[Fordim Hedgethistle]

It's occured to me that this discussion of 'essential nature' in relation to death and death rituals is something that we can follow to the other races of Middle-earth.

Elves, for example, don't have graveyards -- at least, there is no mention made anywhere. Arwen, of course, gets buried after her death, but she's mortal then so gets treated like a human. It makes sense that Elves don't have tombs or graves or anything, since they are immortal. Seems to me that they would be rather ill-equipped to deal with death, or even to understand it really. This has always struck me as a particularly limited aspect to Elvish nature: to go on for centuries never having to face death. I am sure that there was plenty of death in the First Age but the wars of the Second and Third Age were relatively sparse and the casualties among the Elves well below the numbers of those departing for the West. Besides, death in war is a special case: there simply is no part or place for 'natural' deaths in Elvish society. They're almost like children insofar as they never have to think about their mortality or face the loss of a loved one.

It's interesting, then, that like hobbits they live underground: at least some of them. While by the time of the War of the Ring, there's only (apparently) Thranduil who still has a large underground palace, there were a number of such places in the First Age. Given how out of touch Elves are with the natural cycle, what do we make of their desire to live in the earth? I can't help but see their underground palaces as very Elvish places in which they did not try to live 'in' nature, but in defiance of it: above ground, things change and grow and die. Below ground, things are a lot more stable and static.

Dwarves are, of course, also a people who live underground, but despite this they seem somehow -- and perhaps oddly -- more in touch with nature than the Elves. This is counter intuitive, I realise: I am not suggesting that Dwarves 'get' trees better than Elves (clearly ridiculous) but that they seem more in tune with, or accepting of, the natural cycle than Elves. Their tunnels and halls underground are mines: places of industry and change, where they acquire goods for trade and commerce with other peoples. Their acceptance of change and flux is marked by the fact that they have tombs (Thorin's and Balin's in the books). They apparently have a well-developed set of rituals around death and dying which allows them to incorporate these into their societies. In fact, so adept are they at 'accepting' and incorporating death that Thorin's tomb becomes the literal centre of Erebor.

These seems to be a 'better' way and approach than the Elves, but it leads toward a dangerous path, I think -- that charted by the Numenoreans, who quite famously became so obsessed with death and funerary rites, that their whole society became statically obsessed with these rites to its destruction. So is there some kind of a spectrum here? With Elves at one end, in death-denial, Men at the other in death-celebration (even the Rohirrim have the mounds right in front of their city; the Barrows are the creations of Men), and Dwarves are somewhere in the middle?

So where does this leave the hobbits? Might I suggest that they somehow synthesise these positions? They live in the ground and resist change, like Elves, but at the same time are engaged in the natural world of change and generation. Their holes are not retreats from the world but very much part of the word. Whereas the great Elven halls are "carved from the living rock" hobit holes are "delved in hill sides". In this they are perhaps a bit like Dwarves, insofar as their holes are places that get 'used' for the process of living, but they do not combine their homes with places of industry: they don't live in mines, the purpose of which are to remove the goods from the earth. They work with nature and in nature, without living off of nature or removing things from it. Like Dwarves and Men, then, they have a sense of the change of natural living and accept it, and make a place for it with funerary rites and funerals, but only where and when appropriate. They don't, like Men (and possibly Dwarves) go to the other extreme and place death and dying and remembering the dead at the centre of their culture and experience. They make room for the dead in the realm of the living.

The extensive genealogies might have something to do with this. Family trees are really little more than records of the dead -- commemorations of the dead: tombs in paper. But they are tombs that are expressed in the form of life: family trees which outline how the living are related to one another through the dead. It is a way of keeping the dead 'around' as part of the living society, while maintaining and emphasis upon the living and the act of living.

So here I go with what may be something of a flyer: why are there no graveyards mentioned in the Shire? Because the hobbits already live in tombs: their holes are living, natural tombs. They are holes in the ground where the memory of the dead, and even the 'presence' of the dead, are maintained and celebrated in and by the process of living and natural existence kept up by their descendants. By the end of LotR, I think we can see Bag End as Bilbo's and Frodo's tomb, kept alive and in joy by Sam, Rosie and their children. The Appendices even extend this by telling us of the death of Rosie and the passing of Sam -- so Bag End becomes their 'living tomb' as well.

One more thought that just occurs to me: Merry and Pippin are both buried in tombs with Men (both are buried in Gondor, are they not? With Aragorn?). Perhaps this is the final marker of their otherness, their separation from their essential hobbitish nature?