[ Daily Tolkien ] And Now for the Other Love Story

I briefly discussed Sam and Rosie's marriage in Love, Middle-earth Style. At the time it seemed there wasn't much to say. Sam goes off on his long adventure, becomes the second-most famous hobbit in Middle-earth, comes back to the Shire and becomes the third most famous hobbit there, and Rosie pops up almost out of nowhere and says, "Okay, Sam, you've sowed your wild oats, it's time to settle down." About the biggest conflict there is the fact Sam hasn't sown any oats (oh, please, let's not go down the Sam and Frodo path, okay?).

I think the second question is easier to answer than the first. Someone had to be left behind to carry on as historian. Bilbo and Frodo both left before the story was finished (and the Story, as Tolkien would put it, was the great drama unfolding from the beginning of Time until the End, so we are in it, too). Frodo's account of the War of the Ring was rather complete but he knew there were many loose ends which needed to be tidied up, and it would be Sam who would do the tidying. There was really no one else who could put it all together.

So Sam had to stay behind, but Sam was a Ringbearer, and he, like Frodo, had suffered the spiritual wounding which came of bearing the Burden of the One Ring. So Sam would have to go over Sea as well. That was inevitable, long foreseen, I'm sure. But how could Sam stay in Middle-earth if he had suffered a part of the torment which drove Bilbo and frodo away from it?

Rosie provides the salve which gives him the strength and the will to stay in the Mortal World for as long as possible. So she's important to Sam's part of the story and therefore to Sam, and that importance doesn't need to be shown very often. Hence, we learn very little about Rosie before Sam returns to the Shire and needs her most.

Sam was born in the year 1380 (2980 in the Tale of Years) and Rosie was born 4 years later. The year of Sam's birth was the year Aragorn finished his long journeys and retired to Lothlorien, where he met Arwen for the second time and finally won her heart. 1380 was also the year that Drogo and Primula Brandybuck died, leaving 12-year-old Frodo an orphan among the Brandybucks (Bilbo adopted him 9 years later). That was also the year Theoden became King of Rohan.

A lot of events occurred in 1380 which set the stage for later events (Tolkien loved this foreshadowing). (Note: Astute readers may notice that the Tale of Years gives Sam's birth as 1383, not 1380 -- the latter year occurs in the genealogy.)

It's difficult to piece together the possible lives Sam and Rosie had while they were young. Gaffer Gamgee was semi-retired or retired in the year 1401 (3001 in the Tale of Years) when Bilbo held the Farewell Party. Sam would at most have been 21 years old by then, at least 18 years old. That means he and Rosie probably only had a few years in which to run together before Sam became more and more involved in his father's work (probably by age 16 Sam was doing a lot of the gardening work at Bag End either way).

When Sam thinks about Rosie and her brothers while traveling through Ithilien he recalls spending time with them in Bywatter, so he must have stayed with their family on occasion, although boys can start roaming the land at a pretty early age and Hobbiton and Bywater were probably separated by no more than a few miles at most. But Sam lived north of Bywater, on the Hill, so he had a little farther to go.

What was the Shire like in those years? Probably it was very prosperous, and still experiencing good relations with Bree.

Sauron returned to Mordor and declared himself openly in 2951. The effect of the resurrection of the state of Mordor took time to spread. A few years later (2954) the last inhabitants of Ithilien fled across Anduin. These were probably the equivalent of frontiersfolk, hardy woodland dwellers. Their migration would not have been significant. Aragorn served the King of Rohan and the Steward of Gondor in the last years of his errantries, probably from around 2973 onward to 2980. There would have been battles with Orcs and other creatures in Ithilien, and perhaps men. Aragorn's last act as a captain of Gondor was to raid Umbar with a small fleet of ships.

In the north the Dwarves of Erebor were prospering sufficiently that Balin felt confident enough to lead a colonization effort to Moria in 2989. The Orcs of the Misty Mountains were probably not yet very numerous at this time (it would be five years before they had the numbers to overwhelm Balin's small colony). The Beornings were thus in control of the High Pass, Bain Bard's son was king in Dale, and the Eldar were still living peacefully throughout Eriador and Lindon. Their great exodus had not yet occurred.

In fact, the lands were so safe and peaceful in the north that Bilbo was able to send special orders to Erebor in the year 3000 in preparation for his farewell party the next year. There must have been quite a bit of traffic on the roads at the time.

It would not be until the year 3009 (8 years after Bilbo's departure from the Shire) that Elrond sent for Arwen for the final time. This event probably heralded the final general decline of the westlands. Probably the Eldar began their exodus soon afterward, and as the Tale of Years says the lands east of the mountains were becoming dangerous again that would mean travel between Erebor and Ered Luin would diminish. Bree's economy would suffer considerably and trade between Bree and the Buckland (and the Marish) should have begun dropping off rapidly.

The decline in trade in the eastern part of the Shire may not have affected the central and western parts of the Shire much. One gets the impression that most of the Shirefolk are small farmers. They provide for themselves and sell a little surplus in the town and village markets, where the tavern and innkeepers would buy most of the food, probably. Hobbits had specialized trades, such as wagon-makers, carpenters, rope-makers, weavers, and so forth. These skilled craftsmen would have bought the farm surpluses or gotten their meals at the taverns (it was, in fact, quite common in the Roman world for people to eat out -- fireplaces and kitchens were forbidden in Rome's apartments after the great fire, and in the Middle Ages taverns served as centers of society in small towns).

Rosie's father, Farmer Cotton, seemed to be a pretty important person in his district. He was enough of a leader in Bywater that he could speak out against the Ruffians during Saruman's occupation of the Shire without being arrested. That implies he probably was a bit wealthy as the Shire farmer goes.

Although Tolkien makes it clear from Sam's idiom and behavior that he is clearly from a lower social class than Frodo (Sam, being the youngest son of a younger son of a working class family, bears little resemblance in social station to Frodo, who was titular head of the Baggins clan, which family was well-to-do), it seems that Sam's family was anything but poor. They came from the middle-class, not from the poor class. They were ropers, gardeners, and gentleman farmers (if Cotton can be called a gentleman farmer). They were probably well-respected in their own way, solid members of the community, but not really leaders.

Shire society is hard to figure out. Tolkien implies that the Shire started out as a very clannish society. When the Kingdom of Arnor was ended it was the clan chiefs of the Shire who elected a Thain. Tolkien doesn't tell us when the Mayor of Michel Delving was established, but apparently that office represented a less traditional role among Shire-folk. Michel Delving was established at a major cross-roads (the road which ran from the Greenway up to Sarn Ford passed on into the Shire and went all the way to Michel Delving). The name of the town, "Michel Delving", means "great digging". There must have been a lot of hobbits living there at the end of the Third Age.

When the Oldbucks moved across the Brandywine to establish the Buckland they were still very much a clannish folk, and centuries later the Master of Buckland continued to carry much authority throughout the Marish (undoubtedly because the Marish farmers were selling much of their surplus to the various towns and villages of Buckland).

If there were centers of industry in the Shire (such as where milling, brick-making, cart-making, cooping, pottery, and other "expoertable" trades could be supported and practiced) they were probably Michel Delving, Hobbiton-Bywater, and Stock. A few other villages would have provided satellite industries, but these were the regions most likely to be the centers of such manufacturing as the hobbits would accomplish. All three communities were located on or close to major travel routes.

Hobbiton's name implies that it was an older community ("hobbit town"), and being close to the Three-Farthing Stone it was relatively close to the center of the Shire. It makes sense the early hobbits would have spread out along the Road leading from the Bridge of Stonebows (later called the Brandywine Bridge) to the Tower Hills. Such traffic as Arthedain maintained with Lindon and Ered Luin in the last few centuries of its existence would have run along this road. Michel Delving, though somewhat distant from Ered Luin, would have provided a great marketplace from early on.

Hobbiton thus represents an older center of hobbit middle-class which spread west along the Road. The old clan relationships broke down, as is evident from the ways the families spread out. The Baggins family probably lost real authority long before the Battle of Greenfields in the north (where Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took defeated a band of Orcs). The old clan system seems to have held strongest in the east and south, lands where the older families settled. Younger branches of the families thus struck out west and north, and the social structures evolved more along economic lines. Hence, you have the small town of Quarry even in the northern part of Eastfarthing.

So, what does all this have to do with Sam and Rosie? It would imply that they lived in a very wealthy area by Shire standards. There was enough money in the region to support multiple industries, and the Baggins family was probably the largest property-holding family, living off rents. But they didn't control the local economy. The townspeople controlled it (in the usual haphazard way that townspeople can control their economies). So chances are pretty good that the Gamgees and Cottons were upper middle-class families. After all, the Gamgees were personal gardeners for the Baggins of Bag End, and the Cottons were a prominent enough family to avoid serious trouble with the Ruffians.

Rosie may therefore have had a lot of advantages over the other local hobbit girls. When Frodo and his companions returned to the Shire and reached Bywater, Merry told Sam, "...you can make a dash for Cotton's farm, if you like. He's the chief person around here...." Now, how did Merry know that? Of course, he and other cousins had spent time in Bag End visiting Bilbo and Frodo, and they had known Sam for years, which means they probably had heard a lot of the local gossip. So it makes sense that if Merry knows Cotton is "the chief person" in Bywater then the Cottons are probably anything but poor hobbits.

When Sam arrives at Cotton's farm he meets the farmer and some of his sons coming up the lane from Cotton's house. The front door to the house is at the top of a set of steps. It sounds very much like Cotton is living in one of those highly coveted hobbit holes (most hobbits by this time lived in houses, except in the hillier lands to the west and north).

The Bywater community was pretty large, too. When Cotton cleared the streets in preparation for the first band of Ruffians to arrive, nearly 200 hobbit-men were left with him (all armed in some fashion -- probably with bows, axes, pitch-forks, and the like). The town must have had a thousand or more hobbits in it. Hobbiton may have had a similar size population.

Times being what they were, Hobbiton and Bywater probably suffered a decline in trade off of travelers passing through the Shire (they would be mostly Dwarves -- Tolkien seems to imply the Elves kept to themselves). But the local economy probably depended less on the Road and more on shipping goods to outlying hobbit communities. Hence, the Cotton family must have been doing well enough for itself until the Ruffians started turning the Shire into a prison for all hobbits.

So one must ask what the heck Sam was waiting for? Why did it take him so long to marry Rosie? He had a secure job at Bag End and it wasn't until around the year 3017 that Frodo even began to think about leaving Bag End. Sam and Rosie were well past their Tweens and she was definitely anxious to get married.

It's hard to say, but maybe Sam had a feeling that he needed to save himself for something before committing to that marriage. They had apparently spoken about marriage before Sam left the Shire. Undoubtedly he had said good-bye to her at some point, knowing he would be going on a long journey and having no real idea of when he would return. Rosie probably could have had her pick of the local hobbit-men but she elected to stay and wait for Sam. One of the things about Rose which came up in the Epilogue that Tolkien was persuaded to leave out of the book was that on the morning Sam and Frodo came back to Bywater Rose suddenly started singing out loud. She knew, somehow, that Sam was coming back to her.

Sam, for his part, didn't forget Rosie on the trip. He did think about her in Lorien when Galadriel tested the surviving members of the Fellowship. It's pretty clear Sam's test consisted of the temptation to return to the Shire and get married. The significance of the passage is diminished by the lack of a preface for it. The reader really doesn't know anything about Rosie at that time, and when Sam thinks about her in Ithilien the scene in Lorien is long past.

And Mistress Rose doesn't get a story in the Appendix as Arwen does. The reader is left to completely fill in the gaps over how Sam and Rosie met and why they should have fallen in love. In fact, though they were third cousins, the genealogies imply their families were close friends. Sam's younger sister Marigold married Rosie's older brother Tom. The Gamgees of Bagshot Row must have spent a fair amount of time socializing with the Cottons of Bywater.

The Gamgees were descended of a family of ropers. Hamfast (the Gaffer, Sam's father) was the second of three sons. Apparently the family business was not large enough to encompass three sons, so Ham and his younger brother had to find other trades. Halfred seems to gone to the town of Overhill (north of the Hill, where Bag End and Bagshot Row were located) and perhaps set up as a rope-maker there. But Hamfast took up with his cousin Holman Greenhand, who was the gardener at Bag End.

The Greenhands were the "middle family", so to speak. One of Holman's aunts had married Hamfast's grandfather and another of Holman's aunts married Tom Cotton's grandfather. The Cotton family seems to have been a long-time Bywater clan, and that implies they knew everyone in the district. Most likely the Mill that Ted Sandyman's father ran was the only mill in the Hobbiton-Bywater-Overhill area, and that would mean all the farmers would take their grain there.

Hence, Cotton probably spent a fair amount of time in Hobbiton after harvest time and dropped in on the cousins, aunts, and uncles. So he and Hamfast probably were friends from early on.

This is all purely speculative, of course, but one cannot help but imagine Sam and Rosie going to social gatherings in both Bywater and Hobbiton. There would have been weddings and funerals, birthday parties, harvest parties, planting parties, and maybe just party parties. It doesn't seem that hobbit-women spent any time in the taverns (but one should be careful about assuming too much), yet it would be entirely possible Sam saw the Cotton lads quite often since he was fond of the Green Dragon in Bywater. Unfortunately, there was one Party the Cottons did not attend: Bilbo's Farewell Party. The omission of the Cottons from the list of Party Guests in the genealogies might be an oversight, or it might be an indication that not everyone in Bywater was invited (though the text seems to indicate otherwise).

Still, Sam and Rosie probably had a lot of opportunities to show they were "a couple", and after many years of "going together" (as we Americans put it) they must have made it clear to all the folk who knew them they would eventually get married. So maybe Rosie's prospects by the time Sam went off weren't all that numerous.

But if she was the pick of the Bywater Belles, it's obvious Sam was no mean catch himself, despite the way he talked (and there was certainly nothing wrong with the way he talked). Rosie could have done a lot worse, and Sam could have gone to Sea much sooner.

Author: Michael Martinez
Published on: April 21, 2000
Michael Martinez is the author of Visualizing Middle-earth

The Daily Tolkien articles by various authors	The Tolkien Virgin articles by Mark-Edmond
ARTICLES 01-10	ARTICLES 01-10
ARTICLES 11-20	11) Of the Sindar
ARTICLES 21-30	12) Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor
ARTICLES 31-40	13) Of Men
ARTICLES 41-50	14) Of the Return of the Noldor
51) And Now for the Other Love Story	15) Of Beleriand and its Realms
	16) Of the Noldor in Beleriand
	17) Of Meglin

Your Daily Tolkien Ping!

Coming from many sources, these articles cover many aspects of Tolkien and his literary works. If anyone would like for me to ping them directly when I post articles such as this let me know. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.