Peter Jackson's 'The Hobbit' cast performs 'Ballad of Bilbo Baggins' to promote 'Desolation of Smaug'

One of the biggest YouTube hits of all time has to be Leonard Nimoy's song from the 1960's that was inspired by the J.R.R. Tolkien book, The Hobbit. Considering the latest film on this subject came out this week, the cast of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug embraced Nimoy's song, "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins," and performed a dramatic reading of the lyrics while promoting the new film. The results are amazing.

First of all, we should preface this new video with the original from Nimoy. Check out "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" as performed by Star Trek icon Leonard Nimoy right here:

And here is a selection of the lyrics for this musical gem:

In the middle of the earth in the land of the Shire
lives a brave little hobbit whom we all admire.
With his long wooden pipe,
fuzzy, woolly toes,
he lives in a hobbit-hole and everybody knows him

Bilbo
Bilbo Baggins
He's only three feet tall
Bilbo
Bilbo Baggins

Now hobbits are peace-lovin' folks you know
They don't like to hurry and they take things slow
They don't like to travel away from home
They just want to eat and be left alone
But one day Bilbo was asked to go
on a big adventure to the caves below,
to help some dwarves get back their gold
that was stolen by a dragon in the days of old.

Now check out the cast of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug perform a dramatic reading of the above lyrics:

Do you prefer the original or the updated version of this song?