What ain't there and ought to be.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by LMP

Yes, that was my initial thought from the get-go. I admit to using the the "butcher" topic as an almost good enough excuse to resurrect this thread.

That could be called 'sneaking'...

Originally Posted by LMP

But it's intriguing questions like this that make bringing the thread back up worth having done. I'm not surprised at the revulsion. Nevertheless, any avid reader of Tolkien would have to admit that slaughtering of farm animals had to have occurred in the Middle-earth Shire, even if it was farmers who did it. Hobbits ate stew, did they not? with meat in it? But did Tolkien mean the Shire to be "perfect"? Perhaps it would be best to say that Tolkien intended it to be idyllic (I can't even bring myself to describe it as bucolic, as that has negative connotations for me!). What ever word you choose to use, the sense of intrusion would probably still be there, I take it? Maybe that has as much to do with us urban shoppers as it does with the act of slaughtering animals? After all, we're more disconnected from the earth than people were in Tolkien's time. The Machine!

Well, to bring in the topic of A.N.Other thread which is popular right now, the idea of something as bloody as butchery would surely break the enchantment which The Shire holds for us? This is not to say that the concept of The Shire is not strong enough to include such basic human needs as meat (if that's not tempting a veggie to argue then I don't know what is, but I don't mean it that way), but I do think that seeing as The Shire also does not have other factors of rural life such as poverty, bad smells and negative insularity, then the absence of butchers is not surprising. Perhaps Tolkien knew well enough that The Shire was meant to be different, and so did not wish to include those things which might break the spell of its charm.

A perfect contrast of how writers see or have seen rural life can be found in literature, and that is the contrast between Tolkien's The Shire, and Thomas Hardy's Wessex (The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure in particular portray a harsh reality).

Even when Tolkien was writing LotR people had become disconnected from their relationship with the earth. It was during WWII that widespread mechanisation of agriculture took hold, simply because it had to in order to get everyone fed, and it did not go away after the end of the war, it only intensified.

I often think that Saruman's rule over The Shire was emblematic of that change. Rather than drawing from the general industrialisation of England, which was already very much in force a century before Tolkien's birth, he may have been drawing specifically on the changes which overcame rural England, for example changes from small farms to agribusiness.

But I have to ask, why does bucolic have negative conotations?

[Celuien]

Slaughterer??? Definitely a disturbing thought.

It is obvious that slaughtering and meat preparation are necessary and take place, even if it's not specifically described. I tend to think a description is both not needed and would disturb the Shire's atmosphere by adding too much of the gritty side of reality. Then again, it could be a function of my urbanized lifestyle that I'm uncomfortable with the idea. Maybe if I lived on a farm a century ago where it was part of daily life, I wouldn't have the same reaction.

Here's an interesting thought; Sam cleans and dresses the rabbits that Gollum caught in Ithilien. Gollum, however, is the one who actually catches them. Is it significant that the unpleasant job of killing goes to Gollum rather than the Shire hobbits? Would we think less of Sam if he had been the one to hunt the conies?

[Child of the 7th Age]

You have a point. I do think the word was purposely excluded, perhaps for a variety of reasons. Bear with me. I am thinking out loud here, especially the last half of this post, and am wondering if I am way off base!

First, Lalwende is certainly right. The farmers of the Shire--and most hobbits were farmers--would have done their own slaughtering and offered things directly to their customers ("sanitized" hobbits like Bilbo, for example). It's one thing to do butchering as part of a vast list of farm chores: chores that are essentially life-giving. It's another thing to do only butchering: singling out the killing function as the sole reason for any job. Everything in the Shire is life-affirming, so to single out butchers would have been to go against the grain.

Secondly, just listen to the way the word sounds: B - U - T - C - H - E - R . Not very nice. Tolkien was acutely aware not only of the dictionary meaning of the word but how it sounded to the ear. And "butcher" does not sound very nice.

Lalwende: Why was my first thought one of revulsion at the very thought of butchers being present in The Shire? Perhaps the thought of killing animals would intrude on the vision of The Shire as the perfect rural paradise?

I don't think it's so much a matter of "revulsion" as simply being out-of-place. People have to do many things to survive that are less than pleasant: slaughter animals to eat, tend to wounds and illnesses, find some way to dispose of dead bodies, protect themselves from dangerous things. In one way or other, all these things have to do with staving off the eternal reaper: the onslaught of death. None of these things are present in the Shire, at least in the late third age. Either the tasks (like defense) are farmed out to others (the Rangers) or they are simply not discussed. This is quite different than early Shire history where there were migrations, plagues, harsh winters where people starved, and hobbits going off to battle. But all these things--things that bring about change-- have evaporated by the late third age. And isn't it interesting how our own discussion always focuses exclusively on the Shire of the late third age rather than the earlier periods, even though we have considerable detail on the latter?

Not only have the dangers disappeared by the late third age (except for those rumors of danger floating in from the outside) but, sadly, so have the oddballs and adventurers who make life far more interesting. No more hobbits running off to sea, something that Gandalf said was fairly common in the Took line earlier on. This can be seen from the family trees in the appendix.

Bilbo is the first "crack" in this ideal but bland Shire ("crack" - a word, I think, that was probably literally applied to Bilbo by his neighbors.) There is another hint of this "crack" in two very different characters: Lobelia and Ted Sandyman, who will side with the change represented by Saruman, at least intiailly.

So what's going on here? It's only with the reintroduction of death as represented by the Scouring that adventurous characters can again come to the fore: specifically those hobbits who stood up against the intruders. You can again have true change going beyond the cyclic rhythm of agricultural life: change that focuses on individuals. Merry and Pippin can emerge as leaders. Before, there was simply no need. You can likewise have an adventurous descendent of Elfstan Fairbairn go off with Elanor and found a new community in the Tower Hills. (Elfstan -- what a name for a hobbit! Very suggestive, I would say.)

So, in a strange way, death or at least its possibility represents not an end but a change for the Shire. The question is not whether death will occur. The hobbits have "grown up" so death is inevitable. The question is what that death will mean: will it be the demeaning deaths perpetrated by Saruman and crew, or will it be death with meaning as represented by those hobbits that gave their lives? In other words, change happens in the grown-up Shire, but will it be destructive or positive in nature?

After the Scouring, did the Shire simply go back to what it was in the late third age, or did change become part of the basic rhythm of life? I would say the latter, although in a limited way. There has been too much change generated by events to go back. You have hobbits born with golden hair, the physical presence of the mallorn in the party field, Bilbo and Frodo's books passed down through the Gamgee/Fairbairn family, the tales told by Sam to his children, the establishment of a far-western outpost, the scholarly studies by Merry, plus all those new trees and burrows. The one contrary fact is the continued isolation of the Shire -- something I've never felt comfortable with -- but Tolkien interprets this positively.


If the end of the war of the ring actually means the reintroduction of death/change into the Shire, then Frodo's leaving, his symbolic death, makes even more sense. He has "grown up" more than any other hobbit in the Shire. He can not go back to the "old" Shire. Not only has he changed, the Shire has also changed. Given that reality, he must inevitably move on. And given the fact that Tolkien says his main theme is that of "Death", the reintroduction of death in the Shire as an impetus for change would seem to make at least some sense. Perhaps "Death" is a gift in more than one way.

******************

Edit: My poor brain just figured something out. Someone else may have said this before, but it just clicked in my head. The true "burial" of dead hobbits isn't in a mound or under the ground. The true burial of hobbits was in the family pedigrees. A grave is an acknowledgement of death, and the family trees were a way to acknowledge death yet still affirm life on the same page. The hobbits had always published geneology but it wasn't till after the war that they appeared systematically as an attachment to the Redbook. Thus, the acknowledgement of the deaths could only come after the Scouring.

[littlemanpoet]

Originally Posted by Lalwendê

But I have to ask, why does bucolic have negative conotations?

I'm not sure I can answer why. I do know that I associate the word with barefooted, backwoods, ignorant, cabin-dwelling folk who live far back in the Appalachians or somesuch. Talk about stereotypes! But that's the association.

Originally Posted by Child

listen to the way the word sounds: B - U - T - C - H - E - R . Not very nice.

What about: S - L - A - U - G - H - T - E - R ? That seems reminiscent of "cellar door", don't you think? Unless you aspirate the "gh", I suppose...

Child, thanks for the reflection on the Shire and death and change. I agree with you about the isolation of the Shire in the Fourth Age seeming, well, out of place.

[Eruanna]

Just to put my two penn'orth into what has been an extremely fascinating thread to read:

"Bilbo was too weak to help, and anyway he was not much good at skinning rabbits or cutting up meat, being used to having it delivered by the butcher all ready to cook" From 'The Hobbit': Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire.

As 'not nice' as the word is, it's there and it's an accepted part of Hobbit life. I think that sometimes, we perhaps look on the Shire as being 'perfect'. Sanitised and squeaky clean, the town-dwellers ideal of a country life. It is, though, a real place and Hobbit society is not primitive or basic. They would have had trades folk of many descriptions, just because we don't notice them in the story doesn't mean that they aren't there.

[Lalwendë]

Eruanna - well spotted! That goes to show that not all of us always consider what it says in The Hobbit!

It's interesting too to note that Tolkien mentions butchers here in context. He does not mention them because he wants to tell us about The Shire and its society, but to illustrate something about Bilbo. Tolkien could quite easily have spent several chapters of LotR telling us all about The Shire, how it operates and what the Hobbits do for a living, including butchers, but he does not, he gets into the story quickly. Perhaps it is due to his having already written one substantial novel about Hobbits, or maybe he thought to wrap this kind of information up in the prologue.

[littlemanpoet]

Hmmmm..... I may have to see about introducing a butcher hobbit into the ongoing The Green Dragon over in rpg's. After all, how can a Shire inn survive without meat?