Sauron Defeated (14 page)

8. The two sentinel trees that grew now where the gates of Isengard had stood do not appear. The words of Aragorn and Gandalf with Treebeard after his mention of the destruction of the Orcs (whom he apostrophises only in English adjectives) in the Wold were different from those in RK (p. 258), though a part of this dialogue was used a little later in the final text:

'We know it,' said Aragorn, 'and never shall it be forgotten, nor your storming of Isengard, and it is our hope that your forest may grow again in peace. There is room and to spare west of the mountains.'

'Forest may grow,' said Treebeard sadly; 'woods may spread, but not Ents; there are no Entings now.'

'Never at least while the Mark and Gondor remain,' said Gandalf; 'and that will have to be very long indeed to seem long to Ents. But what of your most important task, Fangorn?

Treebeard does not say how long it was since Saruman had gone (see p. 69); and Gandalf does not tell him that Saruman had found his soft spot and persuaded him by 'the poison of his voice', but says merely 'Well, he's gone then, and that is all there is to be said' (reminiscent of his resigned 'Well, well, he is gone' when he heard from Legolas at the Council of Elrond of Gollum's escape, FR p. 269). Quickbeam does not appear in the handing over of the keys to Orthanc: ' "It is locked," said Treebeard, "locked by Saruman, and here are the keys," and he gave three black keys to Aragorn.'

9. Runaeluin: the last four letters are not perfectly clear, but this seems much the most probable interpretation. Can Runaeluin be the Sea of Rhun?

10. The third manuscript C was given the chapter-number 'LV'. This reduction of the numbers by two begins with 'The Tower of Kirith Ungol' (p. 25).

11. In the First Edition, while the eleventh king is named Leo f by the minstrel in Edoras in 'Many Partings', in the list of the Kings of the Mark in Appendix A (II) the eleventh king is Brytta, with no explanation given. In the Second Edition the explanation was added: 'He was called by his people Leofa, for he was loved by all; he was openhanded and a help to all the needy.'

12. The English adjectives in B are the same as those in RK: 'evileyed, blackhanded, bowlegged, flinthearted, clawfingered, foulbellied, bloodthirsty'. In C the words quingatelko and rakkalepta were omitted, and then henulka and saurikumba were struck out and tingahondo changed to sincahondo. Finally sincahondo was changed on the printer's typescript to sincahonda as in RK.

13. On a copy of the First Edition that my father used to make alterations for incorporation in the Second Edition he added to the section 'The Chief Days from the Fall of the Barad-dur to the End of the Third Age' in Appendix B the entry 'August 15 Treebeard releases Saruman', but this was not for some reason included in the Second Edition. See the Note on Chronology below.

14. On the names Celebras and Fanuiras see VII.174, 306.

15. The course of this river was marked already on the First Map (VII.305), flowing down from the Misty Mountains to join the Greyflood above Tharbad. It was not referred to in the text of the First Edition, but was named the Glanduin in Appendix A (I, iii, first paragraph). The accidents or misunderstandings that be-devilled its representation on the map accompanying The Lord of the Rings are detailed in Unfinished Tales pp. 263 - 5.

16. It is not said in B that the only part of the hobbits' story that really interested Bilbo was the account of the crowning and marriage of Aragorn; nor that he had forgotten that he had already given Sting and the mithril-coat to Frodo; nor that his books of lore had red backs. All these changes entered in the third manuscript C. The books were labelled Translations from the Elvish, by B. B. Esquire; Esquire was removed on the galley proof.

I record here various other details, mostly concerning names, in which B differed from RK.

The reference to Merry as 'a Knight of the Riddermark' was retained from A (p. 61) and then struck out. On Hasufel for Arod see note 1.

The alliterative verses of the song of the Riders of Rohan as they rode round Theoden's barrow were only introduced on a rider to the fourth text, the typescript for the printer, together with the passage preceding them in which the song of the Riders brought to mind 'the voice of Eorl crying above the battle upon the Field of Celebrant', and 'the horn of Helm was loud in the mountains'. The king's minstrel, who made the song, was Gleowin in B, Gleowine in C; and the Barrowfields of A become the Barrowfield in B.

In Eomer's farewell words to Merry (RK p. 256) he speaks of his deeds 'upon the fields of Mundberg', emended on C to Mundburg (see VIII.355 - 6).

Treebeard's name of Lorien was spelt Laurelindorinan, and this survived into the First Edition, becoming Laurelindorenan in the Second. He still says to Galadriel and Celeborn O vanimar vanimalion ontari (p. 64), 0 being changed to A on text B and ontari to nostari on C. The comma after vanimar was added in the Second Edition. In VIII.20 I mentioned late notes of my father's on the fragments of other languages found in The Lord of the Rings, which for the greater part of the book are so hastily written as to be mostly unusable. His translation of O vanimar, vanimalion nostari can however be made out (in the light of the Quenya words themselves): 'fair ones begetters of fair ones', and with this is a note 'nosta beget'; cf. the Etymologies in Vol.V, stems BAN, NO, ONO.

Wormtongue's name remained Frana (p. 65) in B and C, but was changed to Grima on the final typescript; and Gandalf still calls Butterbur Barnabas (RK p. 265).

Note on the Chronology.

In the original draft A of this chapter there were scarcely any indications of chronology: Aragorn tells Frodo (p. 61) that they will depart from Minas Tirith in three days' time, but this only relates to the end of 'the days of rejoicing', of indeterminate length; and it was fifteen days' journey from Minas Tirith to Rohan.

In B Aragorn tells Frodo that they will leave in seven days, and that

'in three days now Eomer will return hither to bear Theoden back to rest in the Mark', as he duly did; and all this is retained in The Lord of the Rings, together with the fifteen days of the journey to Rohan. But neither B nor C give much more indication than did the original draft of the time taken over the. stages of the journey from Edoras to Rivendell, and it may be that my father did not attend to the matter closely until the final preparation of the book. It is a curious fact that the chronology of 'The Chief Days from the Fall of the Barad-dur to the End of the Third Age' in Appendix B (and which is the same in this respect in both editions) does not agree with the text of 'Many Partings' in respect either of Eomer's return in relation to the setting out for Edoras or of the time taken on that journey. In the chronology of 'The Chief Days' Eomer returned to Minas Tirith on July 18, and the riding from the City with King Theoden's wain took place on the following day, July 19, not four days later as in Many Partings., while the arrival at Edoras is dated August 7, eighteen days later, not fifteen as in the text.

As I have noted already, no indication of date was given for the meeting of Saruman with the travellers as they rode north even in the First Edition; in the Second Edition the passage was altered to say that the meeting took place on the sixth day since they parted from the King, and they were still in Dunland (see p. 69). But in fact this dating was already present in the First Edition, in the chronology of 'The Chief Days' in The Tale of Years:

August 22 They come to Isengard; they take leave of the King of the West at sunset.

August 28 They overtake Saruman; Saruman turns towards the Shire.

As the third text C was written it was still on September 1 that the travellers saw the Mountains of Moria, but late emendation (see p. 70) produced, or satisfied, the chronology of 'The Chief Days': September 6 They halt in sight of the Mountains of Moria.

September 13 Celeborn and Galadriel depart, the others set out for Rivendell.

On September 21, the day before Bilbo's birthday, Gandalf and the hobbits returned to Rivendell, having taken (being mounted) a much shorter time than they took to reach Moria on their outward journey, nine months before.

VIII.

HOMEWARD BOUND.

The original draft A of 'Many Partings' continued on into the opening of 'Homeward Bound' (see p. 64), but my father drew a line of separation, and began a new pagination, probably at an early stage. At the same time he scribbled in a title for the new chapter: 'Homecoming'. This text runs on with continuous pagination right through to the end of The Lord of the Rings, and included the Epilogue.

This last of the first drafts ends the work in style: if not the most difficult of all the manuscripts of The Lord of the Rings it certainly has few rivals. As far as the Battle of Bywater (see p. 93) it gives the impression of having been written in one long burst, and with increasing rapidity. Ideas that appear in earlier reaches of the text are contradicted later without correction of the former passages. In the part of it that corresponds to 'Homeward Bound' and the beginning of

'The Scouring of the Shire', however, the text does not present excessive difficulty, chiefly because the final form of the story was not very substantially changed from that in the original draft, but also because my father's handwriting, while very rough throughout, declined only gradually as the text proceeded.

I break the text here into three chapters as in RK. Throughout, the original draft is of course called 'A'. Of the tale of the visit to The Prancing Pony there is not a great deal to record. It opens thus (RK

p. 268):

So now they turned their faces for home; and though they rode now they rode but slowly. But they were at peace and in no haste, and if they missed their companions of their adventures, still they had Gandalf, and the journey went well enough when once they passed beyond Weathertop. For at the Fords of Bruinen Frodo halted and was loth to ride through, and from here on to Weathertop he was silent and ill at ease; but Gandalf said nothing.

And when they came to the hill he said 'Let us hasten', and would not look towards it. 'My wound aches,' he said, 'and the memory of darkness is heavy on me. Are there not things, Gandalf, that cannot ever be wholly healed?'

'Alas, it is so,' said Gandalf.

'It is so I guess with my wounds,' said Frodo....

This page of A (carrying the end of the later 'Many Partings' and the beginning of 'Homeward Bound') was replaced, in all probability very soon, by a new page with a chapter number, 'LVIII', and in this the opening passage draws nearer to that in RK: the date of the crossing of the Fords of Bruinen is given (the sixth of October, as in RK), and Frodo speaks of his pain there, not below Weathertop; but he says:

'It's my shoulder, my wound aches. And my finger too, the one that is gone, but I feel pain in it, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me.'(1)

When Butterbur came to the door of The Prancing Pony he did not, as in RK, misunderstand Nob's cry 'They've come back' and come rushing out armed with a club:

And out came Barnabas wiping his hand on his apron and looking as bustled as ever, though there seemed few folk about, and not much talk in the Common Room; indeed he looked in the dim lamplight rather more wrinkled and careworn.

'Well, well,' he said, 'I never expected to see any of you folk again and that's a fact: going off into the wild with that Trotter ...'

Whatever response Butterbur made to Gandalf's request 'And if you have any tobacco we'll bless you. Ours has long since been finished' is not reported. When Butterbur objects (RK p. 272) that he doesn't want 'a whole crowd of strangers settling here and camping there and tearing up the wild country' Gandalf tells him:

'... There's room enough for realms between Isen and Greyflood, and along the shores between Greyflood and Brandywine. And many-folk used to dwell north away, a hundred miles and more from you, on the North Down[s] and by Nenuial or Evendimmer, if you have heard of it. I should not wonder if the Deadmen's Dike is filled with living men again.

Kings' Norbury is its right name in your tongue. One day the King may come again.'(2)

Apart from these passages the text of 'Homeward Bound' in RK was virtually present in the draft text,(3) though naturally with many small changes in the dialogue still to come, until the end of the chapter: here there is a notable difference in the story. The conversation of the hobbits as they left Bree is much as in RK, but without Merry's reference to pipe-weed and without Gandalf's reference to Saruman and his interest in the Shire:

'I wonder what he [Butterbur] means,' said Frodo.

'I can guess some of it at any rate,' said Sam gloomily. 'What I saw in the Mirror. Trees cut down and all, and the old gaffer tumed out. l ought to have turned back sooner.'

'Whatever it is it'll be that Cosimo at the bottom of it,' said pippin.

'Deep but not at the bottom,' said Gandalf.

This stands near but not at the foot of a page. Across the empty space my father wrote this note:

Gandalf should stay at Bree. He should say: 'You may find trouble, but I want you to settle it yourselves. Wizards should not interfere in such things. Don't crack nuts with a sledgehammer, or you'll crack the kernels. And many times over anyway. I'll be along some time.'