This was not at all to Gimli's liking. 'The agreement was made without my consent,' he said. 'I will not walk blindfold like a prisoner or traitor. My folk have ever resisted the Enemy, nor had dealings with orcs or any of his servants. Neither have we done harm to the Elves. I am no more likely to betray your secrets than Legolas or any others of the Company.'
'You speak truly, I do not doubt,' said Hathaldir. 'Yet such is our law. I am not master of the law, and cannot set it aside at my own judgement. I have done all that I dared in letting you set foot in [Nelen >] the Gore.'
But Gimli was obstinate. He set his feet firmly apart and laid his hand upon the haft of his axe. 'I will go forward free, or I will go back north alone, though it be to perish in the wilderness,' he said.
'You cannot depart,' said Hathaldir grimly. 'You cannot cross Morthond, and behind you north are hidden defences and guards across the open arms of the Angle between the rivers. You will be slain before you get nigh them.' The other elf fitted an arrow to his bow as Gimli drew his axe from his belt. 'A plague on dwarves and their stiff necks!' muttered Legolas. 'Come!' said Aragorn. 'If I am to lead the Company you must all do as I bid. We will all be blindfold, even Legolas. That will be best, though it will make the journey slow and dull.' Gimli laughed suddenly. 'A merry troop of fools we shall look!' he said. 'But I will be content, if only Legolas shares my blindness.'
This was little to Legolas' liking.
'Come!' said Aragorn. 'Let us not cry "plague on your stiff neck" also. But you shall not be our hostage. We will all share the necessity alike.'
'I shall claim full amends for every fall and stubbed toe, if you do not lead us well,' said Gimli as they bound a cloth about his eyes.
'You will not have need,' said Halthadir. 'We shall lead you well, and our paths are smooth and green.'
'Alas! for the folly of these days,' said Legolas in his turn. 'Here all are enemies of the one Enemy, and yet I must walk blind, while the sun is shining in the woodland under leaves of gold!'
'Folly it may seem,' said Hathaldir. 'And in truth in nothing is the evil of the Enemy seen more clear than in the estrangements that divide us all. Yet so little faith and trust is left that we dare not endanger our dwellings. We live now in ever-growing peril, and our hands are more often set to bowstring than to harp. The rivers have long defended us, [but] they are no longer a sure guard. For the Shadow has crept northward all about our land. Some speak [?already] of departing, yet for that maybe it is already too late. The mountains to the west have an evil name for us. To the east the land is waste. It is rumoured that we cannot with safety go south of the mountains through Rohan, and that even if we did pass into the western lands the shores of the sea are no longer secure. It is still said that there are havens in the north beyond the land of the half-high,(35) but where that lies we do not know.'
'You might at least guess now,' said Pippin. 'The havens lie west of my land, the Shire.'
The elf looked at him with interest. 'Happy folk are hobbits,' he said, 'to dwell near Havens of Escape. Tell me about them, and what the sea is like, of which we sing, but scarce remember.' 'I do not know,' said Pippin. 'I have never seen it. I have never been out of my land before. And had I known what the world was like outside, I do not think I should have had the heart to leave it.'
'Yes, the word is full of peril, and dark places,' said Hathal- dir. 'But still there is much that is very fair, and though love is now mingled with grief it is not the less deep. And some there are among us who sing that the Shadow will draw back again and peace shall be. Yet I do not believe that the world will be again as of old, or the light of the sun as it was before. For the
Elves I fear it will mean only a peace in which they may pass to the Sea unhindered and leave the middle-earth for ever. Alas! for Lothlorien. It would be a life far from the mellyrn. But if there are mallorn-trees beyond the Sea none have reported it.' As they spoke thus the Company went slowly along paths in the wood. Hathaldir led them and the other elf walked behind. Even as Hathaldir had said they found the ground beneath their feet smooth and soft, and they walked slowly but without fear of hurt or fall.(36) Before long they met many grey-clad elves going northward to the outposts.(37) They brought news, some of which Legolas interpreted. The orcs had been waylaid, and many destroyed; the remainder had fled westward towards the mountains, and were being pursued as far as the sources of Nimrodel. The elves were hastening now to guard the north borders against any new attack.
I interrupt the text here to introduce a page of fearsomely rough notes which show my father thinking about the further course of the story from approximately this point. They begin with references to Cerin Amroth and to 'a green snowdrop', with the Elvish words nifred and nifredil. It may well be that this is where the name nifredil arose (both nifred 'pallor' and nifredil 'snowdrop' are given under the stem NIK-W in the Etymologies, V.378). Then follows:
News. H[athaldir] says he has spoken much of Elves. What of Men? The message spoke of 9. Gandalf. Consternation at news.
With this cf. p. 227 and note 29. My father was thinking of postponing the revelation of Gandalf's fall to the halt at Cerin Amroth, before he finally decided that it should not be spoken of until they came to Caras Galadon.
There is then a sentence, placed within brackets, which is unhappily - since it is probably the first reference my father ever made to Galadriel - only in part decipherable: '[?Lord] of Galadrim [?and?a] Lady and...... [? went] to White Council.' The remaining notes are as follows:
They climb Cerin Amroth. Frodo says [read sees] Anduin far away a glimpse of Dol Dugol.(38) H[athaldir] says it is reoccupied and a cloud lowers there.
They journey to Nelennas.(39)
Lord and Lady clad in white, with u hite hair. Piercing eyes like a lance in starlight.(40) Lord says he knows their quest but won't speak of it.
They speak [of] Gandalf. Song of Elves.
Of the [?harbour] to Legolas and aid to Gimli. Beornings.(41) Leave Lothlorien. Parting of ways at Stonehills.
I return now to the draft text.
'Also,' said Hathaldir, 'they bring me a message from the Lord of the Galadrim. You may all walk free. He has received messages from Elrond, who begs for help and friendship to you each and all.' He removed the bandage from Gimli's eyes. 'Your pardon,' he said bowing. 'But now look on us nonetheless with friendly eyes. Look and be glad, for you are the first dwarf to behold the sun upon the trees of Nelen-Lorien since Durin's day!'
As the bandage dropped from his eyes Frodo looked up. They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound covered with a sward of grass, as green as if it were springtime. Upon it as a double crown grew two circles of trees: the outer had a bark of snowy white and were leafless but beautiful in their slender and shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn- trees of great height, still arrayed in gold. High amid their branches was a white flet. At their feet and all about the sides of the hill the grass was studded with small golden starshaped flowers, and among them nodding on slender stalks flowers of a green so pale (42) that it gleamed white against the rich green of the grass. Over all the sky was blue and the sun of afternoon slanted among the tree-stems.
'You are come to Coron [written above: Kerin] Amroth.(43) For this is the mound of Amroth, and here in happier days his house was built. Here bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass: the yellow elanor (44) and the pale nifredil. Here we will rest a while, and come to the houses of the Galadrim (45) at dusk. They cast themselves on the soft grass at the mound's foot;(46) but after a while Hathaldir took Frodo and they went to the hill top, and climbed up to the high flet. Frodo looked out East and saw not far away the gleam of the Great River which was the border of Lorien. Beyond the land seemed flat and empty, until in the distance it rose again dark and drear. The sun that lay upon all the lands between seemed not to lie upon it.
'There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood,' said Hathal- dir. 'For the most part it is a forest of dark pine and close f
ir - but amidst it stands the black hill Dol-Dugol, where for long the Necromancer had his [? fort]. We fear it is now rehabited and threatens, for his power is now sevenfold. A dark cloud lies often above it. [?? Fear of the time is] war upon our eastern borders.'
The draft text continues ('The sun had sunk behind the mountains') without a break, whereas in FR a new chapter, 'The Mirror of Galadriel', now begins; and I also pause in the narrative here (it was not long before my father introduced this division). It will be noticed that towards the end of the earliest 'Lothlorien' material given thus far the narrative is less advanced towards the final form, and notably absent is Frodo's sight southward from Cerin Amroth of 'a hill of many mighty trees, or a city of green towers', Caras Galad(h)on (FR p. 366).
The next text of 'Lothlorien' is a good clear manuscript, thus titled, with a fair amount of alteration in the process of composition; but it cannot be entirely separated off from the initial drafting as a distinct 'phase' in the writing of the story, for it seems certain that at the beginning of the chapter the draft and the fair copy overlapped (see note 14). There seems nothing to show, however, that the rest of the new text actually overlapped with the drafts, and it is in any case most convenient to treat it separately.
The text of 'Lothlorien' in FR was now for the most part very closely approached, the chief differences of substance being the absence of all passages referring to or implying Aragorn's previous knowledge of Lothlorien,(47) and the meeting of the Company with the Elves coming up from the south shortly after their rest at noon on the first day of their journey from Nimrodel (see note 37). The original story was still followed in various minor points, as in its being Pippin and not Merry who speaks to Haldir (replacing Hathaldir of the draft text, see note 28) of the Havens (p. 232); Sam does not refer to his uncle Andy (FR p. 361), and it was still in his arm that he was wounded in Moria (p. 201).(48)
By an addition to the text that looks as if it belongs with the first writing of the manuscript the Dimrill Stair acquires its later meaning (see p. 164): ' "Yonder is the Dimrill Stair," said Aragorn pointing to the falls. "Down the deep-cloven way that climbs beside the torrent we should have come, if fortune had been kinder" ' (FR p. 347).
The Silverlode was at first named Blackroot or Morthond, but in the course of the writing of the manuscript the name became Silverlode (the Elvish name Kelebrant being added afterwards). The Company 'kept to the old path on the west side of the Blackroot' (FR p. 360; cf. note 32); but ten lines later Haldir says, in the text as written, 'Silverlode is already a strong stream here'. It was presumably at this juncture that my father decided on the transposition of the names of the northern and southern rivers (see note 36), a transposition that had already taken place in the initial drafting of 'Farewell to Lorien' (p. 279).
One of Haldir's brothers is still called Orfin as in the original draft; at one occurrence only, he is changed to Orofin, and in the drafting of
'Farewell to Lorien' he is Orofin (p. 279; FR Orophin). The other, in the draft text Rhimbron, is now Romrin, becoming Rhomrin in the course of the writing of the manuscript.
The Elvish name for 'the Gore' is here Narthas, where the original text (p. 231) has Nelen (replacing Nelennas): 'you have entered Narthas or the Gore as you would say, for it is the land that lies like a spear-head (49) between the arms of Silverlode and Anduin the Great, and 'I have done much in letting you set foot in Narthas'. But Haldir here says also: 'The others may walk free for a while until we come nearer to the Angle, Nelen, where we dwell', where the original draft has 'until we get nearer to our hidden dwellings'; and when they come to Kerin Amroth (as it is now written) he tells Gimli that he is 'the first dwarf to behold the trees of Nelen-Lorien since Durin's Day!' - where the original draft has Nelen-Lorien likewise (p. 234).
This seems to show that in the first stage my father intended Nelen, Nelen-Lorien, 'the Gore', 'the Gore of Lorien', as the name for Lorien between the rivers, without devising an Elvish name for the southward region where the Elves of Lorien actually dwelt; while in the stage represented here Narthas 'the Gore' is the larger region, and Nelen 'the Angle' the smaller, the point of the triangle or tip of the spearhead. If this is so, when Hathaldir/Haldir first spoke of 'the trees of Nelen-Lorien' the name bore a different sense from what he intended by the same words in the present manuscript.(50)
In the first sentence of this chapter in this manuscript Trotter is so named, as he was throughout the preceding one (p. 204); this was changed at once to Aragorn, and he is Aragorn as far as the Company's coming to the eaves of the Golden Wood, where he becomes Elfstone in the text as written.(51) Subsequently Aragorn, so far as it went, was changed to Ingold, and Elfstone was likewise changed to Ingold; then Ingold was changed back to Elfstone.(52)
There remain to notice some remarkable pencilled notes that occur on pages of this manuscript. The first is written on the back of the page (which is marked as being an insertion into the text) that bears the Song of Nimrodel, and reads:
Could not Balrog be Saruman? Make battle on Bridge be between
Gandalf and Saruman? Then Gandalf... clad in white.
The illegible words might conceivably be comes out. This was struck through; it had no further significance or repercussion, but remains as an extraordinary glimpse into reflections that lie beneath the written evidence of the history of The Lord of the Rings (and the thought, equally baldly expressed, would reappear: p. 422).
A second rejected note was written at some later time against Haldir's words 'they bring me a message from the Lord and Lady of the Galadrim':
Lord? If Galadriel is alone and is wife of Elrond.
A third note, again struck through, is written on the back of the inserted page that carries the preliminary draft of Frodo's perceptions of Lothlorien (note 46):
Elf-rings
.... [illegible word or name]
The power of the Elf-rings must fade if One Ring is destroyed.
NOTES.
1. On 'the black springs of Morthond' see p. 166.
2. At this point, then, my father conceived of the Elves of Lothlorien as dwelling underground, like the Elves of Mirkwood. Cf. Legolas' later words on p. 225: 'It is said that Linglorel had a house built in branches of a tree; for that was the manner of the Elves of Lorien, and may be yet... And our people [i.e. the Elves of Mirkwood] did not delve in the ground or build fastnesses before the Shadow came.'
3. This passage was first used at the end of the preceding chapter, 'Moria (ii)': see p. 204 and note 20.
4. On the emergence of the three peaks (the Mountains of Moria) in the new version of 'The Ring Goes South' see p. 166.
5. The word west is perfectly clear, but can only be a slip; FR has of course east. The same slip occurs in the first emergence of this passage at the end of 'Moria (ii)' (p. 203), and it occurs again in the fair copy of 'Lothlorien'.
6. This passage, from 'Northward the Dale ran up into a glen of shadows, was first used at the end of Moria (ii): see pp. 203-4.
7. For the first appearance of Kheledzaram see p. 166.
8. In FR Legolas did not go down with Gimli to look in Mirrormere.
9. The word southwest is clear (and occurs again in the fair copy of 'Lothlorien'), yet is obviously a slip; d. note 5.
10. The words Now they went on silently were struck out emphati- cally, but they are obviously necessary.
11. It is not told in the original text of 'Moria (ii)' (p. 194) that Sam received any wound in the Chamber of Mazarbul; this story first appears in the fair copy of that chapter (see p. 201).
12. The text becomes illegible for a couple of lines, but elements of a description of the wood can be made out.
13. This passage possibly suggests that at this stage the Company did not encounter Elves on the first night. The 'several (2 - 3) pleasant days' are clearly the days of their journey through Lothlorien, not the days they spent at 'Angle' (cf. the plot outline, p. 207: 'Dec. 15, 16, 17 they journey to Angle between Anduin and Bl
ackroot. There they remain long').
That they were now nearly 300 miles south of Rivendell accords precisely with the First Map: see Map II on p. 305, where the distance from Rivendell to the confluence of Silverlode and Anduin on the original scale (squares of 2 cm. side, 2 cm. = 100 miles) is just under six centimetres measured in a straight line. Aragorn's reckoning, when they came to the eaves of the Golden Wood, that they had come 'barely five leagues from the Gates', does not accord with the First Map, but that map can scarcely be used as a check on such small distances.
14. It seems that my father began making a fair copy of the chapter when the draft narrative had gone no further than the point where Frodo and Sam began to lag behind as the Company went down from Dimrill Dale. When he came to this point he stopped writing out the new manuscript in ink, but continued on in pencil on the same paper, as far as Legolas' words 'Alas that it is winter!' He then overwrote this further passage in ink and erased the pencil; and then went back to further drafting on rough paper - which is why there is this gap in the initial narrative, and why it takes up again at the words 'Under the night the trees stood tall before them...' Overlapping of draft and fair copy, often writing the preliminary draft in pencil on the fair copy manuscript and then erasing it or overwriting it in ink, becomes a very frequent mode of composition in later chapters.
The History of Middle Earth: Volume 7 - The Treason of Isengard Page 31