The War of the Ring (20 page)

It is notable that in the draft the Nazgul is said to have been flying to Isengard. In the manuscript as first written this was not said: '... a vast shape winged and ominous: it scudded across the moon, and with a deadly cry went away westward, outrunning the moon in its fell speed.... But the shadow passed quickly, and behind it the wind roared away, leaving the Dead Marshes bare and bleak.' After the last sentence, however, my father added, probably not long after, 'The Nazgul had gone, flying to Isengard with the speed of the wrath of Sauron.' The rewriting of the passage, so that the Nazgul returns and, flying lower above them, sweeps back to Mordor, was done at a later time (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter); but the words in TT (p. 237) 'with a deadly cry went away westward' are in fact a vestige of the original conception.

Among various other differences and developments the following seem the most worth remarking.

In the original draft, and at first in the manuscript, Gollum's 'song'

(TT pp. 227 - 8) was wholly different after the first line: The cold hard lands

To feet and hands

they are unkind.

There wind is shrill,

The stones are chill;

there's nought to find.

Our heart is set

On water wet

in some deep pool.

O how we wish

To taste of fish

so sweet and cool!

There was no reference to 'Baggins' and the fish-riddle.

The story that they slept the whole of the day after they had come down from the Emyn Muil was not present at first. In the preliminary draft of the opening of the chapter Sam, after testing that Gollum was really asleep by saying fissh in his ear, did not fall asleep: Time seemed to drag; but after an hour or two Gollum sat up suddenly wide awake as if he had been called. He stretched, yawned, got up and began to climb out of the gully. 'Hi, where are you off to?' cried Sam. 'Smeagol's very hungry,' said Gollum. 'Be back soon.'

In the manuscript the final story appears, to the extent that Sam does fall asleep; but when he wakes 'the sky above was full of bright daylight.' This however was changed immediately: Sam and Frodo slept the whole day away, not waking until after sunset, and Gollum's departure to find something to eat is postponed to the evening.(11) There can be no doubt that the geography of the region in which the Dead Marshes lay had now been substantially changed. It is said in TT

(p. 232):

The hobbits were now wholly in the hands of Gollum. They did not know, and could not guess in that misty light, that they were in fact only just within the northern borders of the marshes, the main expanse of which lay south of them. They could, if they had known the lands, with some delay have retraced their steps a little, and then turning east have come round over hard roads to the bare plain of Dagorlad.

This passage appears in the manuscript, and is found embryonically in the original draft, of which, though partly illegible, enough can be made out to see that the new conception was present: 'They were in fact just within the north-west bounds of the Dead Marshes', and

'[they could] have come round the eastern side to the hard of Battle Plain.' The First Map (Maps II and IV(C), VII.305, 317) and the large map based on it that I made in 1943 are entirely at variance with this: for in that conception the No Man's Land lay between Sarn Gebir (Emyn Muil) and the pass into Mordor. There could be no reason for one journeying in those hills to enter the Dead Marshes if he were making for the pass (Kirith Ungol on those maps); nor, if he were at the edge of the marshes, would he by any means come to Dagorlad if instead of going through them he went round to their east. Essentially what has happened is that the Dead Marshes have been moved south-west, so that they lie between the Emyn Muil and the Gates of Mordor - into the region marked 'No Man's Land' on the First Map - and so become continuous with the Wetwang or Nindalf (see VII.320-1 and below); this is the geography seen on the large-scale map of Gondor and Mordor accompanying The Return of the King.(12) In reply to Frodo's question whether they must cross the Dead Marshes, Gollum answered in the original draft (cf. TT p. 233): ' "No need. Back a little, and round a little" - his skinny arm waved away north and east - "and you can come dry-foot to the Plain. Dagorlad that is, where the Battle was fought and He lost the precious, yess" -

he added this in a sort of whisper to himself.' The manuscript here has the text of TT; but subsequently, in Gollum's explanation of the dead faces in the marshes (TT p. 235), he says: 'There was a great Battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Smeagol was young, long ago, before the Precious came. They took It from the Lord then, Elves and Men took It. It was a great battle. They fought on the plain for days and months and years at the Gates of Mornennyn [> Morannon]' (for the original draft of this see p. 109). Gollum's reference to the story of the taking of the Ring from Sauron was removed much later.

The account of the morning after the night of the dead faces in the pools and the flight of the Nazgul, and of the lands through which they passed after leaving the marshes, was different in important respects from that in TT, pp. 238 - 9. The manuscript reads (following an initial draft):

When day came at last, the hobbits were surprised to see how close the ominous mountains had drawn: the outer buttresses and the broken hills at their feet were now no more than a dozen miles away. Frodo and Sam looked round in horror: dreadful as the Marshes had been in their decay their end was more loathsome still.

Even to the mere of the dead faces some haggard phantom of green spring would come ... (&c. as in TT p. 239) The extended and altered passage that replaces this in TT, introduced at a later stage, was due to considerations of geography and chronology. With this new passage two more nights are added to the journey (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter and the map on p. 117), and during this stage of it they pass through a country seen from the end of the marshes as 'long shallow slopes, barren and pitiless', and described subsequently as 'the arid moors of the Noman-lands'. Here this name reappears from Celeborn's words to the Company in 'Farewell to Lorien' (FR p. 390) and the old maps: see VII.320-1 and above.

An isolated page carries two distinct elements, though very probably both were set down at the same time. The change of the name of the Gates of Mordor in the act of writing from Ennyn Dur (the name on Sketch I, p. 108) first to Morennyn and then to Mornennyn shows that this page preceded the point in the writing of the manuscript text where Gollum speaks of the dead faces in the pools, for there Mornennyn appears (p. 112), but it is convenient to give it here since it concerns the narrative of the end of the chapter (and the beginning of the next).

The famous pass of [Ennyn (Dur) > Morennyn >] Mornennyn the Gates of Mordor was guarded by two towers: the Teeth of Mordor

[Nelig Morn Mel >] Nelig Myrn. Built by Gondorians long ago: now ceaselessly manned. Owing to ceaseless passage of arms they dare not try to enter so they turn W. and South. Gollum tells them of Kirith Ungol beneath shadow [of] M. Morgul. It is a high pass.

He does not tell them of the Spiders. They creep in to M[inas]

M[orgul].

This text is accompanied by a further sketch of the site of Kirith Ungol, reproduced on p. 114. It is clear from this that the transference of Minas Morgul to become the fortress guarding the Black Gates was a passing idea now abandoned; and it was no doubt at this very point (Minas Morgul being restored to its old position in the Mountains of Shadow a good way south of the Black Gates) that the southward journey along the western side of the mountains entered the narrative.

But it is also clear that the Tower of Kirith Ungol had not yet emerged: the cleft of the spiders passes beneath Minas Morgul, on the south side (on the assumption that the scene is depicted from the West); and the original story in the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' is again present, that Frodo and Sam entered Minas Morgul (but there is here no mention of Frodo's capture).

In the text accompanying Sketch I on p. 108 it is Minas Morghul, above the Black Gates, that was called 'the White Tooth', Neleglos; now there emerge (or perhaps re-emerge, from the original two towers guarding the pass, see p. 106) the Teeth of Mordor, Nelig Myrn.

It will be seen subsequently (p. 122) that at this stage 'the Gates of Mordor', 'the Black Gates' (Ennyn Dur, Mornennyn) were specifically names of the pass, not of any barrier built across it.

The other brief text on this page places Sam's overhearing of Gollum's disputation with himself (foreseen already in the preliminary notes to the chapter, p. 105) at this point in the narrative (though it seems that at this stage my father envisaged them passing a night, not a day, before the Black Gates).

The night watching the [Ennyn D(ur) >] Mornennyn. It is Frodo's turn to watch. Sam sleeps and suddenly awakes thinking he has (Third sketch of Kirith Ungol.)

heard his master calling. But he sees Frodo has fallen asleep. Gollum is sitting by him, gazing at him. Sam hears him arguing with himself: Smeagol versus 'another'. Pale light and a green light alternate in his eyes. But it is not hunger or desire to eat Frodo that he is battling with: it is the call of the Ring. His long hand keeps on going out and paw[ing] towards Frodo and then is pulled back. Sam rouses Frodo.

The actually reported 'colloquy' of Gollum was developed in stages.

His references to 'She' ('She might help'), and Sam's passing reflection on who that might be, were added subsequently, doubtless when that part of the story was reached. A change made much later altered what the 'two Gollums' said about Bilbo and the 'birthday present'; roughly in the initial draft, and then in the manuscript and subsequent typescripts, the passage read:

'Oh no, not if it doesn't please us. Still he's a Baggins, my precious, yes a Baggins. A Baggins stole it.'

'No, not steal: it was a present.'

'Yes, steal. We never gave it, no never. He found it and he said nothing, nothing. We hates Baggins.'

Lastly, in the manuscript and following typescripts the chapter ended at the words: 'In the falling dusk they scrambled out of the pit and slowly threaded their way through the dead land' (TT p. 242). All that follows in TT, describing the menace of a Ringwraith passing overhead unseen at dusk and again an hour after midnight, and the prostration of Gollum, was added to the typescripts at a later stage (see the Note on Chronology below).

NOTES.

1. My father went on to speak of a letter he had written adjudicat-ing a dispute in an army mess concerning the pronunciation of the name of the poet Cowper (Letters no. 61). A draft for this letter is found on a page of drafting for the passage describing the change in the weather over the marshes, TT pp. 236 - 7.

2. This, I believe, is the first appearance of the conception that the fortresses on the confines of Mordor had been built looking inwards and not outwards.

3. Cf. the Etymologies (V.376), stem NEL-EK 'tooth'.

4. My father had in fact moved Minas Morgul further north from its position as originally shown on the First Map (east of Osgiliath), and placed it not far from the northern tip of the Mountains of Shadow (see VII..310). With this cf. 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien', where Minas Morgul was said to be reached by a path that 'led up into the mountains - the north horn of the Mountains of Shadow that sundered the ashen vale of Gorgoroth from the valley of the Great River' (VII.333). But Minas Morgul was still on the western side of the mountains (i.e.

on the other side of the mountains to the Pass of Kirith Ungol).

5. In notes at the end of 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' my father had suggested that Frodo should be taken as captive to one of the guard-towers of the pass, and in a time-scheme of that period he changed 'Sam rescues Frodo in Minas Morgul' to 'Sam rescues Frodo in Gorgos' (see VII.344); and again (VII.412): 'The winding stair must be cut in rocks and go up from Gorgoroth to watch-tower. Cut out Minas Morgul.' Now, as it appears, these conceptions were to be fused: Frodo was again to be taken to Minas Morgul, but Minas Morgul was itself the watch-tower above the pass.

6. the third day: see the Note on Chronology below.

7. This passage was developed in the manuscript thus, before being changed to the text of TT (p. 238):

Frodo knew just where the present habitation and heart of that will now was. He could have walked, or flown straight there.

He was facing it: and its potency beat upon his brow if he raised it for a moment. He felt like someone who, covered only by a grey garment, has strayed into a garden, when his enemy enters. The enemy knows he is there, even if he cannot yet see him, and he stands at gaze, silent, patient, deadly, sweeping all corners with the hatred of his eye. Any movement is fraught with peril.

8. when the White Eye is up: throughout this part of the story Gollum's names for the Sun and Moon were originally the Yellow Eye and the White Eye, not the Yellow Face and the White Face. - TT has here, as does the manuscript, 'when the candles are lit': see note 10.

9. Cf. Gollum's words in TT (p. 235): 'There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Smeagol was young'. His words in the present draft ('a great battle here long long ago when Smeagol was young') might suggest the far shorter time-span (see p. 21, and VII.450 note 11); but the manuscript had from the first