returnoftheshadow72

by Miguel

  'As for the guessing, or the putting of one and one and one together, much of that has not been very difficult,' said Gandalf. 'The Ring that you had of Bilbo, and Bilbo had of Gollum, is shown by the fire-writing to be the One Ring. And concerning that the tale of Gilgalad and Isildor is known - to the wise. The filling in of the tale of Gollum and fitting it into the gap presents no special difficulty: to one who knows much about the history and the minds and ways of the creatures of middle-earth that he does not tell you. What was the first riddle Gollum asked: do you remember? '

  'Yes,' said Bingo, thinking.

  What has roots that nobody sees,

  Is higher than trees,

  Up, up it goes,

  And yet never grows?

  'More or less right! ' said Gandalf. 'Roots and mountains! But as a matter of fact, I have not had to do much guessing from hints of that kind.(31) I know. I know because I found Gollum.'

  'You found Gollum!' said Bingo astonished.

  'The obvious thing to try to do, surely,' said Gandalf.

  'Then what happened after Bilbo left? Do you know that?'

  'Not so clearly. What I have told you Gollum was willing to tell; though not of course in the way I have reported it - he thought he was misunderstood and ill-treated, and he was full of tears for himself, and hatred of all other things. But after the Riddle Game he was unwilling to say anything, except in dark hints. One gathered that somehow or other Gollum was going to get his own back, and that people would see if he could be kicked and despised and stuck in a hole, and starved and robbed. They might get worse coming their way; for Gollum now had friends, powerful friends. You can imagine the spiteful stuff. He had found out eventually that Bilbo had in some way got "his" Ring, and what his name was.' 'How?' asked Bingo.

  'I asked him, but he only leered and chuckled, and said "Gollum issn't deaf iss he, no Gollum, and he hass eyes, hassn't he, yes my preciouss, yes Gollum." But (32) one can imagine various ways in which that might happen. He could, for instance, have overheard the goblins talking about the escape of Bilbo from the gate. And the news of the later events went all over Wilderland, and would give Gollum plenty to think about. Anyway, after having been "robbed and cheated", as he put it, he left the Mountains: the goblins there became few and wary after the Battle; hunting was poor, and the deep places were more than ever dark and lonely. Also the power of the Ring had left him: he was no longer bound by it. He was feeling old, very old, but less timid, though he did not become less malicious.

  'One might have expected wind and even the mere shadow of sunlight to kill him pretty quickly. But he was cunning. He could hide from daylight or moonlight, and travel softly and swiftly by night with his long pale eyes - and catch small frightened and unwary things. Indeed he grew for a while stronger with new food and new air. He crept into Mirkwood, which is not surprising.' 'Did you find him there?'

  'Yes - I followed him there: he had left a trail of horrible stories behind him, among the beasts and birds and even the Woodmen of Wilderland. He had developed a skill in climbing trees to find nests, and creeping into houses to find cradles. He boasted of it to me.

  'But his trail also ran away south, far south of where I actually came upon him - with the help finally of the Wood-elves. He would not explain that. He just grinned and leered, and said Gollum, rubbing his horrible hands together gleefully. But I have a suspicion - it is now much more than a suspicion - that he made his slow sneaking way bit by bit long ago down to the land of - Mordor,' said Gandalf almost in a whisper. 'Such creatures go naturally that way; and in that land he would soon learn much, and soon himself be discovered, and examined. I think indeed that Gollum is the beginning of our present troubles;(33) for if I guess right, through him the Necromancer discovered what became of the One Ring he had lost. He has even, one may fear, at last heard of the existence of hobbits, and may now be seeking the Shire, if he has not already found out where it is. Indeed I fear that he may even have heard (34) of the humble and long unnoticeable name of- Baggins.'

  'But this is terrible!' cried Bingo. 'Far worse than I feared! 0 Gandalf, what am I to do, for now I am really afraid? What a pity that Bilbo didn't stab the beastly creature, when he said goodbye! ' 'What nonsense you do talk sometimes, Bingo!' said Gandalf. 'Pity! It was pity that prevented him. And he could not do so, without doing wrong. It was against the Rules. If he had done so, he would not have had the Ring - the Ring would have had him at once. He would have been enslaved under the Necromancer.'

  'Of course, of course,' said Bingo. 'What a thing to say of Bilbo! Dear old Bilbo! But I am frightened - and I cannot feel any pity for that vile Gollum. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, let him live on, after all those horrible stories? Now at any rate he is worse than a goblin, and just an enemy.'

  'Yes, he deserved to die,' said Gandalf; 'but we did not kill him. He is very old, and very wretched. The Wood-elves have him in prison, and treat [him] with such kindness as they can find in their wise hearts. They feed him on clean food. But I do not think much can be done to cure him: yet even Gollum might prove useful for good before the end.'(35)

  'Well anyway,' said Bingo. 'if Gollum could not be killed, I wish you had not let Bilbo keep the Ring. Why did he? Why did you let him? Did you tell him all this?'

  'Yes, I let him,' said Gandalf. 'But at first of course I did not even imagine that it was [one] of the nineteen (36) Rings of Power: I thought he had got nothing more dangerous than one of the lesser magic rings that were once more common - and were used (as their maker intended) chiefly by minor rogues and villains, for mean wickednesses. I was not frightened of Bilbo being affected by their power. But when I began to suspect that the matter was more serious than that, I told him as much as my suspicions warranted. He knew that it came in the long run from the Necromancer. But you must remember there was the Ring itself to reckon with. Even Bilbo could not wholly escape the power of the Ruling Ring. He developed - a sentiment. He would keep it as a memento. Frankly - he became rather proud of his Great Adventure, and used to look at the Ring now and again (and oftener as time went on) to warm his memory: it made him feel rather heroic, though he never lost his power of laughing at the feeling.

  'But in the end it got a hold of him in that way. He knew eventually that it was giving him "long life", and thinning him. He grew weary of it - "I can't abide it any longer", he said - but to get rid of it was not so easy. He found it hard to bring himself to it. If you think for a moment: it is not really very easy to get rid of the Ring once you have got it.'(37)

  From this point the text again follows the old (pp. 81 - 2) very closely. Bingo now of course draws the Ring out of his pocket 'again', and means to throw it 'back again' into the fire; and Gandalf says (as in FR, p. 70) that 'This Ring at any rate has already passed through your fire and come out unscathed, and even unheated.' Adam Hornblower the Hobbiton smith remains. Gandalf says here that 'you would have to find one of the Cracks of Earth in the depth of the Fiery Mountain, and drop it in there, if you really did wish to destroy it - or to place it out of all reach until the End.' Against 'Cracks of Earth' (the name in the original text, p. 82) my father wrote in the margin, at the same time, '? Cracks of Doom', at the second occurrence of the name he wrote 'Cracks of Doom', but put 'Earth' above 'Doom'.

  The original text is developed and extended from the point where Bingo says 'I really do wish to destroy it' (p. 82):

  ... I cannot think how Bilbo put up with it for so long. And also, I must say, I cannot help wondering why he passed it on to me. I knew, of course, that he had it - though I was the only one who did or does know; but he spoke of it jokingly, and on the only two or three occasions when I ever caught him using it he used it more or less as a joke - especially the last time.'

  'Bilbo would: and when your fate has bestowed on you such perilous treasures it is not a bad way to take them - as long as you can do so. But as for passing it on to you: he did so only because he thought you were safe: safe not to misuse it;
safe not to let it get into evil hands; safe from its power, for a while; and safe, as an unknown and unimportant hobbit in the heart of the quiet and easily overlooked little Shire, from the - enemy. I promised him, too, to help and advise you, if any difficulty arose. Also, I may say that I did not discover the letters of fire, or guess that this ring was the One Ring, until he had already decided to go away and leave it.(38) And I did not tell him, for then he would not have burdened you, or gone away. But for his own sake, I knew he ought to go. He had had that Ring for 60 years, and it was telling on him, Bingo. You have tried before now to describe to me your own feeling - the stretched feeling.(39) His was much stronger. The Ring would have worn him down in the end. Yet the only sure way of ridding him of it was to let someone else take on the burden, for a while. He is free. But you are his heir. And now that I have (since that time) discovered much more, I know that you have a heavy inheritance. I wish it could be otherwise. But do not blame Bilbo - or me, if you can help it. Let us bear what is laid upon us (if we can). But we must do something soon. The enemy is moving.'

  There was a long silence. Gandalf puffed at his pipe in apparent content...

  The new version then develops the old text (p. 83) almost to the form in FR (pp. 71 - 2), with Bingo's saying that he had often thought of going off, but imagined it as a kind of holiday, and his sudden strong desire, not communicated to Gandalf, to follow Bilbo and perhaps to find him, and to run out of Bag End there and then. The new text continues:

  'My dear Bingo!' said Gandalf. 'Bilbo made no mistake in choosing you as his heir. Yes, I think you will have to go - before long, though not at once or without a little thought and care. And I am not sure you need go alone: not if you know of anyone you could trust, and who would be willing to go by your side - and who you would be willing to take into unknown dangers. But be careful in choosing, and in what you say even to your closest friends. The enemy has many spies, and many ways of hearing.' Suddenly he stopped as if listening.

  The remainder of the chapter (the surprising of Sam outside the window, and Gandalf's decision that he should be Bingo's companion - cf. Queries and Alterations note 2, p. 221) is almost word for word the final form (FR pp. 72 - 3), which was reached almost at a stroke(40) and never changed.

  NOTES.

  1. This passage goes back to the original version of 'A Long-expected Party' (p. 17).

  2. This passage goes back to the fourth version of 'A Long-expected Party' (p. 37), and indeed in part to the third (p. 29), when Bilbo was Bingo's father.

  3. Odo Bolger: hitherto Odo has been Odo Took - or, at least, he was still Odo Took when his surname was last mentioned, which was in the original text of the 'Bree' chapter (p. 141, note 5). At the beginning, Odo Took could tell Bingo not to be 'Bolger-like' (p. 49); but perhaps my father felt that Odo had developed strong Bolger traits as the story proceeded. He retains, however, a Took mother.

  4. This passage, from 'Merry was the son of Caradoc Brandybuck', was placed within square brackets, apparently at the time of writing. The genealogy (part of which has appeared before, p. 100) is of course very different from the final form, but when it is seen that Frodo Took occupies the place in the 'tree' afterwards taken by Peregrin Took (Pippin) it becomes at once much closer. In the following table the names in LR (Appendix C, Took of Creat Smials) are given in brackets.

  Since Caradoc Brandybuck, Merry's father, is here said to be Bingo's cousin, it can be presumed that the genealogy given in the family tree of the Brandybucks in LR was already present, i.e. Caradoc was the son of Old Rory, the brother of Bingo's mother Primula. That Rory Brandybuck was Bingo's uncle is never actually said in LR, though of course it appears in the family tree, but it does appear in rejected versions of the Farmer Maggot episode (pp. 289, 296), and again later (pp. 385 - 6).

  Merry Brandybuck and Frodo Took are the great-great-grandsons of the Old Took, as are Merry and Pippin in LR.

  5. This passage goes back to the third version of 'A Long-expected Party' (p. 34). '500 pieces of gold' was later changed to '500 double-dragons (gold pieces of the highest value in the Shire)', but this was not taken up into the next version of 'Ancient History', which returns to '500 gold pieces'. sixty years: 111 less 51 (see p. 31).

  6. Gandalf's visits to Hobbiton. In The Tale of Years (LR Appendix B) Bilbo's Farewell Party took place in 3001; Gandalf visited Frodo in the years 3004 - 8, the last visit being in the autumn of 3008; and returned finally in April 3018 (after g and a half years): Frodo's 50th birthday was in September of that year, when he left Bag End. Cf. FR p. 55.

  In the present text there was likewise a gap of three years after the Party before Gandalf came again; but then he came once or twice every year, with one gap of two years, till the 14th year after the Party, when Bingo was 47, and after that 'frequently'. The passage was subsequently rewritten to read:

  ...seeing that Bingo was still quite settled. After that he returned several times, until he suddenly disappeared. Bingo heard no news of him between the 7th and 14th years after Bilbo's departure, when Gandalf suddenly reappeared one winter's night. After that the wizard came frequently and stayed longer.

  For the year in which the conversation in 'Ancient History' took place (it was in the month of April, p. 254) see note 8.

  7. This is a reference to The Hobbit, Chapter XIX 'The Last Stage':

  ... they had at last driven the Necromancer from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood.

  'Ere long now,' Gandalf was saying, 'the Forest will grow somewhat more wholesome. The North is freed from that horror for many an age.

  On his copy of the sixth impression (1954) my father changed Gandalf's words to read: The North will be freed from that horror for many long years, I hope. This is the text from the third edition (1966).

  The following passage is the first clear, if very general, statement of where the Land of Mordor lay; see p. 218, note 17. Cf. also Gandalf's account of Gollum's journey (p. 264): 'his trail also ran away south, far south of where I actually came upon him' (which was in Mirkwood).

  8. in the spring of Bingo's 49th? 50th? year. At the beginning of the next chapter in this 'phase' it is said that Bingo decided to leave Bag End on September 22nd 'in this (his 50th) year.'

  9. My father first made the miller's son Tom Tunnelly, changing it as he wrote to Tom Sandyman; Tom was changed to Ted in pencil, before the chapter was finished, for Ted appears, as first written, at the end of it. See p. 249, note 33.

  10. It is a very old conception that appears here; see II.323 and note 44. - Bingo describes the Elf-towers to his companions on the walk to Farmer Maggot's: he says that he saw them once, shining white in the light of the Moon (p. 93). Trotter at Bree calls them the West Towers (pp. 155, 159).

  11. On Gandalf's visits to the land of the Necromancer see p. 85, note 12.

  12. Here my father wrote: 'Bingo had never seen it on any finger but his own forefinger', but at once struck it out.

  13. My father first wrote 'One ring to bind them', changing it in pencil to 'and in the darkness bind them', which is the form as written from the first in the whole verse that immediately follows.

  14. The text of the verse of the Rings. My father's original workings for this verse are extant. The first complete form reads:

  Nine for the Elven-kings under moon and star,

  Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

  Three for Mortal Men that wander far,

  One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

  In the Land of Mor-dor cohere the shadows are.

  One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

  One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

  In the Land of Mor-dor where the shadows are.

  He was at this time still uncertain as to the disposition of the Rings among the different peoples. The verse in the text of the present chapter as first written also had 'Nine rings for the Elven-kings' and 'Three for Mortal Men' (in the original text, p. 78, 'the El
ves had many', and 'Men had three rings', but 'others they found in secret places cast away by the elf-wraiths'). But he wrote in the margin (in ink and at the same time as the verse itself) '3' against 'Nine' and '9' against 'Three', subsequently changing the words in the verse itself: see note 22.

  Another preliminary version of the verse has:

  Twelve for Mortal Men doomed to die,

  Nine for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

  Three for the Elven-kings of earth, sea, and sky,

  One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne.

  'Twelve' and 'Nine' were then changed to 'Nine' and 'Seven'. On there being at one time twelve Black Riders see p. 196. In the text of the chapter (p. 260) the Three Rings are called the Rings 'of earth, air, and sky'.

  15. The text as first written here was 'and now that he knows or guesses where it is he desires so greatly.'

  16. My father wrote here: 'In ancient days the Necromancer [servant of ???] the Dark Lord Sauron.' The brackets and queries were put in at the time of writing or very soon after. I can only explain this on the assumption that he was momentarily thinking of Morgoth as the Dark Lord, before he wrote the name Sauron; but it is odd that he did not simply strike out the words 'servant of'.