The War of the Ring (56 page)

Here the text L ends, and here the typescript M ends also.

In this second part of the chapter 'Many Roads lead Eastward' the typescript text shows great refinement in detail over these exceedingly rough and obviously primary drafts, but no texts are found to bridge them; and it seems possible that the developed form in M was actually achieved on the typewriter (there are in fact several passages that could suggest this). To a great extent the text of RK in 'The Muster of Rohan' was now present; but there remained still some differences, and among these I notice the following.(11)

Eowyn now says of the coming forth of the Dead (see p. 316), Yet it is said in Harrowdale that they came forth again in the moonless nights but little while ago, a great host in strange array, and none saw them return, they say.' The old man beside the Dark Door is still said to resemble one of the Pukel-men.(12) On the front of Hirgon's helm 'was wrought as an emblem a small silver crown' ('star' in RK). The second, unnamed errand-rider from Gondor says here of the darkness spreading out of Mordor: 'From my station by the beacon of Minrimmon I saw it rise', where in RK he says: 'From the hills in the Eastfold of your realm I saw it rise'. Notably, the conversation between Merry and Theoden now takes this form:

Theoden smiled. 'Rather than that I will bear you with me on Snowmane,' he said. 'I guessed your words before you spoke them. But at the least you shall ride with me to Edoras and look on Meduseld, for that way I shall go. So far Stybba can bear you: the great race will not begin till we reach the plains.'

'And over the plains with you to the end of the road your squire will ride,' said Eowyn. 'That you know in your heart, and others also have foreseen it. Come now, Meriadoc, and I will show you the gear that is prepared for you. It was the only request that Aragorn son of Arathorn made of us ere he departed.'

With that she led the hobbit from the king's pavilion to a booth among the lodges of the king's guard near by; and there a man brought out to her a small helm and a spear and round shield, and other gear.

The account of the departure follows that in text L (p. 318); the Rider who looked at Merry as he passed is still among the twelve household-men that preceded the host, 'somewhat less in height and girth than the others'; and nothing is said of what arrangement had been made for Merry after the departure of the host from Edoras.

The chapter 'Many Roads Lead Eastward' ended, both in manuscript and typescript, at the ride of the Rohirrim down Harrowdale:

'And so the great ride to the East began, with which the songs of Rohan were busy for many lives of men thereafter' (p. 319; RK p. 76).

The conclusion of 'The Muster of Rohan' as it stands in RK was added later, but not much later (at least in terms of the progress of the narrative: what halts and of what duration took place in the writing of Books V and VI there seems no way of telling); it first appeared, in fact, as the opening of Chapter XLVII, 'The Ride of the Rohirrim', and I postpone it to that place (p. 349).

NOTES.

1. On a rejected page in this manuscript, however, Theoden expresses some amazement at the scene in Harrowdale: 'The king looked with surprise about him, for there was a great concourse of men ... "What is the meaning of this?" asked the king. "Was not the muster set to begin tomorrow at Edoras?" ' Then a man, unnamed, explains how this is due to Gandalf, and a note follows: 'Gandalf must tell the king as he rides off that he will order the muster at Dunharrow and speed it up. That will necessitate altering remarks about the full moon' (see the Note on Chronology below). This rejected page then concludes with a brief passage that depends on the note: 'So they saw that Gandalf must have done as he promised. The muster was here, not at Edoras, and already the greater part of the men of Rohan were assembled.'

The words 'Gandalf must tell the king as he rides off' can only refer to his leaving Dol Baran on Shadowfax after the Nazgul passed over; but no such change was in fact introduced in that place.

At the foot of this rejected page is written: 'Eowyn tells of Aragorn's coming and his departure. The Paths of the Dead. The road of Monoliths.'

2. westward was, I think, no more than a slip. It was repeated in the following text (p. 313) but corrected, probably at once.

3. Iscamba: cf. Old English camb (Modern English comb), comb, crest (as of a cock, a helmet, etc.).

4. For the name Firienholt of the later Dimholt see p. 251 and note 21.

5. For the origin of this sentence see p. 246. It reappears in changed form in 'The Passing of the Grey Company' in RK (p. 59), where the Company halted before the Dark Door: 'Signs and figures were carved above its wide arch too dim to read, and fear flowed from it like a grey vapour.'

6. The first part of the name of the Golden Hall is so scrawled that it could be read in almost any way, but it is clearly not Winseld, the earlier name, and is almost certainly the first occurrence of Meduseld.

7. Apparently there were two messengers, for while the writing is so fast that no detail of letter is entirely certain, my father seems to have written 'Men are here, errand-riders out of Gondor.'

Theoden's reply could be equally well read as 'Let him come' or

'Let them come'. But only one man enters. - The war-arrow that he bears is green-feathered (black in RK).

8. The name Calenard(h)on emerged in the course of writing the chapter 'Faramir': see pp. 155 - 6, with notes 18 and 22.

9. The reference is to 'The King of the Golden Hall', TT p. 127:

'[Gimli] chose a cap of iron and leather that fitted well upon his round head; and a small shield he also took. It bore the running horse, white upon green, that was the emblem of the House of Eorl.' This passage, in which is recounted also the arming of Aragorn and Legolas 'in shining mail', was added on a rider to the fair copy manuscript of 'The King of the Golden Hall'.

10. Thus the provision of a coat of mail for Merry, referred to in the preceding sentence, was immediately denied.

11. The following names and name-forms in the typescript may be mentioned. The Firienholt remains, for later Dimholt. Brego is now again spelt thus, not Bregu, but his son's name is here Bealdor (changed to Baldor on the typescript): both of these are Old English variants. The path down from the Dark Door ('the road of Monoliths', note 1) is again called 'the Stony Road', capitalised, as in the text K (p. 315). Hirgon speaks of the Harad, where RK has the Haradrim.

12. In RK (p. 71) the old withered man is said to have been once 'tall and kingly'. Cf. The Lord of the Rings Appendix F (Of Men):

'The Dunlendings were a remnant of the peoples that had dwelt in the vales of the White Mountains in ages past. The Dead Men of Dunharrow were of their kin.'

Note on the Chronology.

In the last of the texts (H) of the abandoned opening of 'The Muster of Rohan' Theoden asked if the moon had not been full on the night before, and Eomer replied that on the contrary the moon would be full that night (pp. 251 - 2, 272 - 3). In the first of the later texts (J) Theoden himself says 'Tonight the moon will be full, and in the morning I shall ride to Edoras to the gathering of Rohan', and this remained into the typescript M.

In 'The Road to Isengard' the date of the muster at Edoras was changed over and over again according to the shifting chronology. For the earliest texts see p. 27 and note 6; the second fair copy of that chapter had 'before the waning of the moon', changed to 'at the last quarter of the moon'. This was retained in the following typescript, but there changed subsequently to 'on the first day after the full moon'

- which is the date in the present texts. (In 'The Road to Isengard' in TT, p. 150, the date of the muster is to be 'the second day after the full moon', and so at the beginning of 'The Muster of Rohan' in RK, p. 65, Theoden says: 'Last night the moon was full, and in the morning I shall ride to Edoras to the gathering of the Mark.') In the note on text J (see note 1 above) it is said that 'Gandalf must tell the king as he rides off [from Dol Baran] that he will order the muster at Dunharrow and speed it up', and that this 'will necessitate altering remarks about the full moon.' I do not understand this. If my father was referring to the passage in 'The Road to Isengard' in which the date of the muster is set, this would seem to have no relevance: for Gandalf was proposing, in view of the coming of the Nazgul, to change the arrangement that had been made and 'speed up' the muster.

All these later 'Muster of Rohan' texts agree that the moon was full on the night that Theoden came to Harrowdale (February 6); cf.

p. 299 and note 9. This was the night following the day on which Gandalf and Pippin reached Minas Tirith at sunrise; the sunset of that day was 'ominous', and the Darkness began on February 7 (p. 295).

With this the present texts agree: the second errand-rider from Gondor, arriving on the morning of the 7th, says that the Darkness

'began last night at sunset' (p. 317), and the departure of the Riders from Dunharrow takes place in deepening gloom. It is interesting to see that in text K, as Merry sat alone in his tent on the Firienfeld,

'Slowly night came on, and the half-seen heads of the mountains were crowned with small stars in the West, but the East was dark and shadowy, and the moon did not appear until late at night'; whereas in the typescript M (where it was still the night of full moon) the moon is not mentioned. The natural presumption is that the moon was hidden by the vast cloud spreading out of Mordor.

How my father was at this stage relating the full moon of February 6 to Frodo's movements is not clear to me. In The Tale of Years in LR

the full moon was on March 7 (since Frodo left Henneth Annun on March 8, and he saw the full moon setting before dawn on the morning of his departure: 'The Forbidden Pool', TT pp. 292 - 3), and Theoden came to Dunharrow on the evening of March 9; but with this the king's words in 'The Muster of Rohan', RK p. 65, 'Last night the moon was full', do not accord, and should have been 'Two nights ago'. This in turn would require alteration of the date set for the muster in 'The Road to Isengard' (see above).

VI.

THE SIEGE OF GONDOR.

My father's first start on this chapter was a brief, roughly pencilled text ('A') which he then wrote over in ink, so that a good deal is lost, especially of the latter part of it; but Taum Santoski has managed to recover quite enough to show that the ink overwriting ('B') followed it for the most part very closely. I shall here describe B rather than A, noting subsequently passages in which A is significantly different.

Text B (numberless and titleless) begins as does Chapter 4 in The Return of the King with 'Pippin was roused by Gandalf', and extends through the paragraph beginning 'It was dark and dim all day' (RK

p. 80). After Pippin's question 'Why did you bring me here?' the text differs from that of RK:

'Because it was not safe to leave you behind,' answered the wizard. 'Safe for others, I mean. It is no safe place here for you or anyone else, as you'll probably soon discover. But you brought it on yourself.' Pippin said no more.

Before long he was walking with Gandalf back again down the long cold passage to the doors of the Tower Hall. Within Denethor sat in a grey gloom, like an old patient spider, Pippin thought, and looking as if he had not moved since he dismissed his new esquire the day before. He beckoned Gandalf to a seat, but Pippin was left standing for a while unheeded. Presently the old man turned to him with a cold smile, whether of mockery or welcome Pippin could not tell.

'And why have you come, Peregrin son of Paladin?' he said.

'I was told that you wanted me, sir,' said Pippin, 'to, well, to learn my new duties.'

'Ah yes,' said Denethor. 'It is to be hoped that you spent yesterday well and to your liking, if less in eating [struck out: and sleeping] than you might wish. Today you shall take your turn to wait on me. I have little more now to do, until my son Faramir returns with tidings. And if there comes no ill news and the great ones' (he looked at Gandalf) 'do not occupy all my leisure, you shall talk to me. Can you sing?'

Pippin's apologetic account of the songs he knew and his horror at the thought of singing a comic song of the Shire before the grim Steward of Minas Tirith follows as in RK, as does Denethor's discussion with Gandalf, the arming and clothing of Pippin,(1) and the darkness over the city, up to 'as if all the Vale of Anduin waited for a ruinous storm.' Then follows:

His duties he found irksome and dull, so much so that he would even have welcomed a chance to sing one of his comic songs. But he was not asked to sing, and indeed few spoke to him at all.

Here the overwritten text B ends. In the underlying pencilled text A the discussion between Gandalf and Denethor did not concern Rohan, but was on the subject of the immediate strategy: though very little of it can be made out, the phrase 'Gandalf had already been urging on the Steward' and the name 'West Osgiliath' can be read. After Pippin had returned from the armoury it is said that he spent the day idly, 'for Denethor sat mostly behind closed doors'; and at some point during the day 'There was a clamour in the city. Faramir had returned. Pippin witnesses the greeting of Denethor and Faramir.'