Gandalf receiving a message in the Shire

Ennikan

Member
Hello, I'm new here and just started listening to the series. Really enjoying it. Wanted to ask a question even though you are long past it, hope that is okay.

Before Frodo leaves, Gandalf receives a message that disturbs him, and so of course he goes off, planning on being back for Frodo's departure. It puzzled me on how he got this message, or who might have delivered it.

It wouldn't be from Radagast, since he meets him later on. We don't read of anyone visiting Gandalf in the Shire - and if they had, it seems as though Frodo would have known. And if someone visited Gandalf there, why didn't they just give him the message then?

I suppose it's a small thing, but I couldn't figure out how the message might have been delivered. I suppose Elves are possible, but when Frodo meets Gildor, the Elves had not seen Gandalf. It's all very interesting.
 
Before Frodo leaves, Gandalf receives a message that disturbs him, and so of course he goes off, planning on being back for Frodo's departure. It puzzled me on how he got this message, or who might have delivered it.
That IS a great question, especially because I don't recall it ever being asked before!

Perhaps we can start to grope towards some answers by trying to deduce the content of the message. This was in the Spring, during Gandalf's last visit to the Shire, in The Shadow of the Past. Possible messages include:
  1. Rumors of Black Riders having left Mordor (though certainly not that specific)
  2. Rumors of Gollum's escape from the Elves (did that even happen yet? We don't hear about it until the Council of Elrond in late Autumn)
  3. Rumors of Sauron's emissary to the Lonely Mountain (same note as #2 - I'll have to check the dates when I get home and can look it up)
  4. Something going on way to the south, in Rohan, or Gondor, or Mirkwood
  5. Rumor of Saruman's spies, or perhaps of his dealings in pipe-weed
  6. Something else entirely, and possibly completely false anyway
Argh: too many possibilities! All we know for sure is that later Gandalf did meet Radagast, and at that meeting he was told, definitively, about the Black Riders.

I think we can confidently exclude the possibility (contra Peter Jackson) that Gandalf got the message via moth. Wandering companies of Elves seem most likely, since we know that they are occasionally seen in The Shire. But Dwarves are, too, though they're less likely to know to find Gandalf in Hobbiton. And there's always the Rangers, but they're not so likely to enter The Shire itself.

Nope: I don't think I've made any progress here. Gonna post anyway: maybe it will trigger someone else's thoughts.
 
I agree Elves/Dwarves are the most likely contacts.

That was sort of the same thought process I had, and I couldn't draw a conclusion either. He said it was disturbing news, so it's specific and alarming enough to personally follow up with it - but - not so alarmed that he would want Frodo to move up his departure - or flee with him.

In his letter to Frodo left with Barliman, he does not indicate that Frodo should leave immediately, even though at this point he had heard of the nine being abroad from Radigast and was headed to see Saruman.

"I must go off at once. You had better leave Bag End soon, and get out of the Shire before the end of July at latest."
I can only feel as though he still felt that there was time (which of course he laments later) and that even though abroad, the nine would have trouble locating the Shire. It's almost as though he's trying to get as much information as he can before Frodo is forced out of the "safety" of the Shire. Before the one desperate gamble of setting a hobbit off with the ring is set in motion.
 
Welcome!

If I recall correctly, this actually is discussed in some of the classes. But there's nothing wrong with us examining it again (or separately).

I don't think we can prove it, but I think that the most reasonable theory is that Sam repeats a rumour from the Green Dragon to Gandalf without recognizing its significance.

First off, I think we can be confident that the message which reaches Gandalf is a vague rumour. As far as I can see, he never actually refers to it as a message. He simply says "I have heard something that has made me anxious and needs looking into" (Chapter 3). In fact, at the council of Elrond, he's even more vague about why he felt the need to leave Bag End. At that point, he reports his reasons in this way: "At the end of June I was in the Shire, but a cloud of anxiety was on my mind, and I rode to the southern borders of the little land; for I had a foreboding of some danger, still hidden from me but drawing near" (Book II, Chapter 2). The first comment seems to make it clear that he heard something, but it was so vague that a few months later he only remembers it as a general anxiety with no specific cause.

So, where could Gandalf have heard rumours?

I'm pretty confident that Gandalf hasn't been out gathering news himself. We're told that Gandalf "kept himself very quiet and did not go about by day, it was well known that he was ‘hiding up in the Bag End’" (Chapter 3). This seems to leave room for him to have been going out at night, but as he's telling Frodo that he's leaving, he also comments "I have been idle longer than I should" (Chapter 3), which I take to mean that he hasn't been doing much of anything.

If we accept that, then the only people he's likely to be talking to at Bag End are Frodo and Sam. I think that the news is less likely to come from Frodo for two reasons; First, he'd be more likely to recognize its significance and then Gandalf's reasons wouldn't be a mystery. Also, because I think Gandalf would say something to the effect of "The news you brought me has made me anxious" instead of "I have heard something that has made me anxious" (Chapter 3) if it came from Frodo.

So, Sam. And since we know Sam visits the Green Dragon, and we know rumours from outside the Shire also reach the Green Dragon ("One summer’s evening an astonishing piece of news reached the Ivy Bush and Green Dragon. Giants and other portents on the borders of the Shire were forgotten for more important matters" (Chapter 3)), it makes sense that he heard the rumours there.

We could probably come up with a reasonable theory for how the rumours got to the Green Dragon as well. It's pretty obvious that Hobbits within the Shire aren't shy about rumour-mongering. Once a rumour reaches the Shire, it's probably in every pub as quickly as a post-man can get his pony to the next town's pub for a pint. We also know that "There was trouble away in the South, and it seemed that the Men who had come up the Greenway were on the move, looking for lands where they could find some peace" (Chapter 9) and that those men made it as far as Bree. We also know that "There were probably many more Outsiders scattered about in the West of the World in those days than the people of the Shire imagined. Some, doubtless, were no better than tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them" (Chapter 9), and I suspect (from the fact that "Bucklanders kept their doors locked after dark") that these Outsider Hobbits came into the fringes of the Shire to share news (and cause mischief).

Knowing all of that, it's pretty easy to piece together a theory. The Black Riders are riding around randomly asking about the Shire. Some of the men who are fleeing North share the story of encountering the Black Riders in Bree -- mentioning that they're looking for the Shire and possibly including a mention of the Black Rider's dementor like effect on them. The fact that anyone from the South is looking for the Shire is news even to the Outsider Hobbits (some of whom, I assume, live on the outskirts of Bree much like they would on the outskirts of the Shire). The story spreads among the Outsiders, and reaches the Shire from them... and then spreads the normal way within the Shire. By the time it reaches the Green Dragon, it's probably garbled. But with enough detail left that when Sam repeats it to Gandalf, Gandalf gets the idea that someone is searching for the Shire and that there's some menace attached to these searchers. That's enough to make him set off to find the truth, but not enough for him to think Frodo should leave at once.

Obviously, I've built a house of cards here. We can't know the answer. But this explanation strikes me as reasonable... even if some of the details could be slightly different. If the answer isn't something similar to this, then the only other real answer I can think of it "Unexplained magic"... which is unsatisfying and dull -- at least, to me.
 
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