Abby Epplett, Historian

This is my last blog post of 2025! I will discuss two aspects of folklore that appear during “Chapter 2, The Shadow of the Past” related to the seventeen years Frodo spent living alone at Bag End. During this time, he took many trips through the woods of the Shire and was rumored to speak with people from other lands, refugees fleeing danger in the South. Folk cultures around the world have long been fascinated by or afraid of forests. The hobbits’ fears of who might lurk in the woods aligned with fears of Ancient and Medieval people in the Real World. Meanwhile, human migration and displacement due to natural or man-made disasters have existed for thousands of years but have been studied only for the past few decades. During this essay, I will describe both of these concepts and point out similarities between them: our natural unease over the unfamiliar.

In previous case studies, I have combined information from the text of The Lord of the Rings with historical documentation to explore character behavior through a modern medical lens. These descriptions cannot be considered true diagnoses, as I am not a licensed psychiatrist, the characters are fictional, and the terminology that I use did not exist when the books were written. However, I hope that explaining these conditions will provoke empathy for people in the Real World who live with similar circumstances. While I will briefly cover the plausibility of two conditions that I have seen mentioned by other Tolkien enthusiasts on social media, I will spend most of the essay explaining my own interpretation.

When Frodo invited his twenty closest friends to his annual celebration of Bilbo’s birthday, these young hobbits were most likely his cousins from the Took branch of his family, as I cannot imagine a Baggins displaying such ridiculous behavior. By the time of Frodo’s generation and that of his younger cousins, members of the Took clan had married into nearly every other respectable clan in the Shire, bringing their wealth and quirky behavior with them. Besides reviewing the Took family tree and a potential cause of their unusual actions, I will explain how the clothing of wealthy hobbits changed from the time of Bilbo’s 111 st birthday to seventeen years later when Frodo was again visited by Gandalf. Finally, I believe the Took cousins were based upon a group of young people in the Real World who were contemporaries of Tolkien, and I will compare the behaviors of the two cultures.

For the second essay in a two-part series on my interpretation of Frodo’s wardrobe, I focus on clothing worn in different types of weather, including coats, hats, boots, early sunglasses, and floral outfits. Besides comparing clothing from the Real World to the version I made for Middle-earth, I examine how technology and culture shaped what people wore.

Past Abby would have written this post as one giant essay. Present Abby knows better. During today’s post, I will describe the leisurewear I designed for Frodo’s wardrobe with a special focus on the banyan, the smoking jacket and its matching hat, and Celtic clothes like argyle, tam-o’-shanter, and brekis . Next week, I will discuss weather-themed clothing, including coats, hats, and boots. Since Frodo was implied to have inherited the “rooms full of clothes” from Bilbo, the audience needs to see what he has: no pathetic blue shirt and suspenders for this Frodo.

At long last, I have managed to reach Book I, Chapter 2. During these past two weeks, I carefully read the chapter using multiple lenses of interpretation, including those of history, literature, world religion, and potential animated musical. I have written the first draft of the script to be used while crafting the animatic for this section, something I should have considered while creating the first chapter instead of building the landing gear while landing the proverbial plane. I have scheduled the essays I plan to write leading up to the release of the next animatic, which brings its launch to about a year from now, on October 25, 2026. Faster production is relative; I spent almost a year and nine months on the first chapter, and this is an improvement.

I was not sure what to write to go along with this animatic, which is the culmination of many months of work. I had originally begun an essay about the history of computer programs used to create my animatic. While the essay was certainly interesting, especially for technology geeks, it did not seem in line with my other essays in this series. I have decided instead to keep this essay as simple as possible and instead offer a brief summary of what I have learned so far. During my research of global histories and cultures, creating illustrations, and composing music, I have amassed a vast amount of knowledge and a wide-ranging skill set that I would not have thought possible at the beginning of the project. I have uncovered delightful stories and fun facts during this journey. For some highlights, I enjoyed learning about traditional clothing worn by Manchus, which partially inspired my depiction of Dunlending culture and took a MasterClass on voice acting presented by Nanc...

I had originally intended this post to cover the Tolkien Society Seminar 2025 held online on Saturday, October 18. However, since the event took place from 4:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and I had already scheduled in-person history events for that day, I decided to watch the replays when these are posted to the Tolkien Society YouTube channel . Instead, I will talk about a mini documentary by the BBC-run YouTube channel HistoryExtra that I have been meaning to watch for seven months. The animatic is still scheduled to appear next week, and my discussion of the conference will appear after the recordings are posted to YouTube. Because of the YouTube algorithm demanding clickbait titles, the mini-documentary is called The REAL history behind Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and more . The host was James Osborne , a HistoryExtra employee who studied archaeology and has experience as an entertainment journalist. Like other mini documentaries produced by History...

As promised last week, this portion of the animated musical does not appear in the original text, nor in any of its drafts. Thus far, I have used few creative licenses during my adaption. Costumes and architecture rely on historical designs and the original text. “The Introduction Song” and “The Want Song” were summaries of what appeared in the Prologue, Appendixes, and “Book I, Chapter 1, The Long-Expected Party”, while “One Ring” and “The Road Goes Ever On” were taken nearly verbatim from the book. The one difference is the more obvious nature of my framing device , which features Elanor Gardner Fairbairn reading and editing the book as she chooses what will appear in the Red Book of Westmarch . Some scenes from this hypothetical original manuscript will not make her cut.

In this essay accompanying my next instrumental, available at the end of the post, I am discussing the music of the three licensed versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings : the Rankin/Bass version, the Ralph Bakshi version, and the Peter Jackson version. From my understanding, while other versions exist, the Tolkien Estate did not approve them. While my own hypothetical animated musical likewise does not have approval, it also is not intended for commercial purposes, as detailed in my discussion on fair use back in the project introduction . Other musicians and performance groups who have written their own music or song cycles to be performed independently during a concert or on an album, rather than as a part of a musical score, will be discussed in a future essay.

The morning after Bilbo disappeared during his Long-Expected Party, his heir Frodo took the brunt of the backlash while handing out gifts labeled with insults written by Bilbo. These gifts were remarkable not only for their snide nature but also for being more modern than other gifts given throughout The Lord of the Rings . While variations of these objects had existed for centuries, if not millennia, their status as items once owned by a single person suggested once again that the Shire had entered an early industrial revolution, allowing goods to be mass manufactured at prices that were a fraction of previous costs. Even with these reductions, such gift-giving was an extravagant display of wealth, especially when considering how Bilbo left the remainder of possessions to Frodo. In this essay, I will review the items given to the ungrateful relatives, describe the history of similar objects in the Real World, and reveal how some of these insults were even worse than what appea...

“The Road Goes Ever On” and its variations appear throughout the dialogue portion of the text, from the first song sung by Bilbo during Book I, Chapter 1 “The Long-Expected Party” in The Fellowship of the Ring to the last song sung by Frodo during Book VI, Chapter 12 “The Grey Havens” in The Return of the King . This song expresses the spirit of adventure experienced by multiple characters along with the desire to return home in the end. The love of travel and love of home are nearly universal concepts but rarely expressed as creatively as in “The Road Theme”. Ancient and medieval people told the same stories in their oral histories and during pilgrimages, while modern musicians express their love of the road and homesickness through country and rock hits. I considered all these factors while composing this theme, which I will present at the end of this essay.

This is the fourth and final post in my miniseries on my quick history stops in Philadelphia, along with my last post about the city. The first part covered a bank building, a Quaker meeting house, a fire station dedicated to Benjamin Franklin, a cemetery, and a very old alley. The second part covered a historic house possibly belonging to a Founding Mother, commercial buildings from the Industrial Revolution, and a courtyard showcasing local history. The third part covered a bicentennial speech from an unlikely speaker, a publishing company, a preservation society, a religious statue, an historic athletic facilities, and a diner. This post will include fun facts from my favorite informational signs and how some facts relate to past articles on the blog.

This essay is about flashbacks, one explanation for how humans perceive time and memory. Unlike some of my diatribes, the post is blessedly short for those of you without much spare time. Flashbacks have been used on stage and in film for over a century, but new techniques continue to appear. Medical professionals now use the term “flashback” to describe a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), although not all experts agree if this is a required symptom for diagnosis. As for its connection to The Lord of the Rings , characters use flashbacks when attempting to recall what has happened to them or to people in their communities. Despite the presence of an actual timeline in “Appendix B: The Tale of Years” , the timeline in the dialogue portion is shaky. Characters frequently misremember the past, receive glimpses of the future, and even become confused about the current date in the present. My goal in the animated musical is to preserve these flashbacks while drawing ...

When Bilbo left Bag End after his Long-Expected Party, he wore a traveling outfit that he had assembled during his adventure with Thorin and company many years earlier. The base of this outfit was heavily worn hobbit-clothes, which I have designed to look similar to a late 18 th century costume previously described in “Characters: Bilbo & Frodo Baggins” . The outer layer was a cloak and hood, common clothing for dwarf-men who liked to travel. The cloak and hood were “rather too large” for Bilbo, presumably because although he was nearly the same height as dwarves, he had less muscle mass and a narrower build.

While musicals are driven by songs with lyrics, as previously described during “The Epigraph” , “The Introduction Song” , and “The Want Song” , instrumentals are equally important for setting the tone during dialogue scenes and moments where characters are silent. Music accompanied film even before the invention of the “talkie”, whether a live organist playing along with the action or a phonograph blasting the tune. In the modern era, film composers are among the best known music writers of their day with the most famous in English-language films including John Williams, Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, and Hans Zimmer. Like many industries, older white men dominate movie music, although recent film adaptations of stage musicals have begun to change this demographic.

After the Long-Expected Party — and in the case of the hypothetical animated musical, not long after “The Want Song” — Gandalf joined Bilbo in his house and demanded that his hobbit friend give up the One Ring. Bilbo initially reacted badly, as the ring had gained some control over him, but he eventually left the ring to his ‘nephew’, Frodo, along with most of his worldly possessions. Rings have appeared in fiction throughout world literature, spawning dozens of folkloric motifs and inspiring adaptations of ancient stories for stage and film.

After many weeks of anticipation, the next song in the animated musical is ready to debut. “The Want Song” is possibly the biggest musical number in the production in terms of length and number of singers. It functions as a foil to “The Introduction Song”, a literary device typically meaning a character who contrasts another character, but in this case, I used it to describe a song that contrasts another song. I have a degree in the field, so I can change words like that. While “The Introduction” juxtaposed a wordy solo by Frodo describing Middle-earth with the ‘rustic’ hobbits talking about their local community, “The Want Song” features solos by all of the major characters appearing in the scene along with a closing section from the wealthy hobbits talking about their desires. These two songs cover the complete range of attitudes about the Shire and its people. Going forward, most songs will be short solos or small groups, although several larger group numbers are slated for ...

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.

The Lord of the Rings was originally written as an exercise in speculative linguistics, and Tolkien scholars enjoy discussing the invented languages, unique words, and antiquated concepts found in the text. Of the many words and phrases that may bring discomfort to the modern reader because of the evolution of language and changing social attitudes is one of Sam’s favorite words: master. While a thesaurus might list “boss” or “manager” as synonyms, “master” connotates feudalism in Europe and slavery in the Americas. Interestingly, the negative connotation seems to have arisen after these periods due to the Nazi Party declaring whites a “master race” during the Holocaust, changes in Western social structure after World War II, and the rise of social movements during the 1960s and 1970s. The word was part of daily language from the 16 th to early 20 th century, as a boy of an upper class family or a man of low social status were given the title “master” opposed to the higher ...