Sex, Drugs, Tolkien: An Exploration of Rock N’ Roll’s Connection to Lord of the Rings Part III: pipeWEED
Discussing the controversial nature of the hobbits’ favorite hobby
As I touched on last week, the Lord of the Rings series became associated with the psychedelic subculture of the 1960’s. Paperback copies of the series littered the campus along with marijuana. While in Tolkien’s day, pipeweed was literal tobacco and the word itself is etymologically rooted in tobacco, the word and the hobbits’ usage of it allowed pipeweed to take on another meaning. Pipeweed allowed college counterculture, stoners and head shops to associate themselves with Lord of the Rings. A strong association that still remains to this day and has had an influence on rock and roll’s adoption of Tolkien. Before we discuss how pipeweed relates to rock and roll, it is important to discuss Tolkien’s original intent. In the Prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien outlines pipeweed and its usage among hobbits in a section entitled “Concerning Pipeweed.” In this section, Tolkien writes, “There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipeweed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana” (7-8). The Nicotiana referred to here by Tolkien is a genus of herbaceous plants that all tobacco plants belong to. Much to pop culture’s dismay, pipeweed actually is not weed at all, but a mythical strand of tobacco! It is also important to note that Tolkien published Lord of the Rings in 1954. During the 50’s, marijuana was not a part of the country’s conscious so there would be likely no way for Tolkien to have derived inspiration from marijuana for his plant.
However, as a modern reader, there is something that we have that Tolkien and original readers of Tolkien did not: a common understanding of marijuana. Nowadays, marijuana is so common that the average person understands the stereotypes associated with marijuana and smokers of marijuana. Unintentionally and perhaps unfortunately for Tolkien, the nature of pipeweed and the interactions with it in the series align perfectly with marijuana usage. Tolkien offers an example of this unintentional association in the Prologue. As he continues “Concerning Pipeweed,” he states, “The best homegrown still comes from that district, especially the varieties now known as Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, and Southern Star.” (Tolkien 8). While Tolkien’s contemporary readership would have been familiar with the popularity of tobacco strains and collection/sampling of various kinds, modern readers (such as myself and fellow graduate students) saw the word “strain” and intrinsically linked pipeweed to marijuana. The reference to strains is just one of the many unintentional references that connected pipeweed with real weed.
There are two instances in Unfinished Tales and The Fellowship of the Ring movie that further misconstrued Tolkien’s pipeweed. In the original scene in Unfinished Tales, Tolkien writes,
“Both the silence and the smoke seemed greatly to annoy Saruman, and before the Council dispersed he said to Gandalf: ‘When weighty matters are in debate, Mithrandir, I wonder little that you should play with your toys of fire and smoke while others are in earnest speech.’ But Gandalf laughed, and replied, ‘You would not wonder, if you used this herb yourself. You might find smoke blown out cleared your mind of shadows within” (Tolkien 351).
This quotation is interesting for several different reasons. First, it eventually became adapted in the movies, which contributed to the reputation of pipeweed being marijuana or producing the same effects as it. Also, while Tolkien’s original intent was tobacco, the language he uses here gives the tobacco side effects that mimic that of marijuana. A reiteration of this scene in Unfinished Tales occurs in Sauron recounts, “Your love of the halfling‘s leaf has clearly slowed your mind.” This quotation explicitly connects pipeweed to actual marijuana because marijuana causes one to lose focus and mental clarity while using it. Details like these that are littered throughout the book series and the movies allowed marijuana smokers to identify with hobbits. Another notable and humorous example is how hungry the Hobbits always are because marijuana is notorious for making its user ravenous. These instances are what created the counterculture’s enveloping of pipeweed and how Lord of the Rings has become associated with weed smoking.
Where do we see these associations in the modern age? Just walk in your local head shop. There are likely wooden pipes that are decorated to give a Middle Earth vibe, there are posters with hobbits harvesting weed, or a hobbit village with weed trees. Any list on Buzzfeed or other sites list Lord of the Rings as one of the best “stoner” flicks. There is now actually a strain of weed available at recreational and medical locations that is called Longbottom Leaf. (I’d like to think that Pippen would be proud!) And personally, I knew a guy in college that referred to his long, wooden pipe as his ‘Gandalf.’ Whether or not Tolkien intended to, his usage of tobacco in the novel allowed for counterculture to relate and modernize his literature.
Okay, so, what about rock and roll?
While I feel like this is stating the obvious, it is important to connect it back to the theme of the overall series “Sex, Drugs, and Tolkien: An Exploration of Rock N’ Roll’s Connection to Lord of the Rings.” If there’s one thing we know about rock stars, it is that they love partying. Marijuana=party. We do not have to assume this because there are countless rock and roll songs that tell us this exactly (think Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix or Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath). Following the explosion of psychedelic usage in the early 60’s, a crowd well aware of marijuana read the Lord of the Rings series through new (glazed) eyes. The crowd that was listening to rock music and smoking weed were also reading the Lord of the Rings and establishing the misinformation today that the Hobbits were all potheads. While one might argue that this is unfortunate for Tolkien’s intent for the series, I think it is a positive thing. It allowed Tolkien’s series to take on new life and meaning years after its creation. The series became bigger than a book series. It became associated with rock n’ roll, psychedelics, and new ideas all of which were elevated and contrasting to the generation before it. As someone that participated in a conversation between students and our graduate professor on pipeweed, I am happy to say that it allows the series to still be whimsical and easily relatable for college students today. For its publication to have been sixty-nine years ago and it still be relevant, I’d say that the misconstrued meaning of pipeweed is a good thing!
Works Cited:
Jackson, Peter, director. The Fellowship of the Ring. Warner Brothers, 2001.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings. HarperCollins, 1991.
Tolkien, J.R.R. Unfinished Tales. George Allen and Unwin, 1980.
Your exploration of how pipeweed in Tolkien's world got tangled up with marijuana culture is wild! Even though Tolkien meant it as tobacco, the 60s counterculture grabbed onto it as a symbol of rebellion and good times. With today's readers seeing pipeweed through a different lens, Middle-earth becomes a hangout spot for weed lovers.