| Village | |
| Whitfurrows | |
|---|---|
| General Information | |
| Location | Eastfarthing, the Shire |
| Type | Village |
| People and History | |
| Inhabitants | Hobbits |
Whitfurrows was a village or small town that laid in the Eastfarthing, on the East Road through the Shire, approximately midway between Frogmorton (about ten miles to the west) and the Brandywine Bridge (a similar distance to the east). It laid at the western edge of the Bridgefields region of the Eastfarthing.[1]
Whitfurrows appears to have been a centre or staging-post of some kind for the Shirriffs during the War of the Ring.[source?]
Etymology
Whitfurrows contains the element whit-, a short form of white in personal (Whitlock) and local names (Whitley), or similarly Whitwell in the Shire (an actual English place-name). In English place-names, the colour usually refers to the colour of the soil.[2]
David Salo suggests an etymology from possible Old Hobbitish Hwitfure meaning "white furrows".[3]
Other versions of the legendarium
In the first edition of The Lord of the Rings, the name of a place from which one of the special runners came with a "secret message" in the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire" was Bamfurlong. In the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, the name of this place was changed to Whitfurrows[4], and Bamfurlong was inserted as the name of Farmer Maggot's land, which was unnamed in the first edition[5].
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, "A Part of the Shire" map
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, "Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings" in Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, entry Whitfurrows, p. 779
- ↑ David Salo, "Hobbitish Place-names" 23 November 1998, Elfling, accessed 26 April 2013
- ↑ Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. 657
- ↑ Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. 113