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Old 12-22-2011, 06:32 AM   #1
Lalwendë
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Maybe the lawyers had some responsibility for record keeping? There was obviously some form of administration but not a 'state' as there was little need for control (few external threats and abundance of resources).

It all adds to my long-held impression that The Shire is a very different and much more modern place than the rest of Middle-earth. Rohan is still operating like an Anglo-Saxon society with portable wealth and something like 'wapentakes'; Gondor is like a feudal city state in stasis; and the Elves in some kind of pre-historic society (all very debatable of course - this is just a quick glance at the contrasts). While The Shire has a postal service, 'museums', lawyers, complex inheritance customs, developed trade, an elected Mayor, even a rudimentary police force. It always reminds me of a highly idealised view of Edwardian England without the heavy industry or intense poverty...I digress....

The position of Thain was inherited, and though the Thain wasn't an 'aristocrat' by any means, and more like a titular steward in control of any military needs, no doubt it was still an honoured position and it would be important to keep track of who was in the line of succession. Pippin had sisters who were older to the best of my knowledge, so it looks to have been inherited through males only - another reason why they would need to keep an eye on the family tree!
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Old 12-22-2011, 08:16 AM   #2
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Maybe the lawyers had some responsibility for record keeping? There was obviously some form of administration but not a 'state' as there was little need for control (few external threats and abundance of resources).
Oh, I don't know. The Hobbits seem so fond of their genealogical knowledge I can't see them entrusting it to an outside party. Besides, so many families were related in some way, with each keeping track of its own relations, I would think solid evidence of who was kin to whom would have been that much more reliable.

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It all adds to my long-held impression that The Shire is a very different and much more modern place than the rest of Middle-earth. Rohan is still operating like an Anglo-Saxon society with portable wealth and something like 'wapentakes'; Gondor is like a feudal city state in stasis; and the Elves in some kind of pre-historic society (all very debatable of course - this is just a quick glance at the contrasts). While The Shire has a postal service, 'museums', lawyers, complex inheritance customs, developed trade, an elected Mayor, even a rudimentary police force. It always reminds me of a highly idealised view of Edwardian England without the heavy industry or intense poverty...I digress....
The Shire is an obvious enigma in relation to the rest of ME. I think the idea that it's the most "modern", while at the same time pretty darned near to an idyllic way of life from my point of view, is fascinating.

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The position of Thain was inherited, and though the Thain wasn't an 'aristocrat' by any means, and more like a titular steward in control of any military needs, no doubt it was still an honoured position and it would be important to keep track of who was in the line of succession. Pippin had sisters who were older to the best of my knowledge, so it looks to have been inherited through males only - another reason why they would need to keep an eye on the family tree!
It certainly seems more important than the Mayor's position, though the Thainship by the Third age was, as you note, more of an honorary title like the noble titles still used in Europe today. The Thainship would seem to be a fairly easy succession to track, though one wonders what would happen if the Thain died or went off into the wild (like them crazy Tooks sometimes did ) before he had produced an heir.
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Old 12-22-2011, 06:33 PM   #3
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Oh, I don't know. The Hobbits seem so fond of their genealogical knowledge I can't see them entrusting it to an outside party. Besides, so many families were related in some way, with each keeping track of its own relations, I would think solid evidence of who was kin to whom would have been that much more reliable.
It is pure speculation on my part of course. Though I'd like to think there was some authoritative volume of 'correct' research which any others were based on - and that's probably rooted in my own annoyance at coming across bad family research online where other people have members of my family noted down with totally incorrect facts!

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The Shire is an obvious enigma in relation to the rest of ME. I think the idea that it's the most "modern", while at the same time pretty darned near to an idyllic way of life from my point of view, is fascinating.
I couldn't cope in any other part of Middle-earth.

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It certainly seems more important than the Mayor's position, though the Thainship by the Third age was, as you note, more of an honorary title like the noble titles still used in Europe today. The Thainship would seem to be a fairly easy succession to track, though one wonders what would happen if the Thain died or went off into the wild (like them crazy Tooks sometimes did ) before he had produced an heir.
It would be, and is, an easy line to trace, but there seems to have been quite a big remove between Pippin and the next male in line, had he not made it back from his adventures. If all female descendants were bypassed (as under Salic Law), I think they'd have had to look for descendants of his great-grandfather's brothers, though I can only see evidence of the usual kind of primogeniture, as no female lines were in the running to have ever been discounted.
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Old 12-22-2011, 06:47 PM   #4
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The Shire is an obvious enigma in relation to the rest of ME. I think the idea that it's the most "modern", while at the same time pretty darned near to an idyllic way of life from my point of view, is fascinating.
Intriguing! Put that way, it runs counter to the idea of the "long defeat".

Just a bit of an aside, too, about the dominance of male primogeniture: Gollem's tribe was matriarchial apparently.
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Old 01-04-2012, 01:16 PM   #5
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Living in a very small town with a lot of farmers and at best, a slow trickle of new faces, I can tell you that many of the people here of my grandparents' and to a somewhat lesser degree, my parents' generation aren't too different. It looks as though it'll be lost a bit with my generation with more of us getting jobs elsewhere, completing college, etc.

Just a part of small town life?

Perhaps part of it is because many of us live on the same family land, passed down and divided among the generations, so we have benefited quite tangibly from some of their toils.
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Old 01-06-2012, 06:18 PM   #6
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Living in a very small town with a lot of farmers and at best, a slow trickle of new faces, I can tell you that many of the people here of my grandparents' and to a somewhat lesser degree, my parents' generation aren't too different. It looks as though it'll be lost a bit with my generation with more of us getting jobs elsewhere, completing college, etc.

Just a part of small town life?

Perhaps part of it is because many of us live on the same family land, passed down and divided among the generations, so we have benefited quite tangibly from some of their toils.
I've been reading about how there were so many families with the same surname concentrated in the area where I grew up that some of them took on nicknames, so that one family could be distinguished from each other. For example, you might be a 'Yen Caunce', 'Moss Caunce', or you might be a 'Danny Leatherbarrow'. No doubt it was further complicated by parents using the traditional naming patterns for first names - e.g. first son named after his paternal grandfather, first daughter after her maternal grandmother etc.

I note that with Hobbits, they sometimes were identified not just by surname but by their location too. Though they seemed to have more variety of first names.

I just wish the Noldorian Elves had been more considerate, given how awkward it can be to discriminate between all the names beginning with F.
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Old 01-07-2012, 12:14 AM   #7
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Leaf Roots?

As my father approached retirement age, he started getting into genealogy. After his death, as my sister and I approached retirement age, we took it up as well. I fulfilled my father's quest to trace back to the Mayflower, and confirmed a family rumor that we're distantly related to Abe Lincoln.

Maybe the hobbits need roots. Can't say why Tolkien thought hobbits would be into genealogy, but while the humans had great cities, the dwarves great halls, the elves a deep history not so many generations back, what did the hobbits have? Sure, they had an idealized rural pre-industrial culture, not as such cultures were, but perhaps as they ought to have been. But what did the hobbits have personally?

Anyway, that's a bit of why I got into it. I'm not going to leave a lot for history to find me, but it's nice to know you're part of it?
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Old 09-07-2014, 06:10 PM   #8
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As threads go, this isn't such an old one to be relifting... but I do not recall reading it before and it turns out I have something to add.

Regarding the Hobbits and genealogy, my own experience leads me to make a connection to their large families. On my mother's side, she was one of nine children, her mother was one of fifteen and her father (my grandfather, who was also my grandmother's second cousin--they shared great-grandparents) was one of eight, and these numbers were not at all unusual in the area they grew up: a farming area in western Saskatchewan settled by interrelated families of the same ethnic background (in this case, Catholic Germans who'd been farming in Russia from the time of Catherine the Great until the Russian Revolution). So... not an un-Hobbitlike community.

And although far better records exist on the other side of the family for research, I have always associated genealogical interest with my maternal side, because that was something that was always a topic for conversation when visiting--and in true Hobbit fashion (think: mushrooms), it was something that we never seemed to tire of: who was who's kid and how were they related. I have second- and third-cousins (once or twice removed) and great-aunts who have taken the trouble to record a lot of this information, but it was rarely written down in my memories: Grandpa just knew that so-and-so was his cousin on his father's side and that this cousin was married to the Thems-its, and we had a connection to that family on through the OtherOnes (connections of both him and my grandmother).

In other words, this genealogical interest was necessary for keeping track of your relatives in a community full of large familes--and large families grow at an exponential rate. At only 38 grand-children on that side of my family, I can keep track of them all (my younger siblings can't). My mom could keep track of all 80 or so of hers, but it took dialogue with my grandparents to keep track of anyone more distantly related. I imagine, especially given the stability of Hobbit communities, which were not spread across four provinces as mine came to be (four farthings, maybe) would have found such information relevant on a far more regular basis. After all, Hobbits are a bit gossipy, and gossip, like soap operas, make so much more engaged entertainment if you know the backstory--in other words, the family history.
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