The War of the Ring (23 page)

8. The name Amon Hen was changed at its first occurrence in the manuscript (TT p, 247) to Amon Henn, but not at the second (TT

p. 252). On the second manuscript the name was written Amon Henn at both occurrences.

9. The southward road is shown running a little to the east of Anduin as far as the bottom of square Q 14 on Map III, VII.309.

The eastward road runs along the northern edges of Ered Lithui as far as the middle of square O 17 on Map 11, VII.305. The northward road divides at 'he bottom of square O 15 on Map II, the westward arm running to the hills on the left side of O 15, and the northward arm bending north-east along the western edge of the Dead Marshes and then turning west to end on the left side of N 15.

The passage describing the southward road was several times changed in respect of its distance from the hollow where Frodo, Sam and Gollum hid. In the original draft it was 'not more than a furlong or so'; in the first manuscript the distance was changed through 'a couple of furlongs', 'fifty paces', and 'a furlong', the final reading (preserved in the second manuscript) being '[it]

passed along the valley at the foot of the hillside where the hobbits lay and not many feet below them.' For one, rather surprising, reason for this hesitation see pp. 172 - 3.

In the First Edition the description of the topography differed from that in the Second Edition (TT p. 247), and read: The hollow in which they had taken refuge was delved in the side of a low hill and lay at some little height above the level of the plain. A long trench-like valley ran between it and the outer buttresses of the mountain-wall. In the morning-light the roads that converged upon the Gate of Mordor could now be clearly seen, pale and dusty; one winding back northwards; another dwindling eastwards into the mists that clung about the feet of Ered Lithui; and another that, bending sharply, ran close under the western watch-tower, and then passed along the valley at the foot of the hillside where the hobbits lay and not many feet below them. Soon it turned, skirting the shoulders of the mountains ...

This is the text of the second manuscript.

10. Frodo's meaning must be that these particular tales known to Gollum, concerning the cities of the Numenoreans, originated in the time before the Last Alliance and the overthrow of Sauron.

11. As the rider was first written there was this difference from the text of TT (p. 251):

For one thing he noted Gollum used I, as he had hardly done since he was frightened out of his old bad wits away back under the cliff of Emyn Muil.

This was changed to: '... Gollum used I, and that seemed usually to be a sign, on its rare appearances, that Smeagol was (for the moment) on top', and then to the final text.

12. Even if this was so, it cannot be supposed that my father still thought that Frodo and Sam would enter Minas Morgul, and encounter the Silent Watchers there. The outline with which the draft text ends (p. 125) would obviously have said so if that had been in his mind. Moreover, not long after, in his letter of 30

April 1944 (Letters no. 64), he said that 'in the chapter next to be done they will get to Kirith Ungol and Frodo will be caught.'

13. It is hard to be sure, but it seems from the manuscript evidence that originally Sam's word was oliphant, and that oliphaunt was used only in the rhyme. - The form is mediaeval French and English olifa(u)nt. There are no differences in the texts, except that in the draft version and in the form cited in my father's letter line 11 reads 'I've stumped' for 'I stump', and in line 15 'Biggest of all' is written 'Biggest of All'.

Note on the Chronology.

Where was Gandalf when Frodo, in hiding before the Morannon, was thinking of him? Four versions of the passage in question (TT p. 252) have been given on pp. 126-7. The original draft (1) seems to leave it open whether Gandalf was riding across Rohan or was almost at the end of his journey, climbing the road to the gates of Minas Tirith; in the following manuscript (2) he was standing on the walls of Minas Tirith; in the second manuscript (3) he was again riding across Rohan; and finally (4), as in TT, he was standing on the steps of Orthanc.

These versions reflect, of course, the difficulty my father encountered in bringing the different threads of the narrative into chronological harmony. According to the 'received chronology' at this time, the day in question here (spent by Frodo, Sam and Gollum in hiding before the Morannon) was 5 February (see p. 118); while Gandalf, Theoden and their companions left Isengard in the evening of 3 February (pp. 6, 73), camping at Dol Baran that night - the great ride of Gandalf with Pippin therefore began during the night of 3-4 February.

At the end of the fine manuscript of 'The Palantir' that my father had made at the beginning of April 1944 (p. 78) Gandalf had said to Pippin as they passed near the mouth of the Deeping Coomb, following the first manuscript of the chapter: 'You may see the first glimmer of dawn upon the golden roof of the House of Eorl. At sunset on the day after you shall see the purple shadow of Mount Mindolluin fall upon the walls of the tower of Denethor.' This was said, according to the chronology at the time, in the small hours of the night of 3-4 February; and Gandalf was therefore forecasting that they would reach Minas Tirith at sunset on the fifth.

This is the chronology underlying the words of the original draft (version 1). Subsequent shifting in the dates, so that Gandalf and Pippin reached Minas Tirith later and Frodo reached the Morannon earlier, meant that Gandalf was less far advanced in his journey, but his ride across Rohan still coincided with Frodo at the Morannon (version 3). None of the time-schemes, however, allows Gandalf to have actually reached Minas Tirith at that time, and I cannot explain version 2.

The final version 4 of this passage, as found in TT, reflects of course the final chronology, according to which Frodo was in hiding before the Black Gate on the same day {5 March) as Gandalf spoke with Saruman on the steps of Orthanc.

IV.

OF HERBS AND STEWED RABBIT.

For this chapter, written as a continuation of 'The Black Gate is Closed' and only separated from it and numbered 'XXXV' after its completion, there exists a good deal of (discontinuous) initial drafting, some of it illegible, and a completed manuscript, some of which is itself the primary composition. As in the last chapter I distinguish the texts as 'draft' and 'manuscript' (in this case no other manuscript was made, see p. 121).

On 26 April 1944, in a letter to me already cited (p. 121), my father said that on the previous day he had 'struggled with a recalcitrant passage in "The Ring" ', and then went on to say that 'at this point I require to know how much later the moon gets up each night when nearing full, and how to stew a rabbit!' From drafts and manuscript it is easy to see what this recalcitrant passage was: the southward journey as far as the point where Sam's thoughts turned to the possibility of finding food more appetizing than the waybread of the Elves (TT p. 260).

The original draft begins thus:

They rested for the few hours of daylight that were left, ate a little and drank sparingly, though they had hope of water soon in the streams that flowed down into Anduin from Hebel Duath. As the dusk deepened they set out. The moon did not rise till late and it grew soon dark. After a few miles over broken slopes and difficult [? country] they took to the southward road, for they needed speed. Ever they listened with straining ears for sounds of foot or hoof upon the road ahead and behind ...

After the description of the road, kept in repair below the Morannon but further south encroached upon by the wild, the opening draft peters out, and at this point, probably, my father began the writing of the manuscript. Here the single red light in the Towers of the Teeth appears, but they passed out of sight of it after only a few miles,

'turning away southward round a great dark shoulder of the lower mountains', whereas in TT this took place 'when night was growing old and they were already weary'.(1) In this text they came to the less barren lands, with thickets of trees on the slopes, during that first night, and the shrubs which in TT the hobbits did not know (being strange to them) were here 'unrecognizable in the dark'. After a short rest about midnight Gollum led them down onto the southward road, the description of which follows.

The precise sequence of composition as between drafts and manuscript is hard to work out, but I think that it was probably at this point that my father wrote a very brief outline for the story to come, together with notes on names. Frustratingly, his writing here has in places resisted all attempts to puzzle it out.

After so much labour and peril the days they spent on it seemed almost a rest. In Gollum's reckoning it was some 20

[changed from some other figure] leagues from the Morannon to the outer wards of Minas Morghul, maybe more. Gollum finds food. Night of Full Moon, they see a white... far away up in the dark shadow of the hills to left, at head of a wide

[?re-entrant, sc. valley], Minas Morghul.(2) Next night they come to the cross roads. An[d] a great [?stone] figure ... (3) back to Elostirion ... [Struck out: Sarnel Ubed.(4) Ennyn. Aran] Taur Toralt [struck out: Sarn Torath.] Annon Torath. Aranath.

reminding Frodo of the Kings at Sern Aranath. or Sairn Ubed.

But his head was struck off and in mockery some orcs? had set

... a clay ball with ... The red eye was ... [?painted over].(5) For Sern Aranath as the name of the Pillars of the Kings see VII.366

note 21; and cf. TT p. 311 (at the end of 'Journey to the Cross-roads'):

'The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath.' It is not clear to me whether Sairn Ubed is an alternative to Sern Aranath. On this same page, later but not much later, my father made further notes on names (see p. 137), and among these appears the following:

The two King Stones Sern Ubed (denial)

Sern Aranath

The word denial makes one think of the description of the Pillars of the Kings in 'The Great River' (FR p. 409), where in the earliest draft of that passage (VII.360) 'the left hand of each was raised beside his head palm outwards in gesture of warning and refusal.'(6) It is plain from this text that at this time the emergence of Faramir and the Window on the West was totally unforeseen, while on the other hand the broken statue at the Cross-roads was already present.

The next step in the development of the 'recalcitrant passage' is seen, I think, in what follows the description of the southward road in the manuscript:

After the labours and perils they had just endured the days that they spent upon the road seemed almost pleasant, though fear was about them and darkness lay before them. The weather now was good, though the wind blowing from the north-west over the Misty Mountains far away had a sharp tooth. They passed on into the northern marches of that land that men once called Ithilien, a fair country of climbing woods and swift falling streams. In Gollum's reckoning it was some thirty leagues from the Morannon to the crossing of the ways above Elostirion, and he hoped to cover that distance in three journeys. But maybe the distance was greater or they went slower than he hoped, for at the end of the third night they had not come there.

This passage was rejected at once, but before this was done 'thirty leagues' was changed to 'twenty', and it was perhaps at this time that a sentence was added earlier, following 'But they were not going quick enough for Gollum' (TT p. 256): 'In his reckoning it was twenty leagues from the Morannon to the crossing of the ways above Osgiliath,(7) and he hoped to cover that distance in three journeys'

(where TT has 'nearly thirty leagues' and 'four journeys').

My father now, if my analysis of the sequence is correct, decided that he was treating the journey from the Morannon to the Crossroads too cursorily; and his next step, on the same page of the manuscript, was to return to the first night (which was that of 5 February):

All that night they plodded on, and all the next. The road drew ever nearer to the course of the Great River and further from the shadow of Hebel Duath on their left. That second night the moon was full. Not long before the dawn they saw it sinking round and yellow far beyond the great vale below them.

Here and there a white gleam showed where Anduin rolled, a mighty stream swollen with the waters of Emyn Muil and of slow-winding Entwash. Far far away, pale ghosts above the mists, the peaks of the Black Mountains were caught by the beaming moon. There glimmered through the night the snows on Mount Mindolluin; but though Frodo's eyes stared out into the west wondering where in the vastness of the land his old companions might now be, he did not know that under This passage was in its turn struck out. The last words stand at the foot of a page.(8)

It was now, as it seems, that my father decided to introduce the episode of the rabbits caught by Gollum (developing it from the passage where it first appears, given in note 6).

All that night they plodded on. At the first sign of day they halted, and lay beneath a bank in a brake of old brown bracken overshadowed by dark pinetrees. Water flowed down not far away, cold out of the hills, and good to drink.