The War of the Ring (8 page)

The decision to remove most of this to the Foreword had already been taken when the first completed manuscript was written, for here Merry says no more than the few words that Gandalf allows him in TT (p. 163) - with Tobias for Tobold and the date 1050.

Lastly, the conversation near the end of the chapter in the manuscript (there is no initial drafting for this) brings in the meeting with Bregalad on the journey to Isengard, and runs thus:

'It is past noon,' said Gandalf, 'and we at least have not yet eaten. Yet I wish to see Treebeard as soon as may be. If Bregalad took my message, Treebeard has forgotten it in his labours.

Unless, as does not seem to be beyond belief, he left us some word with these door-wardens, which their noon-meal has driven from their minds.'

'Bless me! yes, of course,' said Pippin, tapping his forehead.

'"One thing drives out another," as Butterbur would say. Of course. He said: Greet the Lord of Rohan, fittingly. Tell him that Saruman is locked in Orthanc, and say that I am busy near the north gate.(38) If he and Gandalf will forgive me, and will ride there to find me, I will welcome them.'

'Then why did you not say so before?' said Gandalf.

'Because Gimli interrupted my fitting words,' answered Merry. 'And after that it appeared that hobbits had become the chief wonder and matter of debate.'

The chapter did not at this time end with Pippin's 'A fine old fellow.

Very polite', but went on with 'Gandalf and the King's company rode away, turning east to make the circuit of the ruined Ring of Isengard', which in TT is the opening of 'Flotsam and Jetsam'.

Further abundant drafting, again discontinuous and closely related to the finished text, exists for the second stage in the development of the chapter. Here can be seen the new or altered elements in the narrative as they arose - the postponed departure from Helm's Deep, the Ents at the edge of the Huorn wood (39) that displaced the meeting with Bregalad, the passage of the Fords, the dry river, the burial mound, the Isen suddenly running again in the night. At first, though the time of departure had been changed to the evening, the encounter with Bregalad was still present - but ends differently: for despite Gandalf's message to Treebeard, 'to the surprise of all he [Bregalad]

raised his hand and strode off, not back northward but towards the Coomb, where the wood now stood as dark as a great fold of night.'

The scene at the Fords likewise evolved in stages: at first there was no mention of the burial mound, then there were two, one on either bank of the Isen, and finally the island or eyot in the middle of the river appeared.(40) The passage describing the departure-of the Huorns from the Deeping Coomb and the Death Down (see p. 27) was first moved to stand (apparently) after Gandalf's reply to Legolas' question concerning the Orcs: That, I think, no one will ever know (TT

p. 151), for an isolated draft of it begins: 'And that proved true. For in the deep of the night, after the departure of the king, men heard a great noise of wind in the valley ...' '

The second main manuscript of the chapter was a fair copy that remained so, being only lightly emended after its first writing. A few details still survived from the first stage: Merry's father Caradoc; Tobias Hornblower and the year 1050; Eodoras; and the form Rohir, not Rohirrim (the two latter being changed later on the manuscript).

The assembly at Eodoras is still to be, as in the first version (p. 27),

'before the waning of the moon' (changed later to 'at the last quarter of the moon').

Lastly, in the account of the burials after the Battle of the Hornburg, there were not only the two mounds raised over the fallen Riders: following the words 'and those of Westfold upon the other' (TT p. 150) there stands in the manuscript 'But the men of Dunland were set apart in a mound below the Dike' (a statement that goes back through the first complete manuscript to the original draft of the passage, see note 8). This sentence was inadvertently omitted in the following typescript (not made by my father), and the error was never observed.

NOTES.

1. A short section of initial drafting was written on the back of a letter to my father bearing the date 31 July 1942.

2. One would expect Erkenwald: see p. 24, note 22. In the first occurrence here my father in fact wrote Erkenw before changing it to Erkenbrand. It may be that he was for a time undecided between the two names, and that there was not a simple succession Erkenwald > Erkenbrand.

3. Cf. the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Fangorn', VII.436: 'The victorious forces under Eomer and Gandalf ride to the gates of Isengard. They find it a pile of rubble, blocked with a huge wall of stone. On the top of the pile sit Merry and Pippin!'

4. Caradoc Brandybuck: see VI.251 and note 4. This is the first appearance of Pippin's father Paladin Took: see VI.386.

5. Less than a day: this must imply the shortest possible time-scheme (see Chapter I):

Day 3 (January 31) Ents break into Isengard at night and divert the Isen; Theoden to Helm's Deep, Battle of the Hornburg.

Day 4 (February 1) Theoden, Gandalf, &c. to Isengard.

6. This conversation is found in no less than seven separate forms for the first version of the story alone. In one of these Theoden says to Gandalf: 'But would you assault the stronghold of Saruman with a handful of tired men?', and Gandalf replies: 'No.

You do not fully understand the victory we have won, Lord of the Mark. The hosts of Isengard are no more. The West is saved. I do not go to an assault. I have business to settle, ere we turn back -

to graver matters, and maybe to harder fortune.' - In different versions Gandalf advises Theoden to order an assembly at Eodoras 'on the second day from now' and 'at the full moon four days from now.'

7. In TT the company did not leave for Isengard until the late afternoon, and on the way they camped for the night below Nan Gurunir; see pp. 5-6, $$ III-IV.

8. In preliminary drafting for this passage the bodies of the Orcs were burned; the men of Dunland were still the men of Westfold; it was Gamling who addressed them, not Erkenbrand ('Help now to repair the evil in which you have joined ...'); the dead of this people were buried in a separate mound below the Dike (a statement that was retained in both the finished manuscripts of the chapter, though lost in TT: see p. 40); the slain Riders were buried in a single mound (not two); and Hama, whose death before the Gates of the Hornburg here first appears (see p. 22), was buried among them, yet he gave his name to the mound: 'the

[Hamanlow >] Hamelow it was called in after years' (i.e. Old Engish Haman hlaw, the Mound of Hama). In TT (p. 150) Hama was laid in a grave alone under the shadow of the Hornburg.

9. The Death Down, where the bodies of the Orcs were buried, was first called the Barren Hill ('for no grass would grow there').

10. See note 14.

11. See the First Map (redrawn map III, VII.309), where the Isen flows into the Great Sea in the region then named Belfalas.

12. In the draft for this passage the battlefield 'was but a mile or two away'. - In TT the company crossed the Fords of Isen (by moonlight) in order to follow the 'ancient highway that ran down from Isengard to the crossings'.

13. That the slain Riders had been buried by Ents is stated subsequently: see pp. 47, 49, 54. Contrast TT (p. 157): 'More [Riders]

were scattered than were slain; I gathered together all that I could find.... Some I set to make this burial.'

14. In this version the company was riding fast, but even so my father seems to have been working on the basis of a much shorter distance from Helm's Deep to Isengard: contrast TT (p. 156):

'They had ridden for some four hours from the branching of the roads when they drew near to the Fords.' In a chronology written at this time, when the story was that Gandalf and Theoden and their company left Helm's Deep very soon after the end of the Battle of the Hornburg (see p. 5, $ III), he said that they left about 9 a.m. Changing this to the story that they stopped for the night on the way (p. 6, $ IV), he said that they left at 3.30 p.m., and noted: 'It is forty miles and they arrive about 12.30 p.m. on next day, Feb. 3.' This is followed by notes of distances that are in close agreement with the First Map (see p. 78 note 2), but

'Isengard Gates to mouth of Deeping Coomb' is given as 33 > 41

> 45 miles (cf. p. 27, where Gandalf's estimate was changed from 12 to 14 to 11 leagues).

As well as I have been able to interpret the First Map here I make the distance 1 cm. or 50 miles, and my map made in 1943

agrees. Section IV(E) of the First Map (VII.319) is stuck onto a portion of IV that is totally hidden, and it is possible that at this stage the Gap of Rohan was less wide. In any case, considerations of distance as well as of chronology evidently dictated the change whereby Gandalf and Theoden did not reach Isengard till the following day.

15. On the removal of this dialogue from the (revised) opening of

'Helm's Deep' and the chronological considerations that led my father to do so see pp. 5 - 6, $$ II - III.

16. This extremely squashing (and revealing) remark of Gandalf's to the King of Rohan was subsequently very firmly struck through on the manuscript.

17. Cf. Aragorn's words (at once rejected) in a draft for 'The White Rider', VII.429: 'The Ents! Then there is truth in the ancient legends, and the names that they use in Rohan have a meaning!'

18. In the original draft for this passage 'the strange figure came quickly on to meet them until it was about fifty [written above: a hundred] yards away. Then it stopped and lifting its grey arms and long hands to its mouth it called in a loud voice like a

[?ringing] trumpet. "Is Gandalf with this company?" The words were clear for all to hear.'

19. The page of the manuscript that includes this passage was replaced by another, which introduced little significant change; but in the rejected page Bregalad and Gandalf speak of 'the trees', and only in the replacement do they call them 'the Huorns'.

Several other terms in fact preceded Huorns: see pp. 47, 50, 52.

20. In the rejected page referred to in note 19 Bregalad said that Treebeard 'wishes to know what to do with Saruman', at which Gandalf 'laughed softly, and then was silent, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Hm," he mused, "hm - yes, that will be a problem." ' Cf. the outline for the chapter (p. 26).

21. The original drafting for the description of Nan Gurunir reads thus:

On either side the last long arms of the Misty Mountains reached out down into the plain, bare and broken ridges half-hidden now in smoke. And now they came upon a strange thing. It seemed to them that ruinous rocks lay ahead, out of which in a new-riven channel came the river, flowing where they stood back into its old course; yet higher up the valley the former bed was dry.

'Yes, I knew it,' said Gandalf. 'Therefore I drew you this way. We may cross with no difficulty to the Gates of Isengard.

As some of you who have journeyed here may know, of old the Isen flowed down, fed by many mountain-springs and streams, until it was already a swift and powerful water ere it left Nan Gurunir - it swept past the walls of Isengard upon the East.

That river you claimed as your boundary, but Saruman did not agree. But things have changed. Come and see!'

This was not used at all in the completed text of the first version of the story. It was not the first appearance of the diversion of the Isen: cf. 'The Story Foreseen from Fangorn', VII.436: 'At North end [of Isengard] they let in the River Isen but blocked its outflow. Soon all the floor of the circle was flooded to many feet deep.'

In the passage just cited the meaning must be that the Isen had not been sent back into its former course after the drowning of the Circle of Isengard, but continued to flow in its new channel.

Gandalf's words 'I knew it. Therefore I drew you this way. We may cross with no difficulty to the Gates of Isengard' must mean that that is why he had led the company along the east bank of the Isen from the Fords (p. 28), for thus they would only have to cross the dry former bed of the river, to the east of its new course.

22. Later, in 'Flotsam and Jetsam', Merry told (TT p. 171) that when the great host left Isengard 'some went off down the highway to the Fords, and some turned away and went eastward. A bridge has been built down there, about a mile away, where the river runs in a very deep channel.' See p. 56.

23. Differences from the final form were that a part of the Circle of Isengard on the western side was formed of the mountain-wall itself (this was taken up from the draft but rejected from the completed manuscript in the act of writing); there were two entrances, there being in addition to the great southern arch 'a small gate at the north, near the mountains' feet'; the circle was