Timeline Event
Drogo and Primula Baggins die boating on the Brandywine
Event Type: Genealogical
Age: 3rd Age - The Stewards
Year: 2980
Description:
'But what about this Frodo...?' asked Old Noakes of Bywater. 'Baggins is his name, but he's more than half a Brandybuck, they say. It beats me why any Baggins of Hobbiton should go looking for a wife away there in Buckland, where folks are so queer.'
'And no wonder they're queer,' put in Daddy Twofoot..., 'if they live on the wrong side of the Brandywine River, and right agin the Old Forest....'
'You're right, Dad!' said the Gaffer. 'Not that the Brandybucks of Buckland live in the Old Forest; but they're a queer breed, seemingly. They fool about with boats on that big river — and that isn't natural. Small wonder that trouble came of it, I say. But be that as it may, Mr. Frodo is as nice a young hobbit as you could wish to meet.... After all his father was a Baggins. A decent respectable hobbit was Mr. Drogo Baggins; there was never much to tell of him, till he was drownded.'
'Drownded?' said several voices. They had heard this and other darker rumours before, of course; but hobbits have a passion for family history.... 'Well, so they say,' said the Gaffer. 'You see: Mr. Drogo, he married poor Miss Primula Brandybuck.... And Mr. Drogo was staying at Brandy Hall with his father-in-law, old Master Gorbadoc, as he often did after his marriage (him being partial to his vittles, and old Gorbadoc keeping a mighty generous table); and he went out boating on the Brandywine River; and he and his wife were drownded, and poor Mr. Frodo only a child and all.'
'I've heard they went on the water after dinner in the moonlight,' said Old Noakes; 'and it was Drogo's weight as sunk the boat.'
'And I heard she pushed him in, and he pulled her in after him,' said Sandyman, the Hobbiton miller.
'You shouldn't listen to all you hear, Sandyman,' said the Gaffer, who did not much like the miller. 'There isn't no call to go talking of pushing and pulling. Boats are quite tricky enough for those that sit still without looking further for the cause of trouble. Anyway: there was this Mr. Frodo left an orphan and stranded... among those queer Bucklanders....'
The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 1, A Long-expected Party
Notes
The date of this event is drawn from the family trees for Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck, where the death dates are listed as 1380 in the Shire-reckoning.
The Return of the King, LoTR Appendix C, Family Trees
Contributors:
Elena Tiriel 20Jul07