the account of his Journey that he was writing.
     His sword, Sting, Bilbo hung over his fireplace, and his coat of
marvellous mail, the gift of the Dwarves from the Dragon-hoard, he
lent to a museum, to the Michel Delving Mathom-house in fact. But he
kept in a drawer at Bag End the old cloak and hood that he had worn on
his travels; and the ring, secured by a fine chain, remained in his
pocket.
     He returned to his home at Bag End on June the 22nd in his
fifty-second year (S.R. 1342), and nothing very notable occurred in
the Shire until Mr. Baggins began the preparations for the celebration
of his hundred-and-eleventh birthday (S.R. 1401). At this point this
History begins.
     NOTE ON THE SHIRE RECORDS
     At the end of the Third Age the part played by the Hobbits in the
great events that led to the inclusion of the Shire in the Reunited
Kingdom awakened among them a more widespread interest in their own
history; and many of their traditions, up to that time still mainly
oral, were collected and Written down. The greater families were also
concerned with events in the Kingdom at large, and many of their
members studied its ancient histories and legends. By the end of the