Law and Institutions in the Shire

Volume 18 Number 4 Article 1 Fall 10-15-1992 Law and Institutions in the Shire William H. Stoddard Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Stoddard, William H. (1992) "Law and Institutions in the Shire," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 18 : No. 4 , Article 1. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol18/iss4/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico • Postponed to: July 30 – August 2, 2021 Abstract Examines the evidence in Tolkien’s writings to construct a history of the Shire as a social and political entity. Considers this another example of Tolkien’s ability to imbue his Secondary World with a feeling of reality. Additional Keywords Tolkien, J.R.R.—Settings—Shire—History; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Settings—Shire—Politics and government; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Settings—Shire—Social life and customs This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol18/iss4/1 Imuc 70 - Autumn 1992 CPyT H LO R e (JJilliam R StoddaRd s a fantasy writer, J.R.R. Tolkien is distinguished by, but to understand the total historical evolution of societies Aamong other traits, a peculiarly high degree of realism in the large, and who therefore had recourse to a great in his imaginary worlds. One aspect of this realism is a variety of documents from which social detail might be vivid sense of how societies work, derived from the same gleaned. And I think their method can be applied with source as the more scientifically intended studies of clas some interest to Tolkien's own imagined societies. We sical sociologists such as Weber: a lifelong immersion in cannot readily induce a random sample of ores to answer actual texts from past societies. This sense is reflected by, Questions about their early childhood socialization, but we among other elements in his writing, his portrayal of the can look at the customs and events Tolkien describes and Shire. In anthropological terms, the Shire is in transition ask what social forms and processes they grow out of, and between two forms of organization: the chiefdom and the how they compare with the customs and events of state. The chiefdom level of organization is reflected in the societies with which we are familiar. system of folklands such as the Buckland and Tookland, Indeed, the every way in which Tolkien created and in such customs as the giving away of birthday Middle-Earth encourages such an approach. For Tolkien presents on one's own birthday — reminiscent of the began with the creation of language: of Quenya and Sin- potlatch of the Pacific Northwest and of similar societies darin and of the non-Elven tongues that surrounded them. worldwide, which typically have redistributive And though you can read grammars and vocabularies of economies. The state level of organization is reflected in these languages that appear to freeze them at a single the presence of a Shirewide civil government, which main instant in their histories, Tolkien imagined them in no such tains safeguards for property boundaries (The Shirriffs) way. His own wordlistsare full of etymology, and therefore and communications (the mail carriers); in the widespread of metaphors crystallized into habitual use until their literacy of hobbits; and in the obvious presence of a thriv figurative character was forgotten, of slips of pronunciation ing market economy. The Shire is unusual for this level of become habitual, of names turned into common nouns, and organization in being clearly a republican enclave; per of all the other historical phenomena that historical haps one might speculate that Tolkien was influenced by philologists learn about. His storytelling provided the con the 'distributivist' theories of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. text within which those languages were spoken and within Chesterton, English Catholic writers of an earlier genera which their changes took place, and he regularly offered tion with whom he was certainly familiar, and also by his historical comparisons for the societies he imagined — knowledge of the literature and history of ancient Iceland. above all, of course, England at various stages in its history, The poet Marianne Moore called for poets who were from Anglo-Saxon to early modem, but England en "literalists of the imagination" and who would give visioned through the eye of a historical scholar. readers "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." I I offer herea case study in Tolkien's realism: an analysis have felt for many years that J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth of the Shire as a social order. The Shire, that curiously meets this prescription in an exemplary manner. Indeed, utopian little enclave so well insulated from most of the the sense that Middle-Earth is a real place with a real history of Middle-Earth, smugly self-satisfied in the man history has been remarked by many of Tolkien's readers. ner of Victorian and Edwardian England with its own To a great degree, I believe, this is true because of stuffy matter-of-fact everydayness, yet also had its own Tolkien's lifelong immersion in reality: specifically, the history, from which we may leam something. reality of archaic societies, as reflected in their texts. For To begin with then, the quantitative facts, so far as we Tolkien's scholarly profession on the philological side of possess them: Karen Wynne Fonstad (1981, p.69) estimates the English curriculum demanded that he spend many that the Shire occupied and area of some 21,400 sQuare hours reading such texts and striving to understand them miles. Based on the relative body sizes of hobbits and — which meant, in some part, to understand the cir medieval farmers and on the efficiency of preindustrial cumstances of their making. In this Tolkien was at one both agriculture, this might have supported some 3,852,000 with the classical philologists from the Grimms down to hobbit farmers, with perhaps 10% as many in other oc his own time, and with the founders of sociology, such as cupations. In fact, Fonstad believes that the Shire was Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, who wanted not only to "well-settled, yet uncrowded, with lots of Hobbits but produce a microlevel theory of one narrow slice of present- plenty of elbow room," (1981, p.69) and the picture Tolkien day society on which data could be collected by question gives us seems to support this. So let us suppose that the naire surveys and analyzed through statistical software, Shire had between one-third and one-fifth as many in CPgTHLQRe Issue 70 - Autumn 1992 Page 5 habitants as would fully occupy it, or between 850,000 and stateless societies, which at first present a bewildering 1,400,000 hobbits. diversity. Anthropologists have discerned certain recur ring types and patterns within these accounts. Of these, the This area was divided into four Farthings, with one customs of the Shire suggest the most complex and largest outlying region, the Buckland, across the Brandywine scale form, the chiefdom. Indeed, we may view the array River form the Shire proper. The Buckland was the home of folklands we are imagining as a group of chiefdoms. region of the Brandybuck family, whom in an early letter (Carpenter, 1981, letter #25) Tolkien lists as one of the A chiefdom is a group of settlements unified by per twelve wealthiest families of the Shire — the others being sonal allegiance to a single leader who has few coercive Baggins, Boffin, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Burrowes, Chubb, powers but gains influence from wealth and prestige. Grubb, Homblower, Proudfoot, Sackville, and Took. Typical chiefdoms have a few thousand inhabitants, per Maps of the Shire, both Tolkien's and Fonstad's, show a haps from one to ten thousand, though in exceptional region called the Tookland, located at the eastern end of circumstances they may attain to one hundred thousand the West Farthing, whose principal settlement, Tuckbur- or more. The chief is probably a center of ritual and a war row, was the seat of the Thain, the head of the Took family leader, but in everyday life neither of these functions is and leader of the Shire's military forces. primary. Rather, chiefs are important because they redistribute goods. W e are not speaking here of anything In these two regions, we may guess at the outlines of like a welfare state funded by taxes and typically the an earlier time in Shire history, when the great families activities of chiefs bring more goods to the already well-off were more powerful and also more tied to specific than to the poor. But throughout the world chiefs cus folklands. At such a time the Shire's excellent systems of tomarily spend considerable effort on accumulating roads and internal communication would have been little goods, not only by their own work, but by their ability to developed, its reliance on markets and trade small, and influence followers to work for them, and then hold large each region would have been very largely self-sufficient.

Load more