The Farmer’s Son

Introduction:

When I first started writing about the Shire, I had a clear image to follow, a possibility that started with the timeline in the Tale of Years and embroidered upon it. An entire culture and society sprang up in the back of my mind; names took on personalities and lives of their own. It was rather like putting together a crazy quilt or stitching away at a tapestry, pieces and threads coming together, each a part of a whole that was much bigger than the individual pieces.

But there were certain aspects that I found unsatisfying. Certainly, I had set up the dynamics for maximum character growth, a facet of writing that fascinates me. But writing earlier on the timeline, before Farmer Paladin was soured by his unexpected elevation to Thain, I came to like the good Farmer, and to wish he’d been dealt a different hand of cards. “Stern” or “grim” Paladin is based on a small snippet of description in “The Scouring of the Shire” - his reaction to Lotho’s self-elevation to “Chief”. However, if one turns the kaleidoscope just a little, the brilliant pieces form a completely different pattern. And so, taking a different look at the Shire as it might be, this story emerges.

In the previous stories, I emphasized the class system hinted at by Sam’s deference to Frodo, and subtle cues in speech patterns between farmers such as Maggot and Cotton, and the gentry as represented by Frodo, Pippin, and Merry. Sam reminds me of Bunter, in the Lord Peter Wimsey books - Bunter’s relationship with his lord came out of the trenches of World War I. I believe that Bunter was a batman, was he not? (Not Batman, the comic book hero, but rather a British military officer's orderly. Bunter was a sergeant, anyhow, very loyal to Lord Peter. He dug Peter out when buried in a trench collapse, and later came to serve him when Lord Peter was incapacitated by shell shock, and stayed as his butler, prop, and right arm through all of Lord Peter’s crime-solving endeavours.) I can’t leave off the class distinctions, for they are evident in the book, but they’re not as important in this story because of the setting.

This view of Paladin emerges from Pippin’s description of his father as farming the fields around Whitwell, near Tuckborough, combined with the descriptions of Paladin’s response to Lotho, the Tookish response to the ruffians (interesting, in the re-reading, to note that the Tooks shot first), and Paladin’s dealing with the ruffians to the south while sending all he could spare to the Battle of Bywater.

(By the way, the geography of this story might be a little different from that of previous stories, which were based on maps laid out in The Atlas of Middle Earth. While Whitwell is mentioned in JRRT's text, it is not on his maps. The Atlas of Middle Earth places Whitwell on the road that runs south from Waymoot (Waymeet), on the far side of Tookbank. That doesn't sound "near Tuckborough" to me. Thus I am placing Whitwell in this story between Tookbank and Tuckborough, perhaps as a small farming community on the outskirts of Tuckborough.)

This will be a different Paladin than you’ve seen in the previous stories, though in a sense he’s the same character - he’s just got an alternate history, which has shaped him in a new way. You’ll see many familiar names that have featured in previous stories; they, too, may be somewhat different, but they retain the same qualities that helped them keep the Tookland free during the time of the troubles, and I hope they’ll be recognisable, even though their character development takes a different path than previously.

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p.s. Do not worry about the other WIP (if indeed you were); they continue to be "in progress".