Hobbits should talk Tyke!

University of Huddersfield researcher shows how fantasy author Tolkien fell under the spell of Yorkshire dialect

IN movie versions of the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien, the hobbits speak in a wide range of English accents, with an emphasis on rural West Country. But a researcher at the University of Huddersfield reckons they should all talk like Tykes.

This is because Tolkien – who lectured in Leeds at the start of his career – was a friend of Walter Haigh, who taught at the University of Huddersfield’s predecessor institution and published a guide to the dialect of the Huddersfield district. The future Lord of the Rings author wrote a foreword to this book and would go on to use many of its words in the speech and the names of his hobbits.

A standout example is the Huddersfield dialect word baggin, meaning a meal in a brown lunch bag. Bilbo and Frodo Baggins are the names given to the central character in The Hobbit and the subsequent Lord of the Rings, filmed as a blockbuster trilogy between 2001-2003.

“I think they should have used Sean Bean to provide all the Hobbit voices!” says David Smith, who is Participation and Engagement Officer at the Heritage Quay archives centre at the University of Huddersfield. 

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He recently organised a Heritage Quay event titled Speaking Yorkshire, attended by dialect experts and enthusiasts, and when preparing he delved into the archive’s own copy of the now rare 1928 book A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District. 

Its author, Walter Haigh, who lived from 1856 to 1931, was Head of English and History at Huddersfield Technical College, as the institution founded in 1841 that later became the University of Huddersfield was then known.

Haigh was a long-standing member of the Yorkshire Dialect Society (YDS) – as was J.R.R. Tolkien, who in 1920 became an English lecturer, later a Professor at Leeds University. He moved to Oxford in 1925, but remained a member of the YDS and encouraged his friend Walter Haigh to complete his 4,000-word glossary of the Huddersfield dialect and contributed a six-page foreword.

His contribution adds to the value of the book, with copies on sale for up to £200.

I think they should have used Sean Bean to provide all the Hobbit voices!

said David Smith, who is Participation and Engagement Officer at Heritage Quay

The links between the two men have been probed by Tolkien scholars and David Smith is convinced that the dialect speech of Yorkshire was a major influence on the creator of Middle Earth.

“In his introduction to Haigh’s book he says that one of the things he likes about the dialect of Huddersfield and district is that quite rare Norse words have survived. So I think he saw something in the accent here which chimed in with his interests,” said David.

An article by the American Tolkien expert Janet Brennan Croft has examined the influence of Haigh and the dialect of Huddersfield. She has identified a number of words in the Glossary that figure in the speech of the hobbits of Middle Earth, writing that:

“Some appear as elements in place-names like Bree (breę, bru, the brow of a hill), Staddle (stæddl, staddle, a timber stand or base for a stack), or the element Brock (brok, a badger) in Brockenborings. Others are used in family names like Baggins (bæggin, a meal, particularly a brown-bag lunch). However, several are used in exactly the same way as in the Huddersfield dialect: gaffer, a corruption of grandfather, for an old man; vittles for food, nowt for nothing, nosey, of one who pries into things, or nuncle for uncle.”