Part 27 (1/2)

So great was the delight of the hobbits at this announcement that Gandalf took off his hat and bowed. 'I am used to taking care of hobbits,' he said, 'when they wait for me and don't run off on their own. But I only said: I think I shall have to come. It may only be for part of the way. We have not made any definite plans yet. Very likely we shan't be able to make any.'

'How soon do you think we shall start?' asked Frodo.

'I don't know. It depends on what news we get. Scouts will have to go out and find out what they can - especially about the Black Riders.'

'I thought they were all destroyed in the flood!' said Merry. 'You cannot destroy the Ringwraiths so easily,' said Gandalf. 'The power of their master is in them, and they stand or fall by him. They were unhorsed, and unmasked, and will be less dangerous for a while; yet it would be well to find out if we can what they are doing. In time they will get new steeds and fresh disguise. But for the present you should put all troubles out of your thoughts, if you can.'

The hobbits did not find this easy to do. They continued to think and talk mainly of the journey and the perils ahead of them. Yet such was the virtue of the land of Elrond that in all their thoughts there came no shadow of fear. Hope and courage grew in their hearts, and strength in their bodies. In every meal, and in every word and song they found delight. The very breathing of the air became a joy no less sweet because the time of their stay was short.

The days slipped by, though autumn was fast waning, and each morning dawned bright and fair. But slowly the golden light grew silver, and the leaves fell from the trees. The winds blew cold from the Misty Mountains in the East. The Hunters' Moon grew round in the evening sky, putting to flight the lesser stars, and glittering in the falls and pools of the River. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night as the moon waned again it shone brighter. Frodo could see it through his window deep in the sky, burning like a wrathful eye watching, and waiting for him to set out.

At the end of the text my father wrote: 'New Moon Oct. 24. Hunters' Moon Full Nov. 8'. See p. 434, note 19.

The ma.n.u.script is interrupted here by a heading, 'The Ring Goes South', but without new chapter number, and what follows was written continuously with what precedes.

It will be seen that by far the greater part of the content of the 'The Council of Elrond' in FR is absent; but while the past and present texture of the world is so much thinner in the original form, the discussion of what to do with the Ring is in its essential pattern of argument already present.

Gandalf says that the road to the Fiery Mountain lies through Boromir's land. It may well be that at this stage the geography of the . lands south and east of the Misty Mountains was still fairly sketchy, even though Fangorn Forest, the Dead Marshes, the Land of Ond (Gondor), and 'the South Mountains' have appeared in name (pp. 397 - 8, 401). Further aspects of this question appear in the next chapter.

It is curious that although Elrond says at the outset that Boromir brings tidings that must be considered, we are not told what these tidings were. In the original draft for the Council (p. 398) it is said that the men of Ond 'are besieged by wild men out of the East'; and in the text just given (p. 403) Elrond says that they are 'still faithful amid a host of foes'. Odo Bolger has at long last disappeared (at least by that name); and Folco has been renamed Faramond. That name has appeared in the papers dated August 1939, but there it was proposed for Frodo himself (p. 373). The Fellows.h.i.+p of the Ring now changes again, and not for the last time: as may readily be supposed, the achievement of the final composition of the 'Nine Walkers' caused my father great difficulty. In the first draft for the Council of Elrond (p. 397) there were to be: Gandalf. Trotter. Frodo. Sam. Merry. Folco. Odo. Glorfindel. Burin son of Balin. (9) In the rejected page of the text just given (p. 406) the Company becomes: Gandalf. Trotter. Frodo. Sam. Merry. Faramond. Glorfindel. (7) A note to this page proposes that the Company consist only of hobbits, with Gandalf at least at first, but without Glorfindel. In the replacement text (p.408) Gandalf suggests: Gandalf. Trotter. Frodo. Sam. Merry. Faramond. Boromir. (7) - and this was indeed the composition in the original narrative of the southward journey as far as Moria.

The continuation of the story in the original ma.n.u.script ('The Ring Goes South') is given in the next chapter; but before concluding this, there must be given the remarkable outline of future events found on the back of a rejected page of the text of the Council of Elrond (see p.406). This clearly belongs in time with the ma.n.u.script in which it is included, In the outline of the further course of the story dated August 1939 (p. 381, $9) there is no suggestion of the reappearance of Gollum before Mordor is reached; and the reference in this one to Frodo's hearing the patter of Gollum's feet in the Mines shows that it preceded the first draft of the Moria chapter.

Gollum must reappear at or after Moria. Frodo hears patter.

Fangorn Forest. In some way - hears voice, or sees something off path, or? alarmed by Gollum - Frodo must get separated from the rest.

Fangorn is an evergreen (oak holly?) forest. Trees of vast height. (Beleghir [pencilled above: Anduin] Great River divides into many channels.) Say 500 - 1000 feet. It runs right up to the [Blue >] Black Mountains, which are not very high (run NEN - SWW [i.e. North-east by North - South-west by West]) but very steep on N. side.

If Treebeard comes in at all - let him be kindly and rather good? About 50 feet high with barky skin. Hair and beard rather like twigs. Clothed in dark green like a mail of short s.h.i.+ning leaves. He has a castle in the Black Mountains and many thanes and followers. They look like young trees [? when] they stand.

Make Frodo be terrified of Gollum after a meeting in which Gollum pretended to make friends, but tried to strangle Frodo in his sleep and steal the Ring. Treebeard finds him lost and carries him up into the Black Mountains. It is only here that Frodo finds he is friendly.

Treebeard brings him on the way to Ond. His scouts report that Ond is besieged, and that Trotter and four [written above: 3?] others have been captured. Where is Sam? (Sam is found in the Forest. He had refused to go on without Frodo and had remained looking for him.) The tree-giants a.s.sail the besiegers and rescue Trotter &c. and raise siege.

(If this plot is used it will be better to have no Boromir in party. Subst.i.tute Gimli? son of Gloin - who was killed in Moria. But Frodo can bear messages from Boromir to his father the K[ing] of Ond.) Next stage - they set out for the Fire Mountain. They have to skirt Mordor on its west edge.

In this brief sketch we see the very starting-point, in written expression, of two fundamental 'moments' in the narrative of The Lord of the Rings: the separation of Frodo from the Company (subsequently rejoined by Sam), and the a.s.sault by the 'tree-giants' of Fangorn on the enemies of Gondor; but such narrative frame as they were given here was entirely ephemeral. We meet also a further early image of Giant Tree- beard: still of vast height, as in the text given on pp. 382 - 4, where his voice came down to Frodo 'out of the tree-top', but no longer hostile, the captor of Gandalf (p. 363), 'pretending to be friendly but really in league with the enemy' (p. 384). Boromir is now said to be the son of the King of Ond; but the death of Gimli in Moria was an idea never further developed. Here is the first appearance of an Elvish name, Beleghir, of the Great River, which flowed through Fangorn Forest (see p. 410). The Forest 'runs right up to the [Blue >] Black Mountains'; cf. the outline for the Council of Elrond (p. 397), in which Gandalf says that Giant Tree- beard 'haunts the Forest between the River and the South Mountains'. But of Lothlorien and Rohan there is as yet not a hint.

NOTES.

1. The last sheet of the original chapter (see p. 213) had ended with the words 'a strong king whose realm included Esgaroth, and much land to the south of the great falls' at the foot of the page (numbered 'IX.8'), and the reverse was left blank. The first version of the continuation was written out (in a rapid scribble in ink) independently of the old text; the second, also very rough and nearly all in pencil, starts on the unused verso side of 'IX.8', on which however my father wrote in preparation 'IX.9', although at that time he did not use the page. When he returned to it later he did not change the chapter-number but continued the numeration 'IX.10' etc.; this however was mere absentmindedness, since the chapter could not possibly at this time still be numbered 'IX'.

2. The reference is to the end of The Hobbit; cf. p. 15 and note 3.

3. In the first version Gloin does not admit to any falling short of the skill of the forefathers: 'He began to speak of new inventions and of the great works at which the folk of the Mountain were now labouring; of armour of surpa.s.sing strength and beauty, swords more keen and strong... - The sentence You should see the waterways of Dale, Frodo, and the fountains and the pools!' goes back to the first draft; in FR (p. 242) the word 'mountains' is an obvious error which has never been corrected.

4. This name is found only in the first of the two texts, but it appears later on in the second (p. 395).

5. Cf. pp. 211, 214, 363. - Peregrin disappeared out of the s.h.i.+re when he was 33, at which time Frodo was only two years old (see p. 387, note g).

6. When my father wrote this pa.s.sage he evidently had in mind, at least as one possibility, a comic song, received with the 'ringing laughter' that wakened Frodo; for at the top of the page he wrote 'Troll Song' - a pa.s.sing idea before it was given far more appositely to Sam in the Trollshaws. But he also wrote 'Let B[ilbo] sing Tinuviel', and the word '? Messenger'. This is a reference to the poem Errantry (published in The Oxford Magazine 9 November 1933, and with many further changes in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil ( 1962)). Bilbo's song Earendil was a mariner derived (in a sense) from Errantry, and the earliest text of it still begins: There was a merry messenger, a pa.s.senger, a mariner, he built a boat and gilded her and silver oars he fas.h.i.+on d her...

7. In the first text the dwarf with Gloin is named Frar; in the margin is pencilled Burin son of Balin. Frar appears also in the outline for the Council of Elrond on p. 397, again replaced by Burin.

8. The presence of an Elf of Mirkwood was an addition to the second text.

9. As written, the first text read here: 'two of Elrond's own kinsfolk the Pereldar or halfelven folk...' Pereldar was struck out, probably at once. In the Quenta Silmarillion the Pereldar or 'Half-eldar' are the Danas (Green-elves): V.215. The Danas were also called 'the Lovers of Luthien' (ibid.). In LR (Appendix A I (i)) Elros and Elrond are called Peredhil 'Half-elven'; an earlier name for them was Peringol, Peringiul (V.152).

10. The Grey Havens are first named in the third phase version of 'Ancient History', p. 319.

.11. The square brackets are in the original.

12. As note 11.

13. The text stands thus, with two pa.s.sages both beginning 'Yet of late we have received secret messages from Mordor', but neither rejected.

14. The name Boromir of the second son of Bor, killed in the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, had appeared in the later Annals of Beleriand and in the Quenta Silmarillion (V. I34, 287, 310). For the etymology of the name see V.353, 373.

15. This sentence is a subsequent correction of 'But the faces of those that were seated in the room were grave.' In a rejected opening of the text Gandalf says: 'We had better make our way to Elrond's chamber at once', and in the western wing of the house he knocks at a door and enters 'a small room, the western side of which opened onto a porch beyond which the ground fell sheer to the foaming river.' In the revised opening as printed the Council of Elrond takes place in the porch (as in FR, p. 252), though it was still described here as a 'room', until this correction was made.

16. This first appearance of Gimli son of Gloin was a pencilled alteration, but not from much later.

17. In the previous account of those present at the Council (p. 395) the three counsellors of Rivendell are Erestor, called 'an Elf', and 'two other kinsmen of Elrond, of that half-elvish folk whom the Elves named the children of Luthien' - which seems however to imply that Erestor also was Elrond's kinsman.

18. In FR (p. 253) Galdor, here the precursor of Legolas, is the name of the Elf from the Grey Havens who bore the errand of Cirdan. Galdor had not at this time become the name of the father of Hurin and Huor; in the Quenta Silmarillion he was still named Gumlin.

19. The first reference to the Dead Marshes.

20. My father bracketed the pa.s.sage from 'Ever since I have worn shoes' to 'hurt in some way', and wrote in the margin (with a query) that it should be revealed later that Trotter had wooden feet. - This is the first appearance of the story that it was Trotter who found Gollum (in the version of 'Ancient History' in the third phase (p. 320) Gandalf still told Frodo that he had himself found Gollum, in Mirkwood); and Trotter's experience of Mordor, several times mentioned or hinted at (see pp. 223, 371), is explained at the same time.

21. Written in the margin against this paragraph: 'Gandalf's captivity'.

22. See pp. 118 - 20.

23. An earlier form of this pa.s.sage makes Gandalf reply to Elrond: 'I knew of him. But I had quite forgotten him. I must go and see him as soon as there is a chance.' This was changed - at the time of writing - to the pa.s.sage given, in which Gandalf says that he actually visited Tom Bombadil after the attack on Crickhollow - the first appearance of an idea that will be met again, though the meeting of Gandalf and Bombadil never (alas!) reached narrative form. Cf. the isolated pa.s.sage given on pp. 213 - 14, where Gandalf says at Rivendell: 'Why did I not think of Bombadil before! If only he was not so far away, I would go straight back now and consult him.' Cf. also p. 345 and note i r. - Gandalf does not mention Odo here, and it becomes clear at the end of this chapter that he had been removed from Rivendell (see pp. 407, 409).

24. In the third phase version of 'At the Sign of the Prancing Pony' it is still apparent that Tom Bombadil was known to visit the inn at Bree (p. 334).

25. In rough drafting of this pa.s.sage my father wrote: 'and in the end he would come in person; and the Barrow-wights would', striking out these last words as he wrote and changing them to: 'and even on his own ground Tom Bombadil alone could not withstand that onset unscathed.' - 'Lord of the Ring' was first written 'Lord of the Rings', but changed immediately.

26. Erestor changed from Clorfindel, which was changed from Elrond. Cf. P. 396.

27. This reply to Erestor was first given to Gandalf, for Erestor addressed his question to him: 'Can you solve this riddle, Gandalf?' To which Gandalf answered: 'No! I cannot. But I can choose, if you wish me to choose.' The pa.s.sage was then changed at once to the form given.

28. In The Hobbit Thrain was not the father of Thror, but his son. This is a complex question which will be discussed in Vol. VII.