A Question about Merry

[Kalimac]

Beatrice, I don't know for absolute certain that Merry had any kids (OK, nobody except Tolkien knows that, and he can't tell us) but I'm basing the supposition off of a couple of things; first of all the family trees were not necessarily complete. Estella Bolger didn't even get added into them until the second or third edition, so presumably Tolkien "discovered" some further info on Merry between those printings that enabled him to add the marriage. This would suggest that information about Merry's personal life was fairly scanty (like I said in that previous post, maybe there was a fire which destroyed records, or something [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ) and subject to revision even after Estella was added in there.

Second of all, in Appendix B to ROTK, in "Later Events Concerning the Fellowship" for the year 1484, it says that "He [Merry] then took council with his friend the Thain, and soon after they handed over their goods and offices to their sons and rode away over the Sarn Ford, and they were not seen again in the Shire." Pippin of course had his son Faramir I, but the use of "their" is a pretty clear indication that Merry had a least one son, name unknown, and possibly more. So there's no indication of when Merry's child or children were born, or what their names were, but Tolkien must have deduced from side-references somewher else that they did in fact exist. You could say it's the fault of the Brandybucks for not keeping better records [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img].

OK, enough. Sorry, I'm not trying to be a lecturer, I just think it's an interesting discrepancy in the appendices (besides, I like Merry).

[Kalimac descends from soapbox].