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frodo-with-glasses · 1 year

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More Reading Thoughts: The Epilogue, Version One

The long-awaited sequel!! I’m reading the Epilogue as it appears in “The End of the Third Age”, from The History of The Lord of the Rings as compiled by Christopher Tolkien.

Tagging @lady-merian because she’s been asking for this for a LONG time 🤣

Manuscript A

It’s interesting that “well, I’m back” wasn’t originally supposed to be the end of the story. It’s become something iconic now—the perfect, hauntingly understated ending, harkening back to “there and back again”—but the only reason it seems so abrupt is because Tolkien actually meant to write on.

I like both, honestly. This Epilogue has so much good stuff in it, but it would make an already slow book even slower; “well I’m back” is lovely for what it is. ^-^

“Elanor 15, Frodo 13, Rose 11, Merry 9, Pippin 7.” Just looking at their names and the list of ages gets me in the heart. Argh, I love these kids ;u;

Sam resting by the fire in this study! And he’s surrounded by his kids! And they’re listening to him read the Red Book!! AAAHHHHHH

“…And there was Frodo-lad on the heathrug, in spite of his name as good a copy of Sam as you could wish…” D’aww 8-D Named Frodo, looks like Sam. That’s adorable.

AND THERE’S GOLDILOCKS AND HAM AND BABY DAISIE AND—

*strangled screech*

SAM. CALLS ELANOR. ELLIE.

I’M GONNA HECKIN’ CRY

Confirmed that Merry and Pippin traveled to Gondor and Rohan multiple times in their lives! That’s wonderful!

And now: the Gamgee children being carbon copies of their namesakes begins.

Merry Jr. is inordinately proud of Merry Sr. and wants to grow tall like him.

Pippin Jr. is likewise inordinately proud of Pippin Sr. and insists that Merry isn’t the tallest anyway.

“Is he Prince Peregrin away down in the Stone City, dad?” Oh my word.

First of all: the fact that this little hobbit lad knows Minas Tirith familiarly enough to call it the Stone City.

Secondly: I mean they did call him a prince of the halflings at first—

Frodo Jr. wants to hear about the spider again because he likes the parts where his dad comes in ;u;

And Elanor wants to know about the flower she’s named after!

Elanor: I want to go see my flower! Sam: There’s a prettier one if you look in a mirror. Elanor: Daaaad…

Rose Jr. is worried about the elves going away TT-TT

Sam is secretly very proud of the Mallorn tree in the Party Field LOL

Legolas lives in Ithilien! And Pippin says they’ve made it very lovely, which means he’s seen it! WHICH MEANS PIPPIN GOT TO HANG OUT WITH LEGOLAS AND FARAMIR AND BEREGOND AND BERGIL AGAIN—

Frodo Jr. loves Gimli and wants an axe LOL

Gimli and his dwarves helped to rebuild Minas Tirith! And now they live in the mountains behind it!! And he goes to visit the Glittering Caves every two years! Tolkien thought of EVERYTHING

And nobody knows if anyone’s seen Treebeard lol

ROSE JR. LOOKS FOR THE ENTWIVES WHEN SHE GOES WALKING IN THE WOODS I’M GONNA CRY

Haha Sam shuts down the “its not fair”s so fast, he’s such a dad 🤣

‘Don’t talk like that to me,’ said Sam sternly. ‘If it ain’t fair for Ellie and Fro to sit up after supper it ain’t fair for them to be born sooner, and it ain’t fair that I’m your dad and you’re not mine.’

My dad made up an “it’s not fair” song when I was a kid and this is reminding me of that for the first time in over a DECADE

Le gasp! Sam has a SecretTM!

“A dead hush of expectancy fell on all the children: they watched him as hobbit-children of other times had watched the wizard Gandalf.” Hello yes I will cry

THE KING IS COMING HERE

I love that Aragorn himself won’t enter the Shire according to his own decree

But he has sent! A Fancy ScrollTM!

“Elessar Aragorn Arathornsson the Elfstone King of Gondor and of the Westlands…” Local man has too many names, authorities report

And now Tolkien gives elvish names to all Sam’s kids. Nerd.

“‘Samwise or Halfwise who should rather be called Plainwise.’ So now you know what the King thinks of your dad you’ll maybe give more heed to what he says.” LOL SAM COULD YOU GET ANY MORE DADLY

All Frodo Jr. takes away from this is “MUST INTERROGATE FATHER”

And they’re gonna stay with the King and Queen at the house on the Lake for a few weeks!! HOW EXCITING

Tbh I like the first version of Sam’s conversation with Rosie better. (The one marked with footnote #6, if you have the book.) It gives more character to Rosie, which is in short supply; and I like the idea of her almost prophetically starting to sing on the day Sam is about to return. Something very Elvish and Tolkien about that.

And Sam tells us he is all whole and healed so as to preemptively shut down the angst writers. (But we will survive muahaha >:-D)

“The went in and shut the door. But even as he did so Sam heard suddenly the sigh and murmur of the sea on the shores of Middle-earth.” OHOHOHO NONONO DON’T DO THIS TO ME

Manuscripts B and C

WAIT—in one version of Appendix A Gimli became LORD OF THE GLITTERING CAVES?? HELLO??

EDIT: I have been informed that Gimli being Lord of the Glittering Caves did, in fact, make it into the final version of the book, and I just didn’t pay enough attention LOL

Also “Master Samwise who should be called Fullwise”

“I think maybe the Entwives don’t want to be found” *EYES EMOJI*

Merry Jr. asks too many questions about horses! Carbon copies, I tell ya!

The amount of times Tolkien changed the beginning of Aragorn’s letter to include different names and titles is killing me 🤣🤣

#samwise gamgee #elanor gamgee #frodo gamgee #rose gamgee #merry gamgee #pippin gamgee #rosie cotton #aragorn #legolas #gimli #lord of the rings #lotr #my writing #assorted thoughts

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griseldabanks · 11 months

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Rosie Runs to Rivendell AU: Eavesdropping

(I'm not posting this on AO3 or FFNet yet, because I wanted to get feedback on the direction I'm taking with it, and see if I need any course-correction. Also, I have no idea what the title should be, because "Rosie Runs to Rivendell" just doesn't quite sound right ^^' Please give me any constructive criticism you have!)

It was a beautiful April morning when Rose Gamgee's life changed forever.

The day had begun splendidly. After several dismal, drizzly days, the Sun had finally poked her head out from behind the clouds, drying out the grass and warming up the flowers all along Bagshot Row. Sam had plenty of trimming and pruning to keep himself busy, and Granny Gamgee had taken Elanor off Rose's hands. “It's a fine day for dancin' on the grass and pickin' flowers, and we'll have a picnic by and by, won't we, my dear?” Granny had said, leading her granddaughter by the hand as the little girl stumped along on her chubby little legs.

Rose was grateful for the reprieve, for she had a busy day ahead of her, and as sweet as Elanor was, she was only two, and had a tendency to get underfoot. That was the last thing Rose needed today of all days, for Mr. Frodo had company. Important, surprise, last-minute company—though, the way Sam told it, one learnt to expect the unexpected when said company was Mr. Gandalf.

Rose knew that most folk looked askance at Mr. Gandalf. Not only was he one of the Big Folk, he was a wizard. Who knew where he came from, or what unnatural magic he might bring with him. Some said he might turn you into a toad or a snake if you looked at him funny. A troublemaker, they called him. A disturber of the peace.

Sam didn't hold with such nonsense, and wasn't afraid to say so, no matter who brought it up. “He can't help that he's big and from foreign parts, and he's a great friend to Mr. Frodo. Besides,” he would always add, as if it sealed the deal, “he's a friend to the Elves.”

Normally, that wouldn't be enough to convince Rose not to want to hide anytime she saw that pointed grey hat appearing over the hill. But her Sam was the stoutest Hobbit she knew (except perhaps her own father), with a sensible head on his shoulders. Perhaps he was a little more enamored with Elves than was wise, but if he said Mr. Gandalf was all right, then she trusted his judgment.

“Well, I had better, hadn't I?” she said to herself with a toss of her red curls, the few times the subject had come up. “If I'd married someone I couldn't trust, I'd be as silly as Daisy Bellweather's chickens!”

So, when Mr. Gandalf showed up in the evening, unannounced but not unwelcome, in the well-tended garden of Bag End, Rose had rolled up her sleeves and gone straight to work in the kitchen. After all, how else was she to repay Mr. Frodo for his generosity in letting her small family live with him in Bag End, if not by seeing to it that everyone in it had the finest food in all the Shire?

This had been the first time Mr. Gandalf had come to visit Mr. Frodo since Rose had married Sam and moved into Bag End. So if her hands shook a little as she carried in the tea tray, perhaps she could be excused. But Mr. Gandalf and Mr. Frodo were deep in conversation about far-off lands Rose had never heard of, so they paid her little mind except for a brief word of thanks. And when Mr. Gandalf had accepted the teacup she tremblingly offered him, she caught the hint of a smile beneath those bushy eyebrows and long beard.

Now, the next morning, Rose stood at the kitchen table, up to her elbows in flour, kneading the last of three batches of bread dough. Big Folk had big appetites—though not as big as a Hobbit's, Rose thought with a smile. After the bread, she'd get started on some seed-cakes, then see what sort of greens could be gathered in the garden for lunch.

The windows were thrown open to let in the warm, fresh breeze. She smiled at the wet, green scent of cut grass as much as the sound of Sam's tuneless whistling as he strolled back and forth past the window. From the next room, Rose could hear the low rumble of Mr. Gandalf's voice, which had been going on for a while now. Rose had been tuning it out for quite some time, like the drone of a bee in the background. But suddenly, her attention was arrested by Mr. Frodo's raised voice.

“Gollum! Gollum? Do you mean that this is the very Gollum-creature that Bilbo met? How loathsome!”

Rose remembered when Mr. Frodo had told Elanor bedtime stories of Mr. Bilbo's adventures—made to sound cheerful and unthreatening to a little lass's ears, of course. But even Mr. Frodo's watered-down recounting of that horrid Gollum had given Elanor nightmares for weeks. And then Sam had told Rose the points Mr. Frodo had glossed over, and she had been the one starting awake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.

Despite the chill running down her spine, Rose found herself inching closer and closer to the doorway as she listened to Mr. Gandalf's story about how he had traced Gollum's steps since Mr. Bilbo had escaped him. There was a lot she didn't understand about their conversation, but one thing she did glean was that the ring Mr. Bilbo had won in the riddle-game was very dangerous—dangerous in part because there was someone who wanted it, wanted it even more desperately than Gollum, and would stop at nothing to get it.

And so it had to be destroyed. Mr. Frodo had to take it to someplace called Mordor, and throw it into a fiery mountain where it would be destroyed before it wrought things too terrible for words.

Rose's fingers clenched around fistfuls of her apron. This wasn't a bedtime story. This wasn't a nightmare that she would wake from and let fade away with the sunrise. This was really happening. Mr. Frodo was going away—farther away than Rose could even imagine.

But suddenly Mr. Gandalf grew still, poised like a cat eyeing a field mouse. And then, just like the cat, he sprang upon his prey. His hand darted through the open window and pulled Sam to his feet from where he'd apparently been crouching just out of sight. Rose stifled a gasp in her apron, but no one seemed to have heard her.

“Well, well, bless my beard!” Mr. Gandalf exclaimed. “Sam Gamgee, is it? Now, what may you be doing?”

“Lor bless you, Mr. Gandalf, sir!” Sam said. Rosie could see him trembling all the way across the room. “Nothing! Leastways, I was just trimming the grass-border under the window, if you follow me.”

“I don't,” Mr. Gandalf snapped. “It is some time since I last heard the sound of your shears. How long have you been eavesdropping?”

“Eavesdropping, sir? I don't follow you, begging your pardon. There ain't no eaves at Bag End, and that's a fact.”

“Don't be a fool! What have you heard, and why did you listen?”

Rose couldn't bear to stay silent any longer. “Begging your pardon, sirs,” she said, stepping into the room. When Mr. Gandalf spun to face her with bristling eyebrows and eyes glinting like coals, her heart quailed inside her chest, but she stood firm. “I'm sure my Sam meant no harm, only...only please don't turn him into anything unnatural. I don't know what I should say to Elanor if she come home to find her papa's become a toad!”

Sam shot her a glance of mingled fear and gratitude, while Mr. Frodo brought his hand away from his mouth as if he'd been stifling a laugh. “Don't worry, Sam, he won't hurt you. But just you up and answer his questions straight away.”

“Well, sir,” Sam said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “I heard a deal that I didn't rightly understand, about an enemy, and rings, and Mr. Bilbo, sir, and dragons, and a fiery mountain, and—and Elves, sir. I listened because I couldn't help myself, if you know what I mean. Lor bless me, sir, but I do love tales of that sort.”

Rose knew all too well the gleam that entered Sam's eyes any time Elves were mentioned. He could talk about Elves till his tongue fell straight out of his head—but she loved him even so.

“And you, my dear?” Mr. Gandalf turned his keen gaze back upon Rose, but this time she thought she detected a twinkle of humor in their depths, and took courage from that.

“Aye, some of them tales are very pretty indeed, sir, though some are mighty sad—“ Then she realized Mr. Frodo was grinning again. Her hands flew up to cover her face. “Oh...you mean, was I listening too, sir? I'm sorry, Mr. Frodo, I didn't mean to, only I heard raised voices and then you started talking about that horrid Gollum creature, and....”

To her immense relief, Mr. Gandalf began to laugh, and Mr. Frodo soon joined in. Hoisting Sam straight through the window, Mr. Gandalf set him down beside his wife and looked upon them both, hands on hips. Sam's warm hand clasped around Rose's, dirt mixing with flour under their fingernails.

“Well, well,” Mr. Gandalf said, eyes twinkling. “So you heard that Mr. Frodo is going away, did you? Now, what are we to do with the two of you?”

“I did, sir,” Sam said, looking earnestly across the room at Mr. Frodo. “And that's why I choked: which you heard, seemingly. I tried not to, sir, but it burst out of me, I was so upset.”

Rose could see the tears building up in the corners of his eyes, and squeezed his hand in comfort. She loved their kind master dearly, but it was nothing to how Sam felt, she knew. They'd grown up together, and for all that Mr. Frodo was a gentlehobbit, he never put on any airs nor looked down at the common folk. She knew Sam admired him for that, as well as for his wisdom and his connection to Elves and other magical beings simple hobbits could scarce imagine.

Frodo was almost like an older brother to Sam. It felt presumptuous to even think, but it was true. He didn't treat them like servants, though he allowed them to serve him. It as almost like they were family. Elanor even called him 'Uncle.'

And now he was going away.

Going...alone. Going from danger to danger, meeting with Elves and Dwarves and goodness only knew what else. Going away like old Mr. Bilbo, perhaps never to be seen again, leaving the three of them with nothing but memories....

Mr. Frodo sighed, a weight seeming to settle on his shoulders as he fingered something in his pocket. “It can't be helped, Sam, Rosie. I shall have to go. But if you really care about me, you will keep that dead secret. See? If you don't, if you even breathe a word of what you've heard here—“

“You needn't fear, Mr. Frodo,” Rose found herself saying. “You needn't fear my Sam letting anything slip, for he's going with you.”

#lord of the rings #lotr #rosie runs to rivendell au #rose gamgee #samwise gamgee #frodo baggins #gandalf #this is actually the first time i've ever even ATTEMPTED lotr fanfic #took me 20+ years to get my writing ability halfway decent i guess #also...it feels wrong to criticize the Professor #but...i disagreed with some of his punctuation choices and changed them accordingly when copying out dialogue #*hides under desk*

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timeladyjamie · 2 years

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Tolkien’s Legendarium Ladies - (4/∞): Rose “Rosie” Gamgee (nee Cotton)

Rosie was born in TA 2984, the second child and first daughter of Tolman Cotton and Lily Brown. The Cotton family lived in a farm on the South Lane, which was fairly close to Bywater. Not much of her youth is known, except that she and her brothers - Young Tom, Jolly, Nick and Nibs - frequently swam in the Bywater Pool with the children of the Gamgee family, to which the Cottons were close.

Rosie was still fond of Sam when both grew to adulthood, and when he announced he'd be going with Frodo Baggins to Crickhollow, she did not like it. Even though everyone had given up hope of seeing Sam - or any of the other Hobbits - back, she waited patiently. Since the Spring of T.A. 3019, she had expected Sam to return. Rosie was relieved to find Sam on the doorstep on November 2.

Rosie and her mother tended to Sam, Frodo and several others that night, as they prepared to drive out the Ruffians. With shining eyes and a smile on her face she heard Frodo tell of Sam's adventure and fame abroad. Sam and Frodo lived with the Cottons until Bagshot Row and Bag End were restored, the following Spring. Sam later joined Frodo in Bag End, but was torn in two - he wanted to stay loyal to Frodo, as well as marry Rosie. Frodo solved this problem by telling Sam that he and Rosie would both be welcome to live with him at Bag End after the wedding. Sam and Rosie married on May 1, T.A. 3020, and moved into Bag End. There, they lived happily, and begot Elanor, their first daughter, who was born on the anniversary of the Downfall of Sauron.

Rose bore a record thirteen children; Frodo was born in Fo.A. 2, Rose-lass in Fo.A. 4, Merry in Fo.A. 6, Pippin in Fo.A. 8, Goldilocks in Fo.A. 10, Hamfast in Fo.A. 11, Daisy in Fo.A. 12, Primrose in Fo.A. 14, Bilbo in Fo.A. 15, Ruby in Fo.A. 17, Robin in Fo.A. 19, and their last child, Tom, in Fo.A. 21. That year, 21, marked the only major undertaking of Mistress Rose. She and Sam travelled to Gondor, and stayed with King Elessar for well over a year. In the meantime, Rose's brother Tom took over Sam's tasks as Mayor. After their return, Rose would continue to live by her husband's side, until her passing at the age of 98 at Mid-year's Day of Fo.A. 61.

#jamieswomenoftolkien #rosie cotton #rose cotton #rosie gamgee #rose gamgee #lotr #the lord of the rings #hobbits #legendarium ladies #women of tolkien #sam gamgee #jamieedits

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