Why did the Nazgûl drop Merry in Bree?

[Attalus]

Originally Posted by The Dread Pirate Roberts

My login timed out, and I ended up deleting a detailed post about the possible time of the attack on the Inn. I'll try to summarize it again.

When I first tried to think of when the Inn might have been attacked I thought midnight sounded literary and appropriate. Then I recalled some information I recently learned about the sleep patterns of pre-industrial people.

Before the advent of the electric light, people would routinely go to sleep not very long after dark (called "first sleep" across many languages and cultures), sleep for several hours, then awaken and use the outhouse, grab a snack, make a booty call, and perform other mundane tasks for an hour or two, then return to sleep until dawn. (Roger Ekirch's history book "At Day's Close" as well as modern sleep research supports this.)

That tells me that a midnight attack wouldn't be wise, since the attacker would be likely to find at least some people awake and about.

So when would the populace most likely be deepest in slumber? The same time the Nazgul choose to attack the house in Crickhollow. The hour that is also coldest and darkest, just before dawn. Sunrise at that time of year is probably shortly after 6am, so we're looking at probably some time around 5am.

It fits the normal sleep pattern of individuals in such a society as Bree and it fits the established pattern of the Nazgul (if two events can make a pattern).

I agree with this, and regret the "long post" that was lost. For long posts, I type them out in Word or similar programs and save them. That comes in useful on Tolkien forums when somebody raises old questions like "Who really slew the Witch-King?"