The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  The ‘long version’ was followed by another typescript (C) [Ad.Ms.H.86], a ‘short version’, derived primarily from (B) but incorporating some elements from (A). This in turn was followed by a fair copy (D) [Ad.Ms.H.85], which became the version actually printed (cf. DAA.28). I here conflate (C) and (D) together, with passages present in the typescript but omitted in the manuscript that followed given in italics; the title given here appears only on the fair copy.

  Note on corrections and alterations in reprint 1950

  In this reprint several minor inaccuracies, most of them noted by readers, have been corrected. For example, the text on pages 30 and 64 now corresponds exactly with the runes on Thror’s Map. On page 35 the third of March, a misreading of the difficult hand and language of the original, is replaced by the correct reading the twenty first of April, a date borne out by the fact that the expedition started on a fine morning ‘just before May’.TN10 More important is the matter of Chapter Five. There the true story of the ending of the Riddle Game, as it was eventually revealed (under pressure) by Bilbo to Gandalf, is now given according to the Red Book, in place of the version Bilbo first gave to his friends, and actually set down in his diary. This strange departure from truth on the part of a most honest hobbit was a portent of great significance. It does not, however, concern the present story, and those who in this edition make their first acquaintance with hobbit-lore need not trouble about it. Its explanation lies in the history of the Ring, as it is set out in the chronicles of the Red Book of Westmarch, and it must await their publication.

  A final note may be added, on a point raised by several students of the lore of the period. On Thror’s Map is written Here of old was Thrain King under the Mountain; Thrain was the son of Thror, the last King under the Mountain before the coming of the dragon. The Map, however, is not in error. Names are often repeated in dynasties, and the genealogies show that a distant ancestor of Thror was referred to, Thrain I, a fugitive from Moria, who first discovered the Lonely Mountain, Erebor, and ruled there for a while, before his people moved on to the remoter mountains of the North – Dwarves had already known a long and troublous history in the world before the days of Thror, and when he wrote of old he meant it: in the ancient past, remembered still in the songs of lore that the dwarf-kin sang in their secret tongue at feasts to which none but dwarves were bidden. Some say that they sing them still, and with the lengthening of the years the songs have become very long indeed.TN11

  JRRT

  9/9/50

  At the bottom of the typescript page, Tolkien added the notation in pencil:

  Suggested specimen of a prefatory note

  to a revised edition of The Hobbit

  The fair copy page (D) is stamped ‘18 SEP 1950’ by the printer, showing that this and not the typescript is actually the text sent to be typeset. By the omission of the passages I have italicized, the Note was shortened to the point where it could fit on a single page (in fact, on the hitherto-blank back of the table of contents) and thus not disrupt the pagination; had Tolkien known earlier that such a note would be needed, the pagination could no doubt have been adjusted as it was for the Gollum chapter (see page 732 above).

  The Prefatory Notes as published did establish a rationale for changing one of the key chapters in the book, the encounter with Gollum, in a way that served the purposes of the sequel without harm to the coherence and independence of the original book: the replaced passage is revealed to be authentic but inaccurate. And for its part, the passage on Thrain I at last resolves the inconsistency created by the earlier confusion between the two competing Thror-Thrain-Thorin/Thrain-Thror-Thorin genealogies. In a masterly demonstration of his preferred method, Tolkien leaves intact both pieces of information – that Thror was the last King under the Mountain (text) and that ‘Here of old was Thrain King . . .’ (map) – by adding a third new piece of information alongside them that places them into harmony as part of a larger picture.

  The abbreviated published version of this Prefatory Note provides the necessary information to place the new edition in context, but the more extended versions that had to be trimmed down had done more. For example, the closing sentences (‘when he wrote of old he meant it’) conjure up a vast sense of time only remembered in songs which we, not being dwarves, can never be privileged to hear. More remarkably, like some of the remarks about hobbits in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, they bring the story down to the present day (e.g., ‘[Hobbits] now avoid us with dismay’, ‘the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger’ – LotR.13 & 14, italics mine): ‘Some say they sing them still . . .’ Also, the idea that Thror returned to incomplete delvings from long ago enhances his stature as the founder (rather than merely re-occupier) of the Kingdom under the Mountain.

  Significant in another sense, as a road not taken, is Tolkien’s proffered explanation that a change here is simply a correction of an ‘error due to a misreading of the difficult hand and language of the original’. Had he adopted this simple expedient, which was entirely in keeping with his authorial pose as editor and translator of Bilbo’s story (cf. the runic border on the dust jacket, where Tolkien referred to himself as the translator of Bilbo’s memoir), it would have served him well when he tried to resolve the conundrum of recalcitrant phases of the moon in the 1960 Hobbit.

  TEXT NOTES

  1 In the typescript, the example and explanation are both dropped and the paragraphs run together: ‘. . . have been corrected, many of them long noted by readers and students of hobbit-lore. More important than these details is the matter . . .’

  2 ‘Gandalf did not believe it’ > ‘Gandalf had never believed it’.

  3 The opening of this paragraph was replaced by ‘When, if ever, a selection from the matter of the Red Book is presented to students of the period’.

  4 The typescript reads ‘. . . how by that game at the dark roots of the mountains the fortunes of the Western World . . . of Westmarch, a hobbit-heirloom not long ago re-discovered and deciphered, contains chronicles [cancelled: and commentaries] of that perilous time . . .’

  5 Changed to ‘with hobbitry’.

  6 The typescript reads ‘. . . the account in Bilbo’s memoirs, my primary source’. This distinction is significant because there is no mention in The Hobbit of Bilbo’s jotting down what happened to him each day, while we are told in the Epilogue that Gandalf and Balin visit him while he is writing ‘his memoirs’.

  7 This sentence was bracketed in the manuscript.

  The typescript expands slightly upon the career of Thráin I: ‘a distant ancestor of Thrór, a fugitive from Moria, and the first discoverer of the Lonely Mountain, Erebor, who ruled that land for a while, before his people . . .’; the sentence about Thror and his son re-entering old delvings upon their return is absent in the typescript. The inclusion of ‘and his son’ shows how closely Thror and Thrain are linked in Tolkien’s mind; the genealogy in The Lord of the Rings, which probably postdates this prefatory note, gives the date of Thrain’s birth as fifty-four years after Thror’s re-establishment of the Kingdom under the Mountain (LotR.1117).

  8 For the details of this ‘troublous history’, see Appendix A part iii: ‘Durin’s Folk’ in The Lord of the Rings. Even within the context of the original Hobbit, note Thorin’s thoughts during the Siege of the Mountain: how each piece of treasure had associations for him with ‘old memories of the labours and sorrows of his race’ (page 648).

  9 The words ‘deep throated’, bracketed in the fair copy, do not appear in the typescript.

  10 This passage is bracketed in the typescript and absent in the fair copy. The next sentence began a new paragraph in the typescript but becomes part of the first paragraph in the fair copy.

  11 The fair copy might well have once included these sentences, since it ends rather abruptly at the bottom of a page. If so, although bracketed in the typescript they were probably curtailed for reasons of space rather than any dissatisfac
tion with their content.

  (v)

  Thrym Thistlebeard

  Finally, the following unpublished letter casts an interesting light on Tolkien’s thinking about The Hobbit at the time he sent the corrections and proposed re-casting of Chapter V in to Allen & Unwin, offering slightly different solutions to some of the problems than the ones he sent to the publisher. Written on 26th September 1947 to Jennifer Paxman, whose father had been one of Tolkien’s companions in that memorable 1911 visit to Switzerland from which Tolkien drew memories many years later when writing the Misty Mountain sequences in Chapters IV and VI, the letter first addresses her question about applying to various Oxford colleges, then turns to The Hobbit:

  As for ‘the Hobbit’. There are a fair number of errors in it; and though I keep on sending corrections in to Allen & Unwin they don’t seem to get put right . . .

  But the author also made errors. On p. 30 the text to agree with red runes should read ‘five feet high the door and three may walk abreast’

  The chief error otherwise is on p. 25: the third of March a hundred years ago last Thursday. The party was on a Wednesday (p. 17, 20). If this was true, therefore, the party must have been on March 9 and the expedition must have set out on March 10. But that was not so: it was just before May (p. 40), and also it would only have taken about a month’s slow going to reach the Trolls on 31st May (p. 41). As Bilbo’s birthday was Sept. 22nd and a Thursday that year, the party must actually have occurred on Wednesday April 27th. The text should read twenty-first of April /or/ a hundred years [added: ago] last month. The latter is correct. . . .

  Runes. The whole linguistic situation of ‘The Hobbit’ has become rather complicated owing to the necessity for translation. The language of the time, or the Common Speech of the West, is represented by English. This particular variety of Dwarf came from the North where a more northerly language was locally spoken. Now Dwarves have their own secret language, but like Jews and Gypsies use the language of the country. So all these Dwarves have Norse dwarf-names to represent the relations of the country and people of Dale (Bard the Bowman) etc. to the Common Language. The Dwarves used a more inscriptional alphabet – and I am now rather sorry that I used instead the Anglo-Saxon Runes (on the translation principle). The dwarf-alphabet was much better. The Elvish Alphabets do not come into the Hobbit – unless you have the full English edn. with coloured pictures, in which case you will see a bit of an inscription in an Elvish alphabet (the Alphabet of Fëanor) on the great jars in the left-foreground. This alphabet plays a considerable part in the sequel ‘The Lord of the Rings’. I can let you have all these things, if you want them. They were not, of course, invented for the Hobbit or its sequel, since these things are only fragments torn out of ‘the Silmarillion’ or The History of the Elves, which no one will publish.

  As for the actual runes in the book and your question. Þ·Þ stands for Thror son of Thrain. But that is an error that besides myself you alone have spotted. On p. 202–3, the order is given as Thorin – Thrain – Thror. The map-maker was confused and had the order Thorin – Thror – Thrain. But even that was erroneous as dwarf-kings don’t abdicate, and the ‘grandfather’ was still alive when the map was made. In the sequel it will appear that the grandfather Thror was son of an older King Thrym (Thistlebeard). So that Þ·Þ stands for Thrór Thrym’s son. All these dwarf-names (except Thrym and Thistilbarði (Thistlebeard), which is in another list) come out of the list of dwarf-names inserted into the Völuspá or ‘Prophecy of the Sibyl’ that is the first poem of the Elder Edda.TN1

  After this, he continues with a discussion on the actual Anglo Saxon runes, his recent visit to Lincolnshire on college business, a dubious reliquary of ‘Little Saint Hugh (the supposed martyr)’, Chaucer’s ‘Prologue’, and the various editions available of The Hobbit.

  The logic underlying the problem with ‘the third of March’ is the same as in part (iii) above, although interestingly enough here, only five days after sending off (i), (ii), and (iii) to Stanley Unwin, Tolkien now prefers a different phrasing in the replacement text. The reference to dwarves adopting the language of the country they live in ‘like Jews and Gypsies’ shows that this idea was already present long before Tolkien compared his dwarves with the Jews in his 1965 radio interview with Denys Gueroult (see page 86, Note 9 and also page 859), although so far as I am aware the comparison to the Gypsies (an apt parallel to the wandering dwarves mentioned in early parts of The Lord of the Rings) occurs nowhere else.

  The most interesting passage, of course, is that dealing with Thrym Thistlebeard, a hitherto unknown king of Durin’s line. Although like Fimbulfambi he was destined never to appear in canonical form, having already been replaced by Dain (I) in the earliest surviving dwarven family-trees (see Marq. 3/9/1 and also HME XII.277), in this case he was probably not rejected so much as simply forgotten. I have already noted, on pp. 602–3, that the runic initials þ·þ on the inscribed jar in the foreground of the painting ‘Conversation with Smaug’ (Plate XI [top]) must refer to Þror and Þrain (or possibly Þrain and Þror), and that the presence of both’s initials here presents some problems. This unpublished letter is proof first that the Thrain-Thror-Thorin genealogy was simply an error (‘the map-maker was confused’) and that Tolkien himself came to be well aware of the problem inherent in the initials on the inscribed jar. In this paragraph he offers a satisfactory and ingenious solution to their meaning, once again solving a problem in the received text by addition, not contradiction or replacement.

  Why then was it never implemented? My guess is that Tolkien had not yet thought of this solution when he sent the errata off to Allen & Unwin on 21st September and that he generated the character on the spot in response to Paxman’s question five days later. But he neglected to keep a copy of this letter for his files,TN2 so that when he came to create the dwarven family tree, he had by that point forgotten about Thrym Thistlebeard.TN3

  TEXT NOTES

  1 Thrym (‘Uproar’) comes from the Þrymskviða, part of the Elder Edda, while Thistilbarði (‘Thistlebeard’) is part of a þulur (thulur) or namelist, one of many sometimes appended to Snorri’s Prose Edda. However, in the original each is the name of a giant, not a dwarf.

  Thrym is indeed the famous King Thrym of Jötunheim (‘giantland’), lord of the frost-giants; þrymskviða is the story of how he stole Mjöllnir (Thor’s hammer, the bane of all giants) and demanded Freya’s hand for its return. Loki convinced Thor to disguise himself as the bride-to-be, enabling the angry storm god to get close enough to reclaim his weapon, whereupon he killed most of the wedding party. This story has an unusual personal connection to Tolkien, for it was retold by his friend Rob Gilson as a short Christmas play in 1903, when the future fellow T.C.B.S. member was about ten years old. Called ‘Thor’s Journey to Fetch His Hammer’, something of its precocious nature can be conveyed through its list of characters, scenes, and the mock-Shakespearian diction of its closing lines:

  Characters

  Loki: The God of evil

  Thor: The God of thunder

  Thrym: A wicked giant

  Scenes

  Scene I: Thor’s bedroom

  Scene II: Jötunheim

  Scene III: The Hall of Valhalla

  Scene IV: Dining-Hall in Thrym’s castle

  Thrym. And now I will fetch the hammer from its hiding-place.

  (Exit Thrym)

  Thor. Ha, ha, Thrym will soon lie prostrate on the ground.

  (Enter Thrym)

  (He places Miölnir in Thor’s lap)

  Thrym. Here is Miölnir.

  (Thor rises from his seat and throws off his veil)

  Thor. Now giant thou shalt die.

  (He kills Thrym)

  (curtain)

  I am grateful to David Bratman for drawing my attention to R. Q. Gilson’s early interest in Eddic myths and providing me with a copy of both this mini-play and ‘The Wooing of Gerda’, a similar retelling of Skírnismál from the year before (Christmas 1902). />
  As for Thistilbardi, Dronke (The Poetic Edda, vol. II, page 183) cites it as part of a list of giant names: þistilbarði, Hrímnir, and Ganglati (Thistlebeard, Sootface, and Slowcoach) all being among the names for giants and Hengikepta, Loþinfingra, and Grottintanna (Hangjaw, Hairyfingers, and Grittingteeth) those for giantesses. The full list, one of a number of verse name-lists or thulur appearing in some manuscripts of Snorri’s Edda – including lists of names for Odin, Thor, Freya, dwarves (deriving mainly from the Dvergatal), valkyrie, giants, giantesses, and the like – is printed in the massive collection Corpvs Poeticum Boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue, ed. Gudbrand Vigfusson & F. York Powell [2 vols., 1883], which attempts to bring together virtually all Old Norse heroic and mythological verse still in existence. The ‘Thulor’ appear in Bk X, §6: ‘Rhymed Glossaries’ (Vol. II, pages 422–39), and Thistilbardi’s name in line 64 on page 425, in the same line with Thrym himself:

  Þrymr, Þrúð-gelmir, Þistil-barði.

  2 In his letter of 10th September 1950 to Stanley Unwin, announcing his decision to accept the ‘second edition’ Hobbit as the true and authentic version of the story and sending him the new Prefatory Note, Tolkien mentioned that ‘as I have no secretary I rarely keep copies of my own letters, and I do not suppose that my recollections of them at long remove are necessarily accurate’ (Ad.Ms.H.83; a portion of this letter, but not this passage, appears in Letters p. 142).