Middle-earth Journeys
Tolkien Studies
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September 29, TA 3018
29 September 2005 14:21:13The hobbits take their ponies and leave the Barrows after lunch. Frodo and company reach Bree at night. Gandalf visits the Gaffer.
"Narrow Bridge of Stone" by Alan Lee
September 29 is a day of both endings and beginnings for the four hobbits, to whom so much has happened in the last six days. This morning they take leave of Tom Bombadil, who escorts them from the Barrow Downs to the edge of his country, and shows them the way to the Road they need to reach Bree. Then he disappears from both their lives and Tolkien's narrative, to where "Goldberry is waiting."
Night finds the quartet at the gates of Bree, where they had hoped to find a safe haven--but they are disappointed, for Bree is home to spies of both the Enemy and Saruman, and has been visited by Black Riders. What they do find there, however, seems in keeping with the theme of unlooked for rescuers that dominates this part of their adventures. Waiting for them at the Prancing Pony is an enigmatic Man the locals have named Strider, "one of the wandering folk--Rangers we call them."
While the hobbits are having their first encounter with Strider, Gandalf has traveled back to the Shire borne by his new friend Shadowfax, and on this day he has "many words, and few to the point," with Sam' s father, the Gaffer. Amid that worthy's complaints about the Sackville-Bagginses, the wizard ferrets out that Frodo left Hobbiton less than a week before, with a Black Rider close behind. He rides on in fear, hoping to follow Frodo's trail to Bree, where all ways seem to meet during this part of the Quest.
Calendar entry by librislove
Night finds the quartet at the gates of Bree, where they had hoped to find a safe haven--but they are disappointed, for Bree is home to spies of both the Enemy and Saruman, and has been visited by Black Riders. What they do find there, however, seems in keeping with the theme of unlooked for rescuers that dominates this part of their adventures. Waiting for them at the Prancing Pony is an enigmatic Man the locals have named Strider, "one of the wandering folk--Rangers we call them."
While the hobbits are having their first encounter with Strider, Gandalf has traveled back to the Shire borne by his new friend Shadowfax, and on this day he has "many words, and few to the point," with Sam' s father, the Gaffer. Amid that worthy's complaints about the Sackville-Bagginses, the wizard ferrets out that Frodo left Hobbiton less than a week before, with a Black Rider close behind. He rides on in fear, hoping to follow Frodo's trail to Bree, where all ways seem to meet during this part of the Quest.
Calendar entry by librislove