"GL3" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

It would be impossible to set out in this book a family-tree that
included even the more important members of the more import-
ant families of the Shire at the time we speak of. It would take a
whole book, and everyone but hobbits would find it dull. (Hobbits
would love it, if it was accurate: they like to have books full of
things they already know set out fair and square with no contradic-
tions.) The Shire was their own name for the very pleasant little
corner of the world in which the most numerous, thoroughbred,
and representative kind of hobbits lived in Bilbo's time. It was the
only part of the world, indeed, at that time in which the two-
legged inhabitants were all Hobbits, and in which Dwarves, Big
People (and even Elves) were merely strangers and occasional
visitors. The Shire was divided into four quarters, called the Four
Farthings, the North, South, East and West Farthings; and also
into a number of folklands, which bore the names of the important
families, although by this time these names were no longer found
only in their proper folklands. Nearly all Tooks still lived in
Tookland, but that was not so true of other families, like the
Bagginses or the Boffins. A map of the Shire will be found in this

book, in the hope that it will be useful (and be approved as
reasonably correct by those hobbits that go in for hobbit-history).
To complete the information some (abridged) family-trees are
also given, which will show in what way the hobbit-persons
mentioned are related to one another, and what their various ages
were at the time when the story opens. This will at any rate make
clear the connexions between Bilbo and Frodo, and between
Folco Took and Meriadoc Brandybuck (usually called Merry) and
the other chief characters.(3)
Frodo Baggins became Bilbo's heir by adoption: heir not only to
what was left of Bilbo's considerable wealth, but also to his most
mysterious treasure: a magic ring. This ring came from a cave in
the Misty Mountains, far away in the East. It had belonged to a
sad and rather loathsome creature called Gollum, of whom more
will be heard in this story, though I hope some will find time to
read the account of his riddle-competition with Bilbo in The
Hobbit. It is important to this tale, as the wizard Gandalf tried to
explain to Frodo. The ring had the power of making its wearer
invisible. It had also other powers, which Bilbo did not discover
until long after he had come back and settled down at home again.
Consequently they are not spoken of in the story of his journey.
But this later story is concerned chiefly with the ring, and so no
more need be said about them here.
Bilbo it is told 'remained very happy to the end of his days and
those were extraordinarily long.' They were. How extraordinarily
long you may now discover, and you may also learn that remaining
happy did not mean continuing to live for ever at Bag-end. Bilbo
returned home on June 22nd in his fifty-second year, and nothing
very notable occurred in the Shire for another sixty years, when
Bilbo began to make preparations for the celebration of his