Disclaimer: The characters and settings contained in this story are the creation of J.R.R. Tolkien and are the property of the Tolkien Estate. They are used as the basis for a work of fan fiction, from which no profit is made.

Merrily Spoken

“This is the way the hobbit goes, the hobbit goes,”

Frodo sang, his dark locks starting to curl tighter as the heat of the day rose. The faunt he held under the arms, chubby feet resting atop Frodo’s own as he leaned over to “walk” the baby around the Hall, chortled along.

“This is the way the hobbit goes,”

Frodo sang, then lifted the babe up above his head to conclude the song,

“so early in the morning!”

Merry cooed out with happiness. Then, as Frodo turned him around to wriggle his nose into the baby’s tummy, Merry laughed again, kicking his feet and clapping his hands as he babbled.

“Are you trying to talk for me?” Frodo asked, smiling.

Merry pursed his lips and made more sounds.

“O!” he said, then blew his lips together. “P-p-p!”



Merry caught the ball up quickly from where it had bounced against the ewall, then glanced hurriedly about to make sure none of the hobbits fo the Great Smials had seen or heard. None apparently had, since no one came up to him in the next few moments.

He sat down on the floor of the corridor, carefully rolling the ball now, across the floor so that it bumped gently against the far wall wall before coming back to him.

Probably outside playing, he thought grumpily. All these hobbits had to know the good places to play around the Great Smials. They wouldn’t have been scolded for climbing up on the stalls of the stables to get a better look at the ponies, just because there was nothing better to do. Just like he would have been at home. Merry scowled and picked up his ball to aim his dark look down the corridor.

It wasn’t fair, he thought, bringing his arms up to fold them across his chest as he jutted his chin out. It had been lots more fun to spend the summer holiday at the Whitwell farm than at this dreary old place, he was sure.

Why couldn’t Uncle Paladin and Aunt Eg just move back there for the summer, and Merry and his mum could visit like before? Merry gathered his ball up and began walking down the corridor to find the grown-up hobbits. He was going to tell them his idea.

They could just leave that baby here at the Great Smials for the summer, with all the good healers in Tookland. They spent enough time with him anyway, Merry was sure they’d hardly even notice some extra.

Then, Merry decided, everyone could come back and see him, and live here for the winter. It might be all right to have a baby around then, he supposed.

He had reached the quarters where he and his mum were stayi8ng and stopped in the open doorway.

Esmerelda looked up from where she leaned over the bed to see her soon standing there.

“Hullo, Merry,” she said and grinned, holding her hand out to him as he reluctantly came in. “Look who we’ve got for a visitor,” Esmerelda said, and turned her face back to the tiny baby on the great bed, ruffling Merry’s curls with the hand she’d extended.

Merry leaned forward, crossing his arms and resting them against the edge of the bed. He almost didn’t have to stand on his tiptoes to see the top of it.

“Oh,” he said flatly, still clutching the ball. “Pip.”



“Whhf!” Merry let out his breath in a rush, and then tried to make his breathing, and the little scritches his feet made against the floor, and the rustles of the cloth in his shirt and his breeches, as quiet as possible. After all, it would not do to be found when he was supposed to be hiding.

The drapes he was sitting behind were the long ones that reached to the floor in one of the parlors, and they tickled his nose a bit as they swayed with the air currents from the fire on the hearth. Merry rubbed at his nose and softly blew out a “pfft,” but managed not to sneeze.

He drew his knees to his chin and covered his mouth with his hands to stifle any wayward giggles. It had been worth a time of hiding behind Mum’s parlor drapes, it had, to to sample the currant scones being readied for the Foreyule celebrations while they were still warm and deliciously crumbly.

And quite funny, too, to see Cook’s first assumption, from his vantage point under one of the tables, when she noticed the bits of crumbs pinched from the scones where they lay cooling. She thought that mice had been at the kitchen, and she began administering a hearty scolding to the calico cat which stretched awake in its basket in the corner.

Merry’s small feet had taken advantage of Cook’s distraction with flapping her apron into Puss’s indignant face to begin scampering out of the kitchen while the hobbitess’s back was turned.

Puss, however, must have taken none too kindly to Cook’s calling into question her abilities as a mouser. As Merry was scuttling out of the kitchen, she was rising from her basket with both her fur and her tail raised stiffly along her back and taking an indignant step toward where Merry had just been.

Cook have been able to speak “cat,” too, because Merry heard her exclaiming, ere he dove out of sight behind another open door in the corridor, something about “two-footed mice.”

So now, here he was, hiding behind Mum’s drapes and giggling at the thought of being a two-footed mouse, and the thought of “officially” having more of those scones for tea.

Which he could smell quite strongly, come to think of it.

Merry cautiously peeked an eye out between the drapes, but then hastily pulled his head back in again at what he saw: his mother, carrying a tray of tea and scones, and his Aunt Eglantine, carrying his cousin.

“Really, Essie, it’s a bit surprising that the kitchen – No, no, Pippin – that they would have crumbled the scones already into the – No! Phooey! Spit it out for Mama, now – already into the cream for us, don’t you think?”

“Well,” Mum sounded rather philosophical over the sound of pouring tea, “I hear they’ve had problems with the baking and the ‘mice’ – those quite tall ones, you know.”

Merry shifted a bit uncomfortably at what sounded suspiciously like grown-up titters muted behind tea mugs. And then...

“Yarn, Eg?” Mum asked in a tone of surprise.

“Oh, dear.

“No, Pippin. Nasty, mustn’t eat. Give – it – here. Peregrin! Ouch!”

“Here, Essie; I’m sorry—“

“I know he’s at the age where everything goes in his mouth but, my! The whole ball?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine once it dries out, Essie…”

Aunt Eg didn’t sound so sure to Merry, but he now had another distraction. He tried carefully, calmly, to pull his feet farther back under the drapes as the tiny little hands darted after them, but really, with a wall at his back, there was only so far he could go.

So he was at least a little bit prepared when several things happened at once. Perhaps the least distracting was his mother and aunt pulling aside the drapes to reveal his hiding place.

Mostly, of course, Merry’s mind was taken up with the faunt lying flat on his back on the floor, hands clutched around Merry’s foot and the older lad’s toes in his mouth.

Merry really couldn’t help it: the sight was so funny, and the tickles felt just like the fishies that nibbled when he went wading in the Brandywine. “Oh, oh, Pip!” was all he was able to get out between giggles.



“Ow—“ Merry clutched his shin as he hopped away from the edge of the chair, but closed his mouth against the rest of his exclamation at a look from one of the tween lasses.

He settled for giving her a quick glare in return as he hopped toward the group of lads and lasses likewise out of the game. They milled about, chatting and laughing, clapping and singing, near the wall of one of the Great Smials’ great rooms, watching the remaining contestants skip around the circle of chairs – one less than there were players remaining.

Soon enough, young Moonflower Took had slid into the last chair and was declared the winner.

The tweens then reset the chairs in the large circle for the next round of the game, and began again their sprightly tune – Cousin Regi’s direction would tell them when to cease their singing, and clapping, and send the younger ones scampering again.

“Round we go,
Don’t be slow.
There’s a place for you,
You know.
Let the music not you sway
It’s the same
Both night and day.

Round we go,
Don’t be slow.
There’s—“

Young hobbits scrambled for a chair as the singing abruptly stopped.

And, as had been the case in the previous game, Merry’s five-year-old cousin Pippin, newly recovering from one of the illnesses that laid him up in bed from time to time, scrambled the slowest of all and was the first hobbit out.

Merry watched, distracted, as Pippin pushed himself up off the floor where he had fallen when he tried to run for a chair and smilingly toddled over to the wall.

“Pip—“ Merry began, not noticing that the music had started again until another cousin bumped into him from behind.

It was this, he was reasonably sure, which put him off his rhythm so that he himself was the next hobbit out when the music stopped again.

Merry ambled over to the wall to stand next to Pippin. The littler hobbit had slid down so his back was braced against the wall, his bottom on the floor and feet stretched out in front of him.

He was grinning, though, and clapping along with the tweens, who had begun to sing again.

Pippin ceased his own singing long enough to smile up at Merry and say, punctuated with a yawn, “Hullo, Me-e-er-ry! Now you can sing, too!”

Pippin then resumed the cheerful tune, and Merry sat down on the floor next to him. Before he started singing, though, he reached out a hand to gently muss Pippin’s curls.

“Pip,” he said.



“Merry,” his own personal alarum continued, ignoring – except to scoot out of the way – the Brandybuck’s rolling over onto his back, yawning widely to greet the morn, and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Merry, Frodo’s sad again, even though he says he’s not, because I think he misses Uncle Bilbo even if he’s still celebrating his birthday, and wasn’t Bilbo’s last party grand? But I don’t remember it as good as I want, so maybe you or Frodo could tell me the story again later.

“Unless you think it’d make Frodo too sad.” A crease appeared betweeen Pippin’s eyebrows as he swung his legs, now dangling as he sat on the side of the bed and watched Merry use the chamber pot, wash his hands in the basin, splash water on his face and shake his head back and forth to the accompaniment of noises that wouldn’t be out of place among some of the smaller ponies, or perhaps pigs, and then pull on a dressing gown.

“’Cause we mustn’t make him too sad, for it’s his birthday and, ‘sides, we hafta be cheerful for him like you’ve said and anyway, first breakfast is almost ready, so I’m gonna go eat; hurry up, slowpoke!”

With that, Pippin ducked under Merry’s arm and scampered toward Bag End’s kitchen just as the older cousin opened the bedroom door.

* * * *
”Don’t you think it’s time you were in bed?”

Merry looked up, startled, from where he had been contemplating his sweet cider, only to see Frodo slightly shake his head at him and then incline it toward their thirteen-year-old cousin.

“Oh, but Frodo!” Pippin whined as he picked himself up off the floor and stood in front of Frodo, who was lolling in an armchair with his own mug of cider, “it’s your birthday!”

“Aye, and what does my birthday have to do with your bedtime?” Frodo asked with a raised brow.

“Because,” Pippin squirmed onto Frodo’s lap and pressed his mouth to the ear beneath the dark curls. “If I go to bed, you’ll have to celebrate all alone!”

“Oh?” Frodo asked with another raised brow, while Merry, who had caught the gist of the conversation, began an indignant “Oi!—“

--only to be cut off by Pippin’s continued explanation as the young Took clambered around Frodo in the chair, necessitating the Baggins to make some deft arm movements to avoid spilling his cider.

“Aye,” Pippin continued, “for it’s your birthday, Frodo, but Merry is old!”

His nose was turned up, but there was a twinkle in his eyes and on his lips.

“Why, Merry almost couldn’t remember where you keep the extra ginger biscuits” – Pippin stepped, without touching the floor, from Frodo’s chair to the nearby sofa, and began inching along its back – “when I know you would have wanted us to have some, Frodo, since it’s your birthday and all.”

Merry suddenly found his cider fascinating again as Frodo’s eyes came back to him.

“And he had to be convinced to jump in the leaf pile, even though they make that nice crackling noise.

“And – well, I suppose he was rather good at running and hitting the ball in the games with Fatty and Folco, but still, you know, you can do that, too, Frodo, and you’re ever so much older than Merry.

Pippin was standing on the far end of the sofa, now, and shook his head sadly, though his eyes still twinkled in the light fo the evening’s small fire.

“I daresay he’s thinking about his birthday coming next, and it’s making him old before his time,” Pipppin said, with more head-shaking, ignoring the choking sounds Frodo was making into his cider.

“Whereas I” – Pippin tucked his knees up and his rump down and began sliding off the edge of the sofa cushions toward the floor, where he landed to sit tailor-fashion, the maroon blanket which had followed him off the back of the sofa draped over the top of his head, its fringed edges dangling in front of his face – “I am still young enough to add some life to the party,” he said, with dignity, from beneath the blanket.

Pippin ignored Merry’s and Frodo’s simultaneously chorusing laughter of “Pip!” even as Frodo picked him up, blanket and all, and carried him toward the bedrooms.



No. I said no, and how many times do I have to say no? Merry thought heatedly to himself as he tried to re-arrange the straw to once again cover up the telltale tracks outside the door of a certain tack room in the Brandy Hall stables.

He caught sight of movement down by one of the stalls out of the corner of his eye, and looked up in time to see a bit of sandy curls and one green eye peeking at him from around a corner.

“Pip!” Merry shouted, and took a step toward that seventeen-year-old cousin, only to have the eye and the curls disappear and to hear the sound of fleeing feet.

Merry sighed, looked at his work with the straw, then glanced carefully around before oepning the tack room door a crack and easing himself through.

As his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, he could see that Berilac and Merimas had puased in their efforts to put things where they had been before and were looking at him with the same question in their eyes.

Merry sighed to himself, his hands behind him on the doorknob, and nodded to his cousins.

“Pip,” he confirmed, his throat tight.



“Well, Mr. Merry, I don’t know as there’s one thing here you haven’t reckoned on.”

“Oh?” Merry looked, distracted, at Frodo’s gardener, Samwise Gamgee, the cooled crumbs of their luncheon shepherd’s pies littering the table before them. It was in a dim corner of The Green Dragon where they now clutched their mugs and discussed their business.

“I don’t reckon as it’s my place to say so,” Sam said earnestly, his thick hand tightening on his mug as he stared earnestly at Merry, “but that lad—“

“Oh,” said Merry, and sat back against his chair, bringing his mug with him to raise it to his lips. He took a swallow, and then his eyes turned to the pub’s windows and acquired a faraway look as he said again, “Oh. Pip.”



“Away, Shadowfax!”

“Oh!” Merry drew a quick breath even as Gandalf’s words, and the horse, and his cousin, flew away with the swiftness of the north wind.

He knew Aragorn stood beside him, and that he must be quiet so as not to attract the Nazgul back again.

Inside, though, he screamed in anguish.

“P-i-i-i-p!”



A pleasant breeze riffled through his curls and through the beech leaves overhead as Merry looked upon the sleepers.

Tomorrow, Strider had said; they would awaken tomorrow.

And, as for his other cousin, Merry looked to where Pipppin clutched unsteadily at the edge of Sam’s bed. His head was bent down to look at Frodo and Sam, but he raised it when he felt Merry’s eyes upon him, and Merry saw tears glistening in Pippin’s eyes and upon his cheeks.

Wordlessly, he held his arms open, and Pippin stumbled into his embrace.

“Oh, Pip,” Merry murmured as he clutched his cousin, running his hands along his back and partly helping to hold him upright.

“Oi, Merry,” Pippin sniffled into his shoulder with a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You always know just what to say.”


The End