Editing Bag End (section)

=== Only one outlet ===

The Tolkien scholar [[Tom Shippey]] writes that the name Bag End is a direct translation of the French ''[[cul-de-sac]]'' ("bottom of [a] bag"), something that he calls "a silly phrase... a piece of 'French-oriented snobbery', used in England to mean a dead end, a road with only one outlet"; he notes that the French say ''impasse'' for the same thing.{{efn|The French actually also say ''un cul-de-sac'', see the relevant [[:fr:wikt:cul-de-sac|French Wiktionary entry]].}}<ref name="Shippey 2001 pp5-11">{{cite book |last=Shippey |first=Tom |author-link=Tom Shippey |title=[[J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century]] |date=2001 |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0261-10401-3 |pages=5–11}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=cul-de-sac |url=https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-french/cul-de-sac |publisher=Collins English-French Dictionary |access-date=20 April 2020}}</ref> The journeys of Bilbo and Frodo have been interpreted as just such confined roads, as they both start and end in Bag End. According to Don D. Elgin, Tolkien's  ''[[A Walking Song]]'', which appears repeatedly in differing forms in ''The Lord of the Rings'' as the quest progresses, is "a song about the roads that go ever on until they return to at last to the familiar things they have always known."<ref name=Midsummer>{{cite book |title=Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language |editor-first=Janet Brennan |editor-last=Croft |editor-link=Janet Brennan Croft |chapter=What's at the Bottom of The Lord of the Rings and A Midsummer Night's Dream? |pages=52–53 |year=2007 |publisher=[[McFarland & Company]] |isbn=978-0-786428274}} Citing: {{cite book |first=Don D. |last=Elgin |title=The Comedy of the Fantastic: Ecological Perspectives on the Fantasy Novel |url=https://archive.org/details/comedyoffantast00elgi |url-access=registration |year=1985 |publisher=[[Greenwood Press]]|isbn=9780313232831 }}</ref> As such, it forms one end of the main story arcs in both ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'', and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in [[The Scouring of the Shire#Formal structure|the story circle]] in each case.<ref name=Midsummer/>