LotR --- Appendix C -- Family Trees

[Estelyn Telcontar]

This appendix consists entirely of four Hobbit family trees, one for each of the members of the Fellowship. Additionally, they include a number of characters mentioned at Bilbo's Birthday Party. In some cases, information as to marriage partners of various hobbits has been recorded here.

These family trees are, as are several of the other appendices, an invaluable source of background information for those who wish to write Hobbit fan fiction and/or RPGs. Have you pored over them to find out more about your favourite Shire characters? Or have you always skipped this appendix?

I have a marker in here, since I use these for my Folco fan fiction. Though he is a canonical character, he is not included anywhere, so I had to find a place for him and figure out how he's related to others. Interestingly, it worked so well that I imagine myself finding the spot that Tolkien would have had for him, had he not been forgotten...

I also know of a planned RPG in which hobbit characters are to be canonical; since it takes place much earlier than the War of the Ring, they are to be chosen from one of the family trees!

How have you made use of this appendix? Did you find any obscure information that interested you?

[Aiwendil]

Such things as charts, tables, maps, and schematics have a way of attracting me, and I have been fascinated by these family trees for about as long as I can remember. I seem to recall spending a good deal of my childhood staring at them, working out the relationship between this hobbit and that, figuring out how old various Bagginses, Tooks, Brandybucks, and Gamgees lived to be, counting Sam's children, and the like. Actually, now that I think about it, it was probably these family trees that sparked an interest in my own genealogy.

Tolkien seems to have very much enjoyed working out not just the big events in his Legendarium, but the minutiae as well, and I think I can understand why. I tend to enjoy these family trees, along with the maps, the lists of kings, and so forth, in much the same way I enjoy reading an almanac or an atlas. There seems to be something enjoyable about mere facts, mere data, when real or at least realistic.

[davem]

Little to say on this on this Appendix. The new 50th Anniversary edition of LotR now includes six family trees, rather than four (the two others, Bolger of Budgeford & Boffin of the Yale, were ommitted from the First Edition for reasons of space). Apart from noting that Fredegar's great, great, great grandmother has my favourite Hobbit name by far: Dina Diggle, I can't think of much to say.

This does allow me an excuse to bring up a favourite tidbit of Hobbit history, though, as in the LotR Readers' Companion section for Appendix C, Hammond & Scull mention the story in Tolkien's letter to AC Nunn, regarding Lalia the Great ('or less courteously the Fat'), wife of Isumbras IV.

Lalia is said to have died when her attendant (rumoured to be Pippin's sister Pearl) let her wheeled chair slip down a flight of steps.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Such things as charts, tables, maps, and schematics have a way of attracting me, and I have been fascinated by these family trees for about as long as I can remember. I seem to recall spending a good deal of my childhood staring at them, working out the relationship between this hobbit and that, figuring out how old various Bagginses, Tooks, Brandybucks, and Gamgees lived to be, counting Sam's children, and the like. Actually, now that I think about it, it was probably these family trees that sparked an interest in my own genealogy.

Tolkien seems to have very much enjoyed working out not just the big events in his Legendarium, but the minutiae as well, and I think I can understand why. I tend to enjoy these family trees, along with the maps, the lists of kings, and so forth, in much the same way I enjoy reading an almanac or an atlas. There seems to be something enjoyable about mere facts, mere data, when real or at least realistic.

I agree that Tolkien definitely loved working out factual tidbits for his world. And, like you, I've picked it up by association with his works (although some predisposition in that direction predates my first reading of The Hobbit probably didn't hurt). I love maps, tales of the years, charts, and geneologies.

Blame it all on Tolkien, if you like, especially the Appendices and Maps of the Lord of the Rings...

As regards this particular Appendix, I find it a fun one to browse, since I am, on one side of my family, rather interrelated with my relatives. I can easily see myself in Frodo, regarding his familial ties to the Tooks and Brandybucks. Though my ancestors on the one side are not Fallohides, but simply German-Russian farmers, the interrelated "family" is a very similiar concept.

And the differences between the two sides of family can even be compared to the Baggins vs. Took (and Brandybuck) differences.

So, the facetious question must be asked, is the Lord of the Rings an allegory of my family? Is Frodo intended to be me?

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Thanks to davem and modern technology, I've been able to compare the Boffin family tree which has now been published with the one I thought up for Folco. Actually, I didn't do too badly - Donnamira Boffin, née Took, is his great-grandmother, just as I had thought! So he does belong right in the opening into which I placed him. A few details vary with Tolkien's own - I had guessed at a birth date and have him four years younger than Tolkien did, which is pretty close. And his father is named there, so that I do not have to use another name for him.

I won't be able to change the age in my fan fiction, since I had made him the same age as Merry there. Still, there's nothing essential in my version that wouldn't be able to fit into what Tolkien revealed in his own Hobbit family tree. I find it interesting that he made one for a character that he dropped in the book - only three mentions, and then Folco disappears completely. But I guess that's typical...

[Lalwendë]

Again I find this section of the Appendices very interesting, and like Aiwendil and Formendacil I have a liking for charts and maps and lists. So much so that I've been told I learned to read from looking at maps when I was very young. I've tried to trace my own family tree, but when it became more and more complicated I did not go any further as I realised how much work would be involved. I used to enjoy drawing up imaginary genealogies as a child and have a notebook somewhere which I used to write them up in; then I would make up stories based on them. Maybe I should've got out more.

Looking at the Baggins family tree it is clear that if inheritance was taken through the male line (through primogeniture) then the Sackville-Bagginses were the rightful heirs to the Baggins estate. Using primogeniture again, Frodo would have been the next but one Baggins in line (after Porto Baggins). Allowing female Hobbits into the line of inheritance, then Sancho Proudfoot was the heir after the Sackvile-Bagginses. Frodo is also the last of the male Bagginses of Hobbiton as shown on this family tree. We don't know if there were other Baggins families, but as far as we can tell from this, the name dies out with Frodo. There is Porto Baggins but he seems to have remained a bachelor also.

Apparently there is a 'joke' in the choice of the name Sackville-Baggins, in that Tolkien was satirising the British intellectual elite or Bloomsbury set (I wonder if he was particularly picking on Vita Sackville-West?). It is unusual to have a double-barrelled surname in The Shire, and I wondered how it might have come about, but Tolkien did explain it. From the Scull/Hammond Reader's Companion, there is an interesting extract from Tolkien's letters:

In other great families the headship might pass through the daughter of the deceased to his eldest grandson (irrespective of the daughter's age). This latter custom was usual in families of more recent origin, without ancient records or ancestral mansions. In such cases the heir ( if he accepted the courtesy title) took the name of his mother's family - though he also reatined that of his father's family also (placed second).

So taking this as custom in The Shire, Longo Baggins must have married an important person in the figure of Camellia Sackville; she must have been of 'great' family and have passed the headship on to Otho. Interestingly, Longo's brother Bingo (another of Bilbo's uncles) also 'married well', as he married Chica Chubb, and started a Chubb-Baggins line - cut short when Poppy marries a Bolger.

If The Shire is in any way representative of English society then this is fascinatingly accurate in its depiction of middle-class social values and concerns. Note that the taking on of double-barrelled names is quite clearly linked with 'new money' while what Tolkien has said in his letter above must also mean that 'old families' such as Tooks and Brandybucks (the aristocracy of The Shire) would not countenance such a thing, a female heir would retain her own name and so would her offspring (much like our own Queen ). I wonder if Lotho upgraded from taking the Daily Mail to taking the Telegraph once he got his hands on Bag End?

[Rumil]

I don't think I'm really justified in a new thread here, as I just wanted to follow up Isumbras and this appeared to be the only one with much of a mention of him.

Anyway I idly clicked on 'Random Page' in Wikipedia and came up with this.....

Sir Isumbras is the hero of a medieval metrical romance written in middle English.

The romance was circulating in England before 1320, when William of Nassington referred to it in his Speculum Vita. His comment is revealing, for he disparages stories of Isumbras as vanities (along with those of the equally popular and pious Guy of Warwick and Bevis of Hampton), an indication that he saw a generic difference between it and the legends of saints. However, in several manuscripts, Isumbras is grouped with saints' legends and other religious materials.

According to the Cambridge History of English and American Literature the theme of Sir Isumbras is that of Christian humility, the story being an adaptation of the legend of Saint Eustace. Sir Isumbras is a an over-proud knight who is offered the choice of happiness in his youth or his old age. He chooses the latter, and falls from his high estate by the will of Providence. He is severely stricken; his possessions, his children and, lastly, his wife, are taken away; and he himself becomes a wanderer. After much privation he trains as a blacksmith, learning to forge anew his armour, and he rides into battle against a sultan. Later, he arrives at the court of the sultan's queen, who proves to be his long-lost wife. He attempts to Christianise the Islamic lands over which he now rules, provoking a rebellion which is then defeated when his children miraculously return to turn the tide of battle.

The poem was almost entirely unknown until it was published in the mid-Nineteenth century. Tom Taylor, the editor of Punch added some humorous lines in a parody of the original's style. This scene was painted by John Everett Millais as Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857).

No doubt The Prof was familiar with the tale of old Isumbras!

This begs a question, is there any possible link between our Isumbrasses?

The tale of the years has - 2340 Isumbras I becomes thirteenth Thain, and first of the Took line. The Oldbucks occupy the Buckland.

The Took family tree has Isumbras III and IV and presumably there must have been an Isumbras II, but I fancy no. 1 as our likely culprit here.

Could the Sir Isumbras tale give an inkling (sorry ) into the transfer of power from the Oldbucks to the Tooks in the days of Isumbras 1st? Perhaps Isumbras was a gentlehobbit who lost all his family and position but returned to a position of ruling the kingdom, or Shire here? Food for thought or outrageous over-speculation? The over-proud knight could apply to an earlier 'fool of a Took' right enough.

Maybe its a possible fanfic lead at least, and I also like the idea of a hobbit Miss Marple tracking down the dastardly perpetrators of the Stair Incident at Great Smials, as descibed above.

(though I'm now worried, having used the 'F' word that davem will be tracking me down with a replica Anduril [£199.99 from Franklin mint no doubt], step away from the weapon davem ! Lal, tell 'im I'm not worth it, )

Cheers

Rumil