Galion

Galion is the butler of the Elvenking, the ruler of the Wood-elves in Mirkwood. His role in the story is brief but decisive: his weakness for the heady wine of Dorwinion provides the crucial opportunity for Bilbo Baggins to liberate the imprisoned dwarves and set in motion the barrel-escape that carries the company out of the Elvenking's halls and toward the Lonely Mountain.

Role and Character

Galion is the king's butler, responsible for the cellars and the storage of wine and other goods brought from afar, including the potent vintage of the great gardens of Dorwinion. This wine is not meant for soldiers or servants but for the king's feasts only, and for smaller bowls, not for the butler's great flagons. Galion's duties include clearing the cellars of empty barrels, which are cast through trapdoors into an underground stream and floated out through a water-gate to be collected and returned to Lake-town. He is a figure of some authority in the palace hierarchy, yet he is also complacent and fond of his comforts.

The Key Incident: The Drugged Guard

When Bilbo, invisible and desperate, overhears Galion inviting the chief of the guards to taste the new wine that has just arrived, he sees his chance. The two elves sit down in a small cellar with large flagons of the Dorwinion wine. The wine proves potent enough to make a Wood-elf drowsy; very soon the chief guard nods his head, lays it on the table, and falls fast asleep. Galion, continuing to talk and laugh to himself, soon follows, his head nodding to the table as he falls asleep and snores beside his friend. This is the moment Bilbo has been waiting for. He creeps in and takes the great bunch of keys from the chief guard's belt, though the keys are heavy and clink and clank, putting him in a tremble. Before leaving, Bilbo later steals back and kind-heartedly replaces the keys on the sleeping guard's belt, reasoning that it will save him some of the trouble he is in for and puzzle the elves, who will think the dwarves used strong magic to pass through locked doors.

Consequences and Aftermath

Galion's negligence has direct and far-reaching consequences. With the keys, Bilbo unlocks the doors of all twelve dwarves and then Thorin's deep dungeon, leading them down to the cellars. There, the dwarves are packed into empty barrels, and when the elves—including a grumpy and disoriented Galion, who is shaken awake by his subordinates—come to roll the barrels through the trapdoors into the river, they unknowingly send the entire company to freedom. The escape is a complete success. Galion is not pleased at being shaken or wakened, and still less at being laughed at, grumbling that he has been waiting and waiting while the others drink and make merry. The elves, after drinking a round themselves, notice that some casks seem full rather than empty, but Galion, muddled, insists they are the ones to go. The narrative never reveals what happened to Galion or the chief of the guards after the escape, but it is implied that more was guessed than was known, and that Bilbo remained a bit of a mystery. Galion's character thus serves as a perfect example of how a minor figure's ordinary human flaw—a taste for good wine—can, in the right circumstances, become the fulcrum on which a major turn of the plot rests.