Pipe-Smokin My Way To Peace
by @jin-out on Brave-Smoke's Corner
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J.R.R Tolkien - "Lord Of The Rings"
Concerning Pipe-Weed
There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must
be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through
pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb,
which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana.
A great deal of mystery surrounds the origin of this peculiar custom,
or ‘art’ as the Hobbits preferred to call it. All that could be discovered
about it in antiquity was put together by Meriadoc Brandybuck (later
Master of Buckland), and since he and the tobacco of the Southfarthing play a part in the history that follows, his remarks in the introduction to his Herblore of the Shire may be quoted.
‘This,’ he says, ‘is the one art that we can certainly claim to be
our own invention. When Hobbits first began to smoke is not known,
all the legends and family histories take it for granted; for ages folk
in the Shire smoked various herbs, some fouler, some sweeter. But
all accounts agree that Tobold Hornblower of Longbottom in the
Southfarthing first grew the true pipe-weed in his gardens in the days
of Isengrim the Second, about the year 1070 of Shire-reckoning. The
best home-grown still comes from that district, especially the varieties
now known as Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby, and Southern Star.
‘How Old Toby came by the plant is not recorded, for to his dying
day he would not tell. He knew much about herbs, but he was no
traveller. It is said that in his youth he went often to Bree, though
he certainly never went further from the Shire than that. It is thus
quite possible that he learned of this plant in Bree, where now, at
any rate, it grows well on the south slopes of the hill. The Bree-hobbits
claim to have been the first actual smokers of the pipe-weed. They
claim, of course, to have done everything before the people of the
Shire, whom they refer to as ‘‘colonists’’; but in this case their claim
is, I think, likely to be true. And certainly it was from Bree that the
art of smoking the genuine weed spread in the recent centuries among
Dwarves and such other folk, Rangers, Wizards, or wanderers, as still
passed to and fro through that ancient road-meeting. The home and
centre of the art is thus to be found in the old inn of Bree, The
Prancing Pony, that has been kept by the family of Butterbur from
time beyond record.
‘All the same, observations that I have made on my own many
journeys south have convinced me that the weed itself is not native
to our parts of the world, but came northward from the lower Anduin,
whither it was, I suspect, originally brought over Sea by the Men of
Westernesse. It grows abundantly in Gondor, and there is richer and
larger than in the North, where it is never found wild, and flourishes
only in warm sheltered places like Longbottom. The Men of Gondor
call it sweet galenas, and esteem it only for the fragrance of its flowers.
From that land it must have been carried up the Greenway during
the long centuries between the coming of Elendil and our own days.
But even the Du´nedain of Gondor allow us this credit: Hobbits first
put it into pipes. Not even the Wizards first thought of that before
we did. Though one Wizard that I knew took up the art long ago,
and became as skilful in it as in all other things that he put his
mind to.’