IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part One; Chapter Twelve "The Better Understanding of our Future"

   In Year Three of the Shire-reckoning, after Gondo had gone off and abandoned him on the western border of their new land, Twoody Swiftalk took twenty more days to return to the village of Buckland; at that time this was the most western city in the hobbits’ very early development of the West-farthing and, more importantly, Gondo’s home.1

   ‘Hardly a city at all, really,’ Twoody thought as he took his time in returning; delaying his course by sleeping late and ending his day’s walk early and all the while rueing the conversations he would eventually have regarding his friend’s sudden and unexpected departure.

  ‘There’s lovely rolling hills there in Buckland,’ he thought to himself, walking along slowly beside Old Nob, their faithful pony. ‘A perfect place for hobbitholes,’ he then said aloud, deciding to talk the issue through with Nob as if the trusted pony might have some solid advice to give. ‘Certainly they have built a good cluster of buildings down southwest of the Farthing-stone and established a very fine town well. There are fresh springs under all those hills, enough to water many gardens.’ Twoody had seen the changes himself and backed many loans for the young pioneers as they moved that way under Gondo’s guidance. In just a few years they had set up property lines around those hills and begun building many wholesome and comfortable dwellings. ‘It’s beautiful land there, of course,’ he said to old Nob, ‘and I suppose that I might find a comfortable hole for myself among them for the next year. Alaura’s youngest brother, Clooty, is there and could help get me set up. Plenty of work in loans and supplies to be found among the Bucklanders, of course.’

   Nob, being a kind and dedicated companion, did not respond to Twoody’s musings and likely had nothing to offer his master at this idea for new business prospects.

   Twoody, who still considered himself to be a clear-headed businessman rather than a bold pioneer, had not dug a hole as Gondo did but instead employed workers to build him a comfortable home and sturdy storefront in the more well-to-do settlement called Hobbiton-by-the-Water.2 There, just north of the Farthing-stone beside a gentle river and small lake, the largest number of hobbit businessmen and shop-owners were now planning to settle into a community where Twoody and Alaura both expected they would do good trade in their little hamlet so close to the Road. Twoody’s home there had not been completed when he and Gondo set forth four months ago, but the excavators had done an excellent job and he knew that it had the makings of a very fine little hole overlooking the lake. A bachelor’s hole only, but he had wisely staked out enough land to grow a good sized family should the opportunity to marry ever find him. He would miss such an opportunity now, and that house and storefront, if he was to live for the next year or so in Buckland.

   ‘Well, that can’t be helped,’ he continued telling Nob, ‘Gondo began building that great smial3 in the Buckland three years ago and already quite a proper community has grown up around his energy and spirit. I cannot simply neglect Alaura and those other folk now as he has done.’

   There were many changes which had happened very quickly in the Shire during the past three years and Twoody had tried very hard to keep up with all of them. He was not as dedicated a memoirist as Alaura was, but many of his early thoughts on the political and practical growth of the community work their way into other accounts of those early days. ‘A new nation needs careful guidance,’ he had been known to say of the Shire’s formation. ‘And a strong and healthy garden will resist the guidance of too careful a gardener,’ Alaura would often answer in their on-going debate. If Gondo had any such witticisms to share on the topic they are, sadly, not preserved.

   The three were very different in their approach to building a new land. But for the next year of the Shire’s growth it would now be up to only Twoody and Alaura to lead things.

 

*****

 

   THE SHIRE-RECKONING, that early news journal which had done so much to spread an account of the Shire’s growth to hobbits all across the North, carried a leading article in the late summer of Year Three about the dangers at the farthest edges of West-farthing. Much of the journal's content was known to be written by Alaura Fairheart in the publication’s earliest years, but this is one of the few articles written by Twoody and entitled “THE CAUTIONS OF THE WEST”.

   “FOR MANY LEAGUES WEST along the GREAT ROAD our LANDS EXTEND and REMAIN BOUNTIFUL. FOR MANY MILES NORTH AND SOUTH of that Road the KING’S AGREEMENT gives to ALL HOBBITS a RICH AND PLENTIFUL HOME wherein our FOLK AND FAMILIES MIGHT GROW AND PROSPER AND EXPAND. There are places WEST OF THE FARTHING STONE for TOWNS and FARMS and HERDS APLENTY.

   “BUT THE WESTERN EDGES OF OUR LAND are FIXED BY THE KING’S AGREEMENT and are to be considered DANGEROUS TO CROSS. WE HAVE NO ENEMIES there, but OUR WESTERN NEIGHBOURS ARE FEY, UNFAMILIAR in our WAYS, and, I believe, BEST AVOIDED.

   “THE ELDER FOLK, ‘Elves’ as some may call them, ARE OUR NEIGHBOURS to the West and THEY HOLD THEIR PRIVACY WITHIN THEIR OWN LANDS to be a MOST IMPORTANT CONDITION. They RESPECT OUR BORDERS and CARE NOT ABOUT THE LAND which the King has granted us, THEY CARE NOT ABOUT THE ROAD which crosses our land, and THEY CARE NOT FOR FURTHER CONTACT OR TRADE with Shirefolk; they want only to walk freely in the woods of their own lands and ASK THAT WE, AS GOOD NEIGHBOURS, KEEP TO OURSELVES. We have MET with them AS EXPLORERS AND AMBASSADORS and spoken with THE LORD AND LADY of these WESTERN NEIGHBOURS and AGREED TO THESE CONDITIONS.

   “THE GREAT ROAD runs through a CHAIN OF LOW HILLS at the WESTERN EDGE OF OUR LAND and this we have named THE FAR DOWNS. It is a PLEASANT COUNTRY for herding, filled with grassy rolling fields. BUT TO JOURNEY BEYOND THESE HILLS is to LEAVE THE SAFETY OF THE SHIRE and pass, UNINVITED AND UNLOOKED-FOR, into the LANDS OF THE ELVENFOLK. ANY HOBBIT WHO DOES SO FORGOES THE PROTECTIONS afforded him in THE KING’S AGREEMENT. IT CANNOT BE SAID MORE CLEARLY than this; THE ELVES AND THEIR LANDS are to be LEFT ALONE BY ALL SHIREFOLK. THEY ARE A CORDIAL PEOPLE by all accounts, but wholly set in their own ways and WANT NO CURIOUS VISITORS nor WELL-WISHING WANDERERS, no BOLD TRAVELERS nor ENTERPRISING TRADERS, and will tolerate NO ENCROACHING ENCAMPMENTS into the LANDS WHICH THEY HAVE HELD SINCE THE CHANGING OF THE WORLD. WE OF THE SHIRE, striving to be GOOD NEIGHBOURS, have AGREED TO LEAVE THEM WELL ENOUGH AND WELL ALONE.’

   This article is the only accounting of the Elvenfolk in Shire records for more than twenty-five years to come. If there were hobbit settlers in the West-farthing during this time who were curious about these foreign people no one can say. But the area of West-farthing had grown very populated very quickly, just as Gondo and Twoody and Alaura all imagined it would, and soon there was a great collection of holes and houses being built into the side of the White Downs, not far east from the chain of hills at the Shire’s edge.

   But no hobbit ventured west to the Far Downs for decades and no herdsmen or cautious wanderer would dare to approach those western slopes. It was rumoured that great tall towers could be seen in the distance from the Far Downs but, when questioned, those who spoke the rumours had never seen these things themselves. It seemed that most sensible settlers of that part of the land felt that once warned was, indeed, once enough and twice frightened was, likewise, twice too many.

 

*****

 

   Twoody and Nob were camped well off the Road but with the Farthing-stone in their sight as the Sun was slowly going down behind them again. Hobbiton-by-the-Water lay not far to the north and the land near the Farthing-stone was, in the three months that Gondo and Twoody had been away, becoming fairly well trafficked. He did not want to see, or be seen by, anyone yet and so Twoody made a small camp for himself in a copse of birch trees on a low hill south and west of the Stone. He lingered there for a day and a night and most of the next day, knowing that he would have to go to Buckland soon and report how he and Gondo had met the Elves and how he had let his friend, Alaura’s husband, run off to join them.

   ‘What do you mean?’ she would say, and ‘How could you let him go off on his own again? Again, Twoody?’ she would also say.

   He could hear Alaura accusing him in their talk. Then and instantly, as had happened frequently on this return trip, he found himself transported to that Spring evening (the 3rd of Thrimidge, more than three years ago now4) when he sat watching Alaura come into her mother’s garden with the sunset falling in the west behind her. He thought of her black hair in eclipse and the cream and gold colours of her gown. That had been the last time he had to tell her that Gondo was gone. He wondered if, when he came to their home in Sarehole, she would be wearing the same dress? No, he thought, Twoody had never seen her in it since. After she moved to the Shire, Alaura had adopted her old wardrobe of short pants instead of dresses. But this wondering did not help with his real problem; should he leave now and try to arrive at her house again by sunset?

   ‘Everyone knows better, of course,’ he spoke aloud in his continuing conversation with Nob, his patient friend. ‘Everyone knows that Elves are a danger. Everyone. They are magical, mischievous, beguiling, seductive, sad-seeming while glad-sounding and, above all else and under the stars that shine, they are not entirely to be trusted. Everyone knows that!’ Twoody said, his voice rising nearly to a shout. Nob, quite content with the long rest they seemed to be taking, had nothing to share on the subject.

   ‘“Oh, you will make an excellent ambassador, Gondo,” I should have said,’ Twoody went on, with a voice that, for all his wanting, couldn’t quite manage to emphasize his anger over his sadness. ‘I should have said; “An excellent ambassador indeed! For you are every bit as capricious, mercurial and wholly as frustrating, and, most obvious from this recent action, you are every bit as steadfast in your irresponsibility as those glimmering and nightwalking Fair Folk are themselves reported to be!” I should have said; “I hope you will be very happy maundering about with strangers, Gondo, while the hard work of all your friends continues without you!” I should have said; “You would go and learn songs about stars when we have a nation of families to build?” Yes, these are things which I very much should have said.’

   Twoody stood now beside a birch tree looking northeast to the Farthing-stone. The sun was gently setting behind him and the light on the hills of the Shire was the gold of sunset; with the shadows of trees and hills growing long at the end of day he was hidden to any of the inhabitants of the land. He alone knew, if no one else other than Nob might see, that his eyes stung with tears from berating his absent friend in this way and that it was the grief of loss which moved him more than any anger. He did not wipe his eyes but, through waters of loss and his own blameful recriminations, looked out at the progress of the nation which they had built together.

   The Shirefolk had done much work in the months that he and Gondo had been gone. He could see a road now running from Hobbiton-by-the-Water south to, he imagined, the green hills of Buckland. Roadside signs had been added, though he could not make them out from such a distance. He wondered who had lettered them and demanded their planting, but that question came with an immediate answer. ‘Alaura, of course,’ he answered himself gently.

   The very idea of her made him turn his head towards the south and look towards Buckland for a moment; he could not see much there yet, but he knew that the development must have steadily grown under her guidance. Sarehole was not directly visible from where he stood and he had to go just south of the Road to get a glimpse of it as he had done some nights before. He knew that if he did go to look that way again come nightfall, just as he witnessed the night before, he could expect to see many lanterns in many windows. Were they meant to light Gondo’s way home, Twoody wondered?

   Twoody was not ready to go there yet. ‘Maybe tomorrow night,’ he said to Nob and to himself.

   The pony snickered and twitched his tail but had no insights to share beyond those simple comments.

   So, having decided, he instead sat himself down beside a birch tree and took a piece of dried meat from his haversack. He looked back toward the Farthing-stone and, chewing slowly as the sunlight was fading, thought again of his friend and looked to the Stone with his watery eyes.

   ‘...it should come from the better understanding of our future...’

   Twoody heard the old king’s words again in memory as he looked out towards the darkening skies above the Farthing-stone. He could hear the King’s deep voice again as he thought about the two days which he and Gondo had spent in great debate here at the Stone; the memories in an acute collision. Twoody thought about how, together, he and Gondo had drawn the map of the Four Farthings which would shape the development of the Shire in their lifetimes and for many generations after. He remembered how proud he was to write in stone the inscription ‘By The Gift of Argeleb II, T.A. 1601, To His Friends.’ He remembered how, at the time, they had both wished that Alaura could have been part of their discussion.

   He remembered also alongside these other memories the day of the Shire’s first wedding; how Gondo and Alaura had decided to be married on the Stonebows bridge so that the ceremony might usher in a new tradition of hobbits coming to the Shire. He knew that soon he would be telling Alaura that her husband had departed from her now so soon after their first anniversary.

   ‘For adventure,’ Twoody said aloud, anger coming into his voice more easily now. ‘For travel into new places and for old stories from ancient peoples! While there are still so many new discoveries, so many new and important struggles to be had here at home. Stars above, Gondo, how could you do such a thing? Either to Alaura or to myself?’

   And while a resolute anger and scornfulness may have finally come into his voice it was never really deeply present in Twoody’s heart. He knew Gondo’s wanderlust well and had himself experienced a small part of the enchantment which an encounter with Elves brought to those who sought adventure. Alaura would understand this too, but Twoody did not want to be the person who told her; for, at the base of it all, beyond his anger, Twoody knew that he did not respect Gondo for his decision and knew of no way to tell Alaura of what her husband had done without expressing that to her, without condemning his old friend and making him seem irresponsible. Twoody dearly loved Gondo just as he did Alaura; he did not want to criticize what he saw as one friend’s great weakness in the face of the other’s loss.

   “If hope may indeed be found in Middle-earth then I believe it should come from the better understanding of our future than dwelling on our former glories and lost past,” Twoody could hear the deep voice of the King say, the memory of it folding again into his memory of the day he and Gondo carved the Stone and his concerns about meeting Alaura.

   Daylight was fading now and he could no longer clearly see the Farthing-stone and the Road beyond it. Turning his eyes southwest he imagined that he saw the lights coming up again in the littles houses and holes of Buckland. While he could not say for sure which it was, he knew one of them was Sarehole. He could see, or imagined that he could see, Alaura in her cream-coloured dress, putting little lamps in her windows.

   ‘Come, Nob,’ he said to the pony (though also more to himself), ‘it is indeed time to get you home.’

   Saddling Nob and packing his bedroll and provisions took very little time. He took the pony’s reins in one hand and his black walking stick in the other and, leaving the shelter of the birch trees, found that the stars now lit his way down to the little road below, the one leading off to Buckland. He knew he would find his way to Alaura’s house from there, but what he found upon arriving was quite unexpected.

 

*****

 

   Gondolpho Boldbuck, having gone off to follow the Elves, did not return home with Twoody in the Third Year of the Shire-reckoning and so, unknowingly of course, he would miss the birth of his son. When Twoody arrived at Alaura’s doorstep, alone once again and once again reporting his friend’s absence, he found her to be four months pregnant. When the boy was born Alaura named him Theudebert, after their friend Twoody, just as she and Gondo had always planned to do. All the hobbits of the region (and for all the years of “little Berty’s” youth) generally called him Youngbuck in remembrance of his missing father and they all expected great things from the young hobbit.

   Twoody Swiftalk remained in Buckland and took on many of Gondo’s old responsibilities there. With the help of Alaura’s brother Clooty he built a small hole in the second hill of Sarehole that he might live in and thereby be on hand to help her when the baby came. He kept his own house up in the village of Hobbiton-by-the-Water, but had not spent a night there. The steady onslaught of newcomers and new problems to be solved kept them both, Twoody and Alaura, quite busy from Thuedebert’s birth in December and through most of the new year.

   Over the following midsummer Twoody shut his offices and responsibilities down and took the Road west again hoping to find Gondo returning just as promised and to be the first to give him the good news of the birth of his son. Twoody and Nob the pony made camp for three weeks in the same place where they had met with the Elves before and each night Twoody listened for the song which might signal their return. But neither Gondo nor the elves came.

   Afterward Twoody returned to Buckland so that he and Alaura could manage the ever growing population of that part of the Shire; there were deeds to register, roads to build, wells and holes to be dug and policies to be established. Twoody’s responsibilities had grown and they built a new Assayer’s Office in Buckland which tracked all the new deeds and families. A new Buckland Postal Branch building was put next to it from which Alaura managed her plans for other small schoolhouses and could continue the distribution of THE SHIRE-RECKONING. Twoody continued to stay in the second hill of Sarehole near to Alaura and began to build a fine home there. The deed of that hill was put in young Theudebert’s name on his first birthday so that the boy would have a stake in the land while his father remained lost. At this time the absence of a proper deed for all of Sarehole was noted and Twoody co-signed for it under Gondo’s name (left unsigned) as guarantor. No one, it seemed, doubted that this was “the Oldbuck’s” own land of course, but the matter of deeds had become more keenly delineated as more and more hobbits were moving into the Shire and filling out the empty spaces. Once Youngbuck’s name was put on the deed for the second hill the rent, which Twoody paid earnestly, was set aside for the child’s future. For Twoody was a loving uncle to little Berty, but at heart still very much a banker. Throughout this time Twoody himself retained the deed to his property in Hobbiton-by-the-Water (though that house would remain empty for many years).

   In Buckland Twoody and Alaura were busily engaged with the good hard work of creating a free and friendly nation for all hobbits just as all three of the friends had dreamed of together. With the coming of Alaura’s son she and Twoody did not travel back and forth to the East-farthing as Gondo had often done and, in this way, the Buckland became the de facto center of the Shire government for a time. But every Midsummer’s month for six more years Twoody left his new home to make camp on the western edge of the Shire and wait for his friend’s return. No other hobbits ever accompanied him on these trips, though Gondo, in his absence, had grown even greater in their respect and many of his old friends wished to go off and find him. Twoody always turned them away, cordially of course, explaining that the responsibility was his alone. In those six years he had, quite unwillingly, become the furthest pioneer in the west, making quite a comfortable little place for himself on what the Shirefolk had been told was the very edges of their safety. Twoody had come to name the place where he and Gondo had first camped “Greenholm” and had spent the Summerdays for seven years there hoping to see his friend again. But he never mapped the area and filed no deed for the land for many years.

   In the tenth year of the Shire-reckoning, after seven years of waiting, some Shirefolk began to suggest that Gondolpho Boldbuck (now called the “Oldbuck”) should be officially presumed dead. Certainly being gone this long, especially amongst such dangerous and unpredictable people as the Elves, meant that he had fallen into some mishap that not even the Oldbuck could survive. The hobbits of the Shire, having little else to gossip about on an annual event like the Summerdays, had various theories of his untimely demise; most all of them involving a bold and bloody death as a cautionary tale to anyone who might be foolhardy enough to follow him.

   The legal question of land estates was becoming an increasing annoyance in Shire policies and, while none would deny that the vast property of Sarehole belonged to Gondo, many wondered how long it should remain empty, waiting for his return. On the Summerdays of Year Ten (still referred to as ‘Lithe’ by many of the newer hobbits) Twoody went once again to Greenholm to look for his friend; but to no avail. It fell upon Alaura and Twoody, as officiants in the early development of the Shire, to be the signatories then of the Shire’s very first Certificate of Death. They did so in private, speaking to no one about it. Then Nob the pony passed away in that same year, and most of the hobbits in the neighbourhood of Buckland felt that to be an indication that the pony’s former master would never return. Twoody set his black walking stick aside in a closet and there it remained unseen by any for a very long time.

   It was later that same year that Twoody and Alaura were married and the great row of hills that was named Sarehole, the first hobbithole in the Shire and originally dug by Gondo, was considered, by new Shire law, to be the property of Twoody Swiftalk and his new legal bride. For laws of the Shire, new as they were, made no conditions for widows and ownership of the land passed to Twoody as Alaura’s new husband, her son’s adopted father and cosignator of the deed. But the second hill, where Twoody had stayed as a bachelor and an uncle and a friend for seven years, was, by Twoody and Alaura’s own signature, the property of Gondo’s son, named in all deeds and licenses afterward as Theudebert Youngbuck.

   The real trouble between the two most prominent families in the history of the Shire, the great feud which would separate them for generations, would occur years later, in the twenty-ninth year of the Shire-reckoning, when Gondolpho Boldbuck, the ‘Oldbuck’ as he was then called, finally returned home.

End of Part One

Chapter End Notes

  Notes

1)  As mentioned before, “Buckland” here in the West-farthing is an invention of the story and has little to do (well, maybe more than little) with the Buckland of Frodo’s time. But it should be noted that this part of the Shire will, eventually, come to be called “the Tookland”.

2)  Again, this earlier name suggests the more suburban plan which Twoody held for this land and which, by Bilbo’s day, had completely happened.

3)  "Smial” is a curiously hobbitish word. It is an invention of Tolkien’s based on the Old English word smygel. This from Tolkien Gateway: “Smial is a translation of the Hobbitish word trân (Rohanese trahan "burrow"). Tolkien explained in his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings the origin of the name Sméagol in the lemma on smials: ‘Smials. A word peculiar to hobbits (not Common Speech), meaning 'burrow'; leave unchanged. It is a form that the Old English word smygel, “burrow” might have had, if it had survived. The same element appears in Gollum's real name, Sméagol. So the names Smaug and Sméagol are etymologically related.’”

4)  This date is from the Shire calendar, which I believe was also devised by Alaura Fairheart, and indicated May 24th, the day Twoody returned to the Bree-land and met Alaura at her father’s home.

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