PART TWO. THE RING GOES EAST. I. THE TAMING OF SMEAGOL. In his letter of June 1957 cited in note 19 to the last chapter (p. 80) my father said that at the time of this long break in the writing of The Lord of the Rings 'Chapter 1 of Book iv had hardly got beyond Sam's opening words (Vol. II p. 209)'. That beginning of a new story of Sam and Frodo in Mordor,(1) for so long set aside, can I think be identified: it consists of a brief narrative opening that soon breaks down into outline form ('A'), and a portion of formed narrative ('B') that ends at Sam's words (TT p. 210) 'a bit of plain bread, and a mug aye half a mug of beer would go down proper'. The original draft A went thus: 'Well Master this is a nasty place and no mistake,' said Sam to Frodo. They had been wandering for days in the hard barren heights of Sarn Gebir. Now at last on the fifth evening since their flight (2) they stood on the edge of a grey cliff. A chill east wind blew. Far below the land lay green at the feet of the cliff, and away S.W. [read S.E.] a pall of grey cloud or shadow hung shutting out the remoter view. 'It seems we have come the wrong way altogether,' went on Sam. 'That's where we want to get, or we don't want to but we mean to. And the quicker the better, if we must do it. But we can't get down, and if we do get down there is all that nasty green marsh. Phew, can you smell it.' He sniffed the wind: cold as it was it seemed heavy with a stench of cold decay and rottenness. 'We are above the Dead Marshes that lie between Anduin and the pass into Mordor,' said Frodo. 'We have come the wrong way - [we >) I should have left the Company long before and come down from the North, east of Sarn Gebir and over the hard of Battle Plain. But it would take us weeks on foot to work back northward over these hills. I don't know what is to be done.%hat food have we?' A couple of weeks with care. Let us sleep. Suspicion of Gollum that night. They work northward. Next day footfalls on the rock. Frodo sends Sam ahead and hides behind a rock using ring.(3) Gollum appears. Frodo over- come with sudden fear flies, but Gollum pursues. They come to a cliff rather lower and less sheer than that behind. In dread of Gollum they begin to climb down. Here my father abandoned this draft, and (as I think) followed at once with a new opening (B), in which the text of TT is closely approached at almost all points (but the hills are still named Sarn Gebir, and the time is 'the [struck out: fourth or] fifth evening since they had fled from the Company'). With Sam's longing for bread and beer this manuscript ends, not at the foot of a page; and it is, I feel . sure, the abandoned opening of the chapter to which my father referred.(4) When it was written, in relation to the work on Book III, there seems no way of telling.(5) 'A few pages for a lot of sweat,' my father said in his letter of 5 April 1944 (see p. 78), in which he told me of his turning again to the adventures of Sam and Frodo; and 45 years later one can feel it, reading these pages in which he struggled (in increasingly impossible handwriting) to discover just how Sam and Frodo did in the end get down out of the twisted hills into the horrible lands below. When he took the chapter up again in 1944, he did not rewrite the original opening (which survives with little change into TT), but taking a new sheet began: 'The sun was caught into clouds and night came suddenly' (cf. TT p. 210). This text, which I will call 'C', soon degenerates into a terrible scrawl and at the end becomes in part altogether illegible. The sun was caught into clouds and night came suddenly. They slept in turns, as best they could, in a hollow of the rocks, sheltered from the easterly wind. 'Did you see them again, Mr Frodo?' asked Sam, as they sat,, stiff and chilled, munching wafers of lembas in the cold grey of early morning. 'Yes, once,' said Frodo. 'But I heard the snuffling several times, and it came nearer than it has before.' 'Ah!' said Sam. 'Growing bolder, it seems. I heard him, too, though I saw no eyes. He's after us still: can't shake him off nohow. Curse the slinking varmint. Gollum! I'd give him gollum if I could get my hands on his neck. As if we hadn't enough trouble in front, without him hanging on behind.' 'If only I dared use the Ring,' muttered Frodo, 'maybe I could catch him then.' 'Don't you do that, master!' said Sam. 'Not out up here! He'd see you - not meaning Gollum either. I feel all naked on the east side, if you understand me, stuck up here on the skyline with nought but a big flat bog between us and that shadow over yonder.'(6) He looked hurriedly over his shoulder towards the East. 'We've got to get down off it,' he said, 'and today we're going to get down off it somehow.' But that day too wore towards its end, and found them still scrambling along the ridge. Often they heard the following footsteps, and yet however quick they turned they could not catch sight of the pursuer. Once or twice they lay in wait behind a boulder. But after a moment the flip-flap of the footsteps would halt, and all went silent: only the wind sighing over stones seemed to remind them of faint breathing through sharp teeth. Toward evening Frodo and Sam were brought to a halt. They came to a place where they had at last only two choices: to go back or to climb down. They were on the outer eastward ridge of the Emyn Muil,(7) that fell away sheerly on their right. For many miles it had been falling lower towards the wet lands beyond; here after tending northwards it reared suddenly up again many fathoms in a single leap and went on again on a high level far above their heads. They were at the foot of a cliff facing S.W., cut down as if with a knife-stroke. There was no going further that way. But they were also at the top of another cliff facing east. Frodo looked over the edge. 'It's easier to get down than up,' he said. 'Yes, you can always jump or fall, even if you can't fly,' said Sam. 'But look, Sam!' said Frodo. 'Either the ridge has sunk or the lands at its feet have swelled up - we are not nearly so high up as we were yesterday: about 30 fathoms,(8) not much more.' 'And that's enough,' said Sam. 'Ugh! How I do hate looking down from a height, and that's not so bad as climbing.' 'But here I almost think we could climb,' said Frodo. 'The rock is different here.' The cliff was indeed no longer sheer, but sloped somewhat backward, and the rock was of such a kind that great flat slabs seemed to have split away and fallen. It looked rather as if they were sitting on the eaves of a great roof of thin stone-shingles or tiles that had tipped over leaving their rough edges upwards. 'Well,' said Sam, standing up and tightening his belt. 'What about trying it? It'll give that flapping footpad something to think about anyway.' 'If we are going to try today we had better try at once,' said Frodo. 'It's getting dark early. I think there's a storm coming.' The dark smudge of the mountains in the East was lost in a deeper blackness, that was already sending out great arms towards them. There was a distant rumble of thunder. 'There's no shelter at all down there,' said Frodo. 'Still, come on!' He stepped towards the brink. 'Nay, Mr Frodo, me first!' cried Sam. 'Why so eager?' said Frodo. 'Do you want to show me the way?' 'Not me,' said Sam. 'But it's only sense. Have the one most like to slip lowest. I don't want to slip, but I don't want to slip and come down atop of you and knock you off.' 'But [?I'd] do the same to you.' 'Then you'll have something soft to fall on,' said Sam, throwing his legs over the edge, and turning his face to the wall.. His toes found a ledge and he grunted. 'Now where do we put our hands next?' he muttered. 'There's a much wider ledge about twice your height below you,' said Frodo from above, 'if you can slide down to it.' 'If!' said Sam. 'And what then?' 'Come, I'll get alongside and try it, and then we need not quarrel about first or second.' Frodo slid quickly down till he stood splayed against the cliff a yard or two to the right of Sam. But he could find no handhold between the cliff-top and the narrow ledge at his toes, and though the slope lean[t] forwards (9) he had not the skill nor the head to make the passage to the wider foothold below. From about this point the text becomes increasingly rough and increasingly difficult to read: I reproduce a leaf of the manuscript on p. 90 (for the text of this leaf as best as I can interpret it see p. 91). 'Hm!' grunted Sam. 'Here we are side by side, like flies on a fly-paper.' 'But we can at least still get back,' said Frodo. 'At least I can. There's a hold just above my head.' 'Then you'd best get back,' said Sam. 'I can't manage this, and my toes are aching cruel already.' Frodo hauled himself back with some difficulty, but he found that he could not help Sam. When he leaned down as far as he dared Sam's upstretched hand was just out of reach. 'Lor, this is a pickle I am in,' said poor Sam, and his voice began to quaver. The eastern sky grew black as night. The thunder rolled nearer. 'Hold up, Sam,' said Frodo. 'Just wait till I get my belt off.' He lowered it buckle first. 'Can you grasp it?' 'Aye,' said Sam. 'A bit lower till I get my two hands on it.' 'But now I haven't enough to hold myself, and anyway I can't lean back or get my foot against a stop,' said Frodo. 'You'll just pull me over, or pull the belt out of my hands. 0 for a rope.' 'Rope,' said Sam. 'I just deserve to hang here all night, I do. You're nobbut a ninnyhammer Sam Gamgee: that's what the Gaffer said to me many a time, that being a word of his. Rope. There is one of those grey ropes in my pack. You know, that one we got with the boats in Lorien. I took a fancy to it and stowed it away.' 'But the pack's on your back,' said Frodo, 'and I can't reach it, and you can't toss it up.' 'It did ought to be but it ain't,' said Sam. 'You've got my pack,' said Sam. [?'How's that?']..... 'Now do make haste, Mr Frodo, or my toes'll break,' said Sam. 'The rope's my only chance.' It did not take Frodo long to tip up the pack, and there indeed at the bottom was a long coil of silk[en] grey rope. In a moment Sam [?tied] an end round his waist and ... clutched ... above his head [?with].(10) Frodo ran back from the brink and braced his foot against a crevice. Half hauled, half scrambling Sam came puffing and blowing up the few feet of cliff that had baffled him. He sat down and stroked his toes. 'Numbpate and Ninnyhammer,' he repeated. 'How long's that rope, I wonder.' Frodo wound it [?round his] elbows. '10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hobbit-ells,' he said. 'Who'd have thought it.' 'Ah, who would,' said Sam. 'A bit thin, but it seems mighty tough. Soft to the hand as milk. 80 ells.(11) Well, one of us can get down, seemingly, or near enough, if your guess weren't far out.' 'That would not be much good,' said Frodo. 'You down and me up, or the other way. Is there nothing to make an end fast to up here?' 'What,' said Sam, 'and leave all handy for that Gollum!' 'Well,' said Frodo after some thought. 'I am going down with the rope on, and you're going to hold on to the end up here. But I am only going to use the rope for a precaution. I am going to (A page from the first manuscript of 'The Taming of Smeagol'.) see if I can find a way down that I can use without a rope. Then I climb up with your help, and then you go down with the rope and I follow. How's that?' Sam scratched his head. 'I don't like it, Mr Frodo,' he said, 'but it seems the only thing to do. Pity we didn't think out this rock-climbing business before we started. I'll have to stand down there [?staring] and waiting to catch you. Do you be careful.' Frodo went to the edge again. A few yards from the brink he thought he saw a better point for a descent. 'I am going to try here,' he said. 'Get a purchase somewhere Sam for your foot, but don't let the rope [?saw] over a [?sharp... edge]. It may be elf-spun, but I shouldn't try it too far.' He stepped over the brink ... There was a ledge for his feet before he had gone his full height down: it sloped gently downward to the right. 'Don't pull on the rope unless I shout,' he said, and he had disappeared. * The rope lay slack for a long while as Sam stared at it. Suddenly it drew taut, and nearly caught him at unawares. He braced his feet, and wondering [read wondered] what had happened and whether his master was now dangling in mid-air at the far rope's end, but not [read no] cry came, and the rope went slack again. After a long while as it seemed he thought he heard a faint hail. He listened, it came again, and cautiously he crawled to the brink taking in the slack as he went. The darkness was drawing nearer - and it seemed dim below; but in his grey cloak Frodo if he was there was quite invisible. But something white fluttered and the shout came up clear now. 'It's all right, not too difficult at all except in one place. I'm down. [?I've] 3 ells of rope to spare. Slowly [?to take] my weight ... I'm coming up and shall use the rope.' In about 10 mins. he reappeared over the edge and threw himself down by Sam. 'That's that,' he said. 'I'll be glad of a short rest. Down you go now - he described the route as best he could and direct[ed] Sam to hail when he came to the bad place. 'I slipped there,' he said, 'and [?should have gone] but for the rope, a little over halfway down, quite a drop [?start to finish]. But I think I can just ... you.(12) Pay it out slowly and take the weight off on any ledge you come on. Good luck.' (* At this point the text of the manuscript page reproduced on p. 90 begins, and continues to the end of the second paragraph.) With a grim face Sam went to the edge, [?turned], and found the first ledge. 'Good luck,' said Frodo. ... [?time to time] the rope went slack as Sam found some ledge to rest ..., but for the most part his weight was taken by the rope. It was ..... minutes before Frodo heard his call. First he lowered his pack by the rope, then he cast it loose. He was left alone at the top. At that moment there was a great clap of dry thunder overhead and the sky grew dark. The storm was coming up the Emyn Muil on its way to Rohan and to the Hornburg far away where the riders were at bay.(13) He heard Sam cry from below, but could not make out the words, nor see Sam's pointing hands. But something made him look back. There not far away on a rock behind and overlooking him was a black figure [?whose glimmer(ing)] eyes like distant lamps were fixed on him. Unreasoning fear seized him for a moment - for after all it was Gollum there, it was not a whole.........., and he had Sting at his belt and mithril beneath his jacket: but he did not stop to think of these things. He stepped over the edge, which for the moment frightened him less, and began to climb down. Haste seemed to aid him, and all went well until he came to the bad place. Perhaps my father was at just about this point when he wrote on 5 April 1944, in the letter cited on p. 78, that'at the moment they are just meeting Gollum on a precipice'. - From here to the end of the draft there are so many 'bad places' and even sheer drops that I shall not attempt to represent the text as it stands. There follows an account of Frodo's descent: how he slipped again, and slithered down the cliff-face clinging with his fingers till he came up with a jolt, nearly losing his balance, on a wide ledge - 'and after that he was soon down.' There came then the great storm of wind and thunder, with a torrent of rain lashing down; and looking up 'they could see two tiny points of light at the cliff edge before the curtain of rain blotted them out. "Thank goodness you've done it," said Sam. "I near swallowed my heart when you slipped. Did you see him? I thought so, when you started to climb so quick." "I did," said Frodo. "But I think we've set þ him a bit of a puzzle for those [?soft padding] feet of his. But let's look about here. Is there no shelter from the storm?" ' They looked for shelter, and found some fallen rocks lying against the foot of the cliff, but the ground was wet and soggy; they themselves were not drenched through apparently on account of the elven-cloaks (this passage is very largely illegible). The storm passed on over the Emyn Muil and stars came out; 'far away the sun had set behind Isengard'. The draft ends with Sam's saying: 'It's no good going that way [i.e. towards the marshes] in the dark and at night. Even on this trip we've had better camping-places: but here we'd best stay.' There was very evidently great need for a better text: my father himself would have had difficulty with this, when the precise thought behind the words had dimmed. He began again therefore at the beginning of the chapter, giving it now its title and number (XXXII) and the completed manuscript ('D') that evolved from this new start was the only one that he made (i.e., subsequent texts are typescripts). The opening of the chapter (text B), which went hack to the time before the long break during 1943 - 4 (p. 86), was written out again, and effectively reached the form in TT (but when the story opens it was still 'the fifth evening' since they had fled from the Company, not as in TT the third: see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter). When my father came to the point where his new draft (C) took up the tale ('The sun was caught into clouds and night came suddenly', p. 86), beyond rounding out the expression and making it less staccato he did not at first change any feature of the story until the beginning of the attempt to climb down - apart from introducing the point that on the last day in the Emyn Muil Sam and Frodo had been making their way along at some distance from the outer precipice, perhaps to explain why it was that they had not observed that the cliff was now less high and no longer sheer; but the long gully or ravine by which in TT they made their way to the precipice when their way forward was blocked was not yet present. The fir-trees in the gully would have a narrative function in the final form of the story, in that 'old broken stumps straggled on almost to the cliff's brink' (TT p. 212): for Sam would brace his foot against one of those stumps, and tie the rope to it (TT pp. 215 - 16), in contrast to text C, p. 89 ('Is there nothing to make an end fast to up here?' ... 'I am going down with the rope on, and you're going to hold on to the end up here'). My father at first retained the story in C (p. 88) that Frodo followed Sam over the edge and that they both stood splayed against the rock-face together, until Frodo climbed back up again. But as he wrote he changed this: before Frodo had time to say anything to Sam, The next moment he gave a sharp cry and slithered down- wards. He came up with a jolt to his toes on a broader ledge a few feet lower down. Fortunately the rockface leant well forwards, and he did not lose his balance. He could just reach the ledge he had left with his fingers. 'Well, that's another step down,' he said. 'But what next?' 'I don't know,' said Frodo peering over. 'The light's getting so dim. You started off a bit too quick, before we'd had a good look. But the ledge you're on gets much broader to the right. If you could edge along that way, you'd have room enough, I think, to stoop and get your hands down and try for the next ledge below.' Sam shuffled a little, and then stood still, breathing hard. 'No, I can't do it,' he panted. 'I'm going giddy. Can't I get back? My toes are hurting cruelly already.' Frodo leaned over as far as he dared, but he could not help. Sam's fingers were well out of his reach. 'What's to be done?' said Sam, and his voice quavered. 'Here am I stuck like a fly on a fly-paper, only flies can't fall off, and I can.' The eastern sky was growing black as night, and the thunder rolled nearer. 'Hold on, Sam! ' said Frodo. 'Half a moment, till I get my belt off.' Having thus got rid of the unnecessary incident of Frodo's going down to the first ledge with Sam and then climbing back again, the new text then follows the former (C) - the failure of the experiment with the belt, Sam's sudden recollection of the rope, and his telling Frodo that they are wearing each other's packs - as far as 'He sat down well away from the edge and rubbed his feet' (p. 89; he felt 'as if he had been rescued from deep waters or a fathomless mine'). 'Numbpate and Ninnyhammer!' he muttered. 'Well, now you're back,' said Frodo, laughing with relief, 'you can explain this business about the packs.' 'Easy,' said Sam. 'We got up in the dim light this morning and you just picked mine up. I noticed it and was going to speak up, when I noticed that yours was a tidier sight heavier than mine. I reckoned you'd been carrying more than your share of tackle and what not ever since I set off in such a hurry, so I thought I'd take a turn. And I thought less said less argument.' 'Well meant cheek,' said Frodo; 'but you've been rewarded for the well meaning anyway.' They sat for a while and the gloom grew greater. 'Numbpate,' said Sam suddenly, slapping his forehead. 'How long's that rope, I wonder.' Here my father abandoned this story, feeling perhaps that it was all becoming too complicated, and rejecting these new pages he returned again, not to the beginning of the chapter, but to the beginning of the draft C, that is to say to the point where Frodo and Sam awoke on their last morning in the Emyn Muil (p. 86), with Frodo now saying, in answer to Sam's question 'Did you see them again, Mr Frodo?', 'No, I have heard nothing for three nights now.' From this point the final story was built up in the completed manuscript D. Some of it was written out first on independent draft pages,(14) but some of the pencilled drafting was overwritten in ink and included in the manu- script. It is plain, however, that the final story now evolved confidently and clearly, and since there is very little of significant difference to the narrative to be observed in those parts of the initial drafting that I have been able to read, I doubt that there is any more in those that I have not. My father now saw at last how Sam and Frodo did manage the descent from the Emyn Muil, and he resolved their difficulty about leaving the rope hanging from the cliff-top for Gollum to use by simply not introducing the question into their calculations until they had both reached the bottom. In this text the further course of the storm was described thus: The skirts of the storm were lifting, ragged and wet, and the main battle had passed - hastening with wind and thunder over the Emyn Muil, over Anduin, over the fields of Rohan, on to the Hornburg where the King Theoden stood at bay that night, and the Tindtorras now stood dark against the last lurid glow. At a later stage (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter) the following was substituted: The skirts of the storm were lifting, ragged and wet, and the main battle had passed to spread its great wings over the Emyn Muil, upon which the dark thought of Sauron brooded for a while. Thence it turned, smiting the vale of Anduin with hail and lightning, and rolled on slowly through the night, mile by mile over Gondor and the fields of Rohan, until far away the Riders on the plain saw its black shadow moving behind the sun, as they rode with war into the West. Sam's uncle, the Gaffer's eldest brother, owner of the rope-walk 'over by Tighfield', now appears (cf. VII.235), but he was at first called Obadiah Gamgee, not Andy. The earlier drafts did not reach the point of Gollum's descent of the diff-face, and it may be that my father had foreseen it long since. On the manuscript of the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' he struck out his first ideas for the encounter of Frodo and Sam with Gollum, and wrote: 'Steep place where Frodo has to climb a precipice. Sam goes first so that if Frodo falls he will knock Sam down first. They see Gollum come down by moonlight like a fly' (see VII.329 and note 15). But there is no way of knowing when he wrote this, whether when he first began writing 'The Taming of Smeagol', or when he took it up again in April 1944. In initial drafting the discussion between Sam and Frodo after Gollum's capture, in which Frodo heard 'a voice out of the past', went like this: 'No,' said Frodo. 'We must kill him right out, Sam, if we do anything. But we can't do that, not as things are. It's against the rules. He's done us no harm.' 'But he means to / meant to, I'll take my word,' said Sam. 'I daresay,' said Frodo. 'But that's another matter.' Then he seemed to hear a voice out of the past saying to him: Even Gollum I fancy may have his uses before all's over. 'Yes, yes, may be,' he answered. 'But anyway I can't touch the creature. I wish he could be cured. He's so horribly wretched.' Sam stared at his master, who seemed to be talking to someone .. else not there. At this stage in the evolution of the chapter 'Ancient History', at the point in his conversation with Gandalf at Bag End which Frodo was remembering, the text of the 'second phase' version (given in VI.264-5) had been little changed. The actual reading of the 'current' ('fourth phase') text of 'Ancient History' (cf. VII.28) is: '... What a pity Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, before he left him!' 'What nonsense you do talk sometimes, Frodo! ' said Gandalf. 'Pity! Pity would have prevented him, if he had thought of it. But he could not kill him anyway. It was against the Rules....' 'Of course, of course! What a thing to say. Bilbo could not do anything of the kind, then. But I am frightened. And I cannot feel any pity for Gollum. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is worse than a goblin, and just an enemy.' 'Yes, he deserved to die,' said Gandalf, 'and I don't think he can be cured before he dies. Yet even Gollum might prove useful for, good before the end. Anyway we did not kill him: he was very old and very wretched. The Wood-elves have him in prison ...' It is not often that the precise moment at which my father returned to and changed a passage much earlier in The Lord of the Rings can be determined, but it can be done here. When he came to write the passage in the manuscript (D) of 'The Taming of Smeagol', Frodo's recollection of his conversation with Gandalf began at an earlier point than it had in the draft cited above: It seemed to Frodo then that he heard quite plainly but far off voices out of the past. What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, before he left him! Pity! Pity would have prevented him. He could not kill him. It was against the Rules. I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death. It was at this point that my father perceived that Gandalf had said rather more to Frodo, and on another page of drafting for 'The Taming of Smeagol' he wrote: Deserved it! I daresay he did I does, said Gandalf. Many that live do deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not eager to deal out death even in the name of justice. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I do not much hope that Gollum can be cured This was then (as I judge) written into the manuscript of 'The Taming of Smeagol', in a slightly different form: Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. Maybe the Enemy will get him. Maybe not. Even Gollum may do some good, willy nilly, before the end. It was certainly at this time that my father changed the passage in 'Ancient History'. Omitting the words 'fearing for your own safety', he joined the new passage into that given on p. 96: '... Even the wise cannot see all ends. I do not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies. Yet even Gollum might prove useful for good before the end.' The two passages, that in 'The Shadow of the Past' (FR p. 69) and that in 'The Taming of Smeagol' (TT. p. 221), remain different in detail of wording, perhaps not intentionally at all points. Lastly, there is an interesting difference between the passage in which Gollum makes his promise to Frodo as it was at this time and as it stands in TT. When Gollum said 'Smeagol will swear on the precious', there followed both in initial drafting and in the manu- script: Frodo stepped back. 'On the precious!' he said. 'Oh, yes! And what will he swear?' 'To be very, very good,' said Gollum. Then crawling to Frodo's feet ... This was changed at once, again both in draft and manuscript, to: Frodo stepped back. 'On the precious?' he asked, puzzled for a moment: he had thought that precious was Gollum's self that he talked to. 'Ah! On the precious!' he said, with the disconcerting frankness that had already startled Sam [draft text: that surprised and alarmed Sam, and still more Gollum]. 'One Ring to rule them all and in the Darkness bind them. Would you commit your promises to that, Smeagol? ...' (&c. as in TT, pp. 224-5] The final text of this passage was not substituted till much later.(15) NOTES. 1. For the earliest ideas for this part of the narrative, when Sam crossed the Anduin alone and tracked Frodo together with Gollum, see the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien', VII.328 - 9. 2. See the Note on Chronology following these Notes. 3. In 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien', VII.328, Frodo put on the Ring to escape from Gollum. 4. An argument against this is that in the 1957 letter my father gave the page-reference II.209, whereas this text extends to II.210. But there are various ways of explaining this, and the evidence of the manuscripts seems to me to count more heavily. 5. Together with these earliest manuscripts of 'The Taming of Smeagol' was found a slip bearing the following pencilled notes, which may very well not have been written all at one time (I have added the numbers) (1) Account of Rings in Ch. II ['Ancient History'] needs altering a little. It was Elves who made the rings, which Sauron stole. He only made the One Ring. The Three were never in his possession and were unsullied. (2) Tom could have got rid of the Ring all along [? without further]....... - if asked! (3) The Company must carry ropes - either from Rivendell or from Lorien. (4) Emyn Muil = Sarn Gebir as a knot or range of stony hills. [Sern Erain >] Sarn Aran the King Stones = the Gates of Sarn Gebir. With (1) cf. VI.404; VII.254-5 and 259 - 60. In (2), most frustratingly, I have not been able to form any guess even at the altogether illegible word. (3) seems quite likely to have arisen while my father was pondering the descent from Sarn Gebir (Emyn Muil). On the absence of the mentions in LR of Sam's having no rope, and the absence of the passage concerning ropes at the leaving of Lothlorien, see VII.165, 183, 280. As regards (4), in the long-abandoned opening of the chapter the hills were still called Sarn Gebir, but when my father took it up again in 1944 they had become the Emyn Muil (note 7). Many ephemeral names to replace Sam Gebir are found in notes given in VII.424. Sern Aranath replaced the Gates of Sarn Gebir on the manu- scripts of 'The Great River' (VII.362 and note 21). 6. This sentence, little changed, is given to Frodo in TT (p. 211). 7. The first occurrence of Emyn Muil as written in a text ab initio. See note 5. 8. 30 fathoms: 180 feet. 9. leant forwards: i.e. sloped down outwards from the vertical, what my father earlier in this account called 'backward': 'The cliff was indeed no longer sheer, but sloped somewhat back- ward.' 10. In the following text the corresponding passage has: 'He cast the end to Sam, who tied it about his waist, and grasped the line above his head with both hands.' In the present text the sentence seems to have been left unfinished and in the air. 11. These figures were much changed. At first, as shown in any case by hobbit-ells, my father did not intend the 'English ell' of 45 inches, for by that measure 80 ells is 300 feet or 50 fathoms, getting on for double the height of the cliff as Frodo had reckoned it: whereas Sam thought that the rope of 80 ells would only be 'near enough' to Frodo's guess of 30 fathoms or 180 feet. My father seems first to have changed '80' to '77', and in the margin he wrote '2 feet' and '154'. He then changed '2 feet' to '2 1/2 feet', by which measure 77 ells would give 192 1/2 feet. At some point he struck out hobbit- in hobbit-ells; and finally he substituted 50 ells for the length of the rope. He had then evidently decided on the measure of 1 ell = 45 inches, according to which 50 ells would be equivalent to 187 1/2 feet, just a little longer than the height of the cliff as Frodo had estimated it. This was the measure in TT, where the cliff was about 18 fathoms, and the rope about 30 ells; taking these figures as exact, there would be 4 1/2 feet of rope to spare ('there was still a good bight in Frodo's hands, when Sam came to the bottom', TT p. 216). 12. The meaning is presumably 'I think I can just hold you', but hold is certainly not the word written. 13. See the Note on Chronology below. 14. My father now introduced a further obstacle to the sleuth by using the same piece of paper to write, one on top of the other, drafts for wholly different portions of the narrative. 15. In these texts the word precious when referring to the Ring is not capitalised, but capitals were introduced in subsequent type- scripts before the passage was changed to the final form. Note on the Chronology. In this chapter the narrative opens on the fifth evening since Frodo and Sam had fled from the Company. That night also they passed in the Emyn Muil, and it was at dusk on the following day (therefore 'the sixth evening') that they made their descent. Since the date of the Breaking of the Fellowship and the flight of Frodo and Sam was 26 January (for the chronology at this period see pp. 3 - 4, and VII.368, 406), this should mean that the chapter opens on the evening of the 30th, and that they climbed down from the hills on the evening of the 31st. On the other hand, the great storm is described (p. 95) as 'hastening with wind and thunder over the Emyn Muil, over Anduin, over the fields of Rohan, on to the Hornburg where the King Theoden stood at bay that night'. But the Battle of the Hornburg was fought on the night of 1 February (pp.5-6). Two brief time-schemes, which I will call Scheme 'A' and Scheme B', bear on the question of the chronology of Frodo's wandering in the Emyn Muil relative to events in the lands west of Anduin. Scheme 'B', which begins at this point, is perfectly explicit: Thursday Jan. 26 to Wednesday Feb. 1 Frodo and Sam in Emyn Muil (Sarn Gebir). Night Feb. 1 - 2 Frodo and Sam meet Gollum. (Storm that reached Helm's Deep about midnight on Feb.1 - 2 passed over Emyn Muil earlier in the night.) Scheme 'A', also beginning here, has: Jan. 31 Cold night Feb. 1 Descend, dusk (5.30). Meet Gollum about 10 p.m. Journey in gully till daybreak. According to these, it would have been on the sixth evening since the flight of Frodo and Sam, not the fifth, that the chapter opens. Since Vol. VII The Treason of Isengard was completed I have found two manuscript pages that are very clearly notes on chronological alterations needed that my father made in October 1944, some four and a half months after he had reached the end of The Two Towers (see VII.406 - 7). On 12 October (Letters no. 84) he wrote to me that he had 'struck a most awkward error (one or two days) in the synchronization', which would 'require tiresome small alterations in many chapters'; and on 16 October (Letters no. 85) he wrote that he had devised a solution 'by inserting an extra day's Entmoot, and extra days into Trotter's chase and Frodo's journey ...' These notes refer chapter by chapter to the changes that would have to be made (but not to all). Some of them have been encountered already: the complex alterations to 'The Riders of Rohan' in VII.406; the additional day of the Entmoot in VII.419; and the changes in 'The White Rider' in VII.425. Nothing further need be said of these. But in a note on 'The Taming of Smeagol' the question of the storm is raised; and here my father directed that the reference to Theoden and the Hornburg should be cut out, because it 'won't fit'. He noted that the thunderstorm over the Emyn Muil was at about five o'clock in the evening of 31 January, while the thunder in the Battle of the Hornburg was about midnight of 1 February, and that 31 hours to travel a distance of some 350 miles was too slow; but no solution was proposed. I have referred (VII.368) to an elaborate time-scheme that was made after the changes of October 1944 had been introduced. This, being a major working chronology, is in places fearsomely difficult to inter- pret, on account of later alterations and overwritings in ink over the original pencil. It is arranged in columns, describing 'synoptically', and fairly fully, the movements of all the major actors in the story on each day. It begins on the fifth day of the voyage down Anduin and ends at the beginning of the ascent to the pass of Kirith Ungol; and I would guess that it belongs with the work on chronology in October 1944, rather than later. On this scheme, which I will call 'S', my father afterwards wrote 'Old Timatal stuff' (Iceiandic timatal 'chronology'). In this scheme S the death of Boromir and the Breaking of the Fellowship was put back by a day, to Wednesday 25 January. Jan.25 Company broken up. Death of Boromir.... Frodo and Sam cross river eastward and fly into E. of Emyn Muil. Jan.26 Frodo and Sam wandering in Emyn Muil (1st evening since flight). fan. 27 In Emyn Muil (2nd evening). Jan. 28 In Emyn Muil (3rd evening). Jan. 29 In Emyn Muil (4th evening). Jan. 30 On brink of Emyn Muil. Spend cold night under a rock (5th evening). Jan. 31 Descent from Emyn Muil at nightfall. Meet Gollum about 10 p.m. Journey in the gully (Jan.31/Feb.1). Here therefore the opening of the story in 'The Taming of Smeagol' was on the evening of Jan. 30, and that was explicitly the sixth evening since the flight; but my father was for some reason not counting the first evening in the Emyn Muil (Jan. 25), and so he called that of Jan. 30 the fifth. Perhaps it was the same counting that explains the discrepancy between Scheme B and the text of the chapter (p. 100). And it may well be in any case that the records of these complicated manoeuvres are insufficient, or that there are clues which I have failed to perceive. In Scheme B, as in the completed manuscript of the chapter (p. 95), it is explicit that the storm over the Emyn Muil reached the Hornburg later that same night; it was moving fast ('hastening with wind and thunder'). In Scheme S, however, this is not so; for (just as in the note of October 1944 referred to above) the descent of Frodo and Sam from the Emyn Muil was at nightfall of Jan. 31, but the Battle of the Hornburg began on the night of Feb. 1. S as written had no mention of the great storm, but my father added in against Jan. 31 'Thunder at nightfall', and then subsequently 'It crawls west', with a line apparent- ly directing to Feb. 1. The storm over Rohan, slowly overtaking the Riders as they rode west across the plains on their second day out of Edoras (at the beginning of the chapter 'Helm's Deep') and bursting over the Hornburg in the middle of the night, was already present when my father came to write 'The Taming of Smeagol'. The storm over the Emyn Muil moving westwards, if not actually conceived for the purpose, obviously had the desirable effect of drawing the now sundered stories, east and west of Anduin, together. The revised passage about the storm in 'The Taming of Smeagol' given on p. 95 was clearly intended to allow for another day in the storm's progress, and implies that Frodo and Sam climbed down out of the hills on the day before the Battle of the Hornburg, as in S; and this resolves the problem of time and distance stated in the note of October 1944 by asserting that the great storm did not 'hasten', but 'rolled on slowly through the night.' But in The Tale of Years the relative dating is entirely different: Scheme S. Frodo enters Emyn Muil. (25 Jan.) Day 1. In Emyn Muil. (26 Jan.) Day 2. In Emyn Muil. (27 Jan.) Day 3. In Emyn Muil. (28 Jan.) Day 4. In Emyn Muil. (29 Jan.) Day 5. In Emyn Muil. (30 Jan.) Day 6. Descent from Emyn Muil. (31 Jan.) Day 7. Battle of the Hornburg. (1 Feb.) Day 8. The Tale of Years. Frodo enters Emyn Muil. (26 Feb.) Day 1. In Emyn Muil. (27 Feb.) Day 2. In Emyn Muil. (28 Feb.) Day 3. Descent from Emyn Muil. (29 Feb.) Day 4. (30 Feb.) Day 5. (1 Mar.) Day 6. (2 Mar.) Day 7. Battle of the Hornburg. (3 Mar.) Day 8. Thus in the final chronology the Battle of the Hornburg took place four nights after the descent of Frodo and Sam and the meeting with Gollum. Yet the revised description of the westward course of the storm in 'The Taming of Smeagol' (p. 95) survived into the proof stage of The Lord of the Rings. On the proof my father noted against the passage: 'Chronology wrong. The storm of Frodo was 3 days before Theoden's ride' (i.e. 29 February and 2 March, the day on which Theoden rode from Edoras). The passage as it stands in TT, pp. 215-16, was substituted at the eleventh hour: giving the great storm a more widely curving path, and suggesting, perhaps, a reinforcement of its power and magnitude as it passed slowly over Ered Nimrais. II. THE PASSAGE OF THE MARSHES. The writing of this chapter can again be closely dated from the letters that my father wrote to me in South Africa in 1944. On the 13th of April (Letters no. 60) he said that on the previous day he had read his 'recent chapter' ('The Taming of Smeagol') to C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, and that he had begun another. On the 18th April (Letters no. 61) he wrote: I hope to see C.S.L. and Charles W. tomorrow morning and read my next chapter - on the passage of the Dead Marshes and the approach to the Gates of Mordor, which I have now practically finished.'(1) And on the 23rd of April (Letters no. 62) he wrote: 'I read my second chapter, Passage of the Dead Marshes, to: Lewis and Williams on Wed. morning [19 April). It was approved. I have now nearly done a third: Gates of the Land of Shadow. But this story takes me in charge, and I have already taken three chapters over what was meant to be one!' The completed manuscript of 'The Passage of the Marshes' was indeed first entitled 'Kirith Ungol' (that being still the name of the main pass into Mordor) - for he began writing the manuscript before he had by any means finished the initial drafting of the chapter. Essential ideas for this part of the narrative had in fact emerged a long time before, in the outline The Story Foreseen from Lorien (VII.329 - 30) - when he estimated that the chapter would be num- bered XXV, eight less than the event had proved. In that outline he wrote: Gollum pleads for forgiveness, and promises help, and having nowhere else to turn Frodo accepts. Gollum says he will lead them over the Dead Marshes to Kirith Ungol. (Chuckling to himself to think that that is just the way he would wish them to go.) ... They sleep in pairs, so that one is always awake with Gollum. Gollum all the while is scheming to betray Frodo. He leads them cleverly over the Dead Marshes. There are dead green faces in the stagnant pools; and the dry reeds hiss like snakes. Frodo feels the strength of the searching eye as they proceed. At night Sam keeps watch, only pretending to be asleep. He hears Gollum muttering to himself, words of hatred for Frodo and lust for the Ring. The three companions now approach Kirith Ungol, the dreadful ravine which leads into Gorgoroth. Kirith Ungol means Spider Glen: there dwelt great spiders ... A single page of notes shows my father's thoughts as he embarked at last on the writing of this story. These notes were not written as a continuous outline and not all were written at the same time, but I give them in the sequence in which they stand on the page. Food problem. Gollum chokes at lembas (but it does him good?). Goes off and comes back with grimy fingers [?and face]. Once he heard him crunching in dark. Next chapter. Gollum takes them down into the water gully and then turns away eastward. It leads to a hard point in the midst of the Marshes. Over Dead Marshes. Dead faces. In some of the pools if you looked in you saw your own face all green and dead and corrupted. To Kirith Ungol. Change in Gollum as they draw near Gollum sleeps quite unconcerned - quietly at first; but as they draw near to Mordor he seems to get nightmares. Sam hears him beginning to hold colloquies with himself. It is a sort of good Smeagol angry with a bad Gollum. The latter [?grows] - filled with hatred of the Ring-bearer, in longing to be Ring- master himself. Laid up [?in] rock near gates see great movements in and out. Explanation of why they had escaped the war-movement. They lie up in day in beds of reeds Feeling of weight. Ring feels heavier and heavier on Frodo's neck as Mordor approaches. He feels the Eye. Another page, written at any rate before 'The Passage of the Marshes' had proceeded very far, outlines the story thus: They come to a point where the gully falls into the marshes. Brief description of these (which take about 3 to 4 days to cross). Pools where there are faces some horrible, some fair - but all corrupted. Gollum says it is said that they are memories (?) of those who fell in ages past in the Battle before Ennyn Dur the Gates of Mordor in the Great Battle. In the moon if you looked in some pools you saw your own face fouled and corrupt and dead. Describe the pools as they get nearer to Mordor as like green pools and rivers fouled by modern chemical works. They lie up in foothills and see armed men and orcs passing in. Soon all is clear. Sauron is gathering his power and hiding it in Mordor in readiness. (Swart men, and wild men with long braided hair out of East; Orcs of the Eye etc.) On the far (East) Horn of the Gates is a tall white tower. Minas Ithil now Minas Morghul which guards the pass. It was originally built by the men of Gondor to prevent Sauron breaking out and was manned by the guards of Minas Ithil,(2) but it fell soon into his hands. It now prevented any coming in. It was manned by orcs and evil spirits. It had been called [Neleg Thilim >] Neleglos [the Gleaming >] the White Tooth.(3) This last passage is accompanied by a little sketch, reproduced on p. 108 (no. I). Until now, the pass and chief entry into Mordor had been named Kirith Ungol (cf. the citation from 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' on p. 104). When contemplating the story ahead as he drafted 'The Passage of the Marshes' my father saw that this was not so: Kirith Ungol was a distinct way through the mountains - and (plainly enough) it is this path that Sam and Frodo are going to take. Concomitantly with this, he was proposing to change the site of Minas Morgul as he had long conceived it, and as it appears on the First Map (see Map III, VII.309).(4) There, the pass of Kirith Ungol was guarded by two towers, one on either side (see VII.349, note 41), and Minas Morgul was away to the west, on the other side of the mountains (i.e. on the western side of the northern extremity of the Duath, the Mountains of Shadow); whereas now Minas Morgul is to be the tower that guards the pass.(5) A virtually identical sketch to this, in faint pencil, is found on a page of drafting for 'The Black Gate is Closed'. It clearly does not belong with that, however (the later text is written across it), but with the present passage; and accompanying this pencilled version of the sketch is this note: It is better for the later story that Minas Ithil (Morghul) should be actually at the Gates of Mordor on its East side. The scene is thus depicted from the North. On a page used also for drafting of 'The Passage of the Marshes' there is another sketch of the tower and the pass (also reproduced on p. 108, no. II), very similar except in one important respect: whereas in Sketch I the cleft of Kirith Ungol is placed immediately below Minas Morgul (which thus stands on a high ridge or 'horn' between the 'cleft' and the 'pass'), in Sketch II Kirith Ungol lies on the far side of the pass from the tower. The scene is again depicted from the North, for the accompanying text reads: 'Kirith Ungol is not the main entrance but a narrow cleft to [S(outh) >] West.' I think it almost certain that Sketch II represents a further stage in the development of the conception, not its first appearance. Most of 'The Passage of the Marshes' is extant in preliminary drafting (and most of it in excruciatingly difficult handwriting); in this chapter my father made no use of his method of writing a text in pencil and then setting down a more finished version in ink on top of it. The narrative in the draft is not perfectly continuous, and it is clear that (as commonly) he built up the completed manuscript - the only one made of this chapter - in stages. The initial drafting is mostly extremely rough, written at great speed, and in places the completed manuscript (while perfectly legible - it was the text from which my father read the chapter to Lewis and Williams on April the 19th) is itself really the primary composition, constantly corrected and changed in the act of writing. Nonetheless the story of the passage of the Dead Marshes as it appears in The Two Towers seems to have been achieved almost to the form of every sentence (apart from certain substantial alterations made very much later) in that week of April 1944. Only in one respect did the initial drafting differ significantly from the story as it appears in the manuscript. This was primarily a matter of the narrative structure, but I give most of the passage in question, so well as I can make it out, as exemplification. It takes up from Gollum's words 'Snakes, worms in pools. Lots of things in the pools. No birds' (TT p. 234). So passed the third day of their travelling with Gollum.(6) All the night they went on with brief halts. Now it was really perilous at least for the hobbits. They went slowly keeping close in line and following every move of Gollum's attentively. The pools grew larger and more ominous and the places where feet could tread without sinking into [?chilly] gurgling mires more and more difficult to find. There were no more reeds and grasses. Later in the night, after midnight, there came a change. A light breeze got up and grew to a cold wind: it came from the North and though it had a bitter tang it seemed kindly to them, for it bore at last a hint of untainted airs and drove the reeking mists into banks with dark channels in between. The cloudy sky was torn and tattered and the moon nearly full rode among the [? wrack]. Gollum cowered and muttered but the hobbits looked up hopefully. A great dark shadow came out of Mordor like a huge bird crossed the moon and went away west. Just the same feeling came on them as at the..... they cast themselves down in the mire. But the shadow passed quickly. Gollum lay like one stunned and they had to rouse him. He would say only Wraiths wraiths [?under] the moon. The precious the precious is their master. They see everything everywhere. He sees. After that [?even] Frodo sensed a change in Gollum once more. He was [?even] more fawning [and] friendly but he talked more often in (Two early sketches of Kirith Ungol.) [his] old manner. They had great difficulty in making him go on while the moon The last passage was then rewritten ('After that Sam thought he sensed a change in Gollum again' ...) and the draft continues with a description of Frodo's weariness and slowness and the weight of the Ring that approaches the text in TT (p. 238). Then follows: He now really felt it as a weight: and he was getting conscious of the Eye: it was that as much as the weight that made him cower and stoop as he walked. He felt like someone hidden in a room (?garden) when his deadly enemy comes in: knowing that he is there though he cannot yet see him the enemy stands at gaze to espy all comers with his deadly eye. Any movement is fraught with peril.(7) Gollum probably felt something of the same sort. After the passing of the shadow of the Nazgul that flew to Isengard it was difficult to get him to move if there was light. As long as the moon lasted he would only creep forwards on his hands cowering and whimpering. He was not much use as a guide and Sam took to trying to find a path for himself. In doing so he stumbled forward and came down on his hands in sticky mire with his face bending over a dark pool that seemed like some glazed but grimed window in the moonlight. Wrench- ing his hands out of the bog he sprang back with a cry. There are dead faces ..... dead faces in the pool he cried, dead faces! Gollum laughed. The Dead Marshes, yes, yess. That is their name. Should not look in when the White Eye is up.(8) What are they, who are they, asked Sam shuddering and turning to Frodo who came up behind him. I don't know said Frodo. No don't master said Sam, they're horrible. Nonetheless Frodo crawled cautiously to the edge and looked. He saw pale faces - deep under water they looked: some grim some hideous, some noble and fair: but all horrible, corrupted, sickly, rotting .......... Frodo crawled back and hid his eyes. I don't know who they are but I thought I saw Men and Elves and Orcs, all dead and rotten. Yes yes, said Gollum cackling. All dead and rotten. The Dead Marshes. Men and Elves and Orcs. There was a great Battle here long long ago, precious, yes, when Smeagol was young and happy long ago:(9) before the precious came, yes, yes. They fought on the plain over there. The Dead Marshes have grown greater. But are they really there? Smeagol doesn't know, said Gol- lum. You can't reach them. I we tried, yes we tried, precious, once: but you can't touch them. Only shapes to see perhaps, not to touch, no precious! Sam looked darkly at him and shuddered, thinking he guessed why Smeagol had tried to reach them. The moon was now sinking west into cloud that lay above far Rohan beyond Anduin. They went on and Gollum again took the lead by [read but] Sam and Frodo found that he [read they] could not keep their [?fascinated] eyes from straying whenever they passed some pool of black water. If they did so they caught glimpses of the pallid dead faces. At last they came to a place where Gollum halted, a wide pool ...... barred their way. The pools lit by will o' the wisp fire reveal dead faces. The moon shows their own.(10) ............ The moon came out of its cloud. They looked in. But they saw no faces out of the vanished past. They saw their own...... Sam Gollum and Frodo looking up with dead eyes and livid rotting flesh at them. Let's get out of this foul place! Long way to go yet said Gollum. Must get to somewhere to lie up before day. This section of drafting peters out here. In the manuscript the text becomes that of TT at almost all points: the sequence of the story has been reconstructed, so that the change in the weather and the flight of the Nazgul follows the passage of the pools of the dead faces; and there is no further hint of the idea (going back to the preliminary notes, p. 105) that the beholder's own face was mirrored as dead when the moonlight shone on the pools. 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 chronol- ogy. 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 prob- ably 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 'so they said when Smeagol was young'. 10. This was no doubt the point at which the idea of the marsh-lights entered (ignis fatuus, u ill-o'-the-wisp, jack-o'-lantern). In TT, as in the manuscript, Gollum calls them 'candles of corpses', and in time-schemes of this period my father referred to the 'episode of the corpse-candles'. Corpse-candle is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as 'a lambent flame seen in a churchyard or over a grave, and superstitiously believed to appear as an omen of death, or to indicate the route of a coming funeral.' 11. In the conversation between Frodo and Sam that follows (TT (Frodo's journey to the Morannon.) p. 231), in Frodo's words 'If we can nurse our limbs to bring us to Mount Doom' the name is spelt thus in the preliminary draft, but the manuscript has 'Mount Dum': this spelling is found also in the preliminary draft of Frodo's vision on Amon Hen, VII.373. 12. The large-scale map of Gondor and Mordor was closely based on a map of my father's. This included the track of Frodo's journey from Rauros to' the Morannon, and I have redrawn this section from the original (p. 117). My father's map is in some respects hard to interpret, for it was made roughly and hastily in point of its actual execution, the 'contour-lines' being very impressionis- tic, while the Nindalf and the Dead Marshes are shown merely by rough pencil hatching, for which I have substituted conventional reed-tufts; but I have attempted to redraw it as precisely as I can. The features of the uppermost line of squares were only roughed in on the original, above the top of the map, in order to show the track of the journey, and my version published in The Return of the King excluded this element. The squares are of one inch side, = 25 miles. Note on the Chronology. As the story stood when the manuscript of this chapter was completed but before those changes were made to it that belong to a later stage the chronology was as follows (proceeding from the date February 1, when Frodo and Sam climbed down out of the Emyn Muil, p. 100): Feb. 1 - 2 Night. They advance along the gully. (Journey 1) (Day 1) Feb. 2 They sleep in the gully all day. Feb. 2 - 3 Night. They continue along the gully and come to its end towards daybreak. (Journey 2) (Day 2) Feb.3 They enter the marshes and continue the journey by day ('So passed the third day of their journey with Gollum', manuscript text and TT p. 234). (Journey 3) Feb. 3 - 4 Night. They see the dead faces in the pools. 'It was late in the night when they reached firmer ground again', manuscript text and TT p. 236; followed by change in the weather and flight of the Nazgul. (Journey 4) (Day 3) Feb.4 When day came 'the outer buttresses and broken hills' at the feet of the mountains were 'no more than a dozen miles away' (p. 112). They were among the slag- mounds and poisonous pits. Day spent hiding in a hole. At dusk they went on (night of Feb. 4 - 5). (Journey 5) (Day 4) Feb. 5 (Beginning of the next chapter) They reach the Black Gate at dawn. Both of the brief time-schemes of which the beginnings are given on p. 100 express precisely this chronology. Scheme B was written, apparently, when the story had already reached the departure from Henneth Annun, but A accompanied the writing of the present chapter and scarcely extends beyond it. Notably, in A the actual journeys they made are numbered (as I have numbered them in the chronology set out above), and it may well be that '3' against February 3 explains the statement cited above: 'So passed the third day of their journey with Gollum' - for it was the third journey, but not the third day. Both schemes refer to the flight of the Nazgul. In B, under February 3, 'Nazgul passes over marshes and goes to Isengard', with a sub- sequent addition 'reaching there about midnight'. This is hard to understand, since already in the completed manuscript 'it was late in the night when they reached firmer ground again', and that was before the change in the weather and the flight of the Nazgul. In A it is said that 'Nazgul goes over at early morning before daybreak' (of February 4), agreeing with the text of the chapter; but Theoden and Gandalf and their company left Isengard on the evening of February 3, and camped below Dol Baran (over which the Nazgul passed) that night, so that this offers equal difficulty. In his notes of October 1944 (see p. 100) my father commented, under the heading 'Passage of the Marshes', that 'the Nazgul over marshes cannot be the same as passed over Dolbaran', and directed that the relevant passage in that chapter, and also that at the end of 'The Palantir', should be changed. It must have been at this time, then, that the description of the Nazgul's flight over the marshes was altered - it wheeled round and returned to Mordor (p. 110); while at the same time, in 'The Palantir', Gandalf's original words to Pippin 'It could have taken you away to the Dark Tower' (p. 77) were extended by Pippin's further question 'But it was not coming for me, was it?' and Gandalf s reply: Of course not. It is 200 leagues or more in straight flight from Baraddur to Orthanc, and even a Nazgul would take some hours to fly between them, or so I guess - I do not know. But Saruman certainly looked in the Stone since the orc-raid, and more of his secret thought, I do not doubt, has been read than he intended. A messenger has been sent to find out what he is doing....' Scheme S (in which the dates of Frodo's journey are a day earlier than in A and B, see p. 101) has the folIowing chronology: (Day 2) Feb. 2 Journey in the marshes by day. Feb. 2 - 3 Night. 'Episode of corpse-candles' (see note 10). (Day 3) Feb. 3 Reach slag-mounds at dawn. Day spent hiding in a hole, going on at nightfall. Gandalf, Theoden, etc. leave Isengard at sunset and camp at Dolbaran. (Day 4) Feb. 4 Reach the Black Gate at daybreak and hide all day. Gandalf and Pippin sight Edoras at dawn. In the notes accompanying the changes made in October 1944 my father also directed that 'the first Nazgul' should pass over Frodo and his companions at dusk (5 p.m.) on the evening of February 3 'just about when they start from the slag-mounds', and reach Dol Baran about 11 p.m. 'The second Nazgul, sent after Pippin used the Stone', despatched from Mordor about one o'clock in the morning of the night of Feb. 3 - 4, should pass over Frodo at the end of the chapter 'Passage of the Marshes' before they reach the Morannon. This Nazgul would pass over Edoras on February 4, about six hours later. 'But both may pass high up and only give them faint uneasiness.' Scheme S is confused on the subject of the flights of the Nazgul, offering different formulations, but in the result it agrees well with the notes just cited; here however the second Nazgul leaves Mordor 'at 11 p.m.' or 'about midnight', and it 'scouts around the plain and passes over Edoras at? 8 a.m.' These movements fit very well with the added conclusion to 'The Passage of the Marshes' {TT pp. 242 - 3; see p. 115), which I presume was introduced at this time. Thus the unseen Ringwraith that passed overhead soon after they left the hole amid the slag-heaps, 'going maybe on some swift errand from Barad-dur', was the one that passed over Dol Baran six hours later (on its way to Orthanc to 'find out what Saruman was doing'); and that which passed over an hour after midnight, 'rushing with terrible speed into the West', was the one sent in response to Pippin's looking into the palantir. In the final chronology as set out in The Tale of Years two days were added to the journey to the Morannon, during which Frodo and his companions passed through 'the arid moors of the Noman-lands' (see p. 112): (Day 2) Mar. 1 Frodo begins the passage of the Dead Marshes at dawn. Mar. 1 - 2 Night. Frodo comes to the end of the Marshes late at night. (Day 3) Mar. 2 - 3 Night. Frodo journeys in the Noman-lands. (Day 4) Mar. 3 - 4 Night. Frodo journeys in the Noman-lands. Battle of the Hornburg. (Day 5) Mar. 4 Dawn, Frodo reaches the slag-mounds (and leaves at dusk). Theoden and Gandalf set out from Helm's Deep for Isengard. (Day 6) Mar. 5 Daybreak, Frodo in sight of the Morannon. Theoden reaches Isengard at noon. Parley with Saruman in Orthanc. Winged Nazgul passes over the camp at Dol Baran. Thus according to the final chronology neither of the unseen Nazgul that passed over high up at the end of the chapter 'The Passage of the Marshes' (at dusk on March 4, and again an hour after midnight) can have been the one that wheeled over Dol Baran on the night of March 5, nor the one that passed over Edoras on the morning of March 6. A rigorous chronology led to this disappointing conclusion. III. THE BLACK GATE IS CLOSED. I have already quoted (p. 104) my father's letter of 23 April 1944 in which he said that he had 'nearly done' the chapter which he called 'Gates of the Land of Shadow'. Since in the first fair-copy manuscript of this chapter the text goes on without a break through what was subsequently called 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit', he had probably at that date got well beyond the point where 'The Black Gate is Closed' ends in TT (at Frodo's decision to take the southward road}; and this is borne out by what he said on the 26th (continuation of a letter begun on 24 April, Letters no. 63): '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!' Here I restrict my account to the portion of the new chapter that corresponds to 'The Black Gate is Closed'. This was a part of the narrative that largely 'wrote itself', and there is not a great deal to record of its development; it was achieved, also, in a much more orderly fashion than had been the case for a long time. Here there is a continuous, and for most of its length readily legible, initial draft, which extends in fact to the point where 'The Black Gate is Closed' ends in TT, and then becomes a brief outline that brings Frodo, Sam and Gollum to the Cross-roads and up the Stairs of Kirith Ungol - showing that at that time my father had no notion of what would befall them on the southward road. He headed this draft 'Kirith Ungol' (the original title of 'The Passage of the Marshes', p. 104), sure that he could get them there within the compass of this new chapter (but 'Kirith Ungol' now bore a different significance from what it had when he gave it to the previous chapter, see p. 106). The draft was followed by a fair copy manuscript (in this chapter called 'the manuscript', as distinguished from 'the draft') which, as already noticed, extends without break through 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit', and here again the first title given to it was 'Kirith Ungol', changed to 'The Gates of the Land of Shadow' (the title my father used in his letter of 23 April), and then to 'Kirith Gorgor: The Black gate is Closed'. At some stage, for some reason, he made a further manuscript of the chapter (ending it at the point where it ends in 11 ) in his most beautiful script, and this was copied in the first typescript. The chapter number is XXXIV. In the (first) manuscript the text as it stands in TT was achieved in almost all points without much hesitation in the writing; but there was much further shifting in the names that occur in this region. The opening passage concerning the defences of Mordor and their history differed in some respects from the form in TT (p. 244). The words following 'But the strength of Gondor failed, and men slept': and for long years the towers stood empty, are lacking.(1) The paragraph beginning 'Across the mouth of the pass, from cliff to cliff, the Dark Lord had built a rampart of stone. In it there was a single gate of iron, and upon its battlement sentinels paced unceasingly' was first written thus, both in draft and manuscript: No rampart, or wall, or bars of stone or iron were laid across the Morannon;(2) for the rock on either side was bored and tunnelled into a hundred caves and maggot-holes. A host of orcs lurked there (&c. as in TT) This was changed in the manuscript as soon as written to the text of TT, introducing the rampart of stone and the single gate of iron; and it is thus seen that up to this point the 'Black Gate(s)' was the name of the pass itself.(3) So also at the beginning of the passage, where TT has 'between these arms there was a deep defile. This was Cirith Gorgor, the Haunted Pass, the entrance to the land of the Enemy', both draft and manuscript have 'between these arms there was a long defile. This was the Morannon, the Black Gate, the entrance to the land of the Enemy.' When the rampart and iron gate had been introduced this was changed in the manuscript to 'This was Kirith Gorgor, the Dreadful Pass, the entrance to the land of the Enemy.'(4) The Mountains of Shadow were still in the draft named the Duath, as on the First Map (Map III, VII.309); in the manuscript the name is Hebel Duath, later changed to Ephel Duath (see VII.310).(5) The 'Teeth of Mordor' are named in the draft Nelig Morn (cf. Nelig Morn > Nelig Myrn, p. 113);(6) in the manuscript they are Naglath Morn, which was subsequently struck out and not replaced. It is convenient to notice here a few other points concerning names in this chapter. The name Elostirion for Osgiliath, used in the fine manuscript of 'The Palantir' made earlier in April (p. 78 and note 20), was retained in the draft (7) and in the following manuscript of 'The Black Gate is Closed', with Osgiliath later substituted in the latter (TT p. 249). The name of Sauron's stronghold in Mirkwood remains Dol Dughol, the change to Dol Guldur being made at a very late stage.(8) A curious vestige is seen in the name Goodchild pencilled above Gamgee in Sam's remark 'It's beyond any Gamgee to guess what he'll do next' (TT p. 247). In his letter to me of 31 May 1944 (Letters no. 72) my father said: Sam by the way is an abbreviation not of Samuel but of Samwise (the Old E. for Half-wit), as is his father's name the Gaffer (Ham) for O.E. Hamfast or Stayathome. Hobbits of that class have very Saxon names as a rule - and I am not really satisfied with the surname Gamgee and shd. change it to Goodchild if I thought you would let me. I replied that I would never wish to see Gamgee changed to Good- child, and urged (entirely missing the point) that the name Gamgee was for me the essential expression of 'the hobbit peasantry' in their 'slightly comical' aspect, deeply important to the whole work. I mention this to explain my father's subsequent remarks on the subject (28 July 1944, Letters, no. 76): As to Sam Gamgee, I quite agree with what you say, and I wouldn't dream of altering his name without your approval; but the object of the alteration was precisely to bring out the comicness, peasantry, and if you will the Englishry of this jewel among the hobbits. Had I thought it out at the beginning, I should have given all the hobbits very English names to match the shire.... I doubt if it's English [i.e. the name Gamgee].... However, I daresay all your imagina- tion of the character is now bound up with the name. And so Sam Gamgee remained. Turning now to the narrative itself, there are only certain details to mention. The distance from the hollow in which Frodo and his companions lay to the nearer of the Towers of the Teeth was in the initial drafting and in both manuscripts estimated at about a mile as the crow flies (a furlong in TT, p. 245). The description of the three roads leading to the Black Gate (TT p.247) was present in all essentials from the outset (they were in fact marked in by dotted lines on the First Map, though not included on my redrawing),(9) as were Frodo's stern words to Gollum (TT p. 248), and the conversation about the southward road; but Gollum's remembered tales of his youth and his account of Minas Morgul (11 pp. 249 - 50) differed from the final form in these respects. When Frodo said: 'It was Isildur who cut off the finger of the Enemy', Gollum replied: 'The tales did not say that'; then Frodo said: 'No, it had not happened then' (becoming in the second manuscript 'No, it had not happened when your tales were made').(10) Secondly, Gollum's reference to 'the Silent Watchers' in Minas Morgul (TT p. 250) was added to the manuscript, which as written had only: 'Nothing moves on the road that they don't know about. The things inside know.' Thirdly, after Gollum's explanation of why Sauron did not fear attack by way of Minas Morgul (his speech beginning 'No, no, indeed. Hobbits must see, must try to understand'), Sam says: 'I daresay, but even so we can't walk up along your climbing road and pass the time of day with the folk at the gates and ask if we're all right for the Dark Tower. Stands to reason,' said Sam. 'We might as well do it here, and save ourselves a long tramp.' Thus his jibe at Gollum ('Have you been talking to Him lately? Of just hobnobbing with Orcs?'), and Gollum's reply ('Not nice hobbit, not sensible ... ) are lacking. With the expanded text (written into the manuscript later) there enters the second reference to 'the Silent Watchers' (and Sam's sarcasm 'Or are they too silent to answer?'). The brief text given on p. 113 and reproduced with the accompany- ing sketch on p. 114, in which Kirith Ungol is 'beneath the shadow of Minas Morgul', and in which Frodo and Sam actually enter Minas Morgul, shows that only a short time before the point we have reached the later story and geography had not emerged. But the conception of the entrances into Mordor was changing very rapidly, and the original draft of 'The Black Gate is Closed' shows a major further shift. The conversation following Sam's remarks about the futility of going on a long tramp south only to find themselves faced with the same impossibility of entering unseen (TT p. 251) ran thus in the draft: 'Don't joke about it,' said Gollum. 'Be sensible hobbits. It is not sensible to try to ger in to Mordor at all, not sensible. But if master says I will go or I must go then he must try some way. But he must not go to the terrible city. That is where Smeagol helps. He found it, he knows it - if it is still there.' 'What did you find?' said Frodo. 'A stair and path leading up into the mountains south of the pass,' said Gollum, 'and then a tunnel, and then more stairs and then a cleft high above the main pass: and it was that way Smeagol got out of Mordor long ago. But it may [?have vanished]...' 'Isn't it guarded?' said Sam incredulously, and he thought he caught a sudden gleam in Gollum's eye. 'Yes perhaps,' said he, 'but we must try. No other way,' and he would say no more. The name of this perilous place and high pass he could not or would not tell. Its name was Kirith Ungol, but that the hobbits did not know, nor the meaning of that dreadful name. As the following manuscript was first written this was not sig- nificantly changed (the path and stair are still 'south of the pass'); the passage in which Frodo intervenes and challenges Gollum's story that he had escaped from Mordor, citing Aragorn's view of the matter, was added in a rider to the manuscript later.(11) Thus Kirith Ungol is now not the pass guarded by Minas Morgul, as in the text given on p. 113, but a climbing stair high above it; it is however very difficult to say how my father saw the further course of the story at this time. In the text on p. 113 Frodo and Sam 'creep into Minas Morgul', which suggests that the story of Frodo's capture in 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' had been temporarily abandoned - though it is not clear why they should be obliged to enter 'the terrible city'. With the new geography, however, it seems that they are going to avoid Minas Morgul, passing through the mountains high above it. Does it follow that the Tower of Kirith Ungol had already been conceived? There is nothing in draft or manuscript to show that it had - but that proves little in itself, since in all texts from the original draft Gollum refuses to say clearly whether Kirith Ungol is guarded (cf. 'The Stairs of Cirith Ungol', TT p. 319: 'It was a black tower poised above the outer pass.... "I don't like the look of that!" said Sam. "So this secret way of yours is guarded after all,'* he growled, turning to Gollum'). The gleam in Gollum's eye that Sam caught when he asked him if it were guarded certainly means that Gollum knew that it was, but does not at all imply that it was guarded by a tower. I feel sure that Gollum was thinking of the spiders (at this stage in the evolution of the story). The only other evidence is found!n the outline which ends the original draft of 'The Black Gate is Closed': Frodo makes up his mind. He agrees to take the south way. As soon as dusk falls they start. Needing speed they use the road though fearful of meeting soldiers on it hurrying to the muster of the Dark Lord. Gollum says it is twenty leagues perhaps to the Cross Roads in the wood. They made all the speed they could. The land climbs a little. They see Anduin below them gleaming in the moon. Good [?water]. At last late on the third [day of their daylight journey >] night of journey from Morannon they reach the crossroads and pass out of the wood. See the moon shining on Minas Ithil Minas Morghul. Pass up first stair safely. But tunnel is black with webs [of] spiders.... force way and get up second stair. They [??had] reach[ed] Kirith Ungol. Spiders are aroused and hunt them. They are exhausted. This does not of course imply that the spiders were the only danger they faced in taking the way of Kirith Ungol, but possibly suggests it. However this may be, and leaving open the question of whether at this stage my father had already decided that Kirith Ungol was guarded by its own tower, it would be interesting to know whether that decision had been taken when he introduced into the manuscript Gollum's references to 'the Silent Watchers'. The Watchers, called 'the Sentinels', had already appeared in 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' (see VII.340 - 3 and note 33); there of course they were the sentinels of Minas Morgul. Here too Gollum is speaking of Minas Morgul (at this point in the chapter he has not even mentioned the existence of Kirith Ungol). It would seem rather odd that my father should bring in these references to the Silent Watchers of Minas Morgul if he had already decided that the actual encounter with Silent Watchers should be at the Tower of Kirith Ungol; and one might suspect therefore that when he wrote them into the text the idea of that tower had not yet arisen. But this is the merest conjecture.(12) The passage telling where Gandalf was when Frodo and his companions lay hidden in the hollow before the Black Gate underwent many changes. The original draft reads: Aragorn perhaps could have told them, Gandalf could have warned them, but Gandalf was ? flying over the green [?plain] of Rohan upon Shadowfax climbing the road to the guarded gates of Minas Tirith and Aragorn was marching at the head of many men to war. This seems to express two distinct answers to the question, where was Gandalf? - In the manuscript this becomes: Aragorn could perhaps have told them that name and its significance; Gandalf would have warned them. But they were alone; and Aragorn was far away, a captain of men mustering for a desperate war, and Gandalf stood upon the white walls of Minas Tirith deep in troubled thought. It was of them chiefly that he thought: and over the long leagues his mind sought for them. In the second manuscript, taking up a revision made to the first, Gandalf is again riding over the plains: ... But they were alone, and Aragorn was far away, a captain of men mustering for a desperate war, and Gandalf was flying upon Shadowfax over the fields of Rohan swifter than the wind to the white walls of Minas Tirith gleaming from afar. Yet as he rode, it was chiefly of them that he thought, of Frodo and Sam, and over the long leagues his mind sought for them. This was changed afterwards to the text of TT (p. 252): ... and Gandalf stood amid the ruin of Isengard and strove with Saruman, delayed by treason. Yet even as he spoke his last words to Saruman, and the palantir crashed in fire upon the steps of Orthanc, his thought was ever upon Frodo and Samwise, over the long leagues his mind sought for them in hope and pity. On the significance of these variations see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter. The distant flight of the Nazgul (TT p. 253) and the arrival of the southern men observed and reported on by Gollum differ already in the draft text in no essential points from the final text (except that it is Gollum who calls them Swertings); but Sam's verse of the Oliphaunt was not present. It is found in abundant rough workings and a [ preliminary text before being incorporated in the manuscript; my father also copied it out for me in a letter written on 30 April 1944 (Letters no. 64), when the story had reached the end of what became 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit', saying: 'A large elephant of prehistoric size, a war-elephant of the Swertings, is loose, and Sam has gratified a life-long wish to see an Oliphaunt, an animal about which there was a hobbit nursery-rhyme (though it was commonly supposed to be mythical).'(13) NOTES. 1. In a very rough initial sketching of the opening of the chapter, preceding the continuous draft, the reading is: 'They were built by the Men of Gondor long ages after the fall of the first Dark Tower and Sauron's flight, lest he should seek to [? retake] his old realm.' This was repeated in the draft text of the chapter ('after the felling of the first Dark fortress'), but changed immediately to 'after the overthrow of Sauron and his flight'. 2. The earliest sketch of the opening passage, referred to in note 1, has a name that ends in -y; it could be interpreted as Mornennyn with the final -n omitted, but is written thus at both occurrences. For Mornennyn, replacing Ennyn Dur, see pp. 112 - 13. 3. The Old English word geat 'gate' is found in a number of English place-names in the sense 'pass, gap in the hills', as Wingate (pass through which the wind drives), Yatesbury. 4. It seems in fact that my father did not immediately transfer the name Morannon to the actual 'Black Gate' built by Sauron, but retained it for a time as the name of the pass: so later in the manuscript text (TT p. 247) Frodo 'stood gazing out towards the dark cliffs of the Morannon' (changed subsequently to Kirith Gorgor). 5. Here appear also the plain of Lithlad (see VII.208, 213) and 'the bitter inland sea of Nurnen', shown on the First Map (Map III, VII.309). 6. In the text given on p. 113 and reproduced on p. 114 Nelig Myrn replaced Nelig Mom at the time of writing; yet it seems obvious that that text was written during the original composition of 'The Passage of the Marshes'. 7. The draft text has in fact Osgiliath at one occurrence, in the first description of the southward road (TT p. 247): 'It journeyed on into the narrow plain between the Great River and the moun- tains, and so on to Osgiliath and on again to the coasts, and the far southern lands'. But Elostirion is the name in this same text in the passage corresponding to TT p. 249. 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 encoun- tered in bringing the different threads of the narrative into chrono- logical 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 Moran- non 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 manu- script 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 Cross- roads 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. Sam had been giving some earnest thought to food as they marched. Now that the despair of the impassable Gate was behind him, he did not feel so inclined as his master to take no thought for their livelihood beyond the end of their errand; and anyway it seemed wiser to him to save the elvish bread for worse times ahead. Two days or more had gone since he reckoned that they had a bare supply for three weeks.(9) 'If we reach the Fire in that time we'll be lucky at this rate,' he thought. 'And we may be wanting to come back. We may.' Besides at the end of [?their] long night march he felt more hungry than usual. With all this in his mind he turned to look for Gollum. Gollum was crawling away through the bracken. 'Hi! ' said Sam. 'Where are you going? Hunting? Now look here, my friend, you don't like our food, but if you could find something fit for a hobbit to eat I'd be grateful.' Yes, yess. Gollum brings back 2 rabbits. Angry at fire (a) fear (b) rage at nice juicy rabbits being spoiled. Pacified by Frodo (promise of fish?). Night of full moon and vision of Anduin. Third night. They do not reach the cross ways. [?Trying] to hasten they journey by day through wood. They come to cross ways and peer at it out of thicket. The headless king with a mocking head made by orcs and scrawls on it. That night they turn left. Vision of Minas Morghul in the moon high up in re-entrant.(10) Here this text ends, and was followed by another draft, beginning precisely as does that just given, in which the story of Sam's cooking was developed almost to the final form. On one of the pages of this text my father pencilled a note: 'Describe baytrees and spicy herbs as they march.' It was thus the cooking of the rabbits that led to the account of the shrubs and herbs of Ithilien (TT p. 258) - 'which is proving a lovely land', as he said in his letter of 30 April 1944 {Letters no. 64). He now returned again to the fair copy manuscript, and without changing, then or later, the opening of the chapter he wrote the story almost as it stands in TT, pp. 258 ff. (from 'So they passed into the northern marches of that land that Men once called Ithilien'). At this stage, therefore, the chronology of the journey was thus: Feb. 5 Left the Morannon at dusk, and came into a less barren country of heathland. Took to the southward road about mid- night (p. 132). Feb. 6 Halted at dawn. Description of Ithilien and its herbs and flowers. Sam's cooking, and the coming of the men of Gondor. With the introduction of a long rider to the following typescript text an extra day and night were inserted into the journey between the Morannon and the place of Sam's cooking (see the Note on Chron- ology at the end of this chapter). At dawn of this added day they found themselves in a less barren country of heathland, and they passed the day hidden in deep heather (TT p. 257); at dusk they set out again, and only now took to the southward road. At the end of the episode of 'Stewed Rabbit' there is a brief sketch in the manuscript of the story to come, written in pencil so rapid that I cannot make all of it out; but it can be seen that Sam finds that Gollum is not there; he puts out the fire and runs down to wash the pans; he hears voices, and suddenly sees a couple of men chasing Gollum. Gollum eludes their grasp and vanishes into a tangled thicket. They go on up the hill, and Sam hears them laugh. 'Not an orc,' says one. Sam creeps back to Frodo, who has also heard voices and hidden himself, and they see many men creeping up towards the road. Another page found separately seems quite likely to be the continu- ation of this outline, and is equally hard to read. There is to be a description of men like Boromir, dressed in lighter and darker green, armed with knives; the hobbits wonder who they are - they are certainly not scouts of Sauron. The fight on the road between the men of Harad and the men of Minas Tirith is mentioned; then follows: A slain Tirith-man falls over bank and crashes down on them. Frodo goes to him and he cries orch and tries to ... but falls dead crying 'Gondor!' The Harad-men drive the Gondorians [?down] hill. The hobbits creep away through thickets. At last they climb tree. See Gondorians fight and win finally. At dusk Gollum climbs up to them. He curses Sam for [?bringing enemies]. They dare not go back to road, but wander on through the wild glades of Ithilien that night. See Full Moon. Meet no more folk. Strike the road to Osgiliath far down, and have to go back long [?detour] East. Deep Ilex woods. Gollum goes [?on] by day. Evening of third day they reach Cross ways. See broken statue.(11) The story of the ambush (12) of the Southron men thus seems at this stage to have had no sequel. But from the point where this outline begins (when Sam calls to Gollum that there is some rabbit left if he wants to change his mind, but finds that he has disappeared, 11 p. 264) the final form of the story, partly extant in rough drafting, was achieved without hesitation - with, however, one major difference: the leader of the Gondorians was not Faramir, brother of Boromir. At this time he was Falborn son of Anborn (and remained so in the manuscript). Mablung and Damrod, the two men who were left to guard Frodo and Sam,(13) told them that Falborn was a kinsman of Boromir, and that 'he and they were Rangers of Ithilien, for they were descended from folk who lived in Ithilien at one time, before it was overrun' (cf. TT p. 267). For the rest, Falborn's conversation with Frodo and Sam proceeds almost exactly as does that with Faramir in TT.(14) Mablung and Damrod used 'sometimes the Common Speech, but after the manner of older days, sometimes some other language of their own', but the description of this other tongue (TT p. 267) was added to the typescript that followed the manuscript at some later time. Their account of the Southrons scarcely differs from the final form, but where Mablung in TT (p. 268) speaks of 'These cursed Southrons', in the manuscript he says 'These cursed Barangils, for so we name them' (subsequently changed to the later reading). The name Barangils is written on the First Map beside Swertings (see Map III, VII.309). The account of the Oliphaunt was never changed, save only in the name by which the great beasts were known in Gondor (Mumak in TT). In the original draft Mablung (15) cried Andabund!, and this was the form first written in the manuscript also. This was changed to Andrabonn,(16) then to Mumund. These were immediate changes, for a few lines later appears 'the Mumund of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk', where drafting for the passage has Mumar. Soon after, the form Mamuk was introduced in both passages: this was the form my father used in his letter to me of 6 May 1944 (Letters no. 66). Lastly, in the manuscript Damrod cries 'May the gods turn him aside', where in TT he names the Valar; gods was preceded by a rejected word that I cannot interpret. On 30 April 1944 (Letters no. 64) my father described to me the course of the story that I had not read: ['The Ring'] is growing and sprouting again ... and opening out in unexpected ways. So far in the new chapters Frodo and Sam have traversed Sarn Gebir,(17) climbed down the cliff, encountered and temporarily tamed Gollum. They have with his guidance crossed the Dead Marshes and the slag-heaps of Mordor, lain in hiding outside the main gates and found them impassable, and set out for a more secret entrance near Minas Morghul (formerly M. Ithil). It will turn out to be the deadly Kirith Ungol and Gollum will play false. But at the moment they are in Ithilien (which is proving a lovely land); there has been a lot of bother about stewed rabbit; and they have been captured by Gondorians, and witnessed them ambushing a Swerting army (dark men of the South) marching to Mordor's aid. A large elephant of prehistoric size, a war-elephant of the Swert- ings, is loose, and Sam has gratified a life-long wish to see an Oliphaunt ... In the chapter next to be done they will get to Kirith Ungol and Frodo will be caught.... On the whole Sam is behaving well, and living up to repute. He treats Gollum rather like Ariel to Caliban. Since it was not until a week later that he referred to the sudden and totally unexpected appearance of Faramir on the scene, it seems to me that when he wrote this letter he had not progressed much if at all beyond the end of the Oliphaunt episode; for in the manuscript of the chapter that became 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit' the leader of the Gondorians is Falborn, not Faramir, and there is as yet no indication that he will play any further part (cf. the outline on p. 135).(18) This chapter (including what became 'The Black Gate is Closed') was read to C. S. Lewis on the first of May 1944 (Letters no. 65). This is a convenient place to set down the notes on names added later to the page transcribed on p. 132: Change Black Mountains to the White Mountains. Hebel [Orolos>] Uilos Nor[?ais] Alter the Morannon to Kirith Naglath Cleft of the Teeth Gorgor The two King Stones Sern Ubed (denial) Sern Aranath Rohar? To these pencilled notes my father added in ink: Not Hebel but Ephel. Et-pele > Eppele. Ephel-duath. Ephel [Nimras >] Nimrais. Ered Nimrath. With Kirith Naglath cf. Naglath Morn, p. 122; and on the reference to Sern Ubed and Sern Aranath see p. 132. On the change of the Black Mountains to the White see VII.433. NOTES. 1. In the manuscript as in the draft, 'The moon was not due until late that night'; in TT 'the moon was now three nights from the full, but it did not climb over the mountains till nearly midnight.' 2. That the illegible word is re-entrant seems assured by the recurrence of this word in perfectly clear form and in the same context in the text given on p. 134. In the present text at this point there is drawn a wavy line; this clearly indicates the line of the mountains pierced by a very wide valley running up into a point. 3. The illegible word is certainly not pointing. It begins with an f or a g and probably ends in ing, but does not suggest either facing or gazing. 4. The word Ubed, occurring twice here and again in the further notes on names on this page (where it is translated 'denial'), is written at all occurrences in precisely the same way, and I do not feel at all certain of the third letter. 5. Before the words 'The red eye' were written my father drew an Old English S-rune (cf. VII.382), but struck it out. 6. The remainder of this page carries disjointed passages: as else- where my father probably had it beside him and used it for jotting down narrative 'moments' as they came into his mind. The first reads: that great mountain's side was built Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard, where Gandalf walked now deep in thought. On this see note 8. Then follows: For a third night they went on. They had good water in plenty, and Gollum was better fed. Already he was less famished to look at. At early morning when they lay hidden for rest, and at evening when they set out again, he would slip away and return licking his lips. Sometimes in the long night he would take out something ..... and would crunch it as he walked. ..... and lay under a deep bank in tall bracken under the shadow of pine trees. Water flowed not far away, cold, good to drink. Gollum slipped away, and returned shortly, licking his lips; but he brought with him also a present for the hobbits. Two rabbits he had caught. With Sam's having no objection to rabbit but a distaste for what Gollum brought, and a reference to his prudent wish, in contrast to Frodo's indifference, to save the elvish waybread for worse times ahead, these exceedingly difficult 'extracts' come to an end. It was clearly here that the episode of the stewed rabbit entered; but it seems scarcely possible to define how my father related it to the whole sequence of the journey from the Black Gate. 7. On the continued hesitation between Elostirion and Osgiliath at this time see p. 122 and note 7. 8. The last sentence is in fact, and rather oddly, completed by the first passage given in note 6, thus: 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 com- panions might now be, he did not know that under / that great mountain's side was built Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard, where Gandalf walked now deep in thought. See the Note on Chronology below. 9. This sentence replaced a form of it in which Sam's reckoning had been that they had 'a bare ten days' supply of waybread: that left eight.' In the manuscript of 'The Passage of the Marshes', corresponding to that in TT p. 231, Sam said 'I reckon we've got enough to last, say, 10 days now'. This was changed to 'three weeks or so', no doubt at the same time as the sentence in the present text was rewritten. In TT (p. 260) it is said at this point that 'Six days or more had passed' since Sam made his reckoning of the remaining lembas, whereas here it is 'Two days or more'. Three days had in fact passed, the 3rd, 4th and 5th of February (p. 118). In TT the length of the journey had been increased, both by the two extra days during which they crossed the Noman-lands {pp. 112, 120), and by an extra day added to the journey from the Morannon to the place of the stewed rabbit episode (p. 135). 10. re-entrant: see note 2. 11. The brief remainder of this outline is illegible because my father wrote across it notes in ink on another subject (see p. 145). 12. It is not clear that it was first conceived as an ambush, which perhaps only arose when the story came to be written - and it was then that my father added to the manuscript at an earlier point 'They had come to the end of a long cutting, deep, and sheer-sided in the middle, by which the road clove its way through a stony ridge' (TT p. 258). 13. In a pencilled draft so faint and rapid as to be largely illegible another name is found instead of Mablung, and several names preceded Damrod, but I cannot certainly interpret any of them. 14. Rivendell is still Imladrist and the Halflings are still the Halfhigh (see VII.146). Boromir is called 'Highwarden of the White Tower, and our captain general', as in TT (p. 266). 15. Damrod in TT; the speeches of Damrod and Mablung were shifted about between the two. 16. Cf. the Etymologies, V.372, stem MBUD 'project': * andambunda 'long-snouted', Quenya andamunda 'elephant', Noldorin anda- bon, annabon. 17. Sarn Gebir: an interesting instance of the former name re- appearing mistakenly - unless my father used Sarn Gebir deliberately, remembering that I had not read any of Book IV, in which the name Emyn Muil was first used. Cf. however p. 165 note 7. 18. It is clear that in the manuscript the chapter halted at Sam's words (TT p. 270) 'Well, if that's over, I'll have a bit of sleep.' The following brief dialogue between Sam and Mablung (with the hint that the hobbits will not be allowed to continue their journey unhindered: 'I do not think the Captain will leave you here, Master Samwise') was written in the manuscript as the beginning of the next chapter ('Faramir'), and only subsequently joined to the preceding one and made its conclusion; and by then Falborn had become Faramir. Note on the Chronology. The brief time-scheme B has the following chronology (see pp. 118, 135): (Day 3) Feb. 4 Frodo, Sam and Gollum come to the Barren Lands and Slag-mounds. Stay there during day and sleep. At night they go en 12 miles and come before the Morannon on Feb. 5. (Day 4) Feb. 5 Frodo, Sam and Gollum remain hidden all day. Pass southward to Ithilien at dusk. (Day 5) Feb. 6 Full Moon. Stewed rabbit. Frodo and Sam taken by Faramir. Spend night at Henneth Annun. There are two other schemes ('C' and 'D'), the one obviously written shortly after the other, both of which begin at February 4. As originally written, both maintain the chronology of B, but both give some information about other events as well, and in this they differ. Scheme C reads thus: (Day 3) Feb. 4 Gandalf and Pippin pass Fords and reach mouth of Coomb about 2.30 a.m. [Added: and rides on till day- break and then rests in hiding. Rides again at night.] Theoden sets out from Dolbaran and reaches Helm's Deep soon after dawn. Frodo comes to the Barren Lands and Slag-mounds and stays there during day. (Day 4) Feb. 5 Theoden leaves Helm's Deep on return journey. Aragorn rides on ahead with Gimli and Legolas. Gandalf abandons secrecy and after short rest rides all day to Minas Tirith. He and Pippin reach Minas Tirith at sunset. At dawn on Feb. 5 Frodo comes before the Morannon. Frodo, Sam and Gollum lie hid all day and go south towards Ithilien at nightfall. (Day 5) Feb. 6 Frodo and Sam in Ithilien. They are taken by Faramir. Battle with the Southrons. Frodo spends night at Henneth Annun. Scheme D, certainly following C, runs as follows (as originally written): (Day 3) Feb. 4 Gandalf and Pippin begin their ride to Minas Tirith (pass Fords and reach mouth of Deeping Coomb about 2 ] a.m.). At dawn come to Edoras (7.30). Gandalf fearing Nazgul rests all day. Orders assembly to go to Dunhar- row. Nazgul passes over Rohan again. (Day 4) Feb. 5 Gandalf rides all night of 4 - 5 and passes into Anorien. Pippin sees the beacons blaze up on the moun- tains. They see messengers riding West. Aragorn (with Legolas and Gimli) rides fast by night (4-5) to Dunharrow via Edoras, reaches Edoras at morn- ing and passes up Harrowdale. Theoden with Eomer and many men goes by mountain-roads through south [sic] skirts of mountains to Dunharrow, riding slowly. Frodo at dawn comes before the Morannon. At night- fall Frodo with Sam and Gollum turns south to Ithilien. (Day 5) Feb. 6 Full Moon (rises about 9.20 p.m. and sets about 6.30 a.m. on Feb. 7). Gandalf rides all night of 5 - 6 and sights Minas Tirith at dawn on 6th. Theoden comes out of west into Harrowdale some miles above Dunharrow, and comes to Dunharrow before nightfall. Finds the muster already beginning. Frodo and Sam in Ithilien; taken by Faramir; battle with Southrons; night at Henneth Annun. On the statement in scheme D that Theoden came down into Harrowdale some miles above Dunharrow see p. 259. The full moon of February 6 is the full moon of February 1, 1942, as explained in VII.369. It will be seen that in their dating these time-schemes proceed from the schemes A and B (see p. 118}, in which the day passed by Frodo among the slag-mounds was February 4, and in which he came before the Morannon at dawn on February 5. While these schemes obviously belong to 1944, and were made when Book IV was largely or entirely written (pp. 182, 226), it seems clear that they preceded the chrono- logical problems that my father referred to in his letters of 12 and 16 October 1944 (see p. 100): for in the second of these he mentioned that he had made a small alteration in Frodo's journey, 'two days from Morannon to Ithilien', and this change is not present in these schemes, C and D. Scheme D was revised at that time to provide the extra day in the journey from the Morannon to Ithilien, and this was done by revising the dates backwards: thus Frodo now comes before the Morannon on February 4, and on February 5 'lies in heather on the borders of Ithilien' (see p. 135 and TT p. 257); thus the episode of the stewed rabbit still takes place on February 6. Since this scheme only begins on February 4 it is not shown how the earlier arrival before the Morannon was achieved. It is clear therefore that scheme S was devised following the chronological modifications of 12-16 October 1944; for in S the extra day in the journey from the Morannon was present from its making, and the date of the extra day was February 5 (as in Scheme D revised), because in this scheme the date of the Breaking of the Fellowship was put back from January 26 to January 25 (see pp. 101, 119). The chronology in S I take therefore to represent the structure when my father wrote on 16 October 'I think I have solved it all at last': (Day 3) Feb. 3 Frodo etc. reach slag-mounds at dawn, and stay in a hole all day, going on at nightfall. Nazgul passes high up on way to Isengard about 5 p.m. Another one hour after midnight. Gandalf and company leave Isengard and camp at Dolbaran. Episode of the Orthanc-stone. Nazgul passes over about 11 p.m. (Day 4) Feb. 4 Frodo etc. reach dell in sight of Morannon at daybreak, and lie hid there all day. See the Harad-men march in. At dusk they start southward journey. Gandalf and Pippin ride east. Sight Edoras at dawn. Nazgul passes over Edoras about 8 a.m. (Day 5) Feb. 5 Frodo etc. reach borderlands and lie in heather sleeping all day. At night go on into Ithilien. Gandalf passes into Anorien. (Day 6) Feb. 6 Frodo etc. camp in Ithilien. Episode of Stewed Rabbit. Frodo captured by Faramir and taken to Henneth Annun. [Gandalf and Pippin reach Minas Tirith.] The original entries concerning Gandalf on February 5 and 6 in this scheme cannot be read after the words 'Gandalf passes into Anorien', because they were afterwards overwritten, but it is clear that as in scheme D he reached Minas Tirith at dawn on February 6. In this chapter relation to the movements of other members of the original Company arises in the rejected passage given on p. 133, interrupted in the manuscript but concluded as shown in note 8. In this passage, written before the episode of the stewed rabbit and the coming of the men of Gondor had entered the story, Frodo was walking southward through Ithilien, and in the late night of February 6 - 7 (the second of this journey) he saw the full moon sinking in the West. In its light he glimpsed from far off the snows on Mount Mindolluin; and at that same time Gandalf was walking 'deep in thought' below that mountain in Minas Tirith. When the story was entirely changed by the entry of Faramir it was from Henneth Annun, that night, and in the original draft of 'The Forbidden pool' appears his sad speculation on the fate of his former companions 'in the vastness of the nightlands' (TT p. 293). When that was written the story was still that Gandalf and Pippin had already reached Minas Tirith. In the final chronology the relations were altered. Pippin riding with Gandalf on Shadowfax caught as he fell asleep on the night of March 7 - S 'a glimpse of high white peaks, glimmering like floating isles above the clouds as they caught the light of the westering moon. He wondered where Frodo was, and if he was already in Mordor, or if he was dead; and he did not know that Frodo from far away looked on that same moon as it set beyond Gondor ere the coming of the day' (The Return of the King p. 20). That was still the night that Frodo passed in Henneth Annun; but now Gandalf did not ride up to the wall of the Pelennor until dawn of the ninth of March. V. FARAMIR. On the 26th of April 1944 my father said (Letters no. 63) that he needed to know how to stew a rabbit; on the 30th (no. 64) he wrote that 'A large elephant of prehistoric size, a war-elephant of the Swertings, is loose' (but made no mention of anything further); on the 4th of May (no. 65), having read a chapter to C. S. Lewis on the 1st, he was 'busy now with the next'; and on the 11th (no. 67) he said that he had read his 'fourth new chapter ("Faramir")' to Lewis and Williams three days before.(1) It seems, then, that what was afterwards called 'The Window on the West' was achieved in not much more than a week. That must have been a time of intense and concentrated work, for the volume of writing that went into this chapter, the redrafting and reshaping, is remarkable. It is also very complex, and it has taken me a lot longer than a week to determine how the chapter evolved and to try to describe it here. In what follows I trace the development fairly closely, since in 'Faramir' there are bearings on other parts of The Lord of the Rings and much of special interest in Faramir's discourse on ancient history, most notably in his remarks on the languages of Gondor and the Common Speech (entirely lost in The Two Towers). The various draft-sequences that constitute the history of the chapter are so confusing that I shall try to make my account clearer by using letters to distinguish them when it seems helpful. There was only one manuscript made, titled 'XXXVI. Faramir':(2) this is a good clear text, not extensively emended later, and in it the final form was achieved, with however certain important exceptions. It must have been from this text (referred to in this chapter as 'the completed manuscript', or simply 'the manuscript') that my father read 'Faramir' to Lewis and Williams on 8 May 1944. At this time the chapter began at Sleep while you may,> said Mablung: see p. 139 note 18. The original draft for the end of what became 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit', which I will call 'A', continued on from Sam's 'If that's over I'll have a bit o' sleep' (TT p. 270) thus: He turned and spoke in Frodo's ear. 'I could almost sleep on my legs, Mr Frodo,' he said. 'And you've not had much yourself. But these men are friends, it seems: they seem to come from Boromir's country all right. Though they don't quite trust us, I can't see any cause to doubt them. And we're done anyway if they turn nasty, so we'd best rest.' 'Sleep if thou wilt,' said Mablung. 'We will guard thee and thy master until Falborn comes. Falborn will return hither, if he has saved his life. But when he cometh we must move swiftly. All this tumult will not go unmarked, and ere night is old we shall have many pursuers. We shall need all speed to gain the river first.' It seemed to Sam only a few minutes before he woke and found that Falborn had returned and several men with him. They were talking nearby. Frodo was awake and among them. They were debating what to do about the hobbits. Sam sat up and listened and he understood that Frodo had failed to satisfy the leader of the men of Gondor on some points: which part he had to play in the company sent from Rivendell, why they had left Boromir, and where he was now going. To the meaning of Isildur's Bane he kept on returning, but Frodo would not tell the story of the Ring. 'But the words said with Isildur's Bane in hand,' said Falborn.(3) 'If you are the Half-high then you should have that thing in hand, whatever it be. Have you it not? Or is it hidden because you choose to hide it?' 'Were Boromir here he would answer your questions,' said Frodo. 'And since Boromir was many days ago at Rauros on the way to your city, if you return swiftly you will learn the answer. My part in this company was known to him and to all and to the Lord Elrond indeed. The errand given to me brings me into this land, and it is not [?wise] that any enemy of the Dark Lord should hinder it.' 'I see there is more in this than I first perceived,' said Falborn. 'But I too am under command: to slay or take prisoner as [?reason justifies] all found in Ithilien. There is no cause to slay thee.' Here this barely legible draft ends. At the end of it is written in pencil: Death of Boromir known. This is probably to be associated with the following notes written across the outline given on p. 135 (see note 11 to the last chapter): Is Boromir known to be dead? Only by a vision of the boat with a light about it floating down the river and a voice. And by some things of his drifting? This is Feb. 6. Gandalf only arrives at sunset on Feb. 5 and the Rangers must have left Tirith long before that. Hardly time for messenger from Edoras to Minas Tirith (250 miles). ..... Jan. 31 morning to [Feb. 4 o] night Feb. 3. 3 1/2 days. Rangers must have left on night of Feb. 3rd. NO. On the date 6 February see pp. 140 - 2. 31 January was the day on which Gandalf came with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to Edoras and left with Theoden, riding west across the plains (see pp. 3 - 5). My father was evidently calculating that a man riding 70 miles a day could have brought the news of Boromir's death by word of mouth to Minas Tirith before Falborn and his men left the city to cross the river into Ithilien, but decided that this was not what had happened. A new draft text ('B'), at the outset clearly written, was now begun, opening with Mablung's words 'Sleep, if thou wilt,'(4) and continuing as in the original draft A (p. 145): there is thus still no suggestion at this point that the hobbits will not be allowed to go on their way (see note 18 to the last chapter), and the leader of the men of Gondor is still Falborn. A was followed closely in this new text (which was a good deal emended subsequently) almost to its end,(5) but at the point where Frodo says 'But those who claim to oppose the Dark Lord would do well not to hinder it' the dialogue moves to the same point in TT (p. 272): 'Frodo spoke proudly, whatever he felt, and Sam very much approved of it; but it did not appease Falborn', and continues almost as in the final form, through the wary conversation about Boromir, as far as Frodo's 'though surely there are many perils in the world.' At Falborn's reply 'Many indeed, and treachery not the least' Sam does not in this text intervene, and Falborn continues: 'But thou askest how do we know that our captain is dead. We do not know it for a certainty, but yet we do not doubt it.' And he asks Frodo whether he remembers anything of special mark that Boromir bore with him among his gear, and Frodo fears a trap and reflects on his danger just as in TT (pp. 273 - 4). Then follows: 'I remember that he bore a horn,' he said at last. 'Thou rememberest well, as one who hath verily seen him,' said Falborn. 'Then maybe thou canst see it in thy mind's eye: a great horn of the wild ox of the [Eastern wilderness >] East, bound with silver, and written with his name, [struck out: worn upon a silver chain]. That horn the waters of Anduin brought unto us maybe [> more than] seven nights now gone. An ill token we thought it, and boding little joy to Denethor father of Boromir; for the horn was cloven in twain as by sword or axe. The halves of it came severally to shore ...' Falborn's account of how the pieces of the horn were found now follows as in TT (p. 276),(6) ending 'But murder will out, 'tis said',- then he continues: 'Dost thou not know of the cleaving of the horn, or who cast it over Rauros - to drown it for ever in the eddies of the fall, doubtless? ' 'No,' said Frodo, 'I do not know. But none of our Company has the will for such a deed, and none the strength unless it were Aragorn. But though it may be a token of ill, a cloven horn does not prove the wearer's death.' At this stage, therefore, Boromir's death was a supposition in Minas Tirith depending solely on the finding of the pieces of his horn in the river. But now there follows (and at this point my father's handwriting speeded up markedly and becomes very difficult, often a sign that a new conception had entered that would entail the rewriting and rejection of what had preceded, so that what follows slips back, as it were, into a more 'primitive' stage of composition): 'No. But the finding of the horn followed another and stranger thing,' said Falborn. 'And that sad chance befell me, and others beside [changed to: No, said Falborn. But the finding of the horn followed another and stranger thing that befell me, and others beside]. I sat at night beside the waters of Anduin, just ere the first quarter of the moon, in the grey dark watching the ever moving stream and the sad reeds rustling....' The account of the boat bearing the body of Boromir is for most of its length very close indeed to that in TT (p. 274), and it is here, most curiously, that Falborn becomes Boromir's brother, though he does not change his name: 'It was Boromir my brother, dead.' It is as if he slipped without conscious decision into the role that had been preparing for him. What else could he be, this captain of Gondor so concerned with Frodo's story and the fate of Boromir? Foreshortening the actual development, my father wrote in his letter of 6 May 1944 (Letters no. 66): A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir ... Falborn's story is different in its ending from the final form: '... The boat turned into the stream and passed into the night. Others saw it, some near at hand, others from far off. But none dare touch it, nor maybe would even the evil hands of those that hold Osgiliath dare to hinder it. '[?This] I thought was a vision though one of evil boding, and even when I heard the tale of others we doubted, Denethor my father and I, if it were more, though it boded evil. But none can doubt the horn. It lies now cloven in twain upon the lap of Denethor. And messengers ride far and wide to learn news of Boromir.' 'Alas,' said Frodo. 'For now I do not on my side doubt your tale. The golden belt was given him in Lorien by the Lady Galadriel. It was she who clothed us as you see us. This brooch is of the same workmanship' - he touched the [?enamelled] leaf that caught his cloak about his neck. Falborn looked at it curiously. 'Yes,' he said, 'it is work of the same [?manner].' 'Yet even so,' said Frodo, 'I think it can have been but a vision that you saw. How could a boat have ridden the falls of Rauros and the [?boiling] floods, and naught have been spilled but the horn, and founder not with its burden of water?' 'I know not,' said Falborn, 'but whence came the boat?' 'From Lorien, it was an elven-boat,' said Frodo; 'Well,' said Falborn, 'if thou wilt have dealings with the mistress of magic that ....eth [added: dwells] in the Golden Wood then they [sic] must look for strange things and evil things to follow.' This was too much for Sam's patience. He stood up and walked into the debate. 'Not evil from Lorien,' he said. 'Begging your pardon, Mr Frodo,' he said, 'but I have been listening to a deal of this talk. Let's come to the point before all the Orcs of Mordor come down on us. Now look here, Falborn of Gondor if that is your name' - the men looked in amazement (not in merriment) at the small ... hobbit planted firmly on his feet before the seated figure of the captain. 'What are you getting at? If you think we murdered your brother and then ran away, say so. And say what you mean to do about it.' 'I was in mind to say so,' answered Falborn. 'Were I as hasty as thou I would have slain thee long ago. But we have taken but a few minutes in speech to learn what sort ye be. I am about to depart at once. Ye will come with me. And in that count yourselves fortunate!' Here this second draft B ends,(7) and my father now proceeded to a third version ('C'), beginning at the same point as did draft B (p. 146) with Mablung's words 'Sleep, if you will', and extending no further into the chapter, but C is written on odd bits of paper, much of it very roughly, is not continuous, and contains some sections of the narrative in divergent forms. It seems clear therefore that these pages accom- panied the commencement of the completed manuscript. This third drafting C, in which Falborn has become Faramir,(8) largely retains the structure of B, while at the same time moving in detail of expression a good way towards the form of the opening dialogue between Faramir and Frodo in TT (pp. 271 - 6). There were various intricate shiftings and displacements and new conjunctions within the matter of this dialogue before my father was satisfied with its structure, and these I largely pass over. The essential differences from the final form are that Sam's indignation does not explode at Faramir's words 'and treachery not the least', but as in the second draft B at his disparaging remark about Lorien; and that Faramir's tale of how he heard far off, 'as if it were but an echo in the mind', the blowing of Boromir's horn had not entered. There are a number of particular points to notice. At the beginning of his interrogation of Frodo ('which now looked unpleasantly like the trial of a prisoner') Faramir no longer cites the words of the verse as with Isildur's Bane in hand (see p. 145 and note 3), but as Isildur's Bane upholding,(9) and continues - in the completed manuscript as well as the draft - 'If you be the Halfling that was named, then doubtless you held it before the eyes of all the Council of which you speak, and Boromir saw it.' In TT (p. 271), when the concluding words of the verse were For Isildur's Bane shall waken,/And the Halfling forth shall stand, Faramir says: 'But it was at the coming of the Halfling that Isildur's Bane should waken ... If then you are the Halfling that was named, doubtless you brought this thing, whatever it may be, to the Council of which you speak, and there Boromir saw it.' When Frodo says that if any could claim Isildur's Bane it would be Aragorn, Faramir replies, both in the draft and in the manuscript: 'Why so, and not Boromir, prince of the city that Elendil and his sons founded?', where in TT (p. 271) he speaks of 'the sons of Elendil' as the founders. The story that Elendil remained in the North and there founded his realm, while his sons Isildur and Anarion founded the cities of the South, appears in the fifth version of the 'Council of Elrond' (VII.144); and this may suggest that that version of 'The Council of Elrond' was written lacer than 1 have supposed. As already mentioned, the sound of Boromir's horn blowing far off was not yet present in this third drafting C; and Faramir still relates the finding of the pieces of the horn before he tells of the funeral boat passing down Anduin. In answer to Frodo's objection that 'a cloven horn does not prove the wearer's death' (p. 147) there now follows: '"No," said Faramir. "But the finding of the shards of the horn followed another and stranger thing that befell me, as if it were sent to confirm it beyond hope." ' Thus the words '(that befell me) and others beside' in B are omitted; but in this tale of the boat that bore Boromir's corpse Faramir still declares that he was not the only one to see it: 'Others too saw it, a grey shadow of a vessel from afar.' In yet another revision of this passage before the final form was reached he ends: 'A vision out of the borders of dream I thought it. But I do not doubt that Boromir is dead, whether his body of a truth has passed down the River to the Sea, or lies now somewhere under the heedless skies.' The remote sound of Boromir's horn blowing only entered in the manuscript, and Faramir there says that he heard it 'eight days ere I set out on this venture, eleven days ago at about this hour of the day', where TT (p. 274) has the same, but with 'five' for 'eight'.(10) As my father wrote this passage in the manuscript he went on, after 'as it might be only an echo in the mind': 'And others heard it, for we have many men that wander far upon our borders, south and west and north, even to the fields of Rohan.' This was apparently struck out immediately. To Sam's indignant and courageous confrontation of this great man from Minas Tirith Faramir's response in this draft was gentle: '... Say what you think, and say what you mean to do.' 'I was about to do so,' said Faramir smiling, and now less stern. 'Were I as hasty as you I might have slain you long ago. I have spared the short part of [? an hour] in spite of peril to judge you more justly. [?Now] if you wish to learn what I think: I doubted you, naturally, as I should. But if I am a judge of the words and deeds of men I may perhaps make a guess at hobbits. I doubted but you were friends or allies of the orcs, and though the likes of you could not have slain my brother, you might have helped or fled with some picking.' Here this third phase of drafting (C) ends.(11) - It is curious that in the completed manuscript Sam's intervention has entirely dis- appeared: the dialogue between Faramir and Frodo in the passage where it originally took place now reaches the form in TT (p. 275) and Faramir no longer expresses so conventional a view of the Lady of the Golden Wood (cf. p. 148). It is plain, I think, that at this point, at Frodo's words 'Go back Faramir, valiant captain, and defend your city while you may, and let me go alone where my doom takes me', the writing of the manuscript was halted, and that at that time nothing further had been written: in other words, this chapter, in terms of composition, falls into two parts, all up to this point (apart from the absence of Sam's outburst) having been brought virtually to the final form before the story proceeded. Very rough and here and there altogether illegible outline sketches show my father's preliminary thoughts for its continuation. One of these, impossibly difficult to read, begins at the point where the draft C ends, with Faramir still speaking to Sam: 'But you have not the manners of orcs, nor their speech, and indeed Frodo your master has an air that I cannot ..., an elvish air maybe.' In this text Faramir shows no hesitation about his course and does not postpone his decision, but concludes sternly: 'You shall be well treated. But make no doubt of it. Until my father Denethor releases you, you are prisoners of Gondor. Do not try to escape, if you do not wish to be slain' (cf. the passage given in note 7). Then follows: In a few minutes they were on their way again down the slopes. Hobbits [?tired]. Mablung carries Sam. They get to the fenced camp in a dense wood of trees, 10 miles away. They had not gone far before Sam suddenly said to Frodo: 'Gollum! Well thank heavens we've lost him!' But Frodo not so sure. 'We have still to get into Mordor,' he said, 'and we do not know the way.' Gollum rescues them The last three words are very unclear, but I have no doubt that this is what they are - though what story lay behind them will never be known. Another short text reads as follows: Faramir says he no longer doubts. If he is any judge of men. But he says that much [more) lies upon it than at first he thought. 'I should' he said 'take you back to Minas Tirith, and if things went ill my life would be forfeit. But I will not decide yet. Yet we must move at once.' He gave some orders and the men broke up into small groups and faded away into the trees. Mablung and Damrod remained. 'Now you will come with me,' he said. 'You cannot go along the road if you meant to. And you cannot go far for you are weary. So are we. We go to a secret camp 10 miles away. Come with us. Before morn we will decide.' They .... Faramir spoke.'You do not deal openly. You were not friendly with Boromir. I see S.G. thinks ill of him. Now I loved him, yet I knew him well. Isildur's Bane. I say that this lay between you in some way. Heirlooms do not breed peace among companions. Ancient tales.' 'And ancient tales teach us not to blab,' said Frodo. 'But you must know that much is known in Minas Tirith that is not spoken aloud. Therefore I dismissed my men. Gandalf was here. We the rulers know that I[sildur] carried off the Ruling Ring. Now this is a terrible matter. I can well guess that Boromir, proud, ever anxious for the glory of Minas Tirith (and his own renown) might wish to seize it. I guess that you have the Ring, though how it could ... The rest of the sentence is illegible. The brief sketch ends with Faramir's words 'I would not touch it if it lay by the highway' and his expression of his love for and desires for Minas Tirith (TT p. 280); the last words are 'I could advise you if you would tell me more.' It is a pity that the passage about the Ring is so brief and elliptical; but the implication must surely be that the rulers of the city knew that Isildur carried off the Ruling Ring because Gandalf had told them. This, of course, was not at all the way in which the story would unfold when it came to be written down. Another page of even more hasty and staccato sketching takes up from the point reached in the first, and may be its continuation (cf. TT p. 280, where Faramir's words 'it may be that I can advise you ... and even aid you' are followed by 'Frodo made no answer'). Frodo does not say more. Something holds him back. Wisdom? Memory of Eoromir? Fear of the power and treachery of what he carried - in spite of liking Faramir. They speak of other things. Reasons of decline of Gondor. Rohan (alter Boromir's words saying he did not go there).(12) Gondor gets like Rohan, loving war as game: so Boromir. Sam says little. Delighted that Gollum seems forgotten. Faramir falls silent. Sam speaks of elvish power, boats, ropes, cloaks. Suddenly aware that Gollum is padding behind. But when they halt he sheers off. Faramir in accord with law makes them be blindfold as they reach secret stronghold. They talk. Faramir warns him, warns against Gollum. Frodo reveals that he has to go to Mordor. Speaks of Minas Ithil. Moonrise. Faramir bids farewell in morning. Frodo promises to come back to Minas Tirith and surrender to him if he returns. At this stage, before the chapter proceeded further, Sam's interven- tion in the initial interrogation of Frodo by Faramir was reintroduced, at an earlier place in the dialogue (at 'and treachery not the least'), and inserted into the manuscript on a rider.(13) The latter part of the chapter is extant in continuous and for the most part clearly written drafting, with a good deal of my father's characteristic 'over-lapping' - when the narrative takes a wrong direction or is in some respect unsatisfactory, collapses into a scrawl, and is replaced by a new page beginning at an earlier point (thus producing sections of near repetition). This drafting led to the finished manuscript, in which there were still important differences from the text in The Two Towers: it will be seen that at this time there was much development still to come in the past history of Rohan and Gondor. The new draft ('D') begins (as also does the recommencement of the manuscript, closely based on D) ' "I do not doubt you any more," said Faramir.'(14) The narrative from this point (TT p. 276), as far as Sam's glimpse of Gollum as they walked through the woodland (TT p. 281), already in the draft very largely achieved the final text; but there are some interesting differences.(15) It is here that the Stewards of Gondor first appear, and the passage concerning them (TT p. 278) was written in the draft text virtually without hesitation or correction, although there is no preliminary material extant. It is notable that from his first appearance in 'The Breaking of the Fellowship' (VII.375 - 6) Denethor has never been called King: he is the Lord Denethor, Denethor Lord of the Tower of Guard. It seems more than likely, therefore, that this cardinal element in the history and government of Gondor was already of long standing, though never until now emerging into the narrative. The line of Denethor is traced in the draft to Maraher the good steward, changed probably at once to Mardil (the name in the manuscript); but the last king of the line of Anarion, in whose stead Mardil ruled when he went away to war, was not Earnur. Both in draft and manuscript he is named King Elessar. Gandalf's recital of his names, as reported by Faramir (who calls him in the draft 'the Grey Wanderer': 'the Grey Pilgrim' in the manuscript), was intricately changed in its initial composition, but apparently developed thus: [Added: Mithrandir among the Elves. Sharkun to the Dwarves.] [The name of my youth in the West is forgotten >] [Olorion >] Olorin I was in my youth that is forgotten; [struck out: Shorab or Shorob in the East,] [Forlong >] Fornold in the South, Gandalf in the North. To the East I go not. [Struck out: Not everywhere] The passage was then written out again in the draft, in the same form as it has in TT, but with the names Sharkun and Fornold, this latter being subsequently changed to Incanus. In the manuscript Sharkun (for later Tharkun) remains. - Here the name Olorin first appears, changed from Olorion. On Gandalf's names 'in the South', Forlong changed to Fornold, I can cast no light; I do not know whether it is relevant that in Appendix F to LR the name of Forlong, Lord of Lossarnach (who died in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields), is said to be among the names in Gondor that 'were of forgotten origin, and descended doubtless from days before the ships of the Numenoreans sailed the Sea.' Faramir's words about Gandalf's eagerness for stories of Isildur were much changed: 'he was eager for stories of Isildur, though of him we had less to tell, [for Isildur was of the North in Fornost, and the realm of Gondor held from Anarion. > for to Gondor no sure tale had ever come concerning his end, only rumour that he perished in the River being shot by orc-arrows. >] for nought was ever known for certain of his end.' For the first occurrence of the name Fornost in the texts, replacing Fornobel, see p. 76. A last point here is that (both in draft and manuscript) Faramir says: 'Isildur took somewhat from the hand of the Unnamed, ere he went away from the battle', where in TT (p. 279) he says 'went away from Gondor'. Cf. 'The Council of Elrond' in FR (p. 265), where Gandalf says: 'For Isildur did not march away straight from the war in Mordor, as some have told the tale', and Boromir interrupts: 'Some in the North, maybe. All know in Gondor that he went first to Minas Anor and dwelt a while with his nephew Meneldil, instructing him, before he committed to him the rule of the South Kingdom.' Cf. also the beginning of 'The Disaster of the Gladden Fields' in Unfinished Tales. At the point where Sam, listening to but not entering the conver- sation, and observing that Gollum was never mentioned, sees him slipping behind a tree, the draft text (which, since it was soon replaced by another, I will call 'D 1') continues thus: He opened his mouth to speak, but did not. He could not be sure, and 'why should I mention the old villain anyway, until I'm obliged,' he thought. After a while Frodo and Faramir began to speak again, for Frodo was eager to learn news of Gondor and its folk and of the lands about them, and what hope they had in their long war. 'It is long since we had any hope,' said Faramir. These last words appear much later in TT (p. 286). Thus the entire story in TT pp. 281-6 is lacking at this stage: the blindfolding, the coming to Henneth Annun, the account of the cave, the report of Anborn about the 'black squirrel' in the woods, the evening meal, and Frodo's stories of their journey (although the fact that Frodo and Sam would be blindfolded before they came to the 'secret stronghold' was known to my father: see the outline on p. 152). All this is found in the completed manuscript in virtually the final form. Faramir's account of the history of Gondor and the coming of the Horsemasters (TT pp. 286-7) was developed in two stages before it was written in the manuscript. Already in the first version (D 1) Faramir speaks very much as in TT of the evils and follies of the Numenoreans in the Great Lands,(16) and of their obsession with death. But after 'Childless lords sat musing in hollow halls, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars' he continues: '... But we were more fortunate than other cities, recruiting our strength from the sturdy folk of the sea-coasts, and the hardy people of the White Mountains (17) - where lingered once many remnants of races long forgot. And then there came the men out of the North, the [Horse-marshals >] Rohir. And we ceded them the fields of [Rohan >] Elenarda [written above: Kalen(arda)] that are since called Rohan,(18) for we could not resist their rude strength, and they became our allies and have ever proved true, and they learn of our lore and speak our speech. Yet they hold by their old ways and their own speech among themselves. And we love them for they remind us of the youth of men as they were in the old tales of the wars of the Elves in Beleriand. Indeed I think that in [?that] way we are remotely akin, and that they are come of that old stock, the first to come out of the East from which the Fathers of the Fathers of Men were come, Beren and Barahir and Huor and Hurin and Tuor and Turin, aye and Earendel himself the half-elven, first king of Westernesse. So does some kinship in tongue and heart still tell. But they never crossed the Sea or went into the West and so must ever remain [?alien]. Yet we intermarry, and if they have become somewhat like us and cannot be called wild men, we have become like them and are no longer Numenoreans. For now we love war and valour as things good in themselves, and esteem warriors above all others. Such is the need of our days. In this notable passage are adumbrated new elements of ancient history that were no doubt long preparing before they appeared in any narrative text, though Eorl the Young had entered in 'The King of the Golden Hall', riding out of the North to 'the Battle of the Field of Gorgoroth' in which Sauron was overthrown (see VII.444 and note 11). That 'between Rohan and Ondor there was great friendship' appeared in the initial draft of 'The Riders of Rohan' (VII.393), and in the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Fangorn' (VII.437), after 'News comes... of the siege of Minas Tirith by the Haradwaith', was added: 'Theoden answers that he does not owe fealty - only to heirs of Elendil.' The mention of Earendel as the 'first king of Westernesse' is strange indeed, but I think probably not significant, a passing inadvertence: see further p. 158 and note 26. This draft D 1 continues on for some way, written fast, and I will return to it; but it is convenient now to turn to the draft that replaced it ('D 2'), and which takes up with Sam's decision to say nothing about Gollum: '... why should I remind them of the old villain, if they choose to forget him? I wish I could.' After a while Frodo and Faramir began to talk again, and Frodo asked many questions concerning Gondor and its people and the lands about them, and what hope they had in their long war. He was interested in such matters, but also he wished to discover, if he could, how much Faramir knew of old lore, and how he knew it. He remembered now that at the Council Boromir had shown much knowledge of these things [struck out: naming the number of the rings of]. The last part of this was changed to read: He was interested in such matters, but also he thought of Bilbo. 'He'll want accounts of all these things,' he thought. 'It is long since I made any note in my diary: tonight perhaps, as we rest.' Then he smiled at himself: 'But he lives in the House of Elrond and can have more for the asking than all that is remembered in Gondor! 0 but well, he'll like it best from a hobbit, personal recollections. He will, if ever I see him again, alas!' All this was struck from the page subsequently, when the later structure of the narrative was imposed; but the text as written continues (cf. p. 154): '"What hope have we?" said Faramir. "It is long since we had any hope....', and then proceeds to develop Faramir's discussion of Gondor and Rohan to a form much closer to that in The Two Towers, though still with important differences. Where in the first version D 1 (p. 154) he said: 'But we were more fortunate than other cities, recruiting our strength from the sturdy folk of the sea-coasts, and the hardy people of the White Mountains', he now says: 'But we were wiser and more fortunate than some; wiser, for we recruited the strength of our people from the sturdy folk of the sea-coasts and the hardy mountaineers of Hebel Nimrath;(19) more fortunate in our foes that became our friends.'(20) Faramir still gives no indication of when the Horsemen came out of the North, For on a time there came men out of the North and assailed our borders, men of fierce valour, but not servants of the Dark Lord, not the wild hordes of the East, or the cruel hosts of the South. Out of the North came the Rohiroth,(21) the Eorlingas, and at the last we ceded to them the fields of Kalinarda (22) that are since called Rohan; for long these had been sparsely peopled, and we could not resist the strength of these golden-haired horsemen. And they became our vassals or indeed our allies ...' He continues very much as in TT (p. 287). In the completed manuscript Faramir gives this indication of the date of their coming: 'On a time in the days of Mardil's son there came men out of the North ...' But of course this conveys very little. Of the origin of the Rohiroth this draft D 2 gives the following version. The passage was heavily emended, and I show the significant alterations: '... Indeed, it is said by the loremasters among us that they are somewhat our kin in blood and in speech, being descended [from those of the Three Houses of Men who went not over sea into the West >] from those same Three Houses of Men as were the Numenoreans, from Beor and Hador and Haleth, but from such as went not over sea into the West at the calling of the Powers. Thus they have to us a kinship, [such as the Exiled Elves that linger still in the West (of such indeed is the Lady of the Golden Wood) and returned not to Elvenhome have to those who departed. But they have never returned. >] such as the High Elves that do here and there abide still in the West of these lands have to those who lingered and went never to Elvenhome. Such is the kinship of the Lady of the Golden Wood to the folk she rules.(23) And so, as the Elves are divided into three: the High Elves, and the Middle Elves, [the Lingerers the Elves of the Woods >] their kindred that lingered on the shores, and the Wild Elves [the Refusers >] of the woods and mountains, so we divide Men, calling them the High or the Men of [Light >] the West, which are the Numenoreans, and the Middle or the Men of Shadow, such as the Rohiroth and other of their kindred in Dale and Mirkwood, and the Wild Men, or the Men of the Darkness. And of the truth of this their likeness of tongue and heart still speaks. Nonetheless those of Numenor passed over the Sea indeed, even if they after forfeited their kingdom and returned, and so they became a people apart and should remain so. Yet if the Rohir became in some ways more like to us, enhanced in art and gentleness, we too have become more like to them, and do not now rightly claim the title High. We are become Middle Men, of the Shadow, but with memory of other things. This was very largely retained, as emended, in the manuscript, but with these chief differences: 'they are come from those same Three Houses of Men as were the Numenoreans, from Hador the Golden- haired, the Elf-friend maybe, but from such of their sons as went not over the Sea into the West, refusing the call';(24) there is no mention of the Lady of the Golden Wood; and 'the Middle People or the Men of the Shadows, such as the Rohiroth and others of their kindred in Dale and the upper waters of Anduin'. The threefold division of the Elves here (lost in The Two Towers) is that introduced into the Quenta Silmarillion after the return of the manuscript from the publishers at the end of 1937 (see The Lost Road pp. 200, 219): the Elves of Valinor; the Lembi or Lingerers; and the Avari, the Unwilling. The draft D 1, left on p. 155, continues through Faramir's reply to Sam's remark about the Elves, and this is of great interest. Though a good deal was retained in TT (pp. 287 - 8) I give it here in full. At the end the writing becomes very fast and the draft ends in scrawled notes. Passages in square brackets are thus bracketed in the original. 'You don't say much in all your tales about the Elves, sir,* said Sam, suddenly plucking up courage: he was rather in awe of Faramir since his encounter on his master's behalf. 'No, Master Samwise,' said Faramir, 'and there you touch upon another point in which we have changed, becoming more as other men. For (as you may know, if Mithrandir was your guest; and you have spoken with Elrond) the Numenoreans were elf-friends, and came of those men who aided the Gnomes in the first wars, and were rewarded by the gift of the kingdom in the midst of the Sea, within sight of Elvenhome whither the High Elves withdrew [written above: where the High Elves dwelt). But in the Great Lands (25) men and elves were estranged, by the arts of the Enemy [who had suborned most men (save only the Fathers of the Numenoreans) to his service] and by the slow changes of time in which each kind walked further down their sundered roads. Men fear and misdoubt the Elves, disting- uishing not between the High-elves (that here and there remain) and those that like themselves never went over the Sea. And Elves mistrust men, who so often have served the Enemy. And we grow like other men, like the men even of Rohan who see them not if they pass (or persuade themselves that they do not see), and who speak of the Golden Wood in dread. Yet there are Elf-friends among us in Condor still, more than among any other people; for though the blood of Numenor is now run thin in Gondor, still it flows there, indeed even Elvish blood maybe: for our kings of old were half-elven, even our first king Elros son of Earendel and brother of Elrond.(26) And 'tis said that Elendil's house was a younger branch of Elros. Some there are of Gondor who have dealings with the Elves, some even still fare to the Golden Wood (though often they return not). One great advantage we have: we speak an elvish speech, or one so near akin that we can in part understand them and they us.' 'But you speak the ordinary language,' exclaimed Sam. 'Like as, or a bit old-fashioned like, if you'll pardon me saying so.' 'Yes,' said Faramir, 'we do, for that is our language. The Common Tongue, as some call it, is derived from the Numeno- rean, being a changed form of that speech of men which the fathers used, Beren and Turin and Earendel and those others. [Hence its remote kinship with the tongues of Rohan and of Dale and of Westfold and Dunland and other places.] This language it is that has spread through the western world among all that are of good will, and among others also. But the lords of Numenor spoke the Gnomish tongue of the Noldor to whom they were allied, and that tongue, changed somewhat and mingled, still lives among us, though we do not commonly speak it. So it is that our earliest names were in the High Elvish Quendian, such as Elendil, Isildur, and the rest, but the names we have given to places, and still give to women and men, are of Elvish sort. Often we give them out of the old tales: so is Denethor, and Mablung, and many others.' Here the draft D 1 peters out, and I return to D 2, left on p. 157, at the same point ('You don't say much in all your tales about the Elves, sir'). In his reply to Sam Faramir here says of the Elf-friends of the ancient wars of Beleriand that they 'were rewarded (such as would take it) by the gift of the Kingdom in the midst of the Sea, within sight of Elvenhome, which they had leave to visit.'(27) And he continues: 'But in the Great Lands Men and Elves were estranged in the days of Darkness ...' He no longer speaks of the men of Rohan being unable to see the Elves, or pretending to themselves that they do not see them if they do, but as in TT says only that they shun them; and he declares, again as in TT, that he would not himself go to Lothlorien, judging it 'perilous now for mortal men, at least to seek the Elder People wil- fully.' But his answer to Sam's 'But you speak the ordinary language! Same as us, though a bit old-fashioned like' was substantially changed: 'Of course we do,' said Faramir. 'For that is our own tongue which we perhaps preserve better than you do far in the North. The Common Tongue, as some call it, is derived from the Numenoreans,(28) being but a form changed by time of that speech which the Fathers of the Three Houses [struck out: Hador and Haleth and Beor] spoke of old. This language it is that has spread through the western world amongst all folk and creatures that use words, to some only a second tongue for use in intercourse with strangers, to some the only tongue they know. But this is not an Elvish speech in my meaning. All speech of men in this world is Elvish in descent; but only if one go back to the beginnings. What I meant was so: [the lords >] many men of the Three Houses long ago gave up man-speech and spoke the tongue of their friends the Noldor or Gnomes:(29) a high-elvish tongue [struck out: akin to but changed from the Ancient Elvish of Elvenhome]. And always the lords of Nume- nor knew that tongue and used it among themselves. And so still do we among ourselves, those who have the blood of Numenor still in our veins, though mayhap we have changed it somewhat mingling it like our blood with other strains. Thus it is that all our names of town and field, hill and river are in that tongue, and the names of our women and of our men. [Struck out: Only in the oldest days did we use the High Ancient Elven for such purposes: of that sort are Elendil and Isildur.] Indeed many of these we still take from tales of the old days: such are Mablung and Damrod, and mine own,(30) and my father's Denethor, and many others.' 'Well sir, I am glad you don't think ill of Elves at any rate,' said Sam. 'Wonderful folk, I think, sir. And the Lady of Lorien, Galadriel, you should see her, indeed you should, sir. I am only a hobbit, if you understand me, and gardening's my job at home ...' This draft D 2 continues on through Sam's speech (essentially as in TT p. 288), his blurting out that Boromir always sought the Ring, and Faramir's response; but now in its turn it becomes quickly rougher and less formed (for its continuation beyond this point see p. 163) and was replaced by new drafting ('D 3') beginning at 'Indeed many of these we still take from tales of the ancient days ...' In the text of the completed manuscript the draft D 2 just given was repeated with scarcely any change until towards the end. Faramir now says of the Elvish tongue spoken by the lords of Gondor that 'we can in part understand Elves [struck out: and they us] even when they speak to one another secretly', but all that he says in D 2 of the Common Tongue is repeated exactly as far as: 'All speech of men in this world is Elvish in descent; but only if one goes back to the beginnings.' The following sentence in D 2 ('What I meant was so: many men of the Three Houses long ago gave up man-speech and spoke the tongue of their friends the Noldor or Gnomes') was at first taken up in the manuscript, but struck out in the act of writing and replaced by the following (thus eliminating the reference to the abandonment of their own speech by the men of the Three Houses, see note 29): '... What I meant was so: many men of the Three Houses long ago learned the High-elven tongues, as they were spoken [in Beleriand >] in Gondolin or by the Sons of Feanor. And always the Lords of Numenor knew these tongues, and used the Gnomish speech among themselves. And so still do we, the rulers of Minas Tirith, in whom the blood of Numenor still flows ...'(31) And Faramir, giving examples of names taken 'from tales of the Elder Days', adds Diriel to those he gave before. Among occasional previous references to the Common Speech only once is its nature defined, and there in a wholly different way. This is in an early draft for a passage in the chapter 'Lothlorien' (VII.239 note 26), where it is said that Frodo did not understand the speech of the Elves of Lorien 'for the language was the old tongue of the woods and not that of the western elves which was in those days used as a common speech among many folk.' With the present passage, in its various forms, concerning the Common Speech and the knowledge of the High-elven tongue of the Noldor among the lords of Gondor may be compared what is said in Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings: The Westron was a Mannish speech, though enriched and softened under Elvish influence. It was in origin the language of those whom the Eldar called the Atani or Edain, 'Fathers of Men', being especially the people of the Three Houses of the Elf-friends who came west into Beleriand in the First Age, and aided the Eldar in the War of the Great Jewels against the Dark Power of the North.... The Dunedain alone of all races of Men knew and spoke an Elvish tongue; for their forefathers had learned the Sindarin tongue, and this they handed on to their children as a matter of lore, changing little with the passing of the years. And their men of wisdom learned also the High-elven Quenya and esteemed it above all other tongues, and in it they made names for many places of fame and reverence, and for many men of royalty and great renown. But the native speech of the Numenoreans remained for the most part their ancestral Mannish tongue, the Adunaic, and to this in the latter days of their pride their kings and lords returned, abandoning the Elven-speech, save only those few that held still to their ancient friendship with the Eldar. There follows an account of the spread of Adunaic along the coasts before the Fall of Numenor, becoming a Common Speech in those regions, and of the use of it by the Elf-friends who survived the Downfall 'in their dealing with other folk and in the government of their wide realms', enriching it with many Elvish words. In the days of the Numenorean kings this ennobled Westron speech spread far and wide, even among their enemies; and it became used more and more by the Dunedain themselves, so that at the time of the War of the Ring the Elven-tongue was known to only a small part of the peoples of Condor, and spoken daily by fewer. This much more complex conception seems nonetheless not radically different as regards the nature and origin of the Common Speech from that which Faramir presents here: for in both accounts, early and late, the Common Speech was directly descended from the ancestral tongue of the 'Fathers of Men'. It is thus curious to see that by later pencilled correction to the manuscript this was changed, Faramir now saying: 'Of course we do ... For that is also our own tongue, which we ourselves made, and here preserve better perhaps than do you far in the North. The Common Tongue, as some call it, is derived from the Numenoreans; for the Numenoreans coming to the shores of these lands took the rude tongue of the men that they here found and whom they ruled, and they enriched it, and it spread hence through the Western world ...' And at the end of Faramir's discourse on linguistic history, after his examples of Gnomish names in Gondor, he now adds: 'But in intercourse with other folk we use the Common Speech which we made for that purpose.' Here the idea that the Common Speech was derived from 'that speech which the Fathers of the Three Houses spoke of old' is denied. In his letter of 6 May 1944 my father continued from the passage cited on p. 147: (A new character has come on the scene ... Faramir, the brother of Boromir) - and he is holding up the 'catastrophe' by a lot of stuff about the history of Gondor and Rohan (with some very sound reflections no doubt on martial glory and true glory): but if he goes on much more a lot of him will have to be removed to the appendices - where already some fascinating material on the hobbit Tobacco industry (32) and the Languages of the West have gone. The passage on linguistic history in the present chapter (with the emendations just given concerning the nature of the Common Speech) survived into subsequent typescripts, and was only removed at a later time; thus the excluded material on 'the Languages of the West' to which my father referred in this letter was not the account given by Faramir. As already remarked (p. 160), a new 'overlapping' draft D 3 takes up at the end of Faramir's exposition, and in this Sam shows himself as more impressed by what he has been told than in the previous version, and has more to say about Elves before he gets on to the subject of Galadriel. This passage was retained and slightly extended in the manuscript (in which form I cite it here), and it survived in the following typescripts until it was removed from the chapter together with the account of languages that preceded it. Sam looked at Faramir wide-eyed and almost with awe. To have an elvish name, and even a possible claim to Elvish blood however remote, seemed to him royalty indeed. 'Well Captain, your lordship, I should say, it is good to hear you speak so fair of Elves, sir. 1 wish I had an elvish name. Wonderful folk they are, aren't they? Think of the things they can make and the things they say! You don't find out their worth or their meaning all at once, as it were: it comes out afterwards, unexpected like. Just a bit of well-made rope in a boat, and there it is: one day it's just what you want, and it unknots itself when you ask it and jumps to your hand. And the boat: I agree with your lordship; I think it rode the falls and took no harm. Of course it would, if that was needed. It was an Elven-boat, sir; though I sat in one for many a day, and never noticed nothing special.'(33) 'I think you are right, Master Samwise,' said Faramir smiling; 'though some would say the White Lady had enchanted you.' 'And she did, sir!' said Sam. 'The Lady of Lorien! Galadriel! you should see her, indeed you should, sir. I am only a hobbit, and gardening's my job at home ...'(34) I have mentioned (p. 160) that the Draft D 2, now become very ragged, continued on through Sam's description to Faramir of Galadriel, and his blurting out the truth, so long and so carefully con- cealed by Frodo, that 'Boromir wanted the Ring!'(35) In this draft, where in TT 'Frodo and Sam sprang from their stools and set them- selves side by side with their backs to the wall, fumbling for their sword-hilts', and 'all the men in the cave stopped talking', all that is said is: 'Frodo and Sam sprang side by side, fumbling for their swords.' Faramir sat down and began to laugh, and then became suddenly grave. It is clear that he sat on the ground, where they were, in the woods. The last words of this draft before it was abandoned, barely legible, are: 'Do not fear. I do not wish to see or touch it - my only fear is lest I see it and be tempted. But now indeed it becomes my duty to aid you with all that I have. If this is the counsel of Mithrandir, that this [?dreadful] Thing should be sent [?a- wandering] in the borders of Mordor in the keeping of two hobbits, then he is desperate indeed and at his wits' end. Come, let us get to cover as quick as we may.' It has been seen (pp. 154, 163) that in the drafting (D 1 - 2) for the latter part of this chapter the entire story of the coming to Henneth Annun was absent, and the entire conversation that in TT took place there after the evening meal here took place as they walked through the woods. When we come to the third overlapping portion of the draft (D 3), however, at the denouement, the revelation of the Ring, they are in the cave, and all is as in TT. It is clear therefore that it was only when he had come to the very end of the chapter that my father realised that the long conversation with Faramir had been interrupted by their coming to the refuge; and perhaps it was only now that he perceived what that refuge was: the Window of the Sunset, Henneth Annun. Drafting for the new passage (TT pp. 281 - 6, from 'So they passed on, until the woodlands grew thinner ...') is found separately, with very little significant divergence from the finished form. There is no mention of Anborn and the sighting of Gollum in the woods at dusk: this first appears in the completed manuscript;(36) and Faramir says to Frodo and Sam before the meal: 'Do as we do, I pray. So do we always, look towards Numenor that was, and to Elvenhome beyond, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome, Valinor the Blessed Realm.'(37) On the page of this drafting where appear Faramir's words 'This is the Window of the West' (changed to 'Window of the Sunset') my father wrote many names and forms before achieving Henneth Annun: Nargalad, Anngalad, Carangalad; Henneth Carandun, Hen- neth Malthen; Henlo Naur, Henlo n'Annun; Henuil n'Annun. NOTES. 1. The 'new chapters' were: (1) 'The Taming of Smeagol'; (2) 'The Passage of the Marshes'; (3) 'The Black Gate is Closed' (including 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit'); (4) 'Faramir'. See note 2. 2. Since 'The Taming of Smeagol' was Chapter XXXII, 'The Passage of the Marshes' XXXIII, and 'The Black Gate is Closed' XXXIV, 'Faramir', the 'fourth new chapter', should be XXXV. Its actual number XXXVI implies that 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit' had already been separated off as XXXV - but then of couse 'Faramir' became the fifth new chapter. Perhaps the actual number XXXVI was written in subsequently. See further p. 171. 3. This refers to the form of the 'dream-verse of Minas Tirith' in which the second half ran thus (see VII.146): This sign shall there be then that Doom is near at hand: The Halfhigh shall you see then with Isildur's bane in hand. 4. Throughout this draft Falborn addresses Frodo as 'thou', but this usage was emended throughout and does not appear in the following text. 5. The men of Gondor were in this draft B 'sitting in a ring, in the middle of which were Falborn and Frodo. It seemed that there was a debate going on.' - Frodo refers to 'Elrond of Imlad-rist': d. p. 139 note 14. 6. In a rejected version of this 'the other half was found further down the river above Osgiliath by other watchers,' 7. On the same page are written other passages that were presum- ably potential ingredients in Sam's remonstration to Falborn: It's a pity the folks against Mordor fall out so easy. I should have thought it as plain as a pikestaff. Boromir was on his way to Minas Tirith. We decided not to go that way and went on our own road. Boromir was not dead when we left, but orcs knew of our journey: they attacked us above the rapids beyond Sarn Gebir. What's in it? I daresay now we made a mistake. I don't know the lie of the lands; but maybe we'd have got there quicker through Minas Tirith. But here we would have come. And if you drag us back there'll be some that do not like it. Boromir would not. Nor Aragorn. With Sarn Gebir here for Emyn Muil cf. p. 136 and note 17. - Another passage here, in part totally illegible, is a draft for a more substantial conclusion to the interrogation of Frodo by Falborn: harshly uncomprehending in tone compared to the later Faramir, and suggesting that no further conversation between them had been thought of at this stage. 'Thou'rt commanded to go - somewhere. But I too am under command: to slay all that roam in Ithilien unanswerable, or at least to take them prisoner to Minas Tirith. I see no cause to slay you, or at least too great doubt. But to Minas Tirith ye shall go. And if Boromir is there it will ... with you. If Boromir's death be proved it will interest Denethor to speak with those who saw him last before he died. If he [?cometh] doubtless ye will be glad - maybe not. Of your own errand ..... [the following sentences are effectively illegible] ..... Maybe if you would say more of the truth and reveal your errand we would help you and not hinder. But if you will not speak I have no choice in my doubt.' 'Maybe you would, and maybe not,' said Frodo. 'But it is not a matter to speak of to such as you are - not were the walls of [?Mordor] a thousand miles away, whereas they be but a few leagues.' Also here are inconclusive rewritings of the second part of the 'dream-verse of Minas Tirith'. 8. Falborn was emended to Faramir (but not consistently) on the second draft B, where also many other changes leading to the third version C were entered. 9. This line does not appear in the rewritings of the verse referred to at the end of note 7, but A sign shall be upholden is found there. It may be that no such form of the verse was ever actually written. The manuscript at first followed the draft, but was then changed to 'But the words said that the Halfling would hold up Isildur's Bane'. Halfling for Half-high entered by emendation to the second draft B: 'If you be the Half-high' > 'If you be the Halfling'. 10. The date of Boromir's death was 26 January (and in one of the time-schemes the hour of his death is stated to be 'noon'); it was now 6 February, eleven days later. (In the margin of the manuscript my father wrote 'twelve' beside 'eleven', which however was not struck out. This presumably depends on the chronology in time-scheme 'S', in which Boromir died on 25 January: see pp. 101, 142.) In The Tale of Years the correspond- ing dates are 26 February and 7 March, also eleven days later (February having 30 days). In the notes given on p. 146 Faramir and his men left Minas Tirith on 3 February, thus three days before; and both in the draft and in the manuscript he tells Frodo that no members of the Company had reached the city when he left it three days before (where TT has six days, p. 272). In The Tale of Years he left on 1 March, thus six days before. 11. A further isolated scrap of drafting may be noticed. It represents presumably unused words of Frodo's when he spoke to Faramir about the boats of Lothlorien: 'These boats are crafty and unlike those of other folk. They will not sink, not though they will be laden more than is their wont when you are all aboard. But they are wayward, and if mishandled' (the sentence ends here). 12. This apparently refers to a passage in 'Farewell to Lorien'. In the fair copy manuscript of that chapter Boromir's original words 'I have not myself been there' (referring to Fangorn) had become 'I have not myself ever crossed Rohan' (VII.282, 293 note 36). This was now changed on that manuscript to 'I have myself been seldom in Rohan, and have never crossed it northwards' (cf. FR p. 390). 13. Rough drafting for this new placing of Sam's intervention is found. In this, rather oddly, Faramir's reply continues on into his astute guessing about Frodo's relationship with Boromir and about Isildur's Bane, and Frodo's quickly smothered desire to 'tell all to this kindly but just man'. In TT this passage, in much more developed form, does not arise until after they have begun their journey to Henneth Annun. However, this was clearly no more than a sketching of new elements in the dialogue; it was not a draft for the overhaul of all that had been achieved in the chapter thus far. 14. Cf. the beginning of the sketch given on p. 151. - The passage that precedes this in TT p. 276, from 'For me there is no comfort in our speech together' to 'But whatever befell on the North March, you, Frodo, I doubt no longer' (in which Faramir suggests that some of the Company are still alive, since who else can have arrayed Boromir in the funeral boat), did not enter till later (it was added to the first typescript of the chapter). 15. Various elements are lacking in the draft but are present in the manuscript: such are 'He wished this thing brought to Minas Tirith' (TT p. 278); and the passage concerning Gandalf (p. 279), from 'Are you sure of this' to 'He got leave of Denethor, how I do not know, to look at the secrets of our treasury' - where the draft text reads: '... so much lore be taken from the world. He had leave to look at the secrets of our treasury ...' The draft text has a few features lost in the manuscript: thus after 'There is a something, I know not what, an elvish air maybe, about you' (TT p. 276) it continues: 'And that is not what I should look for, if old tales and rumours from afar told the whole truth concerning the little people.' This was rejected and replaced by: 'Some power greater than the stature of your kind', also rejected. And after 'unlike they were, and yet also much akin' (TT p. 280) the draft goes on: 'Faramir was doubtless of a different temper, but Frodo feared the power and treachery of the thing he bore: the greater and wiser the stronger the lure and the worse the fall.' With this cf. the sketch given on p. 152. 16. Great Lands: this survival of old usage remains at this place in The Two Towers (p. 286), its only occurrence in The Lord of the Rings. At a subsequent occurrence of Great Lands in this chapter (p. 158) TT has Middle-earth (p. 288), suggesting that its appearance in the first passage was an oversight. 17. White Mountains: White was added, but almost certainly as the text was in progress. Cf. the notes given on p. 137: 'Change Black Mountains to the White Mountains'. 18. The writing of the name Elenarda is perfectly clear and unam- biguous, and it was not struck out when Kalen(arda) was written above it (but see p. 156 and note 22). It is strange to find it applied to Rohan; for this old mythological word derives from the conception of the three 'airs' in the cosmology expounded in the Ambarkanta. There it is translated 'Stellar Kingdom', and is another name for the middle region of Ilmen, in which move the Sun, the Moon, and the stars (see IV.240 - 3, 253). - On the name Rohir in the preceding sentence see p. 22 and note 24. 19. Hebel Nimrath was the name of the White Mountains written in the manuscript, subsequently changed to Ered Nimras. With these names cf. those given in the notes on p. 137. 20. In the manuscript Faramir says, as in TT (p. 286), 'But the stewards were wiser and more fortunate.' The Stewards of Gondor, ruling in Minas Tirith after the death of the last and childless king of the line of Anarion, have appeared already in the earlier part of the dialogue of Frodo and Faramir (p. 153). In the manuscript Faramir's balance of phrases ('wiser and more fortunate; wiser ..., more fortunate ...') was preserved ('more fortunate, for our most dangerous foes became our friends'); by alteration of the text here at a later time this was lost in TT. 21. Rohiroth: see p. 22. In the first of these drafts (D 1) the form is ' Rohir (note 18); in the present draft (D 2) both Rohir and Rohiroth are found in close proximity. In the manuscript the form is Rohiroth. 22. In the manuscript my father wrote Kalin, striking it out at once and writing Calenardan, then altering this to Calenardhon, all these changes being made in the act of writing. See note 18. 23. The difference between these formulations is evidently that in the rejected version the relationship is between the Noldor (such as Galadriel) who remained after the overthrow of Morgoth and those who departed and went to Tol Eressea; whereas in the second version the relationship is between the Noldor who remained and the Elves who never went to Valinor (such as the Elves of Lothlorien). - Cf. the passage in the chapter 'Galadriel' in VII.248, with note 12. 24. In TT (p. 287) the reading is 'not from Hador the Goldenhaired, the Elf-friend, maybe ...' This not was inserted by my father on a late typescript of the chapter; it was put in very hurriedly, and it seems to me possible that he read the sentence differently from his original meaning - which was certainly 'They may be descended from Hador indeed, but if so, then of course from those of Hador's descendants who did not pass over the Sea.' - In the manuscript 'such of their sons' was later emended to 'such of his people', and this seems to have been misinterpreted by the typist as 'such of his sons and people'. It may be noted here that at the same time as this correction to the manuscript the words 'they became a people apart and should remain so' were changed to 'and should have remained so'. 25. Great Lands: here TT has Middle-earth; see note 16. 26. This sentence was apparently evolved thus: 'even Earendel our first king and Elros brother [sc. of Elrond]' > 'even our first king Elros son of Earendel and brother of Elrond'. See p. 155. 27. It was explicit from the beginning that the Numenoreans were expressly forbidden by the Gods to sail westward beyond the Lonely Isle (see the original outline and the original versions of The Fall of Numenor in The Lost Road, pp. 11, 14, 26). Elvenhome here means the Lonely Isle: for that isle lay in the Bay of Elvenhome (cf. The Lost Road p. 103: 'the Isle of Eressea in Elvenhome'); and this is the meaning also in the same passage in TT (p. 288), where the words 'within sight of Elvenhome' are retained - cf. the passage in the Akallabeth (The Silmarillion, pp. 262 - 3) where the remote vision from Numenor of Avallone, haven of Eressea, is described. This is made certain, apart from any other considerations, by the passage given on p. 164. 28. The word Numenorean(s) is variously marked, with an accent on the first syllable or on the third, or no accent. Here the word is written Numenoreans, and I have extended this throughout. 29. Cf. the later Annals of Beleriand in The Lost Road, p. 131: the folk of Hador abandoned their own tongue and spoke with the speech of the Gnomes'; also the Lhammas $ 10, ibid. p. 179. 30. The name Faramir does not appear in any earlier writing. 31. By later pencilled correction of the manuscript Faramir's words were changed so that the reference is only to Noldorin: 'many men of the Three Houses long ago learned the High-elven tongue of the Noldor, as it was spoken in Gondolin or by the Sons of Feanor. And always the Lords of Numenor knew that tongue, and used it among themselves.' 32. On the removal of the history of Pipe-weed from the text see pp. 36-9. 33. With these remarks of Sam's cf. the initial sketch given on p. 152: 'Sam speaks of elvish power, boats, ropes, cloaks.' This was written before the entry of Faramir's account of language (the cause of its loss from the chapter in The Two Towers). 34. In neither of the draft versions of Sam's words about Galadriel does Faramir interject: 'Then she must be lovely indeed. Perilously fair', leading (in the manuscript, and in TT) to Sam's consider- ation of the justice of the word perilous as applied to Galadriel; but in both drafts Sam nonetheless says 'I don't know about perilous', and makes the same observations. At this stage he was referring back to Faramir's earlier 'I deem it perilous now for mortal men, at least to seek the Elder People wilfully' (p. 159). 35. In this draft (D 2) Sam's gaffe is preceded by the same words as in TT (p. 289), but he ends: 'and it's my opinion as soon as he first heard of it he wanted the Ring.' Thus he does not refer to Lorien as the place where Boromir (in the words of the final draft, D 3) 'first saw himself clear, and saw what I saw sooner'. 36. The man who saw Gollum was first named Falborn in the manuscript, later altered to Anborn (this change was actually made in the course of the initial drafting of 'The Forbidden Pool'). In draft and manuscript of 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit' (p. 136) Anborn was the father of Falborn leader of the men of Gondor in Ithilien, who became Faramir. 37. On Elvenhome here (Tol Eressea) see note 27. The manuscript has the final text (TT p. 285): '... towards Numenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.' Cf. Letters no. 211, footnote to p. 281, where the words 'that which is beyond Elvenhome and ever will be' [sic] are interpreted as 'is beyond the mortal lands, beyond the memory of unfallen Bliss, beyond the physical world.' VI. THE FORBIDDEN POOL. The 'fourth new chapter ("Faramir")' had been read to C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams on 8 May 1944 (see p. 144) - fourth, because 'The Black Gate is Closed' and 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit' had not yet been separated (see p. 164, notes 1 and 2). On 11 May my father wrote (Letters no. 67) that another chapter was in progress, 'leading to disaster at Kirith Ungol where Frodo is captured. Story then switches back to Gondor, & runs fairly swiftly (I hope) to denoue- ment.' On the following day (Letters no. 68) he said that 'we are now in sight of Minas Morghul'; and he also quoted Faramir's words to Frodo: When you return to the lands of the living,(1) and we re-tell our tales, sitting by a wall in the sun, laughing at old grief, you shall tell me then.' In The Two Towers these words stand just before the end of 'The Forbidden Pool'. On the morning of 15 May 1944 (Letters no. 69) he read his '6th new chapter "Journey to the Cross Roads" ' to C. S. Lewis. Initial drafting for what became 'The Forbidden Pool' runs on continuously into what became 'Journey to the Cross-Roads', and in. the completed fair copy manuscript likewise the two chapters are one, titled 'XXXVII. Journey to the Cross Roads'; the latter title and chapter-break were inserted into the manuscript later, when the first part became 'The Forbidden Pool'.(2) Since my father would not have called his 'new chapter' 'Journey to the Cross Roads' if Frodo, Sam and Gollum did not get there in the course of it, I conclude that this was where they were, beside the broken statue in the ring of trees, when he read his '6th new chapter' to Lewis on the 15th of May (by this time, presumably, he had divided 'Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit' from 'The Black Gate is Closed', so making 'Faramir' the fifth). In his letter recording this (no. 69) he went on: 'So far it has gone well: but I am now coming to the nub, when the threads must be gathered and the times synchronized and the narrative interwoven; while the whole thing has grown so large in significance that the sketches of concluding chapters (written ages ago) are quite inadequate, being on a more "juvenile" level.' This part of the story unfolded, once my father began to write it, virtually without any hestitation between rival courses; there is however a little sketch that he wrote for it, exceedingly hard to make out, when all was not yet plain. They are roused late at night. Moonset over Mindolluin. Sam grumbles at being waked only to see moonlight. They see Gollum fishing below the pool. J Faramir says he must shoot to kill, or Frodo must help to I capture him. Frodo and some men go out. Frodo calls Gollum and Gollum is caught still clutching a fish. Faramir warns Frodo against Gollum. [Struck out: Frodo tells him] No it is Gollum. Frodo begs for his life. It is granted if Frodo will induce Gollum to come and .....(3) Gollum is caught by guards and brought in. He [? feigns) great delight at Frodo. Nice fish. Begs him not to delay but start in morning. They go back to sleep till morning. They go on through woods by day. No orcs. Farewell. They are out of reckoning, and take long[? er than) Here these notes end. The sentences 'Frodo and some men go out. Frodo calls Gollum and Gollum is caught still clutching a fish' are marked with a line in the margin, which probably implies that this is j the version to be followed, rather than 'Gollum is caught by guards ] and brought in. He feigns great delight at Frodo.' I cannot explain the rejected words 'Frodo tells him', followed by 'No it is Gollum'. Drafting for the chapter (much of it in handwriting so difficult that were it not generally already close to the final form parts of it would be virtually uninterpretable) suggests extremely fluent composition, and there is very little to say of it. New elements entered in successive pages of drafting, but the fair copy manuscript, from which the chapter was read to C. S. Lewis on 15 May, reached the text of The Two Towers in all but a few minor points. Minor in itself, but very notable, is what Faramir says of the Moon. In TT (p. 293) he says: 'Fair Ithil, as he goes from Middle-earth, glances upon the white locks of old Mindolluin'; but in the original draft of the passage he said: 'Fair Ithil touches with her fingers the white locks of old Mindolluin', and still in the manuscript, where the text is otherwise that of TT, he said: 'as she goes from Middle- earth ...'(4) In the original draft of Frodo's reply to Far" mir's question concern- ing Gollum ('Why does he so?', TT p. 294) he says, in support of his suggestion that Gollum does not realise that men are concealed there, that 'He has night-eyes, but he is nearsighted and I doubt if he could see us up here.' In a second draft of the passage the last phrase became '... and sees to no great distance clearly'; in the manuscript, '... and distant things are dim to him.' Against this, in the second of these drafts, my father wrote (at the same time): 'Make it not Gollum who looked out at Morannon - or make it 100 yards' (with '200 yards' written above). But the reference to Gollum's nearsightedness was struck from the typescripts and does not appear in TT, and Gollum remained the one who looked out from the hollow before the Black Gate and saw the 'very cruel wicked Men' coming up the road from the south. My father hesitated much over the distance from the hollow to the road, and this was clearly one of the reasons for it; see p. 128 note 9. - The 'froglike figure' that climbed out of the water as Frodo and Faramir looked down on the pool was a subsequent change from 'spidery figure'. In very rough and rapid initial drafting for the concluding part of the chapter in TT (pp. 300-2) Frodo says no more of the way past Minas Morghul than that Gollum had said that there was such a way, 'up in a high pass in the mountains'. Then follows Faramir's declara- tion of the name Kirith Ungol, as in TT. In the fair copy manuscript my father first wrote here: 'I do not know clearly,' said Frodo, 'but it climbs, I think, up into the mountains on the southern side of that vale in the mountains on the northern side of which the old city stands. It goes up to a high cleft and so down to - that which is beyond.' This was subsequently changed to the text of TT. On the earlier idea that Kirith Ungol was on the south side of the valley see p. 113. At the end of this initial draft my father briefly outlined the further course of the story: the blindfolding of the hobbits and Gollum, the report of the scouts on the strange silence and emptiness in the land, Faramir's advice to go by day through the woods 'skirting the last fall of the land before the river vale', and his farewell. At the foot of this page is a pencilled note only a part of which can I make out: K[irith] U[ngol] must not be mentioned before Frodo ... to tell Faramir of Gollum. Yes he found the ring many many years ago, said Frodo. He is the means by which all this great matter has been set going. Two sentences follow in which I can make out nothing at all, except perhaps 'where the ring had been'. But in any case this was evidently a very short-lived idea. NOTES. 1. The original draft of the passage in 'The Forbidden Pool' was almost as in TT: 'If ever you return to the lands of the living ...' 2. A subsequent tentative arrangement was to put 'The Forbidden Pool' with 'Faramir', calling the first part 'Faramir (1): The Window of the West' (not 'on the West'), and the second 'Faramir (2): The Forbidden Pool'. 3. The illegible end of this sentence looks in fact more like 'visit them' than anything else. If so, the meaning is presumably 'if Frodo can induce Gollum to leave the pool and come up with him to Faramir's presence'; the word is oddly chosen, but these notes were written at great speed. 4. she was corrected to he on the first typescript. Cf. the Quenta Silmarillion in The Lost Road, p. 241 $78: 'Varda commanded the Moon to rise only after the Sun had left heaven, but he travels with uncertain pace, and still pursueth her ...' Another matter concerning the Moon may be mentioned. At the beginning of the chapter, when Faramir waking Frodo says 'the full moon is setting', my father changed this on the manuscript to 'rising'; when they came out from the stairway in the rock the words 'Far off in the West the full moon was sinking' were changed to 'Behind him the round moon, full and majestic, rose out of the shadow of the East'; and Faramir's 'Moonset over Gondor' was changed to 'Moonrise over Gondor'. This would of course make it very much earlier in the night. But all these alterations were returned to the original readings, presumably at once, since subsequently 'It was now dark and the falls were pale and grey, reflecting only the lingering moonlight of the western sky' (TT p. 295) was not changed. VII. JOURNEY TO THE CROSS-ROADS. I have recounted the original relationship of 'The Forbidden Pool' and 'Journey to the Cross-roads'(1) at the beginning of the last chapter. Preliminary drafting for this second part of the original single chapter runs continuously, in excruciatingly difficult handwriting, as far as the coming of Frodo and his companions to the ridge covered with whortleberry and gorse-bushes so tall that they could walk upright beneath them (TT p. 307).(2) The story to this point differed from that in The Two Towers. The journey took a day less: they came to the road from Osgiliath at dusk of the day on which they left Henneth Annun in the morning; and their taking refuge in the great holm-oak was described at much greater length (cf. TT pp. 306 - 7, from 'Gollum reluctantly agreed to this'): Gollum agreed to this, and the travellers turned back from the road, but Gollum would not rest on the ground in the open woodland. After some search he chose a large dark ilex with great branches springing together high up from a great bole like a [?giant] pillar. It grew at the foot of a small bank [?leaning] a little westward. From the bank Gollum leaped with ease upon the trunk, climbing like a cat and scrambling up into the branches. The hobbits climbed only with the help of Sam's rope and in that task Gollum would not help, he would not lay a finger on the elven rope. The great branches springing almost from the same point made a wide bowl and here they [?man- aged] to find some sort of comfort. It grew deep dark under the great canopy of the tree. They could not see the sky or any star. 'We could sleep snug and safe here, if it wasn't for this dratted Gollum,' thought Sam. Whether he was really as forgiving as he claimed or not, Gollum at least had no fear of his companions, and curled up like some tree-animal and soon went to sleep, or seemed to. But the hobbits did not trust it - neither of them (certainly not Sam) were likely to forget Faramir's warning. They took [it] in turn to watch and had about 3 hours' sleep each. All the while Gollum did not stir. Whether the 'nice fish' had given him strength to last for a bit or whatnot else, he did not go out to hunt. Shortly before midnight he woke up suddenly and they saw his pale eyes unlidded staring in the darkness. At the point where this opening draft ended my father wrote Thunder. But at this stage there is no suggestion in the text of any change in the weather or in the feeling of the air. Other points worth mentioning are that the staves given to Frodo and Sam by Faramir had 'carven heads like a shepherd's crook'; that the tree of which they were made was first named melinon (the last two letters are not perfectly clear), then lebendron, and finally lebethras, all these changes being made in the act of writing;(3) and that though Faramir warns them against drinking of any water that flows from the valley of Morghul he does not name it Imlad Morghul (but the name occurs soon after: p. 223, note 25). A second draft takes up at the beginning of the passage just given ('Gollum agreed to this'), and the episode of the oak-tree was rewritten. In this text appears the first reference to an approaching change in the weather. They were steadily climbing. Looking back they could see now the roof of the forests they had left, lying like a huge dense shadow spread under the sky. The air seemed heavy, no longer fresh and clear, and the stars were blurred, and when towards the end of the night the moon climbed slowly above Ephel Duath (4) it was ringed about with a sickly yellow glare. They went on until the sky above the approaching mountains began to grow pale. Gollum seemed to know well enough where he was. He stood for a moment nose upward sniffing. Then beckoning to them he hurried forward. Following him wearily they began to climb a great hogback of land.... After the description of the great gorse-bushes and their hiding in a brake of tangled thorns and briars there follows (cf. TT p. 308): There they lay glad to be at rest, too tired as yet to eat, and watched the slow growth of day. As the light grew the mountains of Ephel-duath seemed to frown and lower at them across the tumbled lands between. They looked even nearer than they were, black below where night lingered, with jagged tips and edges lined in threatening shapes against the opening sky. Away a little northward of where the hobbits lay they seemed to recede eastwards and fall back in a great re-entrant, the nearer shoulder of which thrusting forward hid the view in that direction. Below out of the great shadow they could see the road from the River for a short stretch as it bent away north-east to join the southward road that still lay further off [?buried] in the crumpled land. 'Which way do we go from here?' said Frodo. 'Must we think of it yet?' said Sam. 'Surely we're not going to move for hours and hours?' 'No surely not,' said Gollum. 'But we must move sometime. ..... back to the Cross-roads that we told the hobbits about.' 'When shall we get there?' 'We doesn't know,' said Gollum. 'Before night is over perhaps, perhaps not.' At this point the second draft breaks down into an outline of the story to come, and the handwriting becomes in places altogether inscrut- able. Gollum away a large part of the day. Reach Cross-roads in fact owing to difficult country not until evening. Start at dusk about 5.30 and do not reach Cross-roads and headless statue until morning [sic]. Gollum in a great state of fright. Weather changed. Sky above Ephel Duath absolute black. Clouds or smoke? drifting on an East wind. Rumbles? Sun hidden. In this darkness they get out of the wood and see Minas Morghul. It shines amid a deep gloom as if by an evil moon - though there is no moon. Horror of hobbits. Weight of Ring........ vale of Morghul. Where road went away to the north shoulder and bases of the fortress they turned aside and climbed away southward to other side of V [i.e. Vale of Morghul]. Frodo and Sam ....... see a track. They are already some way up and the gates of Minas Morghul frown at them when there is a great roll and rumble. Blast of Thunder .... rain. Out of gates comes host led by B[lack] R[ider]. It was in this text that the idea of the great cloud spreading out of Mordor emerged. In a third section of drafting my father returned to the point where the second had become a sketch, following Gollum's words about the Cross-roads: 'The sun that had risen with a red glare behind the Ephel-duath passed into dark clouds moving slowly from the East. It was a gloomy morning. The hobbits took some food and settled to rest ...' After Gollum's reappearance from his long absence that day this draft too turns to outline: When he returns he says they ought to start. Hobbits think something has worried him (or ?). They are suspicious but have to agree. The [early evening >) afternoon is threatening and overcast. At evening they come to the Cross-roads in a wood. Sun goes down bloodred in the west over Osgiliath. Terrible darkness begins. The completed fair copy manuscript did not in this case reach the form of the story in The Two Towers, for Frodo and his companions still only took two days from Henneth Annun to the Cross-roads, and a major later change was the lengthening of their journey by a further day. This was achieved by the insertion of the following passage into a typescript of the chapter, following the words (TT p. 305) 'The birds seemed all to have flown away or to have fallen dumb': Darkness came early to the silent woods, and before the fall of night they halted, weary, for they had walked seven leagues or more from Henneth Annun. Frodo lay and slept away the night on the deep mould beneath an ancient tree. Sam beside him was more uneasy: he woke many times, but there was never a sign of Gollum, who had slipped off as soon as the others had settled to rest. Whether he had slept by himself in some hole nearby, or had wandered restlessly prowling through the night, he did not say; but he returned with the first glimmer of light, and roused his companions. 'Must get up, yes they must!' he said. 'Long ways to go still, south and east. Hobbits must make haste! ' That day passed much the same as the day before had done, except that the silence seemed deeper; the air grew heavy, and it began to be stifling under the trees. It felt as if thunder was brewing. Gollum often paused, sniffing the air, and then he would mutter to himself and urge them to greater speed. (As the third stage of their day's march drew on ...) This was retained almost exactly in TT. In the manuscript the text passes at once from 'The birds seemed all to have flown away or to have fallen dumb' to 'As the third stage of their day's march drew on', and thus in this narrative (as in the original draft, p. 175) they came to the Cross-roads at sunset of the second day. They had come to Henneth Annun at sunset on 6 February (pp. 135, 141); they left on the morning of the 7th, and coming to the Osgiliath road at dusk of that day passed the first part of the night in the great oak-tree; they went on again 'a little before midnight', and passed most of the daylight hours of 8 February hiding in the thorn-brake before going on to the Cross-roads (see further the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter). Thus the phrase 'As the third stage of their day's march drew on' referred, when it was written, to the statement then immediately preceding: 'Twice that day they rested and took a little of the food provided by Faramir'; as it stands in TT its reference is less clear. In this inserted passage occurs the first reference in TT to the heaviness in the air and the feeling of thunder. In the manuscript as in the draft (p. 176) the first reference to the change in the weather does not appear until they set out again and began to climb eastwards, after spending the first part of the night (the second night in TT) in the oak-tree; at this point in TT, by a later change, 'There seemed to be a great blackness looming slowly out of the East, eating up the faint blurred stars.' On the following morning, as they lay hidden under the thorns, the manuscript retained the story in the draft: the hobbits 'watched the slow growth of day', and saw the mountain-tops outlined against the sunrise; and here again this was afterwards changed to the reading of TT (p. 308): the hobbits 'watched for the slow growth of day. But no day came, only a dead brown twilight. In the East there was a dull red glare under the lowering cloud: it was not the red of dawn.' Where the manuscript, again following the draft (p- 177), has 'The sun that had risen with a red flare behind Ephel-duath passed soon into dark clouds moving slowly from the East. It was going to be a gloomy day, if no worse' TT has 'The red glare over Mordor died away. The twilight deepened as great vapours rose in the East and crawled above them.' On the other hand, the further references in this chapter to the darkness (and to the deep rumbling sounds) were already present in the original version, and at the end it is said, almost as in TT (p. 311): 'There, far away, the sun was sinking, finding at last the hem of the great slow-rolling pall of cloud, and falling in an ominous fire towards the yet unsullied sea.'(5) Comparing the text as it stands in the manuscript with that in TT one might well suppose at first sight that all these careful alterations show my father at a later time (when he had reached Book V) developing the original idea of a great thunderstorm arising in the mountains into that of the 'Dawnless Day', an emanation of the power of Mordor that obliterated the sunrise and turned day into night, that stroke of Sauron's that preceded his great assault. But it is clear that this is not so. That conception was already present. In fact, the essential reason for these changes was chronological, and they are to be associated with the extra day of the journey from Henneth Annun. The slow approach of the great cloud out of the East had to be advanced at each succeeding stage of the journey to the Cross-roads (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter). It is also true, however, that the rewriting of these passages intensified the Darkness and made it more potent and sinister. Lastly, another later alteration to the text in the manuscript was the sentence (TT p. 306) 'and the sound of the water seemed cold and cruel: the voice of Morgulduin, the polluted stream that flowed from the Valley of the Wraiths.' On p. 181 is reproduced a plan of the Cross-roads and Minas Morghul.(6) NOTES. 1. My father wrote the word 'Cross-roads' very variously, but in this chapter I spell it thus throughout, as in TT. 2. Cf. Unfinished Tales, p. 99 and note 15. 3. In the fair copy manuscript it was still said that the heads of the staves were in the form of a shepherd's crook, though this was subsequently rejected (see p. 207), but the name of the tree was lebethron as first written. 4. In the first draft the form was still Hebel Duath. On this change see p. 137. - This reference to the moon climbing above Ephel Duath 'towards the end of night' is curious, in view of the opening of 'The Forbidden Pool', where towards the end of the previous night the full moon was setting in the West. The original draft here is even odder: The moon rose at last out of [?high) shadows ahead of them. It hardly showed yet any ... of its full light, but already away behind the mountains and the hollow land and the empty wastes day was beginning to grow pale. 'There comes White Face,' said Gollum. 'We doesn't like it. And Yellow Face is coming soon, sss. Two faces in sky together at once, not a good sign. And we've got some way to go.' My father was certainly, as he wrote to me on 14 May 1944 (Letters no. 69), having 'trouble with the moon'. In the manuscript the moon is still climbing above Ephel Duath late in the night; only by a later change does it become 'the sinking moon' that 'escaped from the pursuing cloud' (TT p. 307). 5. The words in TT 'beyond sad Gondor now overwhelmed in shade' were a later addition. 6. At the head of the first stair there is evidently a track and not a tunnel, and therefore the later conception of the ascent to the pass is present (pp. 198-200). Note on the Chronology. The time-schemes referred to as Scheme C and Scheme D (pp. 140 - 1) both cover this part of the narrative. Scheme C reads as follows (for comparison with the citations from The Tale of Years that follow I have added 'Day 1' etc. in both cases). (Minas Morghul and the Cross-roads) [Day 1] Monday Feb. 6 Frodo and Sam in Ithilien. They are taken by Faramir. Battle with the Southrons. Frodo spends night at Henneth Annun. [Day 2] Tuesday Feb. 7 Gollum captured in the Pool of Annun in the early hours (5.30-6). Frodo Sam R Gollum leave Faramir, and journey all day reaching Osgiliath road at dusk, and go east just before midnight. Faramir leaves Henneth Annun for Minas Tirith. [Day 3] Wednesday Feb. 8 Faramir rides to Minas Tirith late in day and brings news to Gandalf. Frodo lies hid in thornbrake until late afternoon (Gollum dis- appears and returns about 4.30). Sound of drums or thunder. They reach the Cross-roads at sunset (5.5 p.m.). Pass Minas Morghul, and begin ascent of Kirith Ungol. The host of Minas Morghul goes out to war. [Day 4] Thursday Feb. 9 Frodo etc. all day and night in the Mountains of Shadow. Host of Minas Morghul reaches Osgiliath and crosses into realm of Gondor. Here this scheme ends. Scheme D is precisely the same in dates and content, but continues further (see p. 226) and has some entries concerning Theoden's movements: Feb. 7 'Theoden prepares to ride to Gondor. Messengers from Minas Tirith arrive. Also tidings of the invasion of North Rohan and war in the North'; Feb. 8 'Theoden rides from Edoras'. The fully 'synoptic' scheme S also agrees, and in addition mentions the coming on of 'the Great Darkness' on Feb. 8. It will be seen that this chronology precisely fits the narrative as it stands in the manuscript, i.e. before it was altered by the insertion of the extra day. When that was done, the (relative) chronology of The Tale of Years was reached: [Day 1] March 7 Frodo taken by Faramir to Henneth Annun. [Day 2] March S Frodo leaves Henneth Annun. [Day 3] March 9 At dusk Frodo reaches the Morgul-road. [Day 4] March 10 The Dawnless Day. Frodo passes the Cross Roads, and sees the Morgul-host set forth. The synchronization of Frodo's story with that of the events west of Anduin required both that Frodo should take longer and that 'Day 4' should be the Dawnless Day. Thus in the original story Frodo and Sam see the red sunrise from their hiding in the thornbrake on 'Day 3'; in the final form they are hiding in the thornbrake on 'Day 4', and there is no sunrise, but a red glare over Mordor that 'was not the red of dawn'. VIII. KIRITH UNGOL. In this chapter I shall describe the writing of the three last chapters of The Two Towers: 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol', 'Shelob's Lair', and 'The Choices of Master Samwise'. As will be seen, this is dictated by the way in which my father developed the narrative. This is the last part of The Lord of the Rings for which precise dating is possible, for when the doors of the Tower of Kirith Ungol slammed in Sam's face my father halted again for a long time, and when I returned to England in 1945 the constant correspondence between us naturally ceased. He wrote on 12 May 1944 (Letters no. 68) that 'we are now in sight of Minas Morghul'; and a good part of the work studied in this chapter must have been done during the following ten days, for on 21 May (Letters no. 70) he said: I have taken advantage of a bitter cold grey week ... to write: but struck a sticky patch. All that I had sketched or written before proved of little use, as times, motives, etc., have all changed. However at last with v. great labour, and some neglect of other duties, I have now written or nearly written all the matter up to the capture of Frodo in the high pass on the very brink of Mordor. Now I must go back to the other folk and try and bring things to the final crash with some speed. Do you think Shelob is a good name for a monstrous spider creature? It is of course only 'she + lob' (= spider), but written as one, it seems to be quite noisome. Adding to this letter on the following day, Monday 22 May, he said: It was a wretched cold day yesterday (Sunday). I worked very hard at my chapter - it is most exhausting work; especially as the climax approaches and one has to keep the pitch up: no easy level will do; and there are all sorts of minor problems of plot and mechanism. I wrote and tore up and rewrote most of it a good many times; but I was rewarded this morning, as both C.S.L. and C.W. thought it an admirable performance, and the latest chapters the best so far. Gollum continues to develop into a most intriguing character. At first sight the references in this letter seem inconsistent: in the past week he had written all or nearly all the story up to the capture of Frodo; he had just spent a day working hard 'at my chapter' (in the singular); and that morning he had read 'it' to Lewis and Williams. There are various ways of explaining this: my guess is that he had at this time got the whole story in draft, which he was still working on, and which he thought of as a 'chapter'; but what he read to Lewis and Williams was 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol'. That this last is certainly the case is seen from his letter of 31 May 1944 (Letters no. 72): The rest of my time ... has been occupied by the desperate attempt to bring 'The Ring' to a suitable pause, the capture of Frodo by the Orcs in the passes of Mordor, before I am obliged to break off by examining. By sitting up all hours, I managed it: and read the last 2 chapters (Shelob's Lair and The Choices of Master Samwise) to C.S.L. on Monday morning. It had indeed been a great labour. The elements were present: the climb to the high pass, the spider's lair, the webs in the tunnel, the use of the phial of Galadriel, the disappearance of Gollum, his treachery, the attack of the spider, the tower guarding the pass, the coming of the Orcs; but they long defied a satisfactory articulation. Perhaps in no part of The Lord of the Rings can the work behind the finished text be more clearly discerned than here. Already when drafting the chapter 'The Black Gate is Closed' my father had sketched out his idea of the approach to Kirith Ungol (p. 124): there Gollum tells Frodo and Sam of 'A stair and path leading up into the mountains south of the pass, and then a tunnel, and then more stairs and then a cleft high above the main pass'. And in the outline that ends the original draft of that chapter (p. 125) it is foreseen that after leaving the Cross-roads they will see the moon shining on Minas Morghul; they will pass up the first stair, force their way through the tunnel 'black with webs of spiders', and get up the second stair which will bring them to Kirith Ungol; but 'Spiders are aroused and hunt them. They are exhausted.' Whether at that stage Kirith Ungol was guarded by a tower is not clear {see pp. 125-6). But long before this, my father had written an account of the entry of Frodo and Sam into Mordor, which beginning as outline soon became narrative ('The Story Foreseen from L6rien', in The Treason of Isengard, pp. 330 ff.).(1) That story was very largely concerned with Sam's rescue of Frodo from Minas Morghul, which does not concern us here; but the first part of it is very relevant, for my father had it before him in May 1944, and I cite a portion of it again here (taking up the various additions made to the text that were certainly present when he now turned to it). The three companions now approach Kirith Ungol, the dreadful ravine which leads into Gorgoroth.(2) Kirith Ungol means Spider Glen: there dwelt great spiders, greater than those of Mirkwood, such as were once of old in the land of Elves and Men in the West that is now under sea, such as Beren fought in the dark canons of the Mountains of Terror above Doriath. Already Gollum knew these creatures well. He slips away. The spiders come and weave their nets over Frodo while Sam sleeps: sting Frodo. Sam wakes, and sees Frodo lying pale as death - greenish: reminding him of the faces in the pools of the marshes. He cannot rouse or wake him. The idea suddenly comes to Sam to carry on the work, and he felt for the Ring. He could not unclasp it, nor cut the chain, but he drew the chain over Frodo's head. As he did so he fancied he felt a tremor (sigh or shudder) pass through the body; but when he paused he could not feel any heart-beat. Sam put the Ring round his own neck. Then he sat and made a Lament for Frodo. After that he put away his tears and thought what he could do. He could not leave his dear master lying in the wild for the fell beasts and carrion birds; and he thought he would try and build a cairn of stones about him. 'The silver mail of mithril rings shall be his winding-sheet,' he said. 'But I will lay the phial of Lady Galadriel upon his breast, and Sting shall be at his side.' He laid Frodo upon his back and crossed his arms on his breast and set Sting at his side. And as he drew out the phial it blazed with light. It lit Frodo's face and it looked now pale but beautiful, fair with an elvish beauty as of one long past the shadows. 'Farewell, Frodo,' said Sam; and his tears fell on Frodo's hands. But at that moment there was a sound of strong footfalls climbing towards the rock shelf. Harsh calls and cries echoed in the rocks. Orcs were coming, evidently guided to the spot. 'Curse that Gollum,' said Sam. 'I might have known we had not seen the last of him. These are some of his friends.' Sam had no time to lose. Certainly no time to hide or cover his master's body. Not knowing what else to do he slipped on the Ring, and then he took also the phial so that the foul Orcs should not get it, and girded Sting about his own waist. And waited. He had not long to wait. In the gloom first came Gollum sniffing out the scent, and behind him came the black orcs: fifty or more it seemed. With a cry they rushed upon Frodo. Sam tried to put up a fight unseen, but even as he was about to draw Sting he was run down and trampled by the rush of the Orcs. All the breath was knocked out of his body. Courage failed him. In great glee the Orcs seized Frodo and lifted him. 'There was another, yes,' whined Gollum. 'Where is he, then?' said the Orcs. 'Somewheres nigh. Gollum feels him, Gollum sniffs him.' 'Well, you find him, sniveller,' said the Orc-chief. 'He can't go far without getting into trouble. We've got what we want. Ringbearer! Ringbearer!' They shouted in joy. 'Make haste. Make haste. Send one swift to Barradur to the Great One. But we cannot wait here - we must get back to our guard post. Bear the prisoner to Minas Morgul.' (Gollum runs behind wailing that the Precious is not there.) Even as they do so, Frodo seems to awake, and gives a loud cry, but they gag him. Sam is torn between joy at learning he is alive and horror at seeing him carried off by Orcs. Sam tries to follow, but they go very speedily. The Ring seems to grow in power in this region: he sees clearly in the dark, and seems to understand the orcs' speech. He fears what may happen if he meets a Ringwraith - the Ring does not confer courage: poor Sam trembles all the time. Sam gathers that they are going to Minas Morgul ... Sam follows the Orcs as they march off to Minas Morgul, and sees them entering the city; then he follows them in. My father now wrote a new outline, and it is clear that he wrote it before he had proceeded far with the story that constitutes the chapter 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol'. The original draft of 'Journey to the Cross-roads' in fact continued straight on into what would become the next chapter, but soon became no more than a sketch. Frodo's sudden crazed dash towards the bridge (TT p. 313) was absent; after scarcely legible words corresponding to the later 'Frodo felt his senses reeling and his mind darkening' follows: Gollum again drew him away. Not that way ..... he hissed ..... but the sound seemed to tear the air like a whistle. Not that way. He drew them aside and [?shrinking] after him they left the road and began to climb up into the darkness on the northern side of the valley, ..... their eyes away from the city on their right, but always looking back again. It is here that the placing of the high pass (Kirith Ungol) on the north side of the Morghul Vale first appears. Then follows: They came to a .... and steps and laboured on. As they rose above the exhalations of the valley their track became easier and the [or their] steps less heavy and slow. But at last they could go no further. They were in a narrow place where the path or road - if it were one - was no more than a wide ledge winding along the face of the mountain shoulder. Before them it seemed to vanish into the shadow or into the very rock itself. They halted and at that moment a great red flash lit up the valley. In that place of shadow and pale phosphorescent light it seemed unbearable, suddenly fierce and cruel. Two peaks with notches between sprang suddenly [?black] into view against the [?sudden) fire behind. At the same moment a great [?crack] of thunder ....... There follows an illegible sentence that seems to refer to the great screeching cry, and the text ends with a reference to the coming forth of the host of Morghul. At this point the new outline for the whole 'Kirith Ungol' story begins. Written at great speed and in pencil, it is often exceedingly difficult to make out, and in one passage very hard to follow. Description of the endless long black lines. Rider ahead. He halts and sweeps glance round valley. Frodo's temptation to put on Ring. At last the host [?passes] away. The [?stormJ is bursting - they are going to Osgiliath and the crossing of the River he said. Will Faramir be across? Will army slay them? [Added: long [? journey] up. Frodo uses phial.] They pass into the tunnel. Halfway through they find it blocked with webs. Gollum refuses to say what they are. Frodo goes ahead and hews a path with Sting. Sam helps. At other end after long struggle in dark he finds a stair. They can no longer see into valley, as sheer walls of rock are on either side. The stair goes up, up endlessly. [?Occasional] webs across path. Gollum hangs back. They begin to have suspicion of him. Description of the spiders? There dwelt great creatures in spider form such as lived once of old in the Land of the Elves in the West that is now under the Sea, such as Beren fought in the dark ravines of the Mountains of Terror above Doriath. All light they snared and wove into impenetrable webs. Pale-fleshed, many- eyed, venomous they were, older and more horrible than the black creatures of Mirkwood. Already Gollum had met them: he knew them well. But thought to use them for his purposes. They come out at last to the head of the stair. The road opens a little. There is still an ominous glare. They see the road [?clearly] .. through a [?narrow] cleft and now the right wall sinks and they look down into a vast darkness, the great cleft which was the head of Morghul Vale. On the left sharp jagged pinnacles full of black crevices. And high upon one tip a small black tower.(3) What is that tower? said Frodo full of suspicion. Is there a guard? Then they found Gollum had slipped away and vanished. Frodo is full of fear. But Sam says Well we're up this .... near very top of mountains. Further than we ever hoped to get. Let's go on and get it over. Frodo goes forward and Sam follows. Sam is suddenly lassooed and falls back. He calls out but Frodo does not come. He struggles up and falls again - something is round his feet. Slashes himself free in a fury of rage. Frodo master he cries, and then sees the great spider that has attacked him. He lunges forward but the creature makes off. Then he sees that there [are] a great number about - issuing out of the crevices, but they are all hurrying forward along the road, taking no further notice of him. Lines are drawn on the manuscript here, and though the immedi- ately preceding passage was not struck out it was obviously rejected at this point. Its meaning is not immediately plain: does 'him' in 'the great spider that has attacked him' refer to Sam or to Frodo? On general grounds it might seem at first sight more likely to be Frodo: in both the earlier outlines it was Frodo who was the victim, and so also in the version that replaced this. That Frodo would be the victim here also cannot indeed be doubted; but it seems to me certain that 'him' is in fact Sam - precisely because he escaped (and the words 'lassooed' and 'slashes himself free' clearly refer to attack by a spider). Sam had to be delayed in some way so that he was not at hand when the attack on Frodo took place. The first idea was that one of the spiders went for Sam too, but unsuccessfully; my father then saw at once that it was not a spider that came on him from behind, but Gollum. What idea lay behind the statement that the other spiders were all hurrying forward along the path and taking no further notice of Sam is not clear, but presumably they were going after Frodo (instigated by Gollum?). Returning to the beginning of the last paragraph, the outline continues: Sam suddenly sees the spiders coming out of crevices. He can't see Frodo and calls out in warning, but at that moment he is seized from behind. He can't draw sword. Gollum trips him and he falls. Gollum tries to get at Sam's sword. Sam has long fight and eventually gets hand on his stave and deals Gollum a blow. Gollum wriggles aside and only gets a whack across his hands. He lets go. Sam is aiming another blow at him when he springs away and going like lightning disappears into a crevice. Sam rushes forward to find Frodo. He is too late. There are great spiders round him. Sam draws sword and fights but they don't seem to [?heed] it. Then he found Sting lying by Frodo's outstretched arm. (2 or 3 dead spiders by him.) He seizes Sting and drives off the spiders. Frodo lying as if dead. Spiders have stung him. He is pale as death. Sam uses phial. Reminds Sam of his vision in the mirror of Galadriel.(4) All efforts to rouse his master fail. He can hear or feel no heart beat. He is dead. Sam [?falls] first into senseless rage against Gollum [?beating] the stones and shouting at him to come out and fight. Then into a black despair of grief. How long he sat there he never knew. He came out of this black trance to find Frodo still just as he had left him, but now greenish in hue, a horrible dead look with a ....(5) Sam remembers he himself had said that he had a job to do. Wonders if it has come to him now. He takes the phial and Sting and buckles belt. Sam the two-sworded he says grimly. Prays for strength to fight and avenge Frodo. At that moment he would have marched straight to death, straight to the very Eye of Baraddur. Two additions were made at the time of writing to the text on this page, the first directed to this point by an arrow: 'Lament see 5c'. This is a reference to the previous outline story, where the words 'Then he sat and made a Lament for Frodo' (p. 185) appear on a page numbered '5 continued'. The other addition is conveniently given here, since it is needed to explain the narrative immediately following: Orcs have captured Gollum - all his little plan of getting Frodo tied up by spiders has gone [? wrong]. They are driving Gollum. The text continues: Noise of [?approaching] Orc-laughter. Down out of a cleft Gollum leading comes a band of black orcs. Desperate Sam draws off the ring from Frodo's neck and takes it. He could not unclasp it or cut the chain so he slipped it over Frodo's neck and put it on. As he did so he stumbled forward, it was as if a great stone had been suddenly strung about his neck. At that moment up come orcs. Sam slips on Ring. Frodo cries - or is Sam's motive simply that [?wishing] to bury Frodo: he won't see Frodo's body carried off. Also wanting to get at Gollum. To clarify the syntax of the sentence beginning 'Frodo cries' the word wishing (?) might be read as wishes (sc. 'he wishes'), or of might be understood before wishing; but even so my father's thought is most elliptically expressed and difficult to follow. However, since im- mediately beneath these last two sentences he drew lines on the manuscript, implying that the story just sketched was about to be modified, I think that an interpretation on these lines may be correct. 'Frodo cries' is to be understood in relation to the earlier outline (p. 186): when the Orcs take Frodo he 'seems to awake, and gives a loud cry'. The following words ('or is Sam's motive...') show my father breaking off altogether, and questioning the rightness of what he had just outlined: perhaps this story of Sam's taking the Ring from Frodo because of the approaching Orcs was wrong. Perhaps Sam's only 'motive' (meaning his only purpose, or desire) at this juncture was not to leave Frodo simply lying where he fell (cf. the previous outline, p. 185: He could not leave his dear master lying in the wild for the fell beasts and carrion birds; and he thought he would try and build a cairn of stones about him') - and his desire to take revenge on Gollum. I think that some such interpretation is borne out by the revised story that immediately follows. Make Sam sit long by Frodo all through night. Hold phial up and see him elvish-fair. Torn by not knowing what to do. He lays Frodo out, and folds his hands. Mithril coat. Phial in his hand. Sting at side. Tries to go on and finish job. Can't force himself to. How to die [?soon]. Thinks of jumping over brink. But might as well try to do something. Crack of Doom? Reluctantly as it seems a theft in a way he takes Ring. Goes forward on the path in a violent sorrow and despair. [In margin: Red dawn.] But cannot drag himself away from Frodo. Turns back - resolved to lie down by Frodo till death comes. Then he sees Gollum come and paw him. He gives a start and runs back. But orcs come out and Gollum bolts. Orcs pick up Frodo and carry him off. Sam plods after them. Sam puts on ring! It seems to have grown in might and power. It weighs down his hand. But he can see with terrible clearness - even through the rocks. He can see every crevice filled with spiders. He can understand orc speech. But the ring does not confer courage on Sam. It seems they had been warned for special vigilance. Some spy of more than usual importance could try to get in somehow. If any were caught messenger to be [?sent]. Phial taken. Sam follows up a long stair to the tower. He can see all plain below. The Black Gate and Ithilien and Gorgoroth and Mt. Doom. Here this outline ends. As revised in the course of its composition, the story now stood thus in its essential structure: - They enter a tunnel, which halfway through is blocked with webs. Frodo shears the webs with Sting. - At the end of the tunnel they come to a long stair. (Description of the spiders, which are well known to Gollum.) - At the top of the stair they see the tower; and find that Gollum has disappeared. - Frodo goes ahead; Sam behind sees spiders coming and cries out to Frodo, but at that moment is grappled by Gollum from behind. Sam fights him off, and Gollum escapes. - Sam finds Frodo dead, as he thinks, stung by spiders. He seizes Sting and drives them off; he sits by Frodo all night; puts the phial in his hand and Sting beside him. - He thinks that he must himself attempt Frodo's task, takes the Ring and sets off. - But he cannot do this, and turns back; he sees Gollum come out and paw at Frodo, but as he runs back Orcs come and Gollum flees. - The Orcs pick up Frodo and carry him off. - Sam puts on the Ring, and follows the Orcs up a stair to the tower. Comparison of this outline with the old one shows that the new narrative was a development from it, and by no means an entirely fresh start; here and there even the wording was preserved. The single Great Spider had not yet emerged. But (considered simply as a step-by-step structure) it was already transformed, partly through the wholly different conception of the pass of Kirith Ungol, partly through the changed view of Gollum's role; and even as the new outline was set on paper his role was changed further. At first the Orcs were guided to the spot by Gollum, though he was forced to do so, his own nefarious plan being entirely based on the spiders; but by the time my father had reached the end of it he had decided that Gollum had in fact no traffic whatsoever with the Orcs. The idea that the tunnel was barred by great webs is present, but since Frodo was able to cut a way through with Sting their presence does not affect the actual evolution of the plot. The words 'Gollum refuses to say what they are' suggest that they entered the story as the explanation of what Gollum's 'little plan' had actually been: and that, I take it, was that Frodo and Sam should be entrapped in the tunnel and so delivered to the spiders. But he had not envisaged that Frodo's elvish blade would be able to cut the strands. The important element now enters that Frodo went ahead when they issued from the tunnel (and thus Sam had become separated from him when he was attacked by the spiders), although no explanation of this is given. A very notable feature of this outline is that Sam's clarity of vision when he wears the Ring is not merely retained from the old plot ('The Ring seems to grow in power in this region: he sees clearly in the dark', p. 186), but is greatly increased: he can even see through the rocks; in TT (p. 343), on the other hand, 'all things about him now were not dark but vague; while he himself was there in a grey hazy world, alone, like a small black solid rock'. On this question see VII.373 - 4, 380 - 1; and for the further development of this element (the effect of the Ring on Sam's senses) see pp. 212, 214. The fair copy manuscript was built up in stages. From the beginning of the chapter 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol', as far as 'Frodo felt his senses reeling, his limbs weakening' (cf. TT p. 313), it was developed from the original draft (p. 186) and virtually attained the form in TT; but from this point my father briefly returned to his frustrating practice of erasing his pencilled draft and writing the fair copy on the pages where it had stood. This only extends for a couple of pages, however, and some words and phrases escaped erasure; while on the third page the draft was not erased but overwritten, and here much of the original text can be read. This carries the narrative to the point (TT p. 317) where the host out of Minas Morghul had disappeared down the westward road and Sam urged Frodo to rouse himself; and there is no reason whatever to think that the lost pages of the draft were other than a more roughly expressed version of the final narrative.(6) But from this point (where the pencilled draft reads: 'Frodo rose, grasping his staff in one hand and the phial in the other. Then he saw that a faint light was welling through his fingers and he thrust it in his bosom') the original narrative diverged, and was followed in the fair copy manuscript (where it was subsequently replaced by the later story). This first form of the fully-written story may be called 'Version 1'. The textual situation at this point is odd and perplexing, but it is sufficient to say here that the opening of this section (of no great length) is lost, both in draft and fair copy, and the story only takes up again with the strange smell that the hobbits could not identify (cf. 'Shelob's Lair' in TT, p. 326).(7) I feel certain that the lost lines carried an account of the climbing of the first stair, leading to an opening in the rock which was the mouth of the tunnel, from which the strange smell came (whereas in TT the text at this point tells how after the passage of the ledge the path came to 'a narrow opening in the rock' which was the entry to the high-walled first stair). My father still had in mind the series described in the draft text of 'The Black Gate is Closed' (p. 124), where Gollum says 'a stair and path, and then a tunnel, and then more stairs and then a cleft high above the main pass', and again in the following outline (p. 125), where they 'pass up first stair safely. But tunnel is black with webs of spiders.... force way and get up second stair.' And again, in the original draft for 'The Stairs of Kirith Ungol' (p. 186), when they began to climb up from the valley they came to 'steps'. Further evidence in support of this will appear shortly. After the obliterated lines the original story continues thus. ... a strange odour came out of it - not the odour of decay in the valley below, an odour that the hobbits did not recognize, a repellent taint on the air.(8) Resigning themselves to fear they passed inside. It was altogether lightless. After some little time Sam suddenly tum- bled into Gollum ahead of him and Frodo against Sam. 'What's up now?' said Sam. 'Brought us to a dead end, have you?' 'Dead end - that's good,' he muttered. 'It about describes it.' 'What's up, you old villain?' Gollum did not answer him. Sam pushed him aside and thrust forward, only to meet something that yielded but would not give way, soft, unseen and strong as if the darkness could be felt. 'Something's across the path,' he said. 'Some trap or something. What's to be done? If this old villain knows about it, as I bet he does, why won't he speak?' 'Because he doesn't know,* hissed Gollum. 'He's thinking. We didn't expect to find this here, did we precious? No, of course not. We wants to get out, of course we does, yes, yes.' 'Stand back,' said Frodo, and then suddenly drawing his hand from his bosom he held aloft the phial of Galadriel. For a moment it flickered, like a star struggling through the mists of Earth, then as fear left him it began to burn (9) with dazzling silver light, as if Earendel himself had come down from the sunset paths with the Silmaril upon his brow. Gollum cowered away from the light, which for some reason seemed to fill him with fear. Frodo drew his sword, and Sting leapt out. The bright rays of the star-glass sparkled upon the blade, but on its edges ran an ominous blue fire - to which at that time Frodo nor Sam gave heed. 'Version 1' in the fair copy manuscript stops here, at the foot of a page, the remainder having been taken out of it when rejected and replaced.(10) The next page of 'Version 1' is preserved, however,. it was separated from the other 'Kirith Ungol' papers many years ago, and is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, among other illustrations to The Lord of the Rings - for the verso of the page, in addition to text, bears a picture of the ascent to Kirith Ungol. This was reproduced in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien (no. 28, 'Shelob's Lair'), and is reproduced again in this book (first frontispiece). That the recto of the page is the continuation of the text from the point reached is assured both by the page-number '[6]', following '[5]' in the fair copy manuscript, and by internal association, notably Sam's words when he sees that they are confronted by spiders' webs: 'Why didn't you speak, Gollum?' (cf. his words on the preceding page: 'Something's across the path... If this old villain knows about it, as I bet he does, why won't he speak?'). The recto reads thus: Before them was a greyness which the light did not penetrate. Dull and heavy it absorbed the light. Across the whole width of the tunnel from floor to floor and side to side were .... (11) webs. Orderly as the webs of spiders, but far greater: each thread as thick as a great cord. Sam laughed grimly when he saw them. 'Cobwebs,' he said. 'Is that all! Why didn't you speak, Gollum? But I might have guessed for myself! Cobwebs! Mighty big ones, but we'll get at them.' He drew his sword and hewed, but the thread that he struck did not break, it yielded and then sprang back like a bowstring, turning the blade and tossing his sword and arm backward. Three times Sam struck, and at last one thread snapped, twisting and curling, whipping about like a snapped harpstring. As an end lashed Sam's hand and stung like a whip. [sic) He cried out and stood back. 'It'd take weeks this way,' he said. 'Let me try Bilbo's sword,' said Frodo. 'I will go ahead now: hold my star-glass behind me.' Frodo drew Sting (12) and made a great sweeping stroke and sprang back to avoid the lashing of the threads. The sharp elven-blade blue-edged sparkling shore through the netted ropes and that web was destroyed. But there were others behind. Slowly Frodo hewed his way through them until at last they came to a clear way again. Sam came behind holding up the light and pushing Gollum - strangely reluctant - before him. Gollum kept on trying to wriggle away and turn back.(13) At length they came to more webs, and when they had cut through these the tunnel came to an end. The rock wall opened out and sprang high and the second stair was before them: walls on either side towering up to a great height - how high they could not guess, for the sky was hardly less black than the walls - and could only be discerned by an occasional glow and flicker of red on the underside of the clouds. The stair seemed endless, up, up, up. Their knees cracked. Here and there was a web across the way. They were in the very heart of the mountains. Up, up. At last they got to the stair-head. The road opened out. Then all their suspicions of Gollum came to a head. He sprang unexpectedly out of Sam's reach forward, and thrusting Frodo aside ran out emitting a shrill sort of whistling cry, such as they had never heard him make before. 'Come here! you wretch,' cried Sam darting after him. Gollum turned once with his eyes glittering, and then vanished quite suddenly into the gloom, and no sign of him could they find.(14) The verso of the page, numbered '[7]', carrying the picture of the ascent to the pass,(15) has the following text. 'That's that! ' said Sam. 'What I expected. But I don't like it. I suppose now we are just exactly where he wanted to bring us. Well, let's get moving away as quick as we can. The treacherous worm! That last whistle of his wasn't pure joy at getting out of the tunnel, it was pure wickedness of some sort. And what sort we'll soon know.' 'Likely enough,' said Frodo. 'But we could not have got even so far without him. So if we ever manage our errand, then Gollum and all his wickedness will be part of the plan.' 'So far, you say,' said Sam. 'How far? Where are we now?' 'About at the crest of the main range of Ephel-duath, I guess,' said Frodo. 'Look!' The road opened out now: it still went on up, but no longer sheerly. Beyond and ahead there was an ominous glare in the sky, and like a great notch in the mountain wall a cleft was outlined against it - so [here is a small sketch]. On their right the wall of rock fell away and the road widened till it had no brink. Looking down Frodo saw nothing but the vast darkness of the great ravine which was the head of Morghul dale. Down in its depths was the faint glimmer of the wraith-road that led over the Morghul pass from the city. On their left sharp jagged pinnacles stood up like towers carved by the biting years, and between them were many dark crevices and clefts. But high up on the left side of the cleft to which their road led (Kirith Ungol) was a small black tower, and in it a window showed a red light. 'I don't like the look of that,' said Sam. 'This upper pass is guarded too. D'you remember he never would say if it was or no. D'you think he's gone to fetch them - orcs or something?' 'No, I don't think so,' said Frodo. 'He is up to no good, of course, but I don't think that he's gone to fetch orcs. Whatever it is, it is no slave of the Dark Lord's.' 'I suppose not,' said Sam. 'No, I suppose the whole time it has been the ring for poor Smeagol's own. That's been his scheme. But how coming up here will help him, I can't guess.' He was soon to learn. Frodo went forward now - the last lap - and he exerted all his strength. He felt that if once he could get to the saddle of the pass and look over into the Nameless Land he would have accomplished something. Sam followed. He sensed evil all round him. He knew that they had walked into some trap, but what? He had sheathed his sword, but now he drew it in readiness. He halted for a moment, and stooped to pick up his staff with his left hand Here the text on the 'Bodleian page' ends, but the further continua- tion of this extraordinarily dismembered text is found among the papers that failed to go to Marquette.(16) The next page is duly numbered '[8]' and '[9]', and continues as before in ink over pencilled drafting. - it had a comfortable feel to his hand. As he stood up again, he saw issuing out of a crevice at the left the most monstrous and loathly form that he had ever beheld - beyond his imagination.(17) Spider-like it was in shape, but huge as a wild beast, and more terrible because of the malice and evil purpose in its eyes. These were many, clustered in its small head, and each of them held a baleful light. On great bent legs it walked - the hairs of them stuck out like steel spines, and at each end there was a claw. The round swollen body behind its narrow neck was dark blotched with paler livid marks, but underneath its belly was pale and faintly luminous as its eyes. It stank. It moved with a sudden horrible speed running on its arms, and springing. Sam saw at once that he [sic] was hunting his master - now a little ahead in the gloom and apparently unaware of his peril. He whipped out his sword and yelled. 'Look out! Mr Frodo! Look out! I'm - ' But he did not finish. A long clammy hand went over his mouth and another caught his neck, while something wrapped itself about his legs. Taken off his guard he fell backwards in the arms of his attacker. 'Got you!' hissed Gollum in his ear. 'At last my precious one, we've got him yes, the nasty hobbit. We takes this one. She'll get the other. O yes. Ungoliant will get him.(18) Not Smeagol. He won't hurt master, not at all. He promised. But he's got you, you nasty dirty little thing!' The description of the fight is closely similar to that in TT (p. 335), with some difference in the detail of the wrestling.(19) After the second blow, falling across Gollum's back, the text continues: But it was enough for Gollum! Grabbing from behind was an old game for him - and had never before failed him. But everything had gone wrong with his beautiful plan, since the unexpected web in the path. Here now he was faced by a furious enemy, little less than his own size, with a stout staff. This was not for him. He had no time even to grab at the sword lying on the ground. He squealed as the staff came down once more,(20) and sprang aside onto all fours, and then leaped away like a cat in one big bound. Then with astonishing speed he ran back and vanished into the tunnel. Sweeping up his sword Sam went after him - for the moment forgetful of all else, but the red light of fury in his brain. But Gollum had gone before he could reach him. Then as the dark hole and the stench smote him, like a terrible clap of thunder the thought of Frodo came back to Sam's mind. He span round, and rushed on up the road calling. He was too late. So far Gollum's plot had succeeded. Frodo was lying on the ground and the monster was bending over him, so intent upon her victim that she seemed not to heed anything else until Sam was close at hand. It was not a brave deed Sam then did, for he gave no thought to it. Frodo was already bound in great cords round and round from ankle to breast, and with her great forelegs she was beginning to half lift, half drag him, but still his arms were free: one hand was on his breast, one lay spread wide, limp upon the stone, and the staff of Faramir broken under him. At the point where Sam sees that Frodo is bound with cords the underlying pencilled draft stops; the legible fair copy in ink written over it continues, but at the same point declines very rapidly into the handwriting characteristic of initial drafting, decipherable only with labour and in this case often not at all.(21) This continues to the end of the page ('9' in the Version I text, the last page in this numeration), with Sam's attack on 'Ungoliant'. Many words and even whole sentences are totally illegible, but enough can be made out to see that in this earliest form of the story it was Sam's slash with Sting across Ungoliant's belly that caused her to leap back: there is no suggestion of the great wound she suffered when she drove her whole bulk down onto the point of the sword (TT p. 338). When she sprang back 'Sam stood reeling, his legs astride his master, but she a few paces off eyed him: and the green venom that was her blood slowly suffused the pale light of her eyes. Sting held before him, Sam now .... and ere she attacked again he found his master's hand in his bosom. It was cold and limp, and quickly but gently he took from it the glass of Galadriel. And held it up.' This rough drafting continues on other pages (not numbered on from '9', though that proves little); but I doubt that much more of it, if any, was written at this juncture (see p. 209). The question is not of much importance in the study of the evolution of the story, and in any case it is more convenient to pause here in the original draft. The fact that my father had overwritten legibly in ink the original draft as far as the stinging of Frodo by Ungoliant suggests confidence in the story, while the sudden change from 'fair copy' to 'preliminary draft' at this point suggests that he now realised that important changes were required. The immediate reason for this may well have been that he observed what he had just written, as it were inadvert- ently: 'Then with astonishing speed [Gollum] ran back and vanished into the tunnel.... Then as the dark hole and the stench smote him... the thought of Frodo came back to Sam's mind. He span round, and rushed on up the road calling.' But in this version the far end of the tunnel was immediately succeeded by the agonisingly long second stair, and it was only after they reached the head of it that Gollum ran off (p. 194). The picture of the ascent to the pass contained in this text (see p. 193) shows with perfect clarity the first stair climbing up to the tunnel, and the second stair climbing away beyond it.(22) It is obviously out of the question that my father imagined that Gollum fled all the way down the second stair with Sam in pursuit, and that Sam then climbed up again! I think that the developing narrative was forcing a new topography to appear even as he wrote (see below). There seem in fact to have been several interrelated questions. One was this of topography: the relation of the stairs and the tunnel. Another was the time and place of Gollum's disappearance. In the outline (p. 187) he is found to have vanished when they come to the head of the second stair; and in the present version he ran off with a strange whistling cry when they came to that place. And another was the question of Gollum's plan and its miscarriage. My father had written (p. 197): 'But everything had gone wrong with his beautiful plan, since the unexpected web in the path.' It certainly seems to be the case in this version that Gollum was very put out when they encountered it in the tunnel: 'We didn't expect to find this here, did we precious? No, of course not' (p. 193); and after the first webs had been cut through Gollum was 'strangely reluctant' to go on, and 'kept on trying to wriggle away and turn back.' Leaving the 'Version I' text, now reduced to very rough drafting, at some point not determined, my father scribbled on a little bit of paper: Must be stair - stair - tunnel. Tunnel is Ungoliante's lair. The tunnel has unseen passages off. One goes right up to dungeons of tower. But orcs don't use it much because of Ungoliant. She has a great hole in the midst of path. Plan fails because she has made a web across path and is daunted by the phial-light. Stench out of hole which phial prevents Frodo and Sam falling into. Gollum disappears and they think he may have fallen in hole. They cut their way out of web at far end. Ungoliant comes out of tunnel. Thus the series 'first stair - tunnel - second stair' inherent in the Version 1 story is changed. The reason for this was, I think, as follows. The arrangement 'stair - tunnel - stair' arose when there were many spiders in the pass; in the outline the tunnel seems only one part of their territory, and there are webs also across the second stair (p. 187) - the impression is given that all the cliffs and crags bordering the path are alive with them. But with the reduction of the spider- horde to one Great Spider, whose lair is very clearly in the tunnel (where the great webs were), her attack on the hobbits at the head of the second stair, high above the tunnel, becomes unsatisfactory. It was therefore not long after the emergence in Version 1 of Ungoliant as the sole breeder of the terror of Kirith Ungol that this version collapsed, and my father abandoned the writing of it in fair copy manuscript. Associated with this would have been the decision that Gollum deserted Frodo and Sam while they were still in the tunnel. The plot outlined in the brief text just given is not very clear; but at this same time, perhaps on the same day, my father wrote the fuller note, together with a plan of the tunnels, that is reproduced on p. 201. This also is in the Bodleian Library (see p. 193). The title Plan of Shelob's Lair was written onto the page subsequently, since the name of the Spider in the text is Ungoliant(e); cf. note 15. This text reads: Must be Stair - Stair - Tunnel. Tunnel is Ungoliante's Lair. This tunnel is of orc-make (?) and has the usual branching passages. One goes right up into the dungeons of the Tower - but orcs don't use it much because of Ungoliante.(23) Ungoliante has made a hole and a trap in the middle of the floor of the main path. Gollum's plan was to get Frodo into trap. He hoped to get Ring, and leave the rest to Ungoliant. Plan failed because Ungoliant was suspicious of him - ? he had come nosing up as far as the tunnel the day before? - and she had put a web on near (west) side of hole. When Frodo held up the phial she was daunted for [a] moment and retreated to her lair. But when the hobbits issued from tunnel she came out by side paths and crept round them. Phial prevents F. and S. falling into the hole; but a horrible stench comes out of it. Gollum disappears and they fear he has fallen in the hole. But they do not go back - (a) they see tower with a light on cliffs at head of pass and (b) while they are wondering about this and suspect betrayal the attack is made: Ungoliant going for Frodo, while Gollum grapples Sam from behind. Ungol[iant] specially wants the star-glass? (Frodo had hidden it again when he came out of tunnel). Web at end of tunnel? The plan of the tunnel was mostly drawn in pencil and then overdrawn in black ink. The word pencilled against the minor tunnel to the north of the main passage seems to read 'Bypas[s]'. The pencilled circle in the main passage is marked 'Trap', and the large black circle 'Ungoliant's lair'. Of the two northward tunnels that leave the main one near its eastern end, the westerly one is marked 'Underground way to Tower', and the broad tunnel (drawn with several lines) that leaves this one eastwards will be the way by which Ungoliant emerged to the attack. The last tunnel branching north- wards from the main one was added in blue ball-point pen, and is marked 'orc-path'.(24) Since my father is seen in these notes actually setting down his decision that the second stair preceded the tunnel, it was presumably at this juncture that (leaving aside the question of how far the further story had progressed at this time) he turned back to the point where the faulty conception entered the narrative (see p. 192); and indeed on the back of the first of these notes is found drafting for the new version of the story dependent on the decision (cf. TT p. 317): Following him they came to the climbing ledge. Not daring to look down to their right they passed along it. At last it came to a rounded angle where the mountain-side swelled out again before them. There the path suddenly entered into a dark opening in the rock, and there before them was the first stair that Gollum had spoken of. Then follows the description of the first stair. Thus the 'opening in the rock' was neatly transformed from the mouth of the tunnel into the beginning of the stair (p. 192). Continuous drafting is found for the revised narrative ('Version 2'), and the story as told in TT was very largely achieved already in the draft as far as the events in the tunnel: the climbs up the Straight Stair and the Winding Stair, the hobbits' rest beside the path, their talk of the need to find water (25) leading to the conversation about tales (written down ab initio in a form closely similar to that in TT), their [Plan of Shelob's Lair (1)] [(The compass-points N. and S. on this plan are reversed)] realisation that Gollum had disappeared, his return, finding them asleep (with the description of his 'interior debate', looking back up towards the pass and shaking his head, his appearance as of 'an old weary hobbit who had lived beyond his time and lost all his friends and kin: a starved old thing sad and pitiable'), and Sam's unhappy mistaking of his gesture towards Frodo (TT pp. 317-25, where the chapter 'The Stairs of Cirith Ungol' ends). A few passages in TT are lacking in the draft, but they are not of importance to the narrative and in any case they appear in the fair copy manuscript. A little pencilled sketch appears on the page of the draft where they first see the tower (TT p. 319) - just as there was a picture of the earlier conception of Kirith Ungol at this point in Version 1 (where they had already passed through the tunnel). In the foreground of this sketch is seen the path from the head of the Second Stair, where (in the words of the draft text) the hobbits 'saw jagged pinnacles of stone on either side: columns and spikes torn and carven in the biting years and forgotten winters, and between them great crevices and fissures showed black even in the heavy gloom of that unfriendly place.' The place where they rested ('in a dark crevice between two great piers of rock') is marked by a spot on the right hand side of the track. Beyond is seen the 'great grey wall, a last huge upthrusting mass of mountain- stone' (TT p. 326, at the beginning of 'Shelob's Lair'), in which is the mouth of the tunnel, and beyond it, high above, the 'cleft ... in the topmost ridge, narrow, deep-cloven between two black shoulders; and on either shoulder was a horn of stone' (TT p. 319). A developed form of this sketch is found at the same place in the fair copy manuscript; this is reproduced on p. 204.(26) The draft continues on into 'Shelob's Lair' without break. Of the narrative constituting the opening of the later chapter there is little to say. In the draft the Elvish name of the tunnel is Terch Ungol 'the Spider's Lair'; and the description of the stench from the tunnel is retained from Version 1 (pp. 192-3): 'Out of it came an odour which they could not place: not the sickly odour of decay by the meads of Morghul, but a repellent noisome stuffy smell: a repellent evil taint on the air.' In the fair copy my father first put Te, changing it as he wrote to Torech Ungol 'the Spider's Hole', and changing this as he wrote to 'Shelob's Lair' (the name Shelob having been already devised when he wrote this manuscript). Here he first described the reek from the tunnel in these words: 'Out of it came a stench: not the sickly odour of decay from the meads of Morghul, but a choking rankness, noisome, a reek as of piled and hoarded filth beyond reckoning, tainting even the open air with evil.' But he queried in the margin whether this description was not too strong: if the stench had been so unendurably horrible even from outside 'would they ever have gone in?'; and replaced it immediately with the description in TT (p. 326). He hesitated too about the width of the tunnel. The new story in the draft version reaches the final form in their realisation that there were side tunnels, and in the things that brushed against them as they walked, until they passed the wide opening on the left from which the stench and the intense feeling of evil came. From this point the draft text reads: ... a sense of evil so strong that for a moment he grew faint. Sam also lurched. 'There's something in there,' he says. 'It smells like a death-house. Pooh.' Putting out their remaining strength and resolution they went on. Presently they came to what almost seemed a fork in the tunnel: at least in the absolute gloom they were in doubt. 'Which way's Gollum gone,' said Sam, 'I wonder.* 'Smeagol!' said Frodo. 'Smeagol!' But his voice fell back dead from his lips. There was no answer, not even an echo. 'He's really gone this time, I fancy.' 'Now we are just exactly where he wanted to bring us, I fancy. But just what he means to do in this black hole I can't guess.' He had not to wait long for the answer. 'What about that star-glass?' said Sam. 'Did not the Lady say it would be a light in dark places? And we need some to be sure now.' 'I have not used it,' said Frodo, 'because of Gollum. I think it would have driven him away, and also because it would be so bright. But here we seem to have come to a desperate pass.' Slowly he drew his hand from his bosom and held aloft the phial of Galadriel. For a moment it flickered like a star struggling through the mists of Earth, then as fear left them it began to burn into a dazzling brilliant silver light, as if Earendel himself had come down from the sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow. The darkness receded from it and it shone in a globe of space enclosed with utter blackness. But before them within the radius of its light were two openings. Now their doubt was resolved, for the one to the left turned quickly away, while the one to the right went straight on only a little narrower than the tunnel behind. At that moment some prescience of malice or of some evil regard made them both turn. Their hearts stood still. [There was a shrill whistling cry of Gollum?] Not far behind, .... by the noisome opening perhaps, were eyes: two great clusters of eyes. Whether they shone of their own light or whether the radiance of the star-glass was reflected in their thousand facets ..... Monstrous and abominable and fell they were: bestial yet filled (Kirith Ungol.) with a malice and purpose and even with a hideous glee and delight such as no beast's eyes can show. An evil mind gloated behind that baleful light. At this point my father stopped, and noted that the eyes must come first, and then the star-glass (necessarily implying that the eyes of the Spider shone with their own light). An outline follows: The creature backs away. They retreat up the tunnel. Frodo holds glass aloft and ..... (27) and each time the eyes halt. Then filled with a sudden resolve he drew Sting. It sparkled, and calling to Sam he strode back towards the eyes. They ... [?turned] retreated and disappeared. Sam full of admiration. 'Now let's run for it!' he said. They ran, and suddenly [?crashed] into [?greyness] which 0rebounded and turned them back. Sam cannot break the threads. Frodo gives him Sting. And Sam hews while Frodo stands guard. The web gives way. They rush out and find web was over the mouth of the tunnel. They are in the last gully and the horn-pass ... before them. 'That's the top,' said Sam. 'And we've come out of it. Our luck's in still. On we go now, and take the last bit while the luck lasts.' Frodo ran forward placing his star-glass in his bosom, no thought for anything but escape. Sam follows with Sting drawn - constantly turning to watch the mouth of the tunnel - thinking too little of the craft of Ungoliant. She had many exits from her lair. Frodo was gaining on him. He tried to run, and then some way ahead he saw issuing out of a shadow in the wall of the ravine the most monstrous and loathsome shape. Beyond the imagination of his worst dreams. This account agrees well with the plan reproduced on p. 201: they had passed the wide opening on the left which led to the lair of Ungoliant, and the fork in the tunnel, where 'the one to the left turned quickly away, while the one to the right went straight on only a little narrower than the tunnel behind', can be readily identified. But the story has shifted radically from the outline accompanying the plan (pp. 199-200), which apparently never received narrative form, where the story ran thus: Ungoliant had stretched a web on the west side of the trap (hole) in the main tunnel. The stench arose from the hole. - Frodo held up the phial (cutting of the webs is not mentioned) and Ungoliant retreated to her lair. - By the light of the phial they avoided the hole. Gollum disappeared, and they feared he had fallen into it. They left the tunnel, whereupon Ungoliant, having come round ahead of them by a side path, attacked Frodo, and Gollum grappled Sam from behind. In the very similar short version of this plot (p. 199) it is said in addition that 'They cut their way out of web at far end.' The story in the present draft has moved much nearer to the final form: they passed the opening to the lair, whence the stench came, and there is no mention of the 'trap' or 'hole' in the floor of the main passage,- and they came to the fork in the tunnel.(28) But in this version the phial of Galadriel is used at this juncture, in order to show them which tunnel to take; and turning round on account of a sense of approaching evil the light of the phial is reflected in the eyes of the Spider. My father's direction at this point that the eyes must come before the star-glass clearly means that the eyes, shining with their own light, appeared in the tunnel, and that only then did the thought of the star-glass arise. The remainder of the episode is now essentially as in the final form - except that as they run from the tunnel Sam has Sting and Frodo has the phial of Galadriel. The fair copy manuscript when it reached this point still did not attain the final story in all respects, and this section of it was subsequently rejected and replaced. In the first stage, the idea in the draft that the phial was used simply to illuminate the tunnel (with Frodo's explanation that he had not used it before for fear it would drive Gollum away) was abandoned, and as in TT it was the sound only of the Spider's approach, the 'gurgling, bubbling noise' and the 'long venomous hiss', that inspired Sam to think of it (thus reversing the decision that the eyes must come first and then the star-glass); the light of the phial illumined the eyes (although 'behind the glitter a pale deadly fire began steadily to glow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought'). But at this stage the idea that the light did, if only incidentally, show the way to take, was retained: 'And now the way was clear before them, for the light revealed two archways; and the one to the left was not the path, for it narrowed quickly again and turned aside, but that to the right was the true way and went straight onward as before.'(29) The pursuit of the 'eyes', and the rout of the Spider when Frodo confronted her with the phial in his left hand and the blue-flickering (30) blade of Sting in his right, is in the final form, but my father still followed the draft in making it Sam who cut the web at the far end of the tunnel with Sting. The text here reads thus, from Sam's 'Gollum! May the curse of Faramir bite him' (cf. TT p. 331):(31) 'That will not help us,' said Frodo. 'Come! I will hold up the light while my strength lasts. Take my sword. It is an elven blade. See what it may do. Give me yours.' Sam obeyed and took Sting in his hand, a thrill running through his hand as he grasped its fair hilt, the sword of his master, of Bilbo, the sword that Elrond had declared to come out of the great wars before the Dark Years when the walls of Gondolin still stood.(32) Turning he made a great sweeping stroke and then sprang back to avoid the lashing [? threads]. Blue- edged, glinting in the radiance of the star, the elven blade shore through the netted ropes. In three swift blows the web was shattered and the trap was broken. The air of the mountains flowed in like a river. 'It's clear,' Sam cried. 'It's clear. I can see the [?night] light in the sky.' No! Make Sam hold light and so Frodo goes out first, and so as he has the light Shelob attacks Frodo. Sam sweeps up Frodo's sword from ground. He drops the Phial in struggle with Gollum. Cut out the staffs. This is followed by a suggestion, not entirely legible, that the staffs should 'hang on thongs', and another that Frodo should tap the walls of the tunnel with the staffs. My father was apparently concerned here with the problem arising from having only two hands. No doubt it was at this time that the reading of the fair copy manuscript of 'Journey to the Cross-roads', where the heads of the staves were still in the form of a shepherd's crook (p. 176 and note 3), was changed to that of TT (p. 303): 'staves ... with carven heads through which ran plaited leathern thongs'. The text continues: When Sam cannot hew web, Frodo says: 'I do not feel the eyes any longer. For the moment their regard has moved. You take the light. Do not be afraid. Hold it up. I will see what the elven-sword may do.' Frodo hews the webs asunder. And so the trap as it was planned was frustrated. For though once long ago he [Gollum] had seen it, the nature of that sword he did not know, and of the Phial of Galadriel he had never heard.(33) They rush out. Sam comes behind and suddenly they are aware (a) of red window (b) of the blue light of Sting. 'Orcs', said Sam, and dosing his hand about the phial hid it beneath his cloak again. A sudden madness (?) on Frodo. He sees the red deft the goal of all his effort before him. No great distance, half a mile. Gain itin a rush. Run! ..... Sam, he said. The door, the path. Now for it, before any can stay us. Sam tries to keep up. Then the spider attacks, and Gollum. And so this extraordinarily resistant narrative was at last shaped at almost all points to my father's satisfaction: 'a sticky patch' he described it, achieved with 'very great labour'; and further drafting led to the final text of 'Shelob's Lair' in the fair copy manuscript. Yet even now he seems not to have been entirely confident of the rightness of the story, for the manuscript carries also a second text of the episode in the tunnel (marked 'other version'), and it seems beyond question that this was written after the other.(34) It takes up after the words 'a gurgling, bubbling noise, and a long venomous hiss' (TT p. 328). They wheeled round, but at fin t they saw nothing. Still as stones they stood waiting, for they did not know what. Then, not far down the tunnel, just at the opening where they had reeled and stumbled, they saw a gleam. Very slowly it advanced. There were eyes in the darkness. Two great clusters of eyes. They were growing larger and brighter as very slowly they.advanced. They burned steadily with a fell light of their own, kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstrous and abominable they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose, and with hideous delight: beyond all hope of escape their prey was trapped. Frodo and Sam backed away, their gaze held by the dreadful stare of those cold eyes, and as they backed so the eyes came on, unhurried, gloating. Suddenly both together, as if released simultaneously from the same spell, the hobbits turned and Bed blindly up the tunnel. [Struck out: The left-hand opening was blocked with some unseen barrier; wildly they groped and found the right-hand opening, and again they ran.] But as they ran they looked back, and saw with- horror the eyes come leaping up behind. Then there came a breath of air: cold and thin. The opening, the upper gate, the end of the tunnel - at last: it was just ahead. Desperately they threw themselves forward, and then staggered backwards. The passage was blocked by some unseen barrier: soft, strong, impenetrable. Again they flung themselves upon it. It yielded a little and then like taut cords hurled them back once more. The eyes were nearer now, halted, quietly watching them, gloating, glittering with cruel amusement. The stench of death was like a cloud about them. 'Stand!' said Frodo. 'It's no use struggling. We're caught.' He turned to face the eyes, and as he did so, he drew his sword. Sting flashed out, and about the edges of the sharp elven-blade a blue fire flickered. Sam, sick, desperate, but angry more than all, groped for the hilts of his own short sword, carried so far and to so little purpose all the way from the Barrowdowns. 'I wish old Bombadil was near.' he muttered. 'Trapped in the end! Gollum - may the curse of Faramir bite him.' Darkness was about him and a blackness in his heart. And then suddenly even in those last moments before the evil thing made its final spring he saw a light, a light in the darkness of his mind... The text continues as in the other version (TT p. 329), but without the sentences 'The bubbling hiss drew nearer, and there was a creaking as of some great jointed thing that moved with slow purpose in the dark. A reek came on before it'; and it ends at A light when all other lights go out! There is then a direction to 'proceed' as in the other version. This also was a good story. There is here a formally simpler disposition of the elements: for Frodo and Sam are caught directly between the monster and the trap - trapped indeed 'beyond all hope of escape',(35) and are saved in the very last nick of time by the Phial of Galadriel. The Choices of Master Samwise. I left 'Version 1', the original narrative in which there was no encounter with the Spider in the tunnel, and the attack on Frodo took place at the head of the Second Stair (above the tunnel), at the point where my father abandoned that version as a 'fair copy' manuscript and the text precipitously collapsed into fearfully difficult drafting: see pp. 197-8. It is difficult to be sure of the precise development from this point, because this very rough drafting runs on continuously to the end of the story in The Two Towers, being indeed the original setting down of the narrative of 'The Choices of Master Samwise', and yet it cannot have been an uninterrupted continuation of Version 1. The last page that was certainly a part of Version 1 ends with a near-illegible initial account of Sam's attack on Ungoliant and his holding up the phial that he took from Frodo's body (p. 198). The conclusion of the encounter with Ungoliant may belong to Version 1, but not much more, for when Sam, arising from his long trance of despair, composes Frodo's body he says: 'He lent me Sting and that I'll take'. This of course depends on the developed story (Version 2) in which Frodo gave Sting to Sam for an attack on the web at the end of the tunnel while he himself held the phial (see pp. 205-7)- From the point where Sam holds up the phial against Ungoliant the draft continues: 'Galadriel!' he cried. 'Elbereth! Now come, you filthy thing. Now at last we know what holds this path. But we are going on. Come on, let's settle before we go.' As if his wrath and courage set its potency in motion, the glass blazed like a torch - like [a) Hash not of lightning but of some searing star cleaving the dark air with intolerable radiance white and terrible. No such light of heaven had ever burned in her face before.(36) The account of Ungoliant's retreat is largely illegible, but phrases can be read: 'She seemed ... to crumple like a vast bag', 'her legs sagged, and slowly, painfully, she backed from the light away in the opening in the wall', 'gathering her strength she turned and with a last ..... jump and a foul but already pitiable ... (37) she slipped into the hole.' The declaration that whatever might have been the fate of Ungoliant thereafter 'this tale does not tell' appears in the draft, as does (in very rough form) the passage that follows in TT (pp. 339-40) to the point where Sam composes Frodo's body. Here the draft text reads: He laid his master upon his back, and folded his cold hands. 'Let the silver mail of mithril be his winding sheet,' he said. 'He lent me Sting and that I'll take, but a sword shall be at his side.' And the phial he put into his right hand and hid it in his bosom. 'It's too good for me,' he said, 'and She gave it to him to be a light in dark places.' There were no stones for a cairn, but he rolled the only two he could find of a wieldy size one to Frodo's head and another to his feet. And then he stood and held up the star-glass. It burned gently now with a quiet radiance as of the evening star in summer, and in its light Frodo's hue ..... [?pale] but fair, and an elvish beauty was in his face, as of one that is long past the shadows. And then he strove to take farewell. But he could not. Still he held Frodo's hand and could not let it go. An arrow directs that the placing of the phial in Frodo's hand and Sam's words 'It's too good for me ...' should follow '... as of one long past the shadows'. The account of Sam's agonized debate was not different from its form in The Two Towers (pp. 341-2) in the progression of his thoughts, and his parting words and the taking of the Ring are virtually in the final form; but he does not take the phial, which in this version of the story remains hidden in Frodo's hand. From this point I give the original draft in full. At last with a great effort he stood up and turned away and seeing nothing but a grey mist stumbled forward towards the pass now straight ahead. But still his master drew him: Sam's mind was not at peace, not really made up. (He was acting as best he could reason but against his whole nature.) He hadn't gone far when he looked back and through his tears saw the little dark patch in the ravine where all his life had fallen in ruin. Again he turned and went on, and now he was come almost to the V [i.e. the Cleft]. So the very gate of parting. Now he must look back for the very last time. He did so. 'No I can't do it,' he said. 'I can't. I'd go to the Dark Tower to find him, but I can't go and leave him. I can't finish this tale. It's for other folk. My chapter's ended.' He began to stumble back. And then suddenly to his wrath and horror he thought he saw a slinking thing creep out of the shadow and go up to Frodo and start pawing him.(39) Anger obliterating all other thoughts blazed up again. 'Gollum! After his precious - thinks his plot has worked after all. The dirty - ' He began to run silently. There wasn't more than 20 [?yards] to cover. He got his sword out. Gollum! He ground his teeth. But suddenly Gollum paused [and] looked round, not at Sam, and with all his speed bolted diving back towards the wall and to [the] same opening out of which Ungoliant had come. Sam realized that Gollum had not fled from him or even noticed him. Almost at once he saw the reason. Orcs! Orcs were coming out of the tunnel. He halted in his tracks. A new choice was on him and a quick one this time. Then from behind also he heard orc-voices. Out of some path leading down from the tower orcs were coming. He was between them. No going back now - Sam would never reach the Pass of Kirith Ungol now. He gripped on Sting. A brief thought passed through his mind. How many would he kill before they got him? Would any song ever mention it? How Samwise fell in the High Pass - made a wall of bodies for his master's body. No, no song, for the Ring would be captured and all songs cease for ever [in] an age of Darkness ... The Ring. With a sudden thought and impulse he put it on! [Added: His hand hangs weighed down and useless.] At first he noticed nothing - except that he seemed to see much clearer. Things seemed hard and black and heavy, and the voices loud. The orc-bands had sighted one another and were shouting. But he seemed to hear both sides as if they were speaking close- to him. And he understood them. Why, they were speaking plain language. Maybe they were, or maybe the Ring which had power over all Sauron's servants and was grown in power as the place of its forging was approached brought the thought of their minds in plain speech direct to Sam. 'Hola! Gazmog,' said the foremost of the orcs coming out of the tunnel. 'Ho you Zaglun. So you've come at last. Have you heard them? Did you see it?' 'See what? We've just come through the tunnel of She-lob. o What should we see or hear?' 'Shouting and crying out here and lights. Some mischief afoot. But we're on guard in the tower and not supposed to leave. We waited but you didn't come. Hurry now for we must get back. There's only Naglur-Danlo and old Nuzu up here and he's in a taking.' Then suddenly the orcs from the tower saw Frodo and while Sam still hesitated they swept past him with a howl and rushed forward. (Sting must be sheathed.) One thing the Ring did not confer was courage - rather the reverse, at any rate on Sam. He did not now [?rush] in - or make a hill of bodies round his master. There were about three dozen of them in all, and they were talking fast and excitedly. Sam hesitated. If he drew Sting they'd see that. They wouldn't ....: Orcs never did - but 36! They [?read They'd] see where he was. No - above won't do, he must see Orcs from a greater distance and follow them. The cleft must be no great distance, 100 yards? from Frodo's body and that 20 - 30 yards from tunnel. Cut out Gollum. Sam sees orcs coming down from tower as he turns back [for the] last time. They seem from afar to spot the little shape of Frodo and give a yell. It is answered by a yell - other orcs are coming out of the tunnel! Then put in the part about his thoughts of song as he runs back. Puts on ring and cannot wield sword.(41) Changes it to left hand [broken staff (Sam's broke on Gollum)].(42) By that time orcs have picked up Frodo and are off to tunnel. Sam follows. Ring confers language knowledge - not courage. Sam follows and hears conversation as they go through tunnel. Orcs discuss Frodo. Special vigilance ordered. What is it? Leader [B......] Zaglun says (43) orders are for messages [or messengers] to go to Morgul and direct to Lugburz. They [?groan]. Talk of Shelob and the worm (= Gollum). Big things are on. Only preliminary strokes. News. Osgiliath taken and ford. Army has also left North Gate. [?Other crossing] away up north somewhere and into the north part of the Horseboys' land - no opposition there. We'll be at the Mouths of Anduin in a week and at the Gulf of Lune before the summer's out - and then nowhere to escape. How we'll make 'em sweat! We haven't begun yet. Big stuff's coming. Big stick if you don't hurry. Prisoner is to be stripped naked. Teeth and nails? No. Is he half elf and man - [?there's] a fair blend of folly and mischief. Quick end better. Quick! They round a corner. Sam sees red light in an arch. Under- ground door to tower. Horrified to see that tunnel deceived him: they're further ahead than he thought. He runs forward but the iron door closes with a clang. He is outside in the darkness. Now go back to Gandalf. [Added: Make most of goblin conversation await the rescue chapter?] In the next stage of development my father returned to the words 'At last with a great effort he stood up and turned away and seeing nothing but a grey mist stumbled forward towards the pass now straight ahead' (p. 211), and now continued thus (cf. TT pp. 342-3): He had not far to go. The tunnel was some fifty yards behind; the cleft a couple of hundred yards or less. There was a path visible in the dusk running now quickly up, with the cliff on one side, and on the other a low wall of rock rising steadily to another cliff. Soon there were broad shallow steps. Now the orc-tower was right above him, frowning black, and in it the red eye glowed. Now he was passing up the steps and the cleft was before him. 'I have made up my mind,' he kept saying to himself. But he had not. What he did, though he had long to think it out, was altogether against the grain. To stick by his master was his true nature. 'Have I got it wrong,' he muttered. 'Was there some- thing else to do?' As the sheer sides of the cleft closed about him and before he reached the summit, before he looked upon the descending path beyond, he turned, torn intolerably within. He looked back. He could still see like a small blot in the gathering gloom the mouth of the tunnel; and he thought he could see or guess where Frodo lay, almost he fancied there was a light or a glimmer of it down there. Through tears he saw that lonely, stony high place where all his life had fallen into ruin. What was the 'light, or a glimmer of it' (meaning, I suppose, 'a light, or the glimmer of a light') that Sam saw? It survives in TT (p. 343): 'He fancied there was a glimmer on the ground down there, or perhaps it was some trick of his tears'. Can the original meaning have been that there was a faint shining from the Phial of Galadriel, very probably at this stage (see pp. 210-11) still left clasped in Frodo's hand? From '"No I can't do it," he said' (p. 211) my father repeated the original text almost exactly, but excising the return of Gollum. When he came to Sam's putting on the Ring he wrote: 'The Ring. With a sudden impulse he drew it out and put it on. The weight of it weighed down his hand. For a moment he noticed no change, and then he seemed to see clearer.' But at this point he stopped, marked what he had written with an X, and wrote: 'No! hear[d] clearer, crack of stone, cry of bird, voices, Shelob bubbling wretchedly deep in the rocks. Voices in the dungeons of the tower. But all was not dark but hazy, and himself like a black solid rock and the Ring like hot gold. Difficult to believe in his invisibility.' The account of Sam's understanding of what the Orcs said here takes this form: 'Did the Ring give power of tongues or did it give him comprehension of all that had been under its power [written above: Sauron's servants], so that he heard direct? Certainly the voices seemed close in his ears and it was very difficult to judge their distance.' With a reference to the Ring's increasing power in that region and its not conferring courage on its wearer this draft ends, followed by an outline of the salient points in what Sam heard: Why such a long delay of Orcs to come? Terrified of Shelob. They know another spy is about. Leader says orders are for messengers to go to Morgul and direct to Baraddur Lugburz. Orcs [?groan]. Talk of Shelob and the Spider's worm [who] has been here before. News of war. In further drafting the coming of the Orc-bands is described thus: Then suddenly he heard cries and voices. He stood still. Orc-voices: he had heard them in Moria and Lorien and on the Great River and would never forget them. Wheeling about he saw small red lights, torches perhaps, issuing from the tunnel away below. And only a few yards below him, out of the very cliff as it seemed, through some gap or gate near the tower's foot he had not noticed as he passed debating on the road, there were more lights. Orc-bands. They were come at last to hunt. The red eye had not been wholly blind. And a noise of feet and shouts came also through the cleft. Orcs were coming up to the pass out of Mordor too. This conception of three Orc-bands converging survived into the fair copy manuscript, where however it was removed at once, or soon, for there is no further reference to it; here 'orcs were coming up to the pass out of the land beyond', while 'only a few yards off' lights and 'black orc-shapes' were coming through 'some gap or gate at the tower's foot'. In the event (TT p. 343) the Orcs of the tower appeared from the far side of the Cleft. The draft continues: Fear overwhelmed him. How could he escape? So now his chapter would be ended. It had not had above a page longer than Frodo's. How could he save the Ring? The Ring. He was not aware of any thought or decision: he simply found himself drawing out the chain and taking the Ring in his hand. The orcs coming towards him grew louder. Then he put it on.(44) The achievement of the conversation between the leaders of the two Orc-bands in the tunnel took a good deal of work, extending into the fair copy, and to detail all the rearrangements, shifts of speakers, and so on would require a great deal of space. But there is one draft that deserves quotation in full, for very little of it survived. Here the two Orcs, and especially he of Minas Morghul, are greatly concerned with the precise timing of the various communications that had passed. In the darkness [of the tunnel] he seemed now more at home; but he could not overcome his weariness. He could see the light of torches a little way ahead, but he could not gain on them. Goblins go fast in tunnels, especially those which they have themselves made, and all the many passages in this region of the mountains were their work, even the main tunnel and the great deep pit where Shelob housed. In the Dark Years they had been made, until Shelob came and made her lair there, and to escape her they had bored new passages, too narrow for her [as she slowly grew >] growth, that crossed and recrossed the straight way.(45) Sam heard the clamour of their many voices flat and hard in the dead air, and somewhere he heard two voices louder than the rest. The leaders of the two parties seemed to be wrangling as they went. 'Can't you stop your rabble's racket?' said one. 'I don't care what happens to them, but I don't want Shelob down on me and my lads.' 'Yours are making more than half the noise,' said the other. 'But let the lads play. No need to worry about Shelob for a bit. She's sat on a pin or something, and none of us will weep. Didn't you see the signs then? A claw cut off, filthy gore all the way to that cursed crack (if we've stopped it once we've stopped it a hundred times). Let the lads play. We've struck a bit of luck at last: we've got something He wants.' 'Yes, we, Shagrat.(46) We, mark you. But why we're going to your miserable tower I don't know. We found the spy, my lot were there first. He should be ours. He should be taken back to Dushgoi.'(47) 'Now, now, still at it. I've said before all there is to be said, but if you must have more arguments, they're here: I've got ten more swords than you, and thirty more just up yonder at call. See? Anyway orders are orders, and I've mine.' 'And I've mine.' 'Yes, and I know them, for I was told 'em by Lugburz, see? Yagfil (48) from Dushgoi will patrol until he meets your guard, or as far as Ungol top: be will report to you before returning to report to Dushgoi. Your report was nothing. Very useful. You can take it back to Dushgoi as soon as you like.' 'I will, but I don't like [to] just yet. I found the spy, and I must know more before I go. The Lords of Dushgoi have some secret of quick messages and they will get the news to Lugburz quicker than anyone you can send direct.' 'I know all that, and I'm not stopping you taking news to them. I know all the messages. They trust me in Lugburz, He knows a good orc when he sees one. This is what happened: message from Dushgoi to Lugburz: Watchers uneasy. Fear elvish agent passed up the Stair. Guard pass. Message from Lugburz to Ungol: Dushgoi uneasy. Redouble vigilance. Make contact. Send report by Dushgoi and direct. And there you are.' 'No, I'm not there, not yet. I'm going to take a report back, my own report, Master Shagrat, and I want to know this first. When did you get this message? We set out as soon as possible after the forces left, and we see no sign of you till we're right through the Tunnel - a filthy place and inside your area. Then we see you just starting. Now I guess you got that message early today, this morning probably, and you've been drinking since to give you the guts to look at the hole. That's what you think of orders that don't suit you.' 'I've no need to account for myself to you Dushgoi horseboys, Master Yagul. But if you're so curious to know: the message from Dushgoi was sent out late: things seem a bit slack with the Lord away. Lugburz did not get it till last night, mark you, nor me till this afternoon. By which time messages were hardly needed. I'd had my lads out some time. There were very odd things happening. Lights in the tunnel, lights outside, shouting and whatnot. But Shelob was about. My lads saw her, and her worm.' 'What's that?' The remainder of this text is very rough working for what follows from this point in TT (pp. 348 - 50). In a following draft Yagool (as he is spelt) says of Frodo: 'What is it, d'you think? Elvish I thought by his nasty smooth peaky face. But undersized.' Here the conversation moves closer to the form in TT, and the long discussion between Yagool and Shagrat about the messages is greatly reduced, though the messages are still given, in very much the same form; but that from Minas Morghul begins Nazgul of Dushgoi to Lugburz. In another brief passage of drafting this dialogue occurs: 'I tell you, nearly two days ago the Night Watcher smelt something, but will you believe me it was nearly another day before they started to send a message to Lugburz.' 'How do they do that?' said Shagrat. 'I've often wondered.' 'I don't know and I don't want to ...' The manuscript of 'The Choices of Master Samwise'(49) was in almost all respects very close to the chapter in The Two Towers. Various points in which it differed as first written have been noticed, but there remain a few others. The following account of Shelob was rejected as soon as written and replaced by that in TT (p. 337): Shelob was not as dragons are, no softer spot had she save only in her eyes; not as the lesser breeds of Mirkwood was their dam, and her age-old hide, knobbed and pitted with corruption but ever thickened with layer on layer within, could not be pierced by any blade of Middle-earth, not though elf or dwarf should make it and all runes were written upon it, not though the hand of [struck out: Fingon wielded it whose] Beren or of Turin wielded it. Shagrat's reply to Yagul's opening sally ('Tired of lurking up there, thinking of coming down to fight?') took this form: 'Tired! You've said it. Waiting for nothing, except to be made into Shelob's meat. But we've got orders, too. Old Shagram's in a fine taking. Your lot's to blame. These Dushgoi bogey-men: sending messages to Lugburz.' This was rejected as soon as written, replaced by 'Orders to you. I'm in command of this Pass. So speak civil', and with it went the last appearance of the name Dushgoi of Minas Morghul. Who 'old Shagram' was is not clear, but he is evidently 'old Nuzu' of the original draft (p. 212), also reported to be 'in a taking', apparently because the garrison of the Tower of Kirith Ungol had been depleted. Possibly he was the actual captain of the Tower, until this point, when Shagrat asserts that he himself is the commander of the pass; but Shagrat's words in the draft cited on p. 216, 'They trust me in Lugburz, He knows a good orc when he sees one' suggest that he was so already. Lastly, the words of Sam's Elvish invocation (TT p. 339) in his fight with the Spider take in a draft for this passage the same form as they did in the original verse chanted in Rivendell (VI.394), and this form was retained in the manuscript as written, the only difference being lir for dir in the third line:(50) O Elbereth Gilthoniel sir evrin pennar oriel lir avos-eithen miriel This was changed on the manuscript to give this text: O Elbereth Gilthoniel silevrin pennar oriel hir avas-eithen miriel a tiro'men Gilthoniel! * It was a long time before my father returned to Frodo and Sam. In October 1944 he briefly took up again the stories 'west of Anduin' from where he had left them nearly two years earlier, but soon abandoned them (see pp. 233 - 5). On 29 November 1944 (Letters no. 91), when he was sending me the typescripts of 'Shelob's Lair' and 'The Choices of Master Sam- wise', he said that he had 'got the hero into such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty.' He had by this time conceived the structure of The Lord of the Rings as five 'Books', of which four were written (cf. also his letter to Stanley Unwin of March 1945, Letters no. 98); and in this same letter of November 1944 he forecast what was still to come: Book Five and Last opens with the ride of Gandalf to Minas Tirith, with which The Palantir, last chapter of Book Three closed. Some of this is written or sketched.(51) Then should follow the raising of the siege of Minas Tirith by the onset of the Riders of Rohan, in which King Theoden falls; the driving back of the enemy, by Gandalf and Aragorn, to the Black Gate; the parley in which Sauron shows various tokens (such as the mithril coat) to prove that he has captured Frodo, but Gandalf refuses to treat (a horrible dilemma, all the same, even for a wizard). Then we shift back to Frodo, and his rescue by Sam. From a high place they see all Sauron's vast reserves loosed through the Black Gate, and then hurry on to Mount Doom through a deserted Mordor. With the destruction of the Ring, the exact manner of which is not certain - all these last bits were written ages ago, but no longer fit in detail, nor in elevation (for the whole thing has become much larger and loftier) - Baraddur crashes, and the forces of Gandalf sweep into Mordor. Frodo and Sam, fighting with the last Nazgul on an island of rock surrounded by the fire of the erupting Mount Doom, are rescued by Gandalf's eagle; and then the clearing up of all loose threads, down even to Bill Ferny's pony,(52) must take place. A lot of this work will be done in a final chapter where Sam is found reading out of an enormous book to his children, and answering all their questions about what happened to everybody (that will link up with his discourse on the nature of stories in the Stairs of Kirith Ungol). But the final scene will be the passage of Bilbo and Elrond and Galadriel through the woods of the Shire on their way to the Grey Havens. Frodo will join them and pass over the Sea (linking with the vision he had of a far green country in the house of Tom Bombadil). So ends the Middle Age and the Dominion of Men begins, and Aragorn far away on the throne of Gondor labours to bring some order and to preserve some memory of old among the welter of men that Sauron has poured into the West. But Elrond has gone, and all the High Elves. What happens to the Ents I don't yet know. It will probably work out very differently from this plan when it really gets written, as the thing seems to write itself once I get going, as if the truth comes out then, only imperfectly glimpsed in the preliminary sketch. From a letter to Stanley Unwin written on 21 July 1946 (Letters no. 105), now more than two years since the doors of the underground entrance to the Tower of Kirith Ungol were slammed in Sam's face, and getting on for two since 'the beacons flared in Anorien and Theoden came to Harrowdale', it is dear that he had done no more. He was then hopeful that he would soon be able to begin writing again; and in another letter to Stanley Unwin of 7 December 1946 (Letters no. 107) he was 'on the last chapters'. NOTES. 1. This text went back in turn to an earlier outline, 'The Story Foreseen from Moria', VII.209. 2. At that time Kirith Ungol was the name of the main pass into Mordor. 3. The first mention of the Tower of Kirith Ungol. 4. As I have noted in VII.260, Sam's visions in the Mirror of Galadriel were already in the fair copy manuscript of 'Galadriel' almost exactly as in FR (p. 377); the actual words used in the manuscript of this vision were: 'and now he thought he saw Frodo lying fast asleep under a great dark cliff: his face was pale.' When my father wrote this the words of the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Moria' (VII.209) had already been written: 'Gol- lum gets spiders to put spell of sleep on Frodo. Sam drives them off. But cannot wake him.' 5. The illegible word might possibly be 'grin'. 6. The fair copy manuscript, with some correction and addition from the time of composition, reaches the text of TT, pp. 312-17, in all respects save one: the passage describing Frodo's dash towards the bridge is still absent. The manuscript reads here: ... Frodo felt his senses reeling and his limbs weakening. Sam took his master's arm. 'Hold up, Mr Frodo!' he whispered, but his breath seemed to tear the air like a whistle. 'Not that way! Gollum says not that way - thank goodness! I agree with him for once.' Frodo took a grip on himself and wrenched his eyes away. The reading of TT, introduced later, thus in part returns to the outline given on p. 186. 7. In general I do not go into the detail of textual problems, but this is a very unusual case, and the reconstruction of the evolution of the story to some degree depends on the view taken of it; I therefore give here some account of it. Page 4 of the manuscript, on which the pencilled draft though overwritten can mostly be read, ends with the words: 'Then he saw that a faint light was welling through his fingers and he thrust it in his bosom.' Page 5 was likewise originally a page of rough, continuous, pencil drafting. The top of this page, some 14 lines or so, was erased, and the later narrative was written in this space (ending at 'and there it suddenly entered a narrow opening in the rock. They had come to the first stair that Gollum had spoken of', TT p. 317). Towards the end of this short section, however, the erasure was not complete, and the following can be read: 'not the odour of decay in the valley below ..... that the hobbits could recognize, a'. Thus the original narrative was here entirely different, for within a short space they are already at the mouth of the tunnel. The strange thing is that from this point the original pencilled draft (continuing with 'repellent evil taint on the air'), not erased any further but overwritten, was overwritten with the earlier narrative ('Version 1'). Thus as the text in ink stands on this page it reads: ... and there it suddenly entered a narrow opening in the rock. They had come to the first stair that Gollum had spoken of [TT p. 317]. repellent evil taint on the air. The text following on from 'that Gollum had spoken of' is found on another sheet. The only explanation that I can see is that my father for some reason left the first (approximately) fourteen lines in pencil, and only began to overwrite it in ink at an arbitrary point ('repellent evil taint on the air'). The first part of the page thus fell victim to erasure and re-use when the later story had come into being, but from the point where it had been overwrit- ten in ink the earlier story (Version 1) could not be so used, and was merely struck out. 8. This version of the sentence is found in isolation on a slip, slightly different from and beginning slightly earlier than the form of it that can be read in the pencilled draft (see note 7). 9. With 'then as fear left him it began to burn' cf. the derived passage in 'Shelob's Lair', TT p. 329: 'then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo's mind, it began to burn'; cf. also 'As if his indomitable spirit had set its potency in motion, the glass blazed suddenly' (TT p. 339). 10. This much of 'Version 1' (struck through) was preserved in the manuscript because the page carried a portion of the later story also, as explained in note 7. 11. The Bodleian page '617', like page '5', is written in ink over the underlying pencilled draft. At this point there is an adjective, describing the webs and ending in -ing, which my father could not read; he therefore merely let the pencilled word stand, without writing anything on top of it. 12. The words hold my star-glass behind me are underlined in the original - possibly because my father was emphasising to himself that Frodo had actually given the phial to Sam, though whereas in TT (p. 334) Sam did not give it back to Frodo, later in this version (p. 198) he takes it from Frodo's hand during his fight with Ungoliant. Frodo drew Sting: on the previous page '5' of the manuscript Frodo had already drawn Sting (p. 193), but this, I feel certain, is no more than an oversight, and does not call into question the succession of the two pages. 13. In the margin is written here: 'Dis. into a side hole?', where 'Dis.' obviously stands for 'Disappears'. This was added later, when my father was pondering the idea that Gollum in fact disappeared while they were still in the tunnel. 14. At the foot of the page is written in pencil: 'Make Gollum come reluctantly back.' This clearly belongs with the underlying pencil- led draft; when over-writing the draft in ink my father put a query against these words. 15. The caption of the picture, Shelob's Lair, was added afterwards; at this time the name of the Great Spider was Ungoliant (p. 196). 16. At the time of writing, page 415 of 'Version 1' is in the United States, page 617 in England, and page 819 in France. 17. This is the first appearance of the one Great Spider (as opposed to many spiders). 18. On the name Ungoliant(e), derived from The Silmarillion, see the Etymologies, V.396. 19. When Sam twisted round as Gollum seized him from behind, in TT Gollum's hold on Sam's mouth slipped, whereas in Version 1 it was his hold with his left hand on Sam's neck that slipped (down to his waist). Thus it is not said in Version 1 that 'all the while Gollum's other hand was tightening on Sam's throat'. When Sam hurled himself backwards and landed on Gollum 'a sharp hiss came out of him, and for a breathless second his left arm that was about Sam's waist relaxed' (in TT 'for a second his hand upon Sam's throat loosened'). Sam's second blow, falling across Gollum's back, did not break the staff, and the third blow aimed by Sam was with the staff, not with his sword. 20. Sam's staff was not broken at the second blow, as it was in TT; see notes 19 and 42. 21. The handwriting is so difficult that my father pencilled in glosses here and there where he had evidently been puzzled by what he had written not long before. - It is often the case with a very difficult preliminary draft, which can really only be deciphered by recourse to the following text, that some particularly puzzling word or phrase cannot be solved in this way: another expression appears in its place; and in such cases one may often suspect that my father could not make it out himself. Cf. note 11. 22. On the right is seen the 'Wraith-road' from Minas Morghul rising to the main pass in this region (p. 195). 23. The brackets round this sentence, seen in the reproduction, were put in subsequently, and probably the question mark also. On the tunnel being the work of Orcs see p. 215. 24. I cannot read the word at the bottom of the plan of the tunnels, also in blue ball-point pen, though possibly it also reads 'orc- path'. 25. Here appears the name Imlad Morghul (see p. 176). 26. On lines 3-4 of the page reproduced on p. 204 are the words 'where forgotten winters in the Dark Years had gnawed and carved the sunless stone.' In TT (p. 319) the words in the Dark Years are absent. Seven lines from the bottom of the page the text reads: 'or so it seemed to him in feeling not in reason', with pencilled correction to the reading of TT: 'or so it seemed to him in that dark hour of weariness, still labouring in the stony shadows under Kirith Ungol.' 27. The illegible words look most like 'flies back'. If this is what they are, the meaning must be very elliptically expressed: Frodo flees and the eyes pursue, but every time he turns round holding up the phial the eyes halt. 28. A trace of a stage in which the 'trap' or 'hole' in the floor of the tunnel was present as well as the branching ways is found on a slip carrying very disjointed drafting: Suddenly a thought came into Frodo's mind. Gollum, he had been ahead: where was he? Had he fallen into that awful lurking hole? 'Gollum! I wonder whether he's all right,' he muttered. 'Smeagol! ' Groping in the dark they found that the opening or arch to the left was blocked a few feet inside, or so it seemed: they could not push their way in, it was he called or tried to call Smeagol! But his voice cracked and They tried first the opening to the left, but quickly it grew narrower and turned away mounting by long shallow steps towards the mountain wall. 'It can't be this way,' said Frodo. 'We must try the other.' 'We'll take the broader way,' said Frodo. 'Any passage that turns sideways .....' 29. Frodo's cry here has the form Alla Earendel Elenion Ankalima, and Alla remained through the following texts, only being changed to Aiya after the book was in type. 30. The word picked in TT p. 330 ('but at its edge a blue fire flicked') is an error for flickered which was missed in the proof. 31. Perhaps for no other reason than that this section of the manuscript had become very ragged through emendation, and would have to be replaced, it had well before this point degener- ated into rough pencil, at the end becoming an outline very hard to read. 32. The reference is to The Hobbit, Chapter Ill 'A Short Rest', where Elrond, speaking of the swords Glamdring and Orcrist taken from the trolls' hoard, says (in the text of the original edition): 'They are old swords, very old swords of the elves that are now called Gnomes. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin- wars.' 33. This sentence ('For though once long ago he had seen it ...') was at first retained in the final fair copy manuscript, with the addition: 'neither did he understand his master.' 34. It is dearly written in the 'fair copy' style, but with some repetition and other features pointing to immediate composition, and it was corrected subsequently in pencil; I cite it here as corrected. 35. These words are used also in the story in The Two Towers (p. 330), but there only Shelob knows of the web at the end of the tunnel. 36. If this part of the draft did in fact belong with Version 1 there had been no encounter with the Spider in the tunnel, so that when this scene (surviving of course in TT, p. 339) was first written this was the first time that she had been confronted with the light of Earendel's star in the Phial of Galadriel. 37. The words 'foul but already pitiable' are read from a subsequent gloss of my father's. He gave up on the next word and wrote a query about it; it may perhaps be 'scuttle'. The words 'but already pitiable' are notable. In TT there is no trace of the thought that Shelob, entirely hateful and evil, denier of light and life, could ever be 'pitiable' even when defeated and hideously wounded. 38. This goes back to the original outline 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' (p. 185), as does Sam's thought of building a cairn of stones, and the phrase later in this passage 'an elvish beauty as of one that is long past the shadows', which survives in TT. 39. Cf. the initial outline, p. 190: Turns back - resolved to lie down by Frodo till death comes. Then he sees Gollum come and paw him. He gives a start and runs back. But orcs come out and Gollum bolts.' 40. The first occurrence of the name Shelob (see p. 183). 41. Cf. the sentence added earlier in this draft at the point where Sam puts on the Ring: 'His hand hangs weighed down and useless.' 42. In the original account of Sam's fight with Gollum his staff was not broken (notes 19 and 20); this was where, and why, that element entered the story. The words 'The staff cracked and broke' were added to the fair copy (TT p. 335). 43. This is obscure. A proper name beginning with B, possibly Ballung or something similar, is followed by a sign that might represent 'and' or 'or', but 'and' would mean that Leader and says were miswritten for Leaders and say, and though in this exceedingly rapid script words are frequently defective or mis- written the sentence reappears (p. 214), and there the words are again Leader and says. Perhaps my father intended 'or' and was merely hesitating between two possible names for the Orc. 44. On this page of drafting is a hasty pencilled sketch of the final approach to the Cleft, and a little plan of the tunnel. In the first of these the place where Frodo lay is marked by an X on the path, and just to the left of it in the cliff-wall is the opening from which Shelob came. Another entry is seen in the distance at the top of the steps leading to the summit of the pass, at the foot of the cliff on which the Tower stands. The plan of the tunnel is reproduced here. It will be seen that it differs from the elaborate earlier plan reproduced on p. 201 in that only one passage is shown leading to the left off the main tunnel at the eastern end, curving round and leading to the Tower. 45. With this account of the origin of the tunnels cf. the outline accompanying the plan (p. 199): 'This tunnel is of orc-make (?) and has the usual branching passages.' It survived into the fair copy, where it was subsequently replaced by that in TT (p. 346). 46. The names of the leaders of the Orc-bands were rather bewilder- ingly changed in the drafts (and some transient forms cannot be read). At first (p. 212) they were Gazmog (of the Tower) and Zaglun (of Minas Morghul), and in another brief draft of their genial greetings they become Yagul and Uftak Zaglun - so written: Zaglun may have been intended to replace Uftak, but on the other hand the double-barrelled Orc-name Naglur-Danlo is found (p. 212). The name Ufthak was subsequently given to the Orc found (and left where he was) by Shagrat and his friends in Shelob's larder, 'wide awake and glaring' (TT p. 350). In the present text the names were at first Yagul (of the Tower) and Shagrat (of Minas Morghul), but were reversed in the course of writing (and in a following draft the names became reversed again at one point, though not I think intentionally). At this point, where the Orc from Morghul is speaking, my father first wrote Shag[rat), changed it to Yagul, and then again changed it to Shagrat. See note 48. - Yagul was replaced by Gorbag in the course of writing the fair copy. 47. Dushgoi: Orc name for Minas Morghul. 48. The text actually has Shagrat here, but this should have been changed to Yagsil (see note 46). 49. The story of the ascent of the Pass of Kirith Ungol was early divided into three chapters, with the titles which were never changed; the numbers being XXXVIII, XXXIX, and XL. See my father's letters cited on pp. 183-4. 50. After the verse my father wrote: 'such words in the Noldorin tongue as his waking mind knew not', striking this out at once. 51. This was work done in October 1944: see pp. 233-4. 52. Cf. VII.448. Note on the Chronology. Time-scheme D continues somewhat further than does C (see p. 182): Friday Feb. 10 Frodo and Sam come to Shelob's lair early in the morning. They get out in the late afternoon - nearly at top of the pass. Frodo is captured and carried to orc-tower at night. Saturday Feb. 11 Attack at dawn on besieged Minas Tirith. Riders of Rohan suddenly arrive and charge, overthrowing the leaguer. Fall of Theoden. Host of Mordor flung into River. Sunday Feb. 12 Gandalf (Eomer and Aragorn and Faramir) advance into Ithilien. Time-scheme S goes no further than February 8. Pencilled entries were added to February 11 in Scheme D: 'Sam at the Iron Door early hours of Feb. 11. Sam gets into orc-tower. Rescues Frodo. They fly and descend into Mordor'; and 'Ships of Harad burnt'.