I WAS INTRODUCED TO TOLKIEN BY MY FATHER, who read me The Hobbit as a boy. My first, and clearest memory, remains the dwarves’ first song:
Chip the glasses and crack the plates!Blunt the knives and bend the forks!That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates —Smash the bottles and burn the corks!
Then — a dramatic pause — and confirmation that it was all a joke. Tolkien is rarely admired for either his poetry or his sense of whimsy, but neither is without effect.
There are in fact 24 poems in The Hobbit, a much higher number than I think many would remember. Indeed, even as sensitive an appreciation of its effects as C.S. Lewis’s review in the Times Literary Supplement makes no mention of them. But perhaps it is not an accident…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2025