Translated from The Great Hobbiton Dictionary of The Middle Earth, Volume 2. Lands of the East
The land of Middle-Earth is a very strange place indeed – especially to our modern eye – filled with all manner of strange and bizarre creatures, some of which have never seen the light of our modern earth. Yet perhaps none were so strange as the hobbit – you may call me a fool for saying so. For in a world that boasts dragons, giants, and elves older than the moon, hobbits may seem quite unremarkable, but you see that's the trick.
Hobbits seem unremarkable, dull even, and thus you turn away, and don't look at what's really going on under your nose. Yes, hobbits are dull, they're dull in the West, dull in the North, and dull very much in the East – that's why men don't really look, and elves never knew at all. Not even the great and mighty Gandalf could spot it – but then he mostly concerned himself with the Tooks, during their adventurous youth, and hobbits like that are rarely let in on such dangerous secrets. Who knows who they might have blabbed to? For instance Ulessius Took after consuming more than a quarter of his uncle's alehouse, had apparently told an orc the secret recipe of his Grandmother's sweet pancake batter. To this day the dish had never been made in the Shire again, out of sheer shame.
How could you ever tell someone like that the secret of… the chocolate.
You've never noticed have you? We're so used to hearing that word, the word of chocolate in our modern lives that we don't even realise it might be odd to hear it in a land like Middle-Earth. A land so isolated, from war, famine, in-fighting, and the fact that all their neighbours actually hated them – that even trade between the different kingdoms that made up the West seemed impossible. And yet, hobbits had chocolate.
Have you guessed the secret…the reason such a simple 'backwards' people could possess something that was not able to grow in the Western land of the Shire? Yes, I think you have…for what other way is there to have something you don't have the capacity to produce yourself, but with a trade route.
Ah but you say, surely such a thing, such a road leading from the hobbits of the West to their cousins of the East would have been spotted by the higher, more noble races long before it even began. Well if you actually think that, shut up and sit down, and let me tell you a story.
The story starts long before the fine folks of the Shire began to write down their family tree… long before the Tooks and the Brandybucks had become anything beyond common foot soldiers in the Fallowhide clans.
In a different land, one that had never felt the hard press of a Numinorion sandal against its shore, there a lived a people, a small people with big feet. Now these people had a great kingdom, dug into the heart of a mighty mountain – but none of that matters now, for like all things that kingdom ended, and that great people had to leave the mountain. Some headed north, to the snow-covered lands of their human allies, some south to where the heat is strong, and the spiders are bigger; some headed East to where men who still worshiped that strange god from the West dwelled, and there was a small faction that remained right where they were. Unwilling to risk the journey in the hope that there might be something better, when what they had in front of them was just fine.
These were the ancestors of the hobbits of the East, North, South, and West. For you see we hobbits are a far more numerous people than the writings of Man or Elf will imply when they include us at all. And like so many a numerous people, hobbits kept in contact with each other. Not well, true – for these ancient hobbits were always on the move. A messenger bird here and there, a package with a trusted traveller when they could…many people in a land like Middle-Earth would have stopped trying after the first twenty or thirty years, but those people were not hobbits. Perhaps that is what started it…. that desperate need to keep in contact that they carried with them all the way to their new homes– for even the hobbits that had stayed behind could not live in the mountain.
And then something wonderful happened…the travelling stopped.
At first many did not notice how easier keeping in contact with their cousins had become, too focused on building and securing their own settlements – but eventually a collection of bright sparks realised that the messenger birds were coming quicker back. Their cousins were finally as settled as they were, and thus proper contact could be established again. But for a time, that's all it was, contact, a bird from the East, a couple from the north every few weeks, nothing much more than that…there'd have to be something more than a promise of cousins long unseen for the hobbits of any corner to brave the long danger of the distance between them. And then in the bright lands of the east, a plant was discovered – whose seeds, when prepared correctly, could be used to make the most wonderous of substances…and they called this plant, the cacao bean.
Now hobbits being hobbits, were naturally not a selfish people – at least when it came to their own kind - and such was the wonder that the cacao bean installed within them that for one last time the Hobbits of the East sent birds out to their cousins in the South, North, and West. We have discovered the most wonderous of beans, they told them, and we will share with you, but first you must make the danger worth our while. Let us start up a trade route between our four people, let us bring the wonders of our settlement, our creations and our discoveries to one another and trade them for yours. And to each message they attached a small pot of the strange substance the cacao bean had been made into…. and they named it chocolate.
Such was the joy that the substance did awake in the four corners of the hobbit world, that the construction of the road began almost immediately. They called it the Compass Road – don't ask why, compasses were yet to be invented – but still it was a thing of beauty, with four roads stretching to the East, the North, the South and the West, with a crossroad placed in the land that Men now called Rohan.
Perhaps this is where our story should start.
For more than an age of men the four prongs of the compass road ran unimpeded by the wanderings of the larger races – for hobbits have always been adept at slipping unnoticed by those with long legs and their eyes thrust up to the skies. For you see hobbit roads are not like the roads of men, or elves, or even dwarves, they are subtle and indeed if one isn't in the know they would seem almost undistinguishable from the paths made by deer.
Which was all fine and fair if one was a hobbit in the know, yet over the years such a creature became rarer and rarer in the West…until at last only those at the very top of society and those at the very bottom even bothered to remember at all. Some blamed the Tooks as they were so often wont to do, but this seemed for once slightly unfair – seeing how the Thain was one of those top brass still in the know of the Compass Road. No, it was most likely as it was with most bad things in Middle Earth the fault of the sinking of Numenor. For with their island home gone those mighty men had no choice but to settle in the lands of Middle-Earth; unfortunately for those that actually dwelled there the long favouritism by the gods had left these men of the sea with the belief, that because they hadn't turned away from these gods, that every land the gods had made now belonged to them.
There was some disagreement on this matter from the people who actually owned the lands of course, but that had never stopped the Numinorions before.
For many years war ravaged the once 'fairly' peaceful lands of Middle-Earth, leaving even the securely hidden Compass road too dangerous for any sane hobbit to travel. So, for a time, the four corners of the hobbit world were separated, unable to even send a warning when the Numenor turned their greedy eyes onto the quite plotted out lands of the Western Hobbits. Fortunately, hobbits have ever been a people adept at spotting the danger of the big folk, thus those early settlements were abandoned and the hobbits of the West became travellers and wanderers again, for a time at least.
Even when things settled, the gap that had formed between the hobbits of the West, and the others seemed unbreachable. For the Numinorions had settled their mighty kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, and they held no love for the people of the East and south and had been known to slay on sight any person from those far-flung countries.
Thus, the first two prongs of the road were closed. For a time the second two stayed open, trading between each other – but men are a crafty, tricky people and soon even the Hobbits of the North - with their copper complexions – dared not risk moving on paths so far inland of the kingdom of Arnor. They preferred instead to move along the waters leading from North to West, but since only one of the Western Hobbit tribes was not deathly afraid of water, that left little room for wider communication between the two people.
Truly nothing was worth braving the wrath of the wicked sea men and the people of Hobbick were finally sundered.
Years turned into centuries, and centuries turned into history, until history was all but myth. And then, in the third age of Middle-Earth in the bright lands to the east of it, a war began. Now this war, was not the war you have heard so many tales of – it was not fought over a shiny piece of jewel snatched from the finger of a dark lord half a century ago, but from his crown, more than three ages before. For while the readers might know that on that day some forty or so years ago, Pallando the Blue broke the Silmaril and set its essence into the waiting womb of a wife of a Ganyman – the forces of the Wizard Alatar, and the many, many people who did not care for either wizard at all did not know this. For all they knew, the blue wizard had dug a hole in the sand and planted the Silmaril, in the drastic hope that it would regrow one of the sacred trees of light that the dark lord Morgoth had destroyed oh so many centuries ago.
How were they to know, that as a full-blown rehash of the war of the Jewels was starting up in the East, the jewel they fought over was earning his Gardener's licence. Perhaps it would not have mattered, for who would believe it, or rather what Man would. For hobbits have ever been of a more believing nature – especially when it involved one of their own.
From every side it seemed the hobbits of the East were surrounded by enemies, too powerful – the men cried – and far too secretive they had become. Why, it was even whispered that they had once ejected one of the wizards of the far West from their golden gated city – it could never be agreed exactly which one of course. What where these small strange creatures hiding? Where had their wealth come from, surely, such gold and rubies could not be acquired simply by the selling of sweet drink…surely the rich and wealthy of Men were not so desperate for something new for their pallets? No, most concluded, there must be more to this than that…something much sinister.
They were hiding something, something that they could not afford to reveal to their warring neighbours…perhaps something wonderful, magical even…something that only the light of the Elder could ever match. Of course, how silly they had been, it was so obvious now that they had thought of it…obviously these small creatures, with large feet, hid the Silmaril.
Well, said the Hobbit King, if they were going to be attacked for having the damned shiny bauble anyway…they might as well actually have the bloody thing. So, with a sharp flick of his pen he sent his best oracles to find the last of the Silmarils. And Hobbit magic, being of Middle-Earth, did not have to work around the constraints of elven magic – so it didn't take long for a hobbit magician to find anything at all.
Send us the Ring bearer, said the hobbit king, send us him and we shall begin once again the trade that once brought our people such wonders as the Cacao plant and pipe weed.
Well, those hobbits certainly had that Silmaril now.
End of Translation
Middle-Earth, Rhûn, Land of the Turtle-Fish: F.A. 01, January 22nd
Hamson Gamgee was loyal to his family, and before he'd come East that was pretty much all you could say about him. He wasn't political like Halfred, he wasn't bright like Daisy, or pretty like May, or heck even as promising as Sam-lad and wee Marigold; but he was loyal and for a time, that had been enough for him. But then Faldo Proudfoot had happened.
Ham couldn't quite remember his exact age when that goblin piss of a hobbit had taken the title of Mayor; but he could remember what he'd been training to be. Blacksmiths, while becoming a vastly more common sight in the Shire in those days, still weren't exactly considered a respectable profession. It might even have become somewhat of a problem in his household, if his younger brother hadn't been Halfred. What was a slightly odd choice of work to well…Halfred Gamgee? Ham didn't think he'd chosen to become a blacksmith just to start an argument with his father, but then again, he couldn't deny the feeling of disappointment when they'd avoided it.
Yet despite that Ham had grown to love his work at the blacksmith's shop, it had given him a sense of himself, some purpose outside of being the good and loyal son. So, it had been like a stab in the gut to be handed his marching orders. The Blacksmith had tried to say he was sorry, that his hands had been tied by the new Anti-Ganyman laws just brought through; but honestly, he hadn't seemed that torn up about it. There was no real reason he should be; Ham may have been a promising apprentice, but it wasn't as if he was the only one. There was no end to young hobbits hoping for their shot at this new and exciting career.
So that was that, the one thing that made him special that made him stand out from his siblings, that made him more than just another Gamgee was gone. And all because his father just had to be a Ganyman. Still he was the good son, so he tried to move past it, tried to get work somewhere else - of course that soon proved a fruitless endeavour – but he marched on. Desperately hoping his simmering hatred for the rest of the Shire wasn't showing, after all if he couldn't provide a wage to the household then he could at least not be a bother to those who still could. Then the Great Plague had come; May, had died, Da had been arrested and the whole world seemed to collapse in on itself. Ham had been numb with impotent rage at the world by the time Da's death had been announced officially. Then Halfred had got himself hung for starting a daft rebellion… and Ham snapped at last.
He wasn't exactly sure whether it was Halfred's death, or Sam-lad's injury or Ma's quick decline into complete lunacy; but he had finally said enough was enough. He could no longer sit by as a hopeless observer; he couldn't find Halfred before the hangman's noose caught him, he couldn't drag Ma back to lucidity, he couldn't even quiet the little 'uns screams at night like Daisy could. The only thing he could do was find a job and make sure they didn't starve without Da; and he couldn't do that in the Shire.
In the end he didn't quite know whether his final decision to find work in the East was made out of necessity or cowardice. Perhaps that would have haunted him to the end of his life, if he hadn't met Xiang Ji and married her. If they hadn't had their children, if his Ironmongers business hadn't taken off, if his life didn't become more wonderful and joyful with each passing day. Yes, perhaps his life would truly be a pitiful thing; filled with guilt and self-loathing, if all those wonderful things had not happened. And yet all those long-buried feelings filled him now as he read his brother's letter.
Samwise was coming East.