Bucca of the Marish

After the fall of the king

For nearly four centuries after Marcho and Blanco crossed the Brandywine the hobbits of the Shire lived as subjects of the kings of Arthedain at Fornost, owing little more than the upkeep of the roads. In T.A. 1974 the Witch-king of Angmar overran Arthedain, Fornost fell, and Arvedui, the last king, was lost in the ice of the far north the following year. The Shire's own tradition held that it had sent a company of archers to the king's aid, though the histories of Men do not record them. Whatever the truth of that, the hobbits found themselves without any lord at all.

The first Thain

In T.A. 1979 (S.R. 379) they chose one of their own to hold the king's authority until he should return. This was Bucca, a hobbit of the Marish, the wet, fertile country of the Eastfarthing along the river, where the Stoorish strain of the Shire-folk was strong. The office he took was called the Thainship. The Thain was master of the Shire-moot, captain of the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms, and in theory the holder of whatever powers the king had once exercised, though in practice, since the Shire hardly ever needed mustering, the position soon became a dignity more than a duty. Bucca's descendants took the family name Oldbuck, and the Thainship passed down through them for twelve generations.

The Oldbucks and the Brandybucks

The line of Bucca ended its tenure in T.A. 2340, when Gorhendad Oldbuck, the twelfth Oldbuck Thain, crossed the Brandywine with his family and settled the strip of land between the river and the Old Forest. He renamed himself Brandybuck, built Brandy Hall, and became the first Master of Buckland. The Thainship went to Isumbras Took, and the Tooks kept it thereafter; but the Masters of Buckland, of whom Meriadoc was the most famous, were Bucca's heirs. Nothing personal is recorded of Bucca himself: neither his birth, his death nor his deeds. His name, an old word for a male animal, survives in Buckland and in the Brandybucks, and his election is the moment the Shire began to govern itself.

Unrecorded; his descendants the Oldbucks held the Thainship until T.A. 2340.