The Yale

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The Yale was the low-lying lands of the Shire's Eastfarthing that lay along the northern side of the long road from Stock westwards to Tuckborough. This seems to have been a sparsely populated area, and in fact the map of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings marks only a single building here.

Etymology

Yale is of course a well known surname derived from a Welsh place name.[1] This fits right in with Tolkien's comment to the Dutch Translator, Max Schuchart, that there were "'Celtic' elements in Buckland and East-farthing names." [2] The modern meaning is 'fertile upland', based on the location of the best known "Yale," the commote[3] of Iaal in Powys, the traditional home of the kings of Powys.[1]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Mark T. Hooker, A Tolkienian Mathomium, pp. 42-47 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Mathomium" defined multiple times with different content
  2. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, "p. 93"
  3. The Wikipedia page for commote