Bree

The name Bree is not a word of the Elvish tongues, nor is it presented as the form the villagers themselves would have used. Like most place-names in The Lord of the Rings, it stands as an English rendering of an original in the Common Speech, chosen to convey to a modern reader what the name conveyed to the people of Middle-earth. In his notes on translation Tolkien explains that the element bree carries the sense of 'hill'. The meaning suits the setting: the village lies in the shelter of a single hill that rises out of the surrounding country, and it takes its identity from that landmark. In this way the name records a simple act of description rather than a dedication to a founder or an event.1

Tolkien grouped Bree with a small set of neighbouring names, among them Combe, Archet and Chetwood, and gave them a common treatment. He modelled them on the fragments of British, that is Celtic, vocabulary that survive in English place-names, selecting each for its meaning; chet in Chetwood, for instance, signifies 'wood'. The choice was deliberate. By drawing these names from an older layer of language than the plainly English names of the Shire, he signalled that the settlements of this district were older than the Hobbit homeland to the west and that their people belonged to a more ancient population. The linguistic contrast thus mirrors, in miniature, the historical relation between the two regions without the text needing to state it.2

From the village name a small family of related terms grows. The wider district, which also contains the hamlets of Staddle, Combe and Archet, is called Bree-land, and its inhabitants, both Men and Hobbits, are spoken of as Bree-landers or the Bree-folk. The hill itself is named Bree-hill, a compound that, once the meaning of the first element is known, effectively repeats the same idea twice. Such doubling is common in real place-names whose older element was no longer understood by later speakers, and it fits the impression Tolkien sought to create of a name worn smooth by long use.3

Bree lies east of the Shire, on the far side of the Brandywine and beyond the Barrow-downs, in a stretch of Eriador that had largely emptied of settled folk by the end of the Third Age. Together with Staddle, Combe and Archet it forms a small inhabited district, set apart from the wilderness around it and surrounded by an expanse of untilled country. The Great East Road runs past the village on its way from the Shire towards the Misty Mountains, and near Bree it meets the old north–south road. That meeting of routes gave the place its function. In the older days of the North Kingdom the roads carried a steady traffic, and the village has kept the habits of a waystation long after most of that traffic dwindled.1

The village sits against its hill, with most of its houses built of stone and standing above the Road on the western slope, so that their windows look towards the setting sun. On the open side a deep dike, backed by a thick hedge, runs out from the hill and curves back to it in a wide arc of more than half a circle, enclosing the houses. Where the Road enters and leaves this ring it passes through gates, which are shut at nightfall and kept by a gatekeeper who questions late arrivals. Hobbit dwellings are fewer in Bree itself than in Staddle, and those that exist lie higher up the hillside. The inn stands where the Road bends around the foot of the hill, which places it at the natural point of arrival for anyone coming along the highway.2

The neighbouring hamlets divide the surrounding ground between them. Staddle lies on the far side of the hill, Combe in a deep valley further to the east, and Archet at the edge of the Chetwood, the woodland that spreads to the north and east of the district. Beyond the wood the land sinks into the Midgewater Marshes, and past them the Road climbs towards Weathertop through increasingly desolate country. To the west, between Bree and the Shire, lie the Barrow-downs, a region the Bree-folk regard with unease. The village is therefore bounded on nearly every side by land that ordinary residents seldom enter, and its sense of itself rests on that contrast between its enclosed, settled ground and the wilds around it.3

The origins of Bree lie beyond any recorded date. Its Men regarded themselves as the original inhabitants of the district and traced their descent to the first Men who had wandered into the West of Middle-earth in the earliest days. According to the account preserved in the appendices, they were ultimately of the same stock as the folk who had once lived in the vales of the White Mountains. Branches of that people had drifted north through the southern vales of the Misty Mountains and into the emptier lands as far as the Barrow-downs, and the Bree-folk descended from them. Few communities of the Elder Days survived the upheavals of that age. The settlement at Bree did, and the villagers kept a stubborn pride in that continuity.1

When the Númenóreans returned over the sea and founded their realms in the North, they found the Men of Bree already settled around their hill. The village came under the North Kingdom of Arnor, and in time its people adopted the Westron tongue in place of their older speech. During these centuries the crossing of the roads carried a considerable traffic, and Bree grew into a waystation that served travellers of many kinds. The Hobbits of Bree-land were likewise established here at an early date. They maintained that theirs was the oldest Hobbit settlement anywhere, older than any crossing of the Brandywine. The prologue confirms that when most Hobbit communities west of the mountains had failed or moved on, the one at Bree and in the Chetwood endured, though smaller than before.2

Bree played a part in the founding of the Shire itself. In the year 1601 of the Third Age, the Fallohide brothers Marcho and Blanco set out from Bree with a large following of Hobbits and crossed the Brandywine Bridge. They had obtained leave from the king at Fornost to settle the lands beyond the river. The Shire was therefore colonised from Bree, and the older village remained the eastern kin of the new country rather than an offshoot of it. The North Kingdom later declined and finally vanished, but Bree outlasted it. The Bree-landers were still living in their village long after the kings had passed out of common memory, and they continued in the same fashion into the late Third Age.3

By the end of the Third Age, Bree had become an isolated community. Traffic on the roads had fallen off, and the only regular visitors were Dwarves, a few travellers from the Shire and the Rangers. The villagers knew the Rangers only as wanderers and did not realise that they were guarding the region against dangers the Bree-folk never saw. In 3018 the village began to feel the pressure of events to the south. Strangers came up the Greenway, some of them ill-favoured Men fleeing trouble or looking for it, and rumours of war and unrest spread among the regulars of the inn. That summer Gandalf entrusted a letter for Frodo to Barliman Butterbur, and the innkeeper forgot to send it. The delay affected how the hobbits' later journey began.4

At the end of September 3018, Frodo and his companions reached Bree and took rooms at the inn, where they met the Ranger known locally as Strider. The Black Riders were already searching the district. In the early hours of the following night the hobbits' rooms were attacked, and their ponies were driven off from the stables. The party left Bree at dawn, and some of the villagers who wished them ill watched them go. The episode showed that the village's dike and gates could no longer keep out the forces moving through Eriador.5

During the War of the Ring, the Rangers were drawn away to the south, and Bree was exposed to the ruffians who were then gathering in the North. When the hobbits passed through again in the autumn of 3019, they learned that there had been fighting at the gate and that several Bree-folk had been killed. Some of the troublemakers had fled into the wild, taking disaffected locals with them, and the village remained fearful, with its gates barred and its guard doubled. Gandalf assured Butterbur that such days were ending, since a king had returned and would in time restore order to the North. With the restoration of the North Kingdom under Elessar, Bree once again lay within an ordered realm, and the old roads could be expected to carry trade as they had in earlier ages.6

Bree-land was the only place in Middle-earth where Men and Hobbits formed a single settled community, and the narrative marks this arrangement as unique. The Men of Bree are described as stocky and on the short side, brown of hair, good-humoured and independent in outlook. Unlike most of the Big People, they were used to Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves and other folk and were easy in their company. The two peoples kept their own customs and managed their own affairs, yet each regarded itself as a proper part of the Bree-folk. Their surnames show this mixture. Families such as the Butterburs, Heathertoes, Thistlewools and Ferns bore plant-names, while among the Hobbits there were many Underhills alongside Tunnellys, Sandheavers, Brockhouses and others.1

The text names no lord, reeve or council for the district. After the North Kingdom disappeared, the Bree-landers acknowledged no master outside their own bounds and ordered their lives through custom and neighbourly habit. The gatekeeper and the inn served as the practical institutions of the place, one controlling entry at night and the other acting as the meeting-ground where local news and outside rumour mixed. What protection the land actually had came from the Rangers, whom the villagers treated with wary reserve and a measure of suspicion. The Bree-folk did not know that these wanderers kept watch on their borders, and they valued the Rangers' reports mainly as tavern talk.2

The innkeeper also went through more than one name before he became Barliman: in the earliest versions he appears as Barnabas Butterbur.

Contact with the nearer neighbours was limited. Hobbits from Buckland and the Eastfarthing sometimes rode out to the inn, but most Shire-folk seldom made the journey and thought the Bree-landers somewhat outlandish. Dwarves on their way to and from the Blue Mountains remained the most regular foreign visitors. Rule from outside returned only when the kingdom was restored. On the hobbits' return Gandalf told Butterbur that the King would come north and that his authority would reach the district again, so that Bree-land passed from centuries of self-reliance back under the law of a sovereign.3

In the narrative, Bree is the first place beyond the Shire where the hobbits meet the wider world in ordinary social form. The common room of the inn gathers local Men and Hobbits, Dwarves and travellers from the south, and the chapter moves between comedy and unease. Pippin's talk nearly exposes the name Baggins. Frodo tries to draw attention away by singing a comic song on a table, then falls, and the Ring slips onto his finger in front of the company. It is the first time he uses the Ring among strangers, and the result is gossip that later reaches hostile ears. While this happens, Merry is walking outside and is overcome by a dark presence in the lane. Nob, the inn's hobbit servant, finds him and brings him back.1

Bree is also where the hobbits choose a guide. Strider offers his help before he can prove who he is, and the hobbits' doubts, above all Sam's, test how far they are willing to trust someone outside their own circle. Gandalf's delayed letter finally settles the question. Strider's caution, which includes leaving the beds empty and keeping the hobbits in the parlour, shows that the village no longer offers the safety it seems to. Bill Ferny and a squint-eyed stranger from the south stand for the local ill will. After their ponies are lost, the hobbits have to buy a half-starved pony from Ferny at a high price, and this animal later becomes Sam's companion. Merry later sees a man at Isengard who resembles that southerner, which ties the village's troubles to Saruman's wider designs.2

On the homeward journey Bree serves as a point of measurement. The hobbits come back to the same inn and the same host, and both the reader and Butterbur notice how much they have changed. Butterbur tells them the pony found his way back to Bree on his own and returns him to Sam. The inn's talk also warns the travellers of the disorder they will find further west. The chapter therefore links the finished quest to the troubles still waiting in the Shire.3

Bree was part of the story from the first drafts of The Lord of the Rings, before most of the later geography of Eriador was settled. Christopher Tolkien's edition of these early manuscripts shows that the basic situation, with the travelling hobbits reaching an inn at Bree and meeting a stranger there, was in place almost from the start. The people involved in that meeting, however, were very different at first. The hobbit at the head of the party was still Bingo rather than Frodo. The weathered figure watching from a corner of the common room was not a Man but a hobbit, called Trotter, whose distinguishing mark was that he wore wooden shoes, unusual for a people who went barefoot. The innkeeper also went through more than one name before he became Barliman: in the earliest versions he appears as Barnabas Butterbur. These drafts therefore show the village and its inn as a fixed point in the narrative, while the characters met there changed around it. Only in later phases of the writing did Trotter become a Man of Númenórean descent, the heir who would be known as Strider and Aragorn. With that change Tolkien reshaped the Bree chapters, and the encounter at the inn came to carry the weight it has in the published book.1

Bree appears in the first part of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). David Weatherly plays Barliman Butterbur, and Martyn Sanderson has a small part as the keeper of the village gate. The film keeps the outline of the book's episode: the hobbits arrive at night, take rooms at the inn, meet Strider in the common room, and leave the next morning under his guidance. Several details are changed. Frodo's use of the Ring in the common room happens as an accident while he tries to stop Pippin talking, not after a comic song. The attack on the hobbits' lodging is carried out openly by the Ringwraiths themselves, who break through the gate and enter the inn. In the book the attackers are never seen directly. Gandalf's delayed letter is left out, so Strider's claim to be trustworthy has to rest on his actions alone. Merry's encounter in the dark lane is also absent. Because the trilogy does not include the Scouring of the Shire, the hobbits never pass back through Bree, and the village loses the role it has in the book as the place where their return is measured.1

Jackson's later Hobbit trilogy uses the village as well. The second film, The Desolation of Smaug (2013), opens at the inn in Bree with a meeting between Gandalf and Thorin before the events of the novel. The Hobbit itself contains no such scene. The film takes it from Tolkien's own later account in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, where the two meet by chance at Bree and the expedition to Erebor starts from that conversation. The adaptation turns that brief summary into a dramatised episode and sets it in the Prancing Pony. In this way Bree becomes the starting point of the earlier story on screen, as the appendices suggest but the novel does not show.2