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Riding in Carts With Hobbits - Page 6

© Michael Martinez

Celtic farmers were pretty advanced for their time. They were, in fact, better farmers than the Romans (according to some opinions). Celts used iron plows and developed crop rotation. So, despite their reputation for wandering around the landscape, the Celts tried to stay in the same place for as long as possible. The migrations are considered one solution to a problem with growing population. The Hobbits, being a diminutive people, would not have required as much land as full-sized men, but they must have still needed to break new lands every couple of generations. The Shire must have been a very large tract of land for their earliest populations, admittedly reduced in 1636 (the Great Plague) and 1974 (the fall of Arnor). As the Oldbucks crossed the Baranduin, the Tooks may have sent colonists north after the Battle of Greenfields (2747), since Bandobras Took had many descendants in the northern part of the Shire. The older communities would thus have been stable and self-sufficient, constantly sendig a stream of colonists to the younger communities, which in turn would have sprouted new communities closer to the fringes of the Shire. Aragorn's gift of the West-march to the Shire-folk in the early Fourth Age establishes their need to expand once more. The settlement of the West-march would have been an important event. All across the older Shire, Hobbit families would be loading up carts, bidding farewell to loved ones, and setting off in search of a new life. Opening new lands and facing the perils they might bring (such as the Old Forest's angry trees) were apparently not so much adventures to the Hobbits as deeds born of necessity. Armed with axes, shovels, hammers, and picks, the Hobbits set about the arduous task of conquering new lands whose former inhabitants had long since fled. Hence, they had no need to become the great warriors the Celts were once renowned at. A Hobbit farmer only needed to defend his crops against the incursions of hungry neighbor children. But if people wonder where the Hobbits got off to, the answer must be obvious. There came a time when the encroachments of Men were too threatening. The old boundaries had broken down or been forgotten. So, they loaded up the carts, attached the ponies and little cows, and set off down the road, heading further west. Somehow, they never quite made it to the Sea, but they kept moving along. And they are on the road still. Kids, carts, and all.

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