Beyond the Tolkien Estate

[Sophia the Thunder Mistress]

Unless they want to claim that Tolkien is responsible for the name of "Yorkshire" and inspired Charlotte Bronte's less than inventive use of "----shire" as a location in Jane Eyre and countless other instances, I think they're going to be out of luck. But there may prove to be a difference between "-shire" and "Shire".

Well, scratch the above paragraph, or at least make it a footnote to Child's, since I cross posted with her.

Actually, this:

or in reference to a "Shire" horse which is a registered breed.

struck me as rather funny, since when I was about twelve and extremely passionate about making "my own Middle-earth" , I couldn't quite grasp this difference and named my pseudo-Shire after another breed of draft horse... Percheron. I was a strange little girl indeed.

I wonder, in this slew of website closings/alterations, is there any likelihood of the Downs being hit? Most of the maps I used to use in RPGs are gone, and we too have some copyrighted material in use here...?

Sophia