What ain't there and ought to be.

[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?

[littlemanpoet]

Planning the "Assigned to Mordor" rpg has suddenly raised to consciousness yet another "somethin' that ain't there and oughta be": coins, currency, or any monetary valuations.

It's kind of funny that Lalwendë even brought up poverty (or the lack thereof) and money in one of her posts, but this still didn't occur to me.

In fact, not only is coinage, currency, and monetary valuation missing in the Shire, it's missing absolutely everywhere in Middle Earth! What's going on here? Care to speculate? Or produce hard evidence to the contrary? Or discuss what was up with Tolkien for not including it?

Or is there not ever supposed to be something as crass as the means of determining economic value in Fairyland?

[Aiwendil]

Littlemanpoet:

In fact, not only is coinage, currency, and monetary valuation missing in the Shire, it's missing absolutely everywhere in Middle Earth!

Not quite. From I.11:

Bill Ferny's price was twelve silver pennies; and that was indeed at least three times the pony's value in those parts. It proved to be a bony, underfed, and dispirited animal; but it did not look like dying just yet. Mr. Butterbur paid for it himself, and offered Merry another eighteen pence as some compensation for the lost animals. He was an honest man, and well-off as things were reckoned in Bree; but thirty silver pennies was a sore blow to him, and being cheated by Bill Ferny made it harder to bear.

Of course, this one instance of talk about currency only makes its absence elsewhere more curious.

We must note, though, that while very little is made of the concept of money, the concept of wealth does come up quite often in Middle-earth. It's just that one's wealth or poverty is reckoned in terms of things other than currency. Consider, for instance, the value placed on Smaug's hoard by Elves, Men, and Dwarves alike - not to mention by Smaug himself. The hoard of Glaurung with which Hurin "paid" Thingol is another example.

[littlemanpoet]

Very astute post, Aiwendil. Thanks!

And thanks for pointing up the exception, which as you said, makes the general absence the more glaring. I await others' comments on this interesting theme....

[Gurthang]

I don't have the Hobbit with me right now, but is there anything in there describing Smaug's hoard as having coins in it? I know it's gold and jewels, but is the gold in monetary form?

But also there must have been money in the Shire, because Bag End and everything in it were being auctioned off when Bilbo returned from his adventure. It wouldn't make sense that they traded something for Bilbo's possessions, as the whole point of the auction was to liquidate all the assets. Surely money is implied in this situation, if not exactly said to be.