Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

This is the final essay before I begin my analysis of the dialogue portion of The Lord of the Rings. I hope to begin moving more quickly through the text now that I have laid a solid foundation and framing to my metaphorical house, but seeing as I tend to overanalyze, I cannot promise any amount of speed. Today I discuss Hobbiton, the famous hometown of Bilbo Baggins and possibly his father, Bungo Baggins. This was not the hometown of Frodo, as he was born in Buckland, but he was permitted to live in this area after Bilbo made him the heir to Bag End. I will cover the ownership, architecture, and layout of Hobbiton while comparing it to real-world history before providing the first animatic of the project.

Ownership of Hobbiton

I first discussed the ownership of Hobbiton during “Architecture: Bag End” when I posited that the land upon which it was built was likely owned by the Master of Bag End. Since Belladonna Took Baggins was the daughter of Gerontius Took, the Thain of the Shire and feudal lord over the West Farthing, her father likely gave her the land along with money as a wedding gift, implied in Bilbo’s comment that his father had built Bag End “mostly with her money” (The Hobbit, 1). To better understand how land ownership worked in the Shire, I looked at federal land ownership in the modern-day United States and the United Kingdom, since this illustrates two contrasting methods of how land has historically been distributed by Western political powers.

In the United States, the federal government owns over 615,000 acres (2,489 sq km) out of the 2 billion acres (8 million sq km), or about 27% of the land mass. In a 2012 report, the UK government owned around 16.4 million square meters (16.4 sq km / 4,053 acres) of property against 243,610 sq km (60,197,342 acres) of land mass, a comparatively insignificant amount. This difference in land ownership seems to be related to how the systems of government were founded.

The United Kingdom is a monarchy whose ruler has grown steadily weaker over time until the one on the throne is merely a figurehead. As first mentioned in “Prologue, 3 On the Ordering of the Shire”, feudalism was the variation of monarchy that arose during the European medieval period after William the Conqueror took control of England. Land ownership was dictated by a person’s place in a massive pyramid that encompassed all of society with the king and queen at the top, nobility underneath, and peasants at the bottom. Members of each level divided their land between their vassals in the level beneath them. These vassals were obligated to pay for the privilege of using this land along with pledging their aid during war.

At first, few divisions were made to the land. Most of the population in the early middle ages were serfs, unfree peasants whose labor could be sold between feudal lords, although the people themselves were not considered property. Landlords demanded that serfs harvest their crops and pay fees in return for living on the land and having their own subsistence farms, along with controlling many aspects of the serfs’ lives, including who they might marry. Additionally, serfs were not permitted to own land; however, landlords generally provided common land where everyone collected fuel or sent their animals to graze. During the late medieval and post-medieval period, additional social classes developed, including free peasants or yeomen who owned their own labor and could become government officials, and gentry who owned land but did not have a title. The original estates were divided between the sons of the nobility, and a growing number of classes were permitted to own land, causing plots to become smaller, and individual landlords to become less powerful.

In contrast, the United States under its current Constitution was founded as a democracy with a strong central government made of three branches that allowed individual states to be represented. For territories outside of the thirteen colonies, the federal government was considered the owner of the land unless it granted ownership to citizens. Land grants were especially popular during the mid-19^th through early 20^th century. In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act, which allowed American citizens and recent European immigrants to buy up to 160 acres of land at a highly affordable price. Three years later in 1865, newly freed African-American families were supposed to be granted “forty acres and a mule” under Special Field Orders, No. 15 given by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, although this ruling was rarely enforced.

While feudalism never formally existed in the United States, I have found striking similarities between the operation of medieval towns and mill towns in the Rhode Island System of manufacturing during the late 18^th through early 20^th century. I last discussed this system during my post on the Historic Trolley Tour of Whitinsville. The patriarchal mill owner and his family lived in a manor at the top of the hill. Many workers lived in housing owned by the mill owner, and their rent was taken from their paycheck. Workers were frequently paid in scrip instead of federal money, which was useless outside of the community but could pay for goods at stores owned by the mill owner. A combination of unionization, World War II, and cheaper labor becoming available in the southern United States led to the end of this system.

One stark contrast between feudalism and the Rhode Island System was the attitude of the serf or mill worker towards the feudal lord or factory owner in specific cases. I have found that even the least biased articles emphasized the hardship and misery in the life of a serf while feudal lords were under no obligation to make their lives better. Workers in some mill towns felt the same way about factory owners and led strikes to better their conditions; the first of these strikes took place in Pawtucket, RI in 1824 and was led by young women, setting a precedent for future strikes. However, workers in other mill towns seemed to genuinely like the factory owners and consider them father figures. The Whitin family provided beautiful public schools, a community center, and church buildings to their workers, keeping them happy and complacent for much longer than in other towns. This appears to have been the same practice used by Bilbo and Frodo Baggins; as much as the townspeople disliked their personalities, they had to admit that the town stayed in good shape with them as the masters.

Earthen & Post-Medieval Architecture

Another expansion on materials first presented in my essay on Bag End is the existence of earthen dwellings. In that earlier article, I focused on larger subterranean dwellings, from entire ancient cave systems to modern towns. This time, I want to focus on small sod or turf houses that might have been built for the poorest hobbits. Turf houses or torfbæir were once popular in Iceland, which was first settled by Norse colonists around the 9^th century. The island has few trees, so lumber for housing was in short supply. The houses have a classic Scandinavian architectural design on the front with steeply sloping triangular roofs, but these roofs are covered in dirt packed in the shape of a brick or Klömbur with grass growing over the top. Today, tourists can visit preserved turf house as part of the Glaumbær Farm & Museum, and the design is on the UNESCO tentative list for cultural heritage.

Across the water in the United States and Canada, pioneers built sod houses or soddies during the 19^th through early 20th century. An autobiography written by Evelyn Slater McLeod of Alberta noted that these houses were made by cutting bricks of dirt and stacking them atop each other using mud as mortar. The entire family was involved in building the house, and the rate of collapse was fairly high. Among the last of these buildings is Addison Sod House National Historic Site of Canada in Saskatchewan, which has become covered in vinyl siding but is still triangular, similar in shape to a pyramid or ziggurat.

As for the housing above ground that belongs to middle class hobbits, these appear similar to the English post-medieval buildings that frequently appear on my blog: properties owned by Historic New England such as Boardman House in Saugus, MA; Coffin House in Newbury, MA; Gedney House in Salem, MA; Pierce House in Dorchester, MA; Browne House in Watertown, MA; and Jackson House in Portsmouth, NH, along with Sherburne House at Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH; Thomas Lee House in Lyme, CT; Alden House National Historic Site in Duxbury, MA; and Hoxie House in Sandwich, MA. After that list, I have no more to say about post-medieval architectural style.

Layout of Hobbiton

To understand the layout of Hobbiton, I looked no further than the 1937 watercolor painting created by J.R.R. Tolkien that appeared on the cover of The Hobbit. With Bag End on a hill in the center, a range of smaller houses built under and around it, and strips of land for the working hobbits to farm, Hobbiton trended more towards a medieval village owned by a lord and maintained by serfs than a town lived in by yeomen.

A large, grassy hill with doors and windows cut into the side. On the flat land in front of the hill are buildings, including a mill beside a small river. A path leads down the hill to a bridge crossing the river. On the top of the hill is a tree with green leaves.

This painting showed evidence of protoindustrialization, a rise in technology just before a true industrial revolution. The mill belonging to the Sandyman family used a waterwheel to power its machinery, which could be manufacturing iron products like the factory once built at Saugus Iron Works in Saugus, MA during the mid to late 17^th century, sawing wood like the mill at Moore State Park in Moore, MA during the mid-18^th century, or grinding grain like Dexter Grist Mill in Sandwich, MA from the mid-17^th century through the present day. In fact, based on Bilbo’s “whole rooms devoted to clothes” (The Hobbit, 1), cloth was evidently easy to come by, meaning this could be an early textile mill like the late 18^th century variation of Slater Mill in Pawtucket, RI. However, since the occupation “miller” typically denoted a grain grinder, the Sandyman family most likely had a grist mill.

Towns were rare in medieval England and tended to have a small population. The capital London was the largest with about ten thousand people in contrast to the last official count, which was almost nine million in mid-2023. These tiny towns were home to a wide variety of trades, including tailors, blacksmiths, millers, and shopkeepers. Taverns and inns were found in towns, much like the Green Dragon and the Ivy Bush of Bywater, or the Prancing Pony of Bree. Large, wooden, painted signs hung from the sides of the buildings to show travelers what was sold inside, since most of the population could not read.

Notably missing from Hobbiton was a center of worship. European medieval life in the Real World was dominated by Christianity, as people’s faith dictated every aspect of their lives. All subjects under the monarch believed in the divine right of kings, that authority was given directly from God, and to oppose the ruler was to oppose the will of God and condemn one’s soul to damnation. The emergence of the Protestant Reformation further bolstered this claim for kings who did not want to be beholden to the Pope.

While The Lord of the Rings has a decidedly Christian influence from its Catholic author, Tolkien chose not to make the Hobbits believers in a religion, starkly contrasting them from the other peoples in Middle-earth. Worship centers did not exist outside of a temple built by Sauron and the Númenóreans for Melkor or Thû-Morgoth in The Lost Road, yet the peoples seem to have chosen a patron from among the Valar, just as Catholics might have a patron saint or pantheists might have a patron god: High Elves have Elbereth Varda the Queen of Heaven, Sea-Elves have Ulmo the personification of the Sea, Dwarves have Aulë Mahal their maker and the Smith, Ents have Yavanna Kementári their maker and the Giver of Fruit, and Rohirrim have Oromë Araw the Hunter, to list the most obvious connections.

Some fan art has depicted Yavanna as the creator of Hobbits, but this seems highly unlikely as she already made Ents. Since Hobbits were coded as a modern society and understood that they once lived among several different people, if not being descended from them, then they may have considered their Race to be evolved rather than created, as previously discussed in “Races: Hobbits”, leading them to reject a creator-based religion altogether. Alternatively, their religion may have disappeared after repeat colonization, much like their original language, causing them to adopt a secularized version of Dúnedain state religion. Just as Minas Tirith has its White Tree, Hobbiton has its Party Tree; just as Aragorn affirmed his place as divinely appointed king by planting a seedling of the dead White Tree, Sam became the leader of Hobbits by planting a mallorn in place of the Party Tree cut down by servants of Saruman.

Cold Opening Animatic

After weeks of preparation, readers will finally be able to see the first animatic. As discussed in “Introduction to the History of Documentaries”, animatics are animated storyboards used by filmmakers to plot out major frames in their story, as moving images hold the viewer’s interest more than static images. This video ties together the elements gradually presented on the blog. The cold opening, or the beginning of the episode that runs before the title, will take place in the framing device. The opening begins with a pale blue background and the sound of birdsong, originally recorded by Freesound user juskiddink. A head-up display orients the viewers to a calendar with the time: 2nd Lithe (Day after Mid-Summer), Fourth Age 61, Shire Reckoning 1482, 82 Days Before Departing for the Sea. A map orients viewers to the location of Bag End within Middle-earth. As the map fades out, the viewer hears the sound of a crowd originally recorded by Freesound user toonothing and pitched up a third using the sound editing program Audacity. The camera pans down to lush gardens where Shire Hobbits of the Fourth Age quietly talk together.

A large, grassy hill with doors and windows cut into the side. On the flat land in front of the hill are buildings. A green pasture is beside a small river. A path leads down the hill to a bridge crossing the river. On the top of the hill is a tree with golden leaves.

With the audience oriented, three hobbit-lasses discuss the life of the recently departed Mrs. Rose over the instrumental “Pledge Theme” After they question the location of her oldest daughter, Elanor Gardner Fairbairn, the scene fades to an office inside Bag End where Elanor pages through an unordered manuscript. She briefly reads the opening lines to The Hobbit and then sings “The Epigraph” printed at the beginning of each part of The Lord of the Rings. Ghostly voices from the past repeat her song, and the camera zooms out from the house to reveal all of Hobbiton. The village does not look exactly as shown in Tolkien’s painting, since this was from Bilbo’s time near the end of the Third Age, but in Elanor’s own time, when the mallorn tree had grown large, Bag Shot Row was replaced with New Row, and the mill along the river was torn down. After the climax of the song, the camera cuts back to Elanor and the manuscript as she sings the final line. The scene slowly fades away, and the animated series logo appears on the screen, ending the cold opening.

Watch the cold opening here: