The name used in Bree for the eleventh month of the year, following Wintring and preceding Yulemath. Blooting was equivalent to Blotmath in the Shire, and corresponded approximately to modern November. The name Blooting (and its Shire equivalent Blotmath) both derive from Old English blót, meaning 'sacrifice' (and related to modern 'blood').
Notes
1
The names of months in the calendars of Bree and the Shire are taken from real Anglo-Saxon usage. Historically, this was the time of year when livestock would be slaughtered in preparation for the oncoming winter, and by tradition a part of this meat would be offered to the gods as a blōt or sacrifice, a word cognate with modern 'blood'. These were the roots of the name in real history, but they don't imply that the Bree-landers or Shire-hobbits followed similar practices. Indeed, those people would not actually have called this month Blooting at all; that is simply a suitably archaic name used to translate the original (unrecorded) name for this month used by the inhabitants of Bree.
SHARE
