Q: Who Lived in the Shire Before Hobbits?
ANSWER: In “Three’s Company” Frodo speaks with Gildor Inglorion, leader of a band of Noldorin Elves who meet Frodo, Sam, and Pippin in the woods of the Shire (and inadvertently frighten off a Black Rider, one of the Nazgul). After Gildor warns Frodo that the Shire is no longer safe, Frodo gets a little huffy:
‘I cannot imagine what information could be more terrifying than your hints and warnings,’ exclaimed Frodo. ‘I knew that danger lay ahead, of course; but I did not expect to meet it in our own Shire. Can’t a hobbit walk from the Water to the River in peace?’
‘But it is not your own Shire,’ said Gildor. ‘Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more. The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.’
Readers occasionally ask what Gildor means. To whom is he referring when he says “others dwelt here before hobbits were”? Does someone have a prior claim upon the Shire?
Well, obviously, the lands were once ruled by the Kings of Arnor — and it was, in fact, a King of Arthedain/Arnor who invited or granted the hobbits’ petition to settle in the lands that became the Shire. Besides explaining the event in both the Prologue and the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien refers to this fact in Letter No. 131 (addressed to Collins publisher Milton Waldman) with very precise language:
Their chief settlement, where all the inhabitants are hobbits, and where an ordered, civilised, if simple and rural life is maintained, is the Shire, originally the farmlands and forests of the royal demesne of Arnor, granted as a fief: but the ‘King’, author of laws, has long vanished save in memory before we hear much of the Shire. It is in the year 1341 of the Shire (or 2941 of the Third Age: that is in its last century) that Bilbo – The Hobbit and hero of that tale – starts on his ‘adventure’.
However, the ancient kings would thus have been relatively contemporary with hobbits and I think it’s clear from Gildor’s words he had something much more broad in mind.
For example, in the Second Age, the lands between the Lhun and Baranduin rivers were claimed by Gil-galad as part of his Kingdom of Lindon. Hence, the Shire was once an Elvish land. And though they did not live there (according to notes published in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth) there were men of Edainic peoples who dwelt close to the Baranduin who were welcomed in the Elvish lands as friends. But even before Gil-galad ruled over the area there were yet others who had dwelt in the region.
During the First Age many Elves had once lived in Eriador. These were Nandor and Avari who had gradually migrated westward in the footsteps of the Eldar. A large portion of these Elves were recruited by Denethor who led them over the Ered Luin to settle in Ossiriand, where they became the Laegrim or Lai-Quendi — the Green-elves of Ossiriand. But even before the Nandor and Avari there were the Eldar themselves who had passed through Eriador and spent some time dwelling there before finally passing over the Ered Luin into Beleriand.
And yet, were there not yet other creatures who dwelt there — the so-called aboriginal creatures of Middle-earth such as Tom Bombadil, the River-woman, and Goldberry? We don’t know exactly what they were or even how ancient any but Bombadil himself might be, but Bombadil at least claimed to have been in the region before the Elves passed by — and Elrond noted that the Eldar had named him Iarwain Ben-adar (“Oldest Without-father”).
Gildor’s remark seems to encompass the passing of ages, peoples, and civilizations. He admonishes Frodo not to think of the Shire as the property of his people; rather, it may be that the Elvish sense was to think of the land as a place where one was a custodian while residing there. That seems in keeping with Tom’s own philosophy about his little country. Tom didn’t claim to own anything but he had a “country” he called home and which he felt bound to watch over and protect.
Did the Elves learn this sense of temporary possession from Bombadil or was it simply that Tolkien felt ancient, immortal beings might have trouble thinking of land as belonging to anyone for any length of time? Although Tolkien’s readers may only want to know who the prior inhabitants of the Shire must have been, I think the question itself leads one to ask what Gildor meant in the first place.
Either way, I don’t know of any other important inhabitants of the Shire.
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
As you say, Gildor seems to be looking a long way back. When he says “before hobbits were”, I take it to mean “before hobbits even existed”. It is a reminder that humans (or in this case hobbits) are part of Nature.
Furthermore, we can’t ultimately “own” the natural world. Such was Melkor’s crime: “This [the Earth] shall be my own kingdom, and I name it unto myself!” (Ainulindale).
I should say that Tolkien’s attitude to Nature isn’t precisely custodial, which would be to cast Bombadil as a sort of park ranger. It’s personal. “The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves.” Thus, they are individuals. Bombadil remonstrates with Old Man Willow like a gardener with a recalcitrant weed – he doesn’t like it, but he is on intimate terms with it nevertheless!
Which of course is a wildly animistic attitude for a good Catholic to have. Even the stones can speak, at least to Legolas. However there is some sanction in Genesis:
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (Gn 1:26)
This seems to allow enough sentience in the fish, fowl, etc, and even the Earth itself, for “man”, in the person of Bombadil, to be their “Master”.
‘The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.’
Rather rich words from Gildor, I’ve always thought. He lectures the hobbits on responsible engagement and then promptly abandons them to flee before the Nazgul as best they can. That, or it is just the fatalist words of a depressed Exile, which puts him on a par with most of LotR’s disencouraging ‘Wise’. Doesn’t change the fact of him leaving the hobbits alone to face the tender mercies of the Black Riders, of course.
Given the suggested intensity of the relationship between Elf and land (‘deep they delved me’ etc), and the potency of the (largely Noldor?) obsession with holding back the passage of time, at least some Elves seem to have a very possessive sense of place. No-one could reasonably claim, for instance, that Galadriel saw herself as merely the custodian of Lórien.