A Tribute to Bill the Pony
by Auntkimby
I II
A Tribute to Bill
After the death of Bill the Pony, Sam’s children seek to comfort their
father and honor Bill’s memory.
Part I: The Passing
S.R. 1439
Samwise Gamgee knew that his beloved pony Bill was now very old. His
friend Merry Brandybuck, who knew ponies well, estimated that Bill had
been ten years old when they bought him in Bree (ill use and
underfeeding had made him seem older), and so Bill would be a little
past thirty now. For fifteen of the eighteen years that Sam had been
master of Bag End, Bill the pony had been his faithful mount, but now
that Bill’s back and legs were too weak and rheumatic to support his
weight, only the smallest Gamgee children could climb upon Bill’s back.
Sam was pleased with his new pony, a lovely little chestnut named Star
that had been a gift from Merry Brandybuck for Sam’s daily ride to
Michel Delving. Nevertheless, it nearly broke Sam’s heart to hear Bill
whinny plaintively when he saw Sam saddle his rival’s back each
morning, and Sam tried to make it up to his old friend with extra
treats and currying him twice a day. “I’m sorry, Bill me dear, I truly
am, but it would be no kindness for me to force you to carry me, as
I’ve gained more than I care to think since we first met in Bree. I’ll
make it up to you best I can though, and give you first pick of the
apples and sugar, though I know that’s not much comfort to you right
now, poor old thing.” He would stroke Bill’s muzzle, now white with age
but still soft as down, and Bill would whinny softly in response and
nip Sam’s sleeve.
Bill was a clever old fellow; he had long ago learned how to nudge the
latch on his stall and slip out of the stable if one of Sam’s children
forgot to close the big double doors once he or she had fed Bill and
Star and Rosie’s pony Blossom. More than once, Sam had been wakened on
a summer morning by Bill stretching his nose through the open window of
the Best Bedroom and nuzzling his master’s neck, Sam’s side of the bed
being right underneath the sill. Rosie had caught him in her vegetable
garden more times than she could count and even once Bill had gotten
out and wandered all the way to the Cotton farm and was placidly
munching grass when the panic-stricken family finally located him hours
later. However, such incidents grew increasingly fewer as Bill’s joints
grew stiffer and he found keeping to his warm stall much more agreeable
than adventuring. By the autumn Bill was sleeping most of his days
away, and Sam watched his old friend’s decline with growing anxiety and
dread. Bill had lived a long life, longer even than most ponies that
had always had excellent care, but that did not make the inevitable any
easier to bear for Sam. Every night after supper, he would go out to
the stable and sit with Bill for an hour or longer, talking to him and
petting him, wanting every moment with the loved animal that he could,
for he knew they were few. Rosie and the children knew how Sam loved
Bill, and they did not interrupt that time for any reason.
Finally the morning came that there was no answering whinny and stomp
of a hoof when Sam entered the stable and called Bill’s name. He ran to
Bill’s stall and saw the pony lying down in the straw, his food and
water from the night before untouched, and there was no sign of
breathing. Sam dropped to his knees with a breaking heart and pressed
his ear to Bill’s chest; there was no reassuring beat within. Elanor
was in the adjoining henhouse gathering the eggs when she heard her
father’s cry of grief, and tears filled her eyes as she guessed the
cause. She dropped her basket, ran into the stable, and wrapped her
arms around him, her golden head pressed to his back, as he sat upon
the stall floor and wept.
“We need to have a proper service for Bill,” Merry Gamgee declared a
few days later as he and his siblings lingered over elevenses. Rosie
had taken baby Robin with her to a neighbor’s after fixing the meal for
her other children, and Sam was attending his mayoral duties in Michel
Delving.
“What do you mean?” his brother Pippin asked. “Da buried Bill already,
and I don’t think folk usually have funerals for ponies.”
“Well, Bill wasn’t just a pony,” Merry countered. “Da loved him very
much, and we should do something special to comfort him. We all loved
Bill too.”
Elanor stopped little Ruby from throwing a spoon before she answered
softly, “I think that is a lovely idea, Merry-lad. What did you have in
mind?”
His siblings all looked at him expectantly, and the dark-haired lad
blushed. “Well, I’ve been thinking on it for a couple days now. I
thought maybe we could write a…a tribute to Bill, about all the things
he did, not only here for us but when he was with Da as part of the
Fellowship. We could have a poem or song or something, but we need to
make it extra special, for Bill and for Da.”
So with one accord, they put their heads together and began to make
plans.
A letter addressed in childish script arrived on Sam’s desk in his
office one morning three weeks later. He often received letters from
admiring Shire children, but this writing looked rather familiar. He
slit it open and withdrew a sheet of cream-colored stationery. The
message was obviously traced in ink over penciled letters, but tears of
wonder and delight filled Sam’s eyes as he read:
YOU ARE INVITED
TO A SPECIAL TRIBUTE
IN HONOR OF OUR LATE FRIEND
“BILL THE PONY”
THIS FRIDAY EVENING
AT 7 O’CLOCK
BAG END
HOBBITON
CORDIALLY YOURS,
THE GAMGEE CHILDREN
Rosie watched with moistened eyes and a trembling smile as her children
raced to make the final preparations for their tribute to Bill that
night. They had written to Merry Brandybuck and Peregrin Took when they
first began planning to invite them and their families, and also asked
if each of them would write a tribute to Bill if they were not able to
come deliver it themselves. A week later, letters arrived from Brandy
Hall and Great Smials accepting both the invitation and the request for
a tribute. Elanor, Rosie, Merry, Pippin, Goldilocks, Primrose, Daisy
and even little Hammie had been hard at work on their own offerings,
and refused any help from their mother to assist with any preparations
for their guests or the event itself. There was room enough at Bag End
to accommodate both families, and the children took care of cleaning
and preparing the guest rooms. The service would be held in the parlor,
which was large enough to accommodate everyone comfortably.
Sam was speechless when he arrived home at suppertime Friday evening
and saw Merry and Estella and Pippin and Diamond there to greet him
along with his own family. “Lor’, I-I didn’t know you were comin’!” he
stammered. “The children planned somethin’ special tonight an’ I…”
“I know, dear Sam, that’s why we’re here,” Pippin told him warmly.
“Your children wrote to us and asked if we would come, and we were glad
to oblige. We remember old Bill well, and we wanted to be here too.”
“I didn’t know Bill mattered so much to the young ones,” Sam said as he
wiped his eyes with his handkerchief.
“I’m sure he did, Sam, but they’re doing this for YOU,” Merry said
softly. “Come, I think Elanor and Rosie-lass’s dinner is getting cold.”
II. The Tribute: The Day the Fellowship Met Bill
Author’s Note: The children’s play act is not a perfect
recreation...obviously. LOL.
The tribute began promptly at seven o’clock.
The children had pulled one of the small sitting room tables to the
front of the room for the speaker to stand behind and draped it with a
green cloth, and Primrose had thoughtfully provided a pitcher of water
and a glass in case the speaker got a dry throat or a nervous cough.
There were also drawings of Bill on the walls and the table made by the
children over the years, including a whimsical one Frodo-lad had drawn
when he was twelve of his father sitting on Bill and Bill saying, “Oh,
my back hurts.” Each hobbit present received a shiny red apple and a
sugar cube, Bill’s favorite treats, distributed by Daisy while Bilbo
toddled after her holding the basket. This caused Sam to reach for his
handkerchief again while Rosie lovingly squeezed his arm.
Merry-lad, who was voted by his siblings to
open the occasion since it had been his idea, approached the front of
the room and cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlehobbits, on behalf
of my brothers and sisters I welcome you to this tribute to Bill the
Pony, and we are so glad you could be here...” In his nervousness he
wobbled slightly and jarred the table, causing the water-filled glass
to tumble onto the carpet. Elanor swiftly appeared with a hand towel to
mop it up, the glass was quickly refilled, and a red-faced Merry
continued his speech a moment later. “Anyway, um, we thought the best
way to begin this tribute would be to recreate the day in Bree when Da
and Mr. Frodo and Uncles Merry and Pippin met Bill. The parts of, ah,
Frodo, Merry and Pippin will be played by me and my brothers Frodo and
Pippin. We didn’t have a Sam so my brother Hamfast will play our Da,
and since the next brother in line is too little to learn any lines we
had to…” Merry’s voice trailed away as Daisy slipped in through the
parlor door and whispered urgently in his ear. Merry groaned and said,
“Hamfast needs a little, um, persuasion to come out of his room since
he’s a little nervous…talk among yourselves.” He hurried from the room,
and the amused adults could hear the anxious voices float down the
corridor: “Hammie, come on! You know your lines, you’ll do just fine!
Please, it’s only for a few minutes, and it will make Da so happy…”
Five minutes later, a slightly-puffy eyed
Hamfast entered the room with an older brother steering him on either
side, and the adults clapped. Merry-lad pulled a handkerchief from his
pocket and comically wiped his brow, and then said, “And now…The Day
That the Fellowship Met Bill.”
He retreated out into the corridor, and
after a whispered consultation, Frodo-lad, Merry, Pippin and Hammie
shuffled into the room looking very sad. Hammie shuffled a little too
much and caught his foot on the rug, nearly knocking Pippin down.
(“I think that did happen,” Pippin the elder whispered to his cousin.
“Except you did the tripping,” Merry whispered back.)
Merry-lad sighed loudly and said, “Now all
our ponies are gone! Those stupid Black Riders must have chased them
away. Not to mention my Da is going to be really angry at me when I get
home!” (Merry chuckled.)
“And I can’t believe there is not a single pony for sale in this whole
town,” Frodo-lad declared.
“Are we going to have to walk all the time now?” Pippin-lad whined.
(“I didn’t talk like that!” Adult Pippin said in mock protest. Both Sam
and Merry looked at him incredulously.)
Merry-lad cupped a hand to his ear as if
listening to someone speak, and then he said excitedly, “Wait, a man
named Bill Ferny has a pony for sale! Maybe he will sell it to us!”
“I hope I have enough money,” Frodo said.
Primrose, her hair pulled back tightly and
wearing one of her big brother's frock coats, trooped in through the
sitting room door, an angry scowl on her face and her lip sticking out
far enough to serve as a shelf. In a deepened voice she proclaimed,
“I’m Bill Ferny, and I don’t like you but you can look at my pony! I
want lots of money for him!”
“Oh, lor’,” Sam managed as he desperately
tried to restrain his laughter at the sight of his sweet little
daughter trying to portray the hideous Bill Ferny. The other adults
were doing the same.
A moment later, Daisy walked in dragging Bilbo’s toy wooden horse head
on a stick, the torn red bridle dragging the floor.
That did it. Merry and Pippin and Sam all
burst out laughing while their wives shook their heads, disapproving of
their husbands’ levity.
“That’s exactly what Bill looked like, too!” Pippin choked. “I still
remember the look on Frodo’s face.”
The children spoke loudly to override the
adults’ laughter. Frodo-lad said, “I paid good money for that? I don’t
think he’ll last outside the gates of Bree.”
They all looked at Hamfast then, who blushed
deeply and swallowed hard. He stepped forward and placed a hesitant
hand on the toy horse’s nose. “N-no, M-Mr. Frodo. I think there is good
stuff in this pony. I can take good care of him. I think I will name
him Bill.” He pretended to feed the “pony” an apple, and talked to it
as he had heard his father talking to Bill. “We shall be good friends,”
he said in his soft lilting voice. “Won’t we, Bill?” He stroked the
horse’s head and kissed it on the nose.
There was no laughter now. A single tear trickled down Sam’s cheek.
Frodo-lad cleared his throat. “Well, we’ve
spent enough time in this town, we need to be going. Come along, Merry,
Pippin and Sam.” They all trailed out of the room, Hammie bringing up
the rear and dragging “Bill” while “Bill Ferny” followed after them
calling out mildly nasty things. Hammie reached into his pocket and
gently lobbed an apple at his sister, who caught it, giggling, and took
a big bite of it as she followed her siblings out of the room. So all
the adults laughed again as the first part of the tribute concluded.
Merry-lad reappeared a moment later. “The
next tribute will be a joint recitation by Elanor and Rosie-lass
Gamgee, titled ‘A Pony Named Bill.’”
