S.R. 1420

S.R. 1420, the year following the War of the Ring, was a time of unprecedented peace, healing, and natural abundance in the Shire, marked by the restoration of Bag End, the marriage of Samwise Gamgee, and a legendary harvest that became a byword for prosperity.

The Great Year of Plenty

In the Shire-reckoning, S.R. 1420 was remembered as the Great Year of Plenty. The weather was marvellous, with wonderful sunshine and delicious rain in due times and perfect measure. There seemed to be something more than good weather: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. The fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream; later they sat on the lawns under the plum-trees and ate, until they had made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror, and then they moved on. No one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass. In the Southfarthing the vines were laden, and the yield of 'leaf' was astonishing; everywhere there was so much corn that at Harvest every barn was stuffed. The Northfarthing barley was so fine that the beer of 1420 malt was long remembered and became a byword; a generation later one might hear an old gaffer in an inn, after a good pint of well-earned ale, put down his mug with a sigh: 'Ah! that was proper fourteen-twenty, that was!'

The Restoration of the Shire

The year was also one of great labour and repair. The clearing up after the Battle of Bywater and the expulsion of Sharkey's Men needed a lot of work, but it took less time than Sam had feared. Hobbits can work like bees when the mood and the need comes on them, and there were thousands of willing hands. Before Yule not a brick was left standing of the new Shirriff-houses or of anything that had been built by 'Sharkey's Men'; the bricks were used to repair many an old hole, to make it snugger and drier. Great stores of goods, food, and beer were found that had been hidden away by the ruffians, so that there was a great deal better cheer that Yule than anyone had hoped for. One of the first things done in Hobbiton was the clearing of the Hill and Bag End, and the restoration of Bagshot Row. The front of the new sand-pit was all levelled and made into a large sheltered garden, and new holes were dug in the southward face, back into the Hill, and lined with brick. The Gaffer was restored to Number Three. The new row was called New Row, though it was a purely Bywater joke to refer to it as Sharkey's End.

Samwise's Gardening and the Mallorn

Sam Gamgee, now married to Rose Cotton and living at Bag End, was busy directing the cleaning up and restoring of Bag End, but he was often away in the Shire on his forestry work. He remembered the gift of Galadriel: a small box of plain grey wood containing a grey dust and a seed like a small nut with a silver shale. Following Frodo's advice, he used the gift sparingly, planting saplings in all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had been destroyed, and putting a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each. He went up and down the Shire in this labour, paying special attention to Hobbiton and Bywater. At the end he still had a little of the dust left, so he went to the Three-Farthing Stone and cast it in the air with his blessing. The little silver nut he planted in the Party Field where the tree had once stood. Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty. In the Party Field a beautiful young sapling leaped up: it had silver bark and long leaves and burst into golden flowers in April. It was indeed a mallorn, and it was the wonder of the neighbourhood. In after years, as it grew in grace and beauty, it was known far and wide and people would come long journeys to see it: the only mallorn west of the Mountains and east of the Sea, and one of the finest in the world.

Frodo's Quiet Life and the Birth of Elanor

Frodo took to a quiet life, writing a great deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. Sam and Rose's first child was born on the twenty-fifth of March, a date that Sam noted. It was a maidchild, and at Frodo's suggestion they named her Elanor, after the little golden flower in the grass of Lothlórien. Little Elanor was nearly six months old when, in the autumn of 1421, Frodo called Sam into the study and told him that it would be Bilbo's Birthday on Thursday, and that he would pass the Old Took, being a hundred and thirty-one. Frodo then asked Sam to see Rose and find out if she could spare him, so that they could go off together. Sam, though torn, agreed, and on September the twenty-first they set out together, Frodo on the pony Strider and Sam on his beloved Bill. They camped in the Green Hills, and on September the twenty-second they rode gently down into the beginning of the trees as afternoon was wearing away. There they met Elrond and Galadriel and many fair Elven folk, and Bilbo himself, riding slowly behind on a small grey pony. Frodo and Bilbo departed over Sea with the Three Keepers, and Sam returned to Bag End, where Rose drew him in and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew a deep breath and said, 'Well, I'm back.'