grammaboodawg
Elvenhome
Jun 23 2022, 1:37pm
Views: 5956
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It's time for some more hobbity BS!
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Here's a Book Spoiler continuing the story of The Hobbit's return and how it became part of the "legend of Bilbo" through the gaffer's interpretation... for a moment of Tolkien-zen.
From A Long-Expected Party: The Fellowship of the Ring ..."'...I reckon it was a nasty knock for those Sackville-Bagginses. They thought they were going to get Bag End, that time when he went off and was thought to be dead. And then he comes back... ...and he goes on living and living, and never looking a day older, bless him! And suddenly he produces an heir, and has all the papers made out proper. The Sackville-Bagginses won't never see the inside of Bag End now....'
...'There's a tidy bit of money tucked away up there, I hear tell,' said a stranger, a visitor on business from Michel Delving in the Westfarthing. 'All the top of your hill is full of tunnels packed with chests of gold and silver, and jools, by what I've heard.'
...'Then you've heard more than I can speak to.... ...I know nothing about jools. Mr. Bilbo is free with his money, and there seems no lack of it; but I know of no tunnel-making. I saw Mr. Bilbo when he came back, a matter of sixty years ago, when I was a lad. I'd not long come prentice of old Holman... ...but he had me up at Bag End helping him to keep folks from trampling and trapessing all over the garden while the sale was on. And in the middle of it all Mr. Bilbo comes up the Hill with a pony and some mighty big bags and a couple of chests. I don't doubt they were mostly full of treasure he had picked up in foreign parts, where there be mountains of gold... ...but there wasn't enough to fill tunnels...'
......But the Gaffer did not convince his audience. The legend of Bilbo's wealth was now too firmly fixed in the minds of the younger generation of hobbits.
...'Ah, but he has likely enough been adding to what he brought at first,' argued the miller, voicing common opinion. 'He's often away from home. And look at the outlandish folk that visit him: dwarves coming at night, and that old wandering conjuror, Gandalf, and all. You can say what you like, Gaffer, but Bag End's a queer place, and its folk are queerer.'"
We have been there and back again.
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(This post was edited by grammaboodawg on Jun 23 2022, 1:37pm)
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