Quote:
Originally Posted by Formendacil
Shouldn't a mathom be something that's already made the rounds of the village a couple times? At least it should be a post already posted!
Nothing like a pedantic point to rouse a sleeping Tolkien fan from slumber. This was, after all, the best thing about Rings of Power, and perhaps we glutted ourselves on so much correction of flatly wrong adaptation then.
Still, a Happy Birthday to the Deathly! This place will be hopping again when all of us millennials hit retirement, I promise! |
Not quite, not quite.
There is a Mathom-House in Michael Delving which appears to be given over to weapons from ages past. It in fact housed Bilbo's coat of mithril mail for some time, before Bilbo decided to give it to Frodo, mentioned in the
Prologue and
A Journey in the Dark. Perhaps this forum houses our old precious thoughts like a mathom-house.
Hammond and Scull in the
Companion discuss Tolkien's ironic use of mathom, from the Old English word
mathum, so Tolkien's use is a bit of a joke. Museums, of course, did not exist in Old English culture, not until the 18th and 19th centuries in fact, so this is another anachronism in LotR.
Bilbo apparently did not partake of the hobbit habit of regifting items.
Quote:
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This was only a small selection of the assembled presents. Bilbo's residence had got rather cluttered up with things in the course of his long life. It was a tendency of hobbit-holes to get cluttered up: for which the custom of giving so many birthday-presents was largely responsible. Not, of course, that the birthday-presents were always new; there were one or two old mathoms of forgotten uses that had circulated all around the district; but Bilbo had usually given new presents, and kept those that he received. "A Long-expected Party"
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So there is nothing pedantically incorrect about suggesting new posts as mathoms for a birthday celebration, just following the habit of a very good hobbit.