![]() ![]() 'Some folk have all the luck,' they said but it was not until Frodo approached the usually more sober age of fifty that they began to think it queer. Merry and Pippin suspected that he visited the Elves at times, as Bilbo had done.Īs time went on, people began to notice that Frodo also showed signs of good 'preservation': outwardly he retained the appearance of a robust and energetic hobbit just out of his tweens. Frodo went tramping all over the Shire with them but more often he wandered by himself, and to the amazement of sensible folk he was sometimes seen far from home walking in the hills and woods under the starlight. ![]() Folco Boffin and Fredegar Bolger were two of these but his closest friends were Peregrin Took (usually called Pippin), and Merry Brandybuck (his real name was Meriadoc, but that was seldom remembered). He lived alone, as Bilbo had done but he had a good many friends, especially among the younger hobbits (mostly descendants of the Old Took) who had as children been fond of Bilbo and often in and out of Bag End. When they asked: 'Where is he then?' he shrugged his shoulders. He said that he did not think Bilbo was dead. Some people were rather shocked but Frodo kept up the custom of giving Bilbo's Birthday Party year after year until they got used to it. But that was short of the mark, for twenty guests were invited and there were several meals at which it snowed food and rained drink, as hobbits say. He refused to go into mourning and the next year he gave a party in honour of Bilbo's hundred-and-twelfth birthday, which he called Hundred-weight Feast. Indeed, he at once began to carry on Bilbo's reputation for oddity. And to all appearance the wizard did leave Frodo alone, and he did settle down, but the growth of hobbit-sense was not very noticeable. 'If only that dratted wizard will leave young Frodo alone, perhaps he'll settle down and grow some hobbit-sense,' they said. There he had undoubtedly fallen into a pool or a river and come to a tragic, but hardly an untimely, end. It became a fireside-story for young hobbits and eventually Mad Baggins, who used to vanish with a bang and a flash and reappear with bags of jewels and gold, became a favourite character of legend and lived on long after all the true events were forgotten.īut in the meantime, the general opinion in the neighbourhood was that Bilbo, who had always been rather cracked, had at last gone quite mad, and had run off into the Blue. Bilbo Baggins was discussed in Hobbiton, and indeed all over the Shire, for a year and a day, and was remembered much longer than that. The talk did not die down in nine or even ninety-nine days. Book I Chapter 2 The Shadow of the Past - 01 ![]()
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