This only goes for the movies. In the books they have arranged a house for Frodo on the eastern border of the Shire, where he will go lay low for several months before going to Rivendell. Merry, Pippin and Fatty Bolger have figured out the plan months in advance and made their own plans, in such a way that when the black riders arrive in the region, they leave within 5 minutes and have a route planned out already.
Also, it’s tobacco as clearly mentioned in the books. They are probably quite drunk in this scene though.
Edit: and of course Samwise was also involved in the plans, he was the one who told them. Frodo was being played by all his close friends.
Merry, Pippin and Fatty Bolger have figured out the plan months in advance and made their own plans, in such a way that when the black riders arrive in the region, they leave within 5 minutes and have a route planned out already.
I forgot about that part; thanks for reminding me. I watched the film the previous night, but it’s obviously time for a reread :)
I’m sorry to be that guy, but in the prologue to the book, theres a whole section titled “Concerning Pipe-weed”, where Tolkien talks about how the plant spread around middle-earth, and specifically mentions it’s a type of tobacco.
(Yes this is an example of life imitating art, but as the other person said, isn’t it so much more fun to pretend?)
I laud your devotion to accuracy, but I also offer some middle ground. Tobacco itself is known to possess psychoactive properties, and Middle-earth, insofar as it can be said to be a precursor to the modern world at all (for Tolkien himself drifted away from this idea later in his life and work), is eons in the past, when many things were heightened. So it’s not so far a leap to imagine that pipeweed could have had as much in common with modern strains of marijuana as it did with what we call tobacco.
After all, our own tobacco originated in the Americas, probably somewhere in the region of modern Bolovia, and was not commonly used in Europe until the 16th Century. If one allows the conceit that Middle-earth represents a primordial version of modern Europe, then it follows that pipeweed itself also originated in the West (for was it not said to have been imported from Númenor, that land blessed by the Valar?). If indeed it was a strain of nicotiana, then it must have been of a varietal so pleasant to smoke that even the Valar themselves partook of it. At some point, it died out in the lands of Men, and was forgotten until its rediscovery by colonial exchanges with the indigenous people of the Americas.
TL;dr: Pipeweed is not weed, nor is it something modern people would recognize as garden variety tobacco. It’s better than either of those things.
Isn’t it more fun and whimsical to imagine something else though? That’s the great thing about fiction: it can be whatever you want it to be.
I’m pretty sure it was tabacco.
It explicitly and unambiguously was tobacco, but it’s still funny to think it was weed. Peter Jackson certainly liked to imply it was.
The books, Tolkien’s letters, and a section of the appendices at the end of RoTK all explicitly say it’s tobacco.
Speaking of Hobbits, Tolkien wrote:
they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana [tobacco plant].
Tolkien was a big smoker. You rarely see pics of him without a pipe in his mouth.
Plus, given the Hobbit was released in 1937 in England, it’s likely that Tolkien didn’t even know what Cannabis was. He’d certainly be unaware of its future popularity/cultural relevance.
Accuracy aside, I would love to see someone take this idea and turn it into a parody/remake from their perspective in the style of “Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle”.
…and my joint
