The History of the Hobbit
Page 56
The final Wilderland map published in the original and all subsequent editions (DAA.[399]) does not entirely agree with the accompanying published text (DAA.241). The easternmost extension of the hills in which the Elvenking’s halls are located does indeed appear on the left bank of the river† but the river does not ‘round’ any ‘steep shoulder of land’ but instead curves gradually to the right as it flows through marshlands.
† These same heights can also be seen rising on the left (north) bank of the Forest River in both of Tolkien’s paintings illustrating Bilbo’s arrival by barrel at the huts of the raft-elves (H-S#122 & 124). The unused coloured pencil sketch (Plate VIII [top]) clearly shows hills on the north bank of the river, while the published version (DAA plate two [bottom]) shows both these hills and the lack of any corresponding heights on the right (south) bank of the river.
2 This mention of these unseen landmarks in the midst of this vivid descriptive passage is remarkable, since our point-of-view character cannot see them and they have not yet appeared on any of the sketch-maps. These low hills or badlands show up most clearly on the early version of the Wilderland map that accompanied the submission of the completed book to Allen & Unwin in October 1936 (Plate I [bottom]), where they do indeed extend north-east from the Lonely Mountain instead of the more westerly orientation they are given in the final Wilderland map. They can also be seen depicted pictorially in the careful sketch of the Lonely Mountain that with the final map of the Long Lake made up another of the five maps accompanying the October 1936 submission (Plate II [top]).
3 In the next stage of the text, the first typescript, this section was greatly expanded to bring in a reference to the Dragon and a reminder of the missing wizard’s mysterious business. Major changes are marked in italics to highlight the degree of expansion.
. . . The talk was all of the trade that came and went on the waterways and the growth of the traffic on the river, as the roads out of the East towards Mirkwood vanished or fell into disuse; and of the bickering of the lakemen and the wood-elves about the upkeep of the forest-river and the care of the banks. Those lands had changed much since the days when dwarves dwelt in the Mountain, days which nearly everybody [> most people now] remembered only as a very shadowy tradition. They had changed even in recent years, and since the last news Gandalf had had of them. Great floods and rains had swollen the waters that flowed East; and there had been an earthquake or two (which some were inclined to attribute to the dragon – alluding to him chiefly with a curse and an ominous nod in the direction of the Mountain). The marshes and bogs had spread wider and wider on either side. Paths had vanished, and many a rider and wanderer too, if they had tried to find the lost ways across. The elf-road through the wood which the dwarves had followed on the advice of Beorn now came to a doubtful and little used end at the eastern edge of the forest; only the river offered any longer a safe way from the skirts of Mirkwood in the North to the mountain-shadowed plains beyond, and the river was guarded by the wood-elves’ king.
So you see Bilbo had come in the end by the only road that was any good. It might have been some comfort to Mr. Baggins shivering on the barrels, if he had known that news of this had reached Gandalf far away and given him great anxiety, and that he was in fact finishing his other business (which does not come into this tale) and getting ready to come in search of Thorin’s company. But he [> Bilbo] did not know it.
All he knew was that the river seemed to go on and on and on for ever, and he was hungry, and had a nasty cold in the nose, and did not like the way the Mountain seemed to frown at him and threaten him as they [> it] drew ever nearer . . .
—First Typescript, typescript pages 103–4 (Marq. 1/1/60:1–2).
For more on the theme of roads falling into disuse and the increasing difficulty of travel, see also the 1960 Hobbit (p. 818); for a lucid description of the theme of depopulation as settled lands turn into desolate wastelands, see Henry Gee ‘The Gates of Minas Tirith’, Chapter 14 in The Science of Middle-earth (page 151).
4 Added: ‘over
The reference to the drowned valley that has now become a great lake sounds like an echo of the many drowned lands in Tolkien’s earlier tales, but here no actual tale seems to underlie the reference; like the ruins of the earlier, greater town and the reference to ‘wars’ (plural), it seems to be a deliberate layering of an untold prehistory for artistic effect.
5 Note the plural ‘bridges’ here and elsewhere in this chapter; back in Plot Notes B the reference had been to a single bridge; see p. 364. The plural here persists through both typescripts and was only changed to ‘A great bridge’ in the page proofs (Marq. 1/2/2: page 198). At the same time, the ‘chief bridge’ on p. 436 became the ‘great bridge’ (1/2/2: page 199) and the plural was removed from the description of the bridges being thrown down during Smaug’s attack (cf. p. 548; page proof 1/2/2: page 253). The decision for Lake Town to have only one great bridge seems to have been determined through the two illustrations Tolkien drew of the scene (Plate VIII [bottom] and DAA.244/H-S#127), apparently created over the Christmas 1936 vacation, the second of which he submitted to Allen & Unwin on January 4th, 1937 (the day after his 45th birthday). If so, the changes in page proof (made between February 24th and March 10th 1937) would have been made to bring the text into agreement with the illustration. The colour sketch ‘Death of Smaug’ (see Part Two) also shows the easternmost end of the fallen single Great Bridge and so definitely postdates the submission of the completed manuscript to Allen & Unwin in Oct. 1936; it was probably created between May and August 1937 along with the other colour pieces Tolkien made for the book at Houghton Mifflin’s request (JRRT/Allen & Unwin correspondence, A&U Archives).
6 This marks the first appearance of the names Thror and Thrain. See part iii of the commentary, starting on p. 455.
7 This is the first appearance of the name Thorin used in the text as the chief dwarf’s name, although the change had been anticipated as far back as Plot Notes A (see p. 293). Tolkien’s rejection of ‘Gandalf’ as the name of the chief dwarf no doubt came because, on reflection, it offended Tolkien’s sense of decorum to have a dwarf named ‘elf’ (Gand-alf: ‘wand-elf’). For more on the name ‘Thorin’, see p. 455.
8 Added: where they sat and muttered or moaned.
9 This is the first appearance of Thorin’s cognomen Oakenshield since Plot Notes A, where remarkably enough it had already been linked with Thorin’s name. Like ‘Thorin’ itself, it comes from the list of dwarf-names that appear in both the Völuspá (in the Elder Edda) and the Gylfaginning (‘The Deluding of Gylfi’, in the Prose Edda) as Eikinskjaldi. However, there it is simply another dwarf-name and has no linkage to ‘Thorin’; the two actually occur in different stanzas of Völuspá (Thorin in the third line of stanza 12 and Eikinskialdi in the last line of stanza 13, respectively). See Appendix III.
10 It is possible that this ‘captain of the guard’ is Bard, who later plays such a major role in the dwarves’ fortunes; see p. 553.
11 This is the first mention that Fili and Kili are Thorin’s close kin. Note that they are originally his great-nephews, his sister’s grandsons, whereas in the final book their relationship is one generation closer (his sister’s sons). The original relationship was still in place when the First Typescript was originally typed (cf. typescript page 106; 1/1/60:4) but had already been changed before the Second Typescript (1/1/41:5) was created.
The uncle/nephew bond was extremely important in heroic medieval literature – cf. Roland and Charlemagne, Beowulf and Hygelac, Gawain and Arthur. This motif is more or less entirely absent from the Silmarillion tradition and only enters the legendarium at this point, but later became of great importance: cf. Éomer and Théoden, not to mention Frodo and Bilbo.
12 This was originally followed by a cancelled line that would have marked the beginning of a new paragraph: ‘Yet a
t least the King of the woods gave us food, and sh[elter]’ – a none-too-subtle hint on the hungry dwarf’s part, in keeping with his earlier verbal sparring before the Elvenking (p. 315).
13 The simile may be significant, since within a few chapters the town will indeed burn, as had already been foreseen in Plot Notes B (although in the Plot Notes the dragon did not succeed in burning it to the waterline; see p. 364). Note also the line, ominous in retrospect, in the town-folk’s song: ‘The lakes shall shine and burn’.
14 An earlier draft of this poem can be found on the back of the next manuscript page; after this version was superseded Tolkien struck it through with a cancellation line, then turned the paper upside down and over to use the reversed back as a fresh sheet (manuscript page 135; Marq. 1/1/11:8). A large Roman numeral II appears at the top of this page, drawn directly over the first three cancelled lines:
II
When the king beneath the Mountains comes.
the Lord beneath the Hills
the lord of golden Fountains
This is followed by the draft:
The king beneath the Mountains
The king of carven stone
the lord of golden [> silver] Fortress
shall come into his own
[The >] His crown shall be uplifted
his harp shall be restrung
His halls shall be relighted
his praises shall be resung
His wealth shall flow like water
his gifts like light of sun
The river run in gladness
And the grass
He
his harp shall be restrung
his halls shall echo golden
to song[s] of yore resung.
[The >] His wealth shall flow like fountains
[The > like >] The rivers golden run
the grass [< woods] shall wave [> wax] on mountain
and the grass beneath the sun
The rivers run in gladness
[The > and men >]
the lake be filled with gems [> shall shine and burn]
[And men know no more >]
And sorrow fail and sadness
When the Mountain-kings return
The second draft fair copy incorporated into the main manuscript (see pp. 439–40) required only a very few minor changes (mostly typographical), made between the manuscript and typescript stages, to achieve the text of the published version (DAA.251). The most significant change comes in the final line, which shifts from the plural (‘When the Mountain-kings return’) to the singular (‘At the mountain king’s return’): compare Ms. 1/1/11:6 (manuscript page 134) with Ts. 1/1/60:5–6 (First Typescript, pages 107–8). One change marked in the manuscript which was not taken up into the typescript version is a pencilled change from ‘kings’ to ‘lords’ in the last line.
Curiously enough, between the first and second drafts the word lake (i.e., the Long Lake) in the third line from the end was changed to lakes (plural), a reading which has persisted ever since. While certainly justifiable from the point of view of poetic license, given the dominance of plurals in the closing stanza (it is Mountain-kings, not merely the King under the Mountain, whose return they praise and prophesy), it is nevertheless striking for Tolkien to move from the precise and accurate to the general and ‘poetic’.
15 This passage was revised and expanded to read
In fact he gave up his chair to Thorin, and Fili and Kili sat beside him and even Bilbo was given a place at the high table – no explanation of where he came in (although no songs had alluded to him even in the obscurest way) [beyond >] was asked for in the general bustle.
The cancelled ‘beyond’ suggests some such cover story as that which Thorin had offered the captain of the guard – that is, ‘Mr. Baggins, our guide from the lands of the West’.
According to the much later chronology of The Lord of the Rings, this welcoming feast took place on September 22nd, but clearly no such specific time-scheme was present in the original conception; see ‘Timeline and Chronology’ in The 1960 Hobbit, especially pp. 823 & 832.
16 This sentence was recast between the manuscript and First Typescript to the reading in the published book: ‘Thorin looked and walked as if his kingdom was already regained and Smaug chopped up into little pieces.’
17 The apostrophe is missing in the original, but presumably Tolkien shifted from the singular (dwarf’s) – that is, Thorin’s – to the plural (dwarves’) here rather than offered up an alternative plural (dwarfs’).
18 The illegible word here might begin with a k and end in an -ly (or just possibly -ing), but it is certainly not ‘killing’. The parenthetical ‘(being a wise elf)’ was cancelled, presumably before the section following the dash was added.
19 This passage was cancelled and replaced by the following (written in the margin and marked for insertion at this point): ‘I think that like the king he never believed . . .’
(i)
Lake Town
The vivid description of Lake Town that dominates this chapter is another example of Tolkien drawing upon his knowledge of history and prehistory as inspiration for his creative work. As Christina Scull was the first to point out,1 archeological fact often underlies Tolkien’s fiction – an aspect of his writing that is not surprising, given his avowed ‘passion . . . for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world’ (letter to Waldman, 1951; Letters p. 144), as well as his emphatic preference for ‘history, true or feigned’ as a mode of writing (LotR.11, Foreword to the Second Edition). An interest in legends on the edge of recorded history naturally implies knowledge and interest in both sides of that borderland: a solid familiarity with early recorded history and a matching interest in unrecorded prehistory as well. By the same token, anyone who like Tolkien sets out to write ‘feigned history’ must be well acquainted with the real thing if his pseudohistory is to be plausible and persuasive. A good example can be found in the frame story for The Book of Lost Tales, the Eriol legend, set in the murky period just before the Jutes (closely followed by the Angles and the Saxons) invaded Britain and turned it into England, a period Tolkien revealed extensive historical knowledge of in his posthumously published lectures on the Freswæl, or ‘Fight at Finnesburg’ (Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode, ed. Alan Bliss [1982]). Furthermore, Tolkien’s outline for the unwritten chapters of The Lost Road (HME V.77–8; see also JRRT to Christopher Bretherton, 16th July 1964, Letters p. 347) shows his intention to have that work, starting in the familiar present and ending in the wholly invented mythic world of lost Númenor, bridge the gap between the two through episodes set first in poorly-recorded historical periods (ninth-century England during the collapse of the Angles’ kingdoms under Viking assault,2 Lombardic Italy of the mid-sixth century AD), then in eras known only through legends (Norse lands in the time of Scyld Sceafing, Ireland during the legendary days of the Tuatha dé Danaan), then periods known from archeology but for which all legends and stories have been lost (the Ice Age, the era of the Paleolithic cave-paintings), and finally beyond, into his own imagined prehistory (Beleriand and finally Númenor).3
A closer look at the evidence shows that Tolkien was very well versed indeed in prehistory. We have already seen how he modeled Medwed’s hall on modern archeological reconstructions of a Norse mead-hall (see commentary following Chapter VII, p. 261). Similarly, in his 1932 Father Christmas letter he drew on Paleolithic cave art, such as that found in the caves of Altamira, Spain [17,000 BC] (the similar caves at Lascaux and Chauvet not yet having been discovered). So too with Lake Town, which is closely modeled on the Neolithic lake-dwellings or pfahlbauten (‘pile structures’) first discovered in Switzerland in 1854 on the shores of Lake Zurich.4 That Tolkien is drawing directly on accounts of the Swiss discovery, probably the classic Die Keltische Pfahlbauten in den Schweizerseen by Dr. Ferdinand Keller (literally ‘The Celtic Pile
-structures in the Swiss Lakes’ [1854], translated into English by John Edward Lee as The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and Other Parts of Europe [1866]), is shown by his reference (p. 436) to how
The rotting piles of another greater town could be seen along the shores when there was a drought.
This reference to another, greater, Lake Town (what archeologists excavating the site would no doubt call Lake Town I, to distinguish it from the later Lake Town II visited by Thorin & Company and the still later Lake Town III that replaces it described in the final chapter) is unusual, because we learn nothing else about it; its destruction seems to belong to the distant past, long before Smaug’s advent. It is striking, therefore, that the first prehistorical lake-dwelling was discovered because a dry winter lowered the water level of Lake Zurich, exposing the ancient wooden piles that had once supported the settlement; Tolkien’s description seems to be a direct echo of the archeological discovery of some seventy-five years before. Scull (‘The Influence of Archaeology and History’ page 41; see Note 1), Anderson (DAA.245), and Artist & Illustrator (H-S#125) all reproduce nineteenth- and early twentieth-century images from various archeological texts showing artists’ conceptions of what such Neolithic villages might have looked like; another, found in Bryony & John Coles’ Sweet Track to Glastonbury, is an early twentieth-century depiction of the lake-dwellings closest to Tolkien’s home, those at Meare and Glastonbury (some seventy-five miles from Oxford).5 None of these images corresponds exactly to Lake Town as Tolkien describes it in his text or depicts it in his three drawings of the site (‘Esgaroth’ [Plate VIII, bottom], ‘Lake Town’ [DAA.244/H-S#127], and ‘Death of Smaug’ [in plate section two], all of which clearly date from the time after he had already submitted the book to Allen & Unwin for publication (the first two to December 1936 and the third probably between May and August 1937), since they show only one bridge between Lake Town and the shore (see Text Note 5 above). The closest is that appearing in Robert Munro’s Les Stations Lacustres d’Europe aux Ages de la Pierre et du Bronze [1908] (‘The Lake Stations of Europe during the Stone and Bronze Ages’), said to have been based on an earlier drawing by A. de Mortillet6 (DAA.245 [top], H-S#125). Given the exactness with which Tolkien based some of his drawings upon pre-existing sources – e.g., ‘The Trolls’ on Jennie Harbour’s ‘Hansel and Grethel Sat Down by the Fire’, ‘Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes’ on Archibald Thorburn’s chromolithograph of a golden eagle, and ‘Firelight in Beorn’s house’, the original conception of Medwed’s dwelling, on the picture of Hrolf Kraki’s meadhall that had appeared in his friend E. V. Gordon’s An Introduction to Old Norse – it is probable that he had a more direct source for his illustrations of Lake Town that has not yet been discovered.