[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Rumil

I should have remembered that the RPGs have become less stereotypically combat-oriented. My thoughts were of old-school D+D where everyone tooled up to the max with chainmail, shield and sword, selection of silver daggers, wolfsbane, oil flasks and the obligatory ten-foot pole and got full plate armour as soon as they could. Not that they weren't fun of course .

Well not that they don't exist anymore. We also started like that, only by long playing, the players become somewhat more, hmm, "educated" and aim for other things than just, as we say, "Expírieeens!!!" (which used to be a battle cry)

I noticed that Esty brought up the same vegetarian points in the next chapter. Anyway, the cows (kine?) could have been at least semi-wild. I wonder if it is possible to harvest sufficient grain from wild grasses? I'm thinking of Emmer-wheat here and the old theories about the beginnings of agriculture where food plants were casually harvested and encouraged until the point where formal fields made sense. Perhaps Tom did a little grain trading with Maggot, as grain can be stored, but fresh cream cannot!

Well, there's still the thing I said before about "holding animals captive". And I found there's actually a good point to it. Tom actually says, after calling up the ponies in the next chapter:

Originally Posted by Fog on the Barrow-Downs

My four-legged friend; though I seldom ride him, and he wanders often far, free upon the hillsides.

So, I think Tom can have let's say a cow, but I guess she wanders randomly around the hills (I can imagine that pretty well) and when Tom wants some milk, he calls her home (quite easily, I would imagine, as with the ponies; but even the image of old Tom in his boots running around the hills to find his cow is not inappropriate). By the way I am sure Tom is the one who milks her, not Goldberry. And speaking of cows, I am actually now thinking that maybe a sheep is more plausible. Just because the fact sheep are mentioned in the memories Tom "projects" to the Hobbits when speaking about Arnor of old (it looks like the Downs were a good pasture). And then, the image of half-wild shepherd Tom with sheep milk fits well to me (I am actually thinking of the, to me known, Moravian/Slovak bača, the simple shepherd).