by Miguel
[Song].(11)
There was loud applause. Bingo had a good voice, and the company was not over particular. 'Where's old Barney?' they cried. 'He ought to hear this. He ought to larn his cat the fiddle, and then we'd have a dance. Bring in some more ale, and let's have it again! ' They made Bingo have another drink and then sing the song once more, while many of them joined in; for the tune was well-known and they were quick at picking up words.
Much encouraged Bingo capered about on the table; and when he came a second time to 'the cow jumped over the moon', he jumped in the air. Much too vigorously:(12) for he came down bang into a tray full of mugs, and then slipped and rolled off the table with a crash, clatter, and bump. But what interested the company far more and stopped their cheers and laughter dead was his vanishing. As Bingo rolled off the table he simply disappeared with a crash as if he had thudded through the floor without making a hole.
The local hobbits sprang to their feet and shouted for Barnabas. They drew away from Odo and Frodo, who found themselves left alone in a corner and eyed darkly and doubtfully from a distance, as if they were the companions of a travelling wizard of dubious origin and unknown powers and purpose. There was one swarthy- faced fellow who stood looking at them with a knowing sort of look that made them feel uncomfortable. Very soon he slipped out of the door followed by one of his friends: not a well-favoured pair.(13) Bingo in the meanwhile feeling a fool (quite rightly) and not knowing what else to do crawled away under the tables to the corner by Trotter, who was sitting still quite unconcerned. He then sat back against the wall, and took off the Ring. By bad luck he had been fingering it in his pocket just at the fatal moment, and had slipped it on in his sudden surprise at falling.
'Hullo! ' said Trotter. 'What did you mean by that? Worse than anything your friends could have said. You've fair put your foot and finger in it, haven't you?'
'I don't know what you mean,' said Bingo (annoyed and alarmed).
'O yes you do,' said Trotter. 'But we had better wait till the uproar has died down. Then, if you don't mind, Mr Bolger- Baggins, I should like a quiet word with you.'
'What about?' said Bingo, pretending not to notice the sudden use of his proper name. 'O, wizards, and that sort of thing,' said Trotter with a grin. 'You'll hear something to your advantage.' 'Very well,' said Bingo. 'I'll see you later.'
In the meantime argument in a chorus of voices had been going on by the fireplace. Mr Butterbur had come trotting in, and was trying to listen to many conflicting accounts at the same time.
The next part of the text, as far as the end of Chapter 9 in FR, is almost word for word the same as in the final version, with only such differences as are to be expected: 'Mr Underhill' of FR is 'Mr Hill', 'There's Mr Took, now: he's not vanished' is 'There's Mr Green and Mr Brown, now: they've not vanished', and there is no mention of the Men of Bree, of the Dwarves, or of the strange Men - it is simply 'the company' that went off in a huff. But at the end, when Bingo said to the landlord: 'Will you see that our ponies are ready?', the old narrative differs:
'There now!' said the landlord, snapping his fingers. 'Half a moment. It's come back to me, as I said it would. Bless me! Four hobbits and five ponies! '
As already explained, though I end this chapter here the earliest version goes on into what was afterwards Chapter 10 'Strider' without a break; see the table on p. 133.
NOTES.
1. Bits of the underlying text can in fact be made out: enough to show that the conception of Bree as a village of Men, though with 'hobbits about', was present.
2. Crick (p. 132) has disappeared for good (but cf. 'Crickhollow'); Staddle also, but only temporarily.
3. Barnabas Butterbur is written in ink over the original name in pencil: Timothy Titus. Timothy Titus was the name of the innkeeper in the underlying pencilled text throughout the chapter. This was a name that survived from an old story of my father's, of which only a couple of pages exist (no doubt all that was ever written down); but that Timothy Titus bore no resemblance whatsoever to Mr Butterbur.
4. Nob was at first called Lob; this survived into the inked manuscript stage and was then changed.
5. The original pencilled text went on from here:
Come right inside. Pleased to meet you. Mr Took, did you say? Lor now, I remember that name. Time was when Tooks would think nothing of riding out here just to have a crack with my old dad or me. Mr Odo Took, Mr Frodo Took, Mr Merry Brandybuck, Mr Bingo Baggins. Lemme see, what does that remind me of? Never mind, it will come back. One thing drives out another. Bit busy tonight. Lots of folk dropped in. Hi, Nob! Take these bags (etc.)
My father struck this out, noting 'hobbits must hide their names', and wrote these two passages on an added slip in pencil:
Mr Frodo Walker, Mr Odo Walker - can't say I have met that name before. (Bingo had made it up on the spur of the moment, suddenly realizing that it would not be wise to publish their real names in a hobbit-inn on the high road).
What name did you say - all Walkers, Mr Ben Walker and three nephews. Can't say I have met that name before, but I'm pleased to meet you.
These also were struck out, and the passage that follows in the text ('Come right inside, sirs, all of you...'), in pencil overwritten in ink, was adopted.
6. In the underlying pencilled text of this passage my father wrote Ferny but at once changed it to Hill; and in the text in ink he wrote Fellowes but changed it to Green. Later on, in rejected pencilled drafting, Mr Butterbur says: 'You don't say, Mr Mugwort. Well, as long as Mr Rivers and the two Mr Fellowes don't vanish too (without paying the bill) he is welcome' (i.e. to vanish into thin air, as Mugwort has asserted that he did: FR p. 173).
7. Cf. Bingo's words to Gildor, p. 62: 'I had come to the end of my treasure.' The present passage was rejected and does not appear in FR: but cf. p. 172 note 3.
8. Appledore. 'apple-tree' (Old English apuldor). -In FR (p. 167) these 'botanical' names are primarily names of families of Men in Bree.
9. The underlying pencilled text still had here: 'I am very pleased to meet Mr Bingo Baggins', and Trotter's next words began. "Well, Mr Bingo...' See note 5.
10. Here follows: 'It went to a well-known tune, and the company joined in the chorus', referring to the song which was originally given to Bingo here (see note 11), where there is a chorus; the sentence was struck out when 'The Cat and the Fiddle' was chosen instead.
11. My father first wrote here 'Troll Song', and a rough and unfinished version of it is found in the manuscript at this point. He apparently decided almost at once to substitute 'The Cat and the Fiddle', and there are also two texts of that song included in the manuscript, each preceded by the words (as in FR p. 170):
It was about an Inn, and I suppose that is what brought it to Bingo's mind. Here it is in full, though only a few words of it are now generally remembered.
For the history and early forms of these songs see the Note on the Songs at the Prancing Pony that follows. - That there was to be a song at Bree is already foreseen in the primitive outline given on p. 126: 'They sleep at the inn and hear news of Gandalf. Jolly landlord. Drinking song.'
12. In the original text, where the song was to be the Troll Song, the comments of the audience on the cat and the fiddle are of course absent. Instead, after 'the company was not over particular', there followed:
They made him have a drink and then sing it all over again. Much encouraged Bingo capered about on the table, and when he came a second time to 'his boot to bear where needed' he kicked in the air. Much too realistically: he overbalanced and fell...
The line His boot to bear where needed is found in the version of the Troll Song written for this episode.
13. As the people of Bree were conceived at this stage, the ill-favoured pair would presumably be hobbits; and indeed in the next chapter Bill Ferny is explicitly so (p. 165). His companion here is the origin of the 'squint-eyed Southerner' who had come up the Greenway (FR p. 168); but there is no suggestion as yet of that element in
what was still a very limited canvas.
Note on the Songs at the Prancing Pony.
(i) The Troll Song.
When my father came to the scene where Bingo sings a song in The Prancing Pony he first used the 'Troll Song' (note 11 above). The original version of this, called The Root of the Boot, goes back to his time at the University of Leeds; it was privately printed in a booklet with the title Songs for the Philologists, University College, London, 1936 (for the history of this publication see pp.144-5). My father was extremely fond of this song, which went to the tune of The fox went out on a minter's night, and my delight in the line If bonfire there be, 'tis underneath is among my very early recollections. Two copies of this booklet came into my father's possession later (in 1940-1), and at some time undeterminable he corrected the text, removing some minor errors that had crept in. I give the text here as printed in Songs for the Philologists, with these corrections:
A troll sat alone on his seat of stone,
And munched and mumbled a bare old bone;
And long and long he had sat there lone
And seen no man nor mortal -
Ortal! Portal!
And long and long he had sat there lone
And seen no man nor mortal.
Up came Tom with his big boots on;
'Hallo!'says he, 'pray what is yon?
It looks like the leg o'me nuncle John
As should be a-lyin ' in churchyard.
Searchyard, Birchyard! etc.
'Young man,' says the troll, 'that bone I stole;
But what be bones, when mayhap the soul
In heaven on high hath an aureole
As big and as bright as a bonfire?
On fire, yon fire!'
Says Tom: 'Oddsteeth! 'tis my belief,
If bonfire there be, 'tis underneath;
For old man John was as proper a thief
As ever more black on a Sunday -
Grundy, Monday!
But still I doan 't see what is that to thee,
Wi'me kith and me kin a-makin'free:
So get to hell and ax leave o'he,
Afore thou gnaws me nuncle!
Uncle, Bunck!'
In the proper place upon the base
Tom boots him right - but, alas! that race
Hath a stonier seat than its stony face;
So he rued that net on the rumpo,
Lumpo, Bumpo!
Now Tom goes lame since home he came,
And his bootless foot is grievous game;
But troll's old seat is much the same,
And the bone he boned * from its owner!
Donor, Boner!
(* bone: steal, make off with.)
In addition to correcting errors in the text printed in Songs for the Philologists my father also changed the third line in verse 3 to Hath a halo in heaven upon its poll.
The original pencilled manuscript of the song is still extant. The title was Pero & Podex ('Boot and Bottom'), and verse 6 as first written went:
In the proper place upon the base
Tom boots him right - but, alas! that race
Hath as stony a seat as it is in face,
And Pero was punished by Podex.
Odex! Codex!
My father made a new version of the song for Bingo to sing in The Prancing Pony, suitable to the intended context, and as already mentioned this is found in the manuscript of the present chapter; but it is still in a rough state, and uncertain, and was abandoned when still incomplete. When he decided that he would not after all use it in this place he did not at once reintroduce it into The Lord of the Rings; it will be seen in Chapter XI that while the visit of the hobbits to the scene of Bilbo's encounter with the three Trolls was fully present from the first version, there was no song. It was only introduced here later; but the earlier drafts of Sam's 'Troll Song' proceed in series from the version intended for Bingo at Bree.
Songs for the Philologists.
The origin of the material in this little booklet goes back to Leeds University in the 1920s, when Professor E. V. Gordon (my father's colleague and close friend, who died most untimely in the summer of this same year, 1938) made typescripts for the use of students in the Department of English. 'His sources', in my father's words, 'were MSS of my own verses and his... with many additions of modern and traditional Icelandic songs taken mostly from Icelandic student song- books.'
In 1935 or 1936 Dr. A. H. Smith of London University (formerly a student at Leeds) gave one of these typescripts (uncorrected) to a group of Honours students there for them to set up on the Elizabethan printing- press. The result was a booklet bearing the title
SONGS FOR THE PHILOLOGISTS.
By J. R. R. Tolkien, E. V. Gordon & Others.
Privately Printed in the Department of English at University College, London
MCMXXXVI.
In November 1940 Winifred Husbands of University College wrote to my father and explained that 'when the books were ready, Dr Smith realised that he had never asked your permission or that of Professor Gordon, and he said that the books must not be distributed till that had been done - but, so far as I know, he has never written or spoken to you on the subject, though I spoke of it to him more than once. The sad result is that most of the copies printed, being left undistributed in our rooms in Gower Street, have perished like the press itself in the fire which destroyed that part of the College building.' My father was therefore asked to give his retrospective permission. At that time there were 13 copies known to her, but subsequently she found more, I do not know how many; my father received two (p. 142).
There are 30 Songs for the Philologists, in Gothic, Icelandic, Old, Middle and Modern English, and Latin, and some poems in a macaronic mixture of languages. My father was the author of 13 (6 in Modern English, 6 in Old English, i in Gothic), and E. V. Gordon of two. Three of my father's Old English poems, and the one in Gothic, are printed with translations as an appendix to Professor T. A. Shippey's The Road to Middle-earth (1982).(*)
(* This is a convenient place to cite my father's explanation of the significance of the Birch-tree that appears in two of the poems given by Professor Shippey (see his book pp. 206- 7); cf. also 'Birchyard' in the chorus to verse a of The Root of the Boot. In a note on one of his copies of Songs for the Philologists my father wrote: 'B-rune, B, Bee and (because of the runic name of B) Birch all symbolize mediaeval and philological studies (including Icelandic); while A, and Ac (oak = F-rune ) denote 'modern literature'. This more pleasing heraldry (and friendly rivalry and raillery) grew out of the grim assertion in the Syllabus that studies should be "divided into two Schemes, Scheme A and Scheme B". A was mainly modern and B mainly mediaeval and philological. Songs, festivities and other gaieties were however mainly confined to B.')
(ii) The Cat and the Fiddle.
'The Cat and the Fiddle', which became Bingo's song at The Prancing Pony, was published in 1923 in Yorkshire Poetry, Vol. II no. 19 (Leeds, the Swan Press). I give here the text as it is found in the original manuscript, written on Leeds University paper.
THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE,
or A Nursery Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked.
They say there's a little crooked inn
Behind an old grey hill,
Where they brew a beer so eery brown
The man in the moon himself comes down,
And sometimes drinks his fill.
And there the ostler has a cat
That plays a five-stringed fiddle;
Mine host a little dog so clever
He laughs at any joke whatever,
And sometimes in the middle.
They also keep a homed cow,
'Tis said, with golden hooves -
But music turns her head like ole,
And makes her wave her tufted tail,
And dance upon the rooves.
But O! the rows of silver dishes
And the store of silver spoons:
For Sunday there's a s
pecial pair,
And these they polish up with care
On Saturday afternoons.
*
The man in the moon had drunk too deep,
The ostler's cat was totty*,
A dish made love to a Sunday spoon,