Bilbo's Contract: Full Text PDF


Pipeweed and other such luxury items shall be provided by Burglar; indeed, not only for himself, but for the other members of the Company if such can be obtained along the way by means pertinent to his profession.
––Bilbo's Contract 
One of my favorite moments in the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is when Balin presents Bilbo with the Deed of Contract. Its a classic moment in the book, and although the movie puts its own spin on it, I think that Martin Freeman still carries it off wonderfully. Jump past the break to get access to the full text of the Contract.


Before the movie came out, Dark Jackal did a lot of work deciphering as much of the document as possible from some of the teaser images that had been released. I received the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Chronicles for Christmas, so last week I decided to open up the facsimile of the Contract included at the back of the book and transcribe the text of the Contract to a Word Document so that the entire world can enjoy it.

There is a lot of little text in the Contract, but it is a seriously funny bit of dwarven legal writing . . . poor Bilbo had no idea what he was getting himself into. Below I've included links to a Word and a PDF version of the follow on Google Docs. You can download the original files by going to File>>Download.

Bilbo's Contract: Word Document

Bilbo's Contract: PDF

*Notes: The Word doc was formatted on a Mac, so it may have some issues on a PC . . . maybe. You'll have to see. Also, it looks a little weird in the Google Docs viewer, but once you download the Word doc or PDF it looks fine. Enjoy!

14 comments:

  1. Contact me if you would like to participate in my blog: http://hobbitthedesolationofsmaug.net

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  2. Thank you so much. This will add a special touch to my Hobbit party! So grateful that you shared it! -Natalie

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  3. Awesome!!! thank you! this will be a great adition to my hobbit cosplay!

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  4. Thank you. Will be a fabulous touch to my Hobbit display in my local library :)

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  5. A great idea for a craft project using my interest in calligraphy and making a journal. Looks like it will keep me busy for a long while to construct this one, thanks a lot.

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    1. Thanks Donald! I'd love to see the finished product.

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  6. You left out half of the paragraph titled "The Principles" after "Meals provided" paragraph on page 2. You left off after the "meals provided" and started half way in the middle of "The Principles" paragraph on page 3 at "....contained herein [the Conditions of Engagement]. The part your leaving out says "The Principles" in red, then the rest in black says, "agreeing to this contract, namely the C(red)ompany [as represented by T(red)horin O(red)akenshield]and the B(red)urglar, and known collectively henceforth as the P(red)arties, shall signify their agreement to all clauses". I had to go and try to find another contract that had the missing parts to add to your pdf I printed out. And you have the paragraph on the 5th page titled "Pipeweed" on the wrong side of the page its on the left not the right side of the page. For when you over lapped it with the 2 paragraphs of "Return Journey" and "Transport", its hard to even read them.

    Also a few other paragraphs are wrong also you have them facing the wrong direction that are in the margin they should be turned around 180 degrees. Like the ones that were written on the right hand margin are written to the outside no the inside of the document. And the ones on the left hand margin are not facing the outside but turned and written towards the inside of the document. If your going to do it atleast do it right.
    Please make your corrections. Thanks

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  7. Also in your printed pdf file on page 1 in the paragraph titled "I, the undersigned" there is also a typos in yours it says "agree to travel to the Lonely Mountain, oath to be determined by Thorin". It should say "path to be determined by Throin," not oath.

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  8. what bits are suppose to be sticking out the side

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  9. I tried to download the contracts but were told that "File is in Owner's trash." While I am sad to see this, I understand if you had to put them in the trash because of copyright. Was that the case?

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  10. รจ ancora possibile scaricare il file?

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  11. I can't open the pdf file help plzz

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