Fredegar Bolger

A conspirator who stayed home

Fredegar was born in T.A. 2980 (S.R. 1380), the son of Odovacar Bolger of Budgeford in Bridgefields and Rosamunda Took, and so a cousin of Pippin and Merry. He was stout, comfortable and fond of the Shire, and although he joined Merry's conspiracy to help Frodo leave, he had no wish whatever to go with him. He and Merry set up the house at Crickhollow in Buckland and had it ready when Frodo arrived on 25 September 3018, and Fredegar's part was to stay there, wear Frodo's clothes, and keep up the pretence that Mr Baggins had settled in. He thought the Old Forest a worse prospect than any Black Rider.

The Horn-call of Buckland

He was wrong about that. On the night of 29 September three of the Nine came to Crickhollow and broke down the door, and Fredegar fled out of the back, ran a mile to the nearest house, and gasped out that the Riders were in Buckland. The horns went up along the Hedge, the Horn-call that had not been sounded since the Fell Winter, and the Riders rode off through the North-gate with the whole of Buckland roused behind them. It was the first open alarm the Shire had raised against the Enemy in a thousand years, and Fatty Bolger raised it.

The rebel of Scary

During the year of Lotho's rule and Saruman's, Fredegar did not stay quiet. He gathered a band of hobbits in the Brockenbores, the old workings in the hills of Scary in the Eastfarthing, and held out there against the ruffians until they smoked the band out and dragged him to the Lockholes. When Frodo and his friends opened the tunnels at Michel Delving after the Battle of Bywater they found him half-starved and no longer fat enough for his nickname, though Pippin was pleased to hear him joke about it. His sister Estella married Merry.

Released from the Lockholes in November T.A. 3019; his later life is unrecorded.