I enjoy this chapter so much, but it's rather a guilty pleasure: Trolls with cockney (?) accents, named William, Bert and Tom...dwarves who come down with temporary insanity and unhesitatingly walk right up to a strange fire without looking, one right after another...very 'un-canonic' and out of character. I laugh every time. Mind, I've been told I have a warped sense of humor.
'Roast Mutton' has several of my favorite lines in it, too. First and foremost, the excellent exclamation, "Great Elephants!" And of course, the trolls whining about 'mutton yesterday, today and tomorrer' and "Burrahobbit". I like William's complaint to the ungrateful Tom & Bert, too:
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"Yer can't expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert. You've et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains."
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Ah, the irony of a troll berating his fellows for their greed.
On a more literary note, we have the first occasions of LOTR and The Silmarillion "peeking over the horizion" in this chapter:
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Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and roads grew steadily worse. Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.
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If I understand their route correctly, they are traveling among the Weather Hills, perhaps even passing by Weathertop.
The morning after their encounter with the trolls, they find their hoard:
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...--and among them were several swords of various makes, shapes, and sizes. Two caught their eyes particularly, because of their beautiful scabbards and jeweled hilts.
Gandalf and Thorin each took one of these; and Bilbo took a knife in a leather sheath. It would have made only a tiny pocket knife for a troll, but it was as good as a short sword for the hobbit.
"These look like good blades," said the wizard, have drawing them and looking at them curiously. "They were not made by any troll, nor by any smith among men in these parts and days..."
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"Far vistas". I love them so.
