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homeward bound 1301
there is a king again, Barliman. He will soon be turning his
mind this way.
‘Then the Greenway will be opened again, and his messengers
will come north, and there will be comings and goings,
and the evil things will be driven out of the waste-lands.
Indeed the waste in time will be waste no longer, and there
will be people and fields where once there was wilderness.’
Mr. Butterbur shook his head. ‘If there’s a few decent
respectable folk on the roads, that won’t do no harm,’ he said.
‘But we don’t want no more rabble and ruffians. And we don’t
want no outsiders at Bree, nor near Bree at all. We want to
be let alone. I don’t want a whole crowd o’ strangers camping
here and settling there and tearing up the wild country.’
‘You will be let alone, Barliman,’ said Gandalf. ‘There is
room enough for realms between Isen and Greyflood, or
along the shore-lands south of the Brandywine, without anyone
living within many days’ ride of Bree. And many folk
used to dwell away north, a hundred miles or more from
here, at the far end of the Greenway: on the North Downs
or by Lake Evendim.’
‘Up away by Deadmen’s Dike?’ said Butterbur, looking
even more dubious. ‘That’s haunted land, they say. None
but a robber would go there.’
‘The Rangers go there,’ said Gandalf. ‘Deadmen’s Dike,
you say. So it has been called for long years; but its right
name, Barliman, is Fornost Erain, Norbury of the Kings.
And the King will come there again one day; and then you’ll
have some fair folk riding through.’
‘Well, that sounds more hopeful, I’ll allow,’ said Butterbur.
‘And it will be good for business, no doubt. So long as he
lets Bree alone.’
‘He will,’ said Gandalf. ‘He knows it and loves it.’
‘Does he now?’ said Butterbur looking puzzled. ‘Though
I’m sure I don’t know why he should, sitting in his big chair
up in his great castle, hundreds of miles away. And drinking
wine out of a golden cup, I shouldn’t wonder. What’s The
Pony to him, or mugs o’ beer? Not but what my beer’s good,