Hobbits like to snack. In the Prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring Tolkien writes, "And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them)." In "An Unexpected Party", the first chapter of The Hobbit, a dozen uninvited dwarfs strain but fail to defeat Bilbo's abilities as host, and still leave enough food in the larder for Bilbo's breakfast the next morning after they've left. In all, the meals tea, supper, breakfast and second breakfast are mentioned. The screenwriters of the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring supply the following piece of dialogue, nudging the daily total of meals to seven:
Aragorn: Gentlemen, we do not stop till nightfall.
Pippin: What about breakfast?
Aragorn: You've already had it.
Pippin: We've had one, yes. What about second breakfast?
[Aragorn turns and walks off in disgust]
Merry: I don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.
Pippin: What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn't he?
Merry: I wouldn't count on it.
Bilbo Baggins, the first of Tolkien's hobbits, provided the template for the rest of his hobbit protagonists, all of them homesick though venturesome, and food-obsessed. Even his name encodes who he is and what he's doing. A bilbo is a small sword, like his weapon Sting. Baggins suggests a burglar's bag, and is also associated with his home at Bag End, Tolkien's pun on cul-de-sac. But Baggins also carries the sense of snack. Map L56a of The Linguistic Atlas of England illustrates the variety of English dialect words for snack. In much of Lancashire and Cheshire the predominant word is bagging or baggings. (Other English dialect words are biting on, crib, crust, elevenses, lunch, nammet and ten o'clock). Did Tolkien hear the word baggings as a child in Evesham, a county or so south in Worchestershire? Evesham falls in the lunch zone, on the far side of elevenses from bagging, but perhaps. Food for thought. Douglas