IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

In the Shire-reckoning
A Story of the Early Days of the Shire as Relating to

The Fall of Arnor

another tale set in the world of J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

by
Diane Finnis-Robb

Author’s Note:

   In a 1954 New York Times review of “The Fellowship of the Ring” poet W. H. Auden wrote that “Mr. Tolkien is fortunate in possessing an amazing gift for naming and a wonderfully exact eye for description; by the time one has finished his book one knows the histories of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and the landscape they inhabit as well as one knows one’s own childhood.” I can think of no clearer explanation of purpose for the work that you will find here; as a child I was spellbound by Tolkien’s writings and I explore those familiar landscapes now so that the spell may continue. The opportunity to create and play in the lush world of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” has captivated artists for generations and I am no different in my love for that world and its stories than millions of other creators. If you are choosing to join me by reading this story then I can only assume you are also one of those many fans of the Professor’s work who live under that same spell.

   The story that you will find here is a fragmentary piece of a larger work set in Middle-earth and entitled “The Fall of Arnor.” Begun in 2019, well before the Covid pandemic came along; “The Fall of Arnor” was initially intended to be a choose-your-own-adventure role-playing game for a select group of friends, all of whom are older and seldom get the time for that kind of interaction any longer. All of those friends were fellow Tolkien fans and creators, so I hoped at that time it might be a chance for us to gather, create, interact and discuss our ideas of Tolkien’s Middle-earth with full fan freedom and none of the restrictions of editors, arguers and copyright attorneys.

   In the year 2020, as the pandemic was at its worst (and upset plans for all of our shared universes- cultural, political, social, physical and fictional) I found myself escaping to Middle-earth every day, building the small story that I had in mind for my friends and players into a long-form tale. There were originally no plans in my mind for presenting that novel to the public; I simply wanted to share it with a handful of people who had seen me develop the idea. But writing in such a rich and full world has a way of taking an author into undiscovered corners and unexpected territories, and the initial story grew very rapidly. There began to be so much more material here than I ever imagined creating and by the end of 2020 I began to revise much of the earliest draft into what looked like it would become a series of novels.

   The greater part of the action of “The Fall of Arnor” is set in the year 1975 of the Third Age of Middle-earth, nearly a thousand years before Bilbo’s finding of the Ring. It is concerned with the last remnants of the North Kingdom, the war those people had with the Witch-king of Angmar, and the decline of the great kingdom of Men in the North.

   But that is another story.

   Here I present you with a kind of interstitial novel of Middle-earth; a piece built from the connective tissue which I discovered in my research/autopsy of Shire history undertaken for Book III of “The Fall of Arnor.” This tale does have some ramifications on the whole of that other work, but may be read as a stand alone story for anyone who may hold a great interest in Hobbits. I hadn’t meant to spend much time as an author delving into the Shire-hobbits and their histories, but research for Book III brought to my mind stories of those quiet and peaceable pioneers who became the land’s founders, of the victories they had won, the challenges they faced and comforts which they made for themselves; comforts that would eventually, by Bilbo’s time, almost entirely define them and seem to diminish their earlier acts of bravery.

   These stories, important to me as I discovered them, don’t really fit into a neat space within the larger body of “The Fall of Arnor”; but they are no less a part of my creative process in imaging the undescribed parts of Tolkien’s world. They are places I could not resist going to and that, hopefully, you as readers will also find interesting to visit. Characters I could not help but imagine and that I hope you will also find interesting. They are definitely distractions from the longer tale that I had set out to write but that I have come to enjoy telling.

   So here is a novel about hobbits. I hope you will like it and find it worth your trouble in reading. It, as with all of my work in Middle-earth, is written entirely within the context of Tolkien’s published works and not as any kind of glib alternative history. I have tried at every step of the writing to stay true to the original source material. Therefore, as always, I welcome any feedback on any of my mistakes. As a writer and artist I am painfully aware of how poor my skills are as a researcher; for artists collect information only to support their own purposes and will also quite readily lose information which is of no aid to their inventions. Writers left on their own, not held by the scrutiny of readers or editors, do likewise.

   Please feel free to contact me with any glaring errors you may find in my version of events.

   During the writing of this book I have made contact with many Tolkien fans who have contributed to its growth. Our conversations have played an enormous part not just in my work but in my understanding of the material and my own mental and creative health over the past few years. I can’t thank you all enough for that. If, as I hope, this book brings you a small opportunity to delight in an extended world based upon Tolkien’s design (as the writing of it has done for me) then you should know that it grew out of those conversations which were so important to me in so dark a time.

-D. F. R. 2023

CONTENTS

Part One: The Time Before

-In Which we Tell of the Discovery and Establishment of the Shire and Meet some of the Founding “Townfathers"; Revealing their Dreams and Exhibiting their Practicality while also Witnessing some of the Differences Which Would Come to Divide Them.

1) "explorers and ambassadors” 11 

2) "the agreement" 21 

3) "the bold buck" 32 

4) “the earliest settlements” 42 

5) “the farthing stone” 46 

6) “astron” 53

7) “distant music” 57

8) “the bristling borders” 73 

9) “the edge of arguments” 79

10) “the elves of the western lands” 88 

11) “ambassador to the west” 96

12) “the better understanding of our future” 100

Interlude: A Brief History of Those Early Years

-In Which some Significant History is Recounted Concerning the Shire’s Development, the Beginnings of Its Government and the Character of Its People whilst Gondolpho Oldbuck was Away

i) “on growth and industry” 107 

ii) “on population and documentation” 108

iii) “on centers of trade and administration” 109

iv) “on notable families and great advancements” 112 

v) “on the ingenuity of Childebrand Swiftalk” 116 

vi) “on the childebank” 121

vii) “on the Crisis of Year Fifteen” 124 

viii) “on the First Battle of the Shire” 130 

ix) “on debt and threat and argument” 133 

x) “on government, death and settlement” 137

xi) “on the ordering of the Shire and the new wave of expansion” 143

9.  
10.  

11. Part Two: The Time After

-In Which the First Generation Born in the Shire Begins to Envision a Future of Their Own Making and the Return of the Old Buck Alters that Vision.

1) “the young buck” 152 

2) “the plans” 157 

3) "the walk to waymeet" 166 

4) 'the record of his return" 177 

5) "the game of negotiations" 183 

6) "the southron" 194 

7) "missed connections" 199 

8) "a chance meeting" 215 

9) "the bargain" 242 

10) “what comes next” 264 

11) “from Eumaeus” 274

12) “greenholm” 279

13) “from Ermenberga” 289 

14) “the far downs” 293

Part Three: The Time of Conclusions

-In Which many Accounts are Settled and, for Good and for Bad, the Future of the Shire is Shaped.

1) “after-lithe” 314

2) “diaries and dispatches” 344

3) “waymeet” 383

4) “things to say to one another” 398

Postlude: A Brief History of those Years After

-In Which some Minor History is Recounted Concerning the Shire’s Reunification, the Marriages and Deaths of many of Its Pioneers and Their ties to Future Generations of Famous Hobbits

i) “of the third marriage of Alaura Fairheart” 408 

ii) “of the Oldbuck in retirement” 409

iii) “of Theudebald Swiftalk” 409

iv) “of the Swiftooks” 410

v) “of the Bunces” 412

vi) “of the Tooks” 414

vii) “of the Youngbuck” 416

viii) “of the Southern Sickness” 417 

ix) “of the times after” 423

x) “three letters” 427

Acknowledgements

foreword

   Of the great events in the year 1975 of the Third Age, much has been revealed in The Fall of Arnor which had previously remained mysterious or unrecounted. It was at that time when the Witch-king in Angmar was finally overthrown, yet all hope for the future of the Northlands did also seem lost. Many scribes of that time speak of the great hosts of armies which marched in that war; of the last vestige of the Númenórean Men, tall sons of Sea-kings, who fought alongside the remaining Elf-lords of Mithlond, Imladris and the Golden Realm and how they strove against the terrible hosts of Orcs, Trolls, dark Men and beasts which had poured forth from Angmar to destroy or subjugate the Free Peoples of the north at the will of their sorcerous master. The great deeds of these battles are known and many names of those brave folk are elsewhere recorded. Those stories tell also of how the Witch-king himself was routed and the Northlands were cleansed for a time, but also of how the kingship of the line of Elendil there were left without a home and his remaining people became a scattered folk. Success for the North people seemed a dubious victory when measured against such great loss.

   In all those tales of war and woe there are but few mentions of hobbits and, to be precise in our study of the history, there are only scant few occasions when they should be mentioned. All of what we know today regarding the Fall of Arnor, and of the role of hobbits within that struggle, comes from an unusual and most unexpected source very recently discovered.¹ These new texts suggest that the hobbits of the Shire, while overlooked for centuries, played a great role in the concerns of the Wise from the beginnings of their nation through to the War of the Ring.

   To explain more regarding the history of hobbits in the North Kingdom I submit here a story drawn from numerous newly found sources and, most particularly, from a newly translated text which had been collected, recorded and signed by “Glorfinniel Tarwandur", believed to be the intriguing pen name for Goldilocks Gardener,² third daughter of Samwise the Ringbearer. It is accompanied by many other letters, maps and documents supporting its relationship to the history of the Shire’s earliest days. “Glorfinniel’s” text itself, in its original prose style, is dated as 1463 of the Shire-reckoning (Year 42 of the Fourth Age) and seems to have been a gift which she gave to Faramir Took, son of Thain Peregrin the First, on the occasion of their wedding. While the Elvish languages which are sometimes recorded in the text show the author’s deep understanding of the Red Book or other writings, this book is not intended as a translation of that text nor an academic study of its origins. This particular story goes beyond the things which I have learned in such studies of Glorfinniel’s original text.

   Little is known of the children of Master Samwise; for that family was always more dedicated to the preservation of the Baggins’ legacy than the recording of their own. We know that Goldilocks was born in 1431 of the Shire-reckoning, that she was the sixth of Sam and Rose’s thirteen children, and that she was so named because her fair-coloured hair was rare among the Shire-hobbits (though not so rare among Sam's children). In 1442 Elanor, oldest of Samwise’s children, was made handmaiden to the Queen and went south to Gondor for a year where she learned much of Númenórean and Elvish culture. If Elanor taught some of these things to her younger sister, or if Goldilocks accompanied Elanor upon this journey we do not know, for only a slim record of the lives of these very important hobbits has ever been recovered or mentioned in other texts.

   But in the excavation of the Great Smials (1961 0f our present age)³ we find the wedding certificate for Goldilocks Gardener and Faramir Took recovered inside a small handmade book of 250 pages alongside a box of carefully preserved maps, letters, affidavits and certificates. The cover is of simple, untooled brown leather and bears no title. But the first page, written in a careful and deliberate hand, reads:

   For my beloved Faramir, named for the wise; that he might find wisdom and humour in his own family history, that he might find happiness in knowing the truth of that history over far-fetched gossip, and that he will respect, understand and delight in a story of love and therefore always cherish the value of a fair heart

-Glorfinniel Tarwandur, baingûr⁴

   That book holds the “Tale of the Tooks and Bucks” to which many other texts found at the Great Smials have referred. It is told by its author in the manner of an often amusing and sometimes tragic “love story,” a theme important to the occasion. It speaks of the three principal founders of the Shire: Gondolpho Bucklestrap, Theudebald Swiftalk and Alaura Fairheart, of their trials, their marriages, their children and their arguments. We can see from examining the supporting material that it is a detailed and scholarly work of Shire history, though at the same time it never loses sight of its goal as a love story; to illustrate how love, the honest and fair feelings between people, can be the very kernel of community.

   As I have said above, the telling of this story which you are about to read is not a direct translation of that work. Translation is the work of scholars in preserving the voices of our past. I am indebted to the work of many informed and careful philologists who have kept the Westron language alive, but I believe that a pure translation would limit our perception of the story solely to the frame of its author and not to the larger part it plays in the history of Middle-earth. Many elements of that broader history, and of the development of the Shire itself, have been added for the enjoyment of more general readers. Glorfinniel’s story, told in three parts, is divided in her work and therefore allows me to insert an “interlude” which focuses on the political and social growth of the Shire which I feel is important to our understanding of Hobbit history. The four parts in this novel are then followed by a “postlude” which will aid readers in their understanding of the first and second generations of pioneering hobbits and how they developed culturally up to the time of the War of the Ring.

   Nor is this telling intended as a pure history. A great many accompanying texts were found alongside Goldilocks’ book which give scholars greater insights into her own research. If this were a work of pure history those works would all be cited and the numerous annotations and genealogical reference found in the original would no doubt stupefy and bore the minds of modern readers. I am likewise indebted to the archeologists and historians of Hobbitlore for their work and the aid it serves me here, but I do not share their purposes (or methods) in the telling of this tale.

   Instead this writing is an attempt to render the findings at the Great Smials into an entertaining historical narrative set against the greater developments in Middle-earth. I have set out to do this at a time when the newly discovered books of “The Fall of Arnor” play an important part of our understanding of the role of hobbits in the world prior to the War of the Ring. In some ways this story is presented as a divergence from that fuller tale, but, one hopes, it also informs us of the relationship of hobbits within that tale and the larger history of the northwestern part of Middle-earth.

   I trust that readers will see it as a story of the founding of a nation and I hope those same readers will never forget that every true history of a people begins with a love story.

   So while a shorter tale of the North may draw us sooner to the glories and dramas of the battlefield, some time must now be spent in understanding the peaceful people of the Shire; of their hopes and their loves and their losses. For it is their involvement in matters outside of war and assault that would have an important impact on the future of the North, the defeat of the Witch-king and, some many hundreds of years later, the destruction of Sauron the Enemy and the Return of the King.

Chapter End Notes

Notes

1)  This is the first hyper-textual allusion to indicate where my stories for The Fall of Arnor may be coming from. I think that it is important to remember that Tolkien wrote his tales very much as if they were handed down from outside sources and I am doing my best to mimic that approach here and with other writings of Middle-earth.

2)  This name mashes up the Sindarin with the Quenya languages; “Glorfinniel” is the Sindarin name given to Goldilocks in the King’s Letter found in HoME where the names of Sam’s children are recorded. Sindarin has no existing word for “gardener” so I have borrowed the Quenya word “Tarwandur” for the family name. It presents interesting wrinkles in the linguistic knowledge of the Hobbits which I might exploit later.

3)  “Our present age” is a fun way of sorting the history of textual reference by our own calendar. I was born in the year 1961 of “our present age” so the idea that these apocryphal texts awoke with me seems amusing. Well, it does to me at least.

4)  “baingûr” is the closest I can come to “fair heart” in Sindarin

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“Sic hobbitur ad astra. [thus, by walking like hobbits, one reaches the stars.]”
 

-Tolkien, Letter 17, referring to a postcard he received from Stanley Unwin on the successful publication of “The Hobbit”

part I
The Time Before

chapter one 

“explorers and ambassadors”

   It is commonly known among most Shirefolk that it was Gondolpho Bucklestrap who dug the very first hobbithole in the new land. While much else was said of Bucklestrap in the long years which followed, he was always respectfully accounted for as the very first resident and first great pioneer of the Shire. It should also be said that the King’s Agreement, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of young Bucklestrap and his friend Theudebald Swiftalk (two hobbits who are of principal concern in this tale) would never have happened without the involvement of two other extremely important figures in the land’s early history; the twin brothers Marcho and Blanco Tinyfoot. We know that those two intrepid explorers had never met a king or visited with Elves, never traveled into any town or settlement larger than those surrounding the hill of Bree and had never gone further west than the Farthing Stone, but they are still accredited by all Hobbits as the Founders of the Shire and the Discoverers of that new land.

   Now that is a very rare thing to say as Hobbits were (until much later in the histories of the Third Age) very seldom credited as an adventurous people. But the names of these two brothers are written large in the Hobbit histories and the story of their great deed of discovery was very popular among the Shirefolk young and old for many generations. If the other extremely important acts of diplomacy and exploration accomplished by Gondolpho Bucklestrap and Thueudebald Swiftalk (Gondo and Twoody to their friends) may have fallen in the memory of hobbits (no doubt supplanted by the gossip surrounding their much later and long-standing feud) then certainly the brave missions of Marcho and Blanco have grown and taken their place in popular stories of the Shire’s earliest pioneers.

   For it is recorded that in 1592 of the Third Age, Marcho and Blanco, then two unemployed and dispossessed wanders, struck out west from the Bree-land, crossed the Stonebows bridge and, quite by accident, discovered (for hobbits at least) the peaceful and unpopulated countryside beyond. There are no accounts of this from either of the brothers of course, for we are told that they never learned to write as many of their friends and siblings did. There are many stories (some with conflicting details) to be found of the twin brothers after that first momentous journey which afford them great praise. That they came first is undisputed and lauded by all the later Shirefolk, but what, if anything, they may have done afterward in the development of the Shire itself has been wholly forgotten.¹

   There are some accounts which claim that the twins had light-colored hair, blonde even, and that they wore long mustaches (which would certainly mark them as peculiar among all the other hobbits of their time).² Other stories claim that they were tall and fierce enough to ride wolves and that they carried swords into the wilderness like conquerors. But most of these testimonies are recorded quite late in the Shire histories and, like many tales told in their time, they have a delight in entertainment which surpasses any quite unwanted urge towards historical integrity.

   The histories of hobbits can often be difficult to discern from their gossip and tall tales. Hobbit-lore, particularly before the end of the Third Age, was an obscure and arcane branch of study despite the numerous written letters and documents by hobbits themselves. It should be noted here that the majority of hobbits who had first settled in the Bree-land, beginning in 1100 of the Third Age, could neither read nor write. From what we can discover Hobbits had been, for very many long and unrecorded generations, a nomadic people who traveled in small groups of clans and whose histories were generally oral (in those rare occasions in which they were not forgotten entirely). But by 1500 of that Age there were some hobbit-folk gathered in the Bree-land who had come from two very large clans, the Harfoots and the Stoors, and some of those folk had brought a knowledge of writing with them. It was not widespread at first, and just where they learned the skill remains unknown. But it is believed that it was indeed these hobbits who brought writing to this region when the Breelanders themselves had been ignorant of the art. This is supported by the fact that there are no written accounts of those people of the Bree-land before the arrival of Hobbits and that hobbit shopkeepers there developed an early form of pictographic accounting that the Bree-folk went on using for many hundreds of years after the hobbits had all but disappeared from that part of the world.

   While much is clouded in our study of the early development of Hobbits we do know that Marcho and Blanco, as well as their benefactor and chief investor Hincmar Swiftalk (then called “Swiftwalk”), could neither read nor write. But Hincmar’s son Theudebald could and so too could Theudebald’s childhood friend Gondolpho. Despite the later disagreements of Twoody and Gondo we draw much of our information about the early years of the Shire from their own accounts.

*****

   It seems that the discovery of the Shire might have its beginnings with the legendarily stern and uncompromising Isengrim Tinyfoot, father of Marcho and Blanco, who had sent his sons west to seek fortunes of their own. Isengrim and his fathers before him were of the Harfoot clan³ and had long-distant memories of their friendship with the Dwarves from the time they lived among them in the Iron Hills far away to the northeast in Middle-earth. He had never seen those distant lands himself of course, but he believed all the old stories of the wealth of Dwarves in the mountains.

   ‘Go west, younglings,’ Isengrim told his sons, ‘and find Durin’s Folk who are said to live there. For it is a meager living you might find in the Bree-land. Here our people are farmers and herders and grocers. Living among the Big Folk as they do, their heads and their hands have gone soft and they forget how to dig and discover the riches of the earth. Go west, boys! Find a land in which our kin will live and thrive, unpolluted by Big Folk and cheese-sellers, a land where there is good trade, riverbeds of jewels and untilled hillsides which hobbits may call their own!’

   (It should be noted that Isengrim Tinyfoot was generally avoided by his neighbors and many other of his contemporaries throughout his long and irritable life. He was, as recorded in many journals and letters, a rather rude and bigoted hobbit, but his skills as a blacksmith made him useful to all the settlers in the Bree-land and, for a time, the Shire alike. He did not care for the Big Folk nor did he care much for hobbits of clans or families other than his own. He was rather contemptuous by nature and the disdain he felt for others showed very openly at a time when many hobbits, for better and worse, were trying to integrate themselves into the community of the Breelanders. Many of those hobbit-folk found Isengrim’s vitriol destructive and shallow and this is what may have earned him and his family the very disparaging second-name of “Tinyfoot.” But the fact that his words still come down to us through the centuries should speak to the fact of just how important he and his sons remain within the Shire’s history. His speech, in many modified forms, became a rallying cry years later for the early settlers of that land.)

   Marcho and Blanco (and indeed most of the other Tinyfoot children) did not think or feel about their neighbors as their father did and it is said that the auspicious twins very much enjoyed their young lives in the Bree-land. The very fact that they were twins (as much of a rarity among hobbits as it is among the Big Folk) made them quite popular as children. They had many good friends who encouraged them much more than their own father did and they spent much of their young lives among other large families of hobbits. But, as they grew older and, as Isengrim taught them nothing of smithing, they had no trade or position which they might follow. So, wealthy friends or no, Marcho and Blanco were coming of age with little hope for a vocation of their own.

   Legends tell us that on their twenty-fourth birthday,⁴ and as his house was still filling up with children, Isengrim Tinyfoot brought his sons to the edge of the Bree-lands, beyond the old Clock-tower, through the Hedge-gate and out to where the Crossing Stone of the two Roads lay. There he gave the boys two finely-carved walking sticks with metal heads and heels which he himself had wrought. He handed them two wool cloaks (which their mother had made) and, with some finality, spoke his now-famous advise that they should go into the West. He did not embrace them or allow them any questions. It is said that when he finished his speech he turned his back on them both and went back to his home on the Hill above the town. If the two sons ever saw their father again (and many stories suggest that they did not) no verifiable account is given.

   What is known is that very next morning (April the 6th, as it is noted later in the Shire Calendar),⁵ the two brothers came to stay at the house of Hincmar Swiftwalk, a wealthy innkeeper in the Bree-land. If this meeting had been pre-arranged (as some claim), or if the twins simply had no idea of how to begin (as some less-friendly rumours will report) remains unclear; but many very reliable accounts attest to the friendship the boys had with the old innkeeper through his son Theudebald and also Theudebald’s friend, Gondolpho “Bucklestrap”.

*****

   Names are a very slippery area of study within Hobbit histories and readers should be warned from the start that family names are often changed (whether the family is willingly or not) during the course of a single generation. New names then called for new genealogies to be drafted until it can all be quite confusing from a historian’s point of view. But it does seem to be a favorite game of the hobbits in their earlier days; adopting new names to fit new occupations, changes in living situations, recent personal developments and even popular jokes about a particular family member.

   The Swiftwalks, as we are told, had been the largest family group to ever enter into the Bree-land and were, in the late sixteenth century of the Third Age, relative late-comers from the east. Some Bree-landers, Big and Little Folk alike, saw the arrival of that family as a tipping point within their society; for after their arrival there were more Hobbits in the Bree-land than there were Big Folk. The Swiftwalks were part of a large collection of families and tribes who had crossed the High Pass of the Misty Mountains sometime around 1100 of the Third Age. What happened there is lost to our records and theirs; it is believed that many of them may have been subjugated or killed by the growing power of Angmar at that time. But what is known is that in 1525 of the Third Age, whatever troubles had come before, Old Priamus, sword in hand, had led 1200 members of his extended family past the shattered ruins of Weathertop and along the Great Road west into the Bree-land and thereby earned his family name. The Swiftwalks were accepted from the first, (for the Breelanders were always friendly to outcasts) and the area around Bree-hill became a largely hobbitish settlement.

   Theudebald Swiftwalk, born and named in 1576 of the Third Age, was the grandson and very direct descendant of Old Priamus; possibly the most famous descendant for many long years. His family name would be changed three times within his own life and this is a quality which, for good or bad, makes him all the more illustrious among Shirefolk. The name “Swiftwalk”, given to Old Priamus for accomplishing the long march of his kinsmen out of bondage is as well-earned an honorific as one might wish for (as most hobbit names generally are). But hobbits also have a fondness for puns and joke names among their peers which manage to stick, sometimes unfortunately, to their family members and descendants; for at this point in Hobbit culture, the second name your family received was still very much decided by the community and often, as in the case of Isengrim Tinyfoot, the community could be cruel.

   In 1601, when Theudebald returned to the Bree-land, alone and holding the King’s Agreement in his hand, the other hobbits were rightly amazed and, as he had rightly expected, they threw him a party of much magnificence. It was at this affair (though no recording tells us who may have said it first), that his name and that of his whole family had been jokingly changed from “Swiftwalk” to “Swiftalk”. That change shows up on every transaction or affidavit for years after; for as the fortunes of the family change in Shire-culture so do their names.

   But of Gondolpho Bucklestrap we have less information. The name “Bucklestrap” remains an oddity and there is no record of any direct relatives in the Bree-land while he held that name. If Gondo’s ancestors came into the Bree-land in great numbers as Twoody’s did, we do not know. We have no mention of Gondo’s parentage (which seems very uncommon among the genealogy-obsessed hobbits of his day) and only a small entry from Twoody about Gondo’s early involvement in the founding of the Shire suggests a possible origin to the name. This comes from a letter Twoody wrote which seems to come from the year 1592:

   ‘Father is funding Marcho and Blanco to go west and seek trade with the Dwarves. A ridiculous idea! But father reminds me to “always look for new opportunities when they appear inexpensively upon your doorstep.” Neither Blanco or Marcho can write their own account of this journey, so I’ve convinced him to demand that Gondo join them as recorder. O, Gondo is just so restless to journey anywhere that I hope this ill-planned adventure will cure him of that incautious tendency. But he will be our eyes and ears in western exploration for a while, and I know that this will make him happy. He will need to strap and buckle himself to some purpose soon I think, and, shocking though it seems to me, it may be that exploration will suit him best.’

What is also notable here, and has remained an argument amongst hobbits for many long generations after, is the date of this journal entry. If the date is indeed correct does that mean that Marcho and Blanco did not discover the Shire on their own? Is it possible that Gondolpho Bucklestrap set forth with them on that first journey rather than on the second scouting mission of 1596? We do not know. What is known is that on an April morning of 1592 when the twins set out into the west to seek the Dwarves, they did so with provisions and ponies provided to them by Twoody’s own father, Hincmar Swiftwalk, a wealthy innkeeper among the Little People of the Bree-land.

*****

   ‘You are being very inconsiderate and more than a little bull-headed,’ Twoody had told his friend. They had been walking for only about two hours when Gondo had made the wild suggestion that instead of returning home, the two of them should go immediately west together and make the very first hobbitholes in the new land for themselves. Twoody had not cared for this idea at all.

   ‘Why must you be the first at everything?’ Twoody had asked. They were three days already on their way home. Together they had just finished a very pleasant roadside breakfast after a comfortable night’s sleep in the shade of an old yew tree. Walking at their casual pace Twoody could see the Greenway⁶ before them in a great straight ribbon of grass-covered stones and knew that his own cozy bed and hearth in the Bree-land were not far away. Every time the land rose on their left he imagined he would be able to see the crown of Bree-hill through the trees. After six months of adventures at the King’s court, after all that the two friends had accomplished, the comforts of home were uppermost in Twoody’s mind as he walked south along the road. But for his friend Gondo this did not seem to be enough.

   ‘We have secured the king’s grant, Gondo! Think of what that means. All of our folk and families back in the Bree-land will be delighted to hear of it. Why, they will likely throw a party for us both!’ Twoody said. But he could see that Gondo was unmoved by this argument.

   ‘Here is a better plan then,’ Twoody continued, using humour in hope of swaying his friend’s opinion. ‘At this party you may use your new-found position as “Ambassador to the King” to assemble a group of able-bodied and well-supplied workmen to help tame the new land; pioneers to go on with you and build the most spacious holes one might imagine. Think of that! Father will certainly fund the venture and I suspect every hobbit bachelor in all of the Bree-land will form a line under your guidance to settle a place for themselves. Why, they might very well want you to become the Mayor!’

   Gondo remained silent and unmoved, so Twoody tried next to employ logic in his argument.

   ‘But these things, the settlement of new cities and towns, why, they must be organized, Gondo. Deeds and surveying and all of that, so that we might make things fair and ensure that all of our families may find a proper future for themselves. Now we certainly can’t do all of that by ourselves. And not before we’ve gone back to our people in the Bree-land and told them our news and allowed ourselves to be guests at a celebration or two. Why would you leave such happy times and wise planning aside to go grubbing alone in dangerous dirt completely unprotected?’

   ‘Parties are a fine enough thing,’ Gondo had replied calmly, ‘though I dare say we won’t see any in the Bree-land to equal the feasting halls of the King up in Norbury. But, Twoody, for all of your talk, I don’t think that you quite grasp what it is we’ve done. Don’t you see it? Hobbits will now have a land of their own! And for ours to be the first pairs of feet which tromp through our own lands as rightful owners, why, that would be a wonderful thing. To settle into our own hillsides, find our own place with no help from another, can’t you see how wonderful that would be?’

   ‘I should say not,’ Twoody had replied. ‘Do not mistake me; I have enjoyed these travels, and, O, I have seen sights which I had never imagined, most certainly. The great walls of Norbury, sunset and starlight in the King’s own garden, great falls of water over the hillsides and tall horsemen with bright swords and glittering armour. The city of the King is a marvel that I will always be happy to have witnessed and will, I do not doubt, long remember to others.

   ‘But, Gondo, to be honest, I don’t know that I would have any wish to return there any more than I do to become a pioneer. I’m not like you in this way; I’m but a simple hobbit built neither for lavishness nor meagerness. I like a good well-built hole with a comfortable bed and a little bit of garden dug into a nice hillside near a town. A quiet town at that, with a decent inn, a respectable brewer and a capable cook. I have as little patience for pageantry as I do for sleeping out of doors. Why, I’m no knight nor pilgrim nor farmer nor builder-’

   ‘More of a banker,’ Gondo interrupted with his wide gentle smile.

   ‘Well, yes, that is probably so,’ Twoody replied, a bit red-faced but unbowed by his friend’s jibe, ‘though a venture like this will need a fair share of banking wisdom, one would think.’

   There was a long silence between them then, and neither of the friends felt comfortable in breaking it. They had been friends for so very long, as long as their childhood memories could recall, but their time in the King’s court had taught them each how their hopes as grown hobbits had become divergent. Gondo was a seeker, Twoody knew. And Gondo knew that Twoody was not.

   ‘Very well, Twoody,’ Gondo had said at last. ‘If you won’t come with me, then I suppose I shall have to go on by myself.’

   This debate between the two friends had come on the morning of March 24th7 in what would later be called Year One of the Shire-reckoning. Together (and escorted by trustworthy Nob, their pony) they were walking down and homeward along the old North-South road which some six months before had taken these two fortune-seekers to the court of Argleb II, King of the Northern realm. There, through a good deal of honest talking, some ribald singing and even more faithful promise-making, they had won the King’s favor and secured a land in the North which Hobbits might settle and call their own. This was an exceptional feat in all the history of Hobbit-folk and one for which the two should be long remembered. Gondo and Twoody, together and quite on their own, had accomplished an amazing act of diplomacy which many Shirefolk, and even most of their own descendants, would soon forget in light of their later arguments.

   And this little discussion on the Road had indeed been the first real argument of the two friends' long relationship. They were both still young at the time (Twoody’s twenty-fifth birthday was still months away) but in all their years together they had always found differences of opinion to be nothing more than kindling for their better discussions. They had like-minds in many ways; for they both were more inquisitive, more adventurous and a good deal more mischievous than all of their peers in the Bree-land. Each had a keener love of tall stories and practical jokes than other hobbits of their young age, so that when they had set out for the King’s court six months before most of their neighbors had considered their proposal to see the King as nothing more than another jest with an as yet unpredictable punchline. Old Liudolf Truetunnels, a retired builder and one of the oldest hobbits in the Bree-land, had put it best;

   ‘Sure and I see that they mean to be ambassadors for all of us, these two young scoundrels. No ambassador which I ever selected of course, and laughingstocks they’ll more likely make us. But if a great king should come to know hobbits only through their sense of humour, why, I’d say that these two are the better ambassadors than most.’

   As they walked down the Greenway from the king’s court to the Bree-land on March 24th their meeting with the Elves on the western edge of the Shire was still more than three years into their future. On that occasion they would part as friends yet never truly be friends again. But on this morning three years before they argued as all true friends should; with a great desire to explain one’s own mind while never wanting to overrule the other’s opinion.

   ‘Come back with me, Gondo! We could well be home by suppertime tomorrow. Why would you set out alone again?’

   ‘Because, Twoody,’ Gondo had replied, ‘the Bree-land is not our home! Don’t you see that yet?’

   ‘No, I do not. And you will not talk me into sharing your own feelings of restlessness by saying otherwise. I was born under Bree-hill just as all my siblings were. I and my family have made quite a nice little home for ourselves there. It might be a bit small for so many perhaps,’ Twoody had said, looking a bit wistful as he did, ‘but our business at the inn has done well and this new venture will bring great trade through the Bree-la-’

   ‘Trade?’ Gondo had said, stopping them in their walk forward and bringing another long and uncomfortable silence to their discussion. The pony had gone a few paces further before but now, sensing an uncomfortable moment, he stopped as well. If Nob had understood their discussion or somehow perceived the tension between the two friends at this time there was no one present who might listen to his comments on such a thing.

   ‘Twoody,’ Gondo had told him finally, ‘you are right in saying that we have done a very good thing for all Hobbits and not just for ourselves; we have opened new opportunities.

   ‘But, my dear friend, I think you and I view our opportunities very differently,’ he had said.

   And that seemed to be the end of the argument.

*****

   The two friends parted (for a time) the very next morning. There was no further discussion about the reason behind it, but there was much cautious planning about the practicality. Gondo would have liked to take Nob with him, but the animal was loaded down with gifts from the King to the hobbits of Bree-land and Twoody would not be able to manage carrying these parcels home on his own.

   From this fact, employing whatever logic had possessed him in pursuing what Twoody believed was yet another ‘mad escapade’, Gondo had decided that this was some kind of omen for his journey. Twoody’s own journal tells us that his friend took very little as he went west.

   “A canteen, a tinderbox, a walking stick, a quiver and bow, a haversack, a bag of salt for curing, a knife, a small handaxe and a bedroll and, lastly, a small shovel. He made it a point, and a point that I took as some new arrogance, to go forth as spare and uncomfortably provisioned as possible. At first I saw this as a kind of rebuke of my own arguments for comfort, but that came largely out of my anger over his leaving. Alaura has often said that one only had to look into Gondo’s eyes to read his heart’s intention, and this was certainly true on that morning. Gondo wouldn’t be bothered with such pettiness as proving me wrong in some silly argument; his eyes were now completely focused on his road ahead.”

   Twoody had begged him to utilize more of their provisions, for the king had given them bounty enough for travel beyond the new delicacies for sharing with the Breefolk. But Gondo would take none of them.

   ‘I will walk into our open lands like a pilgrim,’ Gondo told Twoody with a smile. ‘And, as a pilgrim, I will live on the belief that the land will provide.’

   ‘It might very well provide you with rain, for which I suggest a small tent should be useful,’ Twoody said crossly. ‘And rain might provide you with a head cold, for which I think that a few pocket handkerchiefs might also be in need. Stars above, Gondo, you don’t even have a hat for your head nor a brush for your feet!’

   ‘I will manage, Twoody,’ his friend said with a laugh and a smile. ‘You mustn’t worry so.’

   ‘Yes, but I do worry and so I shall until I see you again,’ Twoody told him, grasping his friend's arm now that all seemed prepared. ‘Might I convince you to take pen and paper, Gondo?’ he had said. ‘I would dearly love to read all of your discoveries there and more of your maps would certainly prove useful.’

   ‘And I will tell you all of my discoveries on my return,’ Gondo said smiling, grasping Twoody’s shoulder in return, ‘and rather than maps I think I will enjoy myself more by committing my discoveries to vivid memories. Still,’ he paused, weighing an idea in his mind, ‘you bring up an excellent point, Twoody, and a favour I would like to ask of you. Will you please copy for me the document that the king has signed? I should very much like to carry that with me as I go west. Proof that I walk in a land freely given to all hobbits.’

   And Twoody did so, of course.

   The information on the King’s Agreement would change the lives of hobbits throughout the north for the remainder of the Third Age but, for Gondolpho Bucklestrap, shovel and bow in hand, this copied document was a license for freedom and opportunity the likes of which he had never before known.

   One last thing should be said of this hasty and hand-drafted copy which Twoody made; and in all of our Shire records there remains no hard evidence to support this story, for the actual gravesite of Gondolpho Bucklestrap remains unknown and, we should hope, undisturbed. But it is a rather common legend of the Shirefolk that this copy of the King’s Agreement, the one made in his friend’s own hand on the day he set out into the West, remained in Gondo’s pocket well past the end of his days.

*****

   The early settlement of the Shire is to be the principal interest here, but some discussion of other events in the world (which hobbits seldom pay attention to and less seldom play part in) may be necessary to put these histories into their proper context.

   In Year One of the Shire-reckoning, 1601 of the Third Age the Northern realm, formerly called Arnor, had suffered much from war and internal strife, but a cautious peace prevailed. The king whom Twoody and Gondo had met was Argeleb II and he ruled but a fragment of the old northern kingdom of Arnor that was founded by Elendil the Tall in the Second Age of Middle-earth. For many long centuries Arnor was the greatest kingdom of Men and the seat of their power lay in its capital city of Annúminas on the shore of the still waters of Lake Evendim. But seven hundred and fifty years before the rule of Argeleb II his grandsire, the mad king Eärendur, had split Arnor among his three sons, diminishing the strength of that ancient kingdom and bringing terrible loss to their people. Three nations arose then; Arthedain, Rhudaur and Cardolan, and while the lands of the north were seldom free of the squabbles and petty jealousies of these three powers, no open war came of it for many hundreds of years and the other inhabitants of the north were left in relative peace. The Dúnedain these knights and lords and rulers were called, heirs of the Númenórean lines who came with Elendil out of the Sea in the West. Their numbers had dwindled in the north even before Eärendur’s time, yet many of these great knights were assembled in many great castles which were built by the three lesser kingdoms. And, if unsatisfied in their own allegiance, they still set guards and new borders to protect their lands from invaders. For it was said of this time that dark folk, orcs and trolls, bats and wolves, had gone quiet and were drawing north into barren lands under a new and unknown leader. Yet for many a generation within the shattered kingdoms of Arnor no single king arose with the power and foresight to take the measure of this rumour.

   In 1349 of that age such a ruler arose in the kingdom of Arthedain; he was called Argeleb I, great-grandfather to the king who Twoody and Gondo had met, and he was both wise and powerful. The Line of the King had failed in the kingdoms of Rhudaur and Cardolan and so Argeleb I, believing himself to be the last heir to the ancient line of Elendil, tried to reunite the three nations. Rhudaur, to the east, did not answer Argeleb’s call. They had sundered contact with their brother nations some years before and some folk said dark ceremonies were practiced there as had not been seen since the fall of Númenor. For a time all ties were cut between the three nations by Argeleb’s bold claim and soon after border skirmishes began. Rhudaur and Arthedain were in open war along the Weathered Hills and Cardolan, eventually recognizing Rhudaur to be the greater threat and accepting Argeleb’s authority, joined this warfare as well. Great battles were fought from the North Downs to the Weathered Hills not fifty miles from Bree-hill, but neither side had the resources to advance any further. Then, in 1356, Argeleb I fell in battle and his son was named and seated as Arveleg I, eighth king of Arthedain and heir to Elendil.

   This was two hundred and fifty years before Gondo and Twoody had gone to Fornost Erain (Norbury as hobbits called it) to petition the king.

   Arveleg, grandfather of the king who Gondo and Twoody met, was a mighty king and held the borders of the lands while wisely cementing ties between himself and his allies. He wed Tinnien, daughter of a great house in Cardolan and he sent their son, Araphor, to live amongst the Elves of Lindon in the west and to be raised in the house of Círdan the Shipwright. With the full support of Cardolan and the aid of the Elves, Arveleg managed to drive the enemies out of the Weathered Hills and kept a guarded border there and on the East Road and the lower part of the river Hoarwell. This watch lasted over a dozen years and then, in 1409 of the Third Age, a dark, cold winter came to the northlands.

   For it was then that the Witch-king of Angmar declared himself openly and his first great host poured forth from his red castle of Carn Dûm. Goblins and Dark Men, Bats and Wolves, Drakes and Trolls followed his black banner and Rhudaur, if ever truly free of his grasp, fell in a day. West the Witch-king came in force and the fortresses in the Weather hills were taken and even the great watchtower of Amon Sûl was destroyed. This was a great loss to all the North as the tower had stood since Elendil’s day and it held the palantír of Amon Sûl, one of the Seeing Stones of the Númenóreans. But while the tower was completely destroyed the Stone itself was recovered, and that story is told elsewhere.⁸

   South the armies of the Witch-king went next, to take the petty kingdom of Cardolan. Arveleg I was slain defending against this onslaught and all of his forces were routed. Cardolan was overrun and lost, all their cities burned and destroyed. Some people escaped into the forests of the southwest and some others managed to hold the sacred barrows of Tyrn Gorthad and to escape from that place by other secret means.⁹

   To the north only the great fortress of Fornost Erain held against the onslaught. They lay besieged for many months until Mid-summer of that dark year, when the armies of the Elves came forth.

   Only eighteen years of age, Araphor, the son of Arveleg I, was now the king of Arthedain and recognized by the Elves as High King of all the Dúnedain. He rode with a great host of the Elves of Lindon to break the siege of Fornost Erain and gather the remaining armies of the North People under his banner. Meanwhile and unexpectedly, two much larger Elven armies came from the west by the Ford of Bruinen and from the south over the bridge at Tharabad. These were led by the great lords Elrond of Rivendell and Amroth of the Golden Realm. Against such forces no Orcish army would stand and, by the end of 1410 the Witch-king had fallen back to Carn Dûm, his dark fortress in the barren north. But even the great Elf-lords considered that fortress to be unassailable and so began the long watchful peace in the Northlands. Many Elves returned to their homes after a time and, with Rhudaur and Cardolan utterly destroyed and many old lines of the Dúnedain ended, Arthedain became the last of the northern kingdom to maintain the watch.

   Araphor, being of the true line of Elendil, lived one-hundred and ninety-eight years and his heir, Argeleb II, took rule of the North Kingdom in 1589 of the Third Age. What he knew (or cared) of Hobbits before Gondo and Twoody had walked boldly through his front gate is unknown. What is certain is that Argeleb had the wisdom and foresight of his sires and he knew that one day the Witch-king would rise again in the northeast and that all his attention and his might must be focused there. The lands to the south which Gondo and Berty had come to discuss had been unpeopled and untended for some time. But the old Dwarf Road there was still very necessary for bringing allies like the Elves of Lindon. Like his father before him, the king knew that great strength and hope still lay in the West and would not let the Road go undefended.

   Some say Argeleb II perceived a greatness in these Little Folk that no one else would notice for over a thousand years. Others say that he was so desperate in the watching of his borders that he gave away rich and fertile lands on a whim. But there is no one who doubts that the foresight of Argeleb II was a major development in the long battle against Sauron the Enemy and helped to bring about the concluding moment of the Third Age in which hobbits of the Shire would play such a great part in that battle.

end of chapter one

Chapter End Notes

Notes

1)  Careful readers may see that from the start I have deviated somewhat from the text in regard to Marcho and Blanco within my own story. In the interest of creating unique characters for this tale I have pushed the role of the two brothers to something more mythic; they are credited here with the discovery of the land but never given the spotlight that their later reputation would suggest. Certainly by Bilbo and Frodo’s time they are given greater credit than I afford them. This is because a theme within this work is the effect of rumour and gossip upon history and myth. In LoTR (“Concerning Hobbits”) Tolkien writes, “for it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of Hobbits.” But Tolkien says little of the two brothers beyond this and I’ve chosen to explore, and sometimes lampoon, these characters within my own telling of the history.

2)  The description here is meant as a parallel of Hengest and Horsa, the legendary founders of Britain. There are earlier attempts in Tolkien’s writing to equate the map of Middle-earth with our own world and, while he abandoned this idea eventually, the myth of the two brothers who founded the Shire is definitely born from that kind of thinking.

3)  So this is another bend meant to divert the reader from what we know. I have found no direct support in the letters that Marcho and Blanco were indeed Fallohides but instead “of the Fallohide stock." In fact Tolkien mentions that most of the first Shire-hobbits were Harfoots. I wanted, within this story, to make a greater distinction between the Fallohides and other hobbits and so treat Marcho and Blanco’s mysterious origins a bit differently. You’ll need to bear with me to find out why.

4)  Fans will, of course, know that Shire-hobbits by the end of the Third Age become adults at 33. I suggest that at this time, living among the Big Folk and faced with greater hardships, Bree-hobbits came of age much earlier.

5)  This date is selected because it is the same as when Bilbo, in 2941, would set out after the dwarves, 1349 years later.

6)  Gondo and Twoody are at this time traveling south from their meeting with the king in Fornost Erain along the “Great North-South Road” which once joined the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor. But by this time it had long fallen to scarce use and been renamed “the Greenway”.

7)  My intention in selecting this date was to imply that the signing of the King’s Agreement may have happened on the fifteenth of March, the same date as the battle of Pelennor and so that the announcement of the Agreement would come out on March 25th, “Tolkien Reading Day.”

8)  That story is not told elsewhere, but I would like to think it may be. This is another one of the little pockets of interest I often discover for myself in writing fan fiction; I wonder how the Tower fell but the Stone was saved and that interest seems enough to me that I might wish to develop it into a story someday. After all, I never meant to be writing about the Shire when I started this whole thing. Now look where it's gone. “Be careful going out your door, Frodo...”

9)  Part of this is told in my longer tale, The Fall of Arnor.

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