Tolkien took considerable trouble over the exact details of the Shire. Little of his carefully crafted fictional geography, history, calendar, and constitution appeared in
The Hobbit or
The Lord of the Rings, though additional details were given in the Appendices of later editions. The Tolkien scholar
Tom Shippey comments that all the same, they provided the "
depth", the feeling in the reader's mind that this was a real and complex place, a quality that Tolkien believed essential to a successful fantasy.
Geography Four farthings In Tolkien's fiction, the Shire is described as a small but beautiful, idyllic and fruitful land, beloved by its
hobbit inhabitants. They had
agriculture but were not industrialized. The landscape included
downland and woods like the English
countryside. The Shire was fully inland; most hobbits feared
the Sea. The Shire measured 40
leagues (193 km, 120 miles) east to west and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from north to south, with an area of some : roughly that of the English
Midlands. The main and oldest part of the Shire was bordered to the east by the Brandywine River, on the north by uplands rising to the
Hills of Evendim, on the west by the Far Downs, and on the south by marshland. It expanded to the east into Buckland between the Brandywine and the
Old Forest, and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills. The Shire was subdivided into four Farthings ("fourth-ings", "quarterings"),
as Iceland once was; The Three-Farthing Stone marked the approximate centre of the Shire. It was inspired by the
Four Shire Stone near
Moreton-in-Marsh, where once four counties met, but since 1931 only three do. There are several Three Shire Stones in England, such as
in the Lake District, and formerly some Three Shires Oaks, such as
at Whitwell in Derbyshire, each marking the place where three counties once met. Pippin was born in Whitwell in the Tookland. Within the Farthings there are unofficial clan homelands: the Tooks nearly all live in or near Tuckborough in Tookland's Green Hill Country.
Buckland Buckland, also known as the "East Marches", was just to the east of the Shire across the Brandywine River. Named for the Brandybuck family, it was settled "long ago" as "a sort of colony of the Shire." It was bounded to the east by the
Old Forest, separated by a tall thick hedge called the High Hay. It included Crickhollow, which serves as one of
Frodo's five Homely Houses. The Westmarch or West Marches was given to the Shire by King
Elessar after the War of the Ring.
Bree To the east of the Shire was the isolated village of
Bree, unique in having hobbits and men living side-by-side. It was served by an
inn named
The Prancing Pony, noted for its fine
beer which was sampled by hobbits, men, and the wizard
Gandalf. Many inhabitants of Bree, including the inn's landlord Barliman Butterbur, had surnames taken from plants. Tolkien described the
butterbur as "a fat thick plant", evidently chosen as appropriate for a fat man. Tolkien suggested two different origins for the people of Bree: either it had been founded and populated by men of the
Edain who did not reach
Beleriand in the First Age, remaining east of the mountains in
Eriador; or they came from the same stock as the
Dunlendings. The name
Bree means "hill"; Tolkien justified the name by arranging the village and the surrounding Bree-land around a large hill, named Bree-hill. The name of the village
Brill, in
Buckinghamshire, a place that Tolkien often visited, and which inspired him to create Bree, File:Brill village from Brill Common - geograph.org.uk - 538330.jpg|The name "Bree" was inspired by the name of the village of
Brill, Buckinghamshire; it contains the
Celtic Breʒ and the
Old English hyll, both meaning "hill".
History The Shire was first settled by hobbits in the year 1601 of the
Third Age (Year 1 in Shire Reckoning); they were led by the brothers Marcho and Blanco. The hobbits from the vale of
Anduin had migrated west over the perilous
Misty Mountains, living in the wilds of
Eriador before moving to the Shire. After the fall of Arnor, the Shire remained a self-governing realm; the Shire-folk chose a Thain to hold the king's powers. The first Thains were the heads of the Oldbuck clan. When the Oldbucks settled Buckland, the position of Thain was peacefully transferred to the Took clan. The Shire was covertly protected by
Rangers of the North, who watched the borders and kept out intruders. Generally the only strangers entering the Shire were
Dwarves travelling on the Great Road from their mines in the
Blue Mountains, and occasional
Elves on their way to the Grey Havens. In the hobbits defeated an invasion of
Orcs at the Battle of Greenfields. In –60, thousands of hobbits perished in the Long Winter and the famine that followed. In the Fell Winter of –12,
white wolves from Forodwaith invaded the Shire across the frozen
Brandywine River. and later
Frodo Baggins at Bag End, Hobbiton as filmed in New Zealand The protagonists of
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings,
Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, lived at
Bag End, a luxurious
smial or hobbit-burrow, dug into The Hill on the north side of the town of Hobbiton in the Westfarthing. It was the most comfortable hobbit-dwelling in the town; there were smaller burrows further down The Hill. In
Bilbo Baggins left the Shire on the quest recounted in
The Hobbit. He returned the following year, secretly bearing a magic ring. This turned out to be the
One Ring. The Shire was invaded by four
Ringwraiths in search of the Ring. The Shire was liberated with the help of Frodo and his companions on their return at the Battle of Bywater (the final battle of the
War of the Ring).
Language , Tolkien invented parts of
Middle-earth to resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using different European languages for those of peoples in his legendarium. The hobbits of the Shire spoke Middle-earth's
Westron or Common Speech. Tolkien however rendered their language as
modern English in
The Hobbit and in
Lord of the Rings, just as he had used
Old Norse names for the Dwarves. To resolve this linguistic puzzle, he created the
fiction that the languages of parts of Middle-earth were "translated" into different European languages, inventing the language of the Riders of
Rohan,
Rohirric, to be "translated" again as the
Mercian dialect of
Old English which he knew well. This set up a relationship something like ancestry between Rohan and the Shire.
Government The Shire had little in the way of government. The Mayor of the Shire's chief township, Michel Delving, was the chief official and was treated in practice as the Mayor of the Shire. There was a
Message Service for post, and the 12 "
Shirriffs" (three for each Farthing) of the
Watch for police; their chief duties were rounding up stray livestock. These were supplemented by a varying number of "Bounders", an unofficial border force. At the time of
The Lord of the Rings, there were many more Bounders than usual, one of the few signs for the hobbits of that troubled time. The heads of major families exerted authority over their own areas. The Master of Buckland, hereditary head of the Brandybuck clan, ruled Buckland and had some authority over the Marish, just across the Brandywine River. Similarly, the head of the Took clan, often called "The Took", ruled the ancestral Took dwelling of Great Smials, the village of Tuckborough, and the area of
The Tookland. He held the largely ceremonial office of Thain of the Shire. The Shire's calendar year has 12 months, each of 30 days. Five non-month days are added to create a 365-day year. The two
Yuledays signify the turn of the year, so each year begins on 2 Yule. The
Lithedays are the three non-month days at midsummer, 1 Lithe, Mid-year's Day, and 2 Lithe. In
leap years (every fourth year except centennial years) an
Overlithe day is added after Mid-year's Day. There are seven days in the Shire week. The first day of the week is
Sterday and the last is
Highday. The Mid-year's Day and, when present,
Overlithe have no weekday assignments. This causes every day to have the same weekday designation from year to year, instead of changing as in the
Gregorian calendar. For the names of the months, Tolkien reconstructed
Anglo-Saxon names, his take on what the English would be if it had not adopted
Latin names for the months such as January and March. In
The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings, the names of months and week-days are given in modern equivalents, so
Afteryule is called "January" and
Sterday is called "Saturday". == Inspiration ==