"GL3" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

for its place in the Foreword, but there was now added a reference to the
'Elf-towers', which goes back to the earliest form of the 'architecture'
passage in the original version of the chapter (pp. 92 - 3), where Bingo
says that he had once seen the towers himself.
A number of changes were made to the manuscript of the Foreword,
but apart from those that seem clearly to belong to the time of writing I
ignore them here and print the text as it was first written.

FOREWORD.

Concerning Hobbits.

This book is largely concerned with hobbits, and it is possible to
find out from it what they are (or were), and whether they are
worth hearing about or not. But finding out things as you trudge
along a road or plod through a story is rather tiring, even when it is
(as occasionally happens) interesting or exciting. Those who wish
to have things clear from the beginning will find some useful
information in the brief account of Mr Bilbo Baggins' great
Adventure, which led to the even more difficult and dangerous
adventures recorded in this book. This account was called The
Hobbit or There and Back again, because it was chiefly concerned
with the most famous of all the old legendary hobbits, Bilbo; and
because he went to the Lonely Mountain and came back again to
his own home. But one story may well be all that readers have time
or taste for. So I will put down some items of useful information
here.
Hobbits are a very ancient people, once upon a time more
numerous, alas! than they are to-day, when (or so I hear it sadly
rumoured) they are vanishing rapidly; for they are fond of peace
and quiet, and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed
countryside is their natural haunt. They are quite useless with
machines more complicated than a bellows or a water-mill;
though they are fairly handy with tools. They were always rather
shy of the Big People (as they call us), and now they are positively
scared of us.



And yet plainly they must be relatives of ours: nearer to us than
elves are, or even dwarves. For one thing, they spoke a very
similar language (or languages), and liked or disliked much the
same things as we used to. What exactly the relationship is would
be difficult to say. To answer that question one would have to
re-discover a great deal of the now wholly lost history and legends
of the Earliest Days,(1) and that is not likely to happen, for only the
Elves preserve any traditions about the Earliest Days, and their
traditions are mostly about themselves - not unnaturally: the
Elves were much the most important people of those times. But
even their traditions are incomplete: Men only come in to them