If there is one thing I love about the Shire chapters, more so those at the beginning rather than the end of the book, is that though its characters are all, essentially, little people with hairy feet, Tolkien creates a very viable and believable countryside environment. Anyone from, or who has spent time in, a rural area, will recognise the common traits here: a seemingly peaceful, easy-going populace, tightly interconnected by family and marriage with their own deeply held opinions of specific branches and nearby locations, no government of any consequence, literacy not even being all that required (Hamfast Gamgee notes that his son being “learned his letters” – which, in itself indicates the difficulty some in this society have with grammar – as an exceptional thing, though there are plenty of mentions of writing later). Magic and creatures from outside the borders are the subject of scepticism and suspicion. It is a populace who mark their lives by simple social gatherings and the like, and where the local pub is the usual place for discussion and debate of everything going on in the world. The Shire is both an agrarian anarchy and a libertarian fantasy, where people get by without much in the way of top down control, work hard and seem happy with their lot, with nary a sign of any serious social problems. Tolkien will keep this up in a lot of other locations: homelessness, serious poverty or class differences will never be a large part of the make-up in places like Bree, Edoras or Minis Tirith. There will be a stratification in those societies, but it’ll be rare that it is outlined in a really negative fashion: when the Gaffer tells his son “Don’t go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you’ll land in trouble too big for you”, it doesn’t seem as if he is putting a derogatory meaning behind “betters”.


I’ve mentioned it already, but I’ll do it again (sort of): the gossipy scenes in the pub (more in the next chapter) are a really good representation of country life, at least from my experience (my Mother’s family being from North Clare) where family history (a term often used to disguise basic gossip, which hobbits “have a passion for“) is a crucial topic, the oldest are treated as experts on nearly all things (namely Hamfast Gamgee here, holding forth), rumour and intrigue are rife, and outsiders are frequently despised and ignored (Tolkien, in a sign that he recognised the flaws in this kind of environment could sometimes write harshly of such things, describing the hobbits’ mindset as “a mental myopia that is proud of itself”). Even in the text here, Tolkien writes like a bystander instead of a unattached viewer, dropping references to people and characters, like “old Holman” for example, whenever he can. Places that would be considered down the road in other parts, like Buckland, are far away here, living next to rivers is “unnatural”, actually taking a boat onto one of them is asking for trouble and “decent folk“, like those in Hobbiton, would never dream of doing something so out of the ordinary.

The Lord Of The Rings, Chapter By Chapter: A Long Expected Party

...
God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England’s the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of THAT district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
And there’s none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
And Coton’s full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you’d not believe
At Madingley on Christmas Eve.
Strong men have run for miles and miles,
When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives,
Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,
To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There’s peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,
And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I’m told) ...
Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? ... oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

Whatever evaluation we finally make of a stretch of land, however, no matter how profound or accurate, we will find it inadequate. The land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can know. Our obligation toward it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard. To try to sense the range and variety of its expression -its weather and colors and animals. To intend from the beginning to preserve some of the mystery within it as a kind of wisdom to be experienced, not questioned. And to be alert for its openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know the land knows you are there.

Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez 1986

One evening (surely I was led by her)
I went alone into a Shepherd's Boat,
A Skiff that to a Willow tree was tied
Within a rocky Cave, its usual home.
'Twas by the shores of Patterdale, a Vale
Wherein I was a Stranger, thither come
A School-boy Traveller, at the Holidays.
Forth rambled from the Village Inn alone
No sooner had I sight of this small Skiff,
Discover'd thus by unexpected chance,
Than I unloos'd her tether and embark'd.
The moon was up, the Lake was shining clear
Among the hoary mountains; from the Shore
I push'd, and struck the oars and struck again
In cadence, and my little Boat mov'd on
Even like a Man who walks with stately step
Though bent on speed. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure; not without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my Boat move on,
Leaving behind her still on either side
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. A rocky Steep uprose
Above the Cavern of the Willow tree
And now, as suited one who proudly row'd
With his best skill, I fix'd a steady view
Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,
The bound of the horizon, for behind
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin Pinnace; lustily
I dipp'd my oars into the silent Lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my Boat
Went heaving through the water, like a Swan;
When from behind that craggy Steep, till then
The bound of the horizon, a huge Cliff,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Uprear'd its head. I struck, and struck again
And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff
Rose up between me and the stars, and still,
With measur'd motion, like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turn'd,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the Cavern of the Willow tree.
There, in her mooring-place, I left my Bark,
And, through the meadows homeward went, with grave
And serious thoughts; and after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Work'd with a dim and undetermin'd sense
Of unknown modes of being; in my thoughts
There was a darkness, call it solitude,
Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes
Of hourly objects, images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty Forms that do not live
Like living men mov'd slowly through the mind
By day and were the trouble of my dreams.

Wordsworth - excerpt from The Prelude, Book 1

“75. Bindweed … Delight?

THERE ARE GARDENERS reading this who are likely thinking that if I try to turn bindweed, that most destructive, noxious, invasive, life-destroying plant, into a delight, they will bind me and pour glyphosate down my throat. That might be overstatement. All the same, it is a cloying glass-half-fullness to wrangle bindweed into a delight, though I am going for it, shortly after having spent about twenty minutes pulling it from my newly planted mound of five sweet meat squash—yes, sweet meat; try to say that without smiling—out near the woodpile. Already coming up in that mound is all the buckwheat and clover I planted, which, along with the hopefully soon-to-be-thorough coverage of the sweet meat foliage, might crowd out the bindweed. You are right to observe in me the desire not to live with bindweed, which does not in the least negate or supersede my desire to make living with bindweed, which I do, okay.

I carefully pull the arrowheaded and somewhat reptilian plants from the soil, which if left to grow will quickly find something to ascend by wrapping, or binding, it. There is a lovely feeling to gently pulling the sprouts so that the roots slide unbroken and blanched from the soil, putting them in my pockets (I always have bindweed in my pockets), very careful not to drop any part, which, lore has it, will reroot and strangle your children as they sleep. I do this work, often, on my hands and knees, scanning my garden beds for bindweed, pulling the straw back over here, lifting the leaves of the collards over there. I notice the lettuces are untouched by critters, but the cabbages are getting nibbled. The parsley is starting to get thick. The potatoes need mounding, I notice, sliding a long strand of bindweed from the patch. The beans maybe got washed out from all the rain. And when I pull this sprout, breaking it at the stem, and dig some to get it all out, I notice the worms tunneling through the soil.

And if I think I’m in a hurry, or think I ought to be, and quickly walk by to peek at the beds, the teeny bindweed sprouts will sing out to me. “Stay in the garden! Stay in the garden!” And I often oblige, despite my obligations, getting back on my hands and knees, my thumb and forefinger caressing the emergent things free, all of us rooting around for the light.”

— The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

It [Bree] may be all that we could wish… but it is outside the Shire all the same.”

on friendly terms, minding their own affairs in their own way, but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the Bree-folk.”