None of them were better off. Some were worse, and had hardly been able to breathe at all. They rescued Kili, Bifur, Bofur, Dori and Nori. Poor old Bombur [had >] was so exhausted [he >] (he was the one that had kicked the spider) that he just rolled off the branch and fell plop on the ground (fortunately on leaves) and lay there.
There were still five dwarves hanging up at the far end of the branch when the spiders began to come back, as full of rage as ever.
Bilbo went to the end of the branch and kept off those that crawled up the tree.
‘Now we see you, now we see you’ they said ‘you nasty little creature. We will eat you and leave your bones and skin hanging in a tree. Ugh! he’s got a sting has he – we’ll have him all the same’. [added: Of course Bilbo had taken off the ring when he rescued Fili, and forgotten all about it after.]TN33
All this time the other dwarves were working at the rest of their friends, and cutting at the threads with their knives. Soon all would be free and sitting on the branch, [added, in darker ink: except Bombur] though they had not much idea what would happen next. The spiders had caught each of them easily enough the night before; but that was one by one and in the dark. This time there looked like being a terrible battle.
Then suddenly Bilbo noticed some of the spiders had got round old Bombur on the floor and had tied him up again, and were dragging him away.
He gave a shout and slashed at the spiders in front. They quickly made way, and he scrambled or fell down the tree into the middle of those on the floor. His little sword was something new in stings for them. It shone with delight as he stabbed at them.
He killed three, and the others left Bombur and drew away. ‘Come down Come down’! he shouted to the dwarves ‘don’t stay up there and be netted’.
Down they scrambled or jumped or dropped, eleven of them all in a heap, most of them shaky and little use on their legs. Anyway there they were twelve together, for old Bombur was free again and held on his legs by his cousins Bifur and Bofur.TN34
Now spiders were [old >] all round them, and above them. There were more of them than before, in spite of the ones that had been killed; some of their horrible friends (there were a good many of the wretches about – though Bilbo and the dwarves had [not] struck one of their biggest colonies.) must have come up to see what the noise was about. It was then Bilbo thought he had lost his ball of guiding thread. He was ready to collapse, until he found he had stuck it in his pocket. Luckily it hadn’t snapped, but of course it marked all the winding path he had gone, and went in and out round tree trunks backwards and forwards, and most ridiculous path to follow.TN35
Bilbo saw nothing for it, but to let the Dwarves into his ring secret. When he had done so very quickly and puffily, he made them stand where they were, while he very
Then he dashed back to the dwarves, and got them to understand that he could lead them back to the track. With groans and moans they hobbled after him, and the spiders came too. They couldn’t see Bilbo, and he tired himself out dashing to one side or to another or to the rear to keep them off. But soon they felt the sting so often they contented themselves with running ahead and barring the way with their sticky threads, which Bilbo and one or two of the dwarves who had knives and were more recovered had to cut and slash.
In some ways the most terrible time of all their adventures was that horrible fight back to the track. I am afraid they did not think just then how lucky they were ever to get there, when at last they did, leaving the angry and bewildered spiders behind. Only one or two followed them to the very edge of the path, and sat fuming and cursing at them from branches in the trees.
But the dwarves never forgot Bilbo’s work. Even then they thanked him, and all bowed several times right to the ground, though some of them fell over with the effort and could not get up again for a long while. [There they >] They never forgot Bilbo, and though they knew now about his ring – Balin in particular had to have the whole taleTN36 told him twice – they thought no less of him. In fact they praised him so much, Bilbo began to feel a great bold fellow – or would have done, if there had been anything to eat. There was nothing, and they were worn out. They just lay and looked at one another – except Balin, who kept on saying – ‘so that is how he sneaked past me was it! Now I know. Little
All of a sudden Dwalin opened an eye and look round at them. ‘Where is Gandalf?’TN37 he said.
It was a terrible blow. Of course there were only thirteen of them: 12 dwarves, and the hobbit.TN38 Where indeed was Gandalf?
If you want to know, read on and leave the rest of them sitting more or less hopeless on the forest path. They drowzed off into an uncomfortable sleep there, as evening came on; and they were too sick and weary to think of guards or taking watches. There you can leave them for the present.
[You rem
Are the wood elves wicked? Well not particularly – indeed not at all. But most of them are descended from the ancient elves who never went to the great FairyLand of the west,TN39 where the Light-elves, and the Deep-Elves (or Gnomes) and the Sea-elves lived,TN40 and grew fair, and learned and invented their magic and their cunning craft and the making of beautiful and marvelous things.
The woodelves lingered in the world in the twilight before the raising of the sun and moon, and in the great woods that grew after sun rise,TN41 but they loved the borders of the forest best, whence they could escape at times to hunt, or ride over the more open lands. In a great cave some miles within Mirkwood on its Eastern side, before whose huge doors of stone a river ran from out of the heights of forest and out into the marshes at the feet of the highlands, lived their king.
These caves wound far underground, and had many passages, and wide halls, but they were brighter and more wholesome and not so deep nor so dangerous as goblin-dwellings. In fact the wood elves themselves mostly lived in the woods in huts on the ground or in the branches. Their king lived in the great wood-cave because of his treasure, and [as] a defense against enemies.TN42
To this cave they dragged Gandalf. Not too gently, for they did not love dwarves. They had had wars in ancient days with dwarves, and accused them of stealing their treasure (& the dwarves accused them of the same, and [also] of hiring dwarves to shape their gold & silver, and refusing to pay them after!).TN43
The king of the Wood-elves looked sternly on Gandalf. But Gandalf would say nothing to all his questions, except that he was starving, and [or that he] knew nothing.
‘Why did you and your friends burst three times upon my people[?]’
‘Because we were starving’ he said.
‘Where are your friends now and what are they doing?’
‘I don’t know’ said Gandalf – ‘but I expect starving in the forest.’
‘What brought you into our forest at all[?]’ said the king.
But to that Gandalf shut his mouth and would not say a word.
‘Take him away’ said the king; and they put chains upon him, and put him in one of the inner caves and left
him – they did give him food and drink, plenty if not very fine. Wood elves are not goblins, and are reasonably well-behaved even to their worst enemies when they have them as prisoners. Except to spiders. These they hate above all things,TN44 and fear for few of them have swords of iron or steel at all. Hardly any at all even now. None I expect in those days. They fight chiefly with clubs, and bows, and arrows pointed with bone or stone.TN45
There poor Gandalf lay, and after he had got over the [> his] thankfulness for bread and meat and water, he began to wonder what had happened to his unfortunate friends . . .
He soon found out. The wood-elves were not going to have dwarves wandering about in their part of the forest, starving or not. So they went back to the place where they had caught Gandalf, and finding no one there they waylaid the track. They knew all about it, because they made it, and still guarded and kept [it] open most of the way. It was their only way of getting news of the western world.
It was not long before they found the hobbit and the dwarves staggering along – the day after the spider-battle – in a last effort to find a way out of the forest before they fell down and died of hunger and thirst. [Suddenly from behind the trees >] Such day as there was under the dark trees was fading into pitch blackness, when suddenly out sprang the light of torches on either side of them, like [
There was no thought of a fight. The dwarves were exhausted; and their [added: small] knives, all the weapons they had, were no good [> use] against the bows of the woodelves that hit a bird’s eye in the dark; and they knew it.
At this point in the manuscript (at the bottom of manuscript page 118; Marq. 1/1/8:18) there is a change in the kind of paper used that almost certainly marks one of the two major pauses or breaks in composition to which Tolkien referred in his 1938 letter (see Appendix II and ‘The Chronology of Composition’ on p. xviii). Accordingly, I have chosen to make the chapter break between what later became Chapter VIII: ‘Flies and Spiders’ and Chapter IX: ‘Barrels Out of Bond’ here, even though the last two paragraphs above eventually became the opening paragraph and a half of the following chapter (contrast DAA.221 & 222). Henceforth, instead of being written on both sides of the sheet on ‘foolscap’ paper, the rest of the Second Phase manuscript (manuscript pages 119–167) is written on one side only of the sheet. The new paper is also somewhat inferior to the old and has aged more; the unused backs are lined, which shows that these are probably unused sheets torn from student ‘blue books’ used in examinations. See p. 379 for a continuation of the text.
TEXT NOTES
1 Most of what little wildlife the dwarves and hobbit encounter in Mirkwood is dark in coloration, no doubt from protective camouflage in this dimly lit environment: the black squirrels, the ‘great dark grey and black moths’ attracted by their campfires, the big bats (‘black as a top hat’) presumably attracted by the moths, even the ‘dark, dark velvety black’ purple emperor butterflies Bilbo sees atop the oak canopy. The only exception seems to be the ‘snowy white’ deer (a hind and her fawns) seen in the enchanted stream episode and deliberately contrasted to the ‘dark’ hart seen immediately before, and that scene is itself a later interpolation added into the story, not part of the original draft (see p. 350).
For a speculation on the melanistic nature of Mirkwood’s wildlife, see Henry Gee’s column ‘Melanism and Middle-earth’, posted on the Tolkien site TheOneRing.net (http://greenbooks.theonering.net/guest/files/081104–01.html). Note that while Gee refers to the spiders as ‘black’, their coloration is actually not mentioned in the text. We are told that their cobwebs were ‘dark’ (p. 303) and it would certainly make sense that their dark coloration prevented their being seen when they came to stare at the campfires (p. 304), but the only indication that the spiders themselves are black comes not in the text but in an illustration: the lost halftone of Mirkwood (Plate VII [top]) that appeared in the first two printings of The Hobbit (and as a line drawing in the first printing of the American edition; see DAA.192–3) – a mere 8800 copies, some of which were destroyed unsold during the Blitz (Hammond, Descriptive Bibliography, pages 4, 15, & 18).
2 We are told much later that the elves built and maintain the forest road (p. 316), and that the elves and spiders are enemies (ibid.). We cannot say with certainty that the forest path was an elf-road from first conception, but it seems likely, given its quietly understated eeriness through all versions of the story.
The cobwebs are Bilbo and the dwarves’ first hint of the spiders’ existence. Later readers had more hints from three pieces of accompanying cartography and illustration: the final Thror’s Map, one of whose labels reads ‘West lies Mirkwood the Great – /there are Spiders’ (DAA.50), the Wilderland Map, which clearly shows large spiders & cobwebs throughout northern Mirkwood (DAA.[399]), and the aforementioned Mirkwood halftone (Plate VII [top]), which shows a spider walking by prominently in the right foreground (ibid. [detail]).
3 These ‘horrible pale bulbous . . . insect eyes’ presumably belong to the Mirkwood spiders, since they stare down at Bilbo from the branches overhead. Tolkien does not actually describe the Mirkwood spiders, when we finally encounter them near the end of this chapter, as having compound insect eyes, but he did explicitly use that description for Shelob in The Lord of the Rings (‘two great clusters of many-windowed eyes . . . [with] their thousand facets’ – LotR.747), whom he linked to the Mirkwood spiders as their progenitor. See Commentary, ‘The Children of Ungoliant’, p. 326ff.
4 ‘Black as a top hat’ is the sort of detail often described by careless commentators on the book as anachronistic; it is not. Like the express-train in Chapter I of The Lord of the Rings or the whistling tea kettle it is merely a direct-address simile provided by the narrator (not Bilbo) to help his listeners, the modern-day audience, visualize the scene.
5 Tolkien originally wrote beechnuts, which he soon changed to beechtrees. For more on the role of beechnuts or beechmast in the story, see Plot Notes A, p. 294 and Text Note 8 page 298.
6 Much later, Tolkien changed ‘far on’ to ‘getting on’ in pencil (the first layer of revision in this chapter having been done in black ink, probably not long after the Ms. was written).
Note also the time-frame of the story; whereas in the published book they are already on the Mountain by late autumn, here they are still wandering in Mirkwood when ‘autumn is far on’, with the long captivity among the elves and rest of their journey still to come.
7 Curiously enough, the acorns eaten by the starving dwarves and hobbit in Plot Notes A dropped out of the story here and found no place in the published book. The beech-nuts (see Text Note 5) re-entered the story in the ‘Enchanted Stream’ interpolation in the form of bitter, inedible nuts thrown down from above at them by the black squirrels.
In the published book the ground underneath the beech trees is littered only by ‘the dead leaves of countless other autumns’ (DAA.199).
8 Bilbo’s concern about meeting a spider seems premature, given that the group’s first encounter with the giant spiders of Mirkwood does not come until later in this chapter. However, he has already seen the great cobwebs stretched from tree to tree and sinister eyes staring down at him from the trees (see Text Notes 2 & 3 above), so his apprehension is understandable.
The smaller spiders chasing the butterflies enter the story for the first time here (at any rate they are not mentioned in the extremely compressed paragraph devoted to this scene in Plot Notes A); see p. 343 Note 19.
9 Once again the narrator draws the reader’s attention to a small significant detail that has escaped the characters’ notice: in this case the innocuous line earlier on the page in what seemed a sort of valley mostly filled with oaks. For more examples, see the careful enumeration of how many dwarves are present in the spider-webs (Text Note 38).
10 Tuppence: two pence (two pennies), roughly equivalent in buying power to the American nickel (or,
earlier, dime). A proverbial phrase.
11 Bombur’s sudden collapse here is motivated by nothing more than starvation, exhaustion, and despair, yet it is striking that almost the same words remain in the story after Tolkien had made this speech the climax of the Enchanted Stream interpolation; see p. 352.
12 Tolkien originally wrote ‘Ga’ – i.e., the beginning of the name Gandalf (the chief dwarf), but immediately switched the role of sharp-eyed dwarf to Balin, who had been the group’s look-out man during their council of war after their escape from the Misty Mountains (pp. 198 & 199). Back in Chapter II (p. 91) it had been Dwalin, not Balin, who had first spotted the campfire off in the distance that led to the disastrous but fateful encounter with the trolls, and Dwalin was even described there with the phrase ‘Dwalin, who was always their look-out man’ – the exact words ascribed to his brother Balin in the First Typescript (Marq. 1/1/33:3) and henceforth. The passage here, therefore, marks Tolkien’s decision to keep to the decision in Chapter VI to have Balin be the group’s most observant dwarf.
13 Note that the detail of the hobbit’s going last at the end of the line, which did not survive into the next stage (the typescript) nor the published book, reverses the sequence used with the trolls and with Medwed, where the hobbit went first each time.
14 This is the first mention in the original text of the thirst suffered by the adventurers, a motif developed with great effect in the Enchanted Stream interpolation and published book (see p. 351).
15 The ominous implications of this last phrase do not become apparent until the spiders attack several pages later; note that in the next chapter the Elvenking rebukes the dwarves with having ‘roused the spiders with your riot and clamour’ (see p. 380).
The History of the Hobbit Page 41
