AUTHOR'S NOTES -
CHAPTER 6: GOOD DAYS...
‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ said Sam, ‘but I’m hoping he’ll be more himself when he gets back in his own home. Not that he isn’t very comfortable here,’ he added, not wanting to cause offence, ‘but his journey’s been the hardest of any. Mordor now -’
‘There you go, Sam. Strange places I can’t get the rights of! When I’ve got the time, you’ll have to sit down and tell me plainly and slowly what you’ve been gallivanting off doing. Right now, you must excuse me, or I’ll be in trouble with the lads for letting them do all the work...’
The Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire: “They sat with the family in the warm kitchen, and the Cottons asked a few polite questions about their travels, but hardly listened to the answers: they were more concerned with the events of the Shire.”
The Return of the King, The Grey Havens: “Frodo dropped quietly out of all doings in the Shire, and Sam was pained to notice how little honour he had in his own country. Few people knew or wanted to know about his deeds and adventures...”
Sam had the whole day free, and they spent a pleasant time riding over to Michel Delving on the White Downs.
I revised my ideas of distances later, after I realised it in fact took two days for the Travellers to ride from Buckland to Hobbiton when they returned to the Shire. Thanks to Oselle/Eldalieva for answering my queries on this. It would probably be impractical to ride to Michel Delving for lunch, but I have let it remain uncorrected, since too much would need changing if I chose somewhere closer.
The horse the inn was named after shone out white and clear against the green downland, cut into the chalk in long flowing lines. Generations of hobbits had kept the turf from overgrowing it, but none knew who had first cut it there or why.
Frodo looked at it thoughtfully. ‘Merry said the Rhohirrim rode out of the North, and that many words reminded him of our speech. I wonder if the horse is their work. I must ask Merry if there is anything like it in Rohan.’ They climbed up the steep slope of the Downs to walk around it. From this close it was impossible to see it was a horse.
‘It’s amazing as they could be working up close and yet make such a fine horse as shows up miles away,’ said Sam. ‘It just looks like a jumble of lines from here.’
The Fellowship of the Ring, The Pologue: [Meriadoc] also wrote a short treatise on Old Words and Names in the Shire, showing special interest in discovering the kinship with the language of the Rhohirrim of such ‘shire-words’ as mathom and old elements in place names.”
Since I am a South Downs girl, and the Downs are part of my history, the White Downs of the Shire have taken on the characteristics of the South Downs, in southern England. The White Horse is inspired by the Hill Figures that occur all along the South Downs. However, although there are several white horses, I have actually taken the Uffington White Horse on the Berkshire Downs as my model. This is the oldest known Hill Figure in Britain (3000 years old) and the most elegant.
I wrote this chapter before the release of the film The Return of the King, and I was delighted to see that Peter Jackson used a white horse very similar to the White Horse of Uffington on one of the banners in King Théoden’s tent. Look above Elrond’s head, as he sits with head bowed and hood drawn close.
They climbed on up to where a white postmill sat high on the back of the Downs, its fantail keeping the slow turning sweeps pointing into the wind.
The Post Mill is modelled on Jill Mill at Clayton, Sussex, one of a pair of windmills standing on the South Downs that were always on my horizon as a child.