The Brolly of the Pelennor Fields

What if Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had joined the Fellowship of the Rings? Find the answer here:

Excerpt from "History of Middle-earth, Vol. XIII: The Rejected Pages". Chapter "The Brolly of the Pelennor Fields":

In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.

  All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dínen.

  'You cannot enter here,' said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. 'Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!'

  The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.

  'Old fool!' he said. 'Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!' And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.

  Then Lobelia Sackville-Baggins stepped up to Gandalf. There was a scornful frown on her brow.

  'Get out of the way, old scum,' she snapped at the astonished wizard and poised herself between Shadowfax and the ghastly mare of the Nazgûl Lord. Then she raised Rhosorthelian, the Rainscreen, Umbrella of Westernesse, and prepared herself to club it on the Black Captain's invisible scalp. With the same fell voice that she used on the Sackville-Baggins property to shoo her servants around she said:

Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!

  'Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Whoever desires to enter this city has to pass my brolly first. Begone, if you be not painless! For living or dark undead, smite you I shall if you dare to set but one more step ahead from here!'

  And when they heard those words, many a Man of Gondor was reminded of his wife or of his aunt or grandmother at home, and there was much groaning and bowing of heads on the walls of Minas Tirith, and some brave warriors took their helms off and rubbed their skulls in memory of suffered pain. And the Ringwraith made no answer but fell silent, and it seemed that he was struck by the terrifying thought of a long forgotten youth most dreadful, in ages past when Númenor had still been gleaming under the bright sun. And then, King, Ringwraith, Lord of the Nazgûl, he left the Gate and vanished.

  And the orcs and Variags and Men of Harad, they turned and fled, for now doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on and filled them with hate and fury was no match to the memory of what most they feared, and looking back at the fierceness of the Umbrella of Westernesse that was wielded to terror by aunt Lobelia, they despaired. And in that hour the great Battle of the field of Gondor was over; and not one foe was left within the circuit of the Rammas, and to the land of the Haradrim came a tale from far off: a rumour of the wrath and terror of the Sackville-Bagginses.

  'What,' said Gandalf deep in thought and wonder, 'is a dwimmerlaik?'

  'A bogey I used to scare little Lotho with,' Lobelia said.