The Scouring of the Shire

"The Scouring of the Shire" is the penultimate chapter of the epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and the eighteenth chapter of The Return of the King. The hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, return home to the Shire to find that it has been despoiled and corrupted by ruffians and their leader, the wizard Saruman, now known as Sharkey. To date, it has been left out of all film adaptations of the novel.

The author denied that the chapter was an allegory of the state of Britain during the aftermath of World War II. The chapter had been planned from the beginning and, instead, Tolkien drew on his childhood at the end of the 19th century:

The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman.

Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin come to the Brandywine Bridge, which is barred at both ends, late at night. They are taken in, after some convincing, by the group of hobbits who are supposed to be guarding the bridge. After setting off for Hobbiton the next morning the four hobbits are met by Shiriffs at Frogmorton and placed under 'arrest' for breaking a number of rules the night before. Unable to keep up with the hobbits on ponies, the Shiriffs give up and allow them to continue.

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