Written in golden ink, but who read it?

[Kalimac]

Hello fellow Downers, a wildly trivial question which came to mind as I was writing thank you notes. For Bilbo's famous Long-Expected Party, of course, all the splendid invitations were written in golden ink, and sent out to about three-quarters of the Shire (the other quarter just turning up anyway); I believe there's reference to hobbits anxiously awaiting the postman for their invites. And of course, after the party, there are all those wonderful gift-labels "For the collection of Hugo Bracegirdle, from a contributor" and so forth, along with the more "serious" presents for the Gaffer and so forth.

All well and good. The only question I have about that is, how did the hobbits read all of these things? Tolkien makes reference to hobbits learning to cook "which they learn before their letters (which many never reach)" so the implication is pretty clear that a good portion, if not the majority, of the Shire, is functionally illiterate, with Bilbo and Frodo, as the local gentry, being the big readers of the group. With the invitations it *might* not be such a big deal - if you get a splendid, golden-ink invitation with the Bag End crest, or whatever, it would be pretty clear what it was for. But how about the gift labels? Even assuming that most of Bilbo's relations were fairly upper-crust and mostly able to read, that still leaves the presents for the "poorer folk." How did they figure out what they got? Did Frodo (or more possibly Merry) stand up front and say "Annnnd for Gaffer Gamgee....this beautiful....SACK OF POTATOES AND WAISTCOAT!" Can't quite picture it, somehow [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img].

Any ideas? Just curious, I'd love to know if anyone has a hypothesis (or even if you don't [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]).