IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part Two; Chapter Two "The Plans"

   Leaning his back against a birch tree and picking absent-mindedly at the poor fare presented to him as supper, long-faced and calm-voiced Bovo Bunce was the first to offer his dissatisfaction with the Plan.

   ‘I just don’t see the purpose here, Youngbuck,’ Bovo said. ‘Yes, our idea was to travel to the Delvings and present Poppy to your uncle Clooty so that our friend might find a trade. You still want that, don’t you, Poppy?’

   ‘Well,’ Poppy Noakesburrow said, standing timidly on his good foot and a little apart from the others, ‘yes, sir, I do. Very much. I’m old enough to work and have a need to. But if I can have the chance to work off in the faraways with Cloot the Builder, why-‘

   ‘Yes, that was the impetus of the second version of our Plan,’ Bovo interrupted, ‘and I liked that idea well enough when we first talked of it; in this way we’d all get a chance to run out of these boring and wretched Summerday celebrations and do something nice for our friend here. That was the new Plan we agreed upon, yes?’

   ‘And it still is. We will do all of that,’ Berty said, ‘but I have decided to travel further and be gone longer. I hoped that you and Gilley, as my friends, might accompany me for a time.’

   ‘But as far as Greenholm?’ Bovo replied. ‘To the very western edge of the Shire which is feared by all hobbits? I would ask you “whatever for?” if I did not already have a guess.’

   ‘And what might that guess be, I wonder,’ Berty replied to his friend with a familiar and challenging smile.

 

*****

   The four friends were excited, as many youngsters would be, by their “Plan”; a shared act of defiance of their parents and of the established order of the Shire. They had been friends together from a very early age and now, with Poppy going off to work and Berty coming into his own inheritance, they felt this would be the last summer of the lives they had once known. So, as young people often do, together they set out to make this Summerdays festival one which they would all remember and one that would be uniquely their own.

   The earliest versions of this Plan was initially referred to as “The Stolen Feast” and they all thought it to be a very grand idea worthy of just such a grand and exciting title. Dreamt up many weeks ago, “The Stolen Feast” was to be their own rebellious and private version of the feasts held by their families on the Summerdays, but kept exclusive to themselves, catered through a little bit of larceny and peppered with a quiet form of protest. They had planned to sneak away in the afternoon, concocting wild stories to cover their absence. Bovo, in his own peculiar and dry humour, suggested that they should start a rumour of being chased off by bears but, fortunately, that part of the Plan never came about. The relative danger of bears notwithstanding, they all knew that their disappearance would worry their parents greatly and did not wish to compound it with hurtful stories of false dangers. Yet they were resolved to have their planned adventure and very much wished to show their parents (and themselves) that they had the right to make their own decisions (for better or for worse).

   So in April of Year Twenty-nine (“Astron”, as the Shirefolk called it) they had made their Plan for this “Stolen Feast” in secret. Who came up with the idea first none could rightly say but, as young people often do, they agreed upon its boldness almost immediately. For weeks the four conspirators had put aside their secret provisions against the day; they hoarded “missing” bottles from their fathers’ cellars, “reportedly broken” plates and “bent” forks from the family cupboards, butter and jam and honey taken carefully from the back of their mothers’ larder and, more recently of course, all manner of cheeses and cured meats, fruits and freshly baked pies which their parents were setting aside for their own upcoming festival.

   Two days before their intended act of insubordination, when news came that Poppy must leave them to go find work soon after, Youngbuck had come before them wanting to amend the Plan.

   ‘If Poppy is really going off to the Delvings in a few days,’ he had said to them all, ‘why don’t we take him there ourselves? We could have a lighter feast together on the first night and then walk the Road the next day. It will surely be quiet on Summerdays and I doubt that there should be anyone there to discover us. I could then introduce Poppy to uncle Clooty in person and we could stay the second night in the Delvings as his guests. What do you say?’

   Poppy had been excited by this idea. He needed to find work and the opportunity of doing so with Youngbuck’s uncle, the legendary Cloot the Builder, was a rare opportunity. He had never been excited about walking the lonely Road to the Delvings alone and introducing himself without his friends beside him, so this new Plan seemed very, very good indeed.

   Bovo, who was more comfortable with open acts of defiance than his other friends were, had also liked this new Plan. He had called this second iteration of their Plan “The Great Disappearance” and hoped to confound their parents with a clear act of disobedience. There was some part of Bovo which took the whole idea of running off as being very comical, a kind of dark commentary on Shire-life that only he found to be funny. He had agreed immediately to Berty’s new and second version of the Plan and never questioned if it had some hidden purpose.

   It had been Gilley who showed concern at this time. She would happily take Poppy and Berty to the Delvings and had agreed that this might be a wonderful way to ensure Poppy’s success. But to disappear from their families, with no word or warning, for three or four days rather than one night seemed to her an unfair cruelty.

   ‘Ah, but that’s the best part,’ Youngbuck had told them. ‘Poppy will not be disappearing now, will he? His whole family will know that he’s going off to look for work and will, no doubt, give him their blessings. And his gaffer, Old Noakes, who is a very sweet old gentle-hobbit, will want to do anything he can to help young Poppy along. And that will help the three of us just as well.'

 

*****

   Leaning back on the birch tree, Bovo, with the same rather bored and disaffected look on his face which he normally held for such arguments, was not stayed by Berty’s challenge.

   ‘My guess as to why you want to change our Plan yet again and go trundling off to Greenholm?’ Bovo asked in reply to the earlier question. ‘Well, Youngbuck, my guess is that you are every bit as sentimental about the Summerdays as is the sorrowful tradition within your own family. And furthermore I guess that you have seized the opportunity to come up with this new Plan because you wish to be in Greenholm on Overlithe, just one night after tomorrow’s, with the bright stars over your head, looking west and hoping to meet those same Elves who carried off your father. Yes. That would be my guess, or my two guesses I suppose. It seems to me that you have changed our Plans twice now at the last minute, shaping them closer to some Plan of your own which you may have originally held in secret. And, beyond just guessing all of that, I would, as your friend and Gilley’s, be rather remiss in not pointing it out to everyone. Yes. With all possible respect, Youngbuck, you have your uncle’s cool head for negotiation, but your famous father’s reputedly reckless heart for planning dangerous adventures.’

   Bovo then picked up the meagre little sandwich that had been offered to him as first supper, took a large and decisive bite, and waited to see how things would play out.

 

*****

   Bovo’s guess was in part true: three months before, quite in secret from his family and his friends, Berty had privately decided to leave Buckland and perhaps the Shire. The idea had struck him like a thunderbolt from a blue sky really, and he remembered the moment of its striking quite clearly. He had been sitting on one of the benches on the western side of Sarehole and watching the sun go down over the long string of hills to the west. Each of those six hills had been deeded to Berty and his siblings on the occasion of their first birthday. Being the eldest, Berty’s own hill was first in the line, and his uncle Twoody, in his bachelor days while living there, had begun a wonderful construction of rooms. Berty would come into his ownership of these rooms and all of this hill when he reached adulthood in the coming winter of this year. The other five smaller hills of Sarehole, originally registered as the land of Berty’s father, had been given to the children of his mother and his uncle Twoody.

   On the memorable March day Berty was sitting with his mother and his youngest sister, Deidre, still only twelve years of age, atop their house watching that larger hill cast its shadow across the others. As they talked the Sun was catching like fire on their peaks and Berty’s mother was teaching Deidre to name the hilltops.

   ‘Your own home is the farthest of course, for you are the youngest of my little darlings and I cannot bear to let you go so far for many, many years,’ his mother said. ‘Before your own hill comes your brother Clothaire’s. And what does he call his future home?’

   ‘Builder’s Bungalow!’ Deidre said with enthusiasm.

   ‘Indeed,’ Berty’s mother replied, ‘for he has aspirations to join your uncle Clooty one day but, I’m glad to say, he also holds my own enjoyment of assonance. And the next hill to that?’

   ‘Hinky’s Hole!’ The hobbit-girl said, giggling with delight.

   ‘Yes,’ mother said, ‘for now at least. I do hope that your brother Hincmar will come up with a more suitable name as he grows older. It's comical, certainly, but not in a way which he truly understands yet. And the one just closer before that?’

   ‘That will be Gondo’s house and he calls it Stonewell,’ Deidre replied. ‘It’s not a very good name, if you ask me. He just calls it that because of the little well which father had built there.’

   ‘Yes, well, it doesn’t do to criticise a person’s creativity, Deidre,’ their mother said, ‘and, trust me, there is no lasting value in making fun of your older siblings. And the next hill?’

   ‘Next is Redberry Burrow. Ganda planted shrubs all over the place so many sweet summer berries will grow there. We will go and pick some next week. She plans to have a hillside filled with strawberries and raspberries in years to come. Will she, mother?’

   ‘She will. She has her grandmother Celedine’s knack growing things, that is certain.

   ‘The first and closest hill is for Berty, though he is the slowest in naming it,’ Alaura said to her daughter while smiling at her son in a knowing way. ‘It has a wide top and broad shoulders, roomier and almost as broad as our own house here. There is rich soil in the gardens that your father planted, Deidre, before you were born of course, and some lovely round windows for southern light. There are birch trees on its crest, my darling, do you see? Just as there are here on our own hill, and those are a sign of luck indeed. Have you named it yet, Berty? For it will be yours to occupy when you come of age at ForeYule.’

   ‘No, mother,’ Berty had said. ‘I worry that I have no head for such things and, well, naming a thing seems rather a permanent choice, does it not?’

   ‘No.’ Alaura said with great certainty, a lesson in her voice. ‘Don’t be fooled into sluggardly behavior by the habits of foolish hobbits, Berty. Never put a thing off which needs doing simply because the doing of it seems difficult. You are right in some ways: naming is an attempt at forcing permanence but permanence, particularly in names, is illusory. Call your home what you will, knowing that someone else may call it something different later. But know also, that if you delay too long then someone may name it sooner than you’d like and in a way which could be much less to your liking.

   ‘You can own a thing, for a time at least, by naming it,’ she said with pointedness and some sadness, ‘but a thing, the hill or the name, will often outlast whatever you may call it.’

   ‘I think you should call it Silvertop,’ Deidre said. ‘Those trees are bright and shiny in the gold light.’

   Berty smiled broadly at this. ‘Not as bright and shiny as you, sister! Maybe I should call you Silvertop, eh?’

   They laughed together at this, for though Berty loved all his brothers and sisters dearly, Deidre held a special place in his heart. Even at this young age all the family remarked at how much she looked like, spoke like and reminded them of their mother. She had the same lustrous black hair which glinted like starlight.

   ‘Well, I know the name of my house already and have made a list of its rooms and how I plan on using them. Mother says it is the last hill before Buckland and there I can have a porch and a garden where I can watch the whole of the city grow. I made drawings of all the flowers I want to grow and all the rooms I want built. I will call it my “Peachable Veranda”,’ Deidre said proudly.

   ‘“Unimpeachable”, dear,’ their mother said with a smile. ‘It means “undeniable” but also, mmmn, it means that no one can argue with it. And “veranda”?’

   ‘Means “porch”!’ Deidre said excitedly. ‘No one can ever argue with me on my porch!’1

   Deidre’s delighted laugh lit up their mother’s face, as it usually did, but Berty, older and wiser, could see the sadness which still lay behind it. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and a great perch of assuredness your porch will surely be. And so the last hill of what was our hole will be renamed.’

   And Berty realised in that moment that naming, just as his mother had alluded to, could be a very ephemeral thing with hobbits or with any people.

   The very deeds which Berty had worked on in the afternoon before escaping to join his friends had to do with a road which was planned to run past the front door of his own yet unnamed hill. He noted at the time that some of the construction notes called these lands by their old name, “Sarehole”, while others newer records called them “the Great Smials”. Now this small change of naming had been the talk of many older hobbits in Buckland for as long as Berty might remember, and it left Berty in a difficult position when it came to the naming of the hill he had inherited from his lost father. For the older inhabitants of Buckland, as older people often will do, saw something sinister in the changing of names while younger people, of any time or generation, saw the changing of names, whether they be land titles or job titles or honorary positions, saw such changes as the footprints of progress. This new generation of Shirefolk, Berty’s peers, might have felt a name change from “Sarehole” to “Great Smials” to be a bold sign of some idealistic future. We do not really know with any certainty, for there is no voice among that generation of hobbits which arises so clearly as Alaura Fairheart’s does to talk about politics and affairs of the day. But it is clear that Berty himself, for whatever reason, had put off the naming of his home for many years of his life and we have no written accounts to suggest why.

   Sarehole, by its original name, was quite famous for being the first hobbithole in all of the Shire and many of the old-timers were very proud of Berty’s absent father who had dug it himself and started the whole settlement of the land on his own with just a shovel, a bow and quiver of arrows. When Berty’s mother married his uncle Twoody, back when Berty was only a fawn2 of seven years, the name of the estate was not changed, for the land which Oldbuck had taken was never deeded. Uncle Clooty and some of the older generation of Bucklanders still referred to it as Sarehole, but it seemed that almost everyone else, Berty himself at times, had adopted the new name of “Great Smials.” And the name had certainly come to fit, for “smial” meant “burrow” to most people and a very great burrow these hills were becoming. Tunnels connected each of the seven hills by this time, even before their front doors were all dug. The deeds were held individually by the children, but it was clear that the plan was to make a great burrow where all of the family would be connected.

   In the past twenty years of Berty’s life the Great Smials had become very great indeed. The tall western hill with its chain of six lower hills had seen an enormous, if still cautious, development over the years through uncle Twoody’s practice of financial and societal prudence. In the years since Berty’s birth that first humble dwelling for his mother and father had turned into a veritable warren of early excavations and long tunnels. There were great round doors fashioned in each year that one of Berty’s siblings was born, gifts to their family from friends and neighbours. There were nice north-facing holes cut into the hillside on their first birthdays to mark their future locations. Paths were cut and gardens staked out and plans were made for each of the children to come into their own land ownership on their twentieth-sixth birthday just as Berty himself would this coming winter.3

   If his mother had ever said one thing or another about the name of their home, “Sarehole” as given by the Old Buck or the “Great Smials” as given later by their neighbours, Berty could not remember it. But he remembered, as they sat in the failing sun of that March day, thinking that he had never heard his mother call their home by name. Her use of the phrase “what was our hole” was the closest she ever came to speaking of the issue or, Berty thought, of ever sounding wistful.

   Berty had no way of knowing this at the time, but many surviving correspondences between Twoody and Alaura explain the reasons for the practice of transferring the deeds of the land to their children.

   When Twoody returned from the west to find Alaura with child he wanted to be near to her and to offer his help. Sarehole had already become a good sized excavation with numerous guestrooms, but for Twoody to stay there did not seem proper by his or any hobbit’s sense of standards. So he built a little hole for himself on the first smaller hill in the chain; hardly a full home at first, just a bed and sitting room really, but it had a nice round door and two lovely windows facing to the west. He cooked for himself out-of-doors (very rustic by Twoody’s own standards) and all during this time he remained within earshot of Alaura up on the larger hill. In the months before the birth, Twoody and his friends had laid a very nice stone path between the two front doors. That path, from its earliest beginnings, was well-gardened and had many flowering bushes and summer blossoms. There were some older hobbits who referred to it as “Talk’s Swift-run” in Berty’s time, though Berty did not understand this name until much later. Even in the famous days of Shirehobbits at the ending of the Third Age this path in the village of Tuckborough (as Buckland would later be called) had a similar name, “Took’s Run”, though it is uncertain if even Thain Peregrin himself knew why it was so called. But it was there, on a bench above Talk’s Swift-run, with his mother and his youngest sister beside him, that Berty had made his decision to leave.

   “And the last hill of what was our hole will be renamed,” she had said.

   Berty had been born on December 15th in Year Three of the Shire-reckoning (this was called “Foreyule” in their calendar and, if the changing of names for hobbits is not confusing enough, the changing of calendar names and dates would certainly only complicate matters much more). But one year later, on Berty’s first birthday, his uncle Twoody, with his power as Chief Assayer of Titles and Deeds, redescribed the second hill of Sarehole, the place where Twoody himself currently lived, as the sole property of Theudebert the Youngbuck. In a letter to Alaura he wrote;

   ‘This is to be his land now, little Berty’s. Our Gondo may return, as he promised, with the next coming Mid-year and I will most certainly go west to meet him as I did before. But little Berty must have a home in his own name. You cannot give this to him, for on paper the land belongs to no one and only to Gondo by reputation. But I can give him that home because Gondo and I were partners on many other deeds and articles of business. We need only name this second hill as “Berty’s Hill” and the deed may be drawn. Only Gondo himself might contest it, and, of course, I wish he were back to have his say on it one way or the other. But in the meantime your Berty will have his own.’

   And so, for seven years of Berty’s childhood his uncle Twoody lived at ‘Berty’s Hill’ and awaited his friend's return. He helped to raise young Berty and to tell him of all of the adventures of his father. But then, despite the patient waiting, Berty’s father did not return and new laws within the Shire suggested that he should be legally declared dead. In this way his significant land holdings would pass on to a relative or go to auction. Shirehobbits, you will remember, registered deeds to the male founders of the land and this unfortunate short-sightedness put Alaura’s rights, as a spouse without a marriage contract, and those of other widows into question.

   The deeds and taxations which Berty had studied earlier on that day of his escape had posed interesting questions to his young mind about the ownership of his home, but to suggest that these were the principal motivations in his leaving would be incorrect; Berty had a restless nature that both his mother and his uncle Twoody had noticed from a young age and, loving Berty’s father too much as they did, they never sought to curb it in his upbringing. Berty was not raised by Gondo, but those parents and uncles and aunts that he had did most certainly raise him in what some might call “an incautious reverence of his father’s shadow”. Berty was let to be all of what his parents believed his father had been. And so, on that spring day with his mother and his sister naming the land, with a sudden decision very reminiscent of his unknown father, Berty felt he heard an omen of his future in his mother’s comment and he plotted a course for himself based upon the look he saw in his mother’s eyes.

   He had never before been more like his unknown father than he was at this moment. Though he would be again.

 

*****

   Hildegund Bramblethorne was another of Berty’s steadfast friends and a frequent arguer of whatever cool and detached position which their other friend, Bovo Bunce, might present for discussion. She was round-faced and plain-speaking; "Straightalking Gilley" to those who knew her well and a real terror to any had wound up on the wrong side of her arguments. She was born in the same first years of Shire-children that Bovo and Berty and Poppy were, from a family of Breeland hobbits who came from east of the Hill and, upon their arrival, had known very few townfolk. But her father, like Bovo’s and Poppy’s, was a proud founder of the Buckland and counted himself a friend to the famous Gondo from the very first year of Shire-reckoning. Gilley was the third eldest child of what had since become a very large family and the most distinguishing things about her (according to most who knew her poorly) were her slightly reddish hair, her large fists and her outspoken manners. To those who knew her better Gilley was a person who understood and respected the no-nonsense views of her parents’ pioneer life and made them a hallmark of her own. It did not go well for any hobbit, young or old, to underestimate Gilley’s wisdom or her tenacity in an argument; for she loved to quarrel and could be as quick with her tongue as she was heavy with her fists.

   ‘O, now it's very flattering to see how you’ve taken my safety into your own concern, Bovo,’ Gilley said, ‘but we all know that I can take very good care of that myself. We don’t agree as often as you think we do, you and I, but you do have a good point here. Youngbuck, is this true? Do you mean to go looking for the Elves?’

   Berty took a moment to speak and therefore drew all their attention closer.

   ‘I mean to be gone longer than we had planned, yes,’ he said calmly. ‘And Bovo has guessed it right that I mean to look out into the west from the last place where my father was seen. The mountains at the edge of the world can be seen quite clearly from there, my uncle tells me, and I would dearly love to say that I have seen those while so few Shirefolk can. Wouldn’t you all wish to say the same?

   ‘But Bovo, convinced as he always is about some things, is likewise wrong about others; I am not going west because of sentimentality over my father, my family’s past or anything of that kind. I am going for a chance to think about my future. My uncle and my mother have great plans for me which I remain unsure of. My friends, you all know this! You know that I don’t wish to be, a banker, or a townfather or-’

   ‘Or master of the Great Smials?’ Bovo finished his friend’s uncertain statement.

   ‘Or that! Least of all that!’ Berty replied welcomely.

   There was then a long silence between the four friends punctuated only by the soft sound of Bovo, in his quiet acceptance, munching on his disappointing sandwich. It was still not quite dusk and if there were animals or birds stirring in the little stance of trees around them the sound would have been quite welcome to Berty. It was Poppy Noakesburrow who finally spoke up.

   ‘I’ll go with you, Youngbuck,’ he said. ‘If your goal is to reach Greenholm in two nights then we needn’t waste our time in the Delvings tomorrow. You can introduce me to your famous uncle Cloot on our trip back. My family knows that I’m going away for a long time, so that leaves me in the comfortable position of not disappointing them further. I’ll go see Greenholm with you, if you’ll have me.’

   ‘Thank you, Poppy,’ Berty said, ‘and you are always a welcome companion and dear friend. But you don’t need to do this; I know how you mean to start work and aid your family. That was the important part of our Plan, of course, and I would never change it at your expense.’

   ‘And I thank you for that,’ Poppy replied. ‘But work can wait a bit for such a friend as you.’

   ‘Hmmmmn. Yes. Well that is disconcerting,’ Bovo said with a sarcastic but humorous glumness to his voice. ‘With Poppy’s compliance it seems that our Plan is, once again, irrevocably changed.’

   He took a long moment to look around and then another longer one to bite more of his sandwich before again meeting their eyes. ‘Who would dare to challenge Poppy’s unwavering support? Certainly not I. Yes, Youngbuck, things seem to have worked in your favour and our destination has now changed again. While the food we’ve brought is much less exciting than that served back home on Summerdays I will say that I much prefer the company here to back home and, yes, if we're going west without dropping Poppy, then it seems that the old Plan of dining with your uncle in the Delvings tomorrow also no longer matters. I quite like those previous titles of “The Stolen Feast” or “The Great Disappearance”. “Forth, toward Greenholm” seems less mysterious to my mind, but I’m willing to undertake the adventure.’

   ‘You could just say “yes, I’ll go too,” could you not?’ Gilley replied, smiling at Bovo. ‘No. Of course you couldn’t.

   ‘You’re apt to bring us all into some adventure here, Youngbuck,’ she continued. ‘But my parents warned me of the unfortunate possibility of that from the first time we met. Bovo and I don’t agree often, but you do, just as he has said, seem to have your illustrious father’s thirst for wandering set into your manner. You’d be a fool to deny its calling, because all of your friends recognize it already.

   ‘I’ll go,’ she continued, ‘but I’ll tell you this; I am not as polite as your dear uncle Twoody or our friend Poppy here. I will go to Greenholm with you and look for Elves or answers or anything else that you wish to search for. But I will not go, or let you go, west of Greenholm. I will not sit idly by while you, or any of the rest of you for that matter, become enchanted by songs or faerie lights or ghostly apparitions of any kind. I will, quite roughly if I must, grab you by the points of your ears4 or the scruff of your feet and keep you from going further. I brought no club or mallet, but I would use any such device, on you or on any tall Elf-lords, to keep the lot of you from danger. I see that as my duty to you as my friends, no matter what your complaint. Do you still want me to come?’

   ‘More than ever,’ Berty said with a broad and welcoming smile.

   ‘And you will promise me that we will not go west of the Shire’s border?’ she said.

   ‘I have promised it to my mother and uncle before and will pledge it to you, to all of you, again now,’ Berty answered.

   ‘Then finish up your sandwiches, my friends,’ she said, ‘for we’ll need to be on our way quickly to reach Greenholm in time. We will spend a lot of our time walking beneath the stars tonight.’

   And so just before dusk the four friends set forth on their new and unexpected adventure. Bovo looked despondently at his last bite of bread and wondered when there would be time for a proper meal.

   ‘If we walk most of the night and rest for just a short time,’ Gilley said to them all, ‘we can come to the Waymeet5 with the dawn and get the necessary and longer provisions that Youngbuck has not planned for. Don’t look so downcast, Bovo! You’ve agreed to an adventure and must accept that adventures are not always very agreeable!’

   And so the four friends were to set forth on a new Plan and with little expectations as to where it might bring them. But first, being hobbits, they had the good sense to finish their meal.

 

end of chapter two

Chapter End Notes

Notes

1)  The words “unimpeachable” and “veranda” were chosen from an educational website which explains all of the more complex words in The Hobbit. I rather like the idea of Alaura teaching these kinds of “big words” which that novel presents for young readers to her own children.

2)  “Fawn” is a word I quite like for describing the childhood of hobbits. It appears in the literature found in the website Stories of Arda quite frequently with different spellings and covering different periods of child development. As stated earlier, I believe that hobbits of this time period did not develop in the same comfortable situations of Frodo’s time and so “coming of age” at 33 would, as it does for most pioneer folk, happen at an earlier age. I’ve chosen 26 here to make certain elements work within the novel. But the “fawns” would describe the pre-teen years of hobbit childhood when they could not be given tasks of their own to do and instead needed to be “fawned over.” Then come the “teens” (13-19) and the “tweens” (20-25). More on this in the next note.

3)  In a later draft of this story the time of Gondo’s wanderings was changed from twenty years to twenty-five. This meant that Berty, and all of his siblings, became five years older at the touch of the keyboard. But since the coming of age for hobbits in Frodo’s day was thirty-three years of age it did not seem out of line to set it at twenty-six in Berty’s time.

4)  There is some argument among Tolkien fans as to whether or not Hobbits have pointy ears. There is absolutely no indication of it in the Professor’s writing or in his drawings for The Hobbit. But it is a popular later trope from many other illustrations and I’ve never heard of the Professor criticizing that feature. And, of course, the movies and cartoons all use it. I think this is probably the closest I’ll come to indicating my own feelings on the subject.

5)  I doubt that Waymeet itself was a town at this time but may have been, as the name suggests, a simple meeting of roads. Some early settlements and provenders might have accumulated there, but Gilley seems to like the opportunity of it rather than Little Delvings. More on this in later chapters.

 

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