The Treason of Isengard (13 page)

p. 215), for my father wrote here Thirs before he wrote Ettendales. He must have been thinking of using the Old English word pyrs, of the same general meaning as ent, eoten, Middle English thirs (and other forms). On the other hand a note on the First Map (see p. 306) seems also to show Etten- at the moment of its emergence.

33. There was also a fleeting idea that it would be Bilbo's song at Rivendell (see VI.412, note 6).

34. See Humphrey Carpenter, Biography, p. 213; Letters of J. R. R.

Tolkien no. 134 (29 August 1952). The tape-recording of the

'Troll Song' made by Mr. Sayer on that occasion is heard on the Caedmon record (TC 1477) issued in 1975. The version sung by my father was the third of the present texts.

35. The second text is much closer to that in FR, but still distinct: in the first verse And sat there hard and hungry stands in place of For meat was hard to come by, in the third Before I found his carkis for Afore I found his shin-bone, and in the fifth Thee'll be a nice change from thy nuncle! for I'll try my teeth on thee now. In this text the fifth, sixth, and seventh lines of each verse were omitted, but were pencilled in later, mostly as they appear in FR.

The third text changed And sat there hard and hungry in the first verse to And seen no man nor mortal (with rhyming words Ortal! Portal!), which goes back to The Root of the Boot in Songs for the Philologists (VI.143), but this was corrected on the manuscript to the final line For meat was hard to come by (and was so sung by my father in 1952, see note 34). The third verse preserved Afore I found his carkis (with the last line He's got no use for his carkis), and the fifth preserved Thee'll be a nice change from thy nuncle!

36. But the information that the Baranduin was the Brandywine survived as a footnote at this point in FR (p. 222). - This is no doubt the first occurrence of B(a)randuin in the narrative, origin of the 'popular etymology' Brandywine among the hobbits. Both Branduin and Baranduin are given in an added entry in the Etymologies in Vol. V (stem BARAN, p. 351). - As the passage appears in the manuscript, the name of the river was written Branduin, corrected to Baranduin, and (much later) to Malevarn.

IV.

OF HAMILCAR, GANDALF, AND

SARUMAN.

On 5 August 1940 the Registrar of Oxford University wrote to my father enclosing examination scripts that had been received from an American candidate in the Honour School of English. These provided a good quantity of paper, and my father used it for the continuation of the interrupted story of the Mines of Moria and for revisions of the story already in existence; he was still using it when he came to the departure of the Company from Lothlorien.(1) In the Foreword to the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings he said that he 'halted for a long while' by Balin's tomb in Moria; and that 'it was almost a year later' when he went on 'and so came to Lothlorien and the Great River late in 1941.' I have argued (VI.461) that in saying this he erred in his recollection, and that it was towards the end of 1939, not of 1940, that he reached Balin's tomb; and the use of this paper, received in August 1940, for the renewed advance in the narrative seems to support this view.(2) Of course it may be that he did not begin using it until significantly later, though that does not seem particularly likely.

At any rate, for the attempt to deduce a consecutive account of the writing of The Lord of the Rings this was a most fortunate chance, since the use of a readily recognisable paper the supply of which was limited makes it possible to gain a much clearer idea of the development that took place at this time than would otherwise be the case. I shall refer to this paper as 'the August 1940 examination script'.

It is not, to be sure, clear whether my father meant that he put the whole thing away for the better part of a year, or whether he distinguished between 'new narrative' - the onward movement of the story from the Chamber of Mazarbul - and the rewriting of existing chapters. Dates in the latter part of 1939 have appeared in the preceding chapters: the 'final decisions' of 8 October 1939 (p. 8), the

'New Plot' of Autumn 1939 (p. 9), and the date October 1939 of the

'fourth phase' version of the long 'Bree' chapter (p. 40). A 'New Plot', given in the present chapter, is dated August 1940. It may be much oversimplified to suppose that nothing at all was done between the last months of 1939 and the late summer of 1940, but at least it is convenient to present the material in this way, and in this chapter I collect together various texts that certainly belong to the latter time.

In the 'fourth phase' version of 'A Knife in the Dark' the story of the attack on Crickhollow took this form (p. 55): the Black Riders carried Hamilcar Bolger out of the house as an inert bundle, and as they rode away 'another horse came thundering along the lane. As it passed the gate a horn rang out.' I noted that this story belongs with what is said in the time-scheme D (p. 12: Thursday 29 September: 'Riders attack Crickhollow and carry off Ham, pursued by Gandalf').

A very rough manuscript written on the August 1940 examination script described above gives a version of the event as recounted later at Rivendell by Gandalf and Hamilcar Bolger. This text takes up at the point where Frodo, leaving his bedroom at Rivendell, goes down and finds his friends in the porch (for the previous state of this part of the story see VI.365); but I do not think that anything has been lost before this point - it was a particular passage of the 'Many Meetings' chapter rewritten to introduce the new story.

There seemed to be three hobbits sitting there with Gandalf.

'Hurray!' cried one of them, springing up. 'Here comes our noble cousin!' It was Hamilcar Bolger.

'Ham!' cried Frodo, astounded. 'How did you come here?

And why?'

'On horseback; and representing Mr. F. Baggins of Crickhollow, and late of Hobbiton,' answered Ham.

Merry laughed. 'Yes,' he said. 'We told him so, but he didn't believe it: we left poor old Ham in a dangerous post. As soon as the Black Riders had found Crickhollow, where Mr. Baggins was popularly supposed to be residing, they attacked it.'

'When did that happen?' asked Frodo.

'Before dawn on Friday morning,(3) four days nearly after you left, said Ham. They got me - he paused and shuddered - but Gandalf came in the nick of time.'

'Not quite the nick,' said Gandalf. 'A notch or two behind, I am afraid. Two of the Riders must have crept into Buckland secretly, while a third took the horses down the other side of the River inside the Shire. They stole the ferryboat from the Buckland shore on Thursday night, and got their horses over. I arrived too late, just as they reached the other side. Galeroc had to swim the river. Then I had a hard chase: but I caught them ten miles beyond the Bridge. I have one advantage: there is no horse in Mordor or in Rohan that is as swift as Galeroc.(4) When they heard his feet behind them they were terrified: they thought I was somewhere else, far away. I was terrified too, I may say: I thought it was Frodo they had got.'

'Yes!' said Hamilcar with a laugh. 'He did not know whether he was relieved or disgusted when he found it was only poor old Ham Bolger. I was too crushed to mind at the time: he bowled the Rider that was carrying me clean over; but I feel rather hurt now.'

'You are perfectly well now,' said Gandalf; 'and you have had a free ride all the way to Rivendell, which you would never have seen, if you had been left to your own sluggishness. Still, you have been useful in your way.' He turned to Frodo: 'It was from Ham that I heard you had gone into the Old Forest,' he said;

'and that filled me with fresh anxiety. I turned off the Road at once, and went immediately to visit Bombadil. That seems to have proved lucky; for I believe the three Riders reported that Gandalf and Baggins had ridden East. Their chieftain was at Amrath, far down the Greenway in the south, and the news must have reached him late on Friday. I fancy the Chief Rider was sorely puzzled when the advance guard reported that Baggins and the Ring had been in Bree the very night when they thought they had caught him in Crickhollow! Some Riders seem to have been sent straight across country to Weathertop. Five (5) came roaring along the Road. I was safe back at the Pony when they passed through Bree on Saturday night. They leaped the gates and went through like a howling wind. The Breelanders are still shivering and wondering what is happening to the world. I left Bree next morning, and rode day and night behind them, and we reached Weathertop on the evening of the third.'

'So Sam was right!' said Frodo. 'Yes, sir, seemingly,' said Sam, feeling rather pleased;(6) but Gandalf frowned at the interruption.

'We found two Riders already watching Weathertop,' he went on. 'Others soon gathered round, returning from the pursuit further east along the Road. Ham and I passed a very bad night besieged on the top of Weathertop. But they dared not attack me in the daylight. In the morning we slipped away northwards into the wilds. Several pursued us; two followed us right up the Hoarwell into the Entishlands. That is why they were not in full force when you arrived, and did not observe you at once.'

Here the text ends, but it is followed by another version of the last part, following on from 'we slipped away northwards into the wilds': þ .. not too secretly - I wanted to draw them off. But the Chief Rider was too cunning: only four came after us, and only two pursued us far; and they turned aside when we reached the Entishlands and went back towards the Ford, I fancy. Still, that is why they were not in full force when you arrived, and why they did not at once pursue [you] in the wild/Still, that is why they did not immediately hunt for you in the wilderness, or observe your arrival at Weathertop; and why they were not in full force for the attack on you.

Comparison of this account with the time-scheme D (pp. 12-13) will show that the narrative fits the scheme closely. In both, the Riders crossed the Brandywine by the Ferry on the night of Thursday 29

September; Gandalf rescued Ham from the Riders on Friday morning; two Riders (as the narrative was first written, see note 5) were sent direct to Weathertop, and (again as first written) seven rode through Bree, throwing down or leaping the gates, on the night of Saturday 1

October, while Gandalf and Ham were at The Prancing Pony; two Riders were already at Weathertop when Gandalf and Ham got there in the evening of Monday 3 October, after riding day and night; and Gandalf and Ham left Weathertop on the following morning.

Gandalf's horse is now named Galeroc, replacing earlier Narothal (VI.345); and the name Amrath appears, of the place where the chief of the Riders remained, far down the Greenway in the south.'(7) This narrative seems to belong also with the 'fourth phase' version of 'A Knife in the Dark' (p. 55): the horse that came racing up the lane as the Riders rode off with Ham Bolger was bearing Gandalf from the Ferry, 'a notch or two behind' the nick of time, as he said at Rivendell.

Yet there is a difficulty, or at any rate a difference; for the story of the attack on Crickhollow in this version, as in all those preceding it, described a long period ('time went slowly on') between the coming of the Riders into the garden of Crickhollow and the breaking into the house. If Gandalf came to Bucklebury Ferry just as the Riders with their horses reached the other side, and he at once put Galeroc to swim the river, he cannot have been more than a matter of minutes behind them.

A new narrative outline, written roughly and rapidly on two sides of a single sheet, is headed: 'New Plot. Aug. 26 - 27, 1940'. This outline was subsequently altered and added to, but I give it here as first written. I have expanded contractions and in other small ways slightly edited the text to make it easier to follow.

The wizard Saramond the White [written above at the same time: Saramund the Grey] or Grey Saruman sends out a message that there is important news: Trotter hears that Black Riders are out and moving towards the Shire (for which they are asking). He sends word to Gandalf, who leaves Hobbiton at the end of June. He goes S.E. (leaving Trotter to keep an eye on the Shire-borders) towards Rohan (or Horserland).

Gandalf knows that 9 Black Riders (and especially their king) are too much for him alone. He wants the help of Saramund. So he goes to him where he lived on the borders of Rohan at Angrobel (or Irongarth).

Saramund betrays him - having fallen and gone over to Sauron: (either) he tells Gandalf false news of the Black Riders, and they pursue him to the top of a mountain; there he is left standing alone with a guard (wolves, orcs, etc. all about) while they ride off with mocking laugh; (or else) he is handed over to a giant Fangorn (Treebeard) who imprisons him?

Meanwhile the Black Riders attack the Shire, coming up the Greenway and driving a crowd of fugitives among which are one or two evil men, Sauronites.(8) The King of the Black Riders encamps at Amrath to guard Sarn Ford and Bridge.