It took a silly movie to make me think about Tolkien and thieves' guilds in a new way. I'm referring to Eddie Murphy's "Dr. Doolittle 2", in which the doctor (who hardly resembles the now less-famous literary doctor of yesteryear) is recruited by the animals of an endangered forest to help them save their turf.

The movie is cute, filled with jokes and gentle jabs at the Mafia. The endangered forest is secretly run by a beaver who sends out a possum (that's Opossum for those of you who like silent vowels) and a raccoon as his messenger boys. "When you meet the beaver, you should treat him with the respect he deserves," the raccoon tells the doctor at one point. "Listen, when the beaver offers you a fish, you take it!" he admonishes in another scene. "I am just a simple fisherman who is blessed with a lot of friends," the beaver tells Murphy's character.

Not exactly a thieves guild, but there are certain elements of the Mafia mystique which have crept into role-playing games. A well-designed thieves' guild always has a mafia-like atmosphere. You don't just casually break into the guild and demand to see the bosses. They're busy people. They have wives and children to support. They need their space, just like everyone else.

Now, Tolkien never mentions a thieves guild. In fact, he rarely mentions guilds at all, and when he does he isn't talking about typical medieval bakers guilds. But there is something mafia-like in the way Tolkien depicts Lotho Sackville-Baggins' takeover of the Shire. I mean, think about it. He uses his money to buy up a lot of farms and plantations in the Southfarthing. And then he establishes a trading relationship with Isengard.

Or was that the other way around? Maybe "Pimple" Sackville-Baggins was rich, but not rich enough to achieve his dreams. So he went looking for friends in new places, and he found Isengard ready and willing to help. Isengard sent him money, wagon-drivers, carpenters, and bully-boys. With all due respect to the members of our hard-working labor unions, the connections between the mob and labor unions have been documented through the years in our courts, and exploited through the years in novels, movies, and television shows. So maybe Southfarthing Wagon-drivers Local No. 2 was just a front for the organization.

When Frodo Baggins returns to find that "Pimple" has taken over control of the Shire, he makes the comment that maybe it's time the Family dealt with the annoying little upstart. It's reported to Pippin Took that his father said, "If anyone is going to play boss around here, it should be ME." Clearly, there is an undertone to these Hobbit families and their financial arrangements that we haven't explored before.

The real Mafia was started by rebel Sicilians in the 9th century (or was that the 13th century?). They were a secret society who resisted the Arab conquest (or was that the Norman French conquest?). Through the centuries, the organization built up its tradition of family trust and honor, and maintained great secrecy. They began sending pictures of black hands to wealthy Sicilians in the 1700s, demanding money in exchange for protection. The consequence of withholding payment was to be targeted for kidnappings, murder, vandalism.

Mafia dons began fleeing to the United States to escape imprisonment starting around the year 1901. By 1924, Benito Mussolini decided to stamp out the Mafia, and Mafiosi fled to the United States in droves. The United States stumbled upon the Mafia in the late 1800s in New Orleans, when New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessey investigated the murder of an Italian immigrant and was subsequently assassinated. 12 men were hung by a vigilante organization in retaliation for the assassination, and President Harrison compensated the families of the men for the lynchings.

Saruman's emblem was the white hand. The white hand does not appear inside the Shire, but it does reach out and entangle itself in Shire politics and economics in Mafia-like secrecy. Saruman seized control over Dunland, had at least one highly-placed spy in the Rohirric government, and established contacts and a foothold in the Shire. One might ask if he was also shaking down the simple fishermen of Anfalas and controlling the trade (or lack thereof) coming down Anduin. Isengard was in a position to influence a lot of people and places.

Like the Mafia, who were originally bands of freedom fighters (or thugs, in some people's opinions) resisting foreign invaders, Saruman established himself in Isengard as a force for good, resisting Sauron's efforts to take control over all of Middle-earth. But when one begins to acquire power and gain influence over people, it can become a very intoxicating experience. Power corrupts, and people are corruptible. Saruman gave in to temptation and began building up his own organization. He made contact with one or more local bands of Orcs and recruited them into his scheme. He organized the Dunlendings and set about building them into a powerful army.

But Saruman ran afoul of the law, so to speak. That is, he turned against the White Council and the Free Peoples of Middle-earth. When his henchmen started beating up on the local trees, the Ents formed a vigilante committee and set out to lynch Saruman and his bururum, his Orcs. Well, they took down Isengard's outer wall but the Ents couldn't get to Saruman himself. All they could do was lay siege to the tower of Orthanc and wait him out. In the meantime, Rohan, once rid of the Isengard menace, turned its attention to Sauron and forgot about Isengard.

But Saruman's contacts in the Shire weren't extinguished. Undoubtedly, cut off from Isengard, Lotho went on a rampage. There may even have been a brief period of gang warfare. Drive-by swordings and late-night massacres of Saruman's most trusted henchmen as they partied with local Hobbit girls most likely helped ensure Lotho's control over the Isengarder organization.

In the meantime, the local families were slow to figure out what was going on. They never expected new blood to come in from Isengard and Dunland. They had been running the Shire since the 1900s, and had a pretty good deal. They were landowners now, respectable, and didn't really think about organizing bands of resistance fighters as in the old days when the Realm of Angmar was sending armies to overrun the Hobbits.

But the Shire had its own Mafia-like history and organization. The original Mafiosi fled to the hills of Sicily when the Arabs (or Norman French) showed up. They fought back secretly, and they eventually seized control over the Sicilian government. The Shire families, led by their chieftains, moved into the hills. When Angmar attacked they resisted. Eventually, the chieftains got together and elected a Thain to lead the local bully-boys and resistance fighters. But things settled down after that and the Shire families prospered. They even became aristocratic. But they stayed close together. Some of the families, like the Tooks and Brandybucks, adhered to the Old Ways.

The Brandybucks had once been called the Oldbucks, and they had controlled the Shire for generations. But in what was obviously a turf war (probably over control of wine production in the Southfarthing) the Tooks ran the Oldbucks out of the Shire. The Oldbucks settled across the Baranduin (Brandywine) river in what became known as Buckland. There in Brandy Hall the Master of Buckland continued to exercise considerable influence in the Shire. It's said that many people in the nearby Marish continued to look to the Master of Buckland as their leader. Undoubtedly some of the fees of the Buckleberry Ferry and the Stone Bridge made their way into Brandybuck coffers.

The Tooks settled down in the heart of the Shire and let the Hobbits think they had a nice, quiet little country. The Hobbits even elected a Mayor every seven years who oversaw the Postal Service and the Shirrifs and Bounders. The Bounders were useful in keeping the Brandybucks and other riffraff out of the Shire proper, except for occasional visits by the highest members of the Brandybuck family. But the Shirriffs were limited in number, undoubtedly to prevent them from getting too ambitious and launching investigations into the Tooks' financial arrangements. The Mayors were therefore mostly for show, and it may be that the Tooks didn't even care who was elected Mayor as long as he knew his place and applied himself mostly to feasting.

The Baggins family obviously had its ups and downs. They were closely allied with the Tooks and probably dominated the legal profession. The law firm of Burrowes, Burrowes, and Grubb was a front for Baggins family money-laundering schemes. Baggins and Took adventurers occasionally went off and brought back huge fortunes in "hush" money. Supposedly, Bilbo Baggins helped take out a dragon in distant lands. So it may be that the Baggins family supplied the Tooks with their hit men. It may be that Frodo's journey to Mordor was simply a contract killing intended to take out this Sauron wiseguy who was starting to threaten to take over the local action.

It just so happened that one part of the Baggins family, miffed at losing control over the family business, decided to branch out on its own. They made contact with the Isengard organization and began carving out their turf in the Southfarthing. Things proceeded quietly. Rumor has it that many of the locals were paid off quite well. So the Tooks had no idea of what was coming. They didn't think about calling a Shire-moot and weeding out the traitorous riffraff in their midst. In fact, they couldn't have accomplished anything that way at all. The Baggins family had to deal with its own, and Frodo, head of the Baggins family, was away on a mission.

The Hobbits' own secrecy was their downfall. Their blind devotion to family, honor, and tradition prevented them from taking action. Even when the Isengard gangs started showing up, cutting down trees, and gathering and sharing (mostly gathering from the Hobbits to share for themselves), Paladin Took, the Thain, decided he'd wait for Frodo to come back and take out the little upstart Pimple. So what if Pimple called himself, "Boss"? Paladin knew who the real Boss was. And he had the Took army to back himself up. So he closed off the borders of Tookland and kept the Isengarder gangs out.

Lotho made a mess of things, though. He clearly didn't root out all the opposition when he took over the Shire. When Saruman showed up a few months later, the ruffians and Half-orcs flocked to his side and returned to their old boss. Most likely Saruman had been more generous with the wine and the pipeweed. Reports say that Isengard was well-supplied with these items. Lotho, having little experience in running the family business, was not prepared for the counter-coup. Saruman sent his own messenger boy, Grima Wormtongue, to take out the little dweeb.

The Isengard organization then started to munch down on the Shire. Shakedowns became the order of the day. Saruman simply took control over the puppet government and expanded its law enforcement services to ensure that his laws were obeyed. The Shirriffs became a terrorizing army of thugs controlled by the Isengarders. Things looked pretty grim.

And then Frodo returned.

If there's one thing Tolkien understood, it was that any Hobbit who could take out a Dark Lord shouldn't have any trouble dealing with the nitwit who had lost his own organization down south. Saruman may have been bigger than Lotho Sackville-Baggins, but he wasn't half the Hobbit that Frodo Baggins was. As soon as Frodo returned the Hobbit families began to organize. A new resistance was born. The Tooks started taking back their old turf. Frodo himself oversaw the hit on Saruman.

It wasn't long before the Shire was safely back in the hands of the Old Families. And the old way of life was quickly restored. But the good days weren't destined to last long. There was now a King, and he began sending people north to put his affairs in order. Frodo, the best hit man the Hobbits ever had, read the writing on the wall and he booked passage on the next ship over Sea. The Shire was never the same after he left. The King realized that Hobbits and Men just didn't mix very well. An investigation into Shire family businesses revealed that they controlled the pipeweed trade, and that Shire weed was preferred even in Bree. Worse, the Hobbits' ability to run gangsters from Isengard out of the woods proved to be alarming. What if they got ambitious?

Well, all that may seem a bit of an overread, but it occurs to me that perhaps the gamers' desire to impose a couple of local thieves' guilds on Middle-earth isn't all that out-of-line after all. Tolkien was obviously a wiseguy who wanted to blow the lid off a corrupt and intransigent organization. He obviously changed the names to protect the innocent, but it's easy enough to show that The Lord of the Rings is heavily influenced by the medieval origins of the Mafia, and that it's just an allegory about the perils of living in a society where organized crime has taken control.

For further reading about the historical Mafia, check out History of the Mafia, History - The Mafia Site, and Suite101's Organized Crime topic.

Michael Martinez is the author of Visualizing Middle-earth, which may be purchased directly from Xlibris Corp. or through any online bookstore. You may also special order it from your local bookstore. The ISBN is 0-7388-3408-4.