I Will Give You What You Asked For

  

'Yes, yes, my dear sir--and I do know your name, Mr Bilbo Baggins,  And you do know my name, though you don't remember that I belong to it.  I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!  To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!'

    'Gandalf, Gandalf!  Good gracious me!  Not the wandering wizard that gave Old Took a pair of magic diamond studs that fastened themselves and never came undone till ordered?  Not the fellow who used to tell such wonderful tales at parties, about dragons and goblins and giants and the rescue of princesses and the unexpected luck of widow's sons?  Not the man that used to make such particularly excellent fireworks!  I remember those!  Old Took used to have them on Midsummer's Eve.  Splendid!  They used to go up like great lilies and snapdragons and laburnums of fire and hang in the twilight all evening!'  You will notice already that Mr Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers.  'Dear me!'  he went on .  'Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures?  Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves--or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores!  Bless me, life used to be quite inter--I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time.  I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business.'  

   'Where else should I be?'  said the wizard.  'All the same I am pleased to find you remember something about me.  You seem to remember my fireworks kindly, at any rate, and that is not without hope.  Indeed for your old grandfather Took's sake, and for the sake of poor Belladonna, I will give you what you asked for.'

   'I beg your pardon, I haven't asked for anything!'

   'Yes, you have!  Twice now.  My pardon.  I give it you. In fact I will go so far as to send you on this adventure,  Very amusing for me, very good for you--and profitable too, very likely, if you ever get over it.'

   'Sorry!  I don't want any adventures, thank you.  Not today.  Good Morning!  But please come to tea--any time you like!  Why not tomorrow!  Come tomorrow!  Good-bye!'  With that the hobbit turned and scuttled inside his round green door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seem rude.  Wizards after all are wizards. 

   'What on earth did I ask him to tea for!'  he said to himself, as he went to the pantry.  He had only just had breakfast, but he thought a cake or two and a drink of something would do him good after his fright.

   Gandalf in the meantime was still standing outside the door, and laughing long but quietly.  After a while he stepped up, and with the spike on his staff scratched a queer sign on the hobbit's beautiful green front-door.  Then he strode away, just about the time when Bilbo was finishing his second cake and beginning to think that he had escaped adventures very well.

Don't Believe In ENTS?

So Don't Believe In Ents?


Well, I went out to St Francis in Gulf Breeze, Fl. yesterday  and look at what I saw.  A Great Big Ent flexing his muscles.  And wearing a Huge Cross around his neck.  So There!  You've seen an Ent ;-)


Cheers!
~ Bilbo ~

We Are Plain Quiet Folk And I Have No Use For Adventures

  All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff.  He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots.
  'Good morning!' said Bilbo and he meant it.  The sun was shining, and the grass was very green.  But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
  'What do you mean?' he said.  'Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?'
  'All of them at once,' said Bilbo.  'And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain.  If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine!  There's no hurry, we have all the day before us!'  Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill.
  'Very pretty!' said Gandalf.  'But I have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning.  I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.'
  'I should think so--in these parts!  We are plain quiet folk and I have no use for adventures.  Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things!  Make you late for dinner!  I can't think what anybody sees in them,' said our Mr Baggins, then stuck one thumb behind his braces, and blew out another even bigger smoke-ring.  Then he took out his morning letters, and began to read, pretending to take no more notice of the old man.  He had decided that he was not quite his sort, and wanted him to go away.  But the old man did not move.  He stood leaning on his stick and gazing at the hobbit without saying anything, till Bilbo got quite uncomfortable and even a little cross.
  'Good morning!'  he said at last.  'We don't want any adventures here, thank you!  You might try over The Hill or across The Water.'  By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.
  'What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!'  said Gandalf.  'Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.'
  'Not at all, not at all, my dear sir!  Let me see, I don't think I know your name?'


Cheers!
~Bilbo~

By Some Curious Chance One Morning

By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast, smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed)--Gandalf came by. Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion. He had not been down that way under The Hill for ages and ages, not since his friend the Old Took died, in fact, and the hobbits had almost forgotten what he looked like. He had been away over The Hill and across The Water on businesses of his own since they were all small hobbit-boys and hobbit-girls.

PS: Click on the post above and see a funny old drawing. Click on this line and see another cool drawing of Gandalf.

What Is A Hobbit?

The mother of our particular hobbit--what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach: they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow): wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly): have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). Now you know enough to go on with. As I was saying, the mother of this hobbit--Bilbo Baggins, that is --was the famous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of the hobbits who lived across The Water, the small river that ran at the foot of The Hill. It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely hobbitlike about them, and once in a while members discreetly disappeared , and the family hushed it up; but the fact remained that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Bagginses, though they were undoubtedly richer.

Not that Belladonna Took ever had any adventures after she became Mrs Bungo Baggins. Bungo, that was Bilbo's father, built the most luxurious hobbit-hole for her (and partly with her money) that was to be found either under The Hill or over The Hill or across The Water, and there they remained to the end of their days. Still it is probable that Bilbo her only son, although he looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father, got something a bit queer in his make-up from the Took side, something that only waited for a chance to come out. The chance never arrived, until Bilbo Baggins was grown up, being about fifty years old or so, and living in the beautiful hobbit-hole built by his father, which I have just described for you, until he had in fact apparently settled down immovably.

A Well To Do Hobbit Named Baggins

This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses have lived in the neighborhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is the story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained--well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.

THE HOBBIT or There And Back Again

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

P. S. Click the text and see a real hobbit house. Click the title and see a listing of several hobbit houses. Enjoy;-)

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats--the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill--The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it--and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

Don't let your heads get too big for your hats. BILBO

On Fairy Stories by JRR Tolkien (Excerpts)

Cover of J.R.R. Tolkien

The ‘consolation’ of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it. At least I would say that Tragedy is the true form of Drama, its highest function; but the opposite is true of Fairy-story. Since we do not appear to possess a word that expresses this opposite–I will call it Eucatastrophe. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function.

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist’, nor ‘fugitive’. In its fairy-tale–or other world–setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure; the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.

The peculiar quality of…’joy’ in successful Fantasy can…be explained eas a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a ‘consolation’ for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, ‘Is it true?’ The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): ‘If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.’ That is enough for the artist…But in the ‘eucatastrophe’ we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater–it may be a far-off gleam or echo or evangelium in the real world.

Rally of Hope to support filming of "The Hobbit" in New Zealand (Trailer)

Frodo The Wise

Image via Wikipedia"I don't think the Shadow gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them." ~Frodo

And so it is with all evil. It cannot give life. It  twists, and distorts and slowly destroys with an eternal death.

Shire is fit for Hobbitation again: Old Lord Of The Rings set revamped ready for latest Tolkien blockbuster

Shire is fit for Hobbitation again: Old Lord Of The Rings set revamped ready for latest Tolkien blockbuster

On Time, From Someone With Perspective

Never is too long a word.

Treebeard

I Found Rivendale

The Tolkien Professor

Image via Wikipedia

I am currently going through the lecture series of Dr Corey Olsen on the writings of JRR Tolkien. It's an incredible resource and a lot of fun.
Just punch the title above and you're a click away from a boatload of resources. Enough to fill up any elven boat.
You can click ITunes and download the lectures and listen at your leisure, which is what I've done.
Thank You Dr Corey!!!

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Trailer 1 - 1...

Gandalf Goes to the World Cup

On The Passing of Time

Image via Wikipedia

The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. ~LEGOLAS~

The 'immortality' of the Elves is a subject of endless fascination for the mortal races, usually motived by jealousy or a lack of understanding. Being uninhibited by old age and death, Men or Dwarves would finally achieve the scope to indulge in endless, productive action, but the Elves (especially those of the Third Age) have no such ambition. For them, reminiscing about and preserving the light and beauty of the Elder Days - fighting 'the long defeat' in Galadriel's words - is enough.

The multicultural nature of the Fellowship, and Sam's confusion over the length of their stay in Lorien, provides a rare context in which to discuss the Elvish perspective on time. Legolas obliges, and it is no surprise that his explanation is a string of proverbs.

Time does not tarry ever,
but change and growth is not in all things and places alike.~LEGOLAS~

Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last.

By David Rowe

Born of Hope - Trailer November 2009

Andy Serkis (aka Gollum) Playing Screwtape

One of the real successes of the Lord of the
Rings movies was Andy Serkis vocalisation
of Gollum. Here he is again, in an audio
drama of C.S. Lewis' book "The Screwtape
Letters". Just click on the title above...

.

Don't think, "Oh, just another ruination
of Lewis' work", this has to be seen.
(Including comments from Douglas Gresham).
Quite breathtaking.

With many thanks to Roger @ The Inklings
for writing this post.

Oh, yea, Click The Title!