The second child of Wilibald Bolger and Prisca Baggins, Heribald was born in III 2951 (or 1351 by the Shire-reckoning), ten years after Bilbo Baggins' adventure on the Quest of Erebor, and nearly seventy years before the War of the Ring. Through his father Wilibald he was a descendant of the patriarch of the Bolger clan, his great-great-great-grandfather Gundolpho Bolger. Wilibald was a descendant of Gundolpho's youngest son Gundahad and so, while Heribald could claim descent from an important Bolger ancestor, this descent was through a lesser line of the family.
We have almost no records of Heribald's life,3 but we do know that he was present at Bilbo's famous Birthday Party in III 3001 (or S.R. 1401, when Heribald would have been fifty years old). With him at the party were his mother Prisca Baggins (a distant cousin of Bilbo's) as well his elder brother Wilimar and his younger sister Nora (Heribald's father Wilibald had died just the year before the Farewell Party). We are not told whether or not Heribald married, nor whether he gave rise to any further generations of the Bolger family.
Notes
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We only have a date of birth for Heribald Bolger, but we can be sure that he lived until at least III 3001 (S.R. 1401) because he is listed as being among the guests at Bilbo Baggins' Farewell Party in that year. Assuming a typical Hobbit lifespan, Heribald probably lived into the early decades of the Fourth Age.
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2 |
Heribald was a real Old English name, but its meaning is not directly explained. One plausible source would be a combination of the elements heri- ('praiseworthy', 'glorious') and bald ('bold', 'courageous'), but the name may alternatively be related to herë for an army or group of soldiers.
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3 |
Indeed, Heribald Bolger is not mentioned at all in earlier editions of The Lord of the Rings (in which the genealogies of the Shire-hobbits showed his mother and father, but not their three children). It was not until the book's 50th Anniversary Edition in 2004 that the family tree of the Bolgers was included, revealing Heribald's name as well as those of his brother and sister.
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- Updated 28 July 2024
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