Prologue

...but there has not always been a Shire!

Ah, best beloved, when you crinkle your nose that way you always make me laugh! Let your old Gran-da get his pipe a-going and I’ll tell you somewhat you haven’t heard before. Yes, it’s an old tale, and a long one, such as you young sprouts don’t often take the time to hear anymore these days. Takes a broken leg, I s’pose, to get you to sit still...

There now, where was I? O yes, that’s right, the Shire. Rather, before the Shire. Don’t you remember, the tales I used to tell around the hearth when you were little? Aye, before you grew past three foot and-a-half high and yer old Gran-da had to look up to you, that’s right. What do you remember?

That’s right, quite right. Marcho and Blanco of the Fallohides, they were, came West over the Stonebow Bridge from Bree with a paper from the King in Norbury and a great many hobbits following behind. But no, that’s not where hobbits started. You think they sprung out of the ground in the Chetwood, do ye? Acorns fell to the ground in Breeland and hobbits grew up? Haw, I know that’s what they tell the little ones... told ‘em so mysel’ a few times, I did. (Chuckle. Clearing of throat.)

Nay, long before those twain, hobbits dwelt in the vale between the Great Forest and the Great River. Brandywine? Hah! What’re they teaching young-uns these days, I’d like to know? Not the River, the Brandywine, and not the Old Forest. The Great River, I said, and Greenwood the Great, as it was called in the old days. Yes, that’s the one, on the other side of them mountains it is. Some of the hobbits, the Harfoots it were, lived in the foothills of the mountains, but the Stoors liked to be near the River and the Fallohides loved the woods and trees.

No, yer Gran-da’s never seen mountains, and never will, I warrant. Green Hills are enough for this old gaffer. Anyhow, we’re getting off the trail.

What’s that? I don’t know how hobbits started, nobody knows anymore these days. Many of the gaffers who had the old stories in their heads perished in the Bad Times, you see, when they were hunted like beasts by Orcs and Men, or they froze in the crossing of the mountains. Terrible, it was. As it is, we only know from those who lived through the crossing. Five hundred years afore Marcho, as a matter of fact, the Fallohides crossed over, and they weren’t the first. The Harfoots were first, that’s right, and they passed down their own tales. What I’m telling you comes from the Fallohide branch of the family. We’ve a fair bit of that in our blood, we do. Anyhow, the ones that crossed the mountains and lived to tell the tale -- when they became gaffers, they passed the story on, same’s I’m doing...