"GL1" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol12)

be associated with the writing of The Scouring of the Shire.
It is convenient here, before turning to the rest of the new material
that came in with the manuscript P 5, to notice a text written on two
small slips and attached to the amanuensis typescript P 4. This is the
origin of the passage concerning the founding of the Shire in the pub-
lished Prologue (FR pp. 13 - 14), but it is worth giving in full.

In the Year 1 (according to the reckoning of Shire-folk) and in
the month of Luyde {9} (as they used to say) the brothers Marco
and Cavallo, having obtained formal permission from the king
Argeleb II in the waning city of Fornost, crossed the wide brown
river Baranduin. They crossed by the great stone bridge that had
been built in the days of the power of the realm of Arthedain;
for they had no boats. After their own manner and language
they later changed the name to Brandywine. All that was
demanded of the 'Little People' was (1) to keep the laws of
Arthedain; (2) to keep the Bridge (and all other bridges) in
repair; (3) to allow the king to hunt still in the woods and moors
thrice a year. For the country had once been a royal park and
hunting ground.
After the crossing the L[ittle] P[eople] settled down and
almost disappeared from history. They took some part as allies
of the king in the wars of Angmar (sending bowmen to battle),
but after the disappearance of the realm and of Angmar they
lived mostly at peace. Their last battle was against Orcs (Green-
fields S.R. 1347?). For the land into which they had come,
though now long deserted, had been richly tilled in days of yore,
and there the kings had once had many farms, cornlands, vine-
yards, and woods. This land they called the Shire [struck out:
(as distinct from the Old Home at Bree)], which in their
language meant an ordered district of government and business
- the business of growing food and eating it and living in
comparative peace and content. This name Shire served to dis-
tinguish it from the wilder lands eastward, which became more
and more desolate, all the way back to the dreadful Mountains
over which (according to their own tales) their people had long

ago wandered westward; also from the smaller country, the
Oldhome at Bree, where they first settled - but not by them-
selves: for Bree they shared with the Bree-men. Now these folk
(of whom the brothers Marco and Cavallo were in their day
the largest and boldest) were of a kind concerning which the
records of ancient days have little to say - except of course their
own records and legends. They called themselves Hobbits. Most
other peoples called them Halflings (or words of similar mean-
ing in various languages), when they knew of them or heard
rumour of them. For they existed now only in the Shire, Bree,
and [? lonely] here and there were a few wild Hobbits in Eriador.
And it is said that there were still a few 'wild hobbits' in the
eaves of Mirkwood west and east of the Forest. Hobbit appears