7 The mountain is clearly larger here than the description in the published book would justify (for the manuscript version of this passage, see p. 548):
From their town the Lonely Mountain was mostly screened by the low hills at the far end of the lake, through a gap in which the Running River came down from the North. Only its high peak could they see in clear weather, and they looked seldom at it . . .
— DAA.[302].
However, it is far more aesthetically satisfying for the picture to show such an important feature somewhat larger than it might really appear; for another example, see the image of Thangorodrim in the background of Tolkien’s ‘Tol Sirion’ (Pictures by Tolkien, plate 36 †. In the original drawing by Tolkien, Thangorodrim and the smoke clouds hanging over it are a menacing, looming presence; in the redrawn colourized version by H. E. Riddett, Morgoth’s fortress has become a tiny dot in the far distance – more accurate perhaps but far less dramatic. (The two versions are presented on facing pages without comment in the first edition of Pictures by Tolkien [1979]; this change is noted in Pictures’ second edition [1992].)
† Also known as ‘The Vale of Sirion’; cf. H-S#55.
8 I can find no evidence that Tolkien ever visited the site, and in general he seems not to have felt any special interest in seeing for himself archeological digs, the results of which had inspired him when he read about them. For example, so far as I can determine he does not seem to have visited the site of any of the famous lake-dwellings discovered by Keller and his successors on his 1911 visit to Switzerland (for his route, see his 1967/68 letter to Michael Tolkien, Letters pp. 391–3). Nor can I find any evidence that he visited the site of Beorhtnoth’s tomb in Ely while working on The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, nor the temple of Nodens when writing his essay ‘The Name “Nodens”’, nor the burial mound at Sutton Hoo when writing the Rohirrim chapters of The Lord of the Rings. He did base places in his books on memorable spots he had visited, such as the Aglarond at Helm’s Deep on Cheddar Gorge, or the description of Rivendell and the Misty Mountains on his one trip to snow-covered mountains, his 1911 visit to Switzerland (see Marie Barnfield’s essay on Rivendell and Switzerland in Þe Lyfe ant þe Auncestrye, issue no. 3 [Spring 1996]), but this was a case of drawing inspiration from things he had happened to see years before, not of deliberately seeking out first-hand source material. In general, Tolkien seems to have drawn such inspiration more from imaginative reconstructions proposed in scholarly books than in on-site visits.
For more on possible real-world sites that might have inspired Tolkien, particularly in England and for The Lord of the Rings, see Mathew Lyons’ There and Back Again: In the Footsteps of J. R. R. Tolkien (Cadogan Guides, 2004). For the current state of archeological thinking on the ‘lake-dwellings’, see Francesco Menotti’s essay ‘The Pfahlbau-problem and the History of Lake-Dwelling Research in the Alps’ (Oxford Journal of Archaeology, vol. 20 number 4 [2001], pages 319–28).
9 For destruction by fire, see Keller, page 33: ‘as in many other lake dwellings, the upper structure had been destroyed by fire’. The popularized idea of violent destruction by fire and assault lingered for a very long time: cf. the ‘re-enactment’ of the ‘Scythian’ assault by dugout canoe on the reconstructed Polish lake-fortress of Biskupin staged in 1939. For a more moderate modern assessment, see the chapter devoted to Biskupin in Exploring Prehistoric Europe by Chris Scarre (part of the ‘Places in Time’ series [1998]) which, after admiring the high degree of organization required for a society to be able to create such a carefully planned structure, concludes ‘It is not hard to see . . . that the close-packed timber buildings must have posed an enormous fire risk, even without enemy action, and it is possible that . . . Biskupin simply burned down by accident’ (p. 170).
As for the persistent idea that only desperation would drive people to living in such dwellings, this ignores the wealth of resources available in wetlands. While generally viewed as wastelands, marshlands are actually prime hunting grounds for waterfowl (duck, geese, rails, snipe, &c.), not to mention fish and other animals that make their homes in or around the margins of lakes, bogs, and pools, providing a constant supply of food if the problem of shelter and access can be satisfactorily addressed.† Indeed, in the Middle Ages, the marsh later discovered to contain the ruins of the two ancient lake-villages was a prize possession of the Abbey of Glastonbury, which harvested large quantities of marshfowl from it every year; the Coles record that fisheries in the marshes near Meare alone paid the monks 7,000 eels each year (Sweet Track, page 21).
† The focus of the Coles’ book is actually not on the lake-villages but on the wooden tracks constructed in ancient times to criss-cross the marshy areas and provide safe footing into and across the extensive wetlands; some of these tracks are more than 5,000 years old, including the ‘Sweet Track’ of the title.
10 For more on ‘Mirkwood’, see p. 19. While the juxtaposition of Morris’s Wolfings with Tolkien’s woodmen menaced by wolves is suggestive, the name in The House of the Wolfings simply refers to the totem animal that kindred has adopted: the Wolfings or people of the Wolf, to distinguish them from their neighbors the Bearings (folk of the Bear), the Elkings (Elk), the Hartings (Hart), and so forth.
11 Lake Town is really Tolkien’s only High Medieval setting, which is curious from an author who spent most of his working life in a city dominated by that High Medieval institution known as Oxford University. By contrast, despite a few comic anachronistic touches the village of Ham in Farmer Giles of Ham is a Dark Ages village, while Minas Tirith in The Lord of the Rings strongly evokes a great Classical city from the end of antiquity, Byzantine rather than Roman (cf. Letters p. 157), already in decline and surrounded by barbarian hordes. Hobbiton is, by Tolkien’s own description, a Victorian village from about the time of the Diamond Jubilee (i.e., Queen Victorian’s 60th anniversary on the throne in 1897; Letters p. 230); this is one reason it has such affinities on the one hand with the world of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows [1908], which draws on the same setting as it was a decade later, when the peace and quiet of the countryside was beginning to give way to the noise of the new century’s motorcars,† and on the other with the Puddleby-on-the-Marsh of Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Dolittle series [1922ff], which depict English village life six decades earlier, at the very beginning of the Victorian period. Wootton Major in Smith of Wootton Major is a deliberately timeless setting, while modern settings are relatively rare in Tolkien and are generally confined to single indoor locations: Mr. Bliss is a significant exception.
† For Tolkien’s own parable of motorcars destroying Oxford, see ‘The Bovadium Fragment’ (unpublished; Bodleian Library, Department of Western Manuscripts, Mss. Tolkien, Series A, folder A62, pages 38–91).
12 This makes the Master of the Town one of the very few elected officials to appear anywhere in Tolkien’s work, joined only by the Mayor of Michel Delving in The Lord of the Rings, the only elective office in the Shire (see part 3 of the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, ‘Of the Ordering of the Shire’). This essentially ceremonial role is held at the start of Frodo’s story by Old Will Whitfoot, ‘the fattest hobbit in the Westfarthing’, who is treated more as an ineffectual figure of fun than a wily politician (LotR.172 & 1050), ill-equipped to deal with Lotho and Sharkey’s usurpation. After the War of the Ring the position (‘Deputy Mayor’) is temporarily assumed by Frodo (LotR.1059) and afterwards held for many years by Sam (LotR.1067 & 1133–4). During Sam’s tenure (seven consecutive terms, for a total of forty-nine years) the dignity and authority of the office undergo considerable expansion, as may be seen by King Elessar’s letter (HME IX.117–18, 125–6, & 128–31), which treats the Mayor as the Shire’s chief executive and official representative.
Neither Ham nor Bree seem to have mayors, while Minas Tirith and Meduseld are ruled directly by their resident lords (or, more accurately, by the appointed officials of those lords).
13 That is, ‘politician�
�� in the sense of an elected official who tries to be all things to all people while always looking out primarily for his own interests – unlike, say, Master Gríma Wormtongue, who while a master plotter is neither elected nor a mere weathervane but an evil councillor with a private agenda which he pursues with great skill and care. Similarly, while there is much plotting on all sides in ‘The Wanderings of Húrin’ (HME XI.251–310), it is the maneuvering of clever and ruthless men, more in the style of the Allthing moot in Njal’s Saga, than politicians per se.
14 This was a work Tolkien professed to loathe yet seems to cite in one of his most cynical poems, ‘Progress in Bimble Town’, which is scathingly dedicated to ‘the Mayor and Corporation’, the phrase applied over and over in Browning’s poem to the burgomeister of Hamelin and his council.
That Tolkien castigates Browning’s poem late in life (JRRT to Jane Neave, 22nd November 1961; Letters p. 311) does not necessarily mean he was not influenced by it. This is particularly the case since his criticism of it comes in the context of a condemnation of works specifically written for children, in the course of which he severely criticizes The Hobbit itself as well as the works of Hans Christian Andersen, yet at the same time noting of the latter both that when young he ‘disliked [them] intensely’ and ‘read them myself often’, with what to an outsider ‘may have looked like rapture’ (ibid.). His praise of George MacDonald’s work in the 1930s and condemnation of it in the 1960s (cf. his remarks to Clyde Kilby, printed in Tolkien and the Silmarillion, page 31) is of a piece with this, and shows that his occasional censoriousness always needs to be taken in context.
The similarity between Tolkien’s ‘the Master and his councillors’ and Browning’s ‘the Mayor and Corporation’ was first explored by Douglas Anderson in The Annotated Hobbit (DAA.253), which reprints ‘Progress in Bimble Town’ (first published in The Oxford Magazine in October 1931, during the period when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit and quite possibly right around the time when he was writing this chapter). I am also grateful to Doug for helping me find Tolkien’s 1966 characterization of MacDonald as an ‘old grandmother’.
15 The worst such incident passing into legend as the ‘St. Scholastic Day massacre’ of February 10th 1354/55, which killed about ninety people, two-thirds of them students and the rest townspeople: the Mayor and town of Oxford were ordered by King Edward III to pay a fine of one silver penny for each student killed on the anniversary of that day, a ritual of public humiliation that was not abandoned until 1825.
16 Gandalf’s grandfather, the last King under the Mountain, had of course briefly been named Fimbulfambi (‘Great Fool’) in the Pryftan Fragment (see p. 9), but this name had not survived into the Bladorthin Typescript, where the reference is simply to ‘your grandfather’. Likewise, in the Second Phase continuation of Chapter I neither of Gandalf’s forebears is named, simply being referred to as ‘your father’ and ‘my grandfather’ (e.g., p. 73). Indeed, this anonymity carried over into the first and second editions of the published book; not until the 1966 paperback third edition text were Thror and Thrain’s names inserted into the first chapter:
• ‘made by your grandfather’ > ‘made by Thror, your grandfather’ (DAA.51)
• ‘Long ago in my grandfather’s time’ > ‘Long ago in my grandfather Thror’s time’ (DAA.54)
• ‘Your grandfather was killed’ > ‘Your grandfather Thror was killed’ (DAA.56)
• ‘And your father went away’ > ‘And Thrain your father went away’ (DAA.56)
One spot where we might expect these names to have been inserted but they were not comes in Chapter IV. In the manuscript text there is no indication that the goblin-chief realizes who his prisoner is (cf. p. 132), whereas in the exchange between Thorin and the Great Goblin in the First Typescript when the former gives his name (‘Thorin the dwarf’) the Great Goblin replies using his captive’s full name, indicating that he knows just who his prisoner is:
‘Not that it will do you much good, Thorin Oakenshield, I know too much about your folk already . . .’
—typescript page 86; Marq. 1/1/54:5 (italics mine).
17 Tolkien was of course intimately familiar with this text, citing it as his direct source for the dwarf-names in his February 1938 letter to The Observer (‘The dwarf-names . . . are from the Elder Edda’; see Appendix II). Cf. also his 29th March 1967 letter to W. H. Auden (Letters p. 379), thanking Auden for sending his translation of this poem; Tolkien promises to send Auden his own (as yet unpublished) recasting of some of the Elder Edda material (the Volsunga/Sigurd story) in return.
18 For this reason, Patricia Terry omits the dwarf-names from her translation of Völuspä in her Poems of the Elder Edda (cf. pages 2–3), as did Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell from their dual-text edition Corpus Poeticum Boreale [1883], a once-standard tome that sought to bring together all surviving remnants of Old Icelandic poetry; see Vol. I pages 192 and 194–5. Dronke includes it in her edition of Völuspá but forebears to comment on this passage, although it comprises ten percent of the entire poem (The Poetic Edda, Volume II: Mythological Poems [1997]; see especially page 122), describing it as ‘a unique record of unexpected tradition, made in an unfortunate place’ (page 92). W. H. Auden does include the entire passage in his translation, Völuspá: The Song of the Sybil [published 1968], which Auden sent to Tolkien in 1967 (see Note 17) and later collected into The Elder Edda: A Selection, tr. Paul B. Taylor & W. H. Auden, with introduction by Peter H. Salus and Taylor and notes by Salus [1969], a volume dedicated ‘For J. R. R. Tolkien’. Most significantly, Snorri Sturluson, who was better-informed on Eddic lore than it is possible for any modern scholar to be, selected this passage as one deserving preservation and explanation in his Prose Edda.
19 The full Thror–Thrain–Thorin genealogy occurs in the following passages:
• [p. 436]: ‘songs were still sung of the King Under the Mountain Thror and his son Thrain of the race of Durin . . . Some sang that Thror and Thrain would come back one day’ (Ms. page 131; corresponds to 1st ed. text page 199 and DAA.246).
• [p. 438]: ‘Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror King Under the Mountain!’ (Ms. page 132; 1st ed. page 202/DAA.248).
• [p. 439] ‘I am Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror King Under the Mountain. I return’ (Ms. page 133; 1st ed. page 203/DAA.249–50).
• [p. 441] ‘Certainly O Thorin Thrain’s son Thror’s son’ [the Master said] (Ms. page 136; 1st ed. page 207/DAA.253).
• [p. 504] ‘O Thorin Thrain’s son, may your beard grow ever longer’ [Bilbo] said crossly (Ms. page 142; 1st ed. page 218/DAA.267).
• [p. 619] ‘O Thorin Thrain’s son Thror’s son’ [said Roäc] (Ms. page 166). This passage survived into the Third Phase manuscript conclusion (new Ms. page 6) but was simplified to ‘O Thorin son of Thrain’ (1/1/65:1), preserving the genealogy but omitting the grandfather’s name, when the First Typescript was finally extended to include the final chapters of the story – e.g. immediately before the submission to Allen & Unwin on 3rd October 1936. This latter reading appears in the first and all subsequent editions of the book (cf. 1st ed. page 263/DAA.316).
There are also a number of references to Thror the grandfather:
• [p. 439] ‘. . . the King under the Mountain – that it was Thror’s grandson not Thror himself . . .’ (Ms. page 134; 1st ed. page 204/DAA.250).
• [p. 509] ‘Did you expect me to trot back with the whole treasure of Thror on my back?’ (Ms. page 146; 1st ed. page 226/DAA.276).
• [p. 582] ‘the Great Hall of Thror’ (Ms. page 164; 1st ed. page 247/DAA.297).
• [p. 619] ‘the legend of the wealth of Thror has not lost in the telling’ (Ts. 1/1/65:2; 1st ed. page 264/DAA.317).†
– and to Thrain the father:
• [p. 619] ‘O Thorin son of Thrain’ (Ts. 1/1/65:1; 1st ed. page 263/DAA.316); see above.
• [p. 646] ‘the gates of Thorin son of Thrain, King under the Mountain’ (new Ms. page 9; 1st ed. page 267/DAA 320); this
passage is repeated on 1st ed. page 269/DAA.322 whereas the manuscript simply says ‘Again Thorin asked the same question as before’ without actually repeating the text.
• [p. 656, Text Note 30] ‘We speak unto Thorin Thrain’s son calling himself King under the Mountain’ (addition to new Ms. page 12; 1st ed. page 271/DAA.324).
Tolkien also deleted one reference to Thror and seems to have added one in a margin:
• [p. 473] ‘Thror’s map’ (Ms. page 137; 1/1/12:2) > ‘Thorin’s map’ (1st Ts. 1/1/61:2; 1st ed. page 212/DAA.260).
• [p. 588, Text Note 15] added: ‘the gem of Girion,
† This corresponds to Ms. page 167, but Thror is not mentioned in the original draft nor in the new Ms. page 6 of the continuation; Roäc’s mention of ‘the wealth of Thror’ enters in for the first time in the First Typescript.
20 The Return of the Shadow (HME VI.403): ‘It is said in secret that Thráin (father of Thrór father of Thorin who fell in battle) possessed [a Ring of Power] that had descended from his sires’ [said Glóin]. In this volume Christopher Tolkien defers comment, simply pointing out ‘In The Hobbit Thráin was not the father of Thrór but his son. This is a complex question which will be discussed in Vol. VII’ (HME VI.414 Note 28). He returns to the point in The Treason of Isengard with a ‘Note on Thrór and Thráin’ (HME VII.159–60), which lucidly explains the problem of the competing genealogies and how his father ultimately solved it. One additional piece of evidence suggesting how Tolkien made the mistake is that the first portion of the book sent to him to proofread (signatures A–H) happened in its final pages to include the one place in the text where the genealogy was reversed, in Chapter VII. When he later received the remainder of the proofs, he seems to have taken the (erroneous) reading in the section he had already proofed and returned to the printers as fixed and thus changed all the readings in the remainder of the book to match it. Then he reversed his decision, stetted every transposition he had pencilled in, and requested that the anomalous entry in Chapter VII be changed instead to match the rest, resulting in the text as published.
The History of the Hobbit Page 129
