The History of Middle Earth: Volume 7 - The Treason of Isengard
Page 54
In the fair copy this was greatly expanded, but by no means to the text of TT. Here Treebeard begins as in the original draft (with Mountains of Lune for Lune) as far as 'this was just the East End', but then continues:
'... Things went wrong there in the Dark [> Elder] Days; some old sorcery, I expect [) some old shadow of the Great Dark lay there]. They say that even the Men that came out of the Sea were caught in it, and some of them fell into the Shadow. But that is only a rumour to me. Anyway they have no treeherds there, no one to care for them: it is a long, long time since the Ents walked away from the banks of the Baranduin.'
'What about Tom Bombadil, though?' asked Pippin. 'He lives on the Downs close by. He seems to understand trees.'
'What about whom?' said Treebeard. 'Tombombadil? Tom- bombadil? So that is what you call him. Oh, he has got a very long name. He understands trees, right enough; but he is not an Ent. He is no herdsman. He laughs and does not interfere. He never made anything go wrong, but he never cured anything, either. Why, why, it is all the difference between walking in the fields and trying to keep a garden; between, between passing the time of a day to a sheep on the hillside, or even maybe sitting down and studying sheep till you know what they feel about grass, and being a shepherd. Sheep get like shepherd, and shepherd like sheep, it is said, very slowly. But it is quicker and closer with Ents and trees. Like some Men and their horses and dogs, only quicker and closer even than that. For Ents are more like Elves: less interested in themselves than Men are, better at getting inside; and Ents are more like Men, more changeable than Elves are, quicker at catching the outside; only they do both things better than either: they are steadier, and keep at it. [Added: Elves began it of course: waking trees up and teaching them to talk. They always wished to talk to everything. But then the Darkness came, and they passed away over the Sea, or fled into far valleys and hid themselves. The Ents have gone on tree-herding.] Some of my trees can walk, many can talk to me.
'But it was not so, of course, in the beginning. We were like your Tombombadil when we were young. The first woods were more like the woods of Lorien....'
Most of this passage, including all reference to Bombadil, was bracketed for omission,(4) and my father then struck it all out and substituted a new version on a separate page. It is clear that all this revision belongs to the time of the writing of the fair copy manuscript.(5) In this new version the text of TT is all but reached; but Treebeard says this of the Old Forest:
'..I do not doubt that there is some shadow of the Great Darkness lying there still away North; and bad memories are handed down; for that Forest is old, though none of the trees are really old there, not what I call old. But there are hollow dales in this land where [the shadow >] the Darkness has never been lifted....'
Treebeard's song (In the willow-meads of Tasarinan) was set down in the draft manuscript in a faint scribble that nonetheless reached without hesitation almost the final form.(6)
When in the draft Treebeard reaches the Ent-house (TT p. 73) he makes no remark about the distance they have come, and in the fair copy he says: 'I have brought you three times twelve leagues or thereabouts, if measurements of that kind hold good in the country of Fangorn', where 'three' was changed to 'seven' before the words were rejected and replaced by his computation in 'Ent-strides'. In the draft he says that the place is named Fonthill, changed to Funtial, then back to Fonthill,(7) and finally 'Part of the name of this place could be called Wellandhouse in your language' (Wellinghall in the fair copy).
Treebeard stooped and lifted the two great vessels onto the table (this my father wrote in the fair copy also before at once striking it out); and he said before he lowered himself onto the bed ('with only the slightest bend at the waist') 'I think better flat'.
The next major development in the evolution of the text comes at this point, when Merry and Pippin tell Treebeard their story. Here the draft reads:
They followed no order for Treebeard would often stop them, and go back again or jump forward. He was only interested in parts of the tale: in their account of the Old Forest, in Rivendell, in Lothlorien, and especially in anything to do with Gandalf, most of all in Saruman. The hobbits were sorry that they could not remember more clearly Gandalf's account of that wizard. Treebeard kept reverting to him.
'Saruman has been here some time, a long time you would call it. Too long I should now say. Very quiet he was to begin with: no trouble to any of us. I used to talk to him. Very eager to listen he was in those days, ready to learn about old days. Many a thing I have told him that he would never have known or guessed otherwise. Never. He never repaid me - never told me anything. And he got more like that: his face more like windows in a stone wall, windows with blinds (shutters inside).
'But now I understand. So he's thinking of becoming a Power, is he. I have not troubled myself with the great wars, Elves are not my business, nor Men; and it is with them that wizards are mostly concerned. They are always worrying about the future.
I don't like worrying about the future. But I shall have to begin, I see. Mordor seemed a long way, but these orcs! And if Saruman has started taking them up, I have got trouble right on my borders. Cutting down trees. Machines, great fires. I won't stand it. Trees that were my friends. Trees I had known from nut and acorn. Cut down and left sometimes. Orc-work.
'I have been thinking I should have to do something. But I see it will be better sooner than later. Men are better than orcs, especially if the Dark Lord doesn't get at them. But the Rohiroth and the folk of Ondor if Saruman attacks at the back will soon be in a [?lonely].... We shall have [?hordes] from the East and ... [? swarm] of orcs all over us. I shall be [? eaten] up - and there will be nowhere to go. The flood will rise into the pines in the mountains. I don't think the Elves would find room for me in a, ship. I could not go over sea. I should wither away from my own soil.
'If you'll come with me we'll go to Isengard! You'll be helping your own friends.'
With the further words '[?Of] the Ents and Entwives' the initial draft peters out here; but in these last hastily jotted lines we see the emergence of a major new idea and new direction. The role that Treebeard was to play in the raising of the siege of Minas Tirith (pp. 211, 330, and cf. p. 412) is gone, and all is suddenly clear: Treebeard's part is to attack Saruman, who dwells on his very borders.
There is very little further initial drafting for this chapter extant; almost all is lost erased beneath the fair copy text. Rough workings for the Song of the Ent and the Entwife are found (see p. 421); and there is also a little scrap which shows my father's first thoughts for the march on Isengard:
Ents excited. To Isengard!
Hobbits see trees behind. Is Forest moving?
Orc woodcutters come on the Ents. Horrible surprise to find wood alive. They are destroyed. Ents take shields. They go on to Isengard. End of Ch. XXV.
But it seems to me most unlikely that those parts of the original drafting that are lost were any less close to the fair copy than are those that survive.(8) The text of the fair copy manuscript in the latter part of the chapter was retained in TT (pp. 75 - 90) without the smallest deviation of expression almost throughout its length: Treebeard's thoughts of Saruman and his becoming 'hot', his story of the Entwives, the Entmoot, the time spent with Bregalad, the march of the Ents and Pippin's awareness of the moving groves of trees behind them, to the last words: ' "Night lies over Isengard," said Treebeard.
Exceptions to this are very few.(9) Against the passage in which Treebeard condemns Saruman this note (it is scarcely in Treebeard's style) is written in the margin (and subsequently struck through): 'It is not perhaps mere chance that Orthanc which in Elvish means "a spike of rock" is in the tongue of Rohan "a machine".' With this cf. 'The Road to Isengard (11 p. 160): This was Orthanc, the citadel of Saruman, the name of which had (by design or chance) a twofold meaning; for in the Elvish speech orthanc signifies Mount Fang, but in the language of the Mark of old the Cunning Mind.'
The alte
ration to the text made in 1944, extending the Entmoot by an extra day, has appeared already: see p. 407. Until this change was made the Entmoot ended on the afternoon of the second day (cf. TT pp. 87 - 8):
Most of the time they sat silent under the shelter of the bank; for the wind was colder, and the clouds closer and greyer; there was little sunshine. There was a feeling of expectancy in the air. They could see that Bregalad was listening, although to them, down in the dell of his Ent-house, the sound of the Ent-voices was faint.
The afternoon came, and the sun, going west towards the mountains, sent out long yellow beams...
At the same time as this was rewritten, my father replaced the Entish words (first appearing in the fair copy manuscript) of the song sung by the Ents as they marched from the Moot past Bregalad's house, but not to the text in TT p. 88.(10)
NOTES.
1. The word hnau is taken from C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet: on Earth there is only one kind of hnau, Men, but on Malacandra there are three totally distinct races that are hnau.
2. A pencilled note on the fair copy says that 'Crack my timbers' had been 'queried by Charles Williams'. The same change was made at a later point in the chapter (TT p. 75).
3. This was changed to the form in TT already on the draft manuscript, but with lomeamor for lomeanor, and this remained uncorrected on the fair copy.
4. It would be interesting to know why Treebeard's knowledge of and estimate of Tom Bombadil was removed. Conceivably, my father felt that the contrast between Bombadil and the Ents developed here confused the conflict between the Ents and the Entwives; or, it may be, it was precisely this passage that gave rise to the idea of that conflict.
5. This is seen from the fact that the new version was still numbered in 'Chapter XXIV', i.e. 'Treebeard' had not yet been separated off as a new chapter, as was done in the course of the writing of the fair copy (p. 414). Moreover, when later the hobbits told Treebeard their story he was 'enormously interested in every- thing', and 'everything' included Tom Bombadil.
6. The names in the draft have these differences from those in TT: Dorthonion is Orod Thuin (preceded by Orod Thon), which remained in the fair copy and following typescript, changed later to Orod-na-Thon (see the Etymologies, V.392); and for Aldalomë appears another name that I cannot certainly read: His .. eluinalda.
7. The name Fonthill is specifically derived from Fonthill in Wilt- shire, as is seen from Funtial, which is the form of the place-name found in a tenth-century charter. The first element of the name is probably Old English funta 'spring', and the second the Celtic word ial 'fertile upland region'; but my father no doubt intended it to be taken as if from Old English hyll 'hill'.
8. This is supported by the bits of text where the erased draft can to some extent be made out, and by a piece of independent draft revision of a part of the 'Saruman' passage. - The name Dernslade (slade 'valley, dell, dingle') can be seen in the draft where the fair copy has Derndingle.
9. In addition to those mentioned in the text, it may be noted that Treebeard's answer to Pippin's question about the small number of the Ents: 'Have a great many died?' is here briefer: ' "Oh no!" said Treebeard. "But there were only a few to begin with, and we have not much increased. There have been no Entings...'
Among names, Angrenost (Isengard} now appears; a blank was left for the Elvish name of the Valley of Saruman, Nan Gurunir being added in; and Gondor remains Ondor (see p. 401).
10. The original form of the Entish words was thus:
Ta-ruta dum-da dum-da dum / ta-rara dum-da dum-da bum/
Da-duda rum-ta rum-ta rum / ta-dada rum-ta rum-ta dum/
The Ents were coming: ever nearer and louder rose their song.
Ta-bumda romba bumda-romba banda-romba bum-ta bum /
Da-dura dara lamba bum / ta-lamba dara rum-ta rum!
Ta-bum-da-dom / ta-rum-ta-rom / ta-bum-ta lamba dum-da- dom //
ta-bum / ta-rum / ta-bum-ta lamba dum//
This was changed in 1944 to:
A! rundamara-nundarun tahora-mundakumbalun,
taruna-runa-runarun tahora-kumbakumbanun.
The Ents were coming: ever nearer and louder rose their song:
Tarundaromba-rundaromba mandaromba-mundamun,
tahurahara-lambanun talambatara-mundarun,
tamunda-rom, tarunda-rom, tamunda-lamba-munda-tom.
The Song of the Ent and the Entwife.
Rough workings and a first completed draft are extant; in this, verses 1 and 3 are as in the final form.
2. When Spring is in the sprouting corn and flames of green arise,
When blossom like a living snow upon the orchard lies,
When earth is warm, and wet with rain, and its smell is in the air,
I'll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.
4. When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown,
When straw is long and ear is white and harvest comes to town,
When honey spills and apple swells and days are wealthiest,
I'll linger here, and will not come, because my land is best.
5. When winter comes and boughs are bare and all the grass is grey,
When _______ and starless night o'ertakes the sunless day,
When storm is wild and trees are felled, then in the bitter rain
I'll look for thee, and call to thee, I'll come to thee again.
The blank space in this verse is left thus in the original. Verse 6 differs from the final form only in the first line, with repeated When Winter comes, when Winter comes; and the concluding lines differ only in the roads that lead for the road that leads. A preliminary version of the ending is found, written as prose, thus:
I'll come back to thee and look for thee again, I'll come to thee and comfort thee, and find thee in the rain. We'll walk the land together and gather seed and set, and journey to an island where both can live again.
XXIII. NOTES ON VARIOUS TOPICS.
There are three isolated pages of notes, heterogeneous in content and obviously even on the same page written at different times, but each of which has links to the others. Some of the notes may well be earlier than the time we have reached,(1) others later, but rather than split them up and try to fit them in uncertainly elsewhere it seems best to give them together.
The page that I give first begins with the note 'Wizards = Angels', and this same note is found on the other two pages also. I take it to be the first appearance in written record of this conception, i.e. that the Istari or Wizards were angeloi, 'messengers', emissaries from the Lords of the West: see Unfinished Tales pp. 388 ff., and especially my father's long discussion in Letters no. 156 (4 November 1954). Then follows:
Gandalf to reappear again. How did he escape? This might never be fully explained. He passed through fire - and became the White Wizard. 'I forgot much that I knew, and learned again much that I had forgotten.' He has thus acquired something of the awe and terrible power of the Ring-wraiths, only on the good side. Evil things fly from him if he is revealed - when he shines. But he does not as a rule reveal himself.
He should have a trial of strength with Saruman. Could the Balrog of the Bridge be in fact Saruman?
Or better? as in older sketch. Saruman is very affable.
With this compare the initial sketch for 'The Riders of Rohan', p. 389 The extraordinary idea that the Balrog of Moria might be Saruman has appeared in a note written on the back of a page of the fair copy manuscript of 'Lothlorien', p. 236: 'Could not Balrog be Saruman? Make battle on Bridge be between Gandalf and Saruman?' The
reference to the 'older sketch' - 'Saruman is very affable' - is to 'The Story Foreseen from Moria', p. 212, where on the homeward journey 'They call at Isengard. Gandalf knocks. Saruman comes out very affable', etc.
The next note on this page records my father's decision to move the whole chronology of the Quest forward by a month:
Time Scheme. Too much takes place in winter. They should remain longer at Rivendell. This
would have additional advantage of allowing Elrond's scouts and messengers far longer time. He should discover Black Riders have gone back. Frodo should not start until say Dec. 24th.
It seems likely that 24 December was chosen as being 'numerically' one month later than the existing date, 24 November (p. 169); and that it was changed to 25 December to make the new dates agree 'numerically' with the existing time-structure (since November has 30 days but December 31): see p. 368. I do not understand the statement here that 'he [Elrond] should discover Black Riders have gone back', since the final text of 'The Ring Goes South' had been reached in Gandalf's words 'It is rash to be too sure, yet I think that we may hope now that the Ringwraiths were scattered, and have been obliged to return as best they could to their Master in Mordor, empty and shapeless.'
Another note on this page, not written at the same time, refers to 'Chapter XXIV: Open with conversation of Goblins and their quarrel. How are Merry and Pippin armed?' And the last reads: 'Sarn-gebir = Grailaw or Graidon Hills'. Both these names mean 'Grey Hill(s)': Old English hlaw 'hill', Northern English and Scottish law, and Old English dun, Modern English down.