[Fordim Hedgethistle]

This might be a bit obscure, but here goes…

Thanks to Esty for bringing up the question of the name of the Brandywine. Davem has already quite rightly identified the meaning of the name in terms of its secondary world origins (a corruption of the Elvish), but I was still intrigued enough by Esty’s challenge to work through some of the implications of the name in terms of the primary world (i.e. what it means in terms of English philology)

The “brandy” part is, I think, as Esty has theorised: it refers to “brand” and the idea of a fire (or more poetically a sword). One of the advantages of using the OED over the M-W, however, is that I found a further connotation to the word “brand” when used as a verb (that is, when one ‘brands’ something with a heated iron). The idea of “branding” began as a royal privilege: the king would “brand” his enemies by burning the King’s mark onto their face, indicating that they were outlaws and not to be allowed to mingle with civilised society. In its earliest uses (as a verb), it meant to mark someone as an outsider and to designate them to that outsider status forever. This, I think, goes along very nicely with the idea of the River as the border between the Shire (the civilised world of everyday experience) and the Wild (the world of outlawry and danger that lies beyond the fringes of the normal world).

The “wine” is even more interesting. There’s the obvious connotation of the fermented drink – it’s a drink that is communal and festive, even celebratory. But it’s also the drink used at communion… A bit of a leap, but bear with me.

Wine in Old English – especially when used as a suffix – means “friend” or “protector,” almost invariably associated with princely or kingly privilege (e.g. maegenwine = a powerful, kingly friend and protector).

So how does this sound – brand+wine could indicate that beyond this River is a land that has been branded or marked as a place of outlawry by the power of the king? In this sense there are two ways to go. First, the Shire is a land that pays nominal duty to “the King” while the lands about it do not: so the Brandywine in this sense really does mark the edge between the King’s power (those who acknowledge his “wine” ) and outlawry (those who do not and are “brandy” ). But I’m going to go completely nuts here – given the associations between wine and communion, is it possible to see the King who is acknowledged in the Shire, but not out, as Christ???

Like I said, I’m taking a bit of flier here…

The only other point I would like to make is that I think this chapter gives us a chance to look back and assess how far the hobbits and we have come. Not in terms of the distance travelled, but in moral terms. There has been some real development in the hobbits (in Frodo and Sam in particular) but are they substantially different here in Crickhollow than they were at Bag End? I think that this is a very important question, actually, as if they are different, if they have already begun to learn and grow then they are doing so entirely by themselves, which would seem to indicate that their greatness – dare I say their heroism – is something that is truly and wholly innate to their hobbitty natures, and native to the Shire. If they have not substantially changed, however, then it would appear that hobbits need to leave the Shire before they can become ‘fully heroic’ (whatever that means).

In other words, as they cross the boundary of the River, how much of what they are going to need later are they taking with them? How much has already been accomplished? For my money, I think that there has been a lot – but I will await your responses.