Fatty Bolger

[jallanite]

Gaffer Gamgee is a neighbor of Frodo Baggins, who lives at #3 Bagshot Row, and shows a high respect for Frodo Baggins, though Frodo is a half a Brandybuck and was born and in his early years raised in Buckland. Gaffer Gamgee quite possibly also personally knows Merry Brandybuck who is a close personal friend of Frodo’s and often a visitor at Bag End.

Fredegar’s home territory, according to “A Conspiracy Unmasked”, was the Eastfarthing, “from Budgeford in Bridgefields in fact, but he had never been over the Brandywine Bridge”. However we learn in “A Conspiracy Unmasked” that of the original company of Frodo, Sam, and Pippin, “Sam was the only member of the party who had not been over the river before.” And there is no hint that either Frodo, Merry, or Pippin had ever been to Bree before, and so had presumably also never been over the Brandywine Bridge previously, unless we are to imagine that they had at least once crossed the Brandywine Bridge as a convenient entry into Buckland by the East Road, rather than by Buckleberry Ferry.

Indeed it is implied, though not explicitly stated, that Fredegar and Merry had originally traveled with a wagon load of Frodo’s household possessions to Crickhollow by the East Road and the Brandywine Bridge. If this interpretation is correct, then Fredegar had used the Brandywine Bridge to get to Buckland and to Crickhollow where he is later found.

Wayne G. Hammond and Christine Scull in their The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, page 119, suggest that readers who complain about Tolkien’s wording here are being over literal. They write:

Fatty is now in Buckland, east of the Brandywine, but he has certainly been on the west side of the river, since he was present at Bilbo’s party (indicated in Appendix C) as well as at Frodo’s birthday dinner at Bag End only a few days earlier, and earlier ‘often in and out of Bag End’ (Book I, Chapter 2, p. 42. I: 51). It seems unlikely that Tolkien meant to suggest that Fatty always crossed the river by the ferry, and not the bridge; presumably these words are meant to convey that he had never traveled further East on the Road than the Brandywine Bridge, beyond which is the wide world.

Tolkien should in theory have written something like (italics mine):

… “from Budgeford in Bridgefields in fact, but he had never been over the Brandywine Bridge, save only to gain entry to Buckland.”