The War of the Ring (21 page)

'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 impressionistic, 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 subsequent 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)