Abby Epplett, Historian

From Eru Ilúvatar singing the universe into being to the vast range of songs found in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , the fantasy world of Arda is shaped by music. Previous scholars have paid attention to the forms in which these songs appear, while musicians have written tunes for the lyrics. Less attention has been paid to the instruments that might play the songs if the timeline of Middle-earth aligned to that of the Real World, perhaps because I appear to be the only person focused on this concept. In past essays concerning music, I previously featured the Bywater Quintet, a set of five hobbit singers who voice the widely held opinions of the population. In this essay, I am focusing on a set of instruments played in my interpretation of the Shire, especially woodwinds, strings, and drums. In a future essay, I will discuss a slightly different set of instruments played in Buckland, including horns and bones or spoons.

During the early 19 th century, also known as the Regency era in Great Britain, clothing mimicked contemporary events in Europe, including revolutions and building empires. People were inspired by similar events in classical history such as Athenian democracy and the Roman Empire. Northwestern European scholars had long appropriated the history of the Mediterranean as their own past, but this was the first time the mythology had gone mainstream. The beginning of print culture , or the mass production of written documents including books, allowed the noble and merchant classes to own their own copies of The Odyssey and The Iliad , albeit with varying accuracy in translation, while the display of marble statues at public institutions like our old friend the British Museum allowed the general public to see how their favorite heroes may have looked. This interest in the ancient world continues today, as the so-called Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon have been on display in the m...

On Thursday, April 10 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., I watched the fifth and final Parked at Home webinar of the 2025 season. This is the fourth year of the Parked at Home series of virtual talks hosted by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BLRV) and other sites in the National Park Service, along with the third year of summaries appearing on my blog. The presentations this year are interpreted into American Sign Language (ASL) by Sherrolyn King. The hour-long webinars will be uploaded to the BlackstoneNPS YouTube channel and available to view at any time. The last installment to this year’s series was Saint Croix Island International Historic Site featuring park ranger Karin Magera.

While putting the final touches on last week’s post, I realized I had yet to discuss The Lord of the Rings in the context of national epics and then concluded that this was an ideal time to do so. Tolkien himself was interested in national epics, both studying and creating them. During the talk “Lost Tales and Found Myths” at the Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference , Sonali Chunodkar mentioned Tolkien’s early attempt to create a national epic using the characters of Aelwine and Ing as creators of England, but he seemed to have realized this flavor of nationalism trended towards supporting colonialism and white supremacy, so he quickly dropped the idea.

My discussion of each chapter will begin with a summary essay highlighting three to five key features presented in the text, while subsequent essays will dive deeper into additional topics. In contrast to the authoritative and comprehensive work, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull , which lends insight to the “literary and historical influences” on the text with special focus on European history, linguistics, and events in Tolkien’s own life, I will compare the cultures of Middle-earth to those in the Real World as I have done throughout this series. Of course, that impressive textbook and other Tolkien-focused works will be excellent resources in understanding Tolkien’s worldview and how it affected his “translation” of the text.

In September 2024, I visited places and attended events in Essex National Heritage Area as part of its annual event Trails & Sails . My first stop on this three-day adventure was Hammond Castle. In a post from earlier this week , I discussed the exterior of the building, its temporary exhibits, and its construction history. Today, I will focus on the guided tour and interior of the building.

In this week’s essay, my loves of historic house tours and The Lord of the Rings combine for the first time as I present my map of Bag End, also spelled Bag-End by the older generations of Hobbits. Since Tolkien was a philologist, it is fitting to take a brief break to explain the naming scheme around the property, along with the clan name of the family who built it. Tolkien studies expert Tom Shippey noted in The Road to Middle-earth that “bag-end” is a literal translation of “cul-de-sac”, which was further elaborated upon by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull in Reader’s Companion . The current meaning of a road terminating at a house or collection of houses dates from 1819.

At last, I arrive at the final section of the appendixes. After a hundred and fifty pages of comparing Middle-earth history to real-world history, I have an even stronger grasp of how Tolkien used his expertise as a philologist and historian to build a fantasy world rooted in fact. This will serve as a solid foundation for future research as I move into the dialog portion of the text and reveal vignettes for the hypothetical animated musical.

While Appendix D is named for the Shire Calendar, this section actually covers calendars from multiple Middle-earth cultures spanning thousands of years. The construction of these calendars presented an unresolved mystery: why were they so similar to modern Western calendars? A real-world explanation was that Tolkien was most familiar with the Gregorian calendar, but a Middle-earth explanation was more complex.

Appendix B contained a long and detailed timeline clarifying dates and locations related to characters found in the dialogue portion of the book and Appendix A, explaining relationships between characters, and describing the fates of characters, especially members of the Fellowship. Like in the real-world, all characters died on Middle-earth or passed over the Sea — a metaphor for death — bringing closure to the story in a way rarely seen in modern fiction but common in religious texts, mythologies, and history books.

As someone who typically will not read a book or watch a movie with too many men — one reason I dislike Chariots of Fire while acknowledging that it deserves to be considered a technically and culturally significant film — The Lord of the Rings is a notable exception. The main cast of Nine Walkers have all been assigned male pronouns in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “translation” into English from Westron, and more on the technicalities of gendered language will appear in upcoming posts for the Appendixes on languages in Middle-earth. Yet female characters regularly have greater magical power or preternatural ability than their male counterparts: Galadriel was the greatest of the Ñoldor Elves, Arwen influenced Aragorn to reunite an empire, Eowyn killed the Witch-King, and even Rosie Cotton implied she could predict the future, telling Sam upon his return to the Shire, “I’ve been expecting you since the Spring” ( The Return of the King , 312).

Continuing my series on historical comparisons with The Lord of the Rings , I move on to “2 Concerning Pipe-weed”, the second section of the Prologue. Smoking is a nearly universal concept, with cultures around the real world and in fantasy cultivating and imbibing their own favorite herb. J.R.R. Tolkien was a known heavy smoker, rarely going anywhere without his pipe, and yet his writing shows that he understood the dark side to smoking. Tolkien may not have been aware of the more serious health risks to smoking at the time of the books’ publication; in fact, smoking in moderation was considered a normal, even healthy way of life. However, the most common plant species used for smoking — including tobacco, opium, cannabis, and coca — are linked to colonization, worker exploitation, and addiction. Big Pipe-weed in Middle-earth, much like Big Tobacco in the real world, is quietly pervasive throughout The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings until the shocking final chapters of Par...

Earlier today — Friday, September 29, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. — I attended the webinar Bagatelle: A Princely Residence in Paris by Nicolas Cattelain , part of the Art & Architecture series hosted by New England Historic Genealogical Society, also known as American Ancestors . Cattelain wrote a book by the same name as the talk, published by Rizzoli New York Last Week , which features photographs of the chateau in the process of its restoration. Cattelain covered the entire history of the property using images of artworks once held in the Bagatelle, diagrams of the buildings and gardens, portraits of past owners, and modern photographs. Cattelain explained that a building had existed on the site since 1720 and was first owned by Maréchal d'Estrées [Marshal of Estrées]. While his wife, Madame d'Estrées , held wild parties at the estate, the Maréchal d'Estrées did not often visit. At this time Louis XV was King of France. Parties at court politically influenced h...