Bert, Tom and William

Three trolls come down from the hills

The three trolls had come down out of the mountains, most likely from the Ettenmoors to the north, into the wooded hills between the Hoarwell and the Loudwater that came to be called the Trollshaws on their account. They were stone-trolls, huge and thick-witted, with a taste for mutton and for men, and they had been raiding the district for some time, emptying the farms, so that by the time Thorin's company came up the road there was no living traveller on it. They spoke a rough country Westron, quarrelled constantly, and were known to one another as Bert, Tom and William, or Bill, whose surname was Huggins.

The burglar's first job

In the spring of T.A. 2941 the company saw a fire in the trees and sent Bilbo, as their burglar, to investigate. He found the three trolls roasting mutton and complaining about it, and decided that a proper burglar would pick a pocket. He took William's purse, and the purse spoke, and William had him by the neck before he could run. Bert and William fought over him and dropped him, and Bilbo crawled into the dark, but the Dwarves came looking one at a time, and the trolls seized each as he arrived and put him in a sack. Only Thorin put up a fight, and he was sacked with the rest.

The argument

The trolls fell to arguing about how to cook thirteen Dwarves and a hobbit, and the argument went on far longer than it should have, because a voice like one of their own kept interrupting. Gandalf, who had gone ahead to scout and come back at the right moment, stood hidden in the trees and imitated each troll in turn, setting them at one another's throats until Bert and William had fought and Tom had been bitten. When they had finally settled the matter the sky had gone grey. The wizard stepped out and said so, and the dawn came up over the hill and the trolls stood where they were, turned to stone in the middle of a quarrel: one bending, one stooping, one standing, as Frodo's company found them still, moss-grown and bird-nested, seventy-seven years later.

The hoard

With the key from William's pocket the company opened the trolls' cave. It held bones, stolen food, pots of gold, and weapons out of some far older plunder: two great runed swords, which proved to be Glamdring and Orcrist of Gondolin, and a small blade that Bilbo took and later named Sting. The gold they buried by the road and recovered on the way home. Gandalf's sword went on to kill the Great Goblin and Bilbo's to cut Shelob's webs, so that none of the trolls' victims served the Free Peoples so well as their own cave.

Legacy

Bert, Tom and William were the only trolls in the histories with names and conversation, and the only ones beaten by a wizard's wit rather than a sword. Their stone figures became a landmark of the East Road, and it was in their clearing that Sam recited his rhyme about a troll and a shin-bone on the last stretch to Rivendell.

Turned to stone by the rising sun in the Trollshaws in the spring of T.A. 2941, and still standing there when Frodo passed in T.A. 3018.