The Peoples of Middle-earth (21 page)

3. In late typescripts of the chapters in which Fredegar Bolger appears in The Lord of the Rings the name Belisarius (with the nickname Belly, which no doubt accounts for the choice) replaced the earlier Hamilcar, and was then itself replaced by Fredegar.

4. Jemima Boffin of BG 2 was first renamed Jasmine, which was replaced by the form Jessamine; and so also in the Boffin genealogy.

5. On one of the proofs my father corrected Fredegar's birth-date from 1377 to 1380, but the genealogy was omitted from the book before this was introduced; in the Took table, however, the date was changed. See note 1.

6. This was in fact an alteration (VI.298 and note 1): originally my father marked the Boffins north-west of the Woody End, and the Bolgers north of Hobbiton, subsequently changing them about; cf. VI.298, 'as far west as Woodhall (which was reckoned to be in the Boffin-country)'.

7. In VI.273, 275 I printed the name as Lanorac, which was a mis-reading of the difficult manuscript.

8. In VI.316 I noted that some of the figures in T 1 were changed on the manuscript, and gave a list of them; but I said that these were

'the earlier ones', whereas they are in fact the corrected figures.

See note 9.

9. In T 1 the birth-dates of Isambard and Flambard were 170 and 165 years before the Farewell Party, but these were changed (see note 8) to 160 and 167 (in T 2 1241 and 1234); hence the reversal of the positions of the brothers in T 2.

10. On T 2 Uffo Took and his son Prospero were corrected to Adelard and Everard (see VI.247, 315), Uffo becoming a Boffin name (see BF 2). It will thus be seen that they have been removed from the descent of the fourth son (Fosco > Sigismond) and given to that of the second son Isembard (formerly without any descendants named), whose son Flambard takes over the former name of Hildigrim.

11. Farmer Cotton's reference to Pippin's father as the Thain ('You see, your dad, Mr. Peregrin, he's never had no truck with this Lotho, not from the beginning: said that if anyone was going to play the chief at this time of day, it would be the right Thain of the Shire and no upstart ...') was a late addition to the text of the chapter The Scouring of the Shire (RK p. 289); for the original form of the passage see IX.99.

IV.

THE CALENDARS.

The earliest text of what became Appendix D to The Lord of the Rings is a brief, rough manuscript without title, which I will call D 1. In style and appearance it suggests association with the first of the two closely related manuscripts of the Appendix on Languages, F 1 (see p. 28), and that this is the case is shown by a reference in the text to 'the note on Languages p. 11'. This in fact refers to the second version, F 2, which was thus already in existence (see p. 136, note 2). D 1 was followed, clearly at no long interval, by a fair copy, D 2, exactly parallel to the manuscripts F 1 and F 2 of the Appendix on Languages; and thus the order of composition was F 1, F 2; D 1, D 2. I have no doubt at all that all four texts belong to the same time, which was certainly before the summer of 1950 (see p. 28 and note 1), and probably earlier: in fact, an envelope associated with D 1 is postmarked August 1949.

In this case, since the texts are far briefer than F 1 and F 2, and since the second manuscript D 2 was substantially altered from its predecessor, I give them both. These earliest versions of the Appendix on Calendars show, as do those of the Appendix on Languages, how far the conception still was, when The Lord of the Rings had been completed, from the published form. There follows here the text of the manuscript D 1.

In the Shire the Calendar was not arranged as ours is; though the year seems to have been of the same length, for long ago as those times are now, reckoned in years and men's lives, they were not (I suppose) far back in the age of Middle-earth.

According to the Hobbits themselves they had no 'week' when they were a wandering people, and though they had months, reckoned by the moon, their keeping of dates and time was not particularly accurate. In Eriador (or the West-lands) when they settled down they adopted the reckoning of the Dunedain, which was of Elvish origin. But the Hobbits of the Shire after a while altered things to suit their own convenience better. 'Shire-reckoning' was eventually adopted also in Bree.

It is difficult to discover from old records precise details about those things which everybody knows and takes for granted, nor am I skilled in such abstruse matters. But in that part of Middle-earth at that time it seems that the Eldar (who had, as Sam said, more time at their disposal) reckoned in centuries. Now they had observed - I do not know how, but the Eldar have many powers, and had observed many centuries - that a century contains, as near as no matter for practical purposes, 36524 days.

They therefore divided it into 100 years (or sun-rounds) of 366

days, and dealt with the inaccuracy, not as we do by inserting at intervals an additional day to make up for the deficit, but by ejecting a few days at stated times to reduce the surplus. Every four years they would have used three days too many, if they had done nothing to correct it.

Normally they divided their year of 366 days into twelve months, six of 31 and six of 30 days. They alternated from January to June 31, 30; from July to December 30, 31. It will be observed that their months thus had the same lengths as ours, except for February, 30, and July, 30. Every eighth year they got rid of their excess of 6 days by reducing all months to 30 days; and these years were called ['Equal-month Years' or 'Thirty-day Years' >] 'Sixty-week Years' or 'Short Years'.

The Elvish week had only six days; so normal years had 61

weeks, and every eighth year had 60 weeks. The first day of the year always began on the first day of the week. In the Short (eighth) Years every month began on the first day of the week.

In the normal years they progressed thus: 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5,5,6,6.(1)

The Eldar still at the end of a century would have had 36525

days, not 35624; so once a century they left out the last day of the last month (reducing December to 30 days). The week-day went with it: there was no sixth day of the week in the last week of the century.

The Dunedain altered these arrangements. They favoured the number 7, and also found a seven-day week more convenient.

They also preferred a system by which all the months had the same lengths and did not vary at intervals. [Struck out later: They had 12 months (not 13) so that the year could be divided into two exact halves.)

In Gondor, therefore, and in most regions where the Common Speech was used, the year had 365 days; there were 12

months of 30 days each; and 52 weeks of 7 days each. But the method of dealing with the extra 5 days differed in different countries.

In Gondor, between June 30 and July 1 they placed a kind of short month of 5 days, which were called The Summer Days, and were a time of holiday. The middle day of the Summer Days (the third) was called Midyear's Day and was a festival. Every fourth year there were 6 Summer Days, and the Midyear festival was two days long (celebrated on the third and fourth days).

In the last or hundredth year of a century the additional Summer Day was omitted, bringing the total to 36524.

In the Shire (and eventually in Bree where Shire-reckoning was finally adopted) there were 3 Summer Days, called in the Shire The Lithe or The Lithedays; and 2 Yule Days, the last of the Old Year and the first of the New.* Every fourth year there were 4 Lithedays [added: except in the last year of a century].

The Lithedays and the Yuledays were the chief holidays and times of feasting. The additional Litheday, called Overlithe, was a day of special feasting and merrymaking. Yule was in full the last week of the old year and the first of the new, or in Shire-reckoning (since December had only 30 days) December 24 to January 7 inclusive; but the two middle days of the period, Old Year's Day or Yearsend (December 30) and New Year's Day or Yearsday (January 1), were the great Yuledays, or Yule proper.

The Hobbits introduced one notable innovation (the Shire-reform). They found the shifting of the weekday name in relation to dates from year to year untidy and inconvenient. So in the time of Isengrim II they arranged that the odd day, which put the succession out, should have no weekday name. So Midyear's Day (the second and middle day of the Lithe) had no weekday name, and neither had Overlithe (which followed it in every fourth year). After this reform the year always began on the first day of the week and ended on the last day of the week; and the same date in one year always had the same weekday name in all other years. In consequence of which Hobbits never troubled to put weekdays on their letters. They found this very (* The reckoning of the year's beginning had varied much in various times and places. The beginning after Yule (originally intended to be at the Winter Solstice) was used in the North Kingdom and eventually adopted by Hobbits. The wild Hobbits were said to have begun their year with the New Moon nearest to the beginning of Spring. The settled Hobbits for a time began their year after Harvest, roughly October 1st. This habit long endured in Bree. In Gondor after the downfall of Baraddur a new era was begun with that day reckoned as the first day of its first year.)

convenient in the Shire, but of course, if they travelled further than Bree, where the reform was adopted, they found it rather confusing.

It will be observed if one glances at a Hobbit (perpetual) Calendar that the only day on which no month began was a

-Friday. It was thus a jesting idiom in the Shire to speak of 'on Friday the first' when referring to a day that did not exist, or to a day on which impossible events like the flying of pigs or (in the Shire) the walking of trees might be expected to occur. In full the expression was 'Friday the first of Summerfilth', for there was no such month.

In the above notes I have used our modern month and weekday names, though of course neither the Eldar nor the Dunedain nor the Hobbits actually did so. But dates are both important and easily confused, so that I thought a translation into our familiar names essential. These may very properly be allowed to represent the usual names in Gondor and in the Common Speech. But in fact, the Hobbits of the Shire and of Bree adhered to old-fashioned month-names, which they seem to have picked up in antiquity from the Men of the Anduin-vale; at any rate very similar names were found in Dale and in Rohan (see the note on Languages p. 11).(2) The original meanings of these had been as a rule long forgotten and they had become in consequence worn down in form, -math for instance at the end of four of them is a reduction of month. There was some variation in the names. Several of the Bree-names differed from those of the Shire, and in one or two cases the East-farthingers agreed with Bree.

Shire Bree

January Afteryule Frery (also East Farthing) February Solmath (a) Solmath (a)

March Rethe (3) Rethe

April Astron Chithing (also East Farthing) May Thrimilch (b) Thrimidge

June Forelithe Lithe

The Lithe or The Summer

Lithedays Days

July Afterlithe Mede

August Wedmath Wedmath

September Halimath Harvest(math) (also East Farthing) October Winterfilth [Wintermath >] Wintring November Blotmath (c) Blooting

December Foreyule Yulemath

(a) Pronounced So'math. (b) Pronounced Thrimidge and also written Thrimich, Thrimidge, the latter being already most usual in Bilbo's time. (c) Often pronounced Blommath. There were often jests in Bree about 'Winterfilth in the Shire', after the Breefolk had altered their name to Wintring; but the name had probably meant 'filling, completion' and may have derived from the time when the year ended and began in October after Harvest. Winter was indeed (as still with us) often used for 'year' in reckoning age.(4)

The Hobbit week was taken from the Dunedain and the names were translations of the names given by the Dunedain following the Eldar. The six-day week of the Eldar had days dedicated to the Stars, Sun, Moon, the Two Trees of Valinor, the Sky, and the Valar or Rulers, in that order, the last day being the chief or high day.

The Dunedain kept the dedications and order, but altered the fourth day to Tree-day with reference to the Eldest Tree of which a descendant grew in Numenor, and desiring a seven day week and being great mariners they inserted a Sea-day after the Sky-day.

The Hobbits took over this arrangement, but the meanings of the days were soon forgotten and the names reduced in form.

The 'translation' was made more than a thousand years before Bilbo's time. In the oldest known records of the Shire, in the earlier parts of the Great Writ of Tuckborough,(5) the names appeared in the following archaic forms.