What did Bilbo mean by telling Frodo that Aragorn "thought the whole thing rather above my head"? This phrase is taken from _The Fellowship of the Ring_ , book II, chapter 1, page 265 (emphasis added): > "You needn't," said Bilbo. "As a matter of fact it was all mine. Except that Aragorn insisted on my putting in a green stone. He seemed to think it important. I don't know why. **Otherwise he obviously thought the whole thing rather above my head** , and he said that if I had the cheek to make verses about Eärendil in the house of Elrond, it was my affair. I suppose he was right." Why does Bilbo say that Aragorn thought the whole thing rather above his head?

This conversation between Bilbo and Frodo follows after Bilbo recites his own poem about Earendil the Mariner. Poetry played a big role in the history of Middle Earth; it was _created_ through what was described as 'holy music', and The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings contain many old poems about historical events. Poetry was held in high regard by the elves, and Aragorn ('he' in your qoute), being a regular guest in Rivendell for hundreds of years, knew this. An attempt by a mere mortal like Bilbo to compose a poem not about Hobbit history, but about one of the defining events of the First Age, surely is out of the ordinary. 'Above my head' is one of the ways to express that in English ('out of my league' would be another idiomatic one).