[Child of the 7th Age]

Oh my Bethberry, you were up so early! I can not even write coherently at such an early hour.

Thank you for clarifying your statement as regards the applicability of your thought outside the particular example we are discussing here. And I do appreciate the problem you describe of finding things that break the "magic of fantasy" as you read this or any piece of literature. I too have encountered such instances in LotR as well as other books. And, especially if it is a book I hold dear, such lapses can be downright painful.

However, I still think we are on slippery ground in this situation. It is too easy to impose the values and norms we have garnered from modern society and impose them on our reading of the past or, in this case, our reading of a mythical past. In the context of Middle-earth, thirteen children do make sense, just as the healing of Eowyn and her turning away from war also fits into the themes and values that Tolkien espouses in the book.

There is one point you briefly mention that I think merits attention. I can well imagine Tolkien smiling slyly as he wrote the word "thirteen". Just as Merry and Pippin had to be the tallest in the Shire and Bilbo the eldest, so his returning hero Samwise and his beloved new bride had to outdo all the other Hobbits in some creative way. (Interesting how Frodo is clearly left out of this play with numbers unless one counts the number of fingers of which he was deprived to symbolize loss and sacrifice!) In this case, Tolkien chose as his criteria the number of children in the Gamgee family.

Many fantasies and myths routinely give the great returning hero "more" than those about him, generally more treasure, status or rule. But in the context of Hobbits what sort of a reward could the author possibly have granted that made any sense? Of course, Sam had more sessions as mayor than any other. But, by itself, this wasn't enough for such a central character. Hobbits as a whole clearly value children and large families so, if seven is good, surely thirteen must be even better!

As to health effects, remember that this is a world where there are no examples of lame, blind, or deaf characters, and where refugees who are women and children seemingly slip off into the hills without injury. At least we are not told of any groups caught and massacred. So by extension, this may be a world where mothers do not have any trouble birthing children and infants never die at birth. As far as I can see, the Hobbit geneologies JRRT gave us don't contain a single example of mothers dying in childbirth or of infants or even older children who die. And we know that, taken realistically, that's simply not true, even in the age we live in.

In real history, especially in an age that is agrarian and without modern medicine, none of this makes sense. In Middle-earth it works.