"GL3" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

kind - in fact just holes, with only one window, or even none. The
most important families continued to live (when they could) in
luxurious versions of the simple excavations of olden times. But
suitable sites for these large and ramifying tunnels were not to be
found everywhere. In Hobbiton, in Tuckborough in Tookland,
and even in the one really populous town of their Shire, Michel-
Delving on the White Downs, there were many houses of stone
and wood and brick. These were specially favoured by the millers,
blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and people of that sort: for even when
they had holes to live in hobbits used to put up sheds and barns for
workshops and storehouses.
The custom of building farms and dwelling-houses was be-
lieved to have begun among the inhabitants of the river-side
regions (especially the Marish down by the Brandywine), where
the land was flat and wet; and where perhaps the hobbit-breed was
not quite pure. Some of the hobbits of the Marish in the East-
farthing at any rate were rather large and heavy-legged; a few
actually had a little down under their chins (no pure-bred hobbit
had a beard); and one or two even wore boots in muddy weather.
It is possible that the idea of building, as of so many other
things, came originally from the Elves. There were still in Bilbo's
time three Elf-towers just beyond the western borders of the
Shire. They shone in the moonlight. The tallest was furthest
away, standing alone on a hill. The hobbits of the Westfarthing



said that you could see the Sea from the top of that tower: but no
hobbit had ever been known to climb it. But even if the notion of
building came originally from the Elves, the hobbits used it in
their own fashion. They did not go in much for towers. Their
houses were usually long and low, and comfortable. The oldest
kind were really artificial holes of mud (and later of brick),
thatched with dry grass or straw, or roofed with turf; and the walls
were slightly bulged. But, of course, that stage belonged to very
ancient history. Hobbit-building had long been altered (and
perhaps improved) by the taking of wrinkles from dwarves and
even Big People, and other folk outside the Shire. A preference for
round windows, and also (but to a less extent) for round doors,
was the chief remaining characteristic of hobbit-architecture.
Both the houses and the holes of hobbits were usually large and
inhabited by large families. (Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were in this
point, as in many others, rather exceptional.) Sometimes, as in the
case of the Brandybucks of Brandy Hall, many generations of
relations lived in (comparative) peace together in one ancestral
and ramifying mansion. All hobbits were, in any case, clannish,
and reckoned up their relationships with great care. They drew
long and elaborate family-trees with many branches. In dealing
with hobbits it is most important to remember who is related to
whom, and how, and why.