The History of the Hobbit
Page 50
Follow follow stars that leap,
Up the heavens high and steep
[Through the >] Turn when dawn comes over land
over rapid over sand
South away and south away
Seek the sunlight and the day,
back to pasture back to mead
where the kine and oxen feed
Back to gardens on the hills
where the berry swells and fills
under sunlight under day
South away and south away
Down the swift dark stream you go
Back to
Now the last barrel was being rolled to the opening. In despair poor little Bilbo caught hold of it, and was pushed over the edge with it. Down into the water he fell, splash!, in the cold dark water. He came up spluttering clinging to the barrel; but he could not climb on top of it, for every time he tried, it rolled round and ducked him under again.
He heard the elves still singing in the cellars above. Then the trapdoors went to with a boom, and their voices faded away. He was in the dark tunnel, [cold >] floating in icy water, all alone – for you can’t count friends that are all packed up in barrels, can you? Very soon a grey patch came in the darkness ahead. He heard the creak of the water gate being hauled up; and he found he was in the midst of a bobbing and bumping mass of casks and tubs all pressing together to pass through under the arch and out into the open stream. He had as much as he could do to prevent himself from being hustled and battered to bits. At last the jostling mass began to break up and swing off one by one under the stony arch and away away. He saw now that it could have been no good at all, if he had managed to sit on his barrel – there was no room to spare, not even for a hobbit, between the barrel and the stooping [> suddenly stooping] roof where the gate was.
Out they went under the overhanging branches of the trees on either bank. Bilbo wondered for a moment what the dwarves were feeling, and if a lot of water was getting inside their tubs. Some of the barrels that bobbed by him in the gloom seemed pretty low in the water; and he guessed these had dwarves inside. ‘I hope I [> we] put the lids on well’ thought he. But he was really far more anxious about himself. He was shivering with cold, and wondered if he would die of it, before the luck turned, and if he would be able to hang on much longer, even long enough for there to be a chance of getting near the bank, and slipping off onto dry land.TN24
His chance came all right. The [eddy] current carried several barrels close
So at last he came to a place where the trees on either side got thinner. The paler sky could be seen between them. The dark river opened out into a wider place and was joined by the main water of the Forest Stream flowing from [> past] the king’s great doors.TN26 There was a pale sheet of water no longer overshadowed but with dancing and broken reflections of cloud and star upon it. Here the incoming water of the Forest River swept them all away to the North Bank, where [a long shore of >] a regular bay had been eaten away walled by a jutting cape of hard rock. There was a stony gravely shore, where most of the casks ran aground, though some went on to thump against the stony pier. But there were people on the look-out on the banks. All the barrels were poled and pushed together into the shallows; and there they were left till morning. Poor dwarves! Bilbo slipped off and waded ashore, and sneaked off to the huts by the water’s edge. He no longer thought twice about picking up a supper uninvited if he got the chance; he had been obliged to do it for so long; and he knew what it was now only too well to be really hungry not just interested in the dainties of a well-filled larder. He caught a glimpse of fire too, which appealed to him with his dripping and ragged clothes clinging to him cold & clammy.
There is no need to tell you of his adventures that night, for now we are drawing near the end of the journey, and the last great end of the adventure,TN27 and we must be hurrying on. He was given away by his wet footsteps and the trail of the drippings and there was a fine commotion in the riverside village when he escaped with a loaf and flagon [> water-flask] and a pie which didn’t belong to him into the woods. He had to pass the night wet as he was, but the flagon helped him to do that; actually he lay
He woke with a sneeze! It was grey morning. There was a merry racket down by the river. They were making up a raft, and would soon be off down to the Lake. Bilbo sneezed again! He was no longer dripping, but he was cold all over. He scrambled down [as best he could >] as fast as his stiff legs would take him, and managed in the general business to get onto the mass of casks now all lashed together. Luckily there was no sun to cast awkward shadows.TN29 There was a mighty pushing of poles, and a heaving and
‘This is a heavy load’ some grumbled. ‘They float too deep – some of these are never empty, I’ll swear’ said another. ‘Had they come ashore in the light we might have had a look inside’ they said. ‘No time now’
And off they went slowly at first until they passed the little point of rock fending off with their poles, and caught the main stream, and went swiftly off down down towards the Lake.TN31
Once again there is no chapter break between what became the end of Chapter IX and the start of Chapter X, which in the manuscript is a simple paragraph break in the middle of a page (Marq. 1/1/11:1). Even in the First Typescript, where the book has already been divided into chapters, the chapters start more often than not in the middle of a page (this being the case for both the start and stop of Chapter IX; cf. 1/1/59:1 and 1/1/60:1). By contrast, the Second Typescript, for all its shortcomings (see p. xxiv), does start new chapters on fresh pages (1/1/39:1, 1/1/40:1, &c.).
The text of the story resumes on p. 435 of this book.
TEXT NOTES
1 At this point, Tolkien wrote in the left margin ‘not needed’. That is, he decided to drop the Theseus theme and omit all mention of the ball of spider-thread by which Bilbo navigated the dark maze of Mirkwood. Since this comment is written in pencil, it belongs to the period when he was creating the First Typescript.
This sentence was recast in the typescript to emphasize the hopelessness of the party’s situation when captured: ‘Each dwarf was blindfolded, but that did not make much difference, for even Bilbo with the use of his eyes could not see where they were going, and neither he nor the others knew where they had started from anyway.’ – that is, in the revised version of the story (see ‘The Enchanted Stream’), as opposed to the original where they were captured on the path.
Another typescript passage in the next sentence seems intended to paint the elves in a better light, more in keeping with their characterization in the final parts of the book: ‘the elves were making the dwarves go as fast as ever they could (of course they did not know how ill and tired their prisoners were)’ (typescript page 93† ; 1/1/59:1–2). Similarly, in the typescript the king orders them unbound when he sees them ‘for they were ragged and weary’. The first of these two passages was changed in page proofs (Marq. 1/2/2 page 178) to ‘as fast as ever they could, sick and weary as they were. The king had ordered them to make haste.’, the reading in t
he published book.
† This had originally been the bottom half of the original last page of the preceding chapter, but after the top half (now 1/1/30:5) was cut away the bottom half was renumbered from 92 to 93.
2 Tolkien originally wrote simply ‘He questions the dwarves’, then cancelled it and began the next paragraph with a new line. Note the use of present tense, which stylistically matches the Plot Notes more than the full text of the book.
3 This passage was recast slightly by an addition written in the upper margin and marked for insertion at this point: ‘. . . where they were going, and where they were coming from; but he did not tell them that Gandalf was also in his hands. The dwarves were surly and wd. not answer him . . .’
4 Originally another name was written before Balin’s, then completely blotted out, leaving a square of solid ink. Use of a light table and careful examination of the few surviving ligatures leads me to believe the cancelled name to be either Dwalin or Bifur; Bofur is also a possibility. Unfortunately, the obliteration is too nearly complete for any certainty.
This is the first time that we are told Balin is the oldest of all the dwarves after Gandalf, or indeed that Gandalf their leader is even older than Balin (described the first time Bilbo sees him as ‘a very old-looking dwarf’ (p. 32) and often referred to as ‘old Balin’. According to the House of Durin family tree (LotR.1117) – drawn up more than twenty years later and representing a different strata of the mythology – Thorin was 195 years old at the time of Bilbo’s journey and Balin 178; Dwalin, the next eldest of whom we have any record, 169.
5 Note that the Elvenking makes no reference to having had his own revel disturbed by the dwarves, for the very good reason that the ‘woodland king’ scene did not enter into the story until the First Typescript (see ‘The Enchanted Stream’, p. 354). Still, it is curious that he refers to the dwarves’ having ‘twice pursued and vexed my people’ when in all versions of the Mirkwood chapter they encountered the elusive elven feasters three times, not twice. This slip is rectified in the typescripts, which correctly refer to three times that the starving dwarves ‘pursue and trouble’ the feasters.
6 ‘other business in . . . the lands to the East.’: this phrase survived into the published book, but we never receive any explication of what that business might be.
7 his shadow: It seems worth emphasizing yet again that Bilbo’s ring has different powers from Frodo’s ring in the sequel, and cannot disguise his shadow when it makes the rest of him invisible. The image of Bilbo trapped inside the fortress of his enemies after a tricky gate closes behind him may derive at least in part from Chrétien’s Yvain: The Knight of the Lion, which vividly places its hero in similar straits.
8 At the end of this paragraph, Tolkien later added the following, writing in small letters to squeeze it into the available space:
He often wished [to >] that he cd. get a message for help/B
– that is, a message for help to Bladorthin, this having been the means whereby they were rescued in the projections sketched out in Plot Notes A, wherein Bilbo set forth to fetch aid.
The typescript contains a new sentence developing this thought, only to firmly reject it:
He often wished, too, that he could get a message for help sent to the wizard, but that of course was quite impossible, and he soon realized that if anything was to be done it would have to be done by his own small self.
The published book repeats this phrasing, except that at the end it substitutes ‘it would have to be done by Mr. Baggins, alone and unaided.’
9 The typescript adds ‘and was even beginning to think of telling the king all about his treasure and his quest (which shows how low-spirited he had become)’. In the original, even though imprisoned for much longer with no idea whether his companions had survived Gandalf showed no signs of yielding to his captor’s demands.
10 The typescript expands upon this passage:
For Thorin had taken heart again hearing how the hobbit had rescued his companions from the spiders, and was determined once more not to ransom himself with promises to the king of a share in the treasure, until all hope of escaping in any other way had disappeared, until in fact the remarkable Mr. Invisible Baggins (of whom he began to have a very high opinion after all) had altogether failed to think of something clever.
The other dwarves quite agreed when they got the message. They all thought their own shares in the treasure (which they quite regarded as theirs, in spite of their plight and the still unconquered dragon) would suffer seriously if the woodelves claimed part of it, and they all trusted Bilbo. Just what Gandalf had said would happen, you see. Perhaps that was part of his reason for going off and leaving them.
Bilbo however did not feel nearly so hopeful as they did. He did not like being depended on by everyone, and he wished he had the wizard at hand. But that was no use: probably all the dark distance of Mirkwood lay between them. He sat and thought and thought, until his head nearly burst, but no bright idea would come. One invisible ring was a jolly fine thing, but it was not much good among fourteen. But of course, as you have guessed, he did rescue his friends in the end, and this is how it happened.
—Marq. 1/1/59:4.
11 In the First Typescript (1/1/59:4) this became ‘was very fond of wine, though none grew in those parts’ – corrected in page proofs to ‘. . . though no vines grew’.
12 This sentence originally read ‘From the Lake Town it was brought on rafts, or else got floated up the Forest river that flowed also into the Lake which formed part of the course of the Running River’.
This part of the story marks the emergence of the name Lake Town. First the story refers merely to ‘the Long Lake and a town of men that had grown up there, built out on bridges far into the lake’. In the next sentence this settlement is referred to as ‘the Lake-town’, more as a common noun than a name. But by the end of this paragraph it has become a proper name as the phrase ‘to Lake town’ indicates. Remarkably enough, this name had appeared long before, in the very first stage of composition, when Tolkien used it as a label on the rough sketch-map incorporated into the Pryftan Fragment (see p. 19 and the Frontispiece). But when he came to write Plot Notes B he had either forgotten the name or chose not to use it; only now does it re-emerge. For a similar example of Tolkien proposing and then not using a name (at least, not for some time), see the opening of Plot Notes A.
13 The chief guard’s reply first appears in the typescript, in exactly the same words that appear in the final book; he is without dialogue in the original.
14 The typescript includes the detail that the drunken butler went on talking without noticing that his friend was no longer listening, as in the final book.
15 This end-of-autumn feast ‘ere the winter should come on’ (probably corresponding to the Celtic feast of Samhain, roughly the 1st of November in our calendar), is another indication of the extended time-line of the original conception. Far from having already arrived in Lake Town by the beginning of autumn (in time for a feast on Bilbo’s birthday, 22nd September, according to the much later chronology of The Lord of the Rings), they here escape from the elf-mound at the end of autumn.
For the theme of elves being taken unawares by intruders at festival time, see The Silmarillion (Silm.75, 242, & 248). This idea goes very far back in the mythology – cf. BLT 1.144 & 146 (Melko’s attack on Fëanor’s home and slaying his father during Manwë’s great reconciliation feast), BLT II.172 (Melko’s attack on Gondolin as they prepare to celebrate the dawn festival known as the Gates of Summer), and HME IV.153 (1930 Quenta: ‘and [Eärendel] came at a time of festival even as Morgoth and Ungoliant had in ages past’.
16 This sentence was originally preceded by ‘Into twelve barrels, twelve dwarves got. There was plenty of room’. The typescript version of the following sentence adds details of the ‘other stuffs’ that came in barrels: ‘butter, apples, and all sorts of things’.
17 This sentence was originally followed by ‘It was an anxio
us and a busy time. Soon twelve dwarves were packed. Last came Balin whom’. The spelling ‘dwarfs’ in the preceding sentence is clear in the manuscript (Ms. page 124; Marq. 1/1/9:6), replaced in the typescript by the more familiar ‘dwarves’ (Ts. page 98; Marq. 1/1/59:6).
18 This marks the last appearance of Gandalf the dwarf – as the late Taum Santoski remarked, Gandalf goes into the barrel but it is Thorin who emerges six manuscript pages later.
19 This line was originally followed with ‘The guard and the butler woke with the sound. Up they jumped with a start’.
The name Galion, in the next line, is significant, as he is the only elf named in The Hobbit (Elrond being half-elven, and the reference to Tinúviel not surviving into the published book). The name is probably Gnomish, composed of the elements gal-, or light (cf. the Gnomish Lexicon, page 37) – an element that also appears in the familiar names Galadriel (‘lady of light’) and Gilgalad (‘star-light’) – and -ion, here probably a patronymic suffix (cf. Salo, A Gateway to Sindarin, p. 165). If so, then it would mean something like ‘son of light’.
‘Galion’ was immediately preceded in the manuscript by another cancelled name, probably incomplete, which looks to have been Bong or possibly Bomg. I can make nothing of this, unless it contains the element bo(n), meaning ‘son of’ (Gnomish Lexicon, p. 23).
20 Tolkien originally began the next page with the line
‘Those are no wine casks there’ said Galion.
but he cancelled this, turned the page upside down, and began again with the elves’ song.
21 This quick glimpse of Bilbo’s possible fate is remarkably like what happened to Gollum, when ‘the goblins came, and he was cut off from his friends far under the mountains.’ (p. 156).
22 Deleted: ‘he had only the faintest notion of the direction of the Forest Stream’.
23 For the first rough draft of this poem, see Plot Notes B (pp. 364–5). Aside from the addition of punctuation and capitalization, the version here corresponds exactly to that published in The Hobbit, with two exceptions: the substitution of the word ‘cold’ for ‘high’ in line fourteen (‘Up the heavens cold and steep’), a change that first appears in the typescript, and the replacement of ‘woods’ – the reading in both typescripts – by ‘lands’ (‘Back to lands you once did know’) in the final line.