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Museum-Quality Matte Paper Print available in two sizes:
12" x 16" (30cm x 40cm): $35.00
24" x 32" (60cm x 80cm): $48.00
 
“For it was in the one thousand six hundred and first year of the Third Age that the Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, set out from Bree; and having obtained permission from the high king at Fornost, they crossed the brown river Baranduin with a great following of hobbits.” - The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, "Concerning Hobbits"
 
Could you imagine some part of your home as a hobbit history museum? This original, hand-done painting represents a major moment in the story of hobbit migrations and gives us a glimpse of the legendary Fallohide brothers, Marcho and Blanco, as they lead their folk over the River Baranduin into the region that will become the Shire. This event is so central to hobbit history that they then date everything else from it. The crossing of the Brandywine Bridge marks Year One of the Shire Reckoning (S.R.) and it can help to think of it taking place about 1,340 years before the events of The Hobbit.
 
This westward movement is one of the major stages of the long hobbit migration story. Prior to crossing the bridge, many hobbits had been living at Bree for nearly six centuries. Prior to that settlement, they had made their far more arduous migrations over the Misty Mountains from their ancient homes in the Vales of Anduin.
 
While living at Bree, the hobbits receive permission from the king of Arthedain, Argeleb II, to cross the Bridge of Stonebows (which we come to think of as the Brandywine Bridge) and inhabit his neglected cornlands if they will keep the bridge in repair and assist the king’s messengers. Fallohide hobbits tended to become the chieftains of other groups, and this westward migration is led by Marcho and Blanco, whom scholars have likened to the legendary brothers, Horsa and Hengest who are said to have founded England (I highly recommend Professor Tom Shippey’s Beowulf and the North Before the Vikings if you’d like a fascinating read about these figures!).
 
In painting this scene, I've taken as my inspiration the River Hodder in Lancashire, which has several lovely old bridges, and which some scholars have likened to this part of the Brandywine. 
 
As we can see in this painting, fair Marcho and Blanco are looking out at an overgrown territory, and they are preceded by doughty hobbits scything their way through the weeds. Blanco is on the white pony (in keeping with the meaning of his name) and Marcho is hailing all their folk to follow. It is wonderful to think that, beneath the weeds and brambles, the future green Shire lies waiting, and I have hinted at this where the path has been cleared. Here, their farms and gardens will become places of bounty and peace for generations to come. 
 
Our picture of hobbits is incomplete if we only think of them in their 19th-century-like settled state, as we see them in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien scatters invitations throughout the Appendices of the latter and in other works like Unfinished Tales to imagine the heartiness of the ancestors of Bilbo and Frodo, Merry and Pippin and Sam. They were capable of surviving incredible hardships and very long travels. If we were to liken Mr. Bilbo Baggins to a Regency gentleman of our own Age, then Marcho and Blanco would have been living in something like the Dark Ages, and I hope you share my enthusiasm that we have any record at all of those times and folk. Our idea of hobbits at the end of the Third Age of Men is immeasurably enriched by even the faintest records of forefathers and foremothers and by bringing a print home of this original, hand-done painting, you will become a lorekeeper who is preserving great scenes from hobbit history!