Judging by the position of Mistress Moon tonight, I think
there’s a good chance she’ll be shining full in my face when I go to bed. And
that isn’t a good thing, is it? No indeedy, not a good thing at all. For we all
know what happens to a moonstruck person in The Shire, don’t we? He turns into that
most terrible of creatures:
The Werehobbit!
Oh my lordy lord. No one will be safe from the hairy wild
thing that lurks behind the newly trimmed hedgerows and visits his horridness mercilessly
on lonely night walkers. Neither maiden fair nor grisly farmhand shall escape
the claws that catch, the jaws that jigger, and the teeth that tear. The beasts
of the field will cower in the corner, praying for a saviour to deliver them
from the horrible hairy human.
And then… and then… (and this, children, is the nice bit…)
The saviour comes! ’Tis Graham the Bullock, charging in all
his glorious whiteness, stick in mouth, until he reaches the monster and butts
it to the ground.
‘Get thee hence, foul fiend,’ moos Graham (and remember,
children, that werehobbits understand cow language very well.) ‘Get thee hence
and trouble my friends no more, or strike thee I will with my trusty stick.
Never more wilt thou howl horribly, nor skulk with whisky sodden and fiercely reddened
eyes, nor wake up naked, mud spattered, and freezing cold in a hay barn at the
drab dawn of day. Get thee hence, I say.’
And Graham will become the hero of The Shire. He will be
lauded and spared the abattoir. His likeness will be hewn from the finest, whitest
marble and set up on the village green. And when the sand in his hour glass
finally runs out, he will live on in the memory of good Christians all until he
passes into legend.
Meanwhile, I’ll just go back to bed and wake up in the
morning wondering what all the fuss is about, and why I’ve got a bruise the
shape of a cow’s head on my chest, and why there are bits of grass between my
toes…
You can tell I’m bored, can’t you?
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