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Orc is not an English word. It occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds).
Orc is the hobbits’ form of the name given at that time to these creatures, and it is not connected at all with our orc, ork, applied to sea-animals of dolphin-kind.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?” “All of them at once,”
We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them,”
To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna Took’s son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!”
Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.
Dwarves can make a fire almost anywhere out of almost anything, wind or no wind;
“What’s a burrahobbit got to do with my pocket, anyways?” said William. “And can yer cook ’em?”
“He wouldn’t make above a mouthful,”
said William, who had already had a fine supper, “not when he was skinned and boned.”
Elves know a lot and are wondrous folk for news, and know what is going on among the peoples of the land, as quick as water flows, or quicker.
Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.
“Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them,” said Elrond, “not when you look straight at them. They can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape and season as the day when they were written.
The dwarves invented them and wrote them with silver pens,
“Then what is Durin’s Day?” asked Elrond. “The first day of the dwarves’ New Year,” said Thorin, “is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter.
There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something (or so Thorin said to the young dwarves). You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.
Out jumped the goblins, big goblins, great ugly-looking goblins, lots of goblins, before you could say rocks and blocks.
It sounded truly terrifying.
The walls echoed to the clap, snap! and the crush, smash! and to the ugly laughter of their ho, ho! my lad!
“Who are these miserable persons?”
but let’s have the truth, or I will prepare something particularly uncomfortable for you!”
“Murderers and elf-friends!” the Great Goblin shouted. “Slash them! Beat them! Bite them! Gnash them! Take them away to dark holes full of snakes, and never let them see the light again!”
“Why, O why did I ever leave my hobbit-hole!” said poor Mr. Baggins bumping up and down on Bombur’s back. “Why, O why did I ever bring a wretched little hobbit on a treasure hunt!”
He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking;
“Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn’t answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes!”
I imagine you know the answer, of course, or can guess it as easy as winking, since you are sitting comfortably at home and have not the danger of being eaten to disturb your thinking.
Not me having no idea what the answer is😭
He wanted it because it was a ring of power, and if you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible; only in the full sunlight could you be seen, and then only by your shadow, and that would be shaky and faint.
“What has it got in its pocketses?”
“I can’t be always carrying burglars on my back,” said Dori, “down tunnels and up trees! What do you think I am? A porter?”
“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks,”
“Don’t be a fool Mr. Baggins if you can help it;
The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course.
These are not wicked folk.
In a great cave some miles within the edge of Mirkwood on its eastern side there lived at this time their greatest king.
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
“I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider,”
“Dazzlingly marvellous! Perfect! Flawless! Staggering!”
“Now what on earth or under it has happened?”
“My mind does not change with the rising and setting of a few suns,”
“You miserable hobbit! You undersized—burglar!”
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!” “Thank goodness!”
