The Lord of the Rings: At the Sign of The Prancing Pony

 

The Tale

Bree is the chief village of Bree-land, where the Great East Road and the North Road meet. The Men of Bree are brown-haired, broad, and rather short, who have lived there since men first moved into the West. They are quite cosmopolitan, living well alongside the Hobbits in the same land, and welcoming all travelers like different Men, Elves, or Dwarves. Some of these travelers are the Rangers, taller and darker than the Men of Bree, mysterious wanderers in the Wild. Hobbits from the Shire seldom visit Bree, and those from the two areas call each other Outsiders. It all depends which side of the border you come from.

Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin come to the gate leading into town, where they are let in by the suspicious (and suspicious acting) gatekeeper, who warns them that there are other strange folk in town tonight. The hobbits enter, and as soon as the gatekeeper’s back is turned, a shadowy figure climbs over the gate and melts into the shadows.

As they ride along, Sam is made uneasy by the looming human houses and asks if they can’t find someplace to stay with other Hobbits, but as Bombadil has recommended the Prancing Pony to them, Frodo reckons it will be nice enough. They make it to the inn, and on the steps outside they almost run into the short, fat, bald-headed (and human) innkeeper, Mr. Barliman Butterbur.

Butterbur is a man whose mind is as raced around as his legs are as he tries to run his business. When he hears that they are hobbits from the Shire it seems to ring a bell, but when Frodo introduces them all and is sure to say that his name is Underhill instead of Baggins, Butterbur loses his train of thought. He says they’re lucky they are hobbits, as the inn is rather full tonight. But he can put them up in some nice Hobbit-sized rooms.

They wash up and are brought a substantial meal (including some beer that melts away Sam’s last misgivings). Butterbur invites them to join the company in the common room. Frodo, Sam, and Pippin go, but Merry says he’ll just stay in and step out later for a sniff of air. He tells them to mind themselves, and to remember they’re supposed to be escaping in secret.

In the common room, Butterbur introduces the Shire-hobbits all round. To cover the purpose of his trip, Frodo says he is doing research for a book, a claim that astounds the Bree-landers, but as he shows no sign of writing one on the spot, the talk turns to other matters.

One of those matters in the increase of Men coming up the Greenway, headed north. One of these travelers, a squint-eyed ill-favored fellow, predicts that if room isn’t found for them, they’ll make room for themselves. ‘The local inhabitants did not look pleased at the prospect.’

But Sam and Pippin are now feeling quite at home and gossiping about doings in the Shire. Some of the Bree hobbits named Underhill are sure that Frodo must be some sort of long-lost cousin and ask what part of the Shire he’s from. Pippin begins a long comic tale that makes him particularly popular with the other guests.

Frodo notices ‘a strange-looking weather-beaten man’ sitting in the shadows, listening to everything. He asks Butterbur about him, and the innkeeper says he’s one of the Rangers, called Strider because he’s always going about at a great pace on his long legs. Sometimes he disappears for a while, but he always pops up again, and though laconic he has been known now and then to tell a rare tale.

Strider gestures Frodo over and introduces himself. He seems to doubt the name of Underhill, though. He draws Frodo’s attention to Pippin, who is now rather unwisely telling a comic version of Bilbo’s farewell speech. Frodo fears it will bring the name of Baggins to too many minds, and that Pippin, in his rather exalted state, might even mention the Ring.

Frodo leaps up on a table and starts making a speech to cause a distraction, ending up with singing a silly song about the Man in the Moon and a cat with a fiddle. Overcome with being asked for an encore, he sings it again, leaping about enthusiastically until suddenly he goes crashing to the floor. At first folks are poised to laugh, but that turns to amazed silence. ‘Mr. Underhill’ has vanished! Consternation, uproar! The squint-eyed southerner and a mocking Breelander leave the room; they had been whispering a lot to each other through the evening, and now it looks like their suspicions are confirmed.

Frodo crawls back invisibly where Strider is sitting. He can’t imagine how the Ring got on his finger. He wonders if it is not the Ring itself playing a trick on him, trying to reveal its presence to an evil power in the room. Strider seems unphased when Frodo reappears, but calls him by his proper name of Baggins, and says he wants a quiet word with him away from prying ears and eyes. Frodo warily agrees.

Meanwhile the debate of what happened continues. Many of the guest draw away from Pippin and Sam, fearing they might be ‘companions of a travelling magician of unknown powers and purpose’. Butterbur takes it all in stride, sure there must be a logical explanation. Frodo comes forward to show he’s still there and says that his ‘vanishment’ was just him crawling away, quick and quiet.

The room clears in a huff. Butterbur asks, “What have you been doing, Mr. Underhill? Frightening my customers and breaking up my crocks with your acrobatics?” Frodo apologizes, but the innkeeper says he’d like a quiet word with him later that evening, as something’s just come back to his harried mind that he should know. Frodo reluctantly agrees. He wonders just how many private talks he will have to have before he gets to bed.  

Bits and Bobs

The four villages of Bree-land (Bree - which just means ‘hill’; Staddle – buildings, steadings; Archet - the edge of the woods; and Coombe - valley) are given Celtic names to emphasize their relation to but distinct nature from the more ‘English’ Shire. There is a town called Brill (Bree-hill) close to the border of Oxfordshire.

The ’shadowy figure’ that climbs over the gate after the Hobbits pass turns out to be (spoilers!) Strider. His significance, and that of his fellow Rangers, will later be revealed.

The name of Barliman Butterbur is meaningful. ‘Barley-man’ is an appropriate name for an innkeeper who deals with beer and brewing. The ‘butter’ element might also be evocative of his dealing with the ‘bread and butter’ job of providing food for travelers. The folks in Bree tend to have ‘botanical’ names, and butterbur is ‘a fleshy plant with a heavy compound flower-head on a thick stalk and very large leaves’, suggesting both his stout body and his scattered brains. Butterbur is actually a Japanese import to Britain.

In later writings Tolkien reveals the ‘squint-eyed Southerner’ to be an agent and spy of Saruman, an outcast Dunlending who is rumored to have Orc-blood in his veins. The man he leaves with is Bill Ferny, who has further significance to the story and who much later ends up joining Saruman’s forces.

In the early drafts Strider begins as 'Trotter', a strange weather-beaten hobbit who at first appears to be wearing wooden shoes but later is revealed to have wooden feet, having had them removed by torture. Tolkien plays with the thought that he is really Bilbo in disguise, and then later one of the wandering Took cousins who went for adventures 'into the Blue', before finally becoming the Strider we know.

Although Strider (Aragorn) is often depicted with facial hair, Tolkien specifically states elsewhere that, as he is related distantly to the Elves (through Elros, the first King of Numenor and Elrond’s mortal brother), neither he nor any of his kin have facial hair. They just don’t live long enough (as does Cirdan, the Elvish master of the Grey Havens) to grow any.

Frodo’s song about the Man in the Moon (said to be written by Bilbo) is, of course, feigned to be the origin of the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle”, although ‘Only a few of the words of it are now, as a rule, remembered.’ There is another Middle-earth ‘Man in the Moon’ poem in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, again, said to be the origin of a more obscure rhyme, “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon”. To the Elves (and Hobbits) the Moon is always masculine and the Sun feminine, because of the spirits that guide their ‘vessels’.

I wanted to show that picture by Judy King Rieniets of the inn even though it is a bit blurry, because its architecture reminds me on my grandmother Nanny's old house ("What style do you call this? Spanish Inquisition?"). I first saw it in a 1979 Fantastic Films magazine when it was published on the back of a fold-out poster as connected somewhat to the Bakshi movie. I still have that poster. It was later republished as the centerfold of the 1981 Tolkien calendar. Here is the poster, in a somewhat truncated form. It's all scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring.