IN THE SHIRE-RECKONING by Diane Finnis-Robb  

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Part One; Chapter Nine "The Edge of Arguments"

   ‘To the White Downs, yes, Twoody,’ Gondo replied, ‘but the border which the King set goes very well beyond that and also mentions another range of low hills.’

    ‘The “Far Downs”, you have called them,’ Alaura added with a smile. ‘Not your most inspired bit of naming, I should think.’

   ‘Well, I’ve not seen them yet have I?’ Gondo returned with a smile of his own. ‘Who knows?’ he paused and, gesturing broadly with his hands, continued to say, ‘Perhaps they’ll have two wide and rounded hills divided by the Road that I, in some fit of my homesickness, will come to call “The Bride’s Hips.”’

   Twoody laughed uneasily; he delighted in having these long conversations with his friends, but he remained a bit uncomfortable with Gondo and Alaura’s bawdy jokes to one another. As they spoke together that night it was the first day of Astron, in the third year1 of the Shire, and therefore the first anniversary of Gondo and Alaura’s marriage. They had feasted all day with the Bucklanders in their growing little town around the well and afterward the three of them were walking up the little road toward Sarehole. As usual their private talks, even on such a celebratory day, turned to the problems of keeping up with the Shire’s surprising growth; but Gondo and Alaura always seemed to keep a very separate line of conversation for themselves.

   ‘Oof! Now why would you want any hobbits going further west along any such road and toward such a heralded destination!’ Alaura chided back. ‘It seems to me that any proper husband treated to such a moment of nostalgia should come running back home and bar his neighbors from the experience of such wonderful sights.’

   ‘Hah! Wonderful indeed!’ Gondo said laughing as he grabbed at his wife’s hips, ‘and an undiscovered country for others which I shall keep to my own!’

   ‘There are many settlers in the White Downs already,’ Twoody said, hoping to change the subject back to something more practical and much less embarrassing for himself. ‘There are good grasses over those low chalk hills. Comfortable farming and easy digging will attract many a hobbit. And once some enterprising individual builds a market there-’

   ‘Or a bank!” Gondo and Alaura said together laughing.

   ‘Yes, yes, yes. Or a bank!’ Twoody replied with his usual sufferance, ‘Once any of these conveniences come to the White Downs then, well, while I hate to admit it, Gondo is quite right; more and more of the incoming pioneers will go even further west and away from our current settlements.’

   ‘Yes, they will,’ Alaura said. ‘And they will set up their own communities with rules quite beyond those few laws which we already have established in our own part of the Shire. There are many I know of who might prefer just such an arrangement as that.’

   ‘Well,’ Gondo said calmly, ‘they’ll have trouble setting up communities, let alone banks or markets, with no knowledge of the land. Shouldn’t we look it over first?’

   ‘Oh, yes, by all means this requires deeper investigation by you two worthies,’ Alaura replied, her face now quite serious belying the mild jest still in her voice. ‘Or, and let me just put this idea forward for my tenth or twentieth attempt, perhaps by not telling everyone what to expect in a new land you might make them happier with what they themselves will discover. Perhaps letting them discover things and go their own ways will make them work all the harder to realize both the land’s potential and their own. I think,’ Alaura continued as she stepped between the two and took each of their hands in either of her own, ‘that there are some here in the Shire who have already grown dangerously attracted to being told what to do by such experienced hands as these.’ Both Gondo and Twoody blushed at this little joke, but for entirely different reasons.

   ‘Now, Alaura,’ Gondo said, ‘that seems unfair. You know I’ve got no desire to lead our folk anywhere other than into their own best interest and well away from our own garden. And poor Twoody here, banker though he may be, is as fair-handed as the miller’s daughter and would trade spun gold for straw while knowing better than any the price for each.2 He wouldn’t sell a rusty nail to his worst enemy nor lead a wealthy ninnyhammer into a bad decision for the simple sake of profit.’

   ‘Yes, yes, I hope that is true, Gondo, and I thank you for saying it,’ Twoody said, offering his own opinion on an old argument. ‘But we all know that there’s more in this comment of hers other than questioning our profits or our egos.

   ‘Alaura,’ Twoody said frankly, ‘we have set down some laws and agreements together you and I, and I know well your concerns about how “rules, though mostly well intended, become history’s constraint upon a people’s own future.” That’s a fine saying that is worth remembering and I do hope it will go into one of those books you are writing. But what I mean to say in response is likewise simple; I respect that you have that concern even when I don’t feel that way myself. And many times, Alaura, when I talk to other Shirefolk I do not feel as generous as you do in regard to every hobbit’s own good nature. How can we ask our neighbours to build roads together, to take on shared responsibilities, to school their children or help maintain the Bridge, how should we ask them to act beyond their own obvious self interest, without some rules and agreements in place? Agreements can be fine things between two or three people, but it takes laws to grow a nation. And, yes, I know how you feel about laws and I have understood your caution about rules even when I have found many of those positions to be very impractical.

   ‘But what is it that you are saying now?’ Twoody continued. He did not look into his friends’ eyes as he spoke, for he had not intended to be so confrontational when he began talking. It had just started to come out that way and there was a part of him which wished such a thing had never happened. But he loved his friends dearly and, as he was used to doing in their company for so very long, he boldly went on speaking his mind in trust of their love.

   ‘More and more are coming west, Alaura, and many more will follow,’ Twoody continued. ‘Should we just send them along their way and hope to hear news of their success? Should they have access to the same postal systems you’ve worked so very hard to establish? What if they want none of that and no involvement with the rest of us here and in the East-farthing? What if they have no interest in keeping the Road or any other part of the King’s Agreement? And what if they start making their own laws out in those new lands, laws which may be very different from those we’ve begun to establish for ourselves? Is the Shire to be one land or just a very large place in which any small group of hobbits might come to make little kingdoms of their own? How shall we answer to troubles like that without laws and agreements?’

 

*****

 

   There was a fairly long pause in their conversation then and it seems important to point out some of the reasons why this most uncomfortable moment came about. While politics seemed to be the subject of their argument at this time there were other considerations between these three hobbits which lay beneath the surface of their talk.

   They had been friends since their childhood of course and, like all young people everywhere, they believed that their special friendship came from having a unique but like-minded view of the world around them. This may indeed be true for, from generation to generation, it is our youthful friendships which most often inspire us to create a life for ourselves in accordance with our ambitions. Sadly, mothers and fathers, who do so much to shape our childhood, can seldom compare with the importance of our friends as we grow older and into ourselves. Hobbits or Men, Dwarves or Elves, it is through our friends that we learn to be something other than sons or daughters, other than extensions of our own families. Children will learn a very great deal about themselves in their interactions with their peers other than what they might through their parents and sometimes, if they are lucky enough to have found true and supportive friends as these three had, those interactions will take them very far indeed. The hopes and cares we share with our young playmates often shape our futures better than any well-intended advice from parents, uncles, aunts or any example of the older generation. Together these three had learned what they each wanted from life at a very young age. And seeking that future together now in a new land had made the uniqueness of their friendship all the stronger.

   But, as any older person may tell you, this bond between friends, as important as it may be in youth, does not always withstand the test of time nor the changes to one’s own worldview which invariably come with age. Much of who we believe ourselves to be can be written in the very sincere and ambitious conversations of our youth only to be examined or rejected or -most often- cautiously rewritten in our much more judicious and circumspect futures.

   The three friends were still very young hobbits despite the many responsibilities which life had recently brought them. Alaura, youngest of the three, had not yet seen her twenty-third birthday and Gondo and Twoody were only four years older. None of them other than Gondo had held a job or a responsible position before the signing of the King’s Agreement. Despite all of their honest hard work since, they had no practical experience of the world to balance against their ambitious, unique and hitherto agreed upon vision for building a new nation of hobbits. They were young when they began this task and, lacking in practicality as youth often does, they were comfortably supported by their shared idealism. Concepts like “fairness” and “justice” and “equity” had been the centerpieces of their earliest conversations, but now they were met by daily practicalities like “land titles” and “shipping costs” and “public works”. More than any other hobbits involved with the establishment of the Shire, these three young friends had been given the rare and troubling job of adapting their shared beliefs into the practical politics which were required to move their dreams forward. They very seldom spoke of it openly (for they were hobbits after all, and as such did not believe that purposeful burdens could be lightened through any such conversations which might sound like complaints), but all three felt the changes which three years of practicality was forcing upon their youthful ambitions.

 

   Yet there is another point to be noted.

   These three were also part of a generation in the midst of great change. It had not been two hundred years since the Witch-king had been pushed back to Angmar and the North had entered into another long and watchful peace. For uncounted generations before that hobbits, who were never a warlike people, had lived spare and dangerous lives of fear and hiding; they were reduced to thousands of small family colonies (or so it is believed), barely aware of one another, moving about constantly to avoid strife or enslavement or slaughter. When peace came to the North (and while more dangers appeared in the east and the south of Middle-earth), hobbits had come to collect themselves in this one area, and they had come to know one another again and to learn, quite rapidly, how to prosper together. For it is wisely said that “all birds are vastly increased in numbers after mild winters and in relatively catless days.”3

   Little is known of Gondo’s background or of Alaura’s people beyond her own immediate parents. But Twoody’s illustrious grandfather, Priamus Swiftwalk, had brought his very extended family into the Bree-land less than one hundred years before the founding of the Shire and Twoody’s father, Hincmar, had in a very short time after that become the most prosperous hobbit in the land before his own thirtieth birthday. This makes Twoody a particularly fine example if we should examine the character of all three of these friends and of the generation of hobbits who came out of the Bree-land and pioneered the settlement of the Shire; for in many ways they were the children of prosperity and the grandchildren of deprivation. They grew up in good holes around warm hearthsides filled with firelight and in the comfort of safe communities, with food and room for plenty. But sitting there beside those homefire they heard the tales of their families before, the stories of struggles and hardships, the plight of family members who had become refugees and hunted people. This generation of Shire-hobbits, those like in age to Gondo, Twoody and Alaura, grew up happy, contented and well-fed, but knew very well, and were often specifically reminded, of the darker times of their history.

   Hobbits (with a few notable later exceptions) do not normally long for adventure as many other young people do. But it may also be said that this particular generation of hobbits were beginning to feel a bit hemmed in before the opening of the Shire; they could feel their towns and hillsides filling rapidly around them and, like the famous discoverers Marcho and Blanco, they had perhaps felt that their opportunities were being crowded out. They most certainly did not long for the hardships which their grandsires had endured, but they had grown up listening to those tales and honoring them. Feeling their own opportunities to be much less than those of their parents, this young generation of hobbits may have chosen adventure (adventure of all things!) the likes of which their grandparents had so heroically faced. For it can also be seen that youth often neglects the status and comforts of their parents in favor of a better self-image.

   This may certainly be said of our three friends for they had accepted challenges which no other hobbit of their time had yet imagined and, while there was little to no danger in the settling of the Shire, it was an heroic and daunting adventure for such young people to undertake. As they walked up the hill to Sarehole on the first anniversary of Gondo and Alaura’s wedding, it might be said that each of the three friends could see how the experience was changing them. But they were also still young and, like many young people, they were uncomfortable recognizing those changes within themselves and one another. They had begun to form differing opinions surrounding their youthful idealism and, as true friends should do, they would continue to question one another’s views throughout their lives together. But now they seemed at the edge of arguments; a place where they could feel their opinions changing inside them but could not yet admit to their newfound differences.

   Twoody may have indeed been ungracious in his frankness, but he was not wrong in speaking up, even on his friends’ anniversary. For they all three feared a time when they could not speak so freely, a time when their growing practicality and uncertainty might petrify their youthful assuredness. But, for now, they were all three still young.

 

   And that is another point to be noted.

   For this tale is a history and one which has been written and handed down by many scholars who were, at the time of their expertise, all much older than Twoody, Gondo or Alaura in this Third year of the Shire. There is a problem with all such histories written about young people by aged historians; as all older people will confess, we sit in our own hearthside comfort and try to understand how the generations which follow us seem so surprisingly different from our own. We measure them by our own standards of repudiation or acceptance. I do not know if any historian, theorist or philosopher has found a maxim for this problem, but here we can see an obvious and much overlooked equation found in Alaura Fairheart’s hand in one of her later letters to Twoody;

   “All young people, of any race or generation, believe that they have a uniqueness which is entirely their own and that it is forged in their friendships rather than the teaching of their parents. Is this the arrogance of youth, to insist that no one may understand them like themselves? I believe I would have answered that question in my youth very differently than I may now. For one day I or any young person, finding themselves fortunately if not quite happily older, may fall upon the cause to write a history. Will they find their youthful ambitions to be so unique? Moreover, will they find that their present view of history is in accordance with those visions, conversations and ideals which they once thought made them and their generation of friends so startlingly fresh and insightful? I do not know, but I imagine the fish out of water to be the only one who has an inkling of water.4

   “History is a constraint which we never care for while we are young but find comfort in as we grow old. It is a desperate and unforgiving thing which will always deplore our youthful idealism and eventually destroy it with ideas of retrospective analysis and tempered reasoning. History is selfish. It wants no friends for itself and often forces us, who come into its thrall, to disavow any of our own who might uncomfortably remind us of past youthful ambitions which now, in our cautious and reflective age, seem naive, unwise or outright impossible. History is a warm and soft blanket made of iron which we, being older and selfish for our comforts, lack the strength to throw off and rise up from. We praise its warmth but disregard its constraints.”

   The idea that they were, as ‘townfathers”, creating the history of the Shire weighed heavily on the three friends. Each new development in the growth of their community had put them in a rather awkward position of deciding things and they had begun to realize how differently each of them viewed their situation. Gondo had the easy-going boldness of a natural leader, Twoody the careful and structured mind of an organizer and Alaura had the decisive cleverness to see a future behind any problem. All three had unique qualities that their neighbors had counted on for settling the Shire in a fair and peaceful manner. But they had lately seen themselves become “authorities” in the land’s development and that is something none of them had expected nor desired.

   Twoody felt horrible for bringing such a conversation up on his friends’ anniversary, but he knew that the subject of their authority somehow lay underneath all of this discussion and many others. He was, perhaps, a bit uncomfortable with the bawdiness of his friends and may have brought up such a serious argument to disrail that discomfort, but he still knew how to cut to the heart of the matter.

 

   And he knew that there was, of course, a much simpler math that was not being discussed (and yet again another point which should be noted):

   Gondo wanted to travel West again, Alaura did not want him to go but would not hold him back, and Twoody had accepted his usual position as go-between in that unspoken debate.

   That would certainly be another way of reading the moment.

    But the pause in their talk lasted for some time and all of them would have reason to remember it in their futures.

 

*****

 

   They had walked for a while up the hill in silence and stood together before the carefully-painted red door of Sarehole before anyone began to speak again.

   ‘I do not know, Twoody,’ Alaura said, breaking the silence. ‘Are many little kingdoms somehow worse than one large one? Do our people come here to build a great nation or to simply make a place of their own?’

   Gondo stood apart from the two of them. The door for Sarehole was on the north side of the hill (as all proper hobbit doors should be) and he looked west then to the brightening stars. He loved the view from this spot. He had set his first dig here years ago at the close of day, watching as the big hill seemed to shelter the smaller ones from the last rays of the Sun. He remembered how the big hill had reminded him of a mother bear protecting her cubs and how he had wanted to build a home which signified peace and protection to Alaura and, one day, to their children and all of the hobbits who would follow him this far west. He knew that he had become a leader of these people, even if he was uncomfortable with the job of telling them what to do. Like Twoody and Alaura, Gondo knew that the subject of leadership lay beneath all of their discussions lately and he had no wish to speak of it.

   ‘But the Shire isn’t a kingdom, Alaura,’ Twoody responded softly. ‘We have met the King and he has given us the land to develop as our own, but he is still the King. And I shouldn’t like to see any upstart family of Stoors up from Dunland crown themselves and suggest otherwise.’

 

   Gondo’s mind went back to the little village they had just left, the town which was now growing around them. There were, after all, a few Stoors up from Dunland who had ventured there with Gondo in the earliest days. At the center of Buckland there was a well; and Gondo had dug the beginnings of that well before anyone else had decided to live in the Shire. It was a meager thing then, for Gondo only had himself and one clumsy and overworked shovel to do the job. But his wandering and mapping of the area suggested a strong underground spring which collected there in the little valley. An underground source of good clean water, which he knew, would be the start of a town and, as much as he loved the open country, he knew that Alaura loved the energy of towns. After a long week of digging his hope bore out; he found cool, clear water below in a depth which he had no tools to measure. ‘Here,’ Gondo thought at the time, ‘was the very heart of a town like she might wish for.’

 

   ‘I appreciate the king’s gift more than many, Twoody,’ Alaura replied, ‘but kings are none of my concern as long as they are willing to keep their distance from our daily life. Your Argeleb the Second sounds like a wonderful and kind sort of fellow and let us hope that his Argelebs Three through Twenty-seven feel the same way. I’ve very limited knowledge regarding the behaviour of kings other than their tendency to beget more kings and the further tendency for those young kinglings to want to outdo their own fathers. And, from what I’ve heard tell, they often reconquer lands their fathers have given away just to prove their own kingly importance. But, again, and not having gone to Norbury myself, I know little of kings other than their reputations.

   ‘But I should not like to see a kingdom happen here in the Shire any more than you do, Twoody,’ she continued.

   ‘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. I’m worried we will turn our own officiousness, for simple want of efficiency, into a kingship!’

   ‘Organized people need faithful leaders, Alaura.’

 

   By the time Gondo brought Alaura to Buckland (just one year before) the other hobbits of the region had made his initial diggings into a fine little well and a centre for all their meetings. There were about thirty hobbits living in the area by that time and Alaura was the first wife, the first doe, to come this far west of the Stonebows bridge. The well had been small then but quite lovely for the care that all of the pioneers had taken with it. As he stood beneath the stars listening to his friends’ argument Gondo could remember clearly in his mind’s eye what the little well had looked like at that time. There was a small slate canopy to give it some shade and a good pulley system for the raising and lowering of three buckets. There were benches and a good supply of clean clay cups for anyone who might come to meet there for casual conversation. Many of Gondo’s neighbours felt, even in those first days, that it far surpassed the old well in the Bree-land, especially in cleanliness and its potential for conviviality.

   And he remembered keenly the silence of all the young hobbits as Alaura took her first drink of water from the well upon her entrance into the Buckland; it was, like their wedding the day before, one of the important first ceremonies performed in the Shire and Alaura, clever as always, recognized it as such. She drank deep and slow, not sipping lightly but taking the whole of the cup in a gentle and unhurried manner that seemed auspicious and formal by all the expectant hobbits who had come to greet her. When she had finished drinking Alaura turned the cup over, empty, and set it gently on the table before her. Smiling broadly then she said to them all, ‘it is that taste of the good clean water of this new land which I will hold in my memory with every new wish I might make for our future.’

   Two days after, when Gondo had to finally get back to the business of the village he left his new bride up at Sarehole and had come back to the quiet and still underdeveloped square. He saw that there was a new sign set there; tall and straight above the canopy of the well. This would be the first signpost ever seen in their village and he approached it then with curiosity and wonder. In those early days he had never learned who placed the sign there and, many years later, he would wish that he had bothered to ask. But now, on the occasion of their first anniversary, he remembered how it made him feel to see the fine letters chiselled there naming this place “The Wisher’s Well.”

 

   ‘Why?’ Alaura replied heatedly to Twoody’s statement. ‘Why can an organised people not benefit more from learning to organise themselves rather than being led?’

   Gondo felt himself growing further and further apart from their discussion. He knew, as he looked out at the stars in the western sky that he must, eventually, respond to the argument. This was an old debate between the three which seemed unsolvable but had woven itself into all their daily decisions of the Shire; should the Shire have a leader to set laws in the king’s name?

   Gondo had, within his nature, the ability to end such discussions between them or, in the very least, put them off for a time. But the quiet night sky which he saw from his doorstep seemed not to care for his friends’ debate in the least, and so he let the vision of it carry his mind peacefully west beyond all arguments.

   They were returning tonight from their first wedding anniversary where a feast of sorts had been established at the Wisher’s Well, quite outside of Gondo’s knowledge. Flowers had been strung from the sign and the canopy and long tables were laden for many guests. Beer and great stores of food were set aside to praise “the Lady of Buckland,” as the pioneers had begun to call her. There were many other families who had come to Buckland by then, but Alaura had been first and as such she held a special place in the hearts of the other young hobbits. She had charmed them tonight, as she always did, and the feast had lasted many long hours of talking.

   ‘All hobbits are free to come here,’ Twoody continued, ‘but should they be free to do as they please without help or guidance? Without working together they might not survive. But, Alaura, by being part of what we have started they might thrive.’

   ‘Thrive? You mean that they might prosper, Twoody, and that the community itself might prosper as well. And I believe you are right, in the short end at least. We will prosper together by working together. But will we, as families and as individuals, will we thrive? Of that I am less certain. “Thrive” is a very different word with its own set of conditions.

   ‘Individuals thrive by facing challenges. It is only governments which thrive by offering to remove those challenges.’5

   ‘Alaura- ‘ Twoody said, but he was stopped by Gondo interrupting the debate.

   ‘That’s enough for tonight,’ he said calmly, turning back to face his friends. ‘I do not know how we will ever answer this question the two of you are arguing or if it is even our place to do so. It is we hobbits who govern ourselves here in the Shire and I hope we will always do so. Twoody is right and we should be cautious of little kingdoms. And Alaura, you are also right that we should fear any laws which might make us a government rather than a collection of well-intended neighbours. For in accepting the land we are subjects of the king, after all. But I don’t feel we need to solve this or that we have the authority to solve it on our own. It's a discussion to be had by more Shirefolk than just we three.

   ‘But it is not a discussion for tonight,’ he said and, with that he turned to look back into the west and away from the conversation.

   ‘Of course, and I am sorry for opening it up,’ said Twoody. ‘It’s late and I should not have bothered a pleasant celebration with such talk of strategies.’

   ‘It was not you alone, Twoody, and it has never been such,’ Alaura replied. ‘For we all know that I love a good argument better than a Bolger loves his second breakfast. I am more toothsome in talk than most hobbits are in dining.

   ‘Your room is ready, as always,’ she continued, smiling brightly. ‘There’s clean sheets and bath water and some of our Buckland friends have lit the little fireplaces in the kitchen, the parlor and the bedrooms to make it homey on our arrival. I look forward to our talk over breakfast, as I always do when you visit. But we’ll say goodnight now, if you don’t think that’s rude of me, and I’ll join my husband here for a time to watch the stars.’

   On clear mornings Gondo believed that he could just barely see the distant mountains of the west from the top of the first hill of Sarehole. They were like a torn edge of the world off in their distance and there were many days that he sat there on the hilltop drawing at dawn’s hour, trying to capture the Sun as She painted those far off western peaks first in bright red and then vivid white. It was late in the evening now, for the Bucklanders had insisted on feasting long in Alaura’s honour, and he could not see any mountains but only the black of the land as it met the bright field of stars in the western sky. As his friends talked he tried to examine the farthest points of that sky and compare it with the shape he had recorded in his drawings. He felt he could still find the world’s torn edge in his memory as the whole explosion of stars was turning and glimmering above it.

   Twoody did not find his friends’ behaviour rude of course, and, saying goodnight in return, he went happily off to his cozy guest room in the west of the hill. Gondo and Alaura walked to the top of Sarehole hill and lay together for a long while beneath a small copse of birch trees which grew there as they looked out over the great canopy of stars as it lay over their heads and in all directions. The night was soft around them, the sky quiet and mysterious above them and the stars seemed like ripening fruit which they might, if bold enough together, reach up and take into their hands.

   No one knows what Gondo and Alaura might have said to one another on that night. If it was recorded somewhere it remains among Alaura’s writings that most hobbits contend were destroyed after her death some thirty-four years later.

   But on the next morning it was decided that Gondo and Twoody would leave on a long expedition to map the western edges of the Shire. They would meet with many surprises there, for one of them would not return and afterwards their friendship would be forever broken.

   But on the first day of Astron in the third year of the Shire-reckoning the three friends had discussed the community’s future with all of the idealism of their youthful friendship. In their own futures it would make them each unbearably sad to know that this was the last time they would all three spend together as friends.

 

end of chapter nine

Chapter End Notes

Notes

1)  Twoody brought the King’s Agreement to the Bree-land in March of 1601. This was considered to be Year One in the Shire calendar. But sensible hobbits like Alaura agreed that each new year should close or begin with the winter solstice; generally December 22nd or 23rd in the Gregorian calendar. These two days that begin the month of Yule were called “Yearsend” and “Yearsday” in the Shire. Gondo and Alaura were wed on the First of Astron in the new calendar Year Two, making this date in Year Three their first anniversary.

2)  This is a small allusion to the Tale of Rumpelstiltskin. I’m trying to pack some of the early hobbit metaphors with tales or proverbs which relate to the Grimm fairy tales because I believe they are in keeping with Tolkien’s vision for these nomadic and Northern European people.

3)  Though I have altered it slightly for syntax this lovely sentence comes from Letter 75 in the Humphries book of Tolkien’s letters.

4)  This lovely saying is one of Tolkien’s own from Letter 52 in the Humphries book. It is a rather scathing diatribe about politics written to his son Christopher during World War Two, but has been sitting in my quotations file for years as I waited for the right opportunity, and the right hobbit, to say it.

5)  Alaura began as something of a Virginia Woolf figure in my mind and she still retains that in much of her wit and writing. But her politics seem to be turning to a strange conflation of Ayn Rand and Emma Goldman as we get into this argument. I didn’t expect that, but I find it really strange to see how those kind of voices need to be raised against the complacency of the Shire.

 

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