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Post by Andorinha on Oct 24, 2011 23:40:21 GMT -6
I managed to get the second volume of Rateliff's History of the Hobbit, "Return to Bag-End," from the University Library, and he has some interesting "guesses" (?) or speculations on the origin of the thrush in Tolkien's narrative. The following comes from several early versions of The Hobbit where the thrush is not merely a "partisan" of the people of Dale, but was originally, a direct ally of the Dwarves as well, playing much the same role as the Ravens in the final published version. Here, Thror and Thrain gave the thrush a specific task, to watch over the secret door, and reveal its location to any Dwarves (and hobbit) who might show up in the distant future and need to use the magic portal. Rateliff also feels that Tolkien's thrush is of the species Turdus philomelos, based on its longevity, dark plumage, and habit of turning its head to listen. The size and coloration (not to mention longevity) of the Lonely Mountain thrush indicates that he is an exceptional individual, but then Thorin does identify him as a member of a 'long lived and magical breed'. It seems very likely that Thror and Thrain set this particular thrush, one of those who 'came tame to the hands of my father and grandfather', the duty of watching the secret door so that others could use the instructions on the Map to find the secret door, should neither Thror nor Thrain return (as indeed through ill fortune proves to be the case). While there is a widespread tradition of helpful birds in folk and fairy tale, mythology and medieval romance, here Tolkien seems to be drawing on Celtic legendry, particularly the Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen (the oldest surviving Arthurian story, found in The Mabinogion, and a tale with which we know Tolkien was familiar) ... (Rateliff The History of the Hobbit part II, p. 490) If Rateliff is correct here, we have yet another instance of Tolkien professing to dislike the Celtic traditions, but, nonetheless mining it for material to be used in his own works.
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 25, 2011 6:27:08 GMT -6
Well...I always thought the Thrush was sort of a sentry or watcher of Durin's Door...just waiting for the right moment to present itself. It seemed to me that he kept living and holding on to life just for this moment--as if it was his destiny.
If Tolkien did not like the Celtic traditions and he wanted to build off of them anyway, I guess he had that right! Perhaps the helpful birds was not one of the traditions he disliked. ;D
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 26, 2011 10:17:22 GMT -6
RE Stormrider's: Re: Bilbo's Great Adventure:The Timeline « Reply #131 on 10/22/11 at 14:46 » It's Durin's Day today!
The bird, the ray of light, and the key! Voila! An open door! I just noticed that Durin's Day, according to Fonstad, is given as the 30th of October, not the 22nd... She also mentions that a precise date was impossible to reckon, and that her date comes from estimations by counting backwards from the amount of days required for all the actions that occurred before Bilbo and Gandalf spent the Yule with Beorn. "That was the estimation shown, but if precise calculation of Durin's Day was beyond the skill of the Dwarves, it certainly was beyond mine." (Fonstad, p. 98) Too bad I don't have my old star chart program, it allowed you to go back in time, or forward to show the stars as they had been, or would be. It also allowed you to find those days when "the last moon of Autumn" would be in the sky together with the sun." Now this I find strange, autumn, in our system begins on September 22 and ends in December (21 - 22). But Tolkien definitely has his Durin's Day toward the middle of our autumn, not in its ending days. So, anyway, the last moon of Autumn would be sometime in December. Did Tolkien make a mistake here, or does Middle-earth count its seasons differently from ours? I guess we are left with trying to fit Durin's Day into the scheme of the narrative, as Fonstad does, with a general estimation by counting the days required from the solidly dated advent of the company at Laketown on Bilbo's birthday, September 22. So having Durin's Day sometime around October 27 to 30 would fit in about as well as we can get it?
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 27, 2011 4:25:20 GMT -6
According to Freddie's Tolkiens Gateway link:
Durin's Day is a rare event noted by Dwarves. The first day of the Dwarves' year is the day that begins the last cycle of the Moon to begin in autumn. When on this day both the Sun and Moon may be seen in the sky together, it is called Durin's Day.
Unlike The Lord of the Rings Tolkien left no precise timetable for the events of The Hobbit; however according to Andreas Möhn, the particular Durin's Day witnessed by Bilbo occurred on 22 October of the Shire Reckoning.
Andreas "Lalaith" Möhn (born 1964) is a German freelance writer and editor.
He has an on-line presence concerning the study of Tolkien's Arda by participating on the Tolklang and Tolkien Mailing Lists. His website, Lalaith's Science Pages, is centered on more obscure aspects of the legendarium and scientific reasoning on several information Tolkien gives out. His essays concern Mannish tongues, calendaric calculations, and various geographical topics of Arda.
So is Shire Reckoning different than our own calendar? Are we on the Gondorian Calendar? Perhaps that might be the difference. Lalaith and Fonstad may be calculating off of different calendars and we are living off another!
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 27, 2011 9:47:41 GMT -6
Hmmm, I'm trying to think now whether or not this would make any difference. Let's see, eight days out of alignment, and I think our next established date is Yule, when Bilbo and Gandalf are back at Beorn's Hall after the long trek north around Mirkwood. I think I distrust Andreas Möhn because the last Moon of Autumn would still have to be in December, right? So November's Moon and December's Moon are yet to come. But maybe November's Moon, and that of December would have gone through their phases without appearing in the sky with the Sun? I find this hard to believe. This would mean that sometimes the Dwarves' New Year could be as much as 60 day's off from the last one? Makes little sense to have a year that might have only 300 days in it, followed by another with 360 (+ five intercalary days). What society ever had a calendar where the New Year was that movable? Historically speaking, I can come up with no culture that ever got the measurement of the year that far off! If you can see the stars, and count the days, you can always come up with 365 plus a smidgen more. LOL. I see that the entry in Tolkien's Gateway does not really give us Andreas Möhn's reasoning, just a bare statement that he made some calculations, and decided upon October 22. At his own site, Möhn does admit that he did not have enough evidence to do a star-chart reconstruction of the celestial event, and that he had to use "secondary evidence." So he is still, just estimating, like Fonstad. But, he thinks he's found a way to be a bit more accurate. But, as I understand his system, he also makes a major mistake in the following: "Drawing a function that links all mentioned observations, we find a surprising result: The orbital period of the moon was in the late Third Age of the Sun about 20 minutes shorter than today, being approximately 29.518 days in contrast to the modern value of 29.530879 days. This difference arises because the moon is gradually slowed down by tidal friction (and at the same time, receding from earth). This should allow even to compute the geological period to which the Third Age belongs." ( lalaith.vpsurf.de/Tolkien/Durin's_Day.html my emphasis) But what year, in our terms, is Bilbo's 2941 (Shire Reckoning 1341)? To use a star chart progression based on relative periods of the Moon's orbit to determine the time when the last Autumn Moon was in the sky with the Sun we would still have to have a precise Before Christ date. Unfortunately, we do not know the length of time of the Fourth Age. For this calculation to work, and for Möhn to correctly state the differences between modern and Third Age lunar orbital periods, he must know how long the Fourth Age lasted, or just how many years B.C. Bilbo's epic adventure took place. Here, he lets us down, he does not give even an approximation. If there are 5,000 years between our present and Bilbo's journey, or if the count should be 3,000, or maybe even 7,000 -- we simply do not know. A great alteration in the possible date of occurrence of a "last Autumn Moon in the sky with the Sun" is to be expected, depending on how long the actual period of the Fourth Age lasted. So, if the distance between our current date and 2941 III A is 7,000 years, the Moon's orbital period would be significantly different from what it would be if only 4,000 years has elapsed since Bilbo's Durin's Day. Möhn gives me no assurance that he has the correct length of time between Bilbo's day and ours. LOL Hope this makes sense. I see this exercise as leaving us with an editorial decision to make, do we stick with the Fonstad reckoning, or use Möhn's: it represents only an eight day difference, and I think it can be absorbed in the full narration where we often have Tolkien tell us that "a number of days went by" without specifying exactly how many. I get the feeling from The Hobbit, and the works that have been written about it, that Tolkien never really put much time into trying to calculate a precise date for Durin's Day in 2941 Third Age. Only to his readers (after the 1966 revised edition paperback became so popular) did it ever become so obsessively important as to make them (us!) try to establish an accurate correlation with our own calendar. Does it make any difference to us? I suppose it does, because if the October 30 date is a better approximation, then we still have time ahead of us to get ready our discussions on Bilbo's journey down the passage to see Smaug. If we accept Möhn's date, we have already missed this crucial incident. Maybe this is Vanye's editorial decision -- use Fonstad as we have been, use Möhn for this one instance, or just ignore the point altogether as being fundamentally unknowable? Drat that Tolkien, gotta be some way of reaching him by seance to get a definitive answer -- all he need do is tell us how many of our years ago Bilbo heard the Thrush knocking on the grey stone...
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 27, 2011 10:53:10 GMT -6
As if we did not have enough confusion. Others have tried to establish Durin's Day, and they seem uniformly to recognize that this is a hopeless task, and the best we can do without a precise B.C. date for 2941 Third Age, is come up with a broad ranging approximation. Durin's Day is a rare event noted by Dwarves. The first day of the Dwarves' year is the day that begins the last cycle of the Moon, starting with a New Moon, to begin in Autumn. When on this day both the Sun and Moon may be seen in the sky together, it is called Durin's Day. Each lunar cycle takes about 29.5 days. When Autumn in the northern hemisphere is assumed to start on the autumnal equinox, generally on September 22, the season runs until about December 21. The first day of the last new moon of Autumn could thus take place any time between about November 22 and December 21.
However, the seasons in Tolkien's work have the four solar markers at the centre of the seasons, not the beginning. For example, Midsummer occurs on the summer solstice, Midwinter on the winter solstice, etc. Autumn would therefore begin midway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox, around August 6, and end midway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, around November 6. That places Durin's Day, the Dwarves' New Year, anytime between about Oct. 7 and Nov. 6, on the last day before the astronomical new moon as the moon sets just before the sun. (from Wikipedia, my emphasis: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_calendar#Durin.27s_Day) From this Wiki article I see that others agree with me that Tolkien must have gotten his placement of Durin's Day all messed up if we use our modern calendar days. Tolkien definitely has the Dwarves' New Year in October, possibly early November -- when it should fall sometime between November 22 and December 21. But then, comes some further confusion concerning whether or not Tolkien was counting his months from solar references at the center of the month, rather than at the beginning of the month as we now do. LOL! If we allow that JRRT was counting from the middle of his months, this would then put Durin's Day sometime between October 7 and November 6. So here, with this corrective reading, both Fonstad and Möhn are within generally acceptable parameters, and Tolkien can still have his Dwarven New Year's Day in October. This still gives us no way of knowing just which of these 30 days would have actually been Durin's Day. By the count of days after leaving Laketown, we are secure up to October 19 where Tolkien gives us a fairly good account of the passage of the days. But after the 19th he becomes vague again, and simply refers to many days passing before the Thrush knocks. So, for our purpose, Durin's Day is definitely after October 19 (in the Gondoran Steward's Calendar, and in the Shire calendar) -- but Möhn's date of the 22nd, is, as I see it, no more likely the actual date of Durin's Day than Fonstad's October 30. I guess it simply becomes a matter of "convenience" which date we choose -- the 30th allows us to still be in time to talk about Bilbo's meeting with Smaug, otherwise, I guess we resort to using the past tense? LOL... _________________________ Another alternative would place Durin's Day on the 20th of October (14 days after the 6th), not Möhn's 22nd: "Thefirstday of the dwarves' New Year ... is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter." Words of Thorin Oakenshield, from The Hobbit 3 A Short Rest
The first day of the Dwarves' year was calculated according to the last new moon of autumn (that is, the new moon that occurs within two weeks of 6 October, on a modern calendar). Not every Dwarves' new year was a Durin's Day, though: Thorin says 'We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together.' (ibid). Only a Dwarvish new year where this occurs is technically a Durin's Day. (Encyclopedia of Arda, www.glyphweb.com/arda/d/durinsday.html) LOTRO.COM uses the 26th of October ( forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?427395-EVENT-Durin-s-Day&p=5775482) From The Barrowdowns Forum we have a discussion on calculating Durin's Day in our own era and by our calendar. Estelyn points out an impotant fact here, sometimes, the New Years' Day may occur without it being also Durin's Day: Estelyn Telcontar 10-04-2005, 01:46 AM I dug out Foster's Guide (well, actually I have it handy on the bookshelf right next to my computer) and found this definition:
The first day of the Dwarvish year, so called only if the moon and the sun shone in the sky at the same time. The Dwarves' New Year was the first day of the last new crescent moon of Autumn. As I understand that, New Year would be every year, of course, but it would rarely be Durin's Day as well. The whole system for determining the Dwarves' New Year is similar to the Christian church's Easter holiday, which also changes its date, dependant on the first new moon of spring.(http://forum.barrowdowns.com/archive/index.php?t-12274.html) From the same discussion, Goomba tried to figure out Durin's Day for a number of our current years -- all speculative as far as I know: Hookbill the Goomba 10-02-2005, 08:08 AM I was just looking at this on TEoA.Dwarvish New Years A selection of modern Dwarvish new years: all dates are shown in the modern (Gregorian) calendar 2001 16 October 2002 6 October 2003 26 September 2004 14 October 2005 3 October 2006 22 September 2007 11 October 2008 29 September 2009 18 October 2010 7 October 2011 27 September Thursday 14 October 2004 is a definite Durin's Day: not only do the Sun and Moon appear in the sky together, but a partial solar eclipse occurs. The occurrence of other Durin's Days will depend on longitude.
Reading the article besides this on the Encyclopaedia reveals that Durins day will be different in which country you are in. I suppose this applied to the Dwarves of Middle Earth as well. This got me thinking, Dwarves in, say, The Blue Mountains, would have a different day to those in the iron hills, if its further enough away. It must be confusing.So here we have yet one more "guesstimate" for Durin's Day in this, our year of 2011 A.D. -- September 27, long past us now. We at least know that Bilbo's Durin's Day was in October, sometime after the 19th. LOL! Arrrgghhhhh!
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Post by Vanye on Oct 27, 2011 21:28:25 GMT -6
In 2005 I did a series of posts titled TR Calendar in which I gave the Shire Reckoning dates in parallel actual modern dates.
My posts for the time in question are as follows:
16 October-22 October 2005 = 25 Winterfilthe-1 Blotmath
23 October-29 October 2005 = 2 Blotmath- 8 Blotmath
Which amounts to 9 days difference between the modern calendar & Shire Reckoning.
I cannot speak to the moon phases-having not studied them, but I put in quite a bit of work into the calendar study & know that the whole year showed a 9 day difference for most of the time. If you wish to know about the exceptions go to TR Calendar & they are explained there.
I also remember in reading the book (5 or 6 Xs now) that the dwarves & Bilbo got very discouraged as the days dragged on before they finally found the door. So I find that the later date seems to make more sense to me. 8^)
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 28, 2011 5:59:35 GMT -6
Goodness! Figuring dates is a tricky business! and very confusing! Andorinha, thank you for your information and all the data. Anyway, that was an interesting discussion about how difficult it is to pin down an exact date! Andorinha, you proved that!
Vanye wrote: "I also remember in reading the book (5 or 6 Xs now) that the dwarves & Bilbo got very discouraged as the days dragged on before they finally found the door. So I find that the later date seems to make more sense to me. 8^)"
I like the idea of going with Fonstad's date of Oct. 30th (and Vanye's agreement) since we should discuss Bilbo's decent down the tunnel for his first visit with The Dragon! I never even thought to look at Fonstad's estimation. When Freddie posted the Gateway link, I just did a search of the site to see what would come up and then hurried off to work.
So Durin's Day for our purposes will be Oct. 30th -- this Sunday -- and we have the Thrush information neatly tucked into this thread.
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 28, 2011 11:36:44 GMT -6
Vanye, yeah, I remember your work on the calendar, excellent stuff, I'll look it up again.
RE: "I also remember in reading the book (5 or 6 Xs now) that the dwarves & Bilbo got very discouraged as the days dragged on before they finally found the door."
Yeah, that was my impression too, a longish time, more than four days, seems to have gone by while they waited for a chance to open the door.
Stormrider, yep, the whole matter of precisely connecting our system with the dates of Middle-earth is really a mess, LOL!
Great, I vote also for making the elusive Durin's Day the 30th of October.
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 28, 2011 22:29:43 GMT -6
Dwarf-doors in The Hobbit and LOTR
Ah, it is almost the 29th of October, the day when Bilbo and the Dwarves find the secret door. In re-reading the account of this discovery it occurred to me that a very similar passage is found in FOTR, just at the entrance to another Dwarven realm, Moria. Apparently, the folk of Durin continued some of their architectural practices down through the history of Middle-earth, with very few changes over the intervening thousands of years.
From The Hobbit we have:
"It was not a cave and was open to the sky above; but at its inner end a flat wall rose up that in the lower part, close to the ground, was as smooth and upright as mason's work, but without a joint or crevice to be seen. No sign was there of post or lintel or threshold, nor any sign of bar or bolt or key-hole; yet they did not doubt that they had found the door at last." (Hobbit, "On the Doorstep," p. 185)
Regarding such "secret Dwarf-doors" -- in LOTR, when the west gate of Moria is approached by the Fellowship, they find the door has no visible markers other than a very flat, smooth place on the cliff front. In this Tolkien gives us a direct link to The Hobbit, and repeats, as he often does, certain features of the earlier narrative. In both The Hobbit and FOTR, the parties are held up outside a Dwarven realm/ palace trying to figure out how to open the door. When they do finally open these portals, they are both greeted by deep darkness, with great dangers looming unseen before them. While discussing how to open the Moria gate, Gandalf makes it quite plain that he had heard from Bilbo all about the secret door on Erebor, the Lonely Mountain:
" 'Dwarf-doors are not made to be seen when shut,' said Gimli. 'They are invisible, and their own masters cannot find them or open them, if their secret is forgotten.' ... ' Yes,' said Gandalf, 'these doors are probably governed by words. Some dwarf-gates will open only at special times, or for particular persons; and some have locks and keys that are still needed when all the necessary times and words are known.' " (FOTR , "A Journey in the Dark," p. 296 -97, my emphasis).
I like this sort of continuity between The Hobbit and LOTR, it gives a sort of historical depth to the continuing Middle-earth narrative.
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 29, 2011 4:41:23 GMT -6
The hidden door of the Lonely Mountain seems to be more secure to me. It could only be opened on Durin's Day which did not occur very often (and was a difficult day to plan on) and a key that needed to be inserted in the keyhole at the right moment the beam of light hit it. Therefore, the timeframe was much narrower for someone trying to enter that way.
The hidden door to Moria was outlined so you could actually see it in the moonlight after it became dark. It also gave a huge clue written in the moon writing to the word that should be uttered to get in! Of course, the clue was rather hidden in the message, but it was there in plain sight! This door could be opened any time...errr...or could it only be opened in the evening once the runes became visible? Anyway, it was openable every night!
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 29, 2011 10:23:57 GMT -6
Yes, I agree, the secret door of Erebor had a lot more "security" features:
1. Just getting to the "doorstep" required a perilous crossing of the cliff-face on a narrow pathway.
2. Then to get in you must have the right day with the right positioning of both Sun and Moon.
3. Maybe you even had to have the Thrush nearby, "knocking on the grey stone?"
4. And even then you needed to have the key.
If the Erebor door opens only on Durin's Day, and not every year has a conjunction of Sun and Moon to give it a Durin's Day, it does not seem very useful does it? Certainly Smaug could not have attacked on a Durin's Day, too much coincidence -- so I bet the door could be opened from the inside whenever you wanted, else how could Thror and Thrain have gotten away from Smaug?
Hmm, at Moria, I thought there was no trace of a door at all until Gandalf used his staff and muttered a few secret words:
He [Gandalf] walked forward to the wall. Right between the shadow of the trees there was a smooth space, and over this he passed his hands to and fro, muttering words under his breath. Then he stepped back.
'Look!' he said. 'Can you see anything now?'
... Then slowly on the surface, where the wizard's hands had passed, faint lines appeared, like slender veins of silver running in the stone.
(FOTR, "A Journey in the Dark," p. 296)
Maybe the Moria Gate was better guarded than we might think, after all, how many people would know the words Gandalf used after a couple of thousand years, and was the wizard's staff required as well? So, even though the west gate of Moria was meant to be a public access route into Moria, and it was easily opened from inside, it still posed quite a puzzle even for as subtle a mind as Gandalf's! In fact, maybe Gandalf was too smart for the door, it took him quite some time to figure out the riddle and use the correct magic word (Mellon!) to get the thing opened. Continuing the comparison with Erebor, since the Moria Gate could be easily opened from the inside, I'm even more sure now that the Lonely Mountain door also could be opened at will from the inside; and it certainly would not have been on a "time catch," where you have to wait til Durin's Day to get either in or out!
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 30, 2011 17:23:59 GMT -6
Regarding Thorin's speech on the day before the last seven days of autumn:
Ah, reading this section of On the Doorstep again, and I found this statement by Thorin:
"Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn," said Thorin one day.
"And winter comes after autumn," said Bifur.
"And next year after that," said Dwalin, "and our beards will grow till they hang down the cliff to the valley before anything happens here."
That night he [Bilbo] was very miserable and hardly slept. Next day the dwarves all went wandering off in various directions... All day Bilbo sat gloomily in the grassy bay gazing at the stone, or out west through the narrow opening. He had a queer feeling that he was waiting for something. (The Hobbit, On the Doorstep, p. 200)
The very next moment, the Thrush starts noisily cracking snails against the grey rock, just as the Moon Letter message on Thorin's map had said it would. Bilbo is alerted by the Thrush to the fact that this very day, the first day of the last seven of Autumn, is the long anticipated Durin's Day. Bilbo squeals, the dwarves come running, the last ray of sunlight falls on the door, the keyhole appears, and Thorin gets the key into the lock...
So, for this year, if I've got the count right, Durin's Day of 2941 IIIrd Age, fell on the first day of the last week of Middle-earth's autumn.
If we then accept that Tolkien's months were all of 30 days, and that he counted his Middle-earth seasons from a center placement of the solar markers, not at the beginning as we do,* then his ME autumn is August 6 through November 6. So the day when Thorin started his grumbling is the day before the last 7 days of Middle-earth autumn. This would have to have been the 29th of October. So the next day, when Bilbo hears the Thrush, would have to have been Middle-earth's 30th of October, wouldn't it? So, Durin's Day actually fell, as Fonstad estimated, on the 30th of October. Maybe Fonstad got it right after all?
____________________
* See reply #140 above in this discussion: "However, the seasons in Tolkien's work have the four solar markers at the centre of the seasons, not the beginning. For example, Midsummer occurs on the summer solstice, Midwinter on the winter solstice, etc. Autumn would therefore begin midway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox, around August 6, and end midway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, around November 6."
_____________________
LOL -- just checked outside. It is almost 5 PM here, sunset will come a bit before 6, and there is a crescent Moon, just going past the zenith on its setting path; and the sun is still well above the horizon. Now, I've just got to find the secret door, get the key, and hope the curved-bill thrush (that lives in the palmetto outside my study window) will find a grey rock upon which to start hammering snails.
Alas, I don't think I've ever seen a single snail down here in the sandy desert...
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Post by Stormrider on Oct 31, 2011 5:25:40 GMT -6
Andorinha wrote: Perhaps your thrush can crack open a nice juicy scorpion...I'm sure you have those down there!
You are some detective, Andorinha!
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Post by Andorinha on Oct 31, 2011 9:38:39 GMT -6
LOL, scorpions we do have, plenty of them!
From my understanding of The Hobbit, chapter XII, Inside Information, follows immediately upon the opening of the secret door, so this puts Bilbo's trip down the tunnel during the hour or so just after sunset on Durin's Day (most probably the 30th of October). I don't know why, but I always thought it was during the daytime. But, given an hour or two for him to make the passage down the tube to get his first glimpse of the treasure (and the dragon!), he would probably make this contact around 8 PM?
Bilbo seems to have had his moment of personal crisis while he was still in the passage:
"Now you are in for it at last, Bilbo Baggins," he said to himself. "You went and put your foot right in it that night of the party, and now you have got to pull it out and pay for it! Dear me, what a fool I was and am!" said the least Tookish part of him. "I have absolutely no use for dragon-guarded treasures, and the whole lot could stay here for ever, if only I could wake up and find this beastly tunnel was my own front-hall at home!" (The Hobbit, chpt 12, p. 193/205 pap bk)
Some time I've got to go through this book carefully, just counting all the times when Bilbo wishes he were suddenly back home...
What kind of "heroic" burglar is Bilbo? Even now, after he has been hardened by the privations of the journey, survived trolls, wargs, giants, goblins, spiders and all, he still has to master himself as he comes within hearing range of the snoring dragon.
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