Tolkien Calendar: The Great Years

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September 28, TA 3018


Gandalf reaches Sarn Ford. The hobbits take their ponies and leave Bombadil. They sleep in the afternoon and are captured by a Barrow-wight in the evening.

"Fellowship Journey" by Alan Lee
Gandalf reaches and crosses into the Shire, but the hobbits encounter the Barrow-wights on the Downs.

It is well worth noting that the Barrow-downs were not always a place of fear and dread. They were once, indeed, favored amongst the Edain of the First Age, as the place to bury the most honored of their dead. Later the Dúnedain came therefore to revere the hills and named them Tyrn Gorthad...'Mounds of the Dead' much the same as the Rohirrim paid tribute to their fallen kings at the mounds covered with simbelmynë outside Edoras. So respected was this buriel place on the Downs that the princes of Arthedain and Cardolan also entombed their royal dead there. It was the evil that spread from Angmar that entered the ancient tombs there and caused the dead to move once again...to their evil purpose.

On this evening the hobbits fall prey to the Barrow-wights.