Bree-landers

"The Big Folk and the Little Folk (as they called one another) were on friendly terms, minding their own affairs in their own ways, but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the Bree-folk."

—The Fellowship of the Ring, "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony"

The Bree-landers, also called Breelandians and Bree-folk, were the Men and Hobbits who lived in the many peaceful communities around the Bree-hill of the Bree-land. The four most prominent of these settlements were Bree, Staddle, Combe and Archet.

History

The Bree-men believed in "their own tales" that they "were the descendants of the first Men that" traveled west into Eriador during the Elder Days, where they would remain. In the Second Age, they witnessed the Númenóreans return to Middle-earth.

Bree as depicted by Robjenx

The Bree-hobbits migrated to the Bree-land in the year 1300 of the Third Age. Though they settled mainly in Staddle, some settled in Bree "on the higher slopes of" Bree-hill. Sometime after the Shire was colonized, the Bree-hobbits began to believe that they were the oldest colony of Hobbits in Arda.

Sometime after the evolution of Westron and the Wandering Days came to an end, the Bree-landers developed a variant that they called the "Bree-dialect", in which certain words related to history and geography were rarely used. This was likely because they had a lack of interest in the world outside Bree-land.

When the Shire-calendar was made in the Shire, the Hobbits among the Bree-landers made an adaptation of it for their own usage, which may have been a Hobbit-speech localization of the Kings' Reckoning.

The Shire-folk had dealings with the Bree-landers during the Shire's earlier history, often times occasionally staying at The Prancing Pony inn of Bree. But after the collapse of Arnor's successor states, the close ties the two people had degraded to the saying "strange as news from Bree" in the Eastfarthing, which was used in reference to any news from the Bree-landers.

After the Downfall of Barad-dûr and the founding of the Reunited Kingdom, the Bree-landers became subjects of King Elessar, who had once traveled the Northern Lands as Strider.