2. Brandywine Bridge to Bree (by road) 50 miles. +
+ called (L.R. I. 162) ‘not much [further] than a day’s riding’ but that refers to quick
3. Wild. Bree Eastgate to ruined Last Inn about 20 miles
4. Last Inn to Weathertop (by road) 80 miles.
100 miles Bree to Weathertop.
5. Weathertop to Bridge of Mitheithel (by road) 110 miles
6. Bridge of Mitheithel to Ford of Bruinen about 80 miles
Bridge to point where Troll-fire seen: 20 miles.
From that point to Ford 60 miles.
7. Ford of Bruinen to entrance to Rivendell, about 22 miles.
The whole journey from Bywater in the Shire to Rivendell was about 412 miles. Time allowed: from morning of April 28 to evening of May 24th. That is, according to the Shire Calendar (followed but nowhere alluded to in The Hobbit),TN8 from Astron 28 to Thrimidge 24 inclusive: 27 days. That is an average of 16 miles a day. This is slow, but accounted for by leisurely pace at the beginning, and slow progress in the Wilds, especially before passing the Greyflood. But is clear that it could not be ‘June the first tomorrow’ (i.e. in Shire reckoning May/Thrimidge 30), as in text, p. 41, on the day of the troll-adventure. This is accounted for by Bilbo’s loss of reckoning, without the help of any calendar, during the 22 days of the journey up to that point. Hence new text: ‘Not what I call June, etc.’
Itinerary.
1. April 28. Spend night at the All-welcome Inn, at junction of the Northway and East Road (on Hobbiton side of Frogmorton). So-called because much used by travellers through the Shire, especially by dwarves on the way to Thorin’s home in exile, which was in the west-side of the Blue mountains (southern part, in Harlindon). None of this is mentioned in text, but The All-welcome Inn should be marked on the needed Shire-map in any new edition of The Hobbit.TN9 It has to be remembered that the East Road though it ran through the Shire was not the property of the hobbits: it was an ancient ‘royal road’, and they maintained the traditional duty of keeping it in repair and providing hospitality for travellers. This was of course profitable. It also provided their chief source of ‘outside news’. Dwarves were therefore not a rare sight on the East Road or in its inns (It would also appear that they were sometimes employed as roadmenders and bridge-repairers), but they seldom turned off it, and their appearance in a company in Bywater and Hobbiton must have caused a lot of talk.TN10 They cared very little about hobbits, and had little to do with them, except as a source of food in exchange for metal, or sometimes forged articles (knives, ploughshares, arrowheads, axe-heads and the like). The poorer sort (or Thorin’s folk in their earlier time of poverty) might accept employment, as masons and roadmakers for example. But they had the notion that hobbits were a slow stupid folk, with few artefacts, and simpleminded – because the hobbits were generous, never haggled, and gave what was asked.
2. April 29. Night at Whitfurrows.
3. April 30. Early start. They cross the Brandywine Bridge (about 12 miles from Whitfurrows) in the late afternoon, and camp by the road about 10 miles on from the B. Bridge.
4. May 1. They ride another 20 miles, taking their time, with longish halts and good meals (but only three), since there are still supplies ahead.
5. May 2. They reach Bree (another 20 miles). There they stay the night, and also purchase a good many supplies (including pipe-weed).
6. May 3. Early start. They enter the wild. They reach the Last Inn early in the evening, but are depressed at finding it deserted and go no further. [added in pencil: Another 20 miles.]
7. May 4 to May 10: 7 days.
Their progress is now very slow, owing to the badness and dangerousness of the road, esp. in the marshy region. They barely manage 12 miles a day, and by evening of May 10 have only reached Weathertop (80 miles from the Last Inn). They camp on its east side.TN11 This is not mentioned at all in text.
8. May 11 to May 18: 8 days.
It was about 109 miles (for they started on the far side of Weathertop) to the Bridge of Mitheithel (over the Greyflood). By the evening of May 18 they had covered only 106 miles, and camped beside the road, on drier and rising ground, actually only about 3 miles from the Bridge, which could not be seen as it was in a deep narrow valley. In the night the weather took a bad turn.
9. May 19. Wakened in the early morning by wind and rain, they make a hurried meal. Soon reach the top of the ridge and look down. Episode of the broken bridge. They get across Greyflood about 10.30 a.m. 3 miles. They make two foodless halts, at midday about 5 miles on from Bridge, and another (not mentioned in text) about 4. p.m.; and then go on till darkness. Say about 8.30 p.m. (sun-set about 8 p.m.) but the road was under dark trees.TN12 Ponies become more and more reluctant to proceed, so that in spite of improved road they are slow. Going from 1 p.m. to 4 and 4.30 to 8. (6 1/2 hours) they only cover about 17 miles.TN13 Episode of the Trolls occurs night of May 19, at a point about 25 miles from the Bridge. 55 miles to go to Ford of Bruinen.
10. May 20. Do not start until afternoon, say 3.30 p.m. Journey till 8 p.m. with one halt: about 4 hours in which they covered about 12 miles: 43 to Bruinen.TN14
11. May 21. They go another [20 >] 18 miles. 25 from Bruinen.
12. May 22. ‘Fourth day from the Bridge’ (19, 20, 21, 22). The weather is clearing up, and the ponies are willing, but they are tired and short of food. They start late, and make a long midday halt. They have only covered about another 15 miles, when in the evening sunshine they see Bruinen gleaming. It is 10 miles away. They go no further that day, for they have passed out of the shadow of the Trollshaws, and feel safer.
13. May 23. They reach the Ford in the afternoon. Probably halting for midday meal on the west bank of the river, though that is not mentioned in text. Further progress is very slow in the heathland. They did not go on when the light failed, and halted when only about 10 miles further on. 12 miles to entrance to Rivendell.
14. May 24. Progress still slow and difficult. Nightfall was near when, after covering 12 more miles, they reached the head of the path down into Rivendell.
The journey of 27 days is over
The typed text ends here about half-way down the fourth typescript page [Ad.Ms.H.24]. Beneath it is written the following penciled note:
But. It is said p. 62 that they stayed in Rivendell ‘at least 14 days’. On their last evening it is Midsummers eve if Shire calendar is used that is the Lithe of June. Next day after June 30th (our calendar July 1) On that day there was a broad crescent moon Sc. at or near FQuarter
The abbreviation ‘Sc.’, used here and elsewhere in Tolkien’s notes on phases of the moon, is short for scilicet, meaning ‘namely’ or ‘that is to say’.
As for ‘Lithe of June’, in the Shire Calendar three days fall between June 30th and July 1st. These ‘Summerdays’ are known as Lithe (the day after June 30th, known as the ‘June Lithe’ or ‘June 30+1’ as Tolkien expresses it in some of the notes below), Midyear’s Day (two days after June 30th, or ‘June 30+2’), and Lithe (the day before July 1st, three days after June 30th, or the July Lithe). Their presence, and that of the two days of Yule at midwinter (between December 30th and January 1st), enable the Shire Calendar to have twelve months of thirty days each (12 x 30 = 360, +5 midwinter/midsummer days).
TEXT NOTES
1 ‘L.R.’: That is, The Lord of the Rings. The ‘large map’ Tolkien refers to is the fold-out map of Middle-earth pasted in the back of The Fellowship of the Ring and also The Two Towers. The ‘Shire-map’ is the map labelled ‘A Part of the Shire’ appearing just after the Prologue (LotR.[30]). By ‘Book’ in the preceding paragraph Tolkien means of course Book 1, the first half of the first volume.
2 This sentence and the one before it (‘Or rather none . . . to the left’) are bracketed but not deleted; this passage may have been singled out because it relates to features of the locale that did not exist at the time of Bilbo’s story. See LotR.1041 & 1049. Note, however, that several such
houses in fact appear on the Shire map printed in The Lord of the Rings, where in fact most of Hobbiton is situated south of The Water, with only a very few buildings (primarily those seen in Tolkien’s painting of The Hill: Hobbiton [DAA plate 1 (top), H-S#98]) north of the little river.†
† This feature is much clearer in the first edition, which prints this map in two colours (black for the river and houses, red for the roads).
3 An ink note over the parenthetical seems to read ‘no explanation
4 Actually Bilbo covered it a third time after his spectacular departure from Hobbiton at the end of the Long-Expected Party, though by that time he had already written at least the earlier portions of his book; cf. LotR.247 for the journey and DAA.361 & LotR.119 for the book.
5 This sentence originally read ‘. . . impossible that Bilbo would have forgotten Bree, and very improbable that he had not heard of it before’.
6 The reference is to page 200 of volume one (The Fellowship of the Ring) of the first edition of The Lord of the Rings [‘L.R.’]; emphasis mine:
‘How far is Rivendell?’ asked Merry . . . The world looked wild and wide from Weathertop.
‘I don’t know if the Road has ever been measured in miles beyond the Forsaken Inn, a day’s journey east of Bree,’ answered Strider. ‘Some say it is so far, and some say otherwise. It is a strange road, and folk are glad to reach their journey’s end, whether the time is long or short. But I know how long it would take me on my own feet, with fair weather and no ill fortune: twelve days from here [Weathertop] to the Ford of Bruinen, where the Road crosses the Loudwater that runs out of Rivendell. We have at least a fortnight’s journey before us, for I do not think we shall be able to use the Road.’
—LotR.204.†
† = Page 200 of The Fellowship of the Ring in the first edition.
7 This passage is added in pencil in the top margin and marked as a note applying to this entry. The full passage cited here can be found on LotR.166.
8 Tolkien here introduces a new complication: the idea that all dates given in The Hobbit are really according to the Shire Calendar described in Appendix D of The Lord of the Rings (see LotR.1140–46). The Hobbit of course had not been written with the Shire Calendar in mind, as the latter had not yet been created when the story was published, and the decision here to adapt the story from one calendar to another would lead him into insoluble paradoxes: see section (iii) below, esp. Text Note 1 on page 828.
9 Added in left margin in pencil: ‘
10 This line harkens back to one of the texts of ‘The Quest of Erebor’, where Gandalf notes that ‘[Bilbo] did not know . . . the care . . . that I took so that the coming of a large party of Dwarves to Bywater, off the main road and their usual beat, should not come to his ears too soon’ (UT.335).
11 Here ‘east side’ was typed over an erasure; the phrase originally typed seems to have been ‘west side’.
12 The text here originally ran ‘and then go on till nearly night. Say about 8 p.m. (sun-set about that time). Ponies . . .’ All these changes are in ink, with ‘but the road was under dark trees’ in the left margin and marked for insertion at this point.
13 This sentence originally read ‘Going from 12.00 to 4 and 4.30 to 8.30 (7 1/2 hours) they only cover about 20 miles.’
14 The original version of the next few entries read:
11.May 21, 22. 2 days. Each day they cover about 16 miles (36) and at night are only 7 from the Ford, which they cannot yet see.
12. May 23. In the morning after a short ride they see the Bruinen ahead and below them in another (less steep) valley.
These were cancelled and replaced by separate entries for all three days giving a somewhat different account of their progress.
(ii)
Timetable from Rivendell to Lake Town
This single sheet of notes (Ad.Ms.H.13), written in ink on the back of an unused page taken from a ‘blue book’ (student’s exam booklet),TN1 extends the timeline and itinerary from Rivendell through Mirkwood to Thorin & Company’s departure from Lake Town. It thus forms a suitable companion piece to the more formal ‘Distances and Itinerary’ given as section (i) above, which focuses on the first stage of Bilbo’s journey (Bag-End to Rivendell), the part covered by New Chapter II and the fragment of New Chapter III. However, it is probably much earlier: all the page references here are to the first edition (i.e., pre-1951), and dates are given in the Gregorian calendar, not the Shire Calendar developed during work on The Lord of the Rings. Christopher Tolkien notes (private communication) that this same kind of paper was used for drafting portions of The Lord of the Rings pre-1944. So these notes may date from as early as the Fourth Phase. But since annotations with ball-point pens show that if so he was still carefully considering and updating them long afterwards, in the period of the 1960 Hobbit, and since they deal with the same concerns as all the material in this chapter, here seems the natural place to give them.
Hobbit Time table is not very clear.TN2
[Written in top margin in dark ink:]
Mirkwood is too small on map it must be 300 miles across
Adventure with Trolls night of 31 May/1 June. reach R’dell appar. about June 3rd. Leave on Midsummer morning: say June 24.
Long days after still climbing p. 66.
On map R’dell is about 50 miles direct to top of the range or pass. Make it more? going
Adventure with Goblins takes 3 days. night before night before last. p. 102. They assemble therefore on July 7th
Adv. with wargs night July 7/8.
Reach Beorn afternoon July 8
Depart 3 days later. July 11th (p. 141)
Take 4 days riding to the Forest Entrance (p. 142)
Enter Forest therefore 15 or 16 July.
Ages and ages p. 148 They reach Enchanted River (which is about 1/2 way to Elvenking’s hall). And after they have gone on again about as long leaf falls suggesting autumn is coming on p. 153. The Forest is largely dark and they are laden – later carrying Bombur. But must allow at least an average of 12 miles per day. Say 12 days to Enchanted River. 144 miles. July 28th.
12 days to adventure with Spiders.
144 miles. August 9thTN4
[total] 288 [miles]
Weary long time in King’s Hall. say 3 weeks.TN5 Aug 30th. Reach Lake Town about Sept 2/3.
9 days gap
We know Bilbo’s Birthday Sept 22 was at Lake Town. They were there about 24 days. Birthday would come after 10 days. Leaves about October 6th?
Reach Lake town on 8th. Stay 10 days. Sept 18.
______________________________
Rivendell must be further off.TN6 Reach Cave about July 9th. Therefore enter Forest 21 July. Forest journey must be 300 miles (150 each) and take about 25 days. 15 August. [cancelled: leave King’s Halls 5 Sept.]
[Text continued in left margin:]
Taken prisoner on 16 August. Escape <9th> Sept.TN7 Reach L.T. 12th Sept. B.
[Added in margin in green ink:]
Use Hobbit Calendar as in L.R.TN9
In this time-table, Tolkien attempts to retroactively apply a scale to the Wilderland map published in The Hobbit but is not able to do so consistently. If the distance
from Rivendell to the Cave of the Goblins atop the Misty Mountains pass (about an inch and a half on the Wilderland map)TN10 is 50 miles (as the crow flies, 100 miles of actual travel), then the route Thorin & Company wound up taking through Mirkwood (three and a half inches) cannot equal 300 miles but is more like 175 miles (the last part of it in barrels), meaning the dwarves averaged only about six miles a day before their capture. The large Middle-earth map,TN11 while different in scale, faithfully reproduces the proportions of the earlier map in their overlapping sections: here their route through the dark forest measures about 31/2 cm (roughly 13/8 inches), which again equals about 175 miles by the scale Tolkien decided on in the ‘distances’ typescript given as section (i) above. By contrast, Gimli in The Lord of the Rings as one of the Three Walkers managed to travel roughly the same distance in only five days (albeit as an epic feat under much better conditions, spurred on by both competition from Man and Elf and the desperate necessity to rescue his friends).
Or to pick a less extreme example, Dain and his company of dwarves from the Iron Hills arrive within a very short time – clearly only a matter of daysTN12 – from the time Thorin sent Roäc to summon them. The Iron Hills are not shown on the Wilderland Map in The Hobbit, being off the edge of the map to the east, and thus more than one inch [= about 35 miles] away. We are not told exactly where Dain’s halls are within the Hills, but since the Hills themselves are clearly nearby, the Wilderland Map leaves it plausible that Dain is easily within the distance of a rapid forced march. But applying this part of The Hobbit’s story to The Lord of the Rings immediately creates difficulties. According to the Middle-earth Map in The Lord of the Rings, we can see that at their nearest point, the Iron Hills are double the distance from the Lonely Mountain that Rivendell is to the top of the mountain-pass; at their furthest point they are seven times that distance. Since we know the latter distance to be at least fifty miles, then Dain had to travel somewhere between a hundred to three hundred and fifty miles to come to Thorin’s aid (the latter if coming from the far eastern side of the Hills), after having first taken at least some time to gather and equip his troops. Furthermore the fact that Thorin & Company are heavy-laden cannot be a significant factor, for we are told within The Hobbit itself of Dain’s army that
The History of the Hobbit Page 101
