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Character Bios

William Huggins

Other Names:
Bill

Location(s):
Trollshaws

Race/Species: Beasts & Monsters

Dates:
died: III 2941, turned to stone

Description:

One of the three stone-trolls 1 that Thorin's company encountered on their way to Rivendell:
The Trolls.
The Trolls, by JRR Tolkien.
[Bilbo] got right up to the fire... without disturbing anyone. And this is what he saw. Three very large persons sitting round a very large fire of beech-logs. They were toasting mutton on long spits of wood, and licking the gravy off their fingers. There was a fine toothsome smell. Also there was a barrel of good drink at hand, and they were drinking out of jugs. But they were trolls.... Even Bilbo, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that: from the great heavy faces of them, and their size, and the shape of their legs, not to mention their language, which was not drawing-room fashion at all....

'Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer,' said one of the trolls.

'Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough,' said a second.

'What the 'ell William was a-thinkin' of to bring us into these parts at all, beats me — and the drink runnin' short, what's more,' he said jogging the elbow of William, who was taking a pull at his jug.

William choked. 'Shut yer mouth!' he said as soon as he could. 'Yer can't expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert. You've et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains. 2 How much more d'yer want? And time's been up our way, when yer'd have said "thank yer Bill" for a nice bit o' fat valley mutton like what this is.' He took a big bite off a sheep's leg he was toasting, and wiped his lips on his sleeve.

The Hobbit, Ch 2, Roast Mutton

The Three Trolls are Turned to Stone.
The Three Trolls are Turned to Stone, by JRR Tolkien.
'Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!' said a voice that sounded like William's. But it wasn't. For just at that moment the light came over the hill, and there was a mighty twitter in the branches. William never spoke for he stood turned to stone as he stooped; and Bert and Tom were stuck like rocks as they looked at him. And there they stand to this day, all alone, unless the birds perch on them; for trolls, as you probably know, must be underground before dawn, or they go back to the stuff of the mountains they are made of, and never move again. That is what had happened to Bert and Tom and William.

'Excellent!' said Gandalf, as he stepped from behind a tree, and helped Bilbo to climb down out of a thorn-bush.... It was the wizard's voice that had kept the trolls bickering and quarrelling, until the light came and made an end of them.

The Hobbit, Ch 2, Roast Mutton

They halted suddenly on the edge, and peered through the tree-trunks, holding their breath. There stood the trolls: three large trolls. One was stooping, and the other two stood staring at him.

Strider walked forward unconcernedly. 'Get up, old stone!' he said, and broke his stick upon the stooping troll.

Nothing happened. There was a gasp of astonishment from the hobbits, and then even Frodo laughed. 'Well!' he said. 'We are forgetting our family history! These must be the very three that were caught by Gandalf, quarrelling over the right way to cook thirteen dwarves and one hobbit.'

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 12, Flight to the Ford


Notes
1[In] Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien mentions as a type of troll the Stone-trolls of the Westlands, who spoke a debased form of Common Speech, and this description certainly applies to Bert, Tom, and William Huggins.

The Annotated Hobbit, Annotated by Douglas A. Anderson, Ch 4, Over Hill and Under Hill, Note 5

2'I met two of Elrond's people... who told me that three [trolls] had come down from the mountains and settled in the woods not far from the road; they had frightened everyone away from the district, and they waylaid strangers.'

The Hobbit, Ch 2, Roast Mutton

Contributors:
Kitt of Lindon 16Nov04.
Elena Tiriel 19Jan13

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