Lord of the Rings (musical) the region of Middle-earth known as the Shire, Bilbo Baggins, an eccentric and wealthy Hobbit, celebrates his eleventyhundredth birthday by vanishing from his birthday party, leaving his greatest treasure, a mysterious magic Ring, to his young relative Frodo Baggins ("Springle Ring"). The Ring is greatly desired by the Dark Lord Sauron, who could use it to conquer the world, and must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom in Sauron's country of Mordor. Frodo and his friends Samwise Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took set out along the road that leads out of the Shire ("The Road Goes On").
Meriadoc Brandybuck "faithful" and "friend". Tolkien used Old English to represent Rohirric, another of his fictional languages, so "Holdwine", like "Meriadoc Brandybuck", is not what the character was actually called. Tolkien does not give Merry's real Rohirric name. It has been asserted that the name "Meriadoc" could be in itself an allusion to the British nobleman Conan Meriadoc, legendary founder of the House of Rohan in Brittany, since the character Meriadoc is closely associated with Tolkien's kingdom of Rohan. But Tolkien, in response to a reader's inquiry, denied that the Breton name inspired the name of his fictional kingdom. Meriadoc Brandybuck Meriadoc