LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 10 - Strider

[Aldarion Elf-Friend]

Firing up an old thread, are we?

Originally Posted by davem

I wonder how much of Tolkien there is in Merry - as I said earlier, he is the closest thing we have to a philologist - how many of us could imagine a hobbit writing a treatise on Old Words & Names in the Shire, & more to the point, how many hobbits would be interested in reading it?

I think that given that "...hobbits delighted in (elaborate family trees with innumerable branches)..." (Prologue) indicates that this sort of thing might not be so far fetched for them. We have this image of hobbits as a sort of rustic, almost serf-like culture. I think that in truth they are much more sophisticated than that. Let's not let a single example of several "working-class" hobbits talking in a tavern (Chapter 1) influence our image of the entire culture.

Originally Posted by Mark

We forget the whole concept that the 9 aslo hold rings.

Not too fast, there. Don't forget that Sauron held the rings of the nine - not the nine.