What ain't there and ought to be.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

Here's a new one: butchers.

There are a few lists of various this's and that's in the Shire, some of which are types of employment. There are farmers, millers, gardeners, mayors, postmen, shirriffs, innkeepers, cartwrights, smiths, ropers, et cetera. But no butchers. See page 15 of FotR for an example of a such a list. Is this another example of Tolkien's overly idyllic Shire? Or is a matter of "it wasn't in the story so it wasn't in the story"? Or is it a matter of farmers being the butchers in the Shire?

I think, looking at how society is still organised on an informal basis in The Shire, that the farmers would also have been the butchers. This was very much the case in rural areas even into the twentieth century, butchers being mainly found in urban areas. I can in fact remember my father buying meat direct from the farmer, my grandmother making sausages and black puddings herself, and I was given a brace of pheasant from which I had to remove the shot, the heads and feet myself before I could cook it, so this is not quite so far out of memory anyway.

Possibly it wasn't an issue for Tolkien to have butchery as a specific trade in The Shire, if it was drawn from his own childhood memories; though being an urbanite, he would have been more used to the idea of butchers in his adult life.

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?