Thank you! The way I see it, the final versions of Merry's earliest letters bore very little resemblance to the drafts, since he felt the need to translate them into impersonal, formal language. But once Eomer started writing in his own words, rather than using a scribe, Merry's first drafts are very similar to the finished version that was actually sent.
The missing barrels of mead were entirely drawn from experience. Years ago, a student society I was involved in ordered a box of 12 bottles of mead for a medieval banquet we were running. When the box turned up, it contained only 4 or 5 full bottles and a few half-full bottles, with the rest having gone completely. We never found out if they'd fallen out by accident, or if they'd been sampled by postal workers along the way.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2015-03-23 11:56 am (UTC)The missing barrels of mead were entirely drawn from experience. Years ago, a student society I was involved in ordered a box of 12 bottles of mead for a medieval banquet we were running. When the box turned up, it contained only 4 or 5 full bottles and a few half-full bottles, with the rest having gone completely. We never found out if they'd fallen out by accident, or if they'd been sampled by postal workers along the way.