[ SECRET POST #2576 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2576 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #368.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The corn is clearly regular-sized corn that isn't fully grown yet and that's why it's not super-huge compared to hobbits. What I want to knw is what a New World cultivar is doing in a wland based on Europe.

[(Anonymous)]

The elves brought it over from Aman, which is/was effectively the New World. (No, really, it's what they make lembas out of: they'd have to have brought some to make it when they emigrated to Middle-earth.)

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Technically the word "corn" is a synonym for "grain", as in a term that means plant seeds. So you can have "wheat corn" and "barley corn" and we actually do regularly use "peppercorns".

So the actual grain used to make lembas remains a mystery, because Tolkien was using an older usage of the word "corn".


Now if you want to start questioning the presence of New World foods in Middle Earth, what about potatoes and tomatoes? Both of them are American foodstuffs. (And by "American" I am meaning both North and South American continents.)

[(Anonymous)]

The surviving Numenoreans circumnavigated the (newly round) globe. No reason they shouldn't have brought back tomatoes and potatoes from the Middle-earth equivalent of the Americas.

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

I am adding that to my headcanon. Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, and tobacco, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

Even in the books, it's a land based on Europe that also has tobacco and potatoes. Because tobacco and potatoes are nice things to have, I guess. (And anyway it's Hobbits who have them, and Hobbits are a bit... anachronistic, I suppose, compared to the people around them.)

[(Anonymous)]

You're right. They are really anachronstic, now that I think about it.

[(Anonymous)]

The whole Shire is anachronistic. They have clocks and Gondor only has a bell-ringer.

[(Anonymous)]

I think a lot of it is that the Shire isn't really based on Europe, it's based on the English countryside through a very Merrie Olde England frame (and similarly hobbits are pretty much straight-up idealized rural English types with a bit of whimsy). And that's a construct that is perfectly compatible with tobacco and clocks and potatoes and all that kind of thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Medieval Europe you mean? Cos I agree.

[(Anonymous)]

a mythologized version of a specific area within Europe during a period that included the medieval period but also continued after it

so, i guess.

[lynx]

That's not a hard question: It's based on Europe, but it's a fantasy world and Tolkien included things he liked /o/

[(Anonymous)]

Based on =/= exactly the same as. Europe didn't have dragons or mithril, either.

[(Anonymous)]

Europe didn't have dragons or mithril, either.

Say it ain't so!

[arcadiaego]

My dad says that during the pictured scene *every time*.