The History of Middle Earth: Volume 8 - The War of the Ring

by J. R. R. Tolkien

At night Sam keeps watch, only pretending to be asleep. He hears Gollum muttering to himself, words of hatred for Frodo and lust for the Ring.

  The three companions now approach Kirith Ungol, the dreadful ravine which leads into Gorgoroth. Kirith Ungol means Spider Glen: there dwelt great spiders ...

  A single page of notes shows my father's thoughts as he embarked at last on the writing of this story. These notes were not written as a continuous outline and not all were written at the same time, but I give them in the sequence in which they stand on the page.

  Food problem. Gollum chokes at lembas (but it does him good?). Goes off and comes back with grimy fingers [?and face]. Once he heard him crunching in dark.

  Next chapter.

  Gollum takes them down into the water gully and then turns away eastward. It leads to a hard point in the midst of the Marshes. Over Dead Marshes. Dead faces. In some of the pools if you looked in you saw your own face all green and dead and corrupted. To Kirith Ungol.

  Change in Gollum as they draw near

  Gollum sleeps quite unconcerned - quietly at first; but as they draw near to Mordor he seems to get nightmares. Sam hears him beginning to hold colloquies with himself. It is a sort of good Smeagol angry with a bad Gollum. The latter [?grows] - filled with hatred of the Ring-bearer, in longing to be Ring- master himself.

  Laid up [?in] rock near gates see great movements in and out. Explanation of why they had escaped the war-movement.

  They lie up in day in beds of reeds

  Feeling of weight. Ring feels heavier and heavier on Frodo's neck as Mordor approaches. He feels the Eye.

  Another page, written at any rate before 'The Passage of the Marshes' had proceeded very far, outlines the story thus:

  They come to a point where the gully falls into the marshes. Brief description of these (which take about 3 to 4 days to cross). Pools where there are faces some horrible, some fair - but all corrupted. Gollum says it is said that they are memories (?) of those who fell in ages past in the Battle before Ennyn Dur the Gates of Mordor in the Great Battle. In the moon if you looked in some pools you saw your own face fouled and corrupt and dead. Describe the pools as they get nearer to Mordor as like green pools and rivers fouled by modern chemical works.

  They lie up in foothills and see armed men and orcs passing in. Soon all is clear. Sauron is gathering his power and hiding it in Mordor in readiness. (Swart men, and wild men with long braided hair out of East; Orcs of the Eye etc.)

  On the far (East) Horn of the Gates is a tall white tower.

  Minas Ithil now Minas Morghul which guards the pass. It was originally built by the men of Gondor to prevent Sauron breaking out and was manned by the guards of Minas Ithil,(2) but it fell soon into his hands. It now prevented any coming in. It was manned by orcs and evil spirits. It had been called [Neleg Thilim >] Neleglos [the Gleaming >] the White Tooth.(3)

  This last passage is accompanied by a little sketch, reproduced on p. 108 (no. I). Until now, the pass and chief entry into Mordor had been named Kirith Ungol (cf. the citation from 'The Story Foreseen from Lorien' on p. 104). When contemplating the story ahead as he drafted 'The Passage of the Marshes' my father saw that this was not so: Kirith Ungol was a distinct way through the mountains - and (plainly enough) it is this path that Sam and Frodo are going to take. Concomitantly with this, he was proposing to change the site of Minas Morgul as he had long conceived it, and as it appears on the First Map (see Map III, VII.309).(4) There, the pass of Kirith Ungol was guarded by two towers, one on either side (see VII.349, note 41), and Minas Morgul was away to the west, on the other side of the mountains (i.e. on the western side of the northern extremity of the Dúath, the Mountains of Shadow); whereas now Minas Morgul is to be the tower that guards the pass.(5) A virtually identical sketch to this, in faint pencil, is found on a page of drafting for 'The Black Gate is Closed'. It clearly does not belong with that, however (the later text is written across it), but with the present passage; and accompanying this pencilled version of the sketch is this note:

  It is better for the later story that Minas Ithil (Morghul) should be actually at the Gates of Mordor on its East side.

  The scene is thus depicted from the North.

  On a page used also for drafting of 'The Passage of the Marshes' there is another sketch of the tower and the pass (also reproduced on p. 108, no. II), very similar except in one important respect: whereas in Sketch I the cleft of Kirith Ungol is placed immediately below Minas Morgul (which thus stands on a high ridge or 'horn' between the 'cleft' and the 'pass'), in Sketch II Kirith Ungol lies on the far side of the pass from the tower. The scene is again depicted from the North, for the accompanying text reads: 'Kirith Ungol is not the main entrance but a narrow cleft to [S(outh) >] West.' I think it almost certain that Sketch II represents a further stage in the development of the conception, not its first appearance.

  Most of 'The Passage of the Marshes' is extant in preliminary drafting (and most of it in excruciatingly difficult handwriting); in this chapter my father made no use of his method of writing a text in pencil and then setting down a more finished version in ink on top of it. The narrative in the draft is not perfectly continuous, and it is clear that (as commonly) he built up the completed manuscript - the only one made of this chapter - in stages. The initial drafting is mostly extremely rough, written at great speed, and in places the completed manuscript (while perfectly legible - it was the text from which my father read the chapter to Lewis and Williams on April the 19th) is itself really the primary composition, constantly corrected and changed in the act of writing. Nonetheless the story of the passage of the Dead Marshes as it appears in The Two Towers seems to have been achieved almost to the form of every sentence (apart from certain substantial alterations made very much later) in that week of April 1944.

  Only in one respect did the initial drafting differ significantly from the story as it appears in the manuscript. This was primarily a matter of the narrative structure, but I give most of the passage in question, so well as I can make it out, as exemplification. It takes up from Gollum's words 'Snakes, worms in pools. Lots of things in the pools. No birds' (TT p. 234).

  So passed the third day of their travelling with Gollum.(6)

  All the night they went on with brief halts. Now it was really perilous at least for the hobbits. They went slowly keeping close in line and following every move of Gollum's attentively. The pools grew larger and more ominous and the places where feet could tread without sinking into [?chilly] gurgling mires more and more difficult to find. There were no more reeds and grasses.

  Later in the night, after midnight, there came a change. A light breeze got up and grew to a cold wind: it came from the North and though it had a bitter tang it seemed kindly to them, for it bore at last a hint of untainted airs and drove the reeking mists into banks with dark channels in between. The cloudy sky was torn and tattered and the moon nearly full rode among the [? wrack]. Gollum cowered and muttered but the hobbits looked up hopefully. A great dark shadow came out of Mordor like a huge bird crossed the moon and went away west. Just the same feeling came on them as at the..... they cast themselves down in the mire. But the shadow passed quickly. Gollum lay like one stunned and they had to rouse him. He would say only Wraiths wraiths [?under] the moon. The precious the precious is their master. They see everything everywhere. He sees. After that [?even] Frodo sensed a change in Gollum once more. He was [?even] more fawning [and] friendly but he talked more often in (Two early sketches of Kirith Ungol.) [his] old manner. They had great difficulty in making him go on while the moon

  The last passage was then rewritten ('After that Sam thought he sensed a change in Gollum again' ...) and the draft continues with a description of Frodo's weariness and slowness and the weight of the Ring that approaches the text in TT (p. 238). Then follows:

  He now really felt it as a weight: and he was getting conscious of the Eye: it was that as much as the weight that made him cower and stoop as he walked. He felt
like someone hidden in a room (?garden) when his deadly enemy comes in: knowing that he is there though he cannot yet see him the enemy stands at gaze to espy all comers with his deadly eye. Any movement is fraught with peril.(7) Gollum probably felt something of the same sort. After the passing of the shadow of the Nazgûl that flew to Isengard it was difficult to get him to move if there was light. As long as the moon lasted he would only creep forwards on his hands cowering and whimpering. He was not much use as a guide and Sam took to trying to find a path for himself. In doing so he stumbled forward and came down on his hands in sticky mire with his face bending over a dark pool that seemed like some glazed but grimed window in the moonlight. Wrenching his hands out of the bog he sprang back with a cry. There are dead faces ..... dead faces in the pool he cried, dead faces! Gollum laughed. The Dead Marshes, yes, yess. That is their name. Should not look in when the White Eye is up.(8) What are they, who are they, asked Sam shuddering and turning to Frodo who came up behind him. I don't know said Frodo. No don't master said Sam, they're horrible. Nonetheless Frodo crawled cautiously to the edge and looked. He saw pale faces - deep under water they looked: some grim some hideous, some noble and fair: but all horrible, corrupted, sickly, rotting .......... Frodo crawled back and hid his eyes. I don't know who they are but I thought I saw Men and Elves and Orcs, all dead and rotten. Yes yes, said Gollum cackling. All dead and rotten. The Dead Marshes. Men and Elves and Orcs. There was a great Battle here long long ago, precious, yes, when Smeagol was young and happy long ago:(9) before the precious came, yes, yes. They fought on the plain over there. The Dead Marshes have grown greater.

  But are they really there? Smeagol doesn't know, said Gollum. You can't reach them. I we tried, yes we tried, precious, once: but you can't touch them. Only shapes to see perhaps, not to touch, no precious! Sam looked darkly at him and shuddered, thinking he guessed why Smeagol had tried to reach them.

  The moon was now sinking west into cloud that lay above far Rohan beyond Anduin. They went on and Gollum again took the lead by [read but] Sam and Frodo found that he [read they] could not keep their [?fascinated] eyes from straying whenever they passed some pool of black water. If they did so they caught glimpses of the pallid dead faces. At last they came to a place where Gollum halted, a wide pool ...... barred their way.

  The pools lit by will o' the wisp fire reveal dead faces. The moon shows their own.(10)

  ............ The moon came out of its cloud. They looked in. But they saw no faces out of the vanished past. They saw their own...... Sam Gollum and Frodo looking up with dead eyes and livid rotting flesh at them.

  Let's get out of this foul place!

  Long way to go yet said Gollum. Must get to somewhere to lie up before day.

  This section of drafting peters out here. In the manuscript the text becomes that of TT at almost all points: the sequence of the story has been reconstructed, so that the change in the weather and the flight of the Nazgûl follows the passage of the pools of the dead faces; and there is no further hint of the idea (going back to the preliminary notes, p. 105) that the beholder's own face was mirrored as dead when the moonlight shone on the pools.

  It is notable that in the draft the Nazgûl is said to have been flying to Isengard. In the manuscript as first written this was not said: '... a vast shape winged and ominous: it scudded across the moon, and with a deadly cry went away westward, outrunning the moon in its fell speed.... But the shadow passed quickly, and behind it the wind roared away, leaving the Dead Marshes bare and bleak.' After the last sentence, however, my father added, probably not long after, 'The Nazgûl had gone, flying to Isengard with the speed of the wrath of Sauron.' The rewriting of the passage, so that the Nazgûl returns and, flying lower above them, sweeps back to Mordor, was done at a later time (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter); but the words in TT (p. 237) 'with a deadly cry went away westward' are in fact a vestige of the original conception.

  Among various other differences and developments the following seem the most worth remarking.

  In the original draft, and at first in the manuscript, Gollum's 'song' (TT pp. 227 - 8) was wholly different after the first line:

  The cold hard lands

  To feet and hands

  they are unkind.

  There wind is shrill,

  The stones are chill;

  there's nought to find.

  Our heart is set

  On water wet

  in some deep pool.

  O how we wish

  To taste of fish

  so sweet and cool!

  There was no reference to 'Baggins' and the fish-riddle.

  The story that they slept the whole of the day after they had come down from the Emyn Muil was not present at first. In the preliminary draft of the opening of the chapter Sam, after testing that Gollum was really asleep by saying fissh in his ear, did not fall asleep:

  Time seemed to drag; but after an hour or two Gollum sat up suddenly wide awake as if he had been called. He stretched, yawned, got up and began to climb out of the gully. 'Hi, where are you off to?' cried Sam. 'Smeagol's very hungry,' said Gollum. 'Be back soon.'

  In the manuscript the final story appears, to the extent that Sam does fall asleep; but when he wakes 'the sky above was full of bright daylight.' This however was changed immediately: Sam and Frodo slept the whole day away, not waking until after sunset, and Gollum's departure to find something to eat is postponed to the evening.(11)

  There can be no doubt that the geography of the region in which the Dead Marshes lay had now been substantially changed. It is said in TT (p. 232):

  The hobbits were now wholly in the hands of Gollum. They did not know, and could not guess in that misty light, that they were in fact only just within the northern borders of the marshes, the main expanse of which lay south of them. They could, if they had known the lands, with some delay have retraced their steps a little, and then turning east have come round over hard roads to the bare plain of Dagorlad.

  This passage appears in the manuscript, and is found embryonically in the original draft, of which, though partly illegible, enough can be made out to see that the new conception was present: 'They were in fact just within the north-west bounds of the Dead Marshes', and '[they could] have come round the eastern side to the hard of Battle Plain.' The First Map (Maps II and IV(C), VII.305, 317) and the large map based on it that I made in 1943 are entirely at variance with this: for in that conception the No Man's Land lay between Sarn Gebir (Emyn Muil) and the pass into Mordor. There could be no reason for one journeying in those hills to enter the Dead Marshes if he were making for the pass (Kirith Ungol on those maps); nor, if he were at the edge of the marshes, would he by any means come to Dagorlad if instead of going through them he went round to their east. Essentially what has happened is that the Dead Marshes have been moved south-west, so that they lie between the Emyn Muil and the Gates of Mordor - into the region marked 'No Man's Land' on the First Map - and so become continuous with the Wetwang or Nindalf (see VII.320-1 and below); this is the geography seen on the large-scale map of Gondor and Mordor accompanying The Return of the King.(12)

  In reply to Frodo's question whether they must cross the Dead Marshes, Gollum answered in the original draft (cf. TT p. 233): ' "No need. Back a little, and round a little" - his skinny arm waved away north and east - "and you can come dry-foot to the Plain. Dagorlad that is, where the Battle was fought and He lost the precious, yess" - he added this in a sort of whisper to himself.' The manuscript here has the text of TT; but subsequently, in Gollum's explanation of the dead faces in the marshes (TT p. 235), he says: 'There was a great Battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Smeagol was young, long ago, before the Precious came. They took It from the Lord then, Elves and Men took It. It was a great battle. They fought on the plain for days and months and years at the Gates of Mornennyn [> Morannon]' (for the original draft of this see p. 109). Gollum's reference to the story of the taking of the Ring from Sauron was rem
oved much later.

  The account of the morning after the night of the dead faces in the pools and the flight of the Nazgûl, and of the lands through which they passed after leaving the marshes, was different in important respects from that in TT, pp. 238 - 9. The manuscript reads (following an initial draft):

  When day came at last, the hobbits were surprised to see how close the ominous mountains had drawn: the outer buttresses and the broken hills at their feet were now no more than a dozen miles away. Frodo and Sam looked round in horror: dreadful as the Marshes had been in their decay their end was more loathsome still. Even to the mere of the dead faces some haggard phantom of green spring would come ... (&c. as in TT p. 239)

  The extended and altered passage that replaces this in TT, introduced at a later stage, was due to considerations of geography and chronology. With this new passage two more nights are added to the journey (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter and the map on p. 117), and during this stage of it they pass through a country seen from the end of the marshes as 'long shallow slopes, barren and pitiless', and described subsequently as 'the arid moors of the Nomanlands'. Here this name reappears from Celeborn's words to the Company in 'Farewell to Lorien' (FR p. 390) and the old maps: see VII.320-1 and above.

  An isolated page carries two distinct elements, though very probably both were set down at the same time. The change of the name of the Gates of Mordor in the act of writing from Ennyn Dur (the name on Sketch I, p. 108) first to Morennyn and then to Mornennyn shows that this page preceded the point in the writing of the manuscript text where Gollum speaks of the dead faces in the pools, for there Mornennyn appears (p. 112), but it is convenient to give it here since it concerns the narrative of the end of the chapter (and the beginning of the next).