The Wisdom of the Shire

Tolkien has been criticized by some pundits for the scarcity of bodice ripping in his books. We must remember, however, that the master of Middle-earth was a product of the Victorian age, when a man could be brought to trial for lewd behavior simply by gesturing toward a young lady with the wrong end of his badminton racket.*

Tolkien’s work is entirely bereft of the risqué. The naughty bits in The Lord of the Rings are tucked away in the appendices, and it is here we may uncover the romantic exploits of the Shire or coHobbitations of the agrarian Halflings who live in the so-called Third Age of Middle-earth. Farmers, as everyone knows, like to get down and dirty—and not just in the garden. According to Tolkien’s racy back matter, Sam Gamgee and his wife Rosie had thirteen children! Now we really know what was going on in those Hobbit-holes.*

Merry is referred to as Meriadoc “the Magnificent” and yet he remained childless, probably from the effects of too much Ent-water and Longbottom Leaf. The more likely answer, though, is that spending all those days tucked into the saddle nestled against the bosom of the fair Lady Éowyn of Rohan spoiled him forever and turned him cold to Shire lassies.* Pippin, always the rascal, married a woman scandalously named Diamond of Long Cleve (cleve being the Saxon word for “bedchamber”).

The most lovelorn inhabitants in Middle-earth are the sad old Ents who drifted apart from the females of their species. The Entwives wanted to settle down and start gardens and grow things. The males didn’t want to put down roots—they had a wanderlust to explore new lands, and so they left their womenfolk behind.

And then tragedy struck the tree people. War ravaged the land of the Entwives and when the Ents returned to their women all they found were burned and barren fields and rumors of a diaspora. No matter where the Ents searched they could not find their Entwives. Treebeard is like some sad old man lamenting the girl who got away. The Ents had their magical water, but it was nothing compared to the elixir of love, even if the woman you pine for might, in fact, be made of pine!

But at least the Ents were yearning for something lost. The Dwarves of Middle-earth seem to have never had any love life at all. The appendices to The Lord of the Rings also tells us that there was only one female Dwarf to every three males. And they looked so much like their counterparts they were nearly impossible to tell apart. Gimli, therefore, must be an aberration of his race. He is so utterly smitten by the Elven Lady Galadriel that he begs to be given a strand of her golden tresses that he might encase it in crystal and thus keep as an heirloom of his house. Later on in the tale Galadriel teasingly sends a message to Gimli referring to the Dwarf as her “Lockbearer,” causing the Dwarf to go into an ax-swinging rapture.

Critics who insist Tolkien was uninterested in romance need only look to his own life to contradict these claims. He was married to his soul mate Edith for fifty-five years (until she passed away). In The Lord of the Rings Aragorn and Arwen share a similar heroic monogamy. They are plighted in troth for sixty-seven years. This is, without a doubt, the longest engagement in the history of literature.

It’s pretty hard to get hitched, however, when your father-in-law (Elrond: half-elven, full-on somber) demands that before you marry you must succeed in destroying the armies of the Dark Lord of Mordor, then become King of Gondor and Arnor.

Aragorn fell in love with Arwen at first sight. He saw her walking through the woods of Rivendell and called out to her “Tinúviel! Tinúviel!” which is the Elven equivalent of shouting, “By the Heathen Kings of Old that’s one stunning Elf-maid!”* Just before Aragorn saw Arwen he had been daydreaming about Beren and Lúthien—Middle-earth’s most romantic duo. These two shared a love so profound their story makes the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet look like Mickey and Minnie Mouse in comparison.

Lúthien’s father would only allow Beren to marry his daughter if the young warrior managed to cut one of the fabulous Silmaril jewels from the crown of Morgoth—a virtually impossible task. For Morgoth was a creature so evil he made his nasty servant Sauron look about as scary as one of the Sackville-Bagginses.

Lúthien saved Beren from a hellish dungeon, sucked poison from his wounds and performed a torch song for that dirty old reprobate Morgoth, singing him to sleep so Beren could cut the Silmaril from his iron crown. Beren, for his part, took an arrow for Lúthien, and lost his hand protecting her from Morgoth’s pet werewolf.

When Beren died from wounds he suffered fighting the wolf-beast a second time, Lúthien passed away on the spot from grief. Her spirit journeyed to the kingdom of Mandos—the Judge of the Dead. Mandos thought her voice was so beautiful he decided to bring Beren and Lúthien back to life!

Aragorn, using this unprecedented romance as a guide for his love for Arwen Evenstar, remains faithful to his Elven Lady even when Éowyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan, makes it known (with many longing looks) that she would let him “take her to the stables” of Edoras. Aragorn snubs her, though. He’s got a Minas Tirith marriage on the mind.*

Tolkien’s heroes, you see, were monogamous heroes. The paragons of true love in Middle-earth must go through terrible ordeals before they can find happiness. True love for them is like the shards of Narsil reforged in a fiery furnace—the hammer blows only make it all the stronger. How many of us have given up on a relationship simply because of some minor impediment or perceived fault in our partner? Tolkien’s lovers have the hearts and determination of warriors who stay true despite separation, loneliness and temptation.

I fell in love my first day of college. The instant I saw her I knew the same crazy joy that Beren felt when he saw Lúthien in the Elven glade, or Aragorn when he caught sight of Arwen, or when Sam Gamgee first spotted Rosie Cotton.

One of the first things my girlfriend and I did together was read The Lord of the Rings out loud to each other in our dorm rooms. And if you’re thinking we were a couple of innocent dorks, you’re right. But it seems like innocence is on the wane these days. Wouldn’t you like some of it back in your own life? I know I would.

There is another love story in The Lord of the Rings that is just as profound as Beren and Lúthien or Arwen and Aragorn. And that’s the platonic love Sam has for Frodo. He is willing to sacrifice everything to stay with his friend, and even give up his own life to help him in his quest—to help him destroy the terrible burden of the Ring.

Sam’s love is mightier than the Ring of Doom and it gives him the strength to face seemingly insurmountable odds including single-handedly storming a tower full of maniacal Orcs, and facing down one very scary little Ring-obsessed lunatic.

So why is it so difficult for us to find true and lasting love like Tolkien and his creations—Beren, Aragorn and Sam? And if we are married, why is it so hard to keep from growing bored with our partners … to remain faithful? Has the act of marriage become another casualty of our epoch: the Disposable Age? Why can’t we be like Tom Bombadil and his bride Goldberry, shacked up like a couple of groovy hippies since the Dawn of Time, eating and making love and skinny-dipping in the River Withywindle singing “Come merry-dol!”*

Perhaps we’ve become too jaded or too picky or just too lazy to try and make love last. We look to celebrity couples for our exemplars of marital bliss, and then shake our heads in dismay when their relationships fall apart over infidelity or boredom. Maybe we should look to the life of Tolkien himself as an exemplar of love.

Tolkien met Edith when he was sixteen and still in school. They were forced to stay apart by Tolkien’s guardian because of their religious differences (he was a Catholic, she a Protestant). But Tolkien never gave up hope he would be with her. When he came of age he begged her to marry him. They were engaged for three long years, and were finally wed on the eve of WWI. Less than three months later Tolkien was serving on the Western Front, while Edith waited home, agonizing that he would be killed. But they survived all of these trials and lived a long and happy life together, raising a family.

I think one of the most amazing things about The Lord of the Rings is that it’s an epic adventure with titanic sieges and demonic wraiths and evil sorcerers and armies of ghosts and mighty talking battle trees, and yet it ends with a guy coming home to his little house and putting his daughter on his knee and letting out a great big sigh.

For many years after college my Tolkien-loving girlfriend and I had to live apart, separated by thousands of miles and sometimes by entire oceans, but we remained faithful, hoping that someday we would be together—knowing it would only come to pass if we stayed true. Now, like Sam, I have my own daughter and son to hold, and I know a truth about life: a happy child on your knee is more powerful than any magic in Middle-earth. I’m still in love with that girl I met in college. I’m just lucky she decided to marry me … after a very long engagement.

Tolkien died less than two years after his wife and asked to be buried in the same grave. On their tombstones, below their Christian names, he ordered their pet names to be carved: BEREN AND LÚTHIEN. He’d spent over half a century in love with the same woman. And he probably hoped, like the characters from his story, he and his wife would get a second chance to be together, even after death.*

The Wisdom of the Shire Tells Us …

“True love must be defended bravely with the soul of a warrior, and yet tended with the patience of a gardener.”