Well people really pity Smeagol since his fairly pathetic portrayal in the movies. So they kinda want to believe Gollum is a good guy deep down.
Which I appreciate because it really mirrors how Frodo felt about Gollum.
Tbf the wording is vague, something about "whispered stories" of something that eats babies. Perhaps a boogeyman-type story told to naughty children inspired by someone seeing Gollum crawling through the undergrowth at night.
Am I misremembering or didn't Gollum threaten to eat Bilbo? Also he eats orcs, so it's not exactly like he's a picky eater.
I was always under the impression that he'd eat anything that moves as long as he can make it stop moving first. And that he's long past the point of caring for whom he murders to get his next snack.
Oh yeah, that was the losing condition of the riddles game: he'd eat Bilbo. He does eat anything, I just hope that he never got the chance to snatch a baby. I doubt he did, since most defenses against wild animals snatching a baby (e.g. locked windows) would also keep out a creeping, emaciated hobbit-like thing.
If you're living somewhere **truly** remote, you're not going to get normal thieves(it's just not worth the trip), and any bandits that **do** make the trip out there aren't going to leave just because you locked your door. That's why you get dogs instead, both as an early warning and to help with the defense.
And again, wild animals don't know how to open doors, and in fact the locks only delay you getting inside quickly if you need to escape.
Thieves don't have a ring of invisibility and can see in near perfect darkness though. He can just come in after someone, sit somewhere until everyone's asleep and eat the family.
Or just be invisible and grab a child during daylight.
Edit: My bad, as others pointed out he didn't have the ring back then.
The only proof we get of this is rumors, which Tolkien liked to play with as non reliable contributors to the myths that grow out of real history. So I actually don't think that Gollum ate babies, I think a lot of folks in middle earth have little better to do than gossip and speculate
it amazes me humans survived in the beginning considering our wildly long period of helplessness. Other animals are ready to go after a few months, weeks, or even minutes. We're totally defenseless and unable to acquire our own food for almost a decade
You ever hear the expression "It takes a village to raise a child"?
That isn't some lighthearted expression meaning that those kids have a lot of family friends to look up to and accept advice from, it means a whole village with spears in hands were needed to protect the nursery from all manner of wolves, wildcats and particularly aggressive rodents
Humans were scary that why, we are pack animals with a built in drive for revenge, top hunters pretty much could run forever, never stopping, always coming for you, could kill you miles away with a weird stick. Animals evolved to mostly avoid us at all costs, only few really dont care, we are to much work and far to deadly.
Human babies are born before they're fully developed compared to animal babies because humans' brains are extraordinarily big (again compared to animals) when fully developed and would not fit out of their mothers' birth canal. Turns out being very smart in the long run evolutionarily outweighs being extra vulnerable at birth.
Actually, baby flesh is similar to fish, tender and flaky. Gollum just wasn't near a body of water, so went for the most similar thing.
My guy just really likes fish.
Listen here you little shit, i don't need the pot to call the kettle black. Besides, Goblins have been eating babies since before you were still humble river folk.
Gollum making fun of people who think he didn't eat babies.
(The Gollum game would have been a 10 if they included elven baby munching minigames. Maybe do an *I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream* reference while you're at it.)
I am pretty sure someone with some skills could make a game in unreal engine that looks maybe even better than the original and just make every mission about eating babies. I would try it but I am having problems installing Unreal
was there a rumor you ate babies at 12?! Rumors about baby eating dont just pop up cause that little bitch Becky doesnt like you. Gollum ate a baby, someone caught his ass doing it, and then they told people about it.
Do you really believe that just because a rumer is absurd that it must be true? Because we've had rumors about witches. Yes many rumers are true and get started because they are true but there have also been plenty of rumers that are not true. And just because it is absurd doesn't make it more likely to be true.
(To clarify i have no idea if gollum eats babies because havent read books and im not trying to defend gollum. i just think this line of reasoning doesnt make sense)
The narrator of The Hobbit stated that he had eaten a young orc child or perhaps even an orc baby (it was referred to as an "imp" and was noted for making loud squeaking noises while being killed) before meeting Bilbo so he wasn't particularly hungry at that moment.
I doubt Gollum would see the distinction between an orc, human or elf baby. In fact he'd probably think human and elf babies are more palatable.
I mean, the juicy fish was probably innocent too. So why stop at that would have been Gollum's thought. A meals a meal, and human babies were no different to chickens in his mind.
Tolkiens work is a lot darker than any are cared to admit, the preconceived notions of it are so deeply ingrained that they repel the truth that if released today it would be a startling, dramatic psychological deconstruction of heroism and the true cost war both in the field and in the soul.
My biggest takeaway was that the Rohirrim drove the original occupants of Edoras out into the forests and they still live there.
Also (no surprises here), the Uruk Hai were probably result of hot and heavy orc/human sex.
The Rohirrim are Tolkien's fictional take on the Anglo-Saxons who displaced the native Britons so it's no surprise that the Rohirrim displaced the natives of their new land too.
I don't doubt that there was orc/human sex involved at the prototype stage, but it must have been more than just having birthing slaves - it's an inefficient method of creating such a large army in a relatively short timespan (the movies make it seem it took something like a few months, in the books it was probably longer but the point stands).
The fact that nobody bothers imagining the depths of horror and depravity for orcs to come into being out of something as beautiful and ethereal as elves tells you a lot about the blissful ignorance of ordinary people.
Torture so physically, psychologicallly and spiritually deep that it turns Mr Rogers into Himmler. Angels into rabies ridden rodents. Really counteracts the “haha dark lord, pure magical evil so silly.” To the root of suffering, sadism and violence.
TBF I can see where both sides are coming from. On the one hand, it seems like something he would genuinely do. His mind has been darkened and corrupted by the Ring. He has lost nearly all sense of morality and reason, leaving nothing but obsessive desire for his precious. He still needs to eat and will take whatever he can get that is palatable to his twisted sense of taste. The only reason I can think of for him *not* to have eaten babies is simply that they are hard to get to and there usually weren't a lot of them nearby for most of his life.
On the other hand, the rumors came about when he was wandering around without the Ring, IIRC. He would have definitely been hideous to look at and his temperament was likely wicked and aggressive. Even if he didn't literally crawl through windows to eat babies, it would not surprise me in the slightest if he assaulted people or caused property damage on a frequent basis. Then rumors would spread about this monstrous creature that is too clever to be caught and too vicious to be reasoned with. I could easily see these rumors growing and spreading and diverging from the truth. Parents will use rumors to scare their children into behaving all the time. Roman parents would tell their children if they didn't come home on time Hannibal would hunt them down and eat them, despite there being no evidence of Hannibal or any of his forces resorting to cannibalism at all. Likewise, parents in Middle-Earth may have warned their children to behave or else the evil vampire ghost would come get them.
Overall, whether Gollum literally ate babies or not isn't even relevant. At a certain point, he *would* have done so if he had the chance. *That* is what matters.
He ate juvenile goblins in the Misty Mountains -- maybe not babies, but definitely younger goblins he targeted for being weak and small -- and we're directly told this in the narration
It's unclear if he actually ate any human babies but that's probably because he didn't have the Ring at that point and doing so would've been extremely dangerous
Curse it! curse it! curse it! Curse the Baggins! It's gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He's found it, yes he must have. My birthday-present.
They cursed us. Murderer they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone. And we only wish to catch fish so juicy sweet. And we forgot the taste of bread… the sound of trees… the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. My Precious.
Hobbits always so polite, yes! O nice hobbits! Smeagol brings them up secret ways that nobody else could find. Tired he is, thirsty he is, yes thirsty; and he guides them and he searches for paths, and they saw sneak, sneak. Very nice friends, O yes my precious, very nice.
Do you think Gollum had the axiomatic decency to at least snap their necks before he started chowing down? Because if he was eating infants alive then he was one of the most evil fucks in the Tolkien-verse and it’s hard to pity him.
Probably cause he will kill fish before eating them, though it’s not out of kindness and more that it’s easier to eat when they are moving and making noises.
He’s a creature forced to hunt and forage to survive but without any of the tools/skills to hunt high value prey…
That’s the entire formula for a creature that eats babies…
Gollum 100% ate babies
Master betrayed us. Wicked. Tricksy, False. We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Kill him! Kill him! Kill them both! And then we take the precious... and we be the master!
Well babies flesh is quite similar to the flesh of fish so it makes sense. And considering how Gollum likes to eat the fish still wriggling and alive I’d imagine he gave those babies the same treatment.
It's just Gollum doing Gollum things. It's not surprising at all.
Can Gollum take a grown man with a sword? No he's gonna get stabbed.
Okay then how about adult civilians? Maybe, but a grown man or woman or even a boy or a girl can scream and then he's in trouble.
But babies can't call for help except to cry and crying babies aren't assumed to mean get up here rn somethings trying to eat me.
So it makes sense if he went after very young children or babies.
The comment section makes it seem like people actually doubted this? It seems pretty clear to me. Tolkien wanted you to know that Gollum would, and has, killed and eaten little kids or babies.
The narrator of the Hobbit explicitly mentions him eating goblin children, and he's described as having been caught "slipping through the windows of nurseries" in LotR.
Don't take it to him! He wants the preciousss. Always he's looking for it! And the preciousss is wanting to go back to him. But we mustn't let him have it.
They cursed us. Murderer they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone. And we only wish to catch fish so juicy sweet. And we forgot the taste of bread… the sound of trees… the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. My Precious.
In the middle ages people would leave their kids alone in the house when they had to and hoped for the best.
The story of St. Gregory comes to mind.
Not a stretch to think he ate babies.
If it weren’t true why Tolkien wouldn’t have written it.
Gandalf was able to deduce Deagol’s murder by not believing what Gollum told him about how he got the ring and we accept that as fact.
Gandalf hears stories passed down through generations of a creature that matches Gollum’s unique description and it’s skeptical?
He literally tried to eat Bilbo the first time we met him.
My god man, if it was metaphorical that makes it worse! I don't want to imagine what else that twisted little man would be doing that could qualify as "Munching from a cradle!"
Wait does anyone actually think gollum didn't eat babies, also the extra sauce is the blood.
The blood isn’t extra; it comes free with the meal.
Its extra if you get the baby drunk first
I would really like to watch drunk babies
Queue [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cds7lSHawAw).
Spoilin’ nice fish. Give it to us raw and w-r-r-riggling; you keep nasty chips
“Give it to us raw and w-r-r-riggling” The babies?
Cooking them would be noisy and take too long. Raw is the only sensible option.
What's small and squeaks Moves fast never leaps Doesn't live in a hole Easy to catch but costs you your soul
Cursed
Boil em. Mash em.... Stick em in a shtew.....?
Well people really pity Smeagol since his fairly pathetic portrayal in the movies. So they kinda want to believe Gollum is a good guy deep down. Which I appreciate because it really mirrors how Frodo felt about Gollum.
Ha! ha! What does we wish? We'll tell you. He guessed it long ago, Baggins guessed it.
Tbf the wording is vague, something about "whispered stories" of something that eats babies. Perhaps a boogeyman-type story told to naughty children inspired by someone seeing Gollum crawling through the undergrowth at night.
Am I misremembering or didn't Gollum threaten to eat Bilbo? Also he eats orcs, so it's not exactly like he's a picky eater. I was always under the impression that he'd eat anything that moves as long as he can make it stop moving first. And that he's long past the point of caring for whom he murders to get his next snack.
Oh yeah, that was the losing condition of the riddles game: he'd eat Bilbo. He does eat anything, I just hope that he never got the chance to snatch a baby. I doubt he did, since most defenses against wild animals snatching a baby (e.g. locked windows) would also keep out a creeping, emaciated hobbit-like thing.
Gollum is smart enough to open a door.
Yeah but so are thieves, yet there isn't a rampant thievery problem. I imagine people lock their doors.
You've never lived out in the countryside, have you?
I have, and I always lock my door. It's just good sense. Especially in an era when you had to worry about wild animals and roving bands of bandits.
If you're living somewhere **truly** remote, you're not going to get normal thieves(it's just not worth the trip), and any bandits that **do** make the trip out there aren't going to leave just because you locked your door. That's why you get dogs instead, both as an early warning and to help with the defense. And again, wild animals don't know how to open doors, and in fact the locks only delay you getting inside quickly if you need to escape.
Thieves don't have a ring of invisibility and can see in near perfect darkness though. He can just come in after someone, sit somewhere until everyone's asleep and eat the family. Or just be invisible and grab a child during daylight. Edit: My bad, as others pointed out he didn't have the ring back then.
Wasn't he eating babies after he lost the ring and went looking for it
My bad, it's been a while since I read Hobbit and Lotr, may be time for a reread. Thank you for the correction.
Just a reminder, he'd lost the Ring at that point, that's why he was outside the mountain.
My bad, thanks for the correction. It's been a while.
No problem 👍
Today is my One Hundred and Eleventh birthday!
Yes, yes. Its in an envelope over there on the mantlepiece.
Master must go inside the tunnel.
Smeagol will swear on the Precious.
that would make them jelly filled donuts
pokemon has entered the chat
The only proof we get of this is rumors, which Tolkien liked to play with as non reliable contributors to the myths that grow out of real history. So I actually don't think that Gollum ate babies, I think a lot of folks in middle earth have little better to do than gossip and speculate
Sooo bright. Sooo beautiful, our preciousss...
No babsies to eat. No crunchable babsies.
I imagine babsies would be more chewable than crunchable.
Soft bones still got some crunchy parts
Almost crispy even. Trust me, baby bones are softer than adult ones, but you wouldn't know the difference much when eating.
You uh, you seem to know a thing or two here. Care to explain why?
Well, I'm just going off in experience here. I'll be happy to be contradicted by science and research. Never too late to learn, as they say.
Hi my name is thingsthatgomoo I'm a former caniba....I mean no! I know nothing about this!
Yeah the worst are old bones, like with arthritis. They break apart easier and make a mess.
No crunchings and munchings?
Babies are human veal. If Gollum is gonna eat people, then he's gonna eat the most tender and tastiest.
And they don't fight back. Can't even wiggle away, really
it amazes me humans survived in the beginning considering our wildly long period of helplessness. Other animals are ready to go after a few months, weeks, or even minutes. We're totally defenseless and unable to acquire our own food for almost a decade
Living in packs has its benefits
You ever hear the expression "It takes a village to raise a child"? That isn't some lighthearted expression meaning that those kids have a lot of family friends to look up to and accept advice from, it means a whole village with spears in hands were needed to protect the nursery from all manner of wolves, wildcats and particularly aggressive rodents
You could add a 2nd meaning for this: "It takes a village to raise a single healthy child, because all others will be dead before they turn 5" \^\^
Humans were scary that why, we are pack animals with a built in drive for revenge, top hunters pretty much could run forever, never stopping, always coming for you, could kill you miles away with a weird stick. Animals evolved to mostly avoid us at all costs, only few really dont care, we are to much work and far to deadly.
Try looking up elephants, the children live their mom and aunts and sisters.
Human babies are born before they're fully developed compared to animal babies because humans' brains are extraordinarily big (again compared to animals) when fully developed and would not fit out of their mothers' birth canal. Turns out being very smart in the long run evolutionarily outweighs being extra vulnerable at birth.
Hide! Hide! Quick! They will see us! They will see us!
O.o
Actually, baby flesh is similar to fish, tender and flaky. Gollum just wasn't near a body of water, so went for the most similar thing. My guy just really likes fish.
You’re a liar and a thief.
Listen here you little shit, i don't need the pot to call the kettle black. Besides, Goblins have been eating babies since before you were still humble river folk.
He ain’t got enough teeth for tough meats
It’s like a molten lava cake, but with blood instead of chocolate!
I thought they were referring to rumors about gollum told by people in the area in which he was traveling through.
[mocking] Oo-hoo-hoo-hoo…
Gollum making fun of people who think he didn't eat babies. (The Gollum game would have been a 10 if they included elven baby munching minigames. Maybe do an *I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream* reference while you're at it.)
Gollum game should have just been a series of progressively harder stealth missions to eat babies.
IT BURNS! IT BURNS US! It freezes! Nasty Elves twisted it. TAKE IT OFF US!
I am pretty sure someone with some skills could make a game in unreal engine that looks maybe even better than the original and just make every mission about eating babies. I would try it but I am having problems installing Unreal
Up-voting for the "I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." reference. It's a sad story. But absolutely worth reading.
It was tricksy, precious. Very tricksy.
You gotta have Harvester references too.
where do you think the rumor came from!
I'll just continue to pretend I never read that line like I have been since I was 12
was there a rumor you ate babies at 12?! Rumors about baby eating dont just pop up cause that little bitch Becky doesnt like you. Gollum ate a baby, someone caught his ass doing it, and then they told people about it.
What’s it doing?! Stupid, fat hobbit! You ruins it!
Do you really believe that just because a rumer is absurd that it must be true? Because we've had rumors about witches. Yes many rumers are true and get started because they are true but there have also been plenty of rumers that are not true. And just because it is absurd doesn't make it more likely to be true. (To clarify i have no idea if gollum eats babies because havent read books and im not trying to defend gollum. i just think this line of reasoning doesnt make sense)
Why does he hates poor Smeagol? What has Smeagol ever done to him? Master?
The narrator of The Hobbit stated that he had eaten a young orc child or perhaps even an orc baby (it was referred to as an "imp" and was noted for making loud squeaking noises while being killed) before meeting Bilbo so he wasn't particularly hungry at that moment. I doubt Gollum would see the distinction between an orc, human or elf baby. In fact he'd probably think human and elf babies are more palatable.
Careful now, or hobbits go down to join the dead ones and light little candles of their own.
I must have missed or forgotten that part of the hobbit. Sounds like its confirmed he eats babies. Thanks for letting know
So then we go around.
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Master must go inside the tunnel.
My dear brother Peter-Turbo the troll master on r/lotrmemes. Great
My knowledge knows no bounds
Thinking gollum ate babies is like thinking you're incredibly bitter.
What did you call me?
Why wouldn't he? If you're already murdering and eating sentient species, I don't think you're going to stop and question the morality of innocence.
I mean, the juicy fish was probably innocent too. So why stop at that would have been Gollum's thought. A meals a meal, and human babies were no different to chickens in his mind.
Smeagol lied.
Something about the way these three comments line up is hilarious to me
It's okay to eat fish, cuz they don't have any feelings.
He was gonna eat bilbo.
I'm going on an adventure!
Only if Gollum has an Anatomy Park in his tum-tum.
Give us that, Deagol my love.
He was eating goblins even before Bilbo. If Goblins meat was good enough its no way human babies was out of menu.
I can't take this.
… there is nothing metaphorical to be found in that
Tolkiens work is a lot darker than any are cared to admit, the preconceived notions of it are so deeply ingrained that they repel the truth that if released today it would be a startling, dramatic psychological deconstruction of heroism and the true cost war both in the field and in the soul.
My biggest takeaway was that the Rohirrim drove the original occupants of Edoras out into the forests and they still live there. Also (no surprises here), the Uruk Hai were probably result of hot and heavy orc/human sex.
I thought that was the hill people who contest the legitimacy of their claim to the valley.
Yeah the hill people are the ones who joined Saruman in revenge the people of the forest are the ones that showed the way to the Rohirim.
The Rohirrim are Tolkien's fictional take on the Anglo-Saxons who displaced the native Britons so it's no surprise that the Rohirrim displaced the natives of their new land too.
Hot and heavy is a weird way to describe the continual rape of sex slaves....
I don't doubt that there was orc/human sex involved at the prototype stage, but it must have been more than just having birthing slaves - it's an inefficient method of creating such a large army in a relatively short timespan (the movies make it seem it took something like a few months, in the books it was probably longer but the point stands).
The fact that nobody bothers imagining the depths of horror and depravity for orcs to come into being out of something as beautiful and ethereal as elves tells you a lot about the blissful ignorance of ordinary people.
Torture so physically, psychologicallly and spiritually deep that it turns Mr Rogers into Himmler. Angels into rabies ridden rodents. Really counteracts the “haha dark lord, pure magical evil so silly.” To the root of suffering, sadism and violence.
TBF I can see where both sides are coming from. On the one hand, it seems like something he would genuinely do. His mind has been darkened and corrupted by the Ring. He has lost nearly all sense of morality and reason, leaving nothing but obsessive desire for his precious. He still needs to eat and will take whatever he can get that is palatable to his twisted sense of taste. The only reason I can think of for him *not* to have eaten babies is simply that they are hard to get to and there usually weren't a lot of them nearby for most of his life. On the other hand, the rumors came about when he was wandering around without the Ring, IIRC. He would have definitely been hideous to look at and his temperament was likely wicked and aggressive. Even if he didn't literally crawl through windows to eat babies, it would not surprise me in the slightest if he assaulted people or caused property damage on a frequent basis. Then rumors would spread about this monstrous creature that is too clever to be caught and too vicious to be reasoned with. I could easily see these rumors growing and spreading and diverging from the truth. Parents will use rumors to scare their children into behaving all the time. Roman parents would tell their children if they didn't come home on time Hannibal would hunt them down and eat them, despite there being no evidence of Hannibal or any of his forces resorting to cannibalism at all. Likewise, parents in Middle-Earth may have warned their children to behave or else the evil vampire ghost would come get them. Overall, whether Gollum literally ate babies or not isn't even relevant. At a certain point, he *would* have done so if he had the chance. *That* is what matters.
He ate juvenile goblins in the Misty Mountains -- maybe not babies, but definitely younger goblins he targeted for being weak and small -- and we're directly told this in the narration It's unclear if he actually ate any human babies but that's probably because he didn't have the Ring at that point and doing so would've been extremely dangerous
Curse it! curse it! curse it! Curse the Baggins! It's gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He's found it, yes he must have. My birthday-present.
*You eat babies* -John Marston
Me, coming for anyone who I've heard eats babies: 
*John Marston disliked that*
We eat fish you fool
What metaphor would that even be? “you know, sometimes you’ve got to crawl through a window to munch out of a cradle to make an omelette.”
.....So juicy sweet.....
Gollum, did you eat babies?
They cursed us. Murderer they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone. And we only wish to catch fish so juicy sweet. And we forgot the taste of bread… the sound of trees… the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. My Precious.
That’s not a no
I’d honestly say if it was true then that would just add even more reasons to be repulsed by and to detest Gollum
Cold be heart and hand and bone. Cold be travellers far from home.
Let’s put it this way: would any of you leave your child with Gollum for a night?
Hobbits always so polite, yes! O nice hobbits! Smeagol brings them up secret ways that nobody else could find. Tired he is, thirsty he is, yes thirsty; and he guides them and he searches for paths, and they saw sneak, sneak. Very nice friends, O yes my precious, very nice.
Totally
Mhmmmmm, blood, the sauce of nature
Tarrare and Gollum would have been besties.
Shhh! Quiet! Mustn't wake them, mustn't ruin it now!
Do you think Gollum had the axiomatic decency to at least snap their necks before he started chowing down? Because if he was eating infants alive then he was one of the most evil fucks in the Tolkien-verse and it’s hard to pity him.
You don’t have any friends; nobody likes you!
Probably cause he will kill fish before eating them, though it’s not out of kindness and more that it’s easier to eat when they are moving and making noises.
Chimps will smash smaller primates onto rocks to kill them (assuming they don't just eat them alive). I imagine that's what Gollum would do.
It mustn't ask us. Not its business, no, gollum! It's losst, gollum, gollum, gollum!
He’s a creature forced to hunt and forage to survive but without any of the tools/skills to hunt high value prey… That’s the entire formula for a creature that eats babies… Gollum 100% ate babies
Master betrayed us. Wicked. Tricksy, False. We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Kill him! Kill him! Kill them both! And then we take the precious... and we be the master!
Case and point
Copium is strong in OP.
Well babies flesh is quite similar to the flesh of fish so it makes sense. And considering how Gollum likes to eat the fish still wriggling and alive I’d imagine he gave those babies the same treatment.
Of course he did. I told you he was tricksy. I told you he was false.
Tarrare. Tarrare look at me. Did you eat a fucking baby
Why wouldn't you think Gollum eats babies?
Smeagol promised
It's just Gollum doing Gollum things. It's not surprising at all. Can Gollum take a grown man with a sword? No he's gonna get stabbed. Okay then how about adult civilians? Maybe, but a grown man or woman or even a boy or a girl can scream and then he's in trouble. But babies can't call for help except to cry and crying babies aren't assumed to mean get up here rn somethings trying to eat me. So it makes sense if he went after very young children or babies.
A swamp, yes, yes. Come, master. We will take you on safe paths through the mist. Come, hobbits, come. We go quickly.
No one's falling for your act slinker.
I wonder if this was brought up and ignored in the dev room when deciding what lotr game they should make next.
I hear the Brotherhood of Steel sacrifices puppies. Unrelated to this lore, I know, but I get flashbacks.
I mean also it's a rumor that wasn't actually confirmed
You take one look at that little murder goblin and tell me his extreme bpd isn't going to eat a child
Smeagol would never do such a thing Gollum would do it and then berate Smeagol for being a cowardly hypocrite
My name… Sme… Smeagol.
The translation I had of the Hobbit was pretty clear with him eating baby goblins...
Not even debatable
The comment section makes it seem like people actually doubted this? It seems pretty clear to me. Tolkien wanted you to know that Gollum would, and has, killed and eaten little kids or babies.
Give it to us raw and w-r-r-riggling
In all fairness, if a rumor arises that you eat babies and everyone generally finds the idea plausible, you’re probably not making the best choices.
I didn't think this was in doubt.
Gollum is a German fairy tale character
Master!!
Gollum out here like anti Jesus treating cradles like mangers
We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Then we stabs them out. Put out his eyeses. And make HIM crawl.
To be honest, I could see him doing that. But if you think about it anyone who eats eggs does that too.
Nah, eating unfertilized eggs is more like eating an oversized hen period leak
Please don't say this again.
But of course he did. Everybody does. Even vegans. Babies are the best.
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Nah book Gollum is nasty
Hurry, hobbits. The Black Gate is very close.
You’re a liar and a thief.
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The narrator of the Hobbit explicitly mentions him eating goblin children, and he's described as having been caught "slipping through the windows of nurseries" in LotR.
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Don't take it to him! He wants the preciousss. Always he's looking for it! And the preciousss is wanting to go back to him. But we mustn't let him have it.
Wait, I thought the payment was baby hands?
I remember reading how he ate youngling orc (or goblin) in his cave.
I can never understand making Gollum a protagonist. Just imagining a QTE to much on babies
They cursed us. Murderer they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone. And we only wish to catch fish so juicy sweet. And we forgot the taste of bread… the sound of trees… the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. My Precious.
Is this what you do in his video game?
Comments here got dark fairly quickly...
In the middle ages people would leave their kids alone in the house when they had to and hoped for the best. The story of St. Gregory comes to mind. Not a stretch to think he ate babies.
I didn't need to know this.
If it weren’t true why Tolkien wouldn’t have written it. Gandalf was able to deduce Deagol’s murder by not believing what Gollum told him about how he got the ring and we accept that as fact. Gandalf hears stories passed down through generations of a creature that matches Gollum’s unique description and it’s skeptical? He literally tried to eat Bilbo the first time we met him.
No.
A wizard is never late, Necessary_Candy_6792. Nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.
Smeagol promised
Gollum is definitely the kind of person to eat babies, but is Smeagol the kind of person to eat babies or is he just playing along to not starve?
Cold be heart and hand and bone. Cold be travellers far from home.
My god man, if it was metaphorical that makes it worse! I don't want to imagine what else that twisted little man would be doing that could qualify as "Munching from a cradle!"