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Shire: Beginnings by Lindelea	9 Review(s)
PSW	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 2/8/2025
What a wonderful story - so glad I found it. Thanks so much for sharing it! Author Reply: I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for your generosity in taking the time to share your thoughts. I greatly enjoyed reading your impressions.

Matt	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 2/27/2017
Two thumbs up for this story. Early history of the various groups in Middle Earth is one of the things I'd love to see more of--and this one is very very well done. I like your characterizations, the research you've done on the migration is well considered and the forces driving the hobbits further from their original home make sense. Did you ever continue this piece? Are there others in this genre out there from other authors that you like? Thanks again, and so much, for a great read. Off to discover (or rediscover in a few cases before I got impatient with your chapter length), some more of your work. Thanks loads for your hard work on this excellent fic. Author Reply: Much belated thanks, Matt. I just now saw this review when I was looking something up. I hope this finds you well.

Nienor Niniel	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 7/30/2006
Oh, they are remembering something after all, both Hobbits and Elves. This was a really lovely ending for a great fic! Thanks for sharing, Nienor Author Reply: Thank you for reading and for pausing to leave some encouraging words! I greatly appreciate it.

Inkling	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 2/20/2005
Ah Lin, this was such a lovely ending to the story! Was it Elladan who saw Bilbo and left such an indelible impression, filling his heart “with unknown longing”? And so in the prologue it was the Old Took then, telling tales to a young Bilbo? This story was every bit as wonderful as I thought it would be, and your Fallohides have captured my heart. Someone thought they were unhobbity? To me they are the very essence of hobbit-kind…all the best qualities of hobbits, with the surface trappings of Shire civilization stripped away. They do the right thing instinctively, without thought of what’s in it for them, as when they help Grandalf or the Elves. They have a nobility of spirit and a quiet dignity that are both inspiring and humbling. You can see how centuries of easy living could turn them into the fussy, complacent hobbits of the late Third Age, but you can also still detect in the modern hobbits the traces of their forebears: “There is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit”… Every now and then—not often—I come across a story that I think Tolkien would have enjoyed. This is one of them. Thank you so much! Author Reply: I'm not sure who the Watcher was. It might very well have been Elladan. I left it vague so that readers could imagine whomever they wished to think it was. The prologue could have been the Old Took and Bilbo, or it could have been any grandfa and grandchild pair of Tooks on down the centuries. I left it open to interpretation. I'm glad you recognized the Shire-folk of Frodo's time in the Fallohides since they are, more-or-less, the distilled essence of JRRT's descriptions of hobbit-kind to the best of my ability. I am honored by the thought that JRRT might enjoy this story. I have done my best in my fanfiction to honor his original works. His Shire became my refuge in tough times, and I'm very grateful for that.

Dreamflower	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 10/1/2004
My goodness, this has been a lovely and ambitious story! I don't know that I'd ever have the nerve to tackle the origins of the hobbits and the Shire, but I am so glad that you did! And I loved your little epilogue. I would guess the Watcher to be either Elladan or Elrohir, as they seemed to be on such fond and familiar terms with Pick. So, Bilbo took after that particular Tookish ancestor, eh? Clever! Author Reply: My goodness, I didn't answer any of your reviews on this story? Bad me! Was glad to get the feedback even though I've been remiss in answering. Thanks so much. (and yes, Bilbo, and I think Pippin, take after Pick the most)

ShireDweller	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 1/28/2004
Bilbo! What a wonderful way to connect the past and the "present", with an immortal elf seeing a long-gone friend in Bilbo. Author Reply: I remembered how Sam "thought he saw an elf once" while I was writing this story, and I thought how wonderful it would be to connect Pick with one of his descendants via Elven memory. So I took the liberty of Bilbo, as a young child, seeing an elf. Maybe it faded and seemed like a dream to him until Gandalf came along and stirred up his appetite for adventure...?

Lyta Padfoot	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 1/28/2004
Young Bilbo is adorable! Wonder what the Watcher would have thought of Frodo or Pippin. Good to know Pickthorn is remembered. Still curious as to who Pick marries, but maybe we'll find that out in the next story. Author Reply: I'm sure the Watcher would have been quite taken with Frodo or Pippin. Oddly enough, I write them as very similar though 21 years apart, or something like that. I think that comes from the mental pictures I formed of the hobbits when I read through LOTR decades ago, even though Frodo was "taller and fairer than most" and Pippin (before the Ent draughts) was the smallest of the hobbits in the Fellowship. In any event, the Watcher would have appreciated their curiosity and courage and bright spirits. The next story starts 150 years later. There's some mention of the hobbits from this story, but it is their great-great-great(-great?) grandchildren who make the decision to leave their homeland and start again in Bree.

Pearl Took	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 1/28/2004
Ah! "Beginnings"! Oh yes. I can hardly wait to continue this journey we have all begun! You have captured me with your epic tale. Pearl Took Author Reply: Thanks, Pearl. Do you think readers would be too confused if one of the heroes in the next part is named "Sam"? (For some reason Samson Roper, the son of Samneth Roper, great-grandson, I think, of Beechnut the Roper of the Fallohides) is winking at me from across the room. I keep telling him his name ought to be Sandy Roper, but hobbits can be awfully stubborn as you know.

FantasyFan	Reviewed Chapter: 31 on 1/28/2004
I like the epilogue. To see Bilbo when he was so young, before any of his adventures, is quite a treat. Here it seems that Somebody has sparked that little Tookish part of him, long before Gandalf set it ablaze. I'm not sure that the chapter fits here, as Part I does not bring them to the Shire proper, but it is an adorable little vignette. Though, it does remind me of the visions the Old Thorn had just before his death, where he could see his line continued in our heroes. Author Reply: The prologue and epilogue are bookends of a sort, or perhaps endpapers in a book, meant to contain the tale. Yes, that echo of the Old Thorn's visions was deliberate. Perhaps I was too subtle or the tale ran too long, but you're supposed to think of the grandfather in the prologue when you read the epilogue, and wonder if perhaps this is the Old Took telling tales to young Bilbo, even though it could be any Tookish grandfather and grandson the way it's written. This last chapter was one of the first written. I had thought to leave it off, but Pearl's plaintive inquiry about hobbits reaching the Shire made me reconsider. Since I don't know how long it'll take me to get the hobbits to the Shire (this story has taken the better part of a year to write), I thought I'd offer a bit of hope. Also, since Pick and Thorn aren't planned to appear in any future instalments (the next is set about 150 years later, when they are dust and perhaps a memory lingering in stories told to the great-grandkids), the Elf's momentary arrest over Bilbo's resemblance to those hobbits wouldn't make sense if I put it in one of the later parts. Thanks for taking the time to comment!

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