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ð ðð ððð ðððð½ðð¼ðððð [Main logotype Expert Modern Advice]( On August 25, 2022, Tucker Carlson interviewed an author and philosopher on his show. [ð£ðððð ðððð£ððð¤ ðð ðð¢ðððð ð¶ðððð ðð]( egorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had e) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not d Sandyman. The Lord of the Rings is issued in a edition, and the has been taken of revising it. A number of errors and inconsistencies that still remained in the text have been corrected, and an attempt has been made to provide ination on a few points which attentive readers have raised. I have considered their comments and enquiries, and if some seem to have been passed over that may be because I have failed to keep my notes in ; but many enquiries could be answered by additional appendices, or indeed by the production of an accessory volume containing much of the material that I did not include in the original edition, in particular more detailed linguistic ination. In the meantime this edition ers this Foreword, an addition to the Prologue, some notes, and an index of the s of persons and places. This index is in intention complete in items but not in references, since for the present purpose it has been necessary to reduce its bulk. A complete index, making full use of the material prepared for me by Mrs. N. Smith, belongs rather to the accessory volume. This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history. Further ination will also be found in the selection from the Red Book of Westmarch that has already been published, under the title of The Hobbit. That story was derived from the earlier chapters of the Red Book, composed by Bilbo himself, the first Hobbit to become famous in the world at large, and ed by him T and Back Again, since they told of his journey into the East and his return: an adventure which later involved the Hobbits in the events of that Age that are related. Many, however, may wish to k more about this remarkable people from the outset, while some may not possess the earlier book. For such readers a few notes on the more important points are collected from Hobbit-lore, and the first adventure is briefly reed. Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous erly than they are ; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ed and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt. They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with tools. Even in ancient days they were, as a rule, shy of âthe Big Folkâ, as they us, and they us with dismay and are becoming hard to find. They are quick of hearing and sharp-eyed, and though they are inclined to be fat and do not hurry unnecessarily, they are nonetheless nimble and deft in their movements. They possessed from the first the art of disappearing swiftly and silently, when large folk whom they do not wish to meet come blundering by; and this art they have developed until to Men it may seem magical. But Hobbits have , in fact, studied magic of any kind, and their elusiveness is due solely to a professional skill that dity and practice, and a close friendship with the earth, have rendered inimitable by bigger and clumsier races. For they are a little people, smer than Dwarves: less stout and stocky, that is, even when they are not actuy much shorter. Their height is variable, ranging between two and four feet of our measure. They seldom reach three feet; but they have ddled, they say, and in ancient days they were ter. According to the Red Book, Bandobras Took (Bullroarer), son of Isumbras the Third, was four foot five and able to ride a horse. He was surpassed in Hobbit records by two famous characters of old; but that curious matter is t with in this book. As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk. They dressed in bright colours, being notably fond of yellow and green; but they seldom wore shoes, since their feet had tough leathery soles and were clad in a thick curling hair, much like the hair of their heads, which was comm brown. Thus, the craft little practised among them was shoe-making; but they had long and skilful fingers and could make many other useful and comely things. Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at times, and of six meals a day (when they could them). They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away ly and eagerly accepted. It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves. Of old they spoke the languages of Men, after their own fashion, and liked and disliked much the same things as Men did. But what exactly our relationship is can no longer be discovered. The beginning of Hobbits lies far back in the Elder Days that are lost and forgotten. the Elves still preserve any records of that vanished time, and their traditions are concerned almost entirely with their own history, in which Men appear seldom and Hobbits are not mentioned at . Yet it is clear that Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk became even aware of them. And the world being after full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance. But in the days of Bilbo, and of Frodo his heir, they suddenly became, by no wish of their own, both important and rened, and troubled the counsels of the Wise and the . Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are long past, and the shape of lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea. Of their original the Hobbits in Bilboâs time preserved no kledge. A love of learning (other than genealogical lore) was far from general among them, but t remained still a few in the older families who studied their own books, and even gatd reports of old times and distant lands from Elves, Dwarves, and Men. Their own records began after the settlement of the Shire, and their most ancient legends hardly looked further back than their Wandering Days. It is clear, nonetheless, from these legends, and from the evidence of their peculiar words and customs, that like many other folk Hobbits had in the distant past moved westward. Their earliest tales seem to glimpse a time when they dwelt in the upper vales of Anduin, between the eaves of Greenwood the and the Misty Mountains. Why they later undertook the hard and perilous crossing of the mountains into Eriador is no longer certain. Their own speak of the multiplying of Men in the land, and of a shadow that fell on the forest, so that it became darkened and its was Mirkwood. Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become divided into three somewhat different breeds: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fohides. The Harfoots were browner of skin, smer, and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides. The Stoors were broader, heavier in build; their feet and hands were larger; and they preferred flat lands and riversides. The Fohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and they were ter and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and of woodlands. The Harfoots had much to do with Dwarves in ancient times, and long lived in the foothills of the mountains. They moved westward early, and roamed over Eriador as far as Weathertop while the others were still in Wilderland. They were the most normal and representative variety of Hobbit, and far the most numerous. They were the most inclined to settle in one place, and longest preserved their ancestral habit of living in tunnels and holes. The Stoors lingered long by the banks of the River Anduin, and were less shy of Men. They came west after the Harfoots and followed the course of the Loudwater southwards; and t many of them long dwelt between Tharbad and the bs of Dunland before they moved north again. The Fohides, the least numerous, were a northerly branch. They were more friendly with Elves than the other Hobbits were, and had more skill in language and song than in handicrafts; and of old they preferred hunting to tilling. They crossed the mountains north of Rivendell and came down the River Hoarwell. In Eriador they mingled with the other kinds that had preceded them, but being somewhat bolder and more adventurous, they were often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors. Even in Bilboâs time the strong Fohidish strain could still be noted among the er families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland. In the westlands of Eriador, between the Misty Mountains and the Mountains of Lune, the Hobbits found both Men and Elves. Indeed, a remnant still dwelt t of the Du´nedain, the kings of Men that came over the Sea out of Westernesse; but they were ddling and the lands of their North Kingdom were fing far and wide into waste. T was room and to spare for incomers, and ere long the Hobbits began to settle in ed communities. Most of their earlier settlements had long disappeared and been forgotten in Bilboâs time; but one of the first to become important still endured, though reduced in size; this was at Bree and in the Chetwood that lay round about, some forty miles east of the Shire. It was in these early days, doubtless, that the Hobbits learned their letters and began to write after the manner of the Du´nedain, who had in their turn long before learned the art from the Elves. And in those days also they forgot whatever languages they had used before, and spoke ever after the Common Speech, the Westron as it was d, that was current through the lands of the kings from Arnor to Gondor, and about the coasts of the Sea from Belfalas to Lune. Yet they kept a few words of their own, as well as their own s of months and days, and a store of personal s out of the past. About this time legend among the Hobbits first becomes history with a reckoning of years. For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost,* they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a follog of Hobbits. They passed over the Bridge of Stonebows, that had been built in the days of the power of the North Kingdom, and they took the land beyond to dwell in, between the river and the Far Downs. that was demanded of them was that they should keep the Bridge in repair, and other bridges and roads, speed the kingâs messengers, and ackledge his lordship. Thus began the Shire-reckoning, for the year of the crossing of the Brandye (as the Hobbits turned the ) became Year One of the Shire, and later dates were reckoned from it.â At once the western Hobbits fell in love with their land, and they remained t, and passed once more out of the history of Men and of Elves. While t was still a king they were in his subjects, * As the records of Gondor relate this was Argeleb II, the twentieth of the Northern line, which came to an end with Arvedui three hundred years later. â Thus, the years of the Third Age in the reckoning of the Elves and the Du´nedain may be found by adding 1600 to the dates of Shire-reckoning. P R O L OGUE 5 but they were, in fact, ruled by their own chieftains and meddled not at with events in the world outside. To the last battle at Fornost with the Witch-lord of Angmar they sent some bowmen to the aid of the king, or so they , though no tales of Men record it. But in that war the North Kingdom ended; and then the Hobbits took the land for their own, and they chose from their own chiefs a Thain to hold the authority of the king that was gone. T for a thousand years they were little troubled by wars, and they prospered and multiplied after the Dark Plague (S.R. 37) until the disaster of the Long ter and the famine that followed it. Many then perished, but the Days of Dearth (1158â60) were at the time of this tale long past and the Hobbits had again become accustomed to plenty. The land was rich and kindly, and though it had long been deserted when they entered it, it had before been well tilled, and t the king had once had many farms, cornlands, vineyards, and woods. Forty leagues it stretched from the Far Downs to the Brandye Bridge, and fifty from the northern moors to the marshes in the south. The Hobbits d it the Shire, as the region of the authority of their Thain, and a district of well-ed business; and t in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ed business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside w dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever kn of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it. At no time had Hobbits of any kind been warlike, and they had fought among themselves. In olden days they had, of course, been often obliged to fight to maintain themselves in a hard world; but in Bilboâs time that was very ancient history. The last battle, before this story opens, and indeed the one that had ever been fought within the bs of the Shire, was beyond living memory: the Battle of Greenfields, S.R. 1147, in which Bandobras Took routed an invasion of Orcs. Even the weathers had grown milder, and the wolves that had once come ravening out of the North in bitter white ters were a grandfatherâs tale. So, though t was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on ws, or gatd into the museum at Michel Delving. The Mathom-house it was ed; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they ed a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort. 6 T HE L ORD O F THE R INGS Nonetheless, ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearyingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not k them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though slow to quarrel, and for sport killing nothing that lived, they were doughty at bay, and at need could still handle arms. They shot well with the bow, for they were keen-eyed and sure at the mark. Not with bows and arrows. If any Hobbit stooped for a stone, it was well to quickly under cover, as trespassing beasts k very well. Hobbits had originy lived in holes in the ground, or so they believed, and in such dwellings they still felt most at ; but in the course of time they had been obliged to adopt other s of abode. Actuy in the Shire in Bilboâs days it was, as a rule, the richest and the poorest Hobbits that the old custom. The poorest went on living in burrows of the most primitive kind, mere holes indeed, with one dow or none; while the wellto-do still constructed more luxurious versions of the simple diggings of old. But suitable sites for these large and ramifying tunnels (or smials as they ed them) were not everyw to be found; and in the flats and the low-lying districts the Hobbits, as they multiplied, began to build above ground. Indeed, even in the hilly regions and the older villages, such as Hobbiton or Tuckborough, or in the chief township of the Shire, Michel Delving on the White Downs, t were many houses of wood, brick, or stone. These were speciy favoured by millers, smiths, ropers, and cartwrights, and others of that sort; for even when they had holes to live in, Hobbits had long been accustomed to build sheds and workshops. The habit of building farmhouses and barns was said to have begun among the inhabitants of the Marish down by the Brandye. The Hobbits of that quarter, the Eastfarthing, were rather large and heavylegged, and they wore dwarf-boots in muddy weather. But they were well kn to be Stoors in a large part of their blood, as indeed was shown by the down that many grew on their chins. No Harfoot or Fohide had any trace of a beard. Indeed, the folk of the Marish, and of Buckland, east of the River, which they afterwards occupied, came for the most part later into the Shire up from south-away; and they still had many peculiar s and strange words not found elsew in the Shire. It is probable that the craft of building, as many other crafts beside, was derived from the Du´nedain. But the Hobbits may have learned it direct from the Elves, the teachers of Men in their youth. For the Elves of the High Kindred had not yet forsaken Middle-earth, and they dwelt still at that time at the Grey Havens away to the west, and in other places within reach of the Shire. Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be the Tower Hills beyond the western marches. They shone far in the moonlight. The test was furthest away, standing alone upon a green mound. The Hobbits of the Westfarthing said that one could see the Sea from the top of that tower; but no Hobbit had ever been kn to climb it. Indeed, few Hobbits had ever seen or sailed upon the Sea, and fewer still had ever returned to report it. Most Hobbits regarded even rivers and sm boats with deep misgivings, and not many of them could swim. And as the days of the Shire lengthened they spoke less and less with the Elves, and grew afraid of them, and distrustful of those that had ings with them; and the Sea became a word of fear among them, and a token of death, and they turned their faces away from the hills in the west. The craft of building may have come from Elves or Men, but the Hobbits used it in their own fashion. They did not go in for towers. Their houses were usuy long, low, and comfortable. The oldest kind were, indeed, no more than built imitations of smials, thatched with dry grass or straw, or roofed with turves, and having ws somewhat bulged. That stage, however, belonged to the early days of the Shire, and hobbit-building had long since been altered, improved by devices, learned from Dwarves, or discovered by themselves. A preference for round dows, and even round doors, was the chief remaining peculiarity of hobbit-architecture. The houses and the holes of Shire-hobbits were often large, and inhabited by large families. (Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were as bachelors very exceptional, as they were also in many other ways, such as their friendship with the Elves.) Sometimes, as in the case of the Tooks of Smials, or the Brandybucks of Brandy H, many generations of relatives lived in (comparative) peace toher in one ancestral and many-tunnelled mansion. Hobbits were, in any case, clannish and reckoned up their relationships with care. They drew long and elabo family-trees with innumerable branches. In ing with Hobbits it is important to remember who is related to whom, and in what degree. It would be impossible in this book to set out a family-tree that included even the more important members of the more important families at the time which these tales tell of. The genealogical trees at the end of the Red Book of Westmarch are a sm book in themselves, and but Hobbits would find them exceedingly dull. Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accu: they liked to have books filled with things that they already k, set out fair and square with no contradictions. T is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning s of a herb, which they ed pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana. A of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom, or âartâ as the Hobbits preferred to it. that could be discovered about it in antiquity was put toher by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later Master of Buckland), and since he and the tobacco of the Southfarthing play a part in the history that follows, his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted. âThis,â he says, âis the one art that we can certainly claim to be our own invention. When Hobbits first began to smoke is not kn, the legends and family histories take it for granted; for ages folk in the Shire smoked various herbs, some fouler, some sweeter. But agree that Tobold Hornblower of Longbottom in the Southfarthing first grew the true pipe-weed in his gardens in the days of Isengrim the Second, about the year 1070 of Shire-reckoning. The best -grown still comes from that district, especiy the varieties kn as Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, and Southern Star. âHow Old Toby came by the plant is not recorded, for to his dying day he would not tell. He k much about herbs, but he was no traveller. It is said that in his youth he went often to Bree, though he certainly went further from the Shire than that. It is thus quite possible that he learned of this plant in Bree, w , at any , it grows well on the south slopes of the hill. The Bree-hobbits claim to have been the first actual smokers of the pipe-weed. They claim, of course, to have done everything before the people of the Shire, whom they refer to as ââcolonistsââ; but in this case their claim is, I think, likely to be true. And certainly it was from Bree that the art of smoking the genuine weed spread in the recent centuries among Dwarves and such other folk, Rangers, Wizards, or wanderers, as still passed to and fro through that ancient road-meeting. The and centre of the art is thus to be found in the old inn of Bree, The Prancing Pony, that has been kept by the family of Butterbur from time beyond record. â the same, observations that I have made on my own many journeys south have convinced me that the weed itself is not native to our parts of the world, but came northward from the lower Anduin, whither it was, I suspect, originy brought over Sea by the Men of Westernesse. It grows abundantly in Gondor, and t is richer and larger than in the North, w it is found wild, and flourishes P R O L OGUE 9 in warm sheltered places like Longbottom. The Men of Gondor it sweet galenas, and esteem it for the fragrance of its flowers. From that land it must have been carried up the Greenway during the long centuries between the coming of Elendil and our own days. But even the Du´nedain of Gondor ow us this : Hobbits first put it into pipes. Not even the Wizards first thought of that before we did. Though one Wizard that I k took up the art long ago, and became as skilful in it as in other things that he put his mind to.â During the interview he learned about a [new type of clean energy]( 8,000 times more efficient than fossil fuels... And 3x more reliable than wind and solar plants. Tucker has since been fired from Fox. Was [this]( one of the reasons why? 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