Rereading "The Lord of the Rings" and playing text-based games set in pre-industrial times, I'm noticing something puzzling, though it may just be a measure of my ignorance. What I want to know is this: If Aragorn sets a watch during the night and tells Frodo to wake him in three hours, how does Frodo know how three hours have passed? Does he have a watch with a luminous dial? Does he count off "A thousand and one, a thousand and two,... a thousand and ten-thousand-eight-hundred. OK, wake up Aragorn!"
In the text-based game, a witch newly brought into a coven (during the American Revolution) is told to punch a broomstick into the ground at a specific spot on the shore of a lake at midnight. How did he know it was midnight? Did "midnight" even mean "12:00 AM" in 1776? I mean, that isn't really the middle of the night, is it? Or is it? (Maybe I'm being misled by daylight savings time.:))
Important stuff, I know. Here's more: The recent dream weirdness was that my brain came up with two new area codes for the state of South Carolina. Or maybe I should look it up; perhaps it wasn't just a dream...
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