The Peoples of Middle-earth (5 page)

Successive stages in the development of the Prologue were accompanied, of course, by development in the Appendices, as is seen from references to the languages and to dates, and from such points as the naming of Argeleb II as the king who granted possession of the Shire to the Hobbits (p. 9, and see p. 209). But the-latest stage of the Prologue discussed here, the manuscript P 6 and its typescript copy P 7, which in all other respects closely approached the final form, still had the old story of the finding of the Ring, and can therefore be dated, at the latest, to before July 1950.

NOTES.

1. The Hobbit was now said to have been 'based on [Bilbo's] own much longer memoirs'; 'Earliest Days' was changed to 'Elder Days', and 'Folco Took' (by way of 'Faramond Took' and

'Peregrin Boffin', see VII.31-2) to 'Peregrin Took'; 'the one really populous town of their Shire, Michel-Delving' became 'the only town of their Shire, the county-town, Michel-Delving'; and the boots of the hobbits of the Marish became 'dwarf-boots'. The Hobbits' antipathy to vessels and water, and to swimming in it, was the only actual addition.

In a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin of 21 September 1947 (Letters no.111) my father said that he was sending,'the preliminary chapter or Foreword to the whole: "Concerning Hobbits", which acts as a link to the earlier book and at the same time answers questions that have been asked.' From the date, this must have been a copy of the original version, as corrected.

2. The date April 30th was corrected to April 28th on the text P 3

(p- 7).

3. Northworthy: the Old English word, wordig were common elements in place-names, with the same general meaning as tun (-ton), an enclosed dwelling-place.

4. The fiction of 'translation' from the 'true' Hobbit language (the Common Speech) was inimical to puns in any case, good though this one was..

5. The extension to P 2 on the ordering of the Shire was a typescript, but that on pipe-weed was a manuscript written on slips. My father inserted them into P 2 as a unit, but they clearly originat-ed separately: see note 6.

6. In his letter to me of 6 May 1944 (cited in VIII.45, note 36) my father said that 'if [Faramir] 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 and the Languages of the West have gone.' I remarked (VIII.162) that Faramir's exposition of linguistic history 'survived into subsequent typescripts, and was only removed at a later time; thus the excluded material on "the Languages of the West" was not the account given by Faramir.' It is indeed difficult to say what it was. On the other hand, the 'pipe-weed' passage was removed from the chapter The Road to Isengard before the first completed manuscript was written (VIII.39). It is in fact quite possible that the account of 'pipe-weed' in the long addition to P 2 does go back so early, seeing that it was certainly written quite independently of the first part of the addition, on the ordering of the Shire (see note 5).

7. Similarly the statement in P 1 (VI.311) that Bandobras Took, the Bullroarer, was the son of Isengrim the First was retained in P 2

as revised: in the published genealogical tree he became the grandson of Isengrim II. - A curious exception to my statement (p. 4) that P 2 as typed was a precise copy of the original version is found in the name Bandobras, which in P 2 became Barnabas; but this was probably a mere slip. It was corrected back to Bandobras in the revision.

8. In P 5 the name Lithe entered as my father wrote, changing 'at Midsummer' to 'at the Lithe (that is Midsummer)'.

9. The name Luyde for the month of March is found once elsewhere, a comparative calendar of Hobbit and modern dates written on the back of a page of the earliest text of the Appendix on Calendars (see p. 136, note 3}. Above Luyde here my father wrote a name beginning Re which is certainly not as it stands Rethe, the later Hobbit name of March, but must be taken as an ill-written form of that name.

10. On holbytla translated 'hole dweller' see p. 49, $48 and commentary (p. 69).

11. This is to be associated with the early version of Appendix F, $$22-3 (p. 38): '... before their crossing of the Mountains the Hobbits spoke the same language as Men in the higher vales of the Anduin ... Now that language was nearly the same as the language of the ancestors of the Rohirrim'.

12. The second figure of the date 1347 is slightly uncertain, but it looks much more like a '3' than a '1'.

13. The significant changes made in the Second Edition (1966) were few. On FR p. 14, where the later text has 'There for a thousand years they were little troubled by wars ...' to '... the Hobbits had again become accustomed to plenty', the First Edition had simply

'And thenceforward for a thousand years they lived in almost unbroken peace' (thus without the mention of the Dark Plague, the Long Winter, and the Days of Dearth}. At the beginning of the next paragraph the reading of the Second Edition, 'Forty leagues it stretched from the Far Downs to the Brandywine Bridge, and fifty from the northern moors to the marshes in the south', was substituted for 'Fifty leagues it stretched from the Westmarch under the Tower Hills to the Brandywine Bridge, and nearly fifty from the northern moors ...'. My father noted that the word 'nearly' was (wrongly) omitted in the text of the Second Edition, 'so this must be accepted'.

On FR p. 16, in 'Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be seen on the Tower Hills', the words 'on the Tower Hills'

were an addition, and in a following sentence 'upon a green mound' was changed from 'upon a green hill'. At the end of this first section of the Prologue (FR p. 17) the sentence 'Hobbits delighted in such things ...' was in the First Edition put in the present tense throughout.

Lastly, in the first paragraph of the third section, FR p. 18, the sentence 'Outside the Farthings were the East and West Marches: the Buckland; and the Westmarch added to the Shire in S.R.

1462' was an addition.

14. A few further differences in P 6 from the published text may be recorded. In the paragraph concerning the script and language of the Hobbits (FR p. 13) P 6 had: 'And if ever Hobbits had a language of their own (which is debated) then in those days they forgot it and spoke ever after the Common Speech, the Westron as it was named', this being changed to the reading of FR, 'And in those days also they forgot whatever languages they had used before, and spoke ever after the Common Speech ...' And at the end of the paragraph the sentence 'Yet they kept a few words of their own, as well as their own names of months and days, and a great store of personal names out of the past' is lacking. Cf. the original version of Appendix F, pp. 37-8, $$21 - 3.

The founders of the Shire were still Marco and Cavallo (pp. 6, 9; later changed to Marcho and Blanco); and the second of the conditions imposed on the Hobbits of the Shire (cf. the text given on p. 9) was 'to foster the land' (changed later to 'speed the king's messengers'). The first grower of pipe-weed in the Shire was still Tobias Hornblower, and still in the time of Isengrim the First (p. 6); the date was apparently first written 1050 as before, but changed to 1020. Later Isengrim the Second and the date 1070

were substituted, but Tobias remained. The footnote to this passage (p. 6) was retained, but 'about 400 years' was later altered to 'nearly 350'. The third of the Longbottom brands now became 'Hornpipe Cake', but was changed back to 'Hornpipe Twist'.

15. In the Foreword as published this concluding paragraph began: Much information, necessary and unnecessary, will be found in the Prologue. To complete it some maps are given, including one of the Shire that has been approved as reasonably correct by those Hobbits that still concern themselves with ancient history. At the end of the third volume will be found also some abridged family-trees ...

When P 6 was written, of course, the idea that The Lord of the Rings should be issued as a work in three volumes was not remotely envisaged. The published Foreword retained the reference to 'an index of names and strange words with some explanations', although in the event it was not provided.

16. I did not carry my account of the history of The Shadow of the Past so far as this: see VII.28-9.

17. In this connection it is interesting to see what my father said in his letter to Sir Stanley Unwin of 10 September 1950 (Letters no.129):

I have now on my hands two printed versions of a crucial incident. Either the first must be regarded as washed out, a mere miswriting that ought never to have seen the light; or the story as a whole must take into account the existence of two versions and use it. The former was my original simpleminded intention, though it is a bit awkward (since the Hobbit is fairly widely known in its older form) if the literary pretence of historicity and dependence on record is to be maintained. The second can be done convincingly (I think), but not briefly explained in a note.

The last words refer to the note required for the new edition of The Hobbit explaining the difference in the narrative in Riddles in the Dark. Four days later he wrote again (Letters no.130): I have decided to accept the existence of both versions of Chapter Five, so far as the sequel goes - though I have no time at the moment to rewrite that at the required points.

II.

THE APPENDIX ON LANGUAGES.

Beside the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits, whose development, clear and coherent, into the Prologue has been described in the last chapter, there is another text of a prefatory or introductory nature; and it is not easy to see how my father designed it to relate to the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits. Indeed, except in one point, they have nothing in common; for this further text (which has no title) is scarcely concerned with Hobbits at all. For a reason that will soon be apparent I give it here in full.

It was typed on small scrap paper, and very obviously set down by my father very rapidly ab initio without any previous drafting, following his thoughts as they came: sentences were abandoned before complete and replaced by new phrasing, and so on. He corrected it here and there in pencil, either then or later, these corrections being very largely minor improvements or necessary 'editorial' clarifications of the very rough text; in most cases I have incorporated these (not all are legible). I have added paragraph numbers for subsequent reference. Notes to this section will be found on page 26.

$1. This tale is drawn from the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, preserved for the most part in the Great Red Book of Samwise. It has been written during many years for those who were interested in the account of the great Adventure of Bilbo, and especially for my friends, the Inklings (in whose veins, I suspect, a good deal of hobbit blood still runs), and for my sons and daughter.

$2. But since my children and others of their age, who first heard of the finding of the Ring, have grown older with the years, this tale speaks more clearly of those darker things which lurked only on the borders of the other tale, but which have troubled the world in all its history.

$3. To the Inklings I dedicate this book, since they have already endured it with patience - my only reason for supposing that they have a hobbit-strain in their venerable ancestry: otherwise it would be hard to account for their interest in the history and geography of those long-past days, between the end of the Dominion of the Elves and the beginning of the Dominion of Men, when for a brief time the Hobbits played a supreme part in the movements of the world.

$4. For the Inklings I add this note, since they are men of lore, and curious in such matters. It is said that Hobbits spoke a language, or languages, very similar to ours. But that must not be misunderstood. Their language was like ours in manner and spirit; but if the face of the world has changed greatly since those days, so also has every detail of speech, and even the letters and scripts then used have long been forgotten, and new ones invented.(1)

$5. No doubt for the historians and philologists it would have been desirable to preserve the original tongues; and certainly something of the idiom and the humour of the hobbits is lost in translation, even into a language as similar in mood as is our own. But the study of the languages of those days requires time and labour, which no one but-myself would, I think, be prepared to give to it. So I have except for a few phrases and inscriptions transferred the whole linguistic setting into the tongues of our own time.

$6. The Common Speech of the West in those days I have represented by English. This noble tongue had spread in the course of time from the kingdoms of Fornost and Gondor, and the hobbits preserved no memory of any other speech; but they used it in their own manner, in their daily affairs very much as we use English; though they had always at command a richer and more formal language when occasion required, or when they had dealings with other people. This more formal and archaic style was still the normal use in the realm of Gondor (as they discovered) and among the great in the world outside the Shire.