IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb

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Postlude

A Brief Record of The Last Generation of Pioneers

Postlude

A Brief Record of The Last Generation of Pioneers

“History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff.”

-Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories”

i) Of the Third Marriage of Alaura Fairheart

Only four hobbits were in attendance at the second wedding of Gondo and Alaura which was held on the twenty-ninth day of July¹ at the Mugwort hole in Longbottom. Present were Dursdale Mugwort and his wife Moschia, Dursdale’s brother Angilbart and Cheldric Bophin, Alaura’s brother-in-law. There was very little ceremony involved in their reunion and it was Mrs Mugwort who tied the same old green and blue holdfast around the couple’s hands as Twoody himself had done twenty-seven years before. Afterward the document, which Twoody himself had prepared was signed and witnessed by all. The signatures read “Gondolpho Underhill” and “Alaura Fairheart”. A small supper was had, but no gifts were exchanged nor looked for. That night, as supper concluded, Gondo and Alaura rode off to their new home in the Marish less than one league away. This was still a small dwelling built into the side of a very large hill. Only three rooms and a well had been dug out by this point, but it had a fine round door on the northern face and a few windows which looked across the vast and still open lands of the South-farthing. Meager as it was in that first year, Gondo and Alaura still called it “Sarehole”.

At dawn on the morning following the wedding Cheldric Bophin rode north and west to Buckland where the witnessed document of marriage was to be notarized, counter-signed, certified and filed. There it received the signature of the Chief Assayer, Theudebald Swiftalk.

The areas of the Marish and Longbottom were so remote that no postal service went there nor were there many other settlers or travelers found to be passing through. Cheldric was to be the most frequent visitor at the new Sarehole and the wheels of his wagon built the first early paths between the Marish and through the Green Hill country and on to Buckland. He came there four times a year for the next five years. Two of these visits were in Yule to take gifts and letters from Alaura to her children and then in After-Yule with any messages or words they might send back. The other trips were before and after the Summerdays, when he would escort Alaura herself back and forth to the Buckland so that she might see the children she had with Twoody.

When Alaura left the Great Smials and her children there behind she moved her sister Ermenberga, along with Ermenberga’s own two sons two daughters and husband, in to serve as Governess to Ganda, Gondobert, Hincmar, Clothaire and Deidre. Deidre, the youngest, was only twelve when her mother went away and so along with this hard choice Alaura had made the determined promise to return each Summerday to watch her children grow. Twoody had long since taken up his own house in Hobbiton-by-the-Water at this time and managed to make himself absent from all Summerday feasts for the remaining years of his life.

By the time she would make her first trip in year Thirty of the Shire, Alaura had given birth to her second son by Gondo, a fair-haired child they called Glorfindel. She would not take the baby to meet her other children and Gondo was left to care for the child at Sarehole. But the Mugwort family, consisting of four Mugwort brothers and their wives, had grown quite large by then and Glorfindel, or his siblings still to come, never lacked for playmates in their young lives.

Despite their age Alaura and Gondo would have five children together, the same number which she had by Twoody. There was Berty first of course, and then came Glorfindel in Year Thirty, the twin boys Ladus and Fortinus in Year Thirty-one and their daughter Astra in Year Thirty-three. All of these later children were born with fair-hair, which is exceptionally uncommon in hobbits, but only Glorfindel’s remained this way into his adulthood. Astra’s hair, by her third year, had taken on the same lustrous black of her mother’s own.

ii) Of the Oldbuck in Retirement

While Gondo had tried to change his own name to “Underhill” upon his return this attempt never truly stuck to his reputation. The Mugworts or any other travelers whom Gondo might occasionally encounter would politely use this name in his company, but all knew him or spoke of him as “the Oldbuck”.

There were some old friends, such as Alaura’s brother Clooty and Porro Noakesburrow (Poppy’s Gaffer), who visited the new Sarehole in the Marish and tried to cajole the Old Buck into helping with the discovery and administration of the South-farthing or even to mend old grievances which they perceived between Gondo and Twoody. Clooty’s own notes on this trip tell us that he found his old friend to be:

...much about him has changed and quite honestly settled into his life in the south. The building of his home is going well and he dotes upon his new children as if he has been given a rare chance at having something which he formerly lost. He does not ask of news from the West-farthing, or even of the Youngbuck, as my sister does and quickly changes the conversation should those subjects arise. Instead he shares with me stories of the world he has seen which I can hardly believe. Sometimes he sings songs in a strange language, beautiful but beyond my understanding, and I have witnessed as he tries to teach that language to his children; but this seems to be something which Alaura disapproves of. His sword, which is as finely-crafted a thing as I have ever seen, hangs above his mantle piece and there is always a low fire in the hearth. He no longer draws, a skill I always envied in him, but says that he is content now to just sit and examine a tree or a landscape for many hours without any desire to put pen to paper. He is, if I was to be asked in the most direct of manners, not at all as he used to be but seems to finely be fully happy with who he has become; the desire for discovery and travel which captured him in our youth now seems completely gone.

He has also shown me a curious invention which he has been working on and is the like of nothing which I have ever seen; it is a boat of some kind, or so he tells me, fashioned to travel over water. It is built much like the rafts I have seen in Sarn Ford; all of pinewood, but fitted and sanded smooth with a bottom that comes to a fine point. He has managed to seal it against water using a mix of pitch and beeswax and charcoal, a clever concoction that I have copied for myself. It remains far from finished but, more curiously, it stands in the midst of a small field near their home and nowhere near the little stream that runs through the valley a mile or so away...

Although Gondo and Alaura did receive family and old friends when they came to Sarehole there is no indication that they invited any. Alaura made her yearly pilgrimage to the Great Smials and Gondo was said to have gone as far as to visit Norbert Button at the Golden Perch on a rare occasion but other than that he traveled very little until after the tragedy of year Thirty-six.

iii) Of Theudebald Swiftalk

Upon the return of the Oldbuck and after their meeting at the Farthing Stone on the first day of After-lithe, Twoody wrote new deeds and titles establishing his children, along with Youngbuck, as the sole owners of the Great Smials. All land and property there was now jointly their own to do with as they pleased. This document was written two days before Twoody’s encounter with Berty at Waymeet and sent along to the Shire Council with another letter regarding the Oldbuck’s return.

On the day after his meeting with Youngbuck Twoody returned to the Great Smials to be with his children but he never entered that home again; the children’s aunt Ermenberga was mistress of the Great Smials for eight more years until Gandalina, Twoody and Alaura’s eldest daughter, wed Richomeres Bramblethorn (one of Gilley’s younger cousins) and moved into their own little hole which she called Redberry Burrow. But from the First of After-lithe in Year Twenty-nine until the end of his days Twoody never again saw the tunnels and rooms inside of those seven hills that were the Great Smials, many of which he had dug himself. He did, however, see his children nearly every day, for Twoody was always a loving and responsible father. He kept the hole that he had built for himself up in Hobbiton-by-the-Water, but only visited there overnight every other week or so. The distance between the Great Smials and Hobbiton was too far, fifteen miles and more, and so Twoody built an addition to his Assayer’s Office in Buckland so that he might be nearer to the children. It was small and spare with a narrow bed, a pail for washing, an old kettle, four cups and two dinner plates, two forks and no spoons. There was a small stove for the heating of water and to stave off the drafty winds in winter. Theudebald Swiftalk was, or at least had been, unquestionably one of the wealthiest hobbits in the whole of the Shire, but he lived there in his little sideroom of the Assayer’s Office so that he might walk thirty minutes each morning and at the end of each day to the Great Smials and be with his children. He also held the deed on Greenholm far off into the west, but never had any intention of visiting there again and had given the management of that property over to Robin Floxflower for the assistance he had given to Clooty and Berty; for Twoody had no wish to ever look out into the Elvish lands again.

Once a week or so while they were still young Twoody would take one or two of the children with him up to the house in Hobbiton. His sons, Clooty, Hink and Gondo, loved these trips, for the path which Twoody knew led them straight through the woods of the Green Hill country and they could hear tales of the first settling of the Shire and imagine themselves entering into those empty lands just as those pioneers had done. And then, all of a sudden, the would come through the trees and see the Old Road crossing their path, its span further than their eyes could discover and shrouded in legend moving east and west; toward impossible distances- off into the lands their parents had come from and then away and off into the lands they were still settling. Twoody’s children could not see the Farthing-stone from this point, for Twoody had also made a secret vow to never go to that spot again either. But they heard of their uncles Marcho and Blanco and, indeed, most especially of their mother’s first husband Gondo the Oldbuck, and of the King who had granted them all of this land. “All of us,” he would tell his children. “All hobbits are welcome here and here all hobbits should be treated as family.”

Twoody lived past the Crisis of Year Thirty-six and long enough to participate in his daughter Ganda’s wedding in the following spring. She and her buck had decided to choose the first of Astron as their wedding date to honour Ganda’s mother and the ceremony was held at the Wisher’s Well in Buckland. Ganda wore the same cream-coloured dress with golden lace at the cuff that her mother had worn thirty-eight years before when Twoody saw her come out of the westering Sun and into Celedine’s garden back on Bree hill. With tear-filled eyes he tied a gold and green holdfast across the couple’s clasped hands and thought to himself; “I have never done a better thing in my life than this.”

Theudebald Swiftalk died in his sleep three weeks later in the little spare room he had built for himself in the Assayer’s Office of Buckland. It was generally agreed upon by all who loved him that he died of a broken heart.

iv) Of the Swiftooks

After the Summerdays of Year Twenty-nine “The Landlord” Childebrand Swiftook and his son Reginard were taken north to meet the King’s Judgement in Fornost Erain, that fortress which hobbits called “Norbury”. But they were not the only Swiftooks living in the South-farthing at this time and, while the family was not large, the Swiftooks held all of the Tooklands as described in the treaty of Year Fifteen and also had enormous sway with their Lausa cousins. The Agreement which the Shire Council had made in that year put 32,000 acres of land into the stewardship of “The Landlord and his family” but, with the king’s Judgement still forthcoming, there remained some questions regarding his current rights and, with the lack of documentation regarding the relationships between the Swiftooks and the other hundreds of Lausa who claimed to be their cousins, it could be argued that all of that land was now open for settlement. It must be remembered that the Lausa, unlike the first pioneers to the Shire who had come from the Bree-land, were an illiterate people and those Lausa who had farms or shops or homes of their own held these only on custom and agreement with the Swiftooks; and there were many hobbits in the north of the Shire who had reason to distrust any such agreements.

The Shire Council met hastily on the Eighth day of After-lithe in Year Twenty-nine to consider what should be done with regard to their new southern neighbours. With the absence of Twoody, Alaura and now Horris Bunce, the Council was led principally by Lamorac Bolger, a well-respected grandson of Heidewin. Lamorac was foresighted enough to send Waltraub Thornburrow, whom the Lausa had accepted as an ambassador, back to Sarn Ford with the newly created title of “Warden of the South-farthing”. With the help of Euric Bophin and the other six reeves still in the south it would be Troby’s responsibility to assess the condition and needs of the people there and set a course for those lands and towns to officially become a part of the Shire again. This is a project which was expected to take many years of course, for without maps or any deeds and documents ownership of these properties by the Lausa would be difficult to determine.

But what property, if any, should still belong to the remaining Swiftook family?

Of the Swiftook family itself there remained only a few who lived in the South-farthing. Childebrand’s own wife, formerly Oda Brownlock of Midgewater had died giving birth to a daughter, Menegilda, in Year Four of the Shire-reckoning while Childy’s family still lived far from the Shire. Leufred, the second son of Childebrand, was only two years of age at this time and these younger children were left with Oda’s sister, Teutberga Brownlock in Midgefield. Reginard, the eldest of Oda and Childy’s three children, was twelve at this time and had been sent to live among his mother’s Lausa-relations, the Zarangambas in the great warrens of the Weather hills. There Reginard met and fell in love with Donnamira Galbassi and she became his good-wife in Year Sixteen of the Shire-reckoning. In accordance with Lausa tradition Donnamira only became Reginard’s true-wife when he came into his own lands in the Shire in Year Twenty-one so that she, and all their children would come to be called “Swiftooks” or, as time went by, simply “Tooks”. The certificate of marriage between reginard and Donnamira was one of the few documents to be found in the Swiftook home.

Leufred Swiftook, disgraced and fleeing from Waymeet in his bedclothes, had reached the Took-land town of Whitwell on the morning of the Seventh of After-lithe. There he had learned, very quickly, of the king’s soldiers, and the Hobbits from the North, of the battle at Sarn Ford and, eventually of the arrest and extradition of his father and brother. Whatever ambitions Leufred may have had a day earlier about mustering an army and returning to Waymeet to redress the insults he had suffered were immediately shattered by this news.

It is unclear when the Shire Council or Troby might have become aware of the existence of this second son of the Landlord. With Childebrand and Reginard both gone and so little documentation available regarding their Lausa relations, Leufred, had he been a bit more brave and a bit more cunning, might have stood the opportunity to inherit a large portion of the Tookland. But there are no records of him ever returning to Sarn Ford to join the rest of his family and most rumours seem to suggest that he changed his name and remained in Whitwell for the rest of his days, finding work where he could, drink when it was offered, and freely making the general dissatisfaction he felt about his life known to all.

The Landlord’s other child, the daughter Menegilda, had never come to the Shire and was said to still reside somewhere in Midgewater in Year Twenty-nine.

But Reginard and his wife Mira had seven children: four daughters; Fiorella, Grimalda, Basina and Leubasta as well as three sons; Ingund, the eldest, and twin sons Dreux and Haiduc. The family lived on a very large farm outside of Sarn Ford called Hazelgarth.¹ There was good land there, a well-built and comfortable hole with many rooms, a good well and ample space for the family to grow. In one of his first acts of diplomacy, Troby went there and had the land mapped and registered under the name of “DONNAMIRA TOOK and HER IMMEDIATE FAMILY”. This meant that should Reginard, or even his father the Landlord himself, return from Norbury they would have a home but also, and Troby felt this to be the more important point, his wife and children should not be blamed for the Old Took’s crimes.

But Childebrand and Reginard Swiftook never returned to the Shire.

On the Fifteenth Day of Halimath in Year Twenty-nine of the Shire, little more than two months after they had departed, the two hobbit messengers, Ageric Proudfoot and Merovech Galpsi, rode over the Stonebows bridge to announce the King’s Judgement for all of the Shire-folk to hear. The two young heralds, now dressed in very fine clothing from the king’s court, given their own ponies and even bearing horns and small daggers to signify their rank, carried the official document of the King’s court in this matter. The document consisted of two rather short paragraphs and while it was written into the very next edition of THE SHIRE-RECKONING, the details of its meaning would remain in debate for another three-hundred years:

“THE PEOPLE of THESE LANDS have come to call it THE SHIRE and, ON THE KING’S AGREEMENT, have come to SETTLE, MAINTAIN, DEVELOP and GOVERN THESE LANDS in FAIRNESS and in ACCORDANCE to THEIR LAWS. ALL HOBBIT-FOLK are FREE and WELCOME to ABIDE in THESE LANDS as STEWARDS just as THE AGREEMENT HAS DECLARED.

“BUT THESE LANDS remain an ANCIENT and HALLOWED FIEFDOM of the KINGDOM of ARNOR and therefore remain UNDER THE PROTECTION of the HEIRS OF ELENDIL. The HOBBITS who have been SO HONOURED with the STEWARDSHIP of THESE LANDS are to be CONSIDERED REPRESENTATIVES of the HEIRS OF ELENDIL and therefore MAY NOT ENGAGE IN TRADE, COLLUSION, ESPIONAGE or NEGOTIATIONS with RIVAL NATIONS. To be FOUND GUILTY of DOING SO by EITHER the KING’S COURT or by the CONSENSUS of SHIRE-HOBBITS will result in EXPULSION and EXILE.”

The two hobbit messengers, Ageric and Merovech, had more to say on the details of the King’s Court in Norbury and the decision of the case against the Swiftooks, but this document seemed to indicate that the hobbits of the Shire were indeed free to make their own laws and to render judgement on their peers. Though she had removed herself from public life by this time, Alaura’s prediction from over two decades earlier had come true:

“You’re worried about some petty King Sandheaver-up-from-Dunland but I am worried about something much more insidious; I’m worried about laws which create judges which create taxes which create public officials which create enforcers which creates a people who can no longer do as they please.”

As for Childebrand and Reginard, the heralds of the court claimed that the two had been exiled from the Shire for the remainder of their lives. They were questioned at length and put out of the gate of Fornost with only meagre provisions. Given Childebrand’s advanced age, Horris Bunce had offered to ride with them as far as the Bree-land, but the Swiftook’s denied his kindness. The heralds had nothing further to report on where the Landlord and his son may have gone.

v) Of the Bunces

Horris Bunce returned to the Shire in the month of Blotmath (our November) in Year Twenty-nine. After the trial of the Swiftooks Horris had been invited to winter at Norbury with the King, but when word reached him of his son’s impending wedding the Firebrand graciously took his leave and hurried home.

Bovidine Bunce and Hildegund Bramblethorne were wed on the First Day of Wintring² in Year Twenty-nine on the crest of Faralong Hill. In the filing of the Zaragamba claims to these lands Gormadoc’s widow and children had ceded that one hilltop and its northwestern slope to the couple in accordance with her husband’s last wishes. Gilley and Bovo, busy as they were with all of the organization of settlements in the Far Downs and the trade between there and the Delvings, spent little time preparing a home for themselves in that late summer of Twenty-nine, let alone planning for a wedding. They lived together with the other Zaragambas at first, working hard to make sure that the settlement beside the Road would have everything they might need for an unpredictable first winter in this new land but, as often as not, they were apart and each of them working hard to see to the needs of others.

Their son Clovis tells the story of their betrothal this way in his book, “The Bunces Between the Branduin and the Borderlands”:

On a late summer morning Bovo had taken a small party of Zaragamba bucks out into the wild area south of the Road to teach them woodcraft. His own bow he brought, but the other hobbits were commanded to carry no weapons, no food and only a small skin each for the carrying of fresh water. They were to be gone for four nights together during which Bovo would teach them to recognize the tracks of animals, to move themselves stealthfully and how to live comfortably on what the land affords.

“Yes,” he told his students, “you must learn to read the signs which the wood provides you. See where a large hawk circles or listen to where an owl cries and you’ll find your way to a place where grey squirrels and small rabbits may be found. Look for pastures of tall grasses for brown hares and follow little streams to track Muntjac and water deer. In those places you will also find nuts and berries and fruit trees as they do. Examine the mosses on bark and stone to find the dry places to make your bed and build your nightfires. There’s enough game in these woods to keep your families well-fed through a long winter and that may very well become your responsibilities should any of you show a talent for it. Mind where you put your feet, yet always keep your head up to what’s around you.”

“But these hills are tall and the woods wide,” said one of the younger hobbits. “How will we keep ourselves from becoming lost?”

“By watching your way, of course,” Bovo replied, “and remembering why you should want to return.”

“Have you never been lost, sir?” another youngling asked.

“Oh, yes,” Bovo said, “on many pleasurable occasions. But never once since I’ve found my reason to go back home.”

When the little band of hunters returned to the Zaragamba encampment at Gormadoc’s Hole in the early morning on their fifth day Gilley was away in the Delvings bartering for stores of equipment. Bovo went immediately to Belle and saw to her comfort. He cut a small piece from the mysterious purple ribbon that the cow wore about her neck and, slipping it into his pocket, put down his bow and picked up a shovel.

Four days later when Gilley returned to the Far Downs Bovo was not to be found in the encampment. She went up to Faralong Hill and saw that he was camped there, on the west side of the hilltop, digging out a wide round door and four round windows.

“Yes,” Bovo said, “the design is rough and Clooty has been far too busy to come and give me any advice. I’ve discovered that I have a better eye for a target than the levelling of a floor. Poppy was here with some other of the younger Zaragambas yesterday, which was terribly helpful, but it is a hard climb for his leg until we can cut some kind of a trail up the southern face; I won’t ask him to do that again.

“But the windows and the door are, well, crudely fashioned though they might be, just how I remember them. The well should be over there-”

Despite all of their childhood arguments Gilley found she had nothing to say to all of this and, as was her usual manner throughout all of her long life, trusted instead to action. She dropped the little bag of provisions she was carrying as his voice lay on her and she looked into his eyes, in the shadows of his hair, and feeling again the memory of the spell which they both had shared, she ran into his glistening arms.³

“It is by no means ready yet,” Bovo continued once they each caught their breath, “but you should come see what our friends have brought us.”

And here he led Gilley through the roughly-carved doorway and into a crudely cut first room of their new home. Every attempt had been made to make a level floor, but the room itself did not go back more than ten ranga deep yet and there were many large rocks yet to be carted away. In the center of this dark hole, taking up much more space and importance than the room could seem to afford, was a tall four-postered bed, rather finely-carved, and beside it, wrapped in tarps, were two feather mattresses.

“I thought I remembered it when I first saw it, you know,” Bovo told her. “When we walked into the tent in Waymeet, I thought-”

“And then you slept in it to give a try, you sluggard,” Gilley said.

“Oh. Yes,” he replied. “But only because of exhaustion and by way of examination. Was I wrong?”

“Wrong to return to Waymeet without me that day?” Gilley answered smiling. “Wrong to put me in the position of marshalling the troops whilst you and Youngbuck step off into the adventures which have always been your heart’s fancy? Are you asking me if you were wrong in that?”

“Well, no,” Bovo replied. He did not look apologetic about the points which Gilley had made, but was somewhat disconcerted by her unexpected response. “I think that I was asking you; was I wrong about the bed. Wrong or, worse, presumptuous?”

Gilley smiled broadly, her cheeks the colour of rose-pink. “No, not wrong at all. It is as I remember it too. And if it is comfortable enough for the Princes of Took-land it is certainly good enough for us.”

And then Bovo took from his pocket a little ring that he had made, braided from the purple sash around Belle’s neck and the rich black wood of the tree at Greenholm where the two had their first kiss, for it was said that on that wood had been set a virtue of finding and returning.

When the wedding actually took place over a month later all of the Bunce and Bramblethorn families were in attendance. In many ways this was the very first social gathering of Northern and Southern hobbits in the Shire and it therefore became an occasion of special significance. But afterward the couple lived quietly on Faralong Hill together where they raised seven children and, surprisingly, for they never saw a bull and Belle never wandered, a brood of cattle equal in number.

Horris “Firebrand” Bunce retired from his position as Chief Constable in Year Thirty-seven at the age of sixty. He had thought to do so sooner, but the troubles of the previous summer had made that impossible.

Euric Bophin took the post on for a time, but it eventually was given to Waltraub Thornburrow for all of his important work in developing the South-farthing.

Bovo would have many small adventures in the rest of his life which made him an equally interesting subject for his son’s book, but he rarely spent more than a day away from Gilley and their home on Faralong Hill.

vi) Of the Tooks

While the Zaragamba family was the first to settle the Far Downs on the western edge of the Shire they were not the largest family of Lausa-hobbits who had followed the Swiftooks into the South-farthing in Year Twenty-one. It is difficult to say exactly how many families there were or to find any kind of accounting of their numbers for quite a few reasons, but there were eleven unique family names to be found in the first few years of land registry documents; the Bardagambas, the Elvellons, the Galbassis, the Galpsis, the Gaukrogers, the Goolds, the Labingis, the Langhams, the Lothrans and the Zaragambas. Now we know that this first generation of Lausa were illiterate, but many of the children of those pioneers benefited from the excellent school system that had been established in the Shire so that some family histories of those folk can be found from the end of the Shire’s fourth decade.

Names have always presented us with particularly difficult problems in charting the genealogy of Hobbits and, I am sure, have been a continuing frustration for readers of this tale. But names changed frequently in those early years of the Shire’s development and in Year Twenty-nine in particular. The uniqueness of these Lausa names, and indeed the connection they had to the Swiftook family, provided reason for many of these folk to adopt new names for the registry of their land and their integration to the broader Shire culture. Many deeds and certificates of marriage (for there was a rush of Lausa who were very happy to officially marry their spouses) give us a host of new names in the Shire; Knotwise and Headstrong, Butcher and Underburrow, Clayhanger and Proudbody, Puddlefoot, Dewfoot, Fleetfoot, Brown, Banks, Riverhopper and Bilberry. All of these new names and many more seemed to appear in the records of the South- and West-farthing beginning in Year Twenty-nine.

To the rest of the Shirefolk, and even to themselves, all of these Lausa-folk were more generally referred to as Tooks.

Although the immediate family of the Old Took living in the Shire was quite small, all of these latecomers would share the relationship to that name and so would their children for many generations. Perhaps it was a geographical reference, for all of them did indeed “come out of the Tookland”. In later generations, as these hobbits moved further north and into the Green Hill country, the very name of the Tookland would move with them and in less than one hundred years time, when everyone had forgotten the name “Sarehole” and only called it the Great Smials, when the story you have read here had become a history of rumour and the feud between these two families had become that history’s legend, Buckland itself was referred to as the Tookland and for the families of the hobbits who had originally settled there that naming carried a deeper meaning.

By the time of Bilbo Baggins, born in Year Twelve hundred and Ninety of the Shire-reckoning, the Tooks were the largest family west of the Brandywine (formerly the Stonebows) bridge. They had won wide acclaim and fortune and, indeed even held the generational post of Thain in the Shire for many hundreds of years. They had been Mayors and Commanders, a President and even an Ambassador to the West. The culture and the industriousness of hobbits within the Shire was, for more than a thousand years, advanced by the clear-headedness, bold adventurism and willingness for hard work which Gormadoc, his brothers and their families, as well as so many other Lausa-folk, those “latecomers”, brought with them in Year Twenty-one.

But these Tooks were still in some ways looked down upon by earlier settlers of the Shire; as if the taint of their relationship to the Landlord Swiftook had made their settling of the South-farthing seem sneaky somehow. They had, just as the other pioneers, left the relative safety which they had known in a dangerous place for the hope of walking in sunlit fields they might call their own. They were certainly accounted as brave and adventurous, but in later years of the Shire’s comfortable isolation those qualities were not held in such high regard and those hobbits who exhibited them were branded “Tookish.”

There were many marriages between the Lausa-folk and some of the other families of the East- and West-farthings. Waltraub Thornburrow married Donnamira Swiftook’s eldest daughter Fiorella. Poppy Noakesburrow married Gormadoc’s daughter Fallon. Twoody and Alaura’s youngest daughter Deidre married Jago Took (formerly of the Galbassi family) and together they were the first Tooks to live in the Great Smials. And so for generations to come the “Tookish” nature would spread both in legend and in Shire bloodlines and come to bring with it an unusual streak of adventurousness, curiosity and daring. By the time of Bilbo Baggins to be branded a “Took” (assuming this was not one’s actual name) was to be accused of holding a disregard for respectability, a dangerous penchant to wander and a reckless courage that other hobbits thought of as foolhardy.

All of which were undeniable traits of Theudebert Youngbuck.

vi) Of Youngbuck

Berty did not leave the Shire in Year Twenty-nine as he had planned, nor in Year Thirty, nor indeed for the rest of his life. He never married and therefore was the last of the Bucks in the West-farthing. But for the next seven years of his life he went on many adventures in the far west and the north of the Shire and was regarded as a great pioneer and map-maker. Bovo joined him on some of his journeys in the spring of Year Thirty, but after the birth of Bovo and Gilley's first child, Gormadoc, Berty and his faithful pony Cinders travelled alone. He was still called the Youngbuck by all who knew him, but there were many who referred to him as “Buck the Wanderer” and the name suited him well in his young life.

Berty travelled far and made excellent charts and descriptions of the western boundaries of the Shire as he interpreted it from the ancient Númenórean maps that he and his friends had found in the tent at Waymeet. From the Far Downs to the North Moors, from the North Moors east and to the Baranduin river, in the seven years of his errantry Berty created the documents and descriptions which would allow Shire-hobbits to step away from their overcrowding communities along the Road and create new homes for themselves in accordance with the King’s Agreement.

The old settlement that the Zaragambas had abandoned south of the Chalk Hill, Nobottle, would blossom again a few leagues north of Michel Delving. There was a clear and cool river there which fed out of the moors and down to Needlehole (where the Caton’s kept their pony farm) and then, eventually into Hobbiton-by-the-Water. Above Hobbiton (as folk had begun to call it) there was the Bindbole wood where much of the lumber came from to feed this northern expansion. This industry gave rise to the new communities of Longcleeve, Greenfields and Oatbarton. All of the lands that the Oldbuck had never explored north of the Road were charted, described and made open for development by his son Theudebert.

Berty did not go far into the south. It is recorded that after his meeting with Twoody in Waymeet he and his other companions went to the Far Downs to attend the funeral rituals for their friend Gormadoc Zaragamba. But the very day after Berty, accompanied by both Bovo and Gilley, departed to ride the old Broken road south of Waymeet and into the Tookland. Both Bovo and Gilley worried that their friend wished to go further and find Reginard Swiftook and this may indeed have been true; we have no way of knowing the Youngbuck’s intentions. But by the time the three reached Whitwell they were given news of how the Swiftooks Childebrand and Reginard had been taken into custody by the King’s soldiers and that the Tookland was now open for legitimate settlement by the Lausa.

'I will go no further south, then,' he said to the hobbits of Whitwell, 'for it embarrasses me that it was anger and wrath that drew there. I am trying to learn that it is a better comfort to let those feelings go than to act upon them.

'But there is land,' he continued, 'good and plentiful land west and north of here now being settled by your own people, the Zaragambas. And they are my cousins too, just as many of your northern neighbours have distant kin amongst the Lausa.'

And here, or so it is said, Youngbuck drew the Dragonsword of Priamus Swiftwalk and held it aloft for all to see.

'This is the sword of Priamus the Walker,' he said. 'Grandfather of my father. I took it from a Took and it comes back, or so I hope, into the service old Priamus had meant for it; to lead and not to command.

'Come west with us!' he said boldly and shaking the Dragonsword violently over his head, 'Come west, for the opportunity you have been promised and to which this sword may still lead you. We shall not be two separate folk any longer; only hobbits living and working well together.'

And so, just as his father Gondo and his great-grandfather Priamus had done, Berty led some of the boldest hobbits of his generation to settle in the far reaches of the Shire. He would never stay in one settlement for long and was constantly off to scout some new location or escort some small group of hobbits to their new homes. Unlike Gondo, or Twoody or Alaura for that matter, Berty lived in those seven years as a guide to all and not a “Townfather” to any; he did not return to the Buckland during these years nor did he claim any spot in all of these lands for himself.

Whatever may have caused Berty not to leave the Shire in Year Twenty-nine it did not curb his restless need to wander. He wrote often to his friends Bovo and Gilley, to his uncles Twoody and Clooty, and visited them when he could. But he came seldom to the East-farthing and then would not travel any farther south than Budgeford or the Stonebows bridge. Remembering the names of stars from his dream, Berty did indeed learn how to work the device that master Undundol had given him and made a careful study of them which he would one day turn into a book. But in the seven years of his errantry Theudebert Youngbuck never returned to visit his family at the Great Smials and he never saw his father nor his mother ever again.

vii) Of the Southern Sickness

While the Shire had become largely self-sufficient within the first two decades of settlement there still remained a good trade and steady contact with the neighbouring peoples of the Bree-land. Many Shire-hobbits still had family there living on or around Bree hill of course, and after trade was cut off at the southern ford in Year Twenty-nine there was much traffic over the Stonebows bridge and into the Bree-land for over three hundred years or more. So it was that the Crisis of Year Thirty-six was first heard in the Shire as “bad news out of Bree”, an expression that would last into Bilbo Baggins' own days and beyond.

During the cold winter of 1635 of the Third Age (Year Thirty-four in the reckoning of Shirefolk) far away in the east and in the cursed land of Rhûn a Great Plague began. Those counted among the Wise in Middle-earth later came to believe that this was caused by the return of the Dark Lord Sauron who was growing as a deepening Shadow over the forest of Greatwood. How it spread was unknown, for the world had never experienced such a destruction through disease that any could remember. Infection passed from Rhûn into the lands of Rhovanian, where very ancient Men still lived. But these people had little skills in medicine, and it is said that infection killed half of the population of these men and their horses and turned once proud lords of great mead halls into chieftains of nomadic tribes scrambling for what little resources were left in the wake of the Plague’s destruction.

Eventually the Plague passed south into the numerous cities and towering fortresses of Gondor. If those descendants of the Sea-Kings had better knowledge of healing it availed them little; for many hundreds of thousands were recorded dead and many old family lines were lost in the tragic year of 1636 of the Third Age. The King Telemnar was killed along with his children and people abandoned the capital at Osgiliath. The lands of Ithilien were emptied and the watch over Mordor was broken. Even the White Tree itself succumbed to illness and died in Minas Anor and many of the few folk who lived beyond the Year of Illness fell into despair at the thought of the death of the Tree of Gondor.

Then north by sea the Plague came, north and into the land of Eriador. The old garrison port of Tharbad became completely deserted and in the lands of Minhiriarth, where some Shire-hobbits had lived not forty years before, so very many folk died that it remained a desolate place for another thousand years. In the old kingdom of Cardolan, now but a remnant of the three petty kingdoms of Arnor, the last prince died and was placed in the Barrow-downs and the city was finally emptied.

And so, in the springtime of Year Thirty-six, the Great Plague had come to the borders of the Shire.

Upon hearing news of the disease the Shire Council, still under the directorship of Lormac Bolger, called its members to an emergency session, yet so great was the panic that only six members were in attendance. It was generally agreed upon that borders should be closed and that public contact should be kept to a minimum, but the members were at a loss as to how to implement such strategies. It was at this time that Twoody was suggested for the new office of Shire-president so that emergency decisions could be made without committee meetings. He agreed to this office and left Buckland for his residence in Hobbiton, hoping to keep his children safer through this distance. Horris Bunce was still Chief Constable at this point and though he could no longer ride through the land as he once had he saw to securing the borders. At the Stonebows bridge, the main point of entrance to the Shire, additional Bridge-wardens were recruited and posted around the clock. Another eighty hobbits were sworn in as “sub reeves” (eventually called “Shirriffs”) to patrol the roads from settlement to settlement and see that all citizens were safe and provided for and were keeping themselves properly tucked inside their own holes. The southern ford had been shut since Year Twenty-nine, but a guard was set there by Warden Thornburrow. All trade was cut off and no one was allowed to pass into the Shire without express command of the king. But despite all these precautions the Great Plague, which Shirefolk called the “Southern Sickness”, arrived in the month of Astron.

According to all records and histories which have ever been uncovered regarding the Third Age the people of the Shire bolstered themselves well against the Plague. While the higher literacy rate within the Shire gives us a more detailed record of death in Year Thirty-six it also gives us a more intimate description of the tragedy. Two in ten of the Shirefolk died of the Southern Sickness in the summer of Year Thirty-six and for a community made up mostly of large families this is a staggering amount of casualties. With the reopening of the Tookland and the integration of the Lausa-folk in Year Twenty-nine it is believed that the population of the Shire may have grown to twenty thousand hobbits by the time plague hit. All records which have been found indicate that less than a month later over four thousand hobbits were dead, many of them young children.

It is difficult to record this part of the tale, a story intended to be about two families and the role they played in the establishment and history of the Shire, without spending time on the scale of a tragedy which enfolded the whole community. Many of the places and hobbits we have encountered in the West-farthing did in fact remain untouched by the Southern Sickness. The quick actions in preventative measures taken under Twoody’s direction kept the disease from spreading much past Frogmorton. The “shirrifs” did the hard work of keeping people off the roads and shut into their homes and if the Sickness had made its way to the more densely populated towns of Whitwell and the Develings then the percentages of death would have certainly been much higher. Youngbuck himself rode through much of the North-farthing alerting those new settlers to avoid contact. But these new settlements, just like the farms around the Bridgefields and the scattered holes between the Budgeford bridge and south past the Stockbrook, from the Baranduin river to the Green hill country, all this land was made up of multi-generational and extended families with neighbouring uncles and aunts and cousins. Many of them could sustain themselves on their own property and with their own gardens for a month or two, but if illness came into one of these isolated homes many hobbits would die trying to care for one another. Holes were shuttered and white rags were hung on doorknobs to indicate a sickhouse; black rags to indicate that all had died and their bodies needed burial.

Tragedies such as a plague running through a community are different from calamities such as fires and floods. Whether we prepare for them or not they do not happen all at once and we seldom can face them as a community together. The sufferings of the Shire-hobbits in Year Thirty-six was very much the tragedy of watching members of their own families die while remaining powerless to help and this was, unlike fire or flood, a very individual struggle. How do we measure what this kind of trauma does to any family? How can we say that one family's actions or their loss are the more illustrative story of the plague than others? It is true that the two families of Gondo and Twoody had much to do with the management of this calamity and that they each suffered great loss from it. And how that loss affected the future generations of Bucks and Tooks is part of the reason for the telling of this tale. But the Southern Sickness in Year Thirty-six was the most tragic event in all of the Shire’s long and peaceful history and every hobbit who had family in that part of the world at that time suffered their own private catastrophe.

There were outbreaks in Budgeford and Stock first and so no one could say how the Southern Sickness entered the Shire. Symptoms began with a fever and chills, often accompanied by headaches and other body pains. These would last for a day or two and almost no hobbit living in the eastern part of the Shire managed to avoid some mild version of the disease. Then those aches and maladies would vanish and many of the hobbits so afflicted could nurse themselves back to health. But for others these symptoms would return in a few days and, if they did, this almost certainly would end in death.⁴

Having ridden his pony Cinders far throughout the North-farthing and warning the hobbits of those new settlements in Scary, Oatbarton and Longcleeve, the Youngbuck found himself in Budgeford when the Sickness arrived. Budgeford, on both sides of the bridge, was the largest community of hobbits in the East-farthing and was famous for its markets and shops and publichouses. When Berty got there plans were being laid to close the doors of the Budgeford bridge and place a guard around the town to keep other hobbits from entering. He argued that much of the goods, the meats and vegetables, the cakes and the breads, the wines and the ales and the juices, should be given freely to all the people of the surrounding area so that they could shelter themselves and not risk contact. Lormac Bolger, who was head of his large clan since his father Rangfred had died two years before, immediately agreed and only the barest of rations were kept by each of the shopowners. Though the idea came from Youngbuck, the phrase “generous as a Bolger” soon replaced “fancy as a Bolger” as high praise among hobbits.

Berty contracted the Sickness while helping the folk of Budgeford on the Thirteenth day of Astron.

The Oldbuck had made the new home for his family, which he also called Sarehole, on the north side of the Shirebourn river. It was in no way as large and as comfortable a dwelling as the old Sarehole in Buckland had been and not nearly so self-sustaining a farm as his friends the Mugworts had made for themselves in Longbottom some twenty-five miles to the south. Longbottom did not have many settlers yet, but the area between the Stockbrook and the Shirebourne, the Marish as Gondo had named it some thirty years before, had begun to crowd up with a few farms and the start of towns on the road to Stock. So when word of an impending plague travelled into that part of the South-farthing Gondo and Alaura decided that the family should go further south to stay with the Mugworts as they did every year on the Summerday holiday. Alaura would take the children there herself while Gondo, still very much an authority even in his retirement, would ride to Stock and help with the isolation plans in that community. They parted from one another at the door of Sarehole on Tenth day of Astron, nine days after their thirty-fourth wedding anniversary.

By the time Gondo reached the village of Stock the Southern Sickness had already arrived. Stock was a waterside town with many of its houses built of wood and along riverside quays; it was unlike other hobbit dwellings in the Bridgefields or Budge, Hobbiton or Buckland or the Delvings. Hobbits did not have their own little holes to shelter in and so the illness tore its way rapidly through the community of folks who shared much common space as well as water and other resources. But here Gondo made one of his characteristically quick and insightful decisions; he organized a train of wagons and ponies, carts and barrows with all of the hobbits who were still uninfected and able-bodied, paying particular attention to the children and their mothers, and planned to drive them forth from the town on the very next morning.

'Bring no comforts and few provisions,' the Oldbuck said. 'You’ll regret the space you have wasted on the one and must learn to survive on less of the other. You that are parents must know already that the healthy children of this community must leave it now while they can. You that are unwell must be separated from them to ensure their future. I am no sage nor physician, but I tell you with all of my heart that if you do not do the hardest job a parent may encounter, if you do not send your children away to meet their future, then they may well have none.'

Stock had much less of a governmental organization than many other towns of the Shire, but it was generally agreed that Nordbert Button, owner of the Golden Perch and Gondo’s friend from their childhood days in the Bree-land, was the closest thing to a town officiant. It is recorded in some journals that he was himself quite unwell at this meeting and kept a great distance from the others who spoke. This was his response:

'There is no town if there are no children. But neither are we a town if we can’t even walk out onto our decks and greet our neighbours. If we are so afraid that a handshake or a morning’s talk of the weather might cause death and calamity, how can we possibly be a town of hobbits? How do we tell our children they may not play together, they may not go outside into the sunshine and they must not, most of all, say hello to hobbits which they meet?

'My own son Heribert,' he continued, 'is but nineteen years of age and, bless me with stars above, he is hale and hearty and well, unmarked as yet by the Sickness. I love him dearly but cannot bear to have him near me nor put him at risk. What parent would be willing participant in the death of their own child?'

And so on the morning of the Twelfth day of Astron in the Year Thirty-six one hundred and twenty-seven uninfected hobbits, a group made largely of children, departed the village of Stock. Nordbert’s son Heribert was in charge of this mission and they were being sent south by Gondo to occupy his own home of Sarehole. It was a convenient safe house, for Sarehole was only ten to twelve miles away with good clear water from the Shirebourn and the few nearby settlements were already deserted or shuttered. Food would need to be brought to them within the next few weeks, for it was still springtime and the gardens at Sarehole would not yet yield fruits or vegetables. But the hobbits of Stock, even the younglings, were clever fishermen and might sustain themselves for sometime longer out of the river. And so it was that Sarehole became a safehouse to all the unafflicted people of Stock and Gondo, who had been away for most of his own son’s life, had managed to save a generation of younglings.

Yet he himself contracted the infection while in Stock and could go no further to the aid of anyone else for a time.

There were twenty-seven Mugworts in Longbottom when Alaura arrived there on the Twelfth day of Astron with her four children and no one, as of yet, showed signs of infection. The Longbottom Leaves, as the Mugwort farmland home was called, was well away from regular roads and easily twenty-five miles and more from the nearest Shire settlement. Alaura and the children reached this place safely and, almost immediately, she sought news of the rest of the Shire. She heard that Twoody had been offered the position of Mayor or Shire-president and wrote a quick commentary in his support. This happened on the thirteenth day of Astron and that was the last she or the Mugworts saw of travelers or messengers. Two days later Moschia Mugwort, Dursdale’s wife, took ill.

At first Alaura could not manage the social containment of the epidemic well. When reports had come of Twoody managing things far off in Hobbiton she had it in her mind to leave the children with the Mugworts just as Gondo had done and go north to help with the management of things. Feeling that these four children were safe in the isolation of Longbottom Leaves, she felt a great desire to go off on her own, to ride the path from Sarehole to the Great Smials as she had done for the past seven summers and see her children in Buckland again. On the Fourteenth day of Astron, Dursdale Mugwort, no more able to argue against Alaura’s willfulness than anyone, agreed to give her a pony and provisions as long as she would agree to avoid anyone who she might chance to meet along the way. Moreover, there were three young cousins of Dursdale’s who could not be refused; Magneric, Serdic and Unroch Mugwort they were, young and ready for adventure as any hobbit may have ever been. Together they would take what supplies they thought may be needed and escort her northwest through the open land.

But then on the Fifteenth day of Astron, as they were scheduled to leave, Moschia showed signs of the illness and all the plans were changed.

Alaura moved from her disappointment in waiting into the speed of decisions and actions that she had always been best at. Before ponies were unbuckled she sent the young cousins west with their provisions and told them to establish a camp by the Baranduin river, some three miles away from the farm and any of the livestock. They were instructed to set the camp and gather as much firewood as possible but be gone from that place before nightfall. She then put Moschia on her own pony without time for change of dress or goodbyes.

'Food for a time we have,' she told Dursdale, standing apart from him and all of the folk who had come to watch the party depart and were now faced with greater problems, 'and should it be just the two of us, that food will suffice. Stay away, no matter what other thoughts might consume you!

'But if more of us should come sick,' Alaura said gravely, 'send them immediately and do not hesitate hoping for someone to escort them. Do not send more food with them! We cannot trust to foods. But send rags as you can and, most importantly, vinegars! Go now, Dursdale, and top all of your beer barrels, for vinegar will needed for cleaning rather than beer for forgetting.'⁵

And so Alaura took her friend Moschia away from the children and down to the Branduin river. There she set up the very first hospital for the sick and dying that we find anywhere in the history of Middle-earth and it was called, in that time and in many tales after, Fairheart’s Home. If the Númenóreans of Arnor or Gondor had taken a similar approach to the management of the Great Plague in 1636 of the Third Age, if they had set up sickhouses as hospitals, we do not know. Records are lost in both the North and the South Kingdoms. But, upon seeing the affliction of a friend, Alaura went immediately to work to save all of those around her, much as Gondo had done up in Stock. In doing so she forsook her opportunity to return to Buckland and her children there; she went clear-eyed from that desire into the protection of others.

As the Shire grew and grew in later years and, by Bilbo’s time, settlement of Longbottom became dedicated to the production of pipeweed, Fairheart’s Home remained a wide path of open meadows which no one dared to disturb or replant. There, and nowhere else in the Shire, grew Star Jasmine, and it gave a pleasing scent when wind came up from the river, but an acidic aroma when the winds were still.

Many of the Mugworts of Longbottom grew sick over the next week, and all of those afflicted were sent forth to Fairheart’s Home, including two of her own children. Astra and Glorfindel both came sick in the following week as did fifteen others of the Mugwort family. Only seven of these died under Alaura’s care, her own children also surviving.

The nature of the illness, hitting hard as it did once it was contracted, abating for a time after a few watchful days and then coming back with lethal complications for an unlucky number of those hobbits who had suffered it, did mean that the Southern Sickness often ran its course in the isolated communities of the Shire in two to three weeks time; those hobbits who had suffered, and we do not know if this is true of Men in the south, became immune once the first ordeal of symptoms were past.

Up in the village of Stock Gondo came through the infection and lived; but nearly sixty percent of the infected folk in that town, including Gondo’s friend Nordbert Button, died of the Sickness.

In Budgeford, also hit early, the percentage of deaths was somewhat lower but the number of deaths in this densely populated area was greater- perhaps seven hundred hobbits of that village died of the Southern Sickness. Most of the Bolgers however, now living north of the Budgeford bridge, survived. Youngbuck was among them.

The illness did not come south of Longbottom and so Waltraub Thornburrow and his new family of Tooks survived. It did not move into the Buckland or Hobbiton, and so Twoody and all of his children by Alaura who still resided at the Great Smials were saved and never contracted the Sickness. Buckland and Sarn Ford, Whitwell and the Delvings, even out in the Far Downs, hobbits continued to shelter for two more months to make sure the Sickness had run its course. If it ever came into the Elvish lands west of the Shire there are no reports.

But Alaura Fairheart died beside the banks of the Branduin river on the Twenty-third day of the month of Astron in Year Thirty-six. She had saved all that she could, sending them back to the farm of Longbottom Leaves even after she herself had become sorely afflicted. Two weeks after the Sickness had run its course this last letter to the Mugworts was found with her:

It must be burned, all of it, Dursdale. It is the best way to ensure that the illness cannot return. I am sorry to report this, but I have spared you the grief of this precaution and have already done so with the bodies of Angilbert, Sedric, Unroch, Walaric, Camelia, Audovera and dear little Basina. Only my own wasted self remains; I care nothing for what is left and only that no other among us should come to harm.

I cannot know what has happened to Gondo but I cannot imagine him dying. I thought it to be so once and have promised myself to never underestimate him in this manner again. Remind him of all that we have discovered together.

If Twoody yet lives, and I believe he is much too clever to allow it to be otherwise, remind him of all that we have built together.

Twoody has taken great care of my older children but I’m afraid that you and Moschia must look after the younger ones for me; Gondo, I fear, will become restless again.

Remind all of my children, all of them, that they are the greatest accomplishment of my life and the truest flame of my heart.

ix) Of the Times After

With much of the loss from the Southern Sickness behind them in the late summer of Year Thirty-six the inhabitants of the Shire began to rebuild. Many small farms, new settlements and town businesses in the East-farthing had been lost and every effort possible was made to assign the deeds of these properties to surviving family members, but this was not an easy task. Many of the Lausa-folk from the South-farthing moved north at this time and the fuller integration of them into older Shire communities began.

Theudebald Swiftalk remained Shire-president for three more months after the Southern Sickness had run its course. As soon as it was considered safe he returned to his little room at the Assayer’s Office in Buckland to be near to his children. He was devastated to hear of Alaura’s death and for the remaining year of his life transferred most of his duties to Berty. He died on the Twenty-fourth of Astron in Year Thirty-seven of the Shire-reckoning, a year and a day after Alaura’s death.

Horris “the Firebrand” Bunce surrendered his position as Chief Constable during the Summerday feast in Year Thirty-six. He hung the old blackened axe above his mantle and settled into his home in Buckland with his wife who was by all reports happy to finally have him home. He could no longer travel far, but for the remaining twenty-three years of his life was glad when Bovo and Gilley returned to Buckland on the Summerdays bringing his grandchildren for a visit.

Euric Bophin became Chief Constable after Horris, but eventually passed the job on to Waltraub Thornburrow, Warden of the South-farthing. The communities of the South-farthing were being built quite quickly and new roads were under construction from Sarn Ford to Stock and Whitwell to Waymeet. When Twoody died Euric and his wife Ermenberga left their temporary home at the Great Smials to settle into their own comfortable hole in Buckland. Auntie Ermie ran the Buckland schoolhouse and postal service from the same building Alaura had for many more years of her life.

The children of Twoody and Alaura were mostly grown by then, the youngest one Deidre having turned twenty-one in Year Thirty-eight after Twoody’s death. Like the eldest daughter Gandalina, all of the children took up their own residence in the chain of hills that had come to be called the Great Smials and lived happily there raising children of their own. Deidre was the first to marry a Took, one Wibert Took who was a distant relative of the Zaragambas, and that was the first time that the name of a Took held a deed in the Buckland.

Alaura’s younger children who she had in her second marriage to Gondo did indeed live with the Mugworts for many years. After the Oldbuck had recovered from the Southern Sickness we know that he went immediately to Longbottom, arriving on the Twenty-sixth of Astron, three days after Alaura’s death. But we have no accounting of what was said between Gondo and his children, or even the surviving Mugworts, at this time. We also know that he then took his children with him and returned to Sarehole in the Marish. There they found that all one hundred and thirty-seven of the children from Stock had survived and remained uninfected. Oldbuck then prepared the group to return to Stock, taking his own children with them as well. It has been told in later tales that he locked the door to Sarehole at this time and gave the key to his oldest son of this second marriage and said this:

“There is a deed for this land, Glorfindel, and it resides in the good hands of your uncle Twoody up in Buckland. It is signed by your mother and I both and placed alongside the document of our marriage. That document and this key are your own and no one may ever keep them from you. This place, Sarehole, is land, Glorfindel, and no mortal can truly own land. But the memory of a home here built by your father and your mother is yours for as long as you may live. Let that memory last.”

Glorfindel was seven years old at that time.

Little or nothing is known of what happened to the Oldbuck after he escorted the children back to the town of Stock. Moschia Mugwort, consumed by a proper sentiment of kindness and responsibility went to Stock with her nephew Magneric the following month. There she found all of Alaura and Gondo’s children working at the Golden Perch alongside the new owner, young Heribert Button. When she heard the tale Glorfindel told her she took the children with her to Sarehole in the Marish. There they found the door still locked and the house itself undisturbed. The only sign of change which they found was that the strange boat-like device which Oldbuck had been building nearby the front door and over a mile away from the river had been burned, its gangplanks and hull destroyed and only the skeletal frame of its gunwale remained.

So it was that Glorfindel, the twin brothers Ladus and Fortinus along with little Astra came to grow up with the Mugworts on the farm of Longbottom Leaves. All of them came to know their famous parent through the tales told by the Mugworts and the Buttons, the Thornburrows and other admirers, but only Glorfindel had been old enough to hold the memory of them in his mind and the thing which Oldbuck had said before the door at Sarehole lasted with him for the whole of his life.

In that same year of Twoody’s death Berty was given the title of Shire-president and he finally returned to Buckland and the Great Smials. His brothers and sisters welcomed him back and, while Berty himself never married, he told his nieces and nephews many tales of the lands he had explored and even showed them how to read the stars. Though he was now “master of the Great Smials” Berty chose not to live in that hall under the first big hill where his father had dug the first hobbit hole of the Shire thirty-eight years before. Instead he took what small comforts had been left to him by his uncle Twoody and moved into the second hill of the chain, the one in which Twoody himself had stayed and put into Berty’s name years before.

It is said that Youngbuck put Twoody’s old walking stick and the sword of Priamus the Walker into the main hall of the first hill alongside the charcoal drawing in the oval frame that was the last self-portrait of his father, Gondo the Wanderer. He also collected letters and correspondence from anyone who knew his parents, all three of them, and often paid what seemed to some hobbits extremely high prices for any artifacts related to the founding of the Shire. He built additional shelves into all of the rooms under the first hill to display all of this material and spent the remaining decades of his life in the collection and cataloguing of the Great Smials without ever spending another night there.

If Berty ever named the second hill of the Great Smials we have no accounting.

Yet in two hundred years time the name of Buckland would be forgotten and all of the surrounding area became part of the Tookland.

By the days of Goldilocks Gardener’s marriage to Faramir Took in the Year Fourteen Hundred and Sixty-three of the Shire-reckoning all seven hills of the Great Smials had become a repository for history which all hobbits cherished and respected yet few ever had occasion to visit.

x) Three Letters

Of the many artifacts found at the uncovering of the Great Smials in the year 1961 of our present age there are three letters which best close our tale of these founding "Townfathers" of the Shire.

The first comes from the Oldbuck and seems to have been written after the Crisis of Year Thirty-six and the death of Alaura Fairheart. When Hincmar Swiftalk died in Year Fifteen of the Shire-reckoning Gondo was still missing and presumed dead. While there are many drawings and maps which have survived from Gondo’s hand there are not many letters which have been discovered. Though he played a very important role as Townfather of the Shire in its earliest days, Gondo’s journals, like his grave, have never been discovered. But in one of the few letters to Theudebert Youngbuck which have been found, Gondo had this to say of Hincmar Swiftalk, the old hobbit who had raised him:

I was not present for you when your granduncle died and now, with the new tragedy in our families, I am reminded all the more of how important it is for us to speak together of our loss. You will not speak to me of your Mother, Berty, and I shall do my best to respect that. I have no words which may offer you peace that I myself cannot find. But your granduncle has been gone for twenty-one years now and we, meeting as we did, have never spoken of that kind hobbit which I knew and you were too young to know as well.

Will you listen? Will you read further? I cannot know. You have never responded to my letters.

But I have heard that you were taught to admire your granduncle very much and it may be that hearing how I felt about old Hincmar will help you through his loss as well as comfort us both in this new and difficult grief we now share.

He was old when I first met him, you know, or so we all thought at the time. I worked as a sweep-up in the stables then, still a fawn and too young and short to groom a pig let alone a pony. He came in one morning and caught me drawing. ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ he asked.

‘The Road through town and into the West, sir,’ I told him. ‘See, here is your own inn, the Clocktower and then the Hedge-gate. And over here is the Winding Lane up the Hill. And here is the East gate.’

‘Yes, I see all that,’ he said to me, ‘and your drawing of these things is quite surprisingly good. But, tell me, why is there so much room on your paper which goes North and West and South?’

‘Well, because we don’t know what’s there sir, do we?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps you know of folks who have traveled there, but I do not.’

‘A few dwarves and soldiers whom I’ve met,’ he told me, ‘but no hobbits that I’ve ever heard of. There are mountains, they say, to the West and the North, and the very ends of the world are beyond them. Longer, some say, than your extra paper can find room for.’

I looked up at him with great seriousness then (or so he later reminded me on several occasions) and simply said, ‘Well, I shall need to find more paper, sir. It may sound silly, but it seems to me that until we discover more of the West and more of the North we will be very much alone in this little land of hills and fields.’

It was the very next day that your granduncle Hincmar took me from the stables and hired me to work at the inn. Twoody and I were friends already and of the same age, so this change in position made our friendship even stronger. Twoody taught me to write of course, but it was at your granduncle’s suggestion. Twoody and I were younger than his other brothers and so had very light responsibilities in the mornings, leaving us our evenings to roam about freely and create havoc among our neighbours. And during all those years Hincmar was pushing me to continue my drawing and indulging me in my reckless ramblings in and around the Bree-land. He would send me on silly little deliveries all about Bree-hill, always asking me to make maps and accounts of what I saw along the way.

And it was he who first encouraged me to cross to the Stonebows bridge, he who suggested that Twoody and I should go north to meet the King, and he who invested in and encouraged the settlement of the Shire though, as I understand it, he came there only a few times himself. If he was like a grandfather to you, and as a father to me, Hincmar Swiftalk might also very rightly be called the Good-father of the Shire itself.

He was one of the kindest and most gentle hobbits that I have ever known, with a firm hand and a cunning eye and a laugh which could catch on like a house afire. There have been many warm nights when, sitting beside the hearth with a small mug of beer, I cherish my last memories of him and feel the regret of his passing. He died most peacefully I’ve been told and, after all, he was always an old hobbit even when I was a young one. I regret not having more memories of him in the lonely days which lay before me and, moreover, I regret that he never heard my own tales of seeing those distant mountains at the end of the world. For your granduncle had much to be proud of, Berty, but he took his greatest pride from what he had done for his family.

I cannot make the same claim. I did not know of your birth and I did not meet you until, being set in your own ways and perhaps those ways being too much like my own, your feet were already set upon your path. I have no regrets of our meeting, Berty, but only of the time before which I did not give to you. “Si peliannen i vâd na dail lîn” I thought at the time of our meeting and should say to you now, my son, for it means “now the way is spread before your feet.” Your granduncle Hincmar made this opportunity for me without knowing such grand language. I hope that you may remember that anyone we meet can set our feet on an important path if we can but listen to our heart’s own calling.

This letter, found in the excavation of the Great Smials, may give us a greater understanding of Oldbuck and all the grief which life had brought him in the face of all the adventures he had.

But the saddest thing which we know about this letter is that it was found on a shelf in an envelope addressed to “Youngbuck -by way of the Great Smials in Buckland” and all evidence indicates that this envelope was never opened, its contents remained unread and Youngbuck very likely never knew the regret which the letter expressed.

Theudebald Swiftalk had altered the deeds for the seven hills of the Great Smials on the Second day of After-lithe in Year Twenty-nine. This was the very next day after the meeting that he and Alaura had with Oldbuck. He placed copies of these new deeds on file at the Assayer’s Office in Buckland but also sent another copy through the Post Office in Hobbiton-by-the-Water as a letter for the Shire Council dated on the Fifth of that month. Overtly the letter deals, in its first part, with the return of Oldbuck, a hobbit formerly presumed dead, and, in the second part, the rightful surrender of his property to the children who had been living there all of their lives. But within the later parts of this letter are some of Twoody’s best arguments for faith in community and the optimism of trust between all hobbits.

... the return of the Oldbuck to our Shire, unexpected as it is, should be seen by all of you as fortunate. The time he has spent among our immortal neighbours has made him wiser and, from what I can see, less reckless. Although his return does create injurious personal consequences for myself and for my family, it comes at a time of crisis in which that new-found wisdom of his will definitely be to the aid of all Shire-hobbits and I believe he has already turned his attention to our troubles in the South-farthing. The solutions which I have offered in the past, the granting of the Tooklands for the forgiveness of debt, have proven to be hasty and ill-considered and brought us no lasting peace. Instead we are a Shire divided and union between all Shire-hobbits grows more doubtful.

But I have made all the difficult decisions of my life in order to preserve such unions. Gondo has always been my friend no matter what the intervening twenty-five years of our life have brought and Childebrand will always be my brother no matter his current transgressions nor those of his past. I will forebear what I must forebear not just for the sake of a friend and a brother lost but for the hope of a union between us preserved. And so we must all, as governors and as individuals, proceed with caution not for love of what we have but for protection of what we may lose. I am learning to accept errors when they are shown to be errors and to adopt new views all the faster when my heart tells me that these views are true.

What will be done with the hobbits of the Tookland must be your own fate to decide; for now I must resign myself from service for a time to see to the repercussions within my own family. Perhaps the Oldbuck will aid you in this where I cannot. Perhaps the King’s soldiers will bring more soldiers to our land and the turmoil that has simmered for years between hobbits in the north and the south of the Shire will again become little more than a side argument in a greater war of Men. This would be a tragic ending for all that we free hobbits have tried to build for ourselves in a land which we hoped to keep free of wars.

For the time we have now I would caution you all to beware of rashness. Do not judge all the people of the Tookland and we have in the past judged their leader, my brother Childebrand. Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward and make wise choices.

The hobbits of the Tookland have lived there for more than eight years and never once sought to strengthen their relationship to the rest of us in the north. No matter the fate of my brother Childy and the outcome of the King’s incursion of their lands they will, and rightly should, resist our advances. Be slow to adopt strong measures, for such force does not build friendships.

Ours should be an argument of union between all hobbits of the Shire, but theirs is a history of rebellion; we began our relationship by excluding them from our community and they began by feeling the sting of being unwanted.

I believe in the choice which we on the Shire Council made after the crises of Year Fifteen to grant my brother Childebrand with unused and uncharted lands in the south for recompense of our shared debt. Now we must investigate and understand what he has built there while none of us were watching. But the hobbits of the Tooklands are not the criminals that my brother was and should, I believe, be treated as our equals.⁶

It was on the Sixth day of After-lithe in Year Twenty-nine that the Shire Council received this letter, the same day in which Waltraub Thornburrow had come to Budgeford from the Sarn Ford with his report and the letter from Horris Bunce about developments in the South-farthing.

When the Council received his letter Twoody was making camp somewhere along the old Road just a bit shy of the path to Waymeet. He would go there tomorrow and be reunited with his nephew and the son of his heart, Youngbuck.

Seven years later, as the Southern Sickness came, Twoody was given the newly created office of Shire-president to better manage the catastrophe. This choice, immediate in the minds of all the Shire Council, was largely based on Twoody’s letter of Year Twenty-nine.

Whether or not he knew of the effect his writing had on the integrations of the Tooks, his own distant relations, into the Shire we cannot say. But even in the midst of his own terrible grief Twoody had managed to unify the Shire in a way no one could expect (excepting, of course, his closest friends).

‘More of a banker, indeed!’ he would think if anyone bothered to ask him about his accomplishments during those remaining sad months of his otherwise wonderful life.

On the Fourth day of After-lithe in Year Twenty-nine of the Shire-reckoning Alaura Fairheart, having explained things as best she could to her children, crept up to the summit of the first great hill of Sarehole (while Sarehole was still in the Buckland and not yet called the Great Smials by everyone) and wrote the last lengthy article we have of her extremely productive life. She gave the hand-written copy to her sister Ermenberga and these pages were found in that hobbit’s own collection of papers at the excavation of the Great Smials. While it is written in the manner of Alaura’s other articles no copy of this editorial has ever been found in the surviving editions of THE SHIRE-RECKONING. Perhaps Ermenberga had her own reasons for withholding it. But, and this seems more important for our examination of the letter and its contents, we cannot be certain who, if anyone other than Ermenberga Bophin, had ever had the chance to read it themselves.

THROUGHOUT the YOUNG HISTORY of the SHIRE I have enjoyed the OPPORTUNITY to write candidly about OUR COMMUNITY and OUR GOALS of a FUTURE TOGETHER. But I have, in these UNEXPECTED and current moments of my LIFE, come to CONSIDER the rather large and esoteric subjects of FATE and FREEDOM alongside the more COMMON QUESTIONS which any one of us might have of THE SHIRE’S FUTURE WHEN MEASURED ALONGSIDE ONE'S OWN. STRANGE and often rather SILLY (though very persistent) QUESTIONS come into my head now which have always been there: “IS A SIGNPOST IN SOME WAY EXCLUSIONARY?” “DO FENCES DEFEND OLD RIGHTS OR GRANT US NEW ONES?” “WHAT IS THE USE IN TWO HOBBITS BUILDING A WELL TOGETHER IF ANY PASSERBY MAY DRINK FROM IT?” and much, much worse, “WHAT IS THE USE OF DIGGING A COMFORTABLE HOLE FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY WHEN SOMEONE ELSE OWNS THE HILLSIDE?”

ALL RATHER STRANGE and SILLY QUESTIONS indeed. BUT NOW as I have come to CONSIDER THEM in this current moment of my life I SEEM TO SEE that all of my PREVIOUS THOUGHTS on these matters have ONE FATAL DRAWBACK; I MAY NEVER COME TO A CONCLUSION. I can NEVER GIVE YOU, my readers, the GIFT which every editor or lecturer looks for- a page or so of discourse delivering A NUGGET OF PURE TRUTH you might wrap between the pages of your notebooks and KEEP ON THE MANTLEPIECE forever. All I might do, in my CURRENT STATE of CONFUSION BETWEEN MY FAITH AND THE DECISIONS OF MY HEART, is OFFER you an OPINION on one minor point:

Any one PERSON who might CHALLENGE THEIR FATE, who might SEIZE OPPORTUNITIES to set themself up FOR THE BROADER SCOPE OF THEIR OWN FREEDOM, must UNDERSTAND that WHATEVER CHOICES they may make, FATE MAKES ITS OWN DECISIONS.

Here in THE SHIRE we have grown to be a COMMUNITY of NEIGHBOURING FAMILIES writing HISTORIES and LETTERS and DIARIES which we hope our CHILDREN WILL READ and to which THEY WILL CONTRIBUTE. Our OLD MANNER OF ORAL HISTORIES has now become STATEMENTS AND CERTIFICATES, DEEDS OF LAND and RECORDS OF BIRTHS, a PLETHORA OF PAPERWORK which I myself have been instrumental in making and which LEGITIMIZES THE COMMUNITY of the Shire in THE EYES OF THE KING, other WANDERING FOLK, and OURSELVES. And these DOCUMENTS and BROADSHEETS are in THE HANDS OF ALL SHIREFOLK, carefully or roughly folded, set ON THEIR OWN MANTLEPIECES and IN NOTEBOOKS OF THEIR OWN. Through these RECORDINGS and YOUR OWN WRITINGS the CONSCIOUSNESS of THE SHIRE is now CONTAINED for HISTORY’S AMUSEMENT.

We all HOPE to see HISTORY outlive ourselves as a FAIR AND TRUTHFUL REPORTING of THE EVENTS OF OUR TIMES. We naively believe that A HISTORY, EXAMINED, WRITTEN OR SPOKEN REVEALS A TRUTH DRESSED FOR DINNER; a WELCOME GUEST to our talk and OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE PAST. But this is NOT SO; HISTORY, as we record it in THESE DOCUMENTS for ourselves, IS A MUMMERY OF FAIRNESS. It DRESSES ITSELF NICELY, that much is true, but it DANCES ABOUT THE DINNERTABLE and, in its VANITY and its DELIGHT FOR THE ATTENTION IT RECEIVES, HISTORY very willingly BETRAYS TRUTH FOR THE TELLING OF A GOOD STORY.

Yet the WRITING OF A PEOPLE, no matter what HISTORY MAY TRY TO SAY about them, are INDEED THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THOSE PEOPLE. We DESCRIBE OUR MINDS in OUR DIARIES and OUR CONFESSIONS and OUR LETTERS and OUR BIOGRAPHIES and ALL OF THOSE MINDS and ALL OF THOSE LIVES are there EVIDENCED AFTER OUR DEATHS. Our TRUTHS LIVE NOW in these DOCUMENTS as do the PERSONALITIES of those who have written them.

Yet THE WORLD we live in, and HISTORY which feels COMPELLED TO EXPLAIN IT, is NOTORIOUSLY INDIFFERENT to our INDIVIDUAL VOICES. THE WORLD does NOT ask its people to write POEMS and DIARIES and HISTORIES for THE WORLD does NOT need them and HISTORY, sometimes, MAY DANCE AND CAPER MORE FREELY WITHOUT THEM. Every RECORDER OF EVENTS and WRITER willing to explore the THOUGHTS OF THEIR OWN TIME knows that HISTORY and THE WORLD work AGAINST THEM; that the work they TOIL at has LITTLE REWARD and the WRITER SUFFERS every form of DISTRACTION and DISCOURAGEMENT. The very FEARFUL NOTION of challenging THE WORLD and its HISTORY creates a place IN ALL CULTURES STREWN WITH THE WRECKAGE of people who have MINDED BEYOND REASON THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS.

For HISTORY wishes to tell its own TALE and THE WORLD collaborates with it AGAINST THE OPINIONS of all earthly AUTHORS.

“THE VERY IDEA OF A HOBBIT WRITING A HISTORY IS LIKE A DOG DANCING ON HIS HIND LEGS; IT IS NOT DONE WELL, BUT YOU ARE SURPRISED AND AMUSED TO SEE IT DONE AT ALL,” HISTORY will say and THE WORLD, having no better PARTNER IN CONVERSATION, will chuckle to hear it.

HISTORY stands OUTSIDE US all in its dinner dress and cares VERY LITTLE FOR LIFE and the CHOICES MADE BY THE LIVING. It would prefer to wrap OUR CHOICES and the COMMENTARY we authors make upon them into FODDER for its OWN PERFORMANCE. HISTORY will, GIVEN ITS CHANCE, take all of the PERSONALITY out of OUR RECORDINGS, OUR HEARTFELT DIARIES and OUR OWN FACTS of day-to-day life. Our very DESIRE TO PROTEST, TO PREACH, TO PROCLAIM INJURY, TO PAY OFF A SCORE, TO MAKE THE WORLD WITNESS of some HARDSHIP or GRIEVANCE will be CONSUMED for HISTORY’S LONG AND CLOWNISH TALE. Whatever we might write about the DEATH OF A LOVED ONE in a FAMILY JOURNAL, HISTORY will turn into the RECOLLECTION OF SORROW rather than the RECORDING OF SORROW ITSELF.

I do NOT CARE for how CLOWNISH or FICKLE HISTORY may paint me. I have ENJOYED for thirty years the OPPORTUNITY to candidly and TRUTHFULLY WRITE about our growth as a COMMUNITY here in THE SHIRE and that is THE PORTRAIT of personality that I leave behind.⁷

-Alaura Fairheart, Sarehole, Year Twenty-nine in the Shire-reckoning

Chapter End Notes

Notes (07/31/2026)

1) This name is an invention of my own and does not appear in any of the Legendarium.

2) The later Shire calendar will call this month “Winterfilth”, but that seems an unwholesome name for such an occasion. In our own calendar this corresponds to September 22nd, the shared birthday of Bilbo and Frodo and International Hobbit Day. That seems the proper date for the marriage, but I have deferred to the Bree calendar for a more pleasant name.

3) There is some language there which Tolkien fans will know from the poem of Luthien Tinuviel. I want to echo the depth of the romance between these two characters as being important, but without the overtness of the Gondo/Alaura relationship as we saw in the “Distant Music” chapter.

4) Tolkien gives us no description of the symptoms of the Great Plague and it is likely that, to his thinking, it worked much like the Bubonic plague which swept through the Medieval world. I have decided to make it more akin to Yellow Fever, a particularly American plague for reasons of my own.

5) The use of vinegar washes and baths during the outbreak of a plague go way back in history and I don’t really know much about their efficacy. It was certainly a practice in the American Yellow Fever outbreak of 1790 that much of this section is based on but, if truth be told, I wanted to leave Alaura with one really practical and useful idea here at the end of her story.

6) Twoody’s letter is largely made up from some of the letters of Abraham Lincoln. Careful readers will have found other instances in the novel where Twoody quotes Lincoln and I thought it appropriate to use that as a guide in his own last musings on Shire politics.

7) And finally Alaura’s letter is modeled off of some of the arguments (though on a different topic) found in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Woolf has long been a model for Alaura’s writing, if not entirely her politics, and I knew from the very beginnings of this book, long before I knew it would in three letters, that this would be the place for Alaura to get the last words in.

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IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb

Postlude

Chapter End Notes