[Lalwendë]

A few things from this chapter...because some proper posting will do me good .....

At the south end of the greensward there was an opening. There the green floor ran on into the wood, and formed a wide space like a hall, roofed by the boughs of trees. Their great trunks ran like pillars down each side. In the middle there was a wood-fire blazing, and upon the tree-pillars torches with lights of gold and silver were burning steadily. The Elves sat round the fire upon the grass or upon the sawn rings of old trunks. Some went to and fro bearing cups and pouring drink; others brought food on heaped plates and dishes.

This has always reminded me of tales of Druidic groves, sacred spaces formed by great Oaks, almost like buildings. I think from reading that for the very first time in my early teens I started thinking of Elves as these magical creatures, as if they held some 'secret'. This might be the beginning of a journey for the Hobbits, but that was also a great beginning for me. In my quest to find out this magical secret of the Elves I've spent the years since delving into history, folklore, all kinds of things. I've never found that secret yet though.

And is it an old, old place, a grove used by other Elves? It sounds like it...

Sam could never describe in words, nor picture clearly to himself, what he felt or thought that night, though it remained in his memory as one of the chief events of his life.

That chimes with my own feelings when I pick up that old copy of Fellowship and feel that intangible thrill I felt when I was first reading the book. It takes me right back, but there's no way I could describe how I felt, and how I still feel like that when I pick up that old book, which is by me now.

To tell the truth, he was very reluctant to start, now that it had come to the point. Bag End seemed a more desirable residence than it had for years, and he wanted to savour as much as he could of his last summer in the Shire. When autumn came, he knew that part at least of his heart would think more kindly of journeying, as it always did at that season. He had indeed privately made up his mind to leave on his fiftieth birthday: Bilbo's one hundred and twentyeighth. It seemed somehow the proper day on which to set out and follow him. Following Bilbo was uppermost in his mind, and the one thing that made the thought of leaving bearable.

This is why I love the early chapters of the book so much. It's the sense of loss. After having been made to feel right at home in The Shire, a familiar place enough to anyone brought up in the English countryside, you have to leave it with Frodo, and his feelings are the same as my own when I have to leave behind a place I love. There's a journey you've been itching to get started on but when it comes to it, you delay leaving.

I understand that need to 'savour' too, to get your fill of the familiar places you've loved and yet in some way also found boring - when you have to leave them they suddenly don't seem so dull any more, but precious.

Anyway, I'll leave it here for tonight with a piece of Tolkien's writing that might not be about Elves, is not about a glorious city, or a furious battle, nor even about a beautiful foreign land, but about home and probably one of my favourite descriptions of anything in Middle-earth. I've often posted about how when I hear Vaughan Williams music I think of Bilbo and Frodo having to leave The Shire behind and this is what I always think of:

For a short way they followed the lane westwards. Then leaving it they turned left and took quietly to the fields again. They went in single file along hedgerows and the borders of coppices, and night fell dark about them. In their dark cloaks they were as invisible as if they all had magic rings. ..........After some time they crossed the Water, west of Hobbiton, by a narrow plank-bridge. The stream was there no more than a winding black ribbon, bordered with leaning alder-trees. A mile or two further south they hastily crossed the great road from the Brandywine Bridge; they were now in the Tookland, and bending southeastwards they made for the Green Hill Country. As they began to climb its first slopes they looked back and saw the lamps in Hobbiton far off twinkling in the gentle valley of the Water. Soon it disappeared in the folds of the darkened land, and was followed by Bywater beside its grey pool. When the light of the last farm was far behind, peeping among the trees, Frodo turned and waved a hand in farewell. 'I wonder if I shall ever look down into that valley again,' he said quietly.