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Riding in Carts With Hobbits - Page 5

© Michael Martinez

The Shire, of course, expanded several centuries later into the Buckland, and many centuries afterward into the Westmarch. But these expansions appear to be different from the volkwanderungs of the earlier periods. Whole clans left their homelands, perhaps burning their homes to discourage their own retreats, and passed across vast tracts of countryside to reach new lands where they had to start over. Everything a self-sufficient Hobbit family owned would have to be moved on their backs or in carts pulled by ponies and/or small cattle. The first three migrations all occurred for similar reasons: war or the threat of war drove the Hobbits from their lands, much as the Helvetii and their allies left Helvetia (approximatel the same region occupied by Switzerland) in the 1st century BCE because of the threat of war from the east and north. The fourth migration differed from the earlier migrations because, for the first time, the Hobbits made a peace-time migration. This was more like a ver sacrum. The Hobbit chieftains Marcho and Blancho gathered as many of their people as would follow them and set out for the former royal demesne beyond the Baranduin river. For reasons unknown to us, the Hobbits divided their new homeland into four parts, the four farthings. The division probably did not occur at first. Rather, it may have been established after the fall of Arnor, after Angmar had been defeated and the Hobbits could return to their homeland. Their homes had probably been destroyed, and the Hobbits had to rebuild everything. It was only when Aranarth (apparently announced that he) would not restore the kingship that the Shire chieftains began arranging matters for themselves. The Shire Hobbits settled down in small folklands built around clan leaderships which, over the course of a thousand years, mostly broke down. A few of the old families retained their distinctive clan traditions, but most of the Shire-folk became homogenized into a fully sedentary society. They opened new lands, to be sure, but only one large migration is mentioned before the return of royal authority in the Fourth Age. The Oldbucks left the Shire (or some of them did) and established the Buckland. Why a Thain would elect to give up his authority is a mystery, but it may be that the Oldbuck family had become so numerous they simply needed their own land. In that respect, the ancient Celtic migrations echoe faintly in the last great Hobbit shuffling of the Third Age.

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