So sleepy!
 

If you clicked on this expecting an interesting topic then I apologise.

Reading about Frodo being wakened by Meriadoc at the start of The Old Forest made me wonder how Meriadoc managed to wake himself. It was around 4 in the morning when he got up.

I asked my parents what folk used to do back in the day if they wanted to get up before dawn. They just said, "Folk didn't do that. They got up when it was light." Dad supposed that Merry had cast some sort of spell (he's not a fan of the book ;) ).

Because dawn didn't break at 4 when Frodo was in Crickhollow, right? So how did Merry get up? And has anyone else ever posed this question? :D

There are people who possess an innate sense of time and can wake up whenever they want to - in real life, mind you, not fantasy tales! So I assume Merry was one of those people. It's a talent, an instinct, I imagine, so one either has it or not. It can perhaps be honed by practice, but for those who don't have it at all, it's a mystery, akin to magic! ;)

A little random trivia I learned from the Simpsons is that Native Americans would drink a lot of water before going to bed when they were going to war that morning so they would wake up early. That is my guess.

He set his clock to wake him up at four?

According to the Hobbit, there was clocks in Middle-earth, or at least Bilbo had one.

An early prototype of an alarm clock was invented by the Greeks around 250 BC.

Maybe Merry had bought one in case he didn't trust the local rooster. ;)

Perhaps Merry had a nightmare which woke him. Maybe he has an alarm clock; if hobbits have umbrellas they could have alarm clocks. Not one of those beeping ones but an old-fashioned one with the bell-thingies on top (I'm not an expert in alarm clock terminology).

EDIT: cross posted with Dancing Spawn.

Right. I must apologise for the lack of research I put into alarm-clock technology. That could well be the answer.

It wouldn't have been a nightmare Alca, Merry had arranged the (very) early start.

Maybe he purposefully ate a strange food that would give him a nightmare, or he might've read a frightening story before going to bed. It's a stretch, but he could've "scheduled" a nightmare. Perhaps it's Merry's hidden talent. :p

Although so sleepy describes me at the moment, ( I think I am turning into a koala bear) and I have been known to sleep through hurricanes. I am seldom woken by the alarm even if it is set for an unusual time. Generally I wake five minutes before the alarm is set. I think we have an internal clock that we just no longer bother to tune into and use. It is easier if the time you wish to wake at coincides with the lightest phase of sleep (the last minutes of the 90 minute sleep cycle). It is the getting up rather than the waking up that is hard -- if I have to catch a plane or something I put the (external ) alarm on the other side of the room!

People have instinctive skills that we no longer use becasue we have technology. For example most men can tell which way North is without thinking - a relic of hunter gatherer days...

Merry possibly just knew it was time to get up. My grandfather never used an alarm clock and always got up at 5.30am; I used to have the same ability when I was a kid but nowadays it takes a clock radio with the volume set to an ear-splitting level to get me out of bed which may be due in no small way to having to go to work instead of lovely school. :( But I do not have a watch and tend to know roughly what time it is without looking at a clock.

But, how did they know it was 4am if it was dark and they didn't have a clock anyway? How would anyone know the time in the middle of the night in Middle-earth unless there was someone posted to the job of counting it?

Well I don't think them having clocks would be that outrageous - they have basic technology and as has been pointed out there have been various forms of clock for a very long time - the chinese had mechanical clocks in 200AD and

" Another advance was the invention of spring-powered clocks between 1500 and 1510 by Peter Henlein, a German locksmith from Nuremberg. Replacing the heavy drive weights permitted smaller (and portable) clocks and watches. Henlein nicknamed his clocks "Nuremberg Eggs". Although they slowed down as the mainspring unwound, they were popular among wealthy individuals due to their size and the fact that they could be put on a shelf or table instead of hanging from the wall. They were the first portable timepieces. However, they only had an hour hand, minute hands did not appear until 1670, and there was no glass protection. Glass over the face of the watch did not come about until the 17th century. Still, Henlein's advances in design were precursors to truly accurate timekeeping.

Accurate Mechanical Clocks

In 1656, Christian Huygens, a Dutch scientist, made the first pendulum clock, regulated by a mechanism with a "natural" period of oscillation. Although Galileo Galilei, sometimes credited with inventing the pendulum, studied its motion as early as 1582, Galileo's design for a clock was not built before his death. Huygens' pendulum clock had an error of less than 1 minute a day, the first time such accuracy had been achieved. His later refinements reduced his clock's errors to less than 10 seconds a day. "


http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa071401a.htm

It is quite possible that wealthy hobbits would have had clocks. I don't think it is wrong to assume that 16th century technology is beyond them although I think it more likelythey got them from Dwarves - didn't Bilbo obtain clockwork toys from Dale as presents for his party... or have I just made that up?

Alternatively, I think it is possible to tell the time from the stars?

Whenever I set my alarm clock I always wake up five minutes before it goes off. Its like setting my clock told my head that that's when I wanted to wake up, so I woke up on my own. ;)

A friend of mine before he goes to bed just thinks a certain time and he always wakes up at that time. Its this weird thing some people can do. Merry was just probably one of them. :)

I'm assuming Merry did what I did this morning:

I knew I had to be two towns over at 9:00 so I set my alarm for 7:30 to give myself time to wake up. I woke up on my own and stared at the clock that said 8:30 and jumped out of bed, realizing I'd forgotten to set my alarm. Grabbing clothes, getting downstairs, and realizing that being dead late allows for immediate waking up, I noted that the clock said... 7:30. I'd set my bedroom clock wrong (whoops). But the point is, I meant to get up at 7:30 and I woke up at 7:30. Without the aid of an alarm that never would have gone off because I pushed the wrong button.

See? My story proves that you don't need an alarm clock to get up on time, if you have sufficient motivation to be out of bed. :D

Has anyone heard of an internal clock? I'm not quite sure how to explain what it is, but a lot of people have them, me for one. No matter what time I go to bed, whether it be midnight or !0:00 pm, I always wake up at 7 in the morning (even though I sleep in during summer ;) (I force myself to go back to sleep)). My grandparents are the same way. I think it's when you have to get up at a certain time, after awhile, you get used to getting up at that time and just wake up, without a clock. Maybe Merry was someone with an internal clock?

Check out this thread for a discussion of clocks (and umbrellas) in Middle-Earth.

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...light=umbrella

I seem to at least wake up momentarily at around 7 am each morning but I could never wake up at 4am on my own. :eek:

Looking at some of the theories that have been aired so far I think I've pasted together a decent one.

Being the warrior sort, Merry drank lots of water before going to bed, then had a nightmare about a rather unpleasant flood. He was rudely awakened at 4 o'clock the next morning & discoved that only part of his nightmare was a dream. He then decided to never again drink so much water before bed & later went on to invent the Shire's first alarm clock.

That's the best explanation I've got.

For what it's worth, I think people in times before clocks and a lot of artificial light were common, they went to bed when it got dark, too. Which makes me think of a common expression by Ben Franklin....

I actually clicked on this thread because I forgot I was here and thought I was on any other forum where people post topics like this about themselves. This is good though Eomer...

I am one of those people who can wake up when they like though I am an extremely heavy sleeper. I don't depend of my internal clock for important wake-up times because it has failed one or two times when I'm seriously tired. So I set an alarm clock. But even if the clock doesn't work or I forget to set it properly I still wake up when I'm supposed to or a couple minutes after. My mind just tells my body I need to wake up and it does. I suspect Merry has a similar condition because who brings a clock with them on a perilous journey of potential death?

Theory
 

My theory is illustrated here.

It worked thusly: There is a candle which burns at a rate of one band per hour. Merry carefully sleeps with his hair resting against this candle. When it reaches four 'o' clock, the specified time, his hair should burst into flame, thus awakening him.

Simple.