LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 09 - At the Sign of the Prancing Pony

[HerenIstarion]

Some points (and again to go along with poems)

The Cow in the Moon poem is light hearted, but it adds up to foundations of old mythology which is guessed, but never fully seen at the roots of LoTR. There is direct references, which may have not been understood by hobbits themselves, but are there nevertheless

The stress falls on Man in the Moon and Sun as she:

The round Moon rolled behind the hill
as the Sun raised up her head.
She hardly believed her fiery eyes;
For though it was day, to her surprise
they all went back to bed!

cf:

The maiden whom the Valar chose from among the Maiar to guide the vessel of the Sun was named Arien, and he that steered the island of the Moon was Tilion

Such an undirect hint, inside an old folklore convinces me more then if Tolkien stated openly (say, in conversation between some characters) in 'reality' of the world I'm reading through.

I doubt, of course, that Arien really cared about bree drunkards going to bed in the morning, though . And yet, later on Legolas states:

I have not brought the Sun. She is walking in the blue fields of the South, and a little wreath of snow on this Redhorn hillock troubles her not at all

So Arien may care for doings down there, after all (logical chain - she does not care about this here hillock - so she may care about something else?) And such a lore is also expressed in 'lowly' hobbit lore - Sun cares for what goes below in general, and in Bree in particular.

I don't intend to tell you Man in the Moon really got drunk in the inn, but again - the principle does not contradict the whole 'truth' of the ME - Tilion is a maia, and there were historical precedents of maiar living among Children - Melian!

Again, what once was lore is now folklore. Or, again and again, hobbit poems are always more then they seem , even the most 'silly' ones

cheers

[davem]

Originally Posted by H-I

Again, what once was lore is now folklore. Or, again and again, hobbit poems are always more then they seem , even the most 'silly' ones

Its interesting that the poems always seem not just to be inspired by, but also to 'expand' the context in which they appear - Frodo's poem about woods failing in the Old Forest, Frodo's song here, Sam's Troll Song, Bilbo's song of Earendel at Rivendell, etc. They open up the mythological dimension - even if we don't realise it. This is why I think those readers who skip the poems miss a lot of the depth of the story.

Somehow songs are a means of transmitting old lore & keeping it alive & relevant. They keep the past alive in the present, linking past & present, almost in the way past & present are linked by experiences like Merry's in the last chapter.

[Mithalwen]

The song is interesting .... partly for me since it was the first part of LOTR I encountered in an anthology ... I remember being delighted at "recognising" an expanded version of the old nursery rhyme... so while it refers back in ME time to the creation stories which would be little known myth to the hobbits (though Galadriel would have known them as fact) they also refer forward to the world we know and nonsense rhymes for English children ..... and the oral tradition does last well it did to my pre computerised/pre-video generation.. . I remember a similar feeling of delighted recognition when I realised that a song I sang in the Brownies 20 years earlier was a slightly corrupted version of the folksong/lute song Lord Randall ..... I couldn't believe my ears .... even the tune was distinctly recognizable......

by the by I believe that it was the first thing Viggo shot as he arrived as a newcomer when the rest of the team had been together for months ... the start of method acting...

Oh I also noticed the idea of further hobbit communities when I reread .... but where? I wonder ... the Gladden ones had been abandoned and the Nazgul drew many blanks on their search? A more distant vista? Were there Hobbits on the far downs before Elanor & co removed there perhaps...

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

"There were probably many more Outsiders scattered about the West of the World in those days than the people of the Shire imagined. Some, doubtless, were no better than tramps, ready to dig a hole an any bank and stay only as long as it suited them."

I expect that this bit of the chapter, might be left over from the earlier drafts when Trotter the Hobbit was to be introduced rather than Aragorn.

It seems to me also that in this chapter the mask starts to slip off everyday mundane life in Middle-earth. The hobbits had expected Bree to be a different sort of place, but still it had enough of the familiar comforting aspects to lull them to some degree. Even Merry, getting out of his range of expertise, felt comfortable enough to go seek some air. But through Frodo's eyes we learn that not all is as seems, and that the common room, for all it's warmth is dotted with shady folk, including the town gatekeeper in the lot! And even though the Shire was not aware of the ring, evidently they might know about it here.

I clearly remember the first time reading the story, I thought Frodo's journey was about to derail and wondered what turn the story was about to take when Strider says,

You have put your foot in it! Or should I say your finger?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I think Aiwendil makes an interesting point about the contrast of this chapter of ‘refuge’ to the others. But I don’t think that this consists of an alteration in the pattern, but a deepening of it. As so many here have already pointed out, this chapter is one of darkness and lurking danger, doubt and fear. It is also one in which no women appear! Unlike the Maggot farm and the House of Bombadil, there is no Mrs Butterbur, and I think that this might go a long way to explaining the oddly discordant feel of this chapter. Without the ‘balance’ wrought by the feminine, the Pony – no matter how cozy and welcoming a place – cannot really be a refuge. It’s for this reason that I don’t read this chapter as a ‘refuge’ one at all, but as the first stage of the hobbits’ next stage of their adventure, which will end at Rivendell under the protection of Elrond and Arwen.

The way this chapter begins is interesting in this light, insofar as we go back to the earlier discussions we had about the Shire as an enclosed society trying to shut out the wider world. Bree is the mirror image of that, but the barriers are here both much more visible (the gate, the wall etc) and – consequently – much more vulnerable (the walls can be climbed, the gate is open to refugees, the spies are in their midst already, etc). It’s as though having left their private fantasy of an enclosed and safe place in the Shire (and having been awoken to the fact that it was a fantasy) the hobbits are now able or ready to face the reality of the world, as it is reflected here in Bree. It’s not all Party Fields and second breakfasts on the lawn, with hot baths and beer in the evenings. There are pleasant things in the world yes (like hobbits, and beer, and a friendly Innkeeper) but there are dark things as well – and sometimes even the dark things aren’t what you think they are: Strider is neither the dangerous threat he first appears to be, nor is he ‘just’ the Ranger Strider. Given this, I think it makes perfect sense (from a thematic point of view) that it is Merry who goes out into the night: as the most grown-up and ‘aware’ of the hobbits, he is the one most able and capable of engaging with that real world beyond the Shire.

The last point I want to make about this chapter is the manner in which the Ring gets on Frodo’s finger. His actual disappearing act is described from the point of view of the inn’s patrons, so we have no real narrative of the moment itself, only Frodo’s memory of it. And this is far from revealing:

How it came to be on his finger he could not [edit: or would not?] tell. He could only suppose that he had been handling it in his pocket while he sang, and that somehow it had slipped on when he stuck out his hand with a jerk to save his fall. For a moment he wondered if the Ring itself had not played him a trick; perhaps it had tried to reveal itself in response to some wish or command that was felt in the room.

The disturbing thing about this is how Frodo seems almost desperate to avoid accepting responsibility for what’s happened. He blames the Ring for ‘tricking’ him (“nasty tricksy Precious; trickses us it did!”), and then some other will in the room. The closest he comes to acknowledging that he might have had some part in it is his admission that he had been “handling it in his pocket.” This in itself is telling, though, since one of the first things we heard from Bilbo in his conversation with Gandalf in Chapter One was how he was always fingering the Ring and playing with it in his pocket. The Ring is already exerting quite a pull on Frodo, and he is here either unable or unwilling to admit just how much…

[Mithalwen]

Fordim's point about the absence of women is interesting; I have often wondered in the books generally whether one can assume when no women are mentioned that no women are present.. In this case I think the answer probably is yes ... I can remember even in my not-so-distant childhood most pubs having "saloons" that were effectively men only as well as mixed lounge bars -and my mother may have been a little old fashioned but I was taught that " a lady did not go into a bar alone" ( and even now I dislike being the first to arrive if I am meeting friends in a pub............) . At the Party women are mentioned and at Minas Tirith and ROhan they are evacuated .... but at the Feast at Rivendell ... it seems that Arwen was the only woman there .... and surely that can't be the case ..... when Frodo says "There was one lady.." does he mean one lady marked out for special rank by her seating ... or that she was the only woman? At Lorien no woman other than Galadriel is mentioned though her maidens are referred to.. I suppose it does increase the impact of the three significant women in the story .... but it makes it seem a superficially unbalanced world ....
but then I suppose Tolkien lived in a very male world so it may not have occurred to him it was odd....!!!

[Lhunardawen]

For some reason unknown, I do not find inns any comforting. And this has been carried on as I read this chapter. Yes, Barliman Butterbur might have been a gracious and customer-friendly innkeeper, but there's something in the way that he talks so much and tends to forget things that scared me. We see a glimpse of this forgetfulness in the line that mentions him hesitating for a moment after hearing Frodo introduce himself as Underhill, as if there is something he has to do in connection with the name (my apologies, I haven't the book).

The unfamiliarity with Breelanders, particularly the Big Folk, adds to this aura of discomfort. As I read, I pictured myself being one of the hobbits, and the description of the Big Folk scared me, not just because of their height. Add to that the lurking thought of the Ringwraiths being around.

Ironically (as we will find out in the next chapter), Strider is also a source of fear. At first we see him as someone who probably knows more about these hobbits than the others in the Inn, in the way he looks at them. And since our only source of information about him in this chapter is the one given by Butterbur (which the people around most likely agree with), there is every reason for Frodo to be on his guard...

...but, unfortunately, he was not. His song has somehow lightened the mood, but the accident has made his position even worse. Now he has a growing suspicion of darkness on the only person he is most likely to trust other than his companions. What a fright this chapter must have been for poor Frodo.

I seem to have focused too much on the negative...