"At first they had passed through
hobbit-lands, a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a
dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business."
The Hobbit 2
Roast Mutton
Those lands owned or cultivated by the Hobbits, or at least familiar to them. The Hobbit-lands certainly contained the Shire and Buckland, and perhaps stretched beyond their borders. When Bilbo and the Dwarves passed out of the Hobbit-lands, they came to an unspecified place where the people used strange speech, and sang unfamiliar songs. This may be an oblique reference to the Bree-land,2 and if so it places Bree outside the Hobbit-lands as such, despite the fact that Hobbits lived among the Men of Bree.
Notes
1 |
The Shire is never named as such in The Hobbit, but the 'Hobbit-lands' clearly represent a close equivalent, and indeed may be meant as an exact equivalent. However, their description in The Hobbit - while ambiguous - seems to imply a civilised land gradually giving way to wilder country beyond, whereas the Shire was a distinct land with a defined border.
|
2 |
The precise wording in The Hobbit describes Bilbo and his companions travelling beyond the Hobbit-lands to a place '...where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before.' (The Hobbit 2, Roast Mutton). Given its place in the story (representing the last civilised land before travellers entered the empty Lone-lands and approached the Weather Hills) this can only realistically be a description of the Bree-land.
Assuming this is correct, then the words used in The Hobbit seem to present Bree as a much stranger and more alien place than we find in The Lord of the Rings. The Bree-landers did indeed use different words than the Shire-folk for commonplace things (such as certain months of the year), so this must be what is meant by the comment that they 'spoke strangely'. |
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- Updated 29 April 2025
- Updates planned: 1
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