Hogwarts, Hobbits and Priority

I was leafing through Finnegans Wake on the lavatory (the price of Andrex being what it is) and I came across this little passage:

Are you right there, Michael, are you right? do you think you can hold on by sitting tight? Well, of course, it's awful angelous. Still I don't feel it's so dangelous. Ay, I'm right here, Nickel and I'll write. Singing the top line why it suits me mikey fine. But, yaghags hogwarts and arrahquinonthiance, it's the muddest think that was ever heard dump since Eggsmather got smothered in the plap of the pfan.

J.K. Rowling, j'accuse! This proves what most literate readers have always suspected: that Harry Potter is nothing more than a thinly-veiled reworking of James Joyce's masterpiece.

The word Hogwarts also pops up in the Molesworth books where it is the title of a play that Nigel writes in Latin, the script of which consists pretty much of the word Eheu, meaning alas.

Of course, it's the second simplest thing in the world to look at the phacochoerus africanus, or warthog, and flip the name around in your head until it fits with hogwash. This has been done thrice: by Joyce in 1939, by Geoffrey Willans in 1953, and by J.K. Rowling in 1997.

Just so you know: warthogs have funny, wartish protruberances on their faces, and hogwash is the kitchen leftovers that are fed to pigs.

A much more peculiar question of priority comes from John Aislabie Denham, who was a folklorist in the first half of the nineteenth century. He wrote a list of mythical creatures that ran thus:

...ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, blackdogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-Wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom Thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks necks, waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins, Gyre-carling, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles, korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description...

The odd thing is that that was published in 1859 and there is no evidence at all that Tolkien ever saw it. Hobbits don't appear anywhere else until John Ronald Reuel published The Hobbit, or There and Back Again in 1937.

It's impossible to know what the hobbit that Denham recorded might have been. Presumably the hob is just a shortening for Robin, as in hobgoblin (which appears twice in the list). Robin and therefore Hob was a popular name with demons like Robin Goodfellow. However, the bit is lost to history. Perhaps it just meant small, in which case a hobbit would be a small demon, the infernal answer to a godling.

Incidentally, if that list made you curious (and I recommend reading it through) Wikipedia has it up with lots of links here.

Fiat justitia, ruat copyright!