The Bee Reads LOTR Episode 5: A Short Cut To Mushrooms
Frodo, Sam, and Pippin continue trekking through the Shire in this week's The Babylon Bee Reads The Lord Of The Rings with Kyle and Dan joined by Jonathan Watson from The One Ring, an online fellowship as well as a place for cool Middle-Earth maps and articles. We discover Farmer Maggot, some black riders, and the shortcut to mushrooms. Note: We had to salvage the audio on this episode after running into several separate production issues, but the discussion is good and we hope you still enjoy it. Chapter summary: Frodo, Sam, and Pippin make for Bucklebury after spending the night at a wooden hall where they were hosted by the elves led by Gildor Inglorion. Frodo worries about taking his friends into danger or exile. Sam states his loyalty to Frodo no matter what. Frodo and Pippin banter. They decide to stay just off the road so they won't be spotted on the road by Black Riders and cut straight across the country to Bucklebury Ferry bypassing Stock, crossing the Stock-brook and missing the Golden Perch's fine beer. Sam spots a rider behind them at the top of the green bank from where they climbed down right when they start debating going back because of difficult terrain. They hear the Nazgul cries and cut across open ground until they come to more orderly lands and ultimately Farmer Maggot's lands. Frodo is distressed because he was a mushroom thief and terrified of the farmer's dogs. The farmer was just getting his dogs out due to a black rider being suspicious on his lands. He brings them in and feeds them and gives them good ale on tap and gets them to Bucklebury Ferry. The banter between Frodo and Pippin. Pippin didn't want to leave Frodo any breakfast but Sam insisted. "I don't want to answer a sting of questions while I am eating. I want to think!" "Good heavens! At Breakfast?" "Short cuts make long delays" "All right!" I will follow you into every bog and ditch! But it is hard! I had counted on passing the Golden Perch at Stock before sundown! The best beer in the Eastfarthing…" "That settles it!' said Frodo. "Short cuts make delays, but inns make longer ones." The stout loyalty of Sam 'If you don't come back, sir, then I shan't, that's certain,' said Sam. 'Don't you leave him! they said to me. Leave him! I said. I never mean to. I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon; and if any of those Black Riders try to stop him, they'll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with, I said. They laughed.' … way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can't turn back. It isn't to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want – I don't rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me.' Special Elf Drink "When they came to make their meal, they found that the Elves had filled their bottles with a clear drink, pale golden in colour: it had the scent of a honey made of many flowers, and was wonderfully refreshing. Very soon they were laughing, and snapping their fingers at rain, and at Black Riders. The last few miles, they felt, would soon be behind them." They start singing louder and louder and the evil and lonely sounding black riders begin to cry to one another. CREEPY Farmer Maggot A Black Rider had been asking the Farmer about Baggins right before they showed up. Gives advice to stay in Buckland, not get mixed up with those weird Hobbiton folk like Bilbo and says if the Black Rider comes back, he'll deal with him! They get supper, ale, and a dark ride to the ferry and a basket of mushrooms.MAILBAG Lynn asks us to set aside our Jacksonian lenses. From David on expected and unexpected parties. From Sarah on finding rest for this crazy world in Tolkien. For Kyles fixation on Tolkien tattoos, a message from RDeis23. From Real Lawyer, Not Rules Lawyer on the cool-as-a-cucumber Gandalf. 2hokies has an audiobook recommendation.
From the heart of the Shire Through the depths of Moria To the ends of Middle-earth It's the Babylon Bee Reads the Lord of the Rings With your hosts Kyle Mann and Dan Coates
Welcome everybody to the Babylon B Reads Lord of the Rings.
I'm Kyle Mann.
I'm the editor-in-chief of the Babylon B.
This is my good buddy Dan Coates, who's a producer at the Babylon B.
This is Jonathan Watson, who is the grand poobah of theone ring.com.
Sure.
Sounds good to me.
I like it.
And which is a website where you can read about Lord of the Rings stuff and buy jewelry.
Yeah, no.
No, and get involved.
Message boards.
You know what's hilarious is we get a bunch of ads on our Babylon Bee website for like beekeeper stuff because they like thinking we got a nail.
Do we absolutely got this nail?
There's a bunch of beekeepers that come to this site.
So I wonder if you guys need a lot of like more.
You know, I don't do any other ads other than Amazon links and things like that.
Gotcha.
Yeah, the end of the day.
We were getting weird ads too.
So I'm like, eh, we'll just cut those down.
Who needs money?
No.
Yeah.
We don't know because we don't know if they have any in the Shire.
Yes.
Yeah, well, we figured it out.
There was some kind of coin, but that was like Gondor currency.
We couldn't figure out like if anybody, it's in they just have like copper coins.
That's kind of what we decided.
It's not fiat, whatever it is.
No.
It's not fiat currency.
It's definitely precious metals.
They might have Bitcoin.
Anyway, so this week we're discussing a shortcut to mushrooms.
So typically what we'll do is we'll spend about a half hour discussing each chapter and we'll let you know what the reading is for next week at the end of the episode.
And then we go into another half hour of discussion exclusively for subscribers.
So if you don't subscribe to the Babylon B, go to Babylon B.com slash plans and subscribe and you can get to our mailbag section and maybe we'll chug some golden ale in the it's been super cool to see how many people have subscribed to the Babylon B. Get a lot of or bought the books for the first time.
I'm reading it because you guys are reading it.
Yeah, as much as a fan of as much as a fan I am of the Babylon B I you know that actually makes me happier when I see someone say I bought Lord of the Rings just to follow along.
Like how cool is that?
That is cool.
I can't imagine living my life and not having read Lord of the Rings.
It's like we did something.
Yeah.
We accomplished something.
So thanks for following along everybody.
So this is shortcut to mushrooms chapter four.
So we've got Frodo and Sam and Pippin and they are traveling across the countryside and they're trying to avoid these Nazgul characters.
So Gandalf has kind of figured out that this ring is the one ring.com.
Thanks, James Flux.
He's got to get out of the shire.
Get out of the shire, but they're trying to do this.
They don't do this in the movies.
They're trying to do this kind of secret thing where they're pretending that Frodo is moving.
Yeah, trying to get to a house in Crick Hollow where Mary is waiting.
He's got the house ready for him.
So everybody except Frodo and Sam are in on this thing.
Like, oh, Frodo is going to Crick Hollow, and this is where he's going to live now by Brandy Hall and the Brandybuck people.
So Frodo and Sam know.
Frodo and Sam.
trying to get to Rivendell but nobody else even knows that which is probably pretty smart because the Nazgul are asking all around and you know the way that hobbits all talk if they had let that slip even to the little group of friends yeah you know that would have been yeah yeah yeah you know that would have been gone So, okay, so last chapter, they were running from the Nazgul.
Actually, one of the Ring Wraiths comes floating in over the ground, like crawling along the ground, sniffing at them, and gets really close.
And when the elves show up and kind of save them from that, and he runs away.
So then they hang out with Gildor.
They have a big old party in the woods, eat a bunch of food, wake up in the morning feeling refreshed.
That's where this chapter kicks off.
So what jumped out at you guys in this one?
What did you guys like in this chapter?
Well, I like how right away the chapter starts, and Pippin and Frodo immediately are like just bickering and bantering with each other.
Frodo wakes up and Pippin is already saying, well, I would have eaten your breakfast, but Sam insisted that I leave you some.
And then as they go throughout the chapter, they're kind of bickering about which way to go.
Pippin wants to go up to stock where the golden perch is so he can get some of that ale.
And he's complaining to Frodo, like, you know, Frodo wants to stay off the road, cut through the country.
And he's like, well, it's all bogs and ditches, and it takes us away from, I think he says something like, shortcuts make long delays.
And then he says something about how good the ale is at the golden perch.
And Frodo's like, well, that settles it.
Shortcuts make long delays, but the Golden Perch would make a longer delay.
So we're not doing that.
I love how they have this quest for the fate of the world.
And Pippin's chief concern is, how do I bend the path so we can get to the Golden Perch?
The Golden Perch.
This is so hobbitesque.
Hobbitonia.
Yeah.
Hobbitonia.
Hobbatonian.
Can we do that?
Hobbitonian.
Hobbatonia.
Sure.
The other thing that struck me right in the beginning was where Pippin says, you know, do you think Bush will see anything of the riders?
Asked Pippin cheerfully.
Under the morning sun, the prospect of seeing a whole troop of them did not seem very alarming to him.
I'm like, wow.
One night.
And he's like, eh, black riders, not that big of a deal.
Let's go to Golden Perch.
So right away they're able to get back into their own way of living and not worry about the grand things that are coming bearing down on them.
But yeah, Frodo's answers are so short.
Yes, probably.
Not much.
We didn't discuss it.
Yeah, Hobbits are so resilient just in their will, and their heart and their attitude.
Where they can always just kind of bounce back and they're like, ah, you know, let's get some beer.
I just love the line where he's, Frodo's talking to Pippin and he says, now leave me in peace for a bit.
I don't want to answer a string of questions while I'm eating.
I want to think.
And Pippin says, good heavens, at breakfast?
Yeah.
It's just so funny.
It's so very hobbitous.
And it reminds me, like, that idea of the hobbits loving the food and the breakfast.
And don't do it.
Just leave me alone with the food is at least in the movie.
They try to come out with a little bit of that with, you know, first breakfast, second breakfast, that sort of stuff.
They throw that in there.
But I just love that little zing.
How would you want to think at breakfast?
Just enjoy the food.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That comes up again later in the chapter where they're kind of in fear of the ring race again, the Nazgul, and they drink that flask of whatever the elves gave them.
And they kind of temporarily forget that they're being chased by these horrible, horrible creatures, and they just start singing in the wilderness there.
Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.
Just kind of interesting.
So Frodo says, I'm leaving the shire as soon as ever I can.
In fact, I have made up my mind now not even to wait a day at Crick Hollow if I can be helped.
Very good, sir.
You still mean to come with me?
I do.
It is going to be dangerous, Sam.
It is already dangerous.
Most likely, neither of us will come back.
If you don't come back, sir, then I shan't, that's certain, said Sam.
Don't you leave him, they said to me.
Leave him, I said.
I never mean to.
I'm going with him if he climbs to the moon.
And if any of those black riders try to stop him, they'll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with, I said.
They laughed.
Get you someone to look at you the way Sam looks at Frodo.
Yeah.
Get yourself a Sam and laugh.
This is very cool.
That's fantastic.
Well, also, when we get to Farmer Maggot, we'll see this.
But the Hobbits, they do have, I mean, they're afraid of the Black Riders, obviously, but when they are kind of at arm's length, they're a few miles away, they haven't seen them in a while, they really do buck up with the stout talk, and they're like, oh, yeah, the big talker.
I'll fight the Black Rider Riders, no problem.
Another interesting, right after Sam and Frodo are talking like that, they asked each other about the elves, or Frodo asks them about the elves.
Do you like them still now that you've had a closer view?
And he says, they're quite different from what I expected.
So old and so young and so gay and sad, as it were.
And I've been going through the Silmarillion again, and one of the things that Tolkien talks about is that death is the gift of men, right?
That death is a release.
And so when he says this, it kind of harkens back to the whole idea that they're old, but they look young, but they're old because the weariness of life is always on them, and they're thousands of years old, essentially.
And so even Sam can see that there's something different about the elves that gives them this gravity that's almost, like, not, the glory of the elves was diminished a little bit because they're old and they're sad.
But he still remembers it.
And so it calls back to that, that the gift of men is death.
And that becoming old is not necessarily a good thing.
Yeah, when I was younger and I read it and I read the gift of men is death, I'm like, that sucks.
Elves get immortality and shiny blonde hair and all this stuff.
And then the men, they're like, death.
Goodbye.
But as I get older, I'm like, I see that as being a gift.
Is the shiny blonde hair a Jacksonian thing?
Or does it actually say in Tolkien?
I don't remember if they're all blonde, though.
No, they're not.
Yeah, there are.
There are.
I'm just making sure because we got some hate mail about this.
Well, we'll get to this as a subscriber.
There is, in particular, there's a guy called the Dark Elf, Eel, who's this, anyway, but he has black hair, but very fair skin.
Yeah, so different colors.
I don't know if there's a particular...
All elves look this way.
Yeah.
Well, in the Hobbit, they look like Keebler Elms.
I guess it depends on what you're reading.
Sam says that the elves seem to be a bit above my likes and dislikes, which is an interesting thing, that they're kind of just this, like, immortal thing, they're not, it doesn't really matter what you think of them, you know.
Yeah, just somewhere in between.
Yeah.
Frodo asks him if he feels the leave to need, feel the need to leave the shire now that he's already gotten his one wish.
And he says, yes, sir, I don't know how to say it, but after last night, I feel different.
I seem to see ahead in a kind of way.
I know we are going to take a very long road into darkness, but I know I can't turn back.
It isn't to see elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains that I want.
I don't rightly know what I want, but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the shire.
I must see it through, sir, if you understand me.
I think that harkens back to the line that Gildor said to Frodo in the previous chapter where he says, the wide world is all about you.
You can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.
And I think Sam is no longer fenced in.
The world has opened up to him and now something greater is approaching him.
And he doesn't know what it is, but he feels it.
Yeah.
He got woke.
He got woke to the struggle of Middle-earth.
Kyle.
You can't take me anywhere, huh?
We have a cool guest come in, and you're going to be a little bit more.
Yeah, this is what you do.
I can't stop.
There's a lot of walking.
There's more walking.
There's some more walking.
Okay, so one of the things that through the previous chapters that I've been noticing as I read through it again and every time I see it is there's a lot of anthropomorphization of the world around them, particularly the forests and things like that.
And where we're going to go is like the old man willow and the ants and things like that.
But we hear words like in this chapter, they had packs to carry in the bushes and brambles.
We're reluctant to let them through.
There's a lot of whispering, a lot of sighing.
So it's almost like, I would guess, I mean, Tolkien, I'm sure, intended it, but there's a lot of the, like, they're living things.
Like, these aren't, these aren't just, you know, it's not still life to be looked at, but things are affecting you there even.
And those words, I think, lead us into believing that the world is living and that something like Old Man Willow could actually be there.
Yeah, he's building up to it, where I think in the earlier chapters they were talking about rumors of trees that move and they didn't really know it was just out there somewhere.
And now the forest is kind of conspiring against them in some way.
Yeah, like even in the previous chapter of his company, the West Wind was sighing in the branches, leaves were whispering, which is a good way of saying that you hear the shh of the leaves, but leaves are whispering says a little bit more than just the sound that they make.
Yeah.
They're talking to each other.
Yeah, so they're trying to...
So is this where they drink the elven thing when they start seeing this?
Yeah.
Yeah, they get the flasks out and they find out that the elves have put something in there, like a clear, fresh-smelling, here it is, a clear drink, pale golden in color, had the scent of honey made of many flowers and was wonderfully refreshing.
And then soon they were laughing, snapping their fingers at rain and at Black Riders.
Yeah, so the last few miles they felt soon to be broken.
I mean, this was like a single malt elven something or another.
So the song, are we singing the song?
I don't know how.
I don't know.
Ho, ho, ho, to the bottle I go to heal my heart and drown my woe.
Rain may fall and wind may blow.
The many miles be still to go.
But under a tall tree I will lie and let the clouds go sailing by.
Yeah.
Well done.
But like I love how they're being chased by like these evil, malevolent, invisible things that are crawling on the ground smelling for them.
And then they just start breaking out into a big song for the shanties or whatever.
Is that a mean?
But of course, as soon as they do that, what do they hear?
They hear right after that.
Yeah, ho, ho, ho, they began again louder, and then they suddenly stopped.
Frodo sprang to his feet and a long drawn wail came down the wind like the cry of some evil and lonely creature.
It rose and fell and ended on a high piercing note.
Even as they sat and stood as if suddenly frozen, it was answered by another cry, fainter and further off, but no less chilling to the blood.
There was then a silence broken only by the sound of the wind and leaves.
That's pretty creepy.
That's creepy.
And I will say, like, that sound that they did in the films was pretty good.
The screeching.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which, by the way, was Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson's partner, who made that scream on, which is interesting.
But yeah, clearly they knew something about that.
And then Frodo, right after he hears that, he says, it was a call or a signal.
There were words in that cry, though I could not catch them.
And that makes me think of either the black speech, right?
Which is the Ashnaz.
And so it was not just a screech.
There was something to it that was more than a screech.
So then they keep walking.
They kind of come out of the woods and now they're out in the open.
They're out in the clearing.
And then they start coming to lands that are a little more orderly.
Yeah.
So they get off course.
So they're trying to go up towards Buckleberry Ferry.
And then they come out and they realize that they had gone too far to the south.
And they see that it's off.
Yeah.
We'll put a map up.
Yeah, we'll put a map.
they get a little lost as one does walking in the woods and being chased by yeah Now it's cool.
So now we meet Farmer Maggot.
Or at least we get to their land.
Which is a really unfortunate name when you think about it.
Yeah.
They've got Baggins, got Brandybuck, but then you gotta get Maggot.
People have been criticizing.
I'm not even the name I'd want to have on my boxes of goods.
People have been criticizing our pronunciation of names and words and tolkins.
So maybe it's like Mago or Farmer Maggot farms.
The Mago.
Magot's fine wines, mushrooms.
So they come to Farmer Mago, Maggot, and they run into him in the lane.
And then he six the dogs out because his alarm's already been raised earlier in the day.
And then he finds out, oh, it's you.
Like Pippin announces himself and the dogs are snarling at Frodo.
So Frodo's terrified because he's been here before when he lived at Brandy Hall.
And he had trespassed on the farmer's land to steal mushrooms before.
And I think we find out that the farmer had beaten him up and told him, hey, don't steal from me.
And if you do, if you come back, I'll send the dogs after you.
And then he let the dogs loose and had them chase after Frodo.
So I think that there's a line in there where it's really funny where it's like they're terrified.
They're running from the black riders and they get to this place and Frodo's terrified even more because he's at Farmer Maggot's house.
He's like, oh no.
So who let the dogs out?
I don't know where to go from there.
No, we know.
Farmer Maggot.
Farmer Mago.
Farmer Mago.
Oh, man.
So Pippin gets along great with this guy.
They start talking to him and they find out like, well, somebody was asking for Mr. Baggins.
And I told him, you better go to Hobbiton because there's no Baggins around here, right?
Yeah, so he's telling them there's strange things going on.
I'm being real careful because there's weird people wandering around.
And he brings them in.
And then he also serves them beer.
Yeah.
And it says it almost made up for not getting to the Golden Spring.
The Mago brewery.
Mago micro brewery or something.
So the interesting part about that discourse, so like number one, like the farmer, he was offended more than anything that the black rider crossed his land.
He's like, what are you doing crossing my land?
Get out, go on the road this time.
And then he starts asking for baggins and he's not helping him out.
Well, and his dogs, or a grip at least, one of his dogs, took a sniff and let out a yelp as he'd been stung and put down his tail and bolted off howling.
Yeah.
Which, if that were my dog, and I knew my dog would be sick on people, then I would have some second thoughts about talking to this guy.
So they go inside, they go inside, and doesn't he relate to Frodo like he was asking for you and he said he'd give me a bunch of gold if you promised him gold, yeah.
Yeah, if he comes this way, I'll come back with some gold if you help me out.
And Maggot says, no, you won't.
We're back where you belong.
Double quick.
I give you one minute before I call all my dogs that went running off after sniffing you.
Yeah.
I love how brave the farmer is in that interaction.
He's just like, get out of here.
Yeah.
So the ringwraith gives a hiss.
He says, it might have been laughing and it might not.
And then he just rides off and almost runs over Farmer Maggot.
And then the takeaway that Farmer Maggot has from this to Frodo is like, you should never have gone mixing yourself up with Hobbiton folk.
It's like, something about the people in Hobbiton.
How about this black rider?
What happens when you mess with people on the south side of the tracks, you know?
Yeah, he starts like kind of speculating like, oh, you mixed yourself up with Bilbo and he got his treasure in some kind of foul way that no good can come from it.
And Frodo, like, he's like, yeah, you're onto something there, but I don't want to tell you what.
Yeah, he's like, he's shocked at how close he guesses everything is.
Right.
So something about like this rural farmer that's just like very much wise and kind of, he kind of knows, he's street smart.
Yeah, I like how the hobbits don't really know.
The hobbits don't really know what the gravity it is of what they're dealing with and how powerful these things are that they're dealing with.
Yeah.
You know, they just see someone's on my land.
Someone's messing with another hobbit.
Someone's coming through the shire, you know.
Yeah.
And then they just get this like stoutheartedness.
Like he says, you'll have friends in these parts.
If any of these black fellows come after you again, I'll deal with them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's what he goes back.
That's what Gandalf sees in them that they don't see in themselves.
And I love the way that, you know, Tolkien never tells us any of this.
He shows it to us the entire book through.
It's the right way to write.
He never says, oh, Hobbits are very brave when it comes to protecting their land.
He shows it.
He shows it to us.
And we believe it.
And that's why, at the end, you believe that they're able to get to Mount Doom.
Yeah.
And the only ones who would have been able to make it to Mount Doom.
So he kind of convinces them to stay for dinner.
Because Frodo, when he hears all this about the black rider, he's like, oh, we got to go.
We got to go right now.
And he's like, well, why don't you stay?
And then when it's dark, I'll just take you for a ride on my wagon to the ferry.
So they kind of go, oh, that makes more sense.
And then they stay.
They get some nice mushrooms and bacon and ale.
So the, yeah, so we want to talk about the comparison to the films.
This part's very condensed.
It's like one quick scene.
And they just run through Farmer Maggot's land.
And he's chasing them.
you see the big bobbing scythe over the bouncing scythe and they're like oh no we're on farmer maggots land And they run and fall down the hill and then they land on Mary and Pippin.
Because I think it was just Frodo.
They're running on each other.
No, they bump into each other in like the cornfield.
Oh, yeah.
And then they all run.
They see the scythe.
And they're like, you've been into Maggot's crop again.
And then they run, they fall over, and then they land.
They roll down.
And then they even reference the title of this chapter.
Yeah.
Because they like land on mushrooms.
And they go, oh, it's a shortcut to mushroom.
But that's not what it is.
Winking an eye.
That's not the same kind of shortcut to mushrooms.
No, not at all.
But you were talking about how he gives them mushrooms, right?
Yeah, so he rides them to the ferry.
They get there.
They meet Mary.
Well, there's like a kind of like a suspense.
You're like, who is that?
You see the rider coming in the mist.
Farmer Maggot is driving them in the wagon and they see this rider come through the mist.
Crawling over the fields, which harkens back almost to the crawling.
Even that word.
The mist was crawling over the fields is kind of excited.
Yeah, and so Mary comes and they're like, oh, it's another black rider, you know.
They give one of those who goes there type addresses to him.
And he reveals himself to be.
Oh, and actually he says a line that makes it sound like he's a black rider, doesn't he?
He says, like, I'm looking for Baggins.
I want Mr. Baggins.
Yeah.
And they're like, oh, no, it's what.
So he's in a mushroom.
He's screwing with them.
Yeah.
Well, I like the whole scene of this, the whole setup of this, is that they're riding in the mist.
They don't have the lanterns on.
They're just kind of like in stealth.
Yeah, how creepy is that?
That's awesome.
And they see this rider come out.
And it turns out to be Mary Brandybook.
I just wondered in reading this, like, how long has Mary been waiting?
He does mention, doesn't he mention, but does he know they're coming on that day?
So I guess how long, how long is from, how long do we know?
And I don't know.
I've never really thought about it or looked into it.
Is from Hobbiton to here, how much time is that?
Do we know it all?
Yeah, I mean, because how many nights have they slept?
You know, we're talking a matter of days.
Right.
So I guess Mary would know around this time.
Yeah, they left on this day.
It's going to be about three days or whatever it was.
Because they had to sleep the first night when he slept on the root on his back.
And then the second night was Gildor, I think.
Was it?
I think so.
This would be the third night.
I was like, I'm going to leave it to me for some reason.
So it's three nights, I think.
Okay.
Okay.
And then the night there, yeah.
And so it is the fourth day.
Or the third night, actually.
Yeah.
Because they actually leave at night.
They're just like leave.
And they start walking.
The first sleep is like right away after they leave.
And so he comes and he turns around and he says to them, oh, I was Matt Maggot, Farmer Mago says, I was nearly forgetting.
Mrs. Maggott put this up for Mr. Baggins with her compliments and he handed down, handed a basket down, moved off, followed by a chorus of thanks and inside the basket.
Mushrooms.
I kind of like that reconciliation between Frodo and because he's like so fearful of him and then when he gets like they're friends now.
Yeah.
And then, oh, yeah, you stole mushrooms from me.
Here's mushrooms as a gift.
Like, just like now they're.
Well, it's almost like it's almost like Bilbo's gifts.
Yeah, kind of like the like, yeah.
You never write me letters.
Here's a pen.
Yeah.
Like, oh, you want to steal my spoons?
Here's some spoons.
And he's like, oh, you're going to take mushrooms?
Mushrooms.
Just throw some mushrooms at him.
So.
Which I've never understood.
A gift of mushrooms wouldn't mean that much to me personally.
They like mushrooms, I guess.
Some people really do.
Puppets are so into cooking.
It's probably something that's big for them.
I don't know.
Simple things in life.
It's little things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this chapter is a little bit of a setup chapter.
We're getting somewhere.
We're, you know, and this is how Tolkien writes is these traveling montages punctuated by action and then finally kind of climaxing, giving away to a period of rest.
And so right here we have right here we have a section that, I mean, it's still a little bit of a suspenseful chase sequence.
We still have the screeches of these things and you're in the midst and you're hearing screeches all around and it's like, and then Mary comes up and it's like, ah, I mean, that's still pretty action-packed.
We are getting, you know, kind of to the next big thing, which is where we should ever get to breathe.
And so that's kind of what we're building towards here.
And Tom Bombadil.
Sorry to old Tom.
I forgot about the most important thing.
So next week, we're going to actually read two chapters.
So this coming week, if you guys want to read A Conspiracy Unmasked and The Old Forest, and that will get us right up to Tom Bombadil and then we'll have our Tom Bombadil bonanza blowout.
The Tom Bombadil is awesome show.
Yeah.
The Tom Bombadil is.
We will convince everybody.
All of our haters.
We will convince all of you.
All of our haters and losers, of which there are many, that Tom Bombadil is the best.
Essential.
Essential to the book.
That's right.
Yeah.
So, yeah, so read Conspiracy Unmasked and then read The Old Forest for next time.
Great.
Sounds good.
All right.
Thanks for being with us, John.
Yeah, we're going to move into our subscriber pub.
What do we call it?
The Lord of the Babylon B, Lord of the Rings.
In and pub.
We're going to answer some fan mail, some mail from haters and losers.
And we actually got hate mail this week.
And we're going to build on, we're going to do some more discussions.
So subscribe if you want and join us here.
All right, everybody.
All right.
Thank you.
Enjoy the reading this week.
Coming up next for Babylon B subscribers.
Okay, so she says that we are falling into the Peter Jacksonification of Little Earth.
That's fighting words.
He's described almost completely differently in the book than in the movie, which is like he actually looks like a tree, like a walking tree.
I don't know how I never made that connection.
Yeah, how could you do that?
It brings it all to life.
It gives me rest from this crazy world.
I totally agree.
This is what, like, to me, reading Lord of the Rings is a different experience than reading any other books.
I'm going to a place.
Kyle and Dan would like to thank Seth and Dan Dylan for buying us cool swords and paying the bills.
Adam Ford for creating our jobs.
Ethan Nicole for creative direction.
And all the writers at the Babylon B. Matthew McDavid for guiding studio operations.
Patrick Green for show production.
Kecklin Petty for Laughtracks.
the Babylon Bee subscribers who make what we do possible.
And you, the listener.
Until next time, this is Austin Robertson.
The voice of the Babylon Bee reads, The Lord of the Rings.
Reminding you that we swears to serve the Master of the Precious.