Bilbo Baggins' Birthday and Michaelmas
It’s been quite a week. Last Friday, September 22nd, was Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’ birthday. Last Saturday, as Eleanor Parker reminds us, was the autumnal equinox, and today it’s Michaelmas, one of the year’s great quarter days (along with December 25th, March 25th, and June 24th).
These days are hugely important in their own right, but any self-respecting Tolkienian will also find at least some of them vaguely familiar. December 25th? Not just Christmas but the day the company left Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings. March 25th? Not just the great Feast of the Annunciation but the day on which the Ring was destroyed and Sauron fell. September 29th? The day Gandalf, Frodo, Bilbo, Elrond, and Galadriel all left Middle-earth. There’s clearly something going on here, but I’m going to break off for a moment and consider not The Lord of the Rings but Farmer Giles of Ham. What happens in this great short story? Or, more to the point, when does it happen?
On the feast of St Michael Farmer Giles was summoned to see the king. The Dragon’s Tail was “served up at the King’s Christmas Feast” and the knight chosen for the dragon hunt “was supposed to set out upon St. Nicholas’ Day and come home with a dragon’s tail not later than the eve of the [Christmas] feast.” A tournament was organised for St John’s Day and Farmer Giles’s armour was prepared “all the rest of the day, and all the next day – which was Twelfthnight and the eve of the Epiphany.” The dragon himself swore that “he would return with all his wealth on the feast of St. Hilarius and St. Felix.” (“Ominous names,” the blacksmith thought. “I don’t like the sound of them.”) However, the dragon did not return and so Farmer Giles was forced to go after him, stumbling across him on the Feast of Candlemas.
Farmer Giles of Ham has a clear geographical and temporal setting, taking place in the countryside around “Oxenford” between the liturgical seasons of Michaelmas and Candlemas; the tale is, we might say, a representation of the liturgical year filtered through the lens of an Oxford don (for the academic year at Oxford starts at Michaelmas and lasts, if we’re being precise, not for eight weeks but for two lunar months).
However, there’s a problem. The rich liturgical opening of the tale is disrupted by the dragon. Farmer Giles’s task, therefore, is not simply to deal with the dragon but to restore liturgical time.
Does he succeed?
On the face of it, the answer is “no”. He subdues the dragon but we hear no more about Michaelmas or Christmas or Candlemas. But we do get one final liturgical reference after Farmer Giles has become “Dominus de Domito Serpente, which is in the vulgar Lord of the Tame Worm, or shortly of Tame. As such he was widely honoured; but he still paid a nominal tribute to the King: six oxtails and a pint of bitter, delivered on St. Matthias’ Day, that being the date of the meeting on the bridge.”
This reference to the hidden apostle chosen to replace Judas signals the end of the liturgical references in the story, as Farmer Giles becomes first Prince Julius Ægidius then King of the Little Kingdom.With Farmer Giles now “old and venerable,” the story enters the timelessness of myth and the liturgical year becomes subsumed within it. Order, of a sort, is restored.
Which still leaves us with the problem of Bilbo’s birthday. Why did Tolkien choose September 22nd of all days?
It’s a fascinating question because September 29th would seem to have been the obvious choice. The Lord of the Rings, like Farmer Giles of Ham, could have started at Michaelmas, but it doesn’t. Why not?
The answer, I think, lies in the other event I mentioned in my opening paragraph: the autumnal equinox. In 2023 and for much of the first half of the 20th century, the equinox fell on September 23rd, but in 1892, the year of Tolkien’s birth, it fell on September 22nd. Here, then, is the clue we need. Bilbo’s birthday falls at precisely the moment when darkness and light are in balance. But not for long. The dark is rising. The winter chill is on its way. The Black Riders are abroad.
But, of course, that’s not the end of the story. The seasons swing again and, after the spring equinox, light triumphs once more. Sauron is defeated. The Ring is destroyed. The Shire is saved.
Except the key date in The Lord of the Rings is not March 19th, the date of the spring equinox in 1892, but March 25th. That is when the Ring is destroyed. That is when Elanor Gamgee is born. That is when the Gondorian year now begins. In other words, we are back to the great feast days that punctuate Farmer Giles of Ham. The good news of the Annunciation has been heard. Mary has said yes. Liturgical order has been restored.