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09-06-2006, 04:39 PM | #1 |
Wight
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Barad-Dur
Posts: 196
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The Hedge
The Brandybucks planted and tended the Hedge for generations as a bulwark against the Old Forest .
Would it not have been more sensible to construct a wall ? Another thing . When Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are returning to the Shire , as they approach the Brandywine Bridge and its locked gates there is no reference to the North Gate in to Buckland . Surely Merry could have got through that gate , even although Gandalf says just prior to leaving the Hobbits to see Tom Bombadil that Merry might " have more trouble at the North Gate " than he thinks ? |
09-06-2006, 11:21 PM | #2 |
Haunting Spirit
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: At The Golden Perch enjoying the best pint in the East Farthing!
Posts: 68
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It might have been more sensible but I think where hobbits are concerned the reason they didn't build a wall is simply that they love all things that grow. It seems to me that they didn't like to build with brick, they'd rather have something natural instead of man made.
As for upon returning to the Shire, someone more learned than me will have to answer that.
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09-07-2006, 02:07 AM | #3 |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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Why a hedge? Why, the answer's simple!
The English love nothing more than growing a ruddy big hedge right around their property. Especially so if there are neighbours there and there is the potential to block off all their natural daylight. I suspect that the Hobbits would have made use of that scourge of England, the Leylandii tree, one tree that I would more than welcome Saruman's hordes to chop burn and destroy. Hobbits are certainly insular enough to indulge in this heinous pastime, so I envisage the Hedge as a row of fifty foot high, funereal, evil Leylandii.
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09-07-2006, 02:46 AM | #4 |
Shade of Carn Dūm
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: The Shire (Staffordshire), United Kingdom
Posts: 273
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The hedge was long (20 miles?). A vast ammount of stone or brick would be neded to replace it with a wall.
While I accept Lalwende's explanation as highly likely, perhaps another reason lies in the Hobbits' persistance in living in artificial caves long after they had migrated from real caves of the mountains; there was a shortage of good building stone in The Shire. . Last edited by Selmo; 09-07-2006 at 02:50 AM. |
09-07-2006, 03:30 AM | #5 |
Animated Skeleton
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 35
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I come from a rural area of England (that is very Shire-like IMO) and I would agree with Selmo. There was probably a lack of stone in that area. If any of you have been to Exmoor, one of the most beautiful places in England, you will have noticed that many of the old boundaries are hedges and not walls. A properly laid hedge, well tended over many years, is not only attractive, but will do the job of a wall and is much less expensive and time consuming to maintain.
I like the reference to Leylandii, the bane of English suburbia! But I would guess that the hobbit's hedge would have been of the traditional variety. Bank up a lot of soil, grow beech trees along the top, then when they are established, lay them horizontally so they grow into a sort of dense screen. Other varieties of trees and shrubs will probably establish themselves, ash or elder or blackthorn for instance, forming a dense and prickly hedge that would deflect the hungriest of wolves.
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09-07-2006, 04:44 AM | #6 | |||
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: under the bed
Posts: 4,737
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The residents of Buckland unfortunately remind me of my weirdo neighbour who likes to put up high fences and has a paranoia complex that people are 'looking at him' or 'listening to him' or somesuch. Maybe he doesn't like it if people see his wife sunbathing in her hotpants? You'd want to scrub your eyes clean with the nail brush, so that's not a possibility. I don't know, but the neighbour dispute the Hobbits have with their neighbours in the Old Forest gives me chills of recognition.
I mean, look at the size of the thing. If it was in the UK it would come under the High Hedges Act and they'd have the local council on their backs to get the thing cut down: Quote:
Quote:
Finally, look at the damning evicence against the Hobbits. They're yobs! Neighbours From H*ll! When are they going to get an ASBO? Or better yet, be dragged through the mud on a lurid ITV Shockumentary? Quote:
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Last edited by Lalwendė; 09-23-2006 at 03:52 PM. |
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09-07-2006, 11:24 AM | #7 |
Drummer in the Deep
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Next Sunday A.D.
Posts: 2,145
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It wouldn't do to fight plants with brick - remember what the Ents did to Isengard. You've got to fight like with like. I see the Hedge as "tame plants", rather like keeping a watchdog outside to keep the foxes away.
I wonder if the Hedge suffered any while Sharkey held sway in the Shire?
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09-11-2006, 10:07 AM | #8 |
Spectre of Decay
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Sharkey the Hedge-tender
Tolkien doesn't say that it did, and I think that he would have done had he imagined it. Perhaps it was left untended and untrimmed, but that would have done it no harm. Personally I think that Saruman would have been the last person to give the Old Forest a chance to intrude on the Shire, at least while he was living there. He had not enjoyed his last encounter with primeval woodlands at all. There's also the question of control: the High Hay was a barrier against entry into the Shire, and the more barriers there were around it, the easier it was for Saruman to keep track of comings and goings across its borders, and to curtail them if necessary.
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