returnoftheshadow72

by Miguel

  'Not later than the autumn! ' said Gildor. 'I wonder. He may all the same not have known that they were in the Shire; yet he knows more about them than we do. If he did not tell you any more, I do not feel inclined to do so, for fear of frightening you from the Journey. Because I think it is clear that your Journey started none too soon; by what seems strange good luck you went just in time. You ought to go on, and not turn back, though you have met adventure, and danger, much sooner than you expected. You ought to go quickly; but you must be careful, and look not only ahead, but also behind, and even perhaps to both sides as well.'

  'I wish you would say things plainer,' said Bingo. 'But I am glad to be told that I ought to go on; for that is what I want to do. Only I now rather wonder if I ought to take Odo and Frodo. The original plan was just a Journey, a sort of prolonged (and perhaps permanent) holiday from Hobbiton, and I am sure they did not expect any more adventures for a long time than getting wet and hungry. We had no idea we should be pursued.'

  'O come! They must have known that if you intend to go wandering out of the Shire into the Wide World, you must be prepared for anything. I cannot see that it makes so much difference, if something has turned up rather soon. Are they not willing to go on?'

  'Yes, they say so.'

  'Then let them go on! (25) They are lucky to be your companions: and you are lucky to have them. They are a great protection to you.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I think the Riders do not know that they are with you, and their presence has confused the scent, and puzzled them.'

  'Dear me! It is all very mysterious. It is like solving riddles. But I have always heard that talking to Elves is like that.'

  'It is,' laughed Gildor. 'And Elves seldom give advice; but when they do, it is good. I have advised you to go to Rivendell with speed and care. Nothing else that I could tell you would make that advice any better.(26) We have our own business and our own sorrows, and those have little to do with the ways of hobbits or of other creatures. Our paths cross those ways seldom, and mostly by accident. In our meeting there is perhaps something more than accident, yet I do not feel sure that I ought to interfere. But I will add a little more advice: if a Rider finds you or speaks to you, do not answer, and do not name yourself. Also do not again use the ring to escape from his search. I do not know(27), but I guess that the use of the ring helps them more than you.'

  'More and more mysterious! ' said Bingo. 'I can't imagine what information would be more frightening than your hints; but I suppose you know best.'

  'I do indeed,' said Gildor, 'and I will say no more.'

  'Very well!' said Bingo. 'I am now all of a twitter; but I am much obliged to you.'

  'Be of good heart! ' said Gildor. 'Sleep now! In the morning we shall have gone; but we will send our messages through the land. The wandering Companies shall know of you and your Journey. I name you elf-friend, and wish you well. Seldom have we had such delight in strangers; and it is pleasant to hear words of our own tongue from the lips of other wanderers in.the World.'

  Bingo felt sleep coming upon him, even as Gildor finished speaking. 'I will sleep now,' he said. Gildor led him to a bower beside Odo and Frodo, and he threw himself upon a bed, and fell at once into a dreamless slumber.

  NOTES.

  1. For emendation of the typescript at this stage my father used black ink. This was fortunate, for otherwise the historical unravelling of the text would be scarcely possible: in a later phase of the work he returned to it and covered it with corrections in blue and red inks, blue chalk and pencil. In one case, however, an addition in black ink belongs demonstrably to the later phase. It is possible therefore that some of the emendations which I have adopted into the text are really later; but none seem to me to be so, and in any case all changes of any narrative significance are detailed in the following notes.

  2. The meaning of this title is not clear. The phrase 'Three's company, but four's more' is used however by Marmaduke Brandybuck during the conversation in Buckland, where he asserts that he will certainly be one of the party (p. 103). Conceivably, therefore, my father gave the original second chapter this title because he believed that it would extend as far as the arrival in Buckland. Subsequently he crossed out the words 'and Four's More', but it cannot be said when this was done.

  3. In the second draft of the opening of the chapter, which had reached virtually the form of the typescript text in this passage, the crossing of the East Road was omitted, and the omission remains here (see p.47).

  4. In the draft text the verse The Road goes ever on and on is placed here (see p. 47).

  5. Fosco Bolger, Bingo's uncle: see p. 38.

  6. In FR (pp. 82-3) the verse has I for we in lines 4 and 8, but is otherwise the same; there, however, it is an echo from Bilbo's speaking it in Chapter x (FR p.44). For the earliest form see p. 47; and see further p.246 note 18.

  7. Men from Dale: see pp. 20, 30.

  8. The next portion of the narrative, from 'I have though,' said Frodo and extending to the end of the song Upon the hearth the fire is red (p. 57), was early re-typed to replace two pages of the original typescript, and a substantial alteration and expansion of the story was introduced (see notes g and x x).

  9. This first part of the re-typed section (see note 8) was not greatly changed from the earlier form. In the earlier, Frodo described his encounter with a Black Rider 'up in the North Moors' in the previous spring in almost exactly the same words; but Bingo's response was somewhat different:

  'That makes it even queerer,' said Bingo. 'I am glad I had the fancy not to be seen on the road. But, somehow, I don't believe either of these riders was one of the Big People, not of the Kind like the Dale-men, I mean. I wonder what they were? I rather wish Gandalf was here. But, of course, he went away immediately after the fireworks with the elves and dwarves, and it will be ages before we see him now.'

  'Shall we go on now, or stay here and have some food?' asked Odo...

  In the later versions of A Long-expected Party there is no reference to Gandalf after the fireworks (see pp. 31, 38; 63).

  10. There the road bent southward: on the map of the Shire in FR the road does not bend southward 'at the end of the straight stretch'; it bends left or northward, while a side road goes on to Woodhall. But at this stage there was only one road, and at the place where the hobbits met the Elves it was falling steadily, 'making south-east towards the lowlands of the Brandywine River' (p. 56). Certainly by oversight, the present passage was preserved with little change in the original edition of FR (p. 86):

  The sun had gone down red behind the hills at their backs, and evening was coming on before they came to the end of the long level over which the road ran straight. At that point it bent somewhat southward, and began to wind again, as it entered a wood of ancient oak-trees.

  It was not until the second edition of 1966 that my father changed the text to agree with the map:

  At that point it bent left and went down into the lowlands of the Yale making for Stock; but a lane branched right, winding through a wood of ancient oak-trees on its way to Woodhall. 'That is the way for us,' said Frodo. Not far from the road-meeting they came on the huge hulk of a tree...

  This is also the reason for change in the second edition of 'road' to 'lane' (also 'path', 'way') at almost all the many subsequent occurrences in FR pp. 86-90: it was the 'lane' to Woodhall they were on, not the 'road' to Stock.

  11. The entire passage from 'Close to the road they came on the huge hulk of an aged tree' is an expansion in the replacement typescript (see note 8) of a few sentences in the earlier:

  Inside the huge hollow trunk of an aged tree, broken and stumpy but still alive and in leaf, they rested and had a meal. Twilight was about them when they came out and prepared to go on again. 'I am going to risk the road now,' said Bingo, who had stubbed his toes several times against hidden roots and stones in the grass. 'We are probably making a fuss about nothing.'

  Though the enlarged description of t
he hollow tree was preserved in FR (p. 86), the second passage of a Black Rider was not, and the tree has again no importance beyond being the scene of the hobbits' meal. In the third chapter Bingo, talking to Marmaduke in Buckland, refers to this story of a Rider heard while they sat inside the tree (p. 103); see also note 19 below.

  12. The version of the song in the rejected typescript (see note 8) had the second and third verses thus:

  Home is behind, the world ahead,

  And there are many paths to tread;

  And round the corner there may wait

  A new road or a secret gate,

  And hidden pathways there may run

  Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

  Apple, thorn, etc.

  Down hill, up hill walks the way

  From sunrise to the falling day,

  Through shadow to the edge of night,

  Until the stars are all alight; etc.

  13. In the initial drafting for this passage Bingo proposed that they stow their burdens in the hollow of an old broken oak and then climb it, but this was rejected as soon as written. This was no doubt where the 'hollow tree' motive first appeared.

  14. In the original draft my father first wrote here: 'Suddenly there was a sound of laughter and a creak of wheels on the road. The shadow straightened up and retreated.' This was soon replaced, without the creak of wheels being explained; but it suggests that he had some intervention other than Elves in mind.

  15. This was another portion that was re-typed. The passage immediately preceding the Elves' song was different in the earlier form: It seemed to be singing in the secret elf-tongue, and yet as they listened the sounds, or the sounds and the tune together, seemed to turn into strange words in their own thought, which they only partly understood. Frodo afterwards said that he thought he heard words like these:

  The song also had certain differences, including a second verse that was rejected.

  O Elbereth! O Elbereth!

  O Queen beyond the Western Seas!

  O Light to him that wandereth

  Amid the world of woven trees!

  O Stars that in the Sunless Year

  Were kindled by her silver hand,

  That under Night the shade of Fear

  Should fly like shadow from the land!

  O Elbereth! Gilthonieth!

  Clear are thy eyes, and cold thy breath! etc.

  In the last verse the form is Gilthoniel. Extensive rough workings are also found, in which the first line of the song appears also as O Elberil! O Elberil! (and the third O Light to us that wander still); from these is also seen the meaning of the Sunless Year, since my father first wrote the Flowering Years (with reference to the Two Trees; see the Quenta Silmarillion $19, V.212). - It seems to have been here that the name Elbereth was first applied to Varda, having been previously that of one of the sons of Dior Thingol's Heir: see V.351.

  16. In the original draft it was added here that the Elves 'were crowned with red and yellow leaves'; rejected, no doubt, because it was dark and they bore no lights.

  17. At an earlier point in the chapter (p. 52) the typescript read 'a day even finer and hotter than the day before (Bingo's birthday, that already seemed quite a long while past).' It was of course on the evening of the day following the birthday party that Bingo and his companions set out, and my father realising this simply changed 'before' to 'of' and removed the brackets, as in the text printed. Here, however, he neglected to change 'yesterday' (see also note 24). These slips are odd, but do not seem to have any particular significance.

  It is seen subsequently how these Elves could have 'heard all about that from the Rivendell people', for Bingo tells Gildor (p. 63) that Gandalf 'went off with the dwarves and the Rivendell elves as soon as the fireworks were over.' The meeting between them is in fact mentioned later (p. 101).

  18. The typescript runs straight on from me have heard all about that, of course, from the Rivendell people to 'O Wise People, ' said Frodo, and the passage beginning 'Then who are you, and who is your lord?' said Bingo is an addition. In the typescript as typed the leader of the Elves is not named until towards the end, where after they had eaten 'Bingo remained talking with Gildor, the leader of the Elves' (p. 62); all references to Gildor before that are corrections in ink

  19. As the text was typed, Bingo said: 'Because we have seen two Black Riders, or one twice over, today.' The changed text accompanies the story of the Rider who paused momentarily beside the hollow tree (see note 11).

  20. For the 'elf-latin' (Qenya) see the Lhammas $4, V. 172.

  21. This passage is an alteration of the text as typed, which read:

  .. we are very easy to please (for hobbits). For myself I can only say that the delight of meeting you has already made this a day of bright Adventure.'

  'Bilbo was a good master,' said the Elf bowing. 'Come now, join our company, and we will go. You had best walk in the middle...'

  22. This sentence replaced the following:

  'Be careful, friends,' said one laughing. 'Speak no secrets! Here is a scholar in the elf-latin and all the dialects. Bilbo was indeed a good master.'

  See note 21 and the altered passage referred to there.

  23. This is the first occurrence of the name Gildor in the text as typed; see note 18.

  24. For my birthday the day before yesterday the text as typed had yesterday; see note 17.

  25. The conversation between Bingo and Gildor to this point, beginning at You can fence yourselves in, but you have no means of fencing it out (p. 63), is the last of the replacement typescript pages.

  The differences from the earlier form are in fact very slight, except in these points. Bingo did not say that Gandalf had told him not to put off his journey later than the autumn, but simply 'He helped me, and seemed to think it a good idea'; and Gildor's reply therefore begins differently: 'I wonder. He may not have known they were in the Shire; yet he knows more about them than we do.' And Bingo said that Odo and Frodo 'only know that I am on a Journey - on a sort of prolonged (and possibly permanent) holiday from Hobbiton; and making for Rivendell to begin with.'

  26. Struck from the typescript here: 'and it might prevent you from taking it.'

  27. Struck from the typescript here: '(for the matter is outside the concern of such Elves as we are).'

  *

  It is characteristic that while the dramatis personae are not the same, and the story possesses as yet none of the dimension, the gravity, and the sense of vast danger, imparted by the second chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, a good part of 'Three is Company' was already in being; for once the journey has started not only the structure of the final narrative but much of the detail is present, though countless modifications in expression were to come, and in several substantial passages the chapter was scarcely changed afterwards.

  While 'Bingo' is directly equatable with the later 'Frodo', the other relations are more complex. It is true that, comparing the text as it was at this stage with the final form in FR, it may be said simply that 'Odo' became 'Pippin' while Frodo Took disappeared: of the individual speeches in this chapter which remained into FR almost every remark made by Odo was afterwards given to Pippin. But the way in which this came about was in fact strangely tortuous, and was by no means a simple substitution of one name for another (see further pp. 323 - 4). Frodo Took is seen as a less limited and more aware being than Odo, more susceptible to the beauty and otherness of the Elves; it is he who speaks The Road goes ever on and on, and it is to him that the recollection of the words of the song to Elbereth is first attributed (note 15). Some element of him might be said to be preserved in Sam Gamgee (who of course imparts a new and entirely distinctive air to the developed form of the chapter); it was Frodo Took who with bated breath whispered Elves! when their voices were first heard coming down the road.

  Most remarkable is the fact that when the story of the beginning of the Journey, the coming of the Black Riders, and the meeting with Gildor and his company, was written,
and written so that its content would not in essentials be changed afterwards, Bingo has no faintest inkling of what the Riders want with him. Gandalf has told him nothing. He has no reason to associate the Riders with his ring, and no reason to regard it as more than a highly convenient magical device - he slips it on each time a Rider passes, naturally.

  Of course, the fact that Bingo is wholly ignorant of the nature of the pursuing menace, utterly baffled by the black horsemen, does not imply that my father was also. There are several suggestions that new ideas had arisen in the background, not explicitly conveyed in the narrative, but deliberately reduced to dark hints of danger in the words of Gildor (that this was so will be seen more clearly at the beginning of the next chapter). It may be that it was the 'unpremeditated' conversion of the cloaked and muffled horseman who overtook them on the road from Gandalf to a 'black rider' (p. 48), combining with the idea already present that Bilbo's ring was of dark origin and strange properties (pp. 42 - 3) that was the impulse of the new conceptions.

  From the early rewriting of the conversation between Gildor and Bingo (see p. 63 and note 25) it emerges that Gandalf had warned Bingo not to delay his departure beyond the autumn (though without, apparently, giving him any reason for the warning), and in both forms of the text Gildor evidently knows something about the Riders, says that 'by what seems strange good luck you went just in time', and associates them with the Ring: warning Bingo against using it again to escape them, and suggesting that the use of it 'helps them more than you.' (The Ring had not been mentioned in their conversation, but we can suppose that Bingo had previously told Gildor that he had used it when the Riders came by).