Tolkienist Tom Shippey points out that the Ring is something very modern: it is addictive. If you are never exposed to it, it doesn't affect you, like a genetic predisposition to alcoholism in someone who never takes a drink. Individuals differ in how susceptible they are to addiction. If you are an addict and have no access to your drug, you suffer horribly, but eventually you slowly begin to recover. The parallelism is exact.

Some of the Dunlendings migrated north during the late Second or early Third Age and became subjects of the Kingdom of Arnor (the sister kingdom of Gondor). Their descendants became the Men of Bree, but they no longer it.