a book question

[illyria_novia]

I'm 50% positive that I've read somewhere in the book that the hobbits once took a bath and washed their clothes while they were on the road, either pre- or post-Rivendell, but I can't for the life of me find in which body of water they did it. I read the Ithilien chapter twice and found no reference to bathing and clothes-washing, so, please, can

Comments

[lame_pegasus]

Chapter Of Herbs and stewed Rabbit:

... it lay in the broken ruins o a stone basin, the carven rim of which was almost wholly covered with mosses and rose-brambles; iris-swords stood in ranks about it, and water-lily leaves floated on its dark, gently-ripping surface; but it was deep and fresh, and spilled ever softly over a stony lip at the far end.
Here they washed themselves and drank their fill at the in-falling freshet...

rabidsamfan has written a beautiful drabble about this scene, A Noble Thing, here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/rabidsamfan/65093.html

[maewyn_2]

I just checked my book (Harper Collins 2001 edition - three books in one). This passage is on page 637 (at the top of the fourth page of the above-mentioned chapter).

[illyria_novia]

I read exactly this and it only made me wonder why there is no clothes washing involved. *scratches head*

[illyria_novia]

That's what I'm afraid of, the inability to tell canon from fanfiction anymore. Anyway, it's exactly because I have a Sam, Frodo and bath soap fic in the burner now that I need to make sure where the bath scene actually takes place.

[ghyste]

UT has a reference to Frodo "being bathed" in the Silverlode (I wonder why that stuck in my memory?) but no clothes washing.

[b_briarwood]

Yep, Tolkien did. In "Of Herbs And Stewed Rabbit".

The line belegcuthalion references, then further on there's:

Besides, at the end of a long night-march, and after bathing and drinking,he fely even more hungry than usual.

[mechtild]

In the Lothlorien chapter, after Moria, the company stops near the Silverlode to rest, Aragorn having remembered the hobbits'wounds. Gimli heats water and Aragorn bathes Sam and Frodo's wounds. This is when they all see that Frodo is wearing the mithril corselet. Further on they cross Nimrodel into Lorien. It was in the fording of Nimrodel that Frodo felt the cold water washing over his tired feet to his knees, as if it had washed "the stain of travel and all weariness" from him.

In my three volume hardcover set, these passages are on p. 350 and 353 respectively.