Hobbit Tolkien There are Moon-letters Here

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by Glen McDonald

Title

Hobbit Tolkien There are Moon-letters Here

Artist

Glen McDonald

Medium

Painting - Watercolour

Description

Help me publish my Hobbit commentary book with HarperCollins - please make a comment.

Though the painting features a recent view of the Tolkien House, the sky is as it was when Elrond, Thorin & Co. saw the Moon-letters.
Regulus, the bright star in Leo, will be setting in advance of the moon and toward the tree on the right. The Big Dipper at the top right shows the way.
�What do they say?� asked Gandalf and Thorin together, a bit vexed perhaps that even Elrond should have found this out first, though really there had not been a chance before, and there would not have been another until goodness knows when. H60.16

The effort of examining the map under the moon every day of the year would be a great challenge, but to catch the right moon on the right day of the year would be truly amazing. On average someone would need to check the map at least once each day under each moon-light 3902 times (less New Moons) without fail to be sure to catch any moon-letters. Periods between readings would vary from three years up to thirty-eight if the weather were favourable. Gandalf actually had eight chances and Thrain seven � though he missed one as a prisoner of the Necromancer in the pits of Dol Goldur. Thorin had just this one night to see these moon-letters.
I have made a table of midsummer�s-eve broad crescent moons and events since the sack of Erebor. (see Tolkien�s, The Hobbit Revealed.)
By extending the table a little we can see the next chance would have come 8 or 19 years after Thorin�s stay in Rivendell. The table also shows that during the writing years of The Hobbit, from 1930 � 1933 H/Hxvii.15-.18 and H/Hxx.21-.23 , 1931 was the Moon-letter year. Nineteen Thirty-one also suits because it was not a leap year � Tolkien once answered a reader saying the neither The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings years were leap years [meaning SR 1341 and TA 3018-19]. Leap days; called Overlithes in the Shire, were co-incidental with Manish leap years throughout Middle-earth.

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October 12th, 2013