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#1 |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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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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#2 | |||
Gruesome Spectre
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Heaven's doorstep
Posts: 8,039
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#3 | |||
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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#4 | |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 6,003
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Just a bit of an aside, too, about the dominance of male primogeniture: Gollem's tribe was matriarchial apparently.
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I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. |
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#5 |
A Northern Soul
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Valinor
Posts: 1,847
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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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...take counsel with thyself, and remember who and what thou art. |
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#6 | |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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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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#7 |
Wight
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Settling down in Bree for the winter.
Posts: 208
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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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#8 |
Dead Serious
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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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