what a great thread!
Here is my little contribution:
LOTR by RL Stevenson
At the Sign of the Admiral Took
King Aragorn Elessar, Gandalf the Wizard, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about the Ring Quest, from the beginning to the end, I, Frodo Baggins, take up my pen in the year of the Shire Reconing 1420 and go back to the time when my uncle Bilbo kept the Admiral Took inn and the haggard old hobbit with greenish skin and bulging pale eyes first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door. I remember him looking round and whistling to himself as he did so, and then in his high, old hissing voice breaking out in that strange song that he sang so often afterwards:
"We only wish
to catch a fish,
so juicy-sweet!"
"This is a handy hole," hissed he at length; "Much company, fat hobbitses?" My uncle Bilbo told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
"Well, then," said he, "this is the hole for me. I'll stay here a bit, among nice hobitses. I'm a plain customer; water and eggses and sweet juicy fissh is what I want…" Here he made a strange noise in his throat:
gollum gollum! "What you mought call me? You mought call me Preciousss. Oh, I see what you're at — there"; and he threw down three or four silver pennies on the threshold.
All days he spent fishing in the river; all evenings he sat in a corner of the parlour furthest from the fire, his gnarled fingers constantly fiddling with a plain golden ring. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce with greenish light in his eyes and make this sound in his throat "Gollum!"; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be. Between us we called him Gollum.
Every day when he came back from his fishing he would ask if any Big Men had gone by along the road. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my "eye open for a tall half-blind Big Man in a black cloak" and let him know the moment he appeared. "Now, if I can't get away nohow, and they pierce my heart by the black knife, mind you, it's my Ring they're after; you get on a pony, and go to — well, yes, I will! — to the Sheriff, and tell him to call all magistrates and such. But not unless you see a Big Black Man." How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
There were nights when he took a deal more brandy than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked, old, wild songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house shaking with " to catch a fish, so juicy-sweet! " all the neighbours joining in for dear life, and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark.
His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories they were — about evil Big Men and Orcs and Spiders, and walking in the wilderness, and deep caves under the Mountains, and the dread Land of Mordor, and wild deeds and places in the Wide world. Uncle Bilbo was always saying the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life, and there was even a party of the younger hobbits who pretended to admire him, calling him a "true fearless adventurer" and such like names.