Disclaimer: Middle Earth and all its people belong to the Tolkien Estate. I own none of them. Some of them, however, seem to own me.

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A NEW RECKONING

PROLOGUE

Sam stayed at first with the Cottons’ with Frodo, but when the New Row was ready he went with the Gaffer. In addition to all his other labours he was busy directing the cleaning up and restoring of Bag End; but he was often away in the Shire on his forestry work. So he was not at home in early March and did not know that Frodo had been ill. On the thirteenth of that month Farmer Cotton found Frodo lying on his bed; he was clutching a white gem that hung on a chain about his neck and he seemed half in a dream.

“It is gone forever,” he said, “and now all is dark and empty.”

But the fit passed, and when Sam got back on the twenty-fifth, Frodo had recovered, and he said nothing about himself. In the meanwhile Bag End had been set back in order, and Merry and Pippin came over from Crickhollow bringing all the old furniture and gear, so that the old hole soon looked very much as it always had.

( The Return of the King, Book 6, Chapter IX, “The Grey Havens” )

The New Reckoning was begun in the restored Kingdom in T.A. 3019. It represented a return to Kings’ Reckoning adapted to fit a spring beginning as in the Eldarin loa.

In the New Reckoning the year began on March 25 old style, in commemoration of the fall of Sauron and the deeds of the Ring-bearers.

( The Return of the King, Appendix D, “The Calendars” )

What else happened in that first Spring after the Ring was destroyed and the Kingdoms were renewed?