In the House of the Fairbairns by Simon J. Cook

In the House of the Fairbairns

J.R.R. Tolkien's famous allegory of Beowulf culminates with the revelation that from the top of his tower the Anglo-Saxon builder could see the sea. My recommendation to those who seek illumination of this enigmatic image of literary value is to open The Lord of the Rings. This at any rate is the plan for the next few posts, and we begin with a passage from 'Concerning Hobbits' in the Prologue:

Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be seen on the Tower Hills beyond the western marches. They shone far off in the moonlight. The tallest was furthest away, standing alone upon a green mound. The Hobbits of the Westfarthing said that one could see the Sea from the top of that tower; but no Hobbit had ever been known to climb it. Indeed, few Hobbits had ever seen or sailed upon the Sea, and fewer still had ever returned to report it. Most Hobbits regarded even rivers and small boats with deep misgivings, and not many of them could swim. And as the days of the Shire lengthened they spoke less and less with the Elves, and grew afraid of them, and distrustful of those that had dealings with them; and the Sea became a word of fear among them, and a token of death, and they turned their faces away from the hills in the west.

No doubt I am too caught up in the story of the tower told in the British Academy lecture to read any other stories by Tolkien with a clear head. But as I read this passage, our author has conjured out of The Hobbit a critical general public for the purpose of an extended sequel to the 1936 allegory of Beowulf.

The sequel will cast much illumination on the original story, although itself a story about a magic ring. This new story begins once upon a time immediately after the British Academy lecture, which had established once and for all that one could see the sea from the top of the western tower. In the face of this spirited defense of an ancient tradition of art, mounted by way of a demonstration of how to use it, friends and descendants alike finally open their eyes to what is in front of their faces. Perceiving not only the tower but its purpose, all former bickering about building materials ceases. For a moment there is silence. And then the critics all begin to talk at once, remarking one to another, and with varying degrees of sagacity and wit, how all their worst fears are now confirmed. Collectively, the critics turn their faces away from the still-living monuments of an ancient art.

Not all of the Hobbit-critics of the sequel turned away from the hills in the west, at least not in the next age of the world. 'Note on the Shire Records', the last section of the Prologue, draws a map of the libraries of the Shire in the early Fourth Age: Brandy Hall to the east of the Brandywine, Great Smials south of Hobbiton in the West Farthing, and Undertowers in the Westmarch, beyond the White Downs and the Far Downs. Brandy Hall and Great Smials were cosmopolitan nodes in the early Fourth Age, actively seeking out manuscripts and lore of the wider world. But it seems that the Fairbairns of Undertowers, Wardens of the Westmarch, turned their faces to the sea.

The Red Book of Westmarch

This account of the end of the Third Age is drawn mainly from the Red Book of Westmarch. That most important source for the history of the War of the Ring was so called because it was long preserved at Undertowers, the home of the Fairbairns, Wardens of the Westmarch.* ¹

The * is in the original text the mark of a footnote. The note directs us to three annals in 'Later Events Concerning the Members of the Fellowship of the Ring' in 'The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands)' in Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings, and also a footnote to 'The Longfather Tree of Master Samwise' at the very end of the Hobbit genealogies of Appendix C. Following the Shire Reckoning employed in this final part of the chronology, adding an additional annal (1452), and quoting exactly only the record of 1482 (and the footnote in Appendix C), here is what is told of the Fairbairns of the Westmarch:

1451. Marriage of Elanor the Fair, daughter of Samwise Gamgee and Rosie Cotton, and Fastred of Greenholm on the Far Downs.

1452. The Westmarch, from the Far Downs to the Tower Hills (Emyn Beraid), is added to the Shire by the gift of the King.

1462. Elected Mayor of the Shire for the sixth time, Sam requests the Thain (Pippin) to make Fastred Warden of Westmarch. Fastred and Elanor move to Undertowers on the Tower Hills, where their descendants, the Fairbairns of the Towers, dwell for many generations.

1482 Death of Mistress Rose, wife of Master Samwise, on Mid-year’s Day. On September 22 Master Samwise rides out from Bag End. He comes to the Tower Hills, and is last seen by Elanor, to whom he gives the Red Book afterwards kept by the Fairbairns. Among them the tradition is handed down from Elanor that Samwise passed the Towers, and went to the Grey Havens, and passed over Sea, last of the Ring-bearers.

The footnote at the end of Appendix C gives the gist of things:

[Fastred and Elanor] removed to the Westmarch, a country then newly settled (being a gift of King Elessar) between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills. From them came the Fairbairns of the Towers, Wardens of Westmarch, who inherited the Red Book, and made several copies with various notes and later additions.

These copies of the Red Book with notes and additions of this last note open the door to the diversity of the early Fourth-Age reception of the Red Book. Concretely, all the appendices (and in effect most of the Prologue) are additions made to copies of the Red Book held in Great Smials and Brandy Hall. For example, the main text of 'Note on the Shire Records' explains that our basic source for the history of the Red Book of Westmarch, 'The Tale of Years', was 'probably' put together at Great Smials 'with the assistance of material collected by Meriadoc' in the library at Brandy Hall. In other words, the above records concerning Sam's daughter Elanor and her descendants were put together by the descendants of Pippin and Merry.

Meriadoc Brandybuck is said to have written as well as collected writings on the history of both Rohan and the Shire, and much of the Prologue has the hallmark of the learning of Brandy Hall. Peregrin Took in Great Smials did not write any books, but it is through him that the Númenórean lore Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age (The Silmarillion) entered the Shire. 'The most important copy' of the Red Book of Westmarch was kept at Great Smials, but 'written in Gondor' ('Its southern scribe appended this note: Findegil, King's Writer, finished this work in IV 172'). In Gondor the Red Book received 'much annotation, and many corrections', and also 'The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen'. Crucially, Pippin and his successors are said to have collected many manuscripts from Gondor concerned with Elendil and his heirs: 'Only here in the Shire were to be found extensive materials for the history of Númenor and the arising of Sauron.'²

What this boils down to is that the Hobbits of Undertowers and the Hobbits of Great Smials were reading different Red Books. The Fairbairns read—and annotated—a Red Book that was only story and no appendices. But once copies of the Red Book of Westmarch were housed in Great Smials and Brandy Hall, an apparatus of textual appendices began to be built up. The cosmopolitan Tooks and Brandybucks wished to frame the narrative left by the Ring-bearers with a systematic account of the history and lore of Middle-earth.

Was there any concrete difference between the readings of the Red Book in the Westmarch and in the rest of the Shire? In the remainder of this post, I attempt to delineate these two traditions by way of one thread in the Red Book that connects certain visions of two Septembers, three years apart.

In Dreams or out of Them

September 22 is a red-letter day at Bag End, or was for most of the Third Age that there was a hole at the top of the Hobbiton Hill. The hole was burrowed before Bilbo Baggins was born, his birthday being September 22, 2890 of the Third Age. Bilbo was the only child of Belladonna Took and Bungo Baggins, who dug the hole. Frodo Baggins, Bilbo's first and second cousin, once removed on both sides, and his adopted heir, was born on September 22, 2968.

The new Hobbit story almost begins on September 22, 3001, when Bilbo vanishes from his own birthday party. It gets going on September 23, 3018, the evening after his birthday, when Frodo finally departs Bag End in the company of Peregrin Took and Samwise Gamgee. But in my view the new adventure formally begins on September 24. As the three Hobbits walk east through the Shire they twice hide from a Black Rider and in Woody End on the second occasion the Ringwraith flees at the approach of High Elves who speak the name of Elbereth.

The Hobbits spend the night with the Elves in the woods, and our dream-thread begins very early in the morning of the following night. Hobbits are natural hole-dwellers, but we are now stepping with Frodo Baggins through three nights in two houses: Joined by Meriadoc Brandybuck, a party of four Hobbits will ride out from the house in Crickhollow, walk through the Old Forest to the house of Tom Bombadil, where they will spend two nights. The next hole in the ground in which Frodo Baggins will awake is a barrow.

Woken in the house at Crickhollow when it is still dark, Frodo comes to himself out of a dream in which he had been on a dark heath and heard in the distance 'a sound he had never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams'—the sound of the sea:

Looking up he saw before him a tall white tower, standing alone on a high ridge. A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea. He started to struggle up the ridge towards the tower: but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a noise of thunder.³

I presume this tall white tower is Elostirion, the western Elf-tower, though the reference is deliberately allusive. The next night, the first in the house of Tom Bombadil, Frodo dreams of an inland Númenórean tower. For this post I pass over this far-seeing vision of Orthanc, and on to the second night with Bombadil, when 'either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which':

Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.⁴ 

Three Years Later: Sam's Record

The Red Book of Westmarch was authored by the three Ringbearers. Bilbo Baggins wrote up his adventure with the Dwarves, Frodo his story with the Ring, and Samwise Gamgee completed the very end of the tale. We have been reading Frodo's account of events in September 3018 of the Third Age. Now we turn to the account of September 3021, which must have been penned by Sam.⁵

One day in Bag End in September of the year 3021 of the Third Age, just a few days before his birthday, Frodo Baggins gives to Samwise Gamgee 'a big book with plain red leather covers,' and explains that it is to be read out aloud, so to 'keep alive the memory of the age that is gone'.⁶ On 21 September the two set out together, riding on ponies, and in Woody End on September 22 they hear once again the song of Gildor Inglorion and meet many fair Elven folk, and also Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins. They ride to the Gulf of Lune and on September 29 Frodo Baggins boards the last fairy-ship:

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.⁷

Who could report these words? Not Frodo, who has passed. How the further shore seemed to Frodo must have been penned by Sam, who cannot know. Having stood side by side with Merry and Pippin watching the ship sail into the West, Sam returns home to Bag End to finish the Red Book in another age of the world. Sam believes that Frodo's 'dream' in the house of Bombadil was a far-seeing vision of the undying lands. He makes a leap in the dark and projects this vision into the final vision of Frodo Baggins as recorded in the Red Book.

The Footnote

What we know as Appendix A was put together in Great Smials. We might even imagine Peregrin Took himself writing the following footnote. To give a full reference, this note is appended to an account of the losing of the Stones of Annúminas and Amon Sûl in the frozen north, which forms part of the account of 'The North-kingdom and the Dúnedain' in the section 'Eriador, Arnor, and the Heirs of Isildur' of the 'Annals of the Kings and Rulers':

The only Stone left in the North was the one in the Tower on Emyn Beraid that looks towards the Gulf of Lune. That was guarded by the Elves, and though we never knew it, it remained there, until Círdan put it aboard Elrond's ship when he left. But we are told that it was unlike the others and not in accord with them; it looked only to the Sea. Elendil set it there so that he could look back with 'straight sight' and see Eressëa in the vanished West; but the bent seas below covered Númenor for ever.

Who is writing this? Pippin might well have retained an abiding interest in the Seeing Stones after his unfortunate experiences with two of them. Of course, we cannot know the individual scribe. But we can be fairly confident it was a Took of Great Smials who had been told Númenórean lore that had its source in Gondor. And whoever the scribe, we know that this note was added to—and so not part of—the Red Book that had already for some years been read in the house of the Fairbairns, Wardens of the Westmarch.

Two Traditions

Once word about the absent Stone reached Great Smials it would soon enough reach Undertowers too. But by then the Fairbairns had already been reading the Red Book aloud to one another for quite some years. Whether the news was even news at all we cannot know. These Hobbits who lived under the three Elf-towers must remain something of a mystery. Their annotations to the Red Book of Westmarch have been lost with the book itself. What they knew of their own local ancient history we can only guess. Who knows what they heard from passing travelers on their way to the sea?

For myself, I feel in my bones that Elanor—who we learn from 'The Tale of Years' spent a year in Gondor as a child—climbed the stairs of all three towers. I'd wager the same for at least one of her two children, Elfstan and Fíriel. From the top of even the tallest of the Elf-towers of Undertowers, the Fairbairns would of course have seen no grey rain curtain parting, as in Frodo's vision in the house of Bombadil. But it is said that from the top of the tallest tower they could see the sea. And I suggest that for Elanor, and for many of the Fairbairns descended from her, a view on the sea was sufficient motivation to climb those stairs. Recall the record for 1482 in the 'Tale of Years':

Among [the Fairbairns] the tradition is handed down from Elanor that Samwise passed the Towers, and went to the Grey Havens, and passed over Sea, last of the Ring-bearers.

The Fairbairns hold that even after the last fairy-ship had sailed, in the first days of a newly disenchanted age, when not even the possibility of 'straight sight' remained, Master Samwise found the Straight Road. From the Fairbairns, I surmise, are descended many of those Hobbits who in later days heard the call of the Sea. They are not Hobbits who build towers, as they already live among them—the Fairbairns are Hobbits who run away to sea.

I don't see any argument of lore separating Undertowers from Great Smials and Brandy Hall, only a gulf of sentiment. The lesson of the footnote concerning the Stone now absent from the Tower is straightforward, though it is no more and no less than the disenchantment wrought with the turning of an age. Here at any rate is how I read the thread between two Septembers in light of the footnote on the absent Stone, and how I presume the Hobbits of the Shire would have come to understand the implications of the note.

Back in the last days of the Third Age, when Frodo dreamed in the two houses, he was under an enchantment cast by or through the Stone in the Tower. My own suspicion is that the chance meeting with Gildor Inglorion was instrumental in casting the spell. Be that as it may, in the wake of this meeting Frodo dreams, first of the western Elf-tower, then of an inland tower, and finally receives a vision such as he might have seen in the Stone in the Tower. In other words, in the house of Bombadil, in his dreams or out of them, Frodo Baggins catches a glimpse of Valinor.

As such, when news reaches the Shire of the now absent Stone in the Tower any discussion of the end of Frodo's story is revolved. Sam obviously projected the 'dream' in the house of Bombadil onto Frodo's vision of the shores of the undying land. But now it is discovered that he revealed good instincts in so doing. Samwise Gamgee read the vision in the house of Bombadil right.

But is it not curious how the Tooks of Great Smials hold at arm's length the tradition that Samwise, last of the Ringbearers and third author of the Red Book of Westmarch, himself passed over the sea? 'The Tale of Years', composed in Great Smials, does not record the passing of the last Ringbearer as a Shire annal so much as a Fairbairn family tradition. Consequently, even in our own day I am not sure it is, strictly speaking, canon.

In the view of Great Smials and Brandy Hall, the Stone in the Tower in the Third Age revealed the hidden light of Valinor, but now it is gone forever. From their perspective, two groups of Hobbits appear foolish. Returning to the Prologue, the learned Tooks and Brandybucks now know that the Hobbits of the Third Age who turned their faces from the Tower Hills were turning their faces away from the protection of the Valar. On the other hand, the Fairbairns of the Fourth Age, the Wardens of the Westmarch who (I surmise) were said by other Hobbits to look on, ride out to, and even on occasion sail out to sea, are living in a past age of the world. To learned Hobbits in a newly disenchanted age of history, the Fairbairn romance with the sea is a Hobbit fairy-tale.

Dedication

Dedicated to Drifa, a good friend who brews the best tea.

Works Cited

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Prologue, "Note on Shire Records."
2. Ibid.
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "A Conspiracy Unmasked."
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "Fog on the Barrow-downs."
5. See Thomas P. Hillman, Pity, Power, and Tolkien's Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2023). I am indebted to Tom for drawing my attention to the question of authorship of the final vision recorded of Frodo Baggins. More generally, my reading of The Lord of the Rings owes much to our discussions over the years.
6. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Grey Havens."
7. Ibid.