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Originally Posted by LmP
What would the burial customs be in the Shire for pre-religious hobbits? Any ideas?
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Well, the question assumes that Hobbits
were 'pre-religious', which I think is wrong. I can't think of any human society which didn't/doesn't have some form of religious belief. If anything is missing from the Shire which ought to be there its that. The Hobbits must have had some form of spirituality, because all human societies do. People think that way - we're all looking for some explanation of life & death, some answer to the question of why there's anything, & where it all came from. Its the old 'God-shaped hole' thing.
So, we would have to work out what hobbit beliefs were before we could answer your question about what form their burial or marriage customs would take.
I think we'd have to assume some form of 'natural religion', because there was no 'revealed' religion available for them to adopt. The point is they aren't 'savages'. They live in a structured society, & have a strong moral sense.
Do they have inherited 'Archetypes'? Do they 'mythologise'? If they are Children of Eru wouldn't there be some innate sense of the Divine, the numinous, which came out naturally?
I suspect Tolkien knew this was inevitable, but simply culdn't find a way to integrate it into his story. All humans tell stories. Stories 'grow in the telling' & become legends, which develop into myths, or more accurately into religious belief. It happens - it always has.
But I think, as Tolkien said, the religious element has been taken up into the story itself. In other words, in a sense, the story is a religious one. I'm struggling here, but its like the way many of Jesus parables don't mention God at all. Many are mundane, but the parable itself is 'religious' - the 'religion' is contained in the story, even though the story doesn't mention God. And it doesn't mention God because its intended to give an
experience of God - which might sound contradictory, but isn't, because the intent is to open the mind to the experience of the Divine, not to
talk about it.
The Divine is present in the Shire, in our experience of it, so in a sense any mention of religious practice in the Shire would get between us & the Divine. I find a greater sense of the spiritual comes through in LotR than in the Sil for this very reason - the Sil writings talk a lot about Eru & the Valar & the afterlife - the great religious questions are dealt with. LotR, on the other hand hardly mentions religion at all, but the Divine shines through every page.
So, 'absorbed into the story' - as it should be, if its to be communicated...