Bree (Middle-earth)

Bree is a fictional village in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, east of the Shire. Bree-land, which contains Bree and a few other villages, is the only place where Hobbits and Men lived side by side. It was inspired by the name of the Buckinghamshire village of Brill, meaning "hill-hill", which Tolkien visited regularly in his early years at the University of Oxford, and informed by his passion for linguistics.

In Bree is The Prancing Pony inn, where the wizard Gandalf meets the Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, setting off the quest to Erebor described in The Hobbit, and where Frodo Baggins puts on the One Ring, attracting the attention of the Dark Lord Sauron's spies and an attack by the Black Riders.

Scholars have stated that Tolkien chose the placenames of Bree-land carefully, incorporating Celtic elements into the names to indicate that Bree was older than the Shire, whose placenames are English with Old English elements. Others have commented that Bree functions as a place of transition from the comfort and safety of home to the dangers of the journey that lies ahead.

'Well, Master Underhill', said Strider, 'if I were you, I should stop your young friends from talking too much. Drink, fire, and chance-meeting are pleasant enough, but, well – this isn't the Shire. There are queer folk about. Though I say it as shouldn't, you may think', he added with a wry smile, seeing Frodo's glance. 'And there have been even stranger travellers through Bree lately', he went on, watching Frodo's face.

Bree was the starting point for the Fallohide brothers and leaders, Marcho and Blanco, when they travelled west in the year 1601 of the Third Age. They led their Hobbits across the river Baranduin and took the land there to found the Shire.

Two important events leading up to the War of the Ring take place at The Prancing Pony. The first is "a chance-meeting" of the Wizard Gandalf and the exiled Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield; this meeting leads to the destruction of Smaug. The second occurs during the journey of Frodo Baggins to Rivendell, when he and his companions stay at The Prancing Pony for a night. After singing The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late, Frodo accidentally slips the One Ring on his finger, and becomes invisible. The minor villain Bill Ferny and a squint-eyed "Southerner", a person from some land far to the south, see him vanish, and inform the Black Riders, who attack the inn. Aragorn saves him and leads the party away, after the innkeeper Barliman Butterbur delivers a letter from Gandalf which he had forgotten to deliver months earlier.

Bree is an ancient settlement of men in Eriador, some 40 miles (64 km) east of the Shire. After the collapse of the kingdom of Arnor, Bree continued to thrive without any central authority for many centuries. As Bree lies at the meeting of two large roadways, the Great East Road and the long disused Greenway or Great North Road, it has for centuries been a centre of trade and a stopping place for travellers. When Arnor in the north waned, Bree's prosperity and size declined. Pipe-weed flourishes on the south-facing side of Bree-hill, and the Hobbits of Bree claim to have been the first to smoke it; travellers on the road including Dwarves, Rangers, and Wizards took up the habit when they visited the village on their journeys. Directly west of Bree are the Barrow-downs and the Old Forest. Bree is the chief village of Bree-land, and the only place in Middle-earth where men and hobbits live side by side. The hobbit community is older than that of the Shire, which was originally colonized from Bree. By the time of The Lord of the Rings, Bree is the westernmost settlement of men in Middle-earth, and there is no other settlement of men within a hundred leagues of the Shire. Tom Bombadil knows of Bree, saying in his metrical speech "four miles along the road / you'll come upon a village, / Bree under Bree-hill, / with doors looking westward."

Tolkien wrote of two different origins for the people of Bree. One was that Bree had been founded and populated by men of the Edain who did not reach Beleriand in the First Age, remaining east of the mountains in Eriador. The other was that they came from the same stock as the Dunlendings.