Jamie123

You're quite right - I had forgotten about that. Also Gandalf had run his hands over the stone where the doorway was.

The same could be said of Beatrix Potter. Her characters are cute, but they live in a world of continuous peril. The Flopsy Bunnies barely avoid being cooked by Mr. and Mrs. McGregor. Squirrel Nutkin is on the verge of being skinned alive by Old Brown, but escapes by ripping off his own tail. Mr. Jeremy Fisher is swallowed by a pike, but is spat out when the fish doesn't like the taste of him. And Samuel Whiskers has every intention of eating Tom Kitten, having turned him into a "rolly-poly-pudding".
Nevertheless, the protagonists nearly always escape the jaws of death, usually becoming wiser in the process. It is true Peter Rabbit's mother warns him that his father "had an accident" in Mr. McGregor's garden, in which he was "put in a pie", but since we never actually meet old Mr. Rabbit, this doesn't hit particularly hard: it is a shadow looming on the border of a story in which Peter escapes the same fate (albeit minus his trademark blue jacket). If Peter had been cooked and served up on the McGregors' table with a cheerful "And that was the end of Peter Rabbit!" I wonder if Miss Potter would have been so successful!
The sparrows urge Peter not to give up hope...

One of my treasured possessions is a book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes printed in the late '60's.  Some of the most violent and gory stories are in that book.  Life used to be much closer to death than it is today, and it made perfect sense to get the kiddos understanding from the earliest age possible how close.

There are so many different versions of this song, but basically the story is the same: Froggy is determined to woo Miss Mouse. He gets Rat to act as his "wing man" and the two of them go to the Mouses' house. The engagement is agreed, and they throw a party. Then all of then suffer a violent death, the exact details of which vary between versions.
This is the version I remember from childhood:
The first time I heard it was at infants' school, when the teacher sang it to us - I think accompanied by the piano. I must have been about five at the time. Us kids sang the "Heigh ho" bits.
When the song ended I was so upset I burst into tears.
Teacher: (Incredulous) What on earth is the matter with you?
Me: *Sob* I didn't want Anthoney Rowley to die! (I had got the idea that Anthony Rowley was the name of the frog.)
Teacher: For goodness sake! It's ONLY A SONG!!!
(Grumbling and murmuring from the other kids about what an idiot I was.)
Well maybe it was only a song. But I liked the image of the rakish frog with his opera hat. I was "invested" in him as a character. And now he was dead! His life was over!!!!
I still don't understand people who call this a "wonderful song from childhood". For me it was a traumatic and nasty song.
 
The late "Anthony Rowley": may he rest in peace...

I weep, in spirit at least, for little Jamie123 and the nasty song about cute anthropomorphic animals being savagely ripped apart. In a weird way, it vaguely reminds me of listening to my fourth-grade teacher reading us from James and the Giant Peach, which as a ten-year-old I found profoundly disturbing. (My 60-year-old self agrees.)
As for the song itself, it appears to be a cautionary tale about the impropriety of otherwise unrelated land vertebrates intimately intermingling. The cat and her kits represent the inexorable hand of destiny meting out justice to those who would tamper with the laws of evolutionary reality. Stick with cousin marriages. In this there is safety and peace.

There are so many different versions of this song, but basically the story is the same: Froggy is determined to woo Miss Mouse. He gets Rat to act as his "wing man" and the two of them go to the Mouses' house. The engagement is agreed, and they throw a party. Then all of then suffer a violent death, the exact details of which vary between versions.
This is the version I remember from childhood:
The first time I heard it was at infants' school, when the teacher sang it to us - I think accompanied by the piano. I must have been about five at the time. Us kids sang the "Heigh ho" bits.
When the song ended I was so upset I burst into tears.
Teacher: (Incredulous) What on earth is the matter with you?
Me: *Sob* I didn't want Anthoney Rowley to die! (I had got the idea that Anthony Rowley was the name of the frog.)
Teacher: For goodness sake! It's ONLY A SONG!!!
(Grumbling and murmuring from the other kids about what an idiot I was.)
Well maybe it was only a song. But I liked the image of the rakish frog with his opera hat. I was "invested" in him as a character. And now he was dead! His life was over!!!!
I still don't understand people who call this a "wonderful song from childhood". For me it was a traumatic and nasty song.
 
The late "Anthony Rowley": may he rest in peace...

To be fair, as a kid I didn't understand why the name "Honeydew" was funny either. I don't think I had ever seen a honeydew melon back then. When  around the age of 40 I learned what a honeydew was, the penny dropped. (Before then I connected it more with Coleridge: For I shall dine on honeydew / And drink the milk of paradise.)
There are all sorts of things on the supermarket shelves nowadays which we never dreamed of back then - not only honeydew melons but aubergines and passion fruit and fresh pineapples for 95p a go. And pease pudding. Do you have pease pudding over there? It's a more extreme version of mushy peas, or a less extreme version of hummus (depending which way you look at it).

Its also called pease porridge. The Man in the Moon burned his mouth on it while travelling south to Norwich.

Everyone of my generation (I suspect) remembers that illustration from The Ladybird Book of Nursery Rhymes. And this of course brings us full-circle back to Tolkien - specifically the song that Frodo sings at the inn at Bree:
Etc...

Pease porridge hot
Pease porridge cold
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old

Another example of Dwarves and their slack security: look at what Dopey does here...
 

To be fair, as a kid I didn't understand why the name "Honeydew" was funny either. I don't think I had ever seen a honeydew melon back then. When  around the age of 40 I learned what a honeydew was, the penny dropped. (Before then I connected it more with Coleridge: For I shall dine on honeydew / And drink the milk of paradise.)
There are all sorts of things on the supermarket shelves nowadays which we never dreamed of back then - not only honeydew melons but aubergines and passion fruit and fresh pineapples for 95p a go. And pease pudding. Do you have pease pudding over there? It's a more extreme version of mushy peas, or a less extreme version of hummus (depending which way you look at it).

Its also called pease porridge. The Man in the Moon burned his mouth on it while travelling south to Norwich.

Everyone of my generation (I suspect) remembers that illustration from The Ladybird Book of Nursery Rhymes. And this of course brings us full-circle back to Tolkien - specifically the song that Frodo sings at the inn at Bree:
Etc...

I know what cats are like. They are cunning and clever and lithe and acrobatic and contortionistic beyond belief. Furthermore they have a "stop-at-nothing" determination to get what they want. I would treat with extreme scepticism anything claiming to be a "cat proof fence". 

I know what cats are like. They are cunning and clever and lithe and acrobatic and contortionistic beyond belief. Furthermore they have a "stop-at-nothing" determination to get what they want. I would treat with extreme scepticism anything claiming to be a "cat proof fence". 

Another example of Dwarves and their slack security: look at what Dopey does here...
 

Wow.  I really don't remember those details.
I certainly remember Beaker.  Who could forget him?  And I remember that Honeydew did some things to Beaker that didn't make sense.  And now thinking back on it.  I guess he really was doing experiments on him.  I didn't understand that back then.
You may as well consider me a kid with Aspergers because there was a lot of humor I didn't understand back then.  I just remember being confused a lot when I saw him and Beaker.  And if I don't understand it, I don't remember it.

Well is surname is Honeydew, which is a melon, and it is also the shape of his head.
Furthermore it was a running joke that his alma mater was "Carnege Mellonhead University".
He also wasn't that infrequent. He appeared in most episodes alongside his assistant Beaker. (At least he referred to Beaker his "assistant". He was actually more like his guinea pig. He did experiments on Beaker.)

Suddenly my FB feed is filled with these physics jokes. 😎

I have recently become the sole keeper of two kitty cats: Sir Robwell Odgekin-Bodgekin McBurgelpuss and his sister Dame Willy-Wally-Walkokibblekins McBurgelpuss. At least that's what I've renamed them. I think I'll go on calling them by their old names of Robbie and Willow though. At least for the moment. Otherwise they're going to get very kitty-konfused!
Here's a picture of Sir Robwell:

I have recently become the sole keeper of two kitty cats: Sir Robwell Odgekin-Bodgekin McBurgelpuss and his sister Dame Willy-Wally-Walkokibblekins McBurgelpuss. At least that's what I've renamed them. I think I'll go on calling them by their old names of Robbie and Willow though. At least for the moment. Otherwise they're going to get very kitty-konfused!
Here's a picture of Sir Robwell:

I have recently become the sole keeper of two kitty cats: Sir Robwell Odgekin-Bodgekin McBurgelpuss and his sister Dame Willy-Wally-Walkokibblekins McBurgelpuss. At least that's what I've renamed them. I think I'll go on calling them by their old names of Robbie and Willow though. At least for the moment. Otherwise they're going to get very kitty-konfused!
Here's a picture of Sir Robwell:

I just couldn't help but think about this:

I've been holding on to this pic for several years, just waiting for someone to start a LOTR thread.

I always understood western entrance of Moria came up in what was formerly the Elvish kingdom of Eregion. The Elves were friendly with the dwarves, and neither side saw any great need for security. However, the timing doesn't quite make sense:
Eregion fell to Sauron in 1697 of the Second Age. This coincides with the founding of Rivendell by a group of survivors led by Elrond - the holder of one of the Three Rings*. (The other two were held by Galadriel and Cirdan.) The Second Age ended 1744 years later, with the defeat of Sauron by the Last Alliance. The Dwarves remained in Moria until 1981 of the Third Age, when the Balrog awoke and drove them out. That's 3725 years after the fall of Eregion. That's a long time not to change your password!
Any Tom, Dick or Gandalf could have come along and said "friend" and entered. (Though admittedly after that time they probably wouldn't have wanted to - what with Orcs, Cave-Trolls and Balrogs waiting to eat them for dinner.)
Now perhaps a bigger and sadder Tolkien geek can resolve this...
(P.S. For the record I don't know my Middle-earth dates by heart. I keep a copy of The Lord of the Rings ready on my desk for just such emergencies as this. Dates for significant events in the backstory can be found in Appendix B.)
*Not quite correct - sorry. That ring (Vilya) didn't come to Elrond until later. It originally belonged to Gil-Galad.

So to elves, calling someone a melon-head would be a term of endearment.