by Dr. U » July 9th, 2007, 1:46 am
Tom Shippey, JRRT's successor in philology, wrote a great book called _The Road to Middle-Earth_, fascinating reading for Tolkien freaks. I can't find the passage right now, but somewhere in it, he makes a compelling case that the hobbits were partly and consciously based on Appalachian Mountains Scots-Irish culture. Tolkien had a student or students from Appalachia studying at Oxford, and was fascinated with the language (as a linguist, I'll bet he was!) and the whole hillbilly culture, and later worked it into the hobbit culture, although the hobbits are also clearly a type of rural English folk as well.
So I'll vote for the hobbits tanking up on fried chicken, fried catfish, hush puppies, ham and black-eyed peas, succotash (after all, at least in the movie, Farmer Maggot had a corn field), pecan pie, and I wouldn't put it past them to eat chicken-fried steak, no doubt for second breakfast. Do any of y'all reading this outside the U.S. need any of these explained?
The orcs, however, would be the ones eating corn dogs, no doubt between changing tires while working the pit crew at NASCAR races. Of course, orcs might also be the ones who cook for late night hospital cafeterias, too.