for as long as anyone can remember, but though today we say with confidence that Goblins and Orcs are the same, that wasn't always so.

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