The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  The treasure’s original owners, the Rodothlim elves (who in later forms of the legend became the Noldor of Nargothrond, Finrod Felagund’s people), were destroyed by Glorund and his goblin [Orc] army, largely because of the arrogance and ofermod of Túrin before the battle. After his victory, Glorund claims all the treasure for himself and uses it for his bed, just as Smaug will later do with the wealth of Girion’s and Thror’s people:3

  all the mighty treasure that [the Orcs] had brought from the rocky halls and heaped glistering in the sun before the doors he coveted for himself and forbade them set finger on it, and they durst not withstand him, nor could they have done so an they would . . . (BLT II.85).

  . . . the dragon gloated upon the hoard and lay coiled upon it, and the fame of that great treasure of golden vessels and of unwrought gold that lay by the caves above the stream fared far and wide about; yet the great worm slept before it . . . and fumes of smoke went up from his nostrils as he slept (BLT II.87–8).4

  As in The Hobbit, a small group later dares to venture into the dragon’s territory to see if they can gain the treasure, but in the earlier tale these are not any survivors of the dragon’s attack but an outside group, a picked band of wood-elves5 sent by Tinwelint the elvenking, who is frank about his motivations:

  Now the folk of Tinwelint were of the woodlands and had scant wealth, yet did they love fair and beauteous things, gold and silver and gems . . . nor was the king of other mind in this, and his riches were small . . .

  Therefore did Tinwelint answer: ‘. . . it is a truth that I have need and desire of treasury, and it may be that such shall come to me by this venture . . .’ (BLT II.95).

  In the event, the expedition ends in disaster and achieves nothing besides stirring up the dragon and exposing Nienóri, Túrin’s sister, directly to the dragon’s curse.6 Some time later, after Glorund’s death at Túrin’s hands far to the north (see commentary following Chapter XIII), the treasure passes into the keeping of Mîm the dwarf, who is here a figure of much greater stature than the petty-dwarf of the same name in the published Silmarillion (Silm.202–6 & 230). Indeed in the early tale Mîm is almost a Durin figure, called ‘Mîm the fatherless’, whose slaying is one of the factors that cause the dwarves of Nogrod (the Nauglath) and those of Belegost (the Indrafangs, a name later applied to Thorin’s kin) to unite in a war of vengeance ‘vow[ing] to rest not ere Mîm was thrice avenged’ – a situation strongly reminiscent of the seven kindreds of the dwarves uniting to avenge the death of Thror, Durin’s heir; cf. pp. 73 & 782 and LotR. 1111. Mîm’s warnings to Úrin of the Woods (the later Húrin, Túrin’s father, who comes with a band of elven outlaws to carry off the treasure), are very much in keeping with the ideas expressed more than a decade later in Plot Notes D:

  . . . one only dwelt there [in the caves of the Rodothlim] still, an old misshapen dwarf who sat ever on the pile of gold singing black songs of enchantment to himself . . . when those Elves approached the dwarf stood before the doors of the cave . . . and he cried: ‘. . . Hearken now to the words of Mîm the fatherless, and depart, touching not this gold no more than were it venomous fires. For has not Glorund lain long years upon it, and the evil of the drakes of Melko is on it, and no good can it bring to Man or Elf, but I, only I, can ward it, Mîm the dwarf, and by many a dark spell have I bound it to myself’ (BLT II.113–14; italics mine).7

  Thus the twin motifs of dragon-haunted gold bringing bad luck and a dwarven claim to immunity from the dragon-sickness were established very early on in the legendarium (although in the end both would be almost entirely reversed; see below). Glorund’s hoard, doubly cursed by the dragon-sickness and Mîm’s dying curse upon it – the one attracting people irresistibly to the gold and the other striking down those who give in to its allure and claim it – brings disaster to all its subsequent owners: the outlaws who carry it away (slain by the wood-elves), the wood-elves and Tinwelint himself (slain and their realm overthrown by angry dwarven smiths cheated of their payment for recasting the gold into treasures), the victorious dwarves (who fall to fighting among themselves over the treasure and are ultimately ambushed and killed by Beren’s green elves), and even Tinúviel (i.e., Lúthien, whose second, human, life is cut short by the Nauglafring Beren gives her, the only piece of treasure he retained).8 And although ‘The Nauglafring’ stresses Mîm’s curse as the chief agent at work in the betrayals and murders that follow (cf. Christopher Tolkien’s comment on BLT II.246), the dragon-sickness is also definitely at work:

  Now came Gwenniel [Melian] to Tinwelint [Thingol] and said: ‘Touch not this gold, for my heart tells me it is trebly cursed. Cursed indeed by the dragon’s breath, and cursed by thy lieges’ blood that moistens it, and the death of those they slew; but some more bitter and more binding ill methinks hangs over it that I may not see’ (BLT II.223).9

  Over and over again the tale stresses the unnatural power that sight of this gold has over the actions of those who come into contact with it: ‘he [Tinwelint] might not shake off its spell’ (BLT II.223), ‘the spell of the gold had pierced [Ufedhin’s] heart’ (ibid., page 224), ‘by reason of the glamour of the gold the king repented his agreement’ (ibid., page 225), ‘he [Narthseg] was bitten by the gold-lust of Glorund’s hoard’ (ibid., page 231). Late in the Tale, Gwendelin [Melian] reaffirms the complex nature of the curse, including ‘the dragon’s ban upon the gold’ (BLT II.239), while it is explicitly stated that the elf-on-elf battle wherein the Sons of Fëanor kill Dior, Beren’s son, and destroy the green-elves’ kingdom is not only because of their remorseless pursuit of the Silmaril but also ‘nor indeed was the spell of Mîm and of the dragon wanting’ (BLT II.241).

  Perhaps this long and complicated story offers a salutary lesson into what might have happened had Bilbo and the wizard not intervened: the dwarves in possession of the dragon-treasure slain by the men of Lake Town, who in turn might soon have found themselves at odds with the wood-elves over its distribution, if the earlier story is any guide. Dragon-treasure has a way of arousing treachery and setting allies at each other’s throats. Even within the Sigurd story, the hero’s first act after slaying the dragon is to murder his foster-father, Regin, who had taught him how to kill Fafnir but was now expressing remorse over the deed (Fafnir having been his own brother before his transformation into a dragon after killing their father and stealing the entire treasure for himself). In words that sound remarkably like internal paranoia, the birds warn Sigurd that ‘Regin [is] minded to beguile the man who trusts him’ (i.e., young Sigurd himself): ‘Let him [Sigurd] smite the head from off him then, and be only lord of all that gold . . . not so wise is he if he spareth him, whose brother he hath slain already . . . Handy and good rede to slay him, and be lord of the treasure!’ (Morris & Magnússon, pages 64–5).

  Luckily, Smaug’s hoard is not cursed to the same degree: the dragon-sickness is there, but not the additional death-curse. It’s true that the dwarves cursed Smaug himself (‘[we] sat and wept in hiding and cursed Smaug’ and ‘. . . we still mean to get it back, and bring our curses home to Smaug’ – Chapter I (c), pp. 72–3), but it is specifically the dragon that they curse, not the treasure itself (which was, after all, their own). Then too there is the curse inscribed on the treasure-jar in the painting ‘Conversation with Smaug’ (see Plate XI [detail] and commentary below), but this would not apply to Thorin & Company, who are Thror and Thrain’s rightful heirs, nor Bilbo, who is their contracted representative. Despite the later devlopment of the ‘dragon-sickness’ theme in the Third Phase and published book, relatively few succumb to it: Bilbo (very briefly), Thorin himself (who heroically throws off its influence during the Battle of Five Armies and dies free of it), most of Thorin’s fellow dwarves to a lesser degree, and the Master of Lake Town at some later date. Ultimately, in fact, Thror’s recovered treasure brings prosperity and peace to the region in the hands of those who can resist the dragon-sickness: Dain (who renews the Kingdom under the Mountain) and Bard (who re-establishes and rebuilds Dal
e and eventually extends his realm all the way down to include the rebuilt Lake Town); those who cannot resist meet with personal disaster but their fate has little effect on others (e.g., the Master of Lake Town’s death from starvation does not harm Esgaroth’s thriving recovery). This forms a stark contrast with Tolkien’s models: the Völsung hoard is lost (knowledge of its location perishing with the execution of Sigurd’s murderers), as is the gold of the Rodothlim (which Beren casts into the river, since it is tainted with all the injustices and murders committed over its possession), and also the treasure guarded by Beowulf’s dragon (which is promptly buried once again, this time in Beowulf’s barrow, and does his people no good whatsoever). Tolkien here creates a near-catastrophe followed by a happy ending appropriate to a fairy-story, in keeping with his ideas of eucatastrophe (cf. OFS): our hero may himself not wind up with a river of gold, but that gold is used instead of hoarded and makes his world a better place, so that in the end ‘prophecies do come true, after a fashion’.

  Such Mighty Heaps of Gold

  Curiously enough, for all the mentions of the vastness and splendour of Smaug’s hoard, relatively little space is devoted to describing it, and most of that is added in the expanded account of the dwarves reveling in their recovered treasure in the fair copy and First Typescript. Bilbo’s awe at first seeing it robs him of all descriptive power, while the account of his later climbing the treasure-mound is almost casual, and the manuscript’s description of the dwarves’ exploration is more practical than sensuous, describing their choice of arms and armor and only then loading up on the most portable precious items (jewels and gemstones). To find a verbal portrait of such a hoard, a true Scrooge McDuck moment, we must go all the way back to The Book of Lost Tales and its description of the hoard of the Rodothlim:

  . . . such mighty heaps of gold have never since been gathered in one place; and some thereof was wrought to cups, to basons, and to dishes, and hilts there were for swords, and scabbards, and sheaths for daggers; but for the most part was of red gold unwrought lying in masses and in bars. The value of that hoard no man could count, for amid the gold lay many gems, and these were very beautiful to look upon . . . (BLT II.223).

  After the great dwarven craftsmen have laboured for months at it, the hoard’s beauty and splendor are exponentially increased:

  . . . in silken cloths, and boxes of rare woods carven cunningly . . . Cups and goblets did the king behold, and some had double bowls or curious handles interlaced, and horns there were of strange shape, dishes and trenchers, flagons and ewers, and all appurtenances of a kingly feast. Candlesticks there were and sconces for the torches, and none might count the rings and armlets, the bracelets and collars, and the coronets of gold; and all . . . subtly made and . . . cunningly adorned . . .

  A golden crown they made . . . and a helm too most glorious . . . and a sword of dwarven steel brought from afar that was hilted with bright gold and damascened in gold and silver with strange figurings . . . a coat of linked mail of steel and gold . . . and a belt of gold . . . a silver crown . . . [and] slippers of silver crusted with diamonds, and the silver thereof was fashioned in delicate scales, so that it yielded as soft leather to the foot, and a girdle . . . too of silver blended with pale gold. Yet were these things but a tithe of their works, and no tale tells a full count of them (BLT II.226–7).

  The gem of the collection, quite literally, is the Nauglafring itself:

  Gems uncounted were there in that carcanet of gold, yet only as a setting that did prepare for its great central glory, and led the eye thereto, for amidmost hung like a little lamp of limpid fire the Silmaril of Fëanor, jewel of the Gods (BLT II.228).

  This imbalance was more than rectified with the inclusion, beginning with the first American edition of 1938, of Tolkien’s painting ‘Conversation with Smaug’ (Plate XI [top]), which not only shows the treasure-hoard in all its glory but is full of specific detail from the text.10 First and foremost there is Smaug himself – clearly a favorite of Tolkien’s, whom he illustrated more times than any other character in the entire legendarium – red-gold and resplendent, looking very sly and self-satisfied in a smiling crocodilian way, the very picture of ‘malicious wisdom’. The Arkenstone also draws the eye, shining brightly from the very peak of the treasure-mound. The emerald necklace, the Necklace of Girion (which arose in the Third Phase text when the Arkenstone became too precious for the old story of Girion’s having given it to Thror in exchange for his sons’ armour to remain credible – see pages 364 & 496), stretches between Smaug’s head and tail. Directly below the Arkenstone can be seen a two-handled cup, no doubt just like the one Bilbo made off with on his first venture into the dragon-lair; horns, swords, shields, helmets and at least one crown, bowls, goblets, chests, many, many gems, and of course a mort of gold and silver coins, along with a few less identifiable objects,11 make up the rest of Smaug’s bed. Bilbo’s mail coat and accompanying cap can be seen on the far wall, above Smaug’s folded wings, along with a pair of spears that might be a relic of the spear with which Bilbo was to kill the dragon in Plot Notes B (page 364) but which along with the shields and spears seen to the right is more probably the ‘mail and weapons’ with which the dwarves arm themselves. The ‘great jars’ standing along the walls ‘filled with wealth only to be guessed at’ are here as well (see commentary below). Even the bats who later extinguish Bilbo’s torch (not to be confused with the more bloodthirsty bats who accompany the goblin army) and the passage up are included, as is of course Bilbo himself (who, Tolkien noted, was much too large in proportion – Letters p. 35). The one element remarkable for its presence here when nothing in the text so much as mentions it are the dwarven bones that lie scattered about, many of them alongside the sword, axe, shield, or helm that all too obviously failed to avail them against the dragon. The only feature of the hoard specifically mentioned in the text which this picture fails to include are the golden harps with silver strings that so delight Fili and Kili; doubtless these were hung on the walls to the left or right outside our field of view.

  The Dwarvenkings’ Curse

  Among the most interesting details of this painting is the inscription on the massive treasure-cup in the lower left (see Plate XI [detail]). The words are English but the alphabet used is Tolkien’s Tengwar except for the initials at the bottom, which use the same Old English runes employed for Fimbulfambi’s Map (Frontispiece to Part One) and Thror’s Map I (Plate I [top]). It is unusual for Tolkien to combine both writing systems in a single illustration but not absolutely unprecedented; see the title page for The Lord of the Rings itself, with runes at the top (this time in Tolkien’s own runic arrangement, which he called the cirth) and continuing in Tengwar at the bottom. Tolkien nowhere translates the writing on the cup and the inscription is partially obscured by the ladder, but the missing ligatures can be restored with confidence:

  A literal transcription, with vowels indicated by diacritical marks in the original enclosed in parentheses and restored letters obscured by the ladder given in italics, reads as follows:

  G(O)LDTHR(O) R THRA(I)N

  AK(E)RST B (E) THE TH (E) F

  TH [ror] TH [rain]

  – that is, ‘. . . gold [of] Thror [and] Thrain . . . accursed be the thief’, signed with the initials of THror and THrain. Note that this is only half of the full inscription, since the writing encircles the jar and we cannot know what appeared on the far side.

  (ii)

  The Arkenstone as Silmaril

  The evolution of the Gem of Girion into the Arkenstone of Thrain, the Heart of the Mountain and supreme treasure of Durin’s line,12 was a gradual process throughout the latter parts of Tolkien’s work on the Second Phase story from Plot Notes B on, until it finally reached its now-familiar form in the Third Phase texts. Initially invented to serve as a portable one-fourteenth share of the hoard to give the lie to Smaug’s insinuation that the dwarves knew all along that Bilbo could never carry away his fair share, its value and allure were greatly
increased with each iteration, until instead of Bilbo’s designated portion it became the one item from the hoard Thorin most wanted to reclaim (DAA.326) and, in an ironic reversal, the one item he would have forbidden Bilbo to take.

  In the original conception, the Gem of Girion is so named because it was given by Girion, King of Dale, to the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain in payment for the arming of his sons; we are never told how it came into Girion’s possession. And just as a new character had to be introduced to fill the role of dragon-slayer once Tolkien decided it strained credulity to have little Bilbo in that role (Bard, whom Tolkien economically made the heir of Girion, thus opening up new plot-threads and possibilities even as he resolved one issue), so too the elevation of the ‘Gem of Girion’ into the Arkenstone led to the introduction of the Necklace of Girion to assume some of the plot-elements no longer suitable for the original item as it had evolved. For example, it is no more plausible that a human king would surrender a wonder like the Arkenstone for his son and heir’s armor, however finely wrought, than that Gollum’s grandmother gave away Rings of Power as birthday-presents (LotR.70), and the stories had to be changed to match the later conceptions. It is interesting, given the other echoes of the old ‘Nauglafring’ story in this cluster of chapters, that having split the Gem of Girion into two items, Tolkien chose to make this new item a necklace, since the Nauglafring itself had combined a wondrous necklace with a fabulous gem.

  In the new conception, as represented by the First Typescript and associated Third Phase manuscript(s), the Arkenstone was found by dwarves and had never been owned by men. The account of its discovery in fact appears in the same piece of text that introduces the Necklace of Girion: