returnoftheshadow72

by Miguel

  'The wind's in the West,' said Sam. 'If we go down the other side of this hill we are climbing, we shall find a spot that is sheltered and snug enough, sir. There is a dry fir-wood just ahead, if I remember rightly.' Sam knew the land well within about twenty miles of Hobbiton, but that was the limit of his geography.

  See also note 11.

  8. The text is actually rendered still more complicated by a layer of later emendation arising from my father's intention to get rid of Odo altogether, leaving Bingo, Frodo Took, and Sam, but this is here ignored.

  9. In the original texts the crossing of the East Road had been omitted (see pp. 46 - 7, 50). - With 'Michel Delving' for 'Much Hemlock (in the Hornblower country)' and 'south-east' for 'eastward', this is the reading of FR - in the first edition of LR. In the second edition (1966) the text was changed to read:

  A mile or two further south they hastily crossed the great road from the Brandywine Bridge; they were now in the Tookland and bending south-eastwards they made for the Green Hill Country. As they began to climb its first slopes they looked back and saw the lamps in Hobbiton far off twinkling...

  Robert Foster, in The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, entry Hornblower, says that 'all or most' of the Hornblowers 'dwelt in the Southfarthing'; this seems to be based only on the statement in the Prologue to LR that Tobold Hornblower, first grower of pipeweed, lived at Longbottom in the Southfarthing, but may well be a legitimate deduction. A few hobbit 'family territories' are marked on my father's map of the Shire (p. 107, item I), but the Hornblowers are not among them. (The Bracegirdles are placed west of Girdley Island in the Brandywine; the Bolgers south of the East Road and north of the Woody End; the Boffins north of Hobbiton Hill - cf. Mr Boffin of Overhill, FR p. 53; and the Tooks in Tookland, south of Hobbiton.) See p. 304, note 1.

  10. See p. 246, note 18. The verse is now a repetition, for Bilbo had sung it before he left Bag End (p. 240); but whereas in FR (pp. 82-3) the only difference between the two recitations is that Bilbo says 'eager feet' in the 5th line and Frodo 'weary feet', here Bingo has also 'we' for 'I' in the 4th and 8th lines (retained from the original text, p. 53).

  11. This passage interestingly exemplifies the 'two-tier' system of emendation which my father employed in this text (see p. 277). The new passage in which Bingo wonders if it is Gandalf coming after them and proposes to surprise him, though feeling certain that it is not him - exactly as in FR pp. 83 - 4 - is a 'red' emendation: because according to the new story Gandalf might well be expected to have just missed them at Hobbiton and be following on their heels, whereas according to the old story - in which the Birthday Party was Bingo's - Gandalf left immediately after the fireworks and went east (see p. 101 and note 12). The remainder of the new passage (cited in the text), describing Bingo's conflicting desires to hide and not to hide, is a 'black' emendation (i.e. covering both 'old' and 'new' stories) - as is the addition almost immediately following, in which Bingo feels an urgent desire to put on the Ring, but does not: because, whatever version is followed, the nature of the Ring demands these changes (cf. Queries and Alterations, note 7p (p. 224): 'Bingo must NOT put on his Ring when Black Riders go by - in view of later developments. He must think of doing so but somehow be prevented.')

  12. The text of FR here, 'I did not know that any of that fairest folk were ever seen in the Shire', was emended in the second edition to 'Few of that fairest folk are ever seen in the Shire.'- For previous references to the High Elves (which means now the Elves of Valinor) see pp 187, 225, 260.

  XVII. A SHORT CUT TO MUSHROOMS.

  The third of the original chapters (pp. 88 ff.) was now rewritten, numbered 'IV', and given a title, 'A Short Cut to Mushrooms'. This is a readily legible but much altered manuscript, with a great deal of variant and rejected material. The final result, however, as achieved already at this time (if a long variant version of the Farmer Maggot interlude, not at once rejected, is ignored for the moment), is virtually Chapter 5 in The Fellowship of the Ring, to a very great extent word for word, and there is not much that needs to be said about it.

  The chief difference from FR lies of course in the fact that there were still Frodo Took and Odo Bolger and not simply Pippin. Pippin's part and all the things he says in FR are present in almost exactly the same form; but where in FR it is Pippin who is familiar with the region and who knows Farmer Maggot, in the present text (as also in the original version) this is Frodo Took's part, and once they have got down into the flat country Odo is in the background.

  A good deal of new geography enters with the discussion whether to take a short cut or not (FR p. 97). While the wet low-lying land is described in the original story (pp. 91 - 2), it is now called the Marish, and the northward curve of the road (p. 89) is explained: 'to get round the north of the Marish.' The way south from Brandywine Bridge now appears - first called 'the raised road', then 'the banked road', then 'the causeway': 'the causeway that runs from the Bridge through Stock and past the Ferry down along the River to Deephallow.' Here the village of Stock is first named (and its inn the Golden Perch, where according to Odo there used to be the best beer in 'the East Shire'), and also Deephallow, which though marked on my father's map of the Shire and on the map in FR is never mentioned in the text of The Lord of the Rings. (In the original version of this chapter there is no suggestion of the causeway road, and the hobbits leaving Maggot's lane came out on to the road they had left, shortly before it reached the Ferry: see p. 97 and note 8. Stock had not then been devised. Later in the old version Marmaduke, arguing for going through the Old Forest, says that it would be silly of them to start their journey by 'jogging along a dull river-side road - in full view of all the numerous hobbits of Buckland', but he is speaking of the road within Buckland, on the east side of the Brandywine: p. 106, note 18).

  The argument about which way to go is mainly between Odo and Frodo, and is somewhat different from the final form. Odo, not knowing

  the country, argued that there would be 'all kinds of obstacles' when they got down into the Marish, to which Frodo replied that he did know it, and that the Marish was now 'all tamed and drained' (in FR Pippin, who takes Frodo Took's part in that he does know the country, but Odo's in that he has his eye on the Golden Perch, argues with Frodo (Baggins) that in the Marish 'there are bogs and all kinds of difficulties').(1)

  The stream that barred their passage is now identified as the Stock- brook. The only other feature to mention before coming to Farmer Maggot is a rejected passage that was to take the place of the mysterious sniffing that interrupted Odo's song in praise of the bottle in the original version (p. 91). There, a pencilled note on the manuscript (p. 105, note 3) said: 'Sound of hoofs going by not far off.'

  Ho! ho! ho! they began again louder. 'Hush! ' said Sam. 'I think I can hear something.' They stopped short. Bingo sat up. Listening he caught or thought he caught the sound of hoofs, some way off, going at a trot. They sat silent for some while after the sound had died away; but at last Frodo spoke. 'That's very odd,' he said. 'There is not any road that I know of anywhere near, yet the hoofs were not going on turf or leaves - if they were hoofs.' 'But if they were, it does not follow that it was the sound of a Black Rider,'said Odo. 'The land is not quite uninhabited round here: there are farms and villages.'

  This was replaced by the terrible signal cries, exactly as in FR (pp. 99 - 100). From a rejected page a little later, when they came into the 'tame and well-ordered lands', it is clear that the hoof-beats they heard were not in fact so mysterious: 'They were just beginning to think that they had imagined the sound of hoofs, when they came to a gate: beyond it a rutted lane wound away towards a distant clump of trees' (i.e. Farmer Maggot's) The horseman they heard was the Black Rider who came to Maggot's door.

  When my father came in this version to Farmer Maggot, he followed the old story in this: Bingo put on the Ring in the lane outside the farm, then entered the house invisibly, and drank Farmer Maggot's beer, so that the departure of the others was highly embarrassin
g and unhappy. Considering all that had now been said concerning the Ring this is remarkable; but I think that my father was reluctant to lose this interlude (see also note 13), and although at this time he also wrote the story of the visit to Maggot's in exactly the form it has in FR, he retained this first, entirely different account of what happened in Maggot's house and marked it as a variant.

  In it, Maggot becomes a violent and intransigeant character, with a black hatred of all Bagginses - a development clearly arising, as I think, from the need to explain the intensity of Bingo's alarm when he learns who is the owner of the farm, an alarm great enough (coupled with the ferocious dogs) to explain in turn how he could put the Ring on in the face of all counsel. In the original version Bingo put on the Ring as a matter of course, as he put it on when the Black Riders came by. Moreover, as the story stood then Frodo and Odo were perfectly familiar with his possession of a magic ring that conferred invisibility, and after they left Farmer Maggot's Odo addressed Bingo while he was still invisible, calling his behaviour 'a silly trick' (p. 97). But now they were not (cf. p.245, note 3: Bilbo wrote his adventures in a private book of memoirs, in which he recounted some things that he had never spoken about {such as the magic ring); but that book was never published in the Shire, and he never showed it to anyone, except his favourite "nephew" Bingo.') The great problem now with this story, my father noted in the margin of the manuscript, was that it would necessitate making Odo, Frodo, and Sam all aware of Bingo's ring - 'which is a pity'; or else, he added, 'making the others equally astonished with Farmer Maggot - which is difficult.' He was even prepared, however, as he noted in the same place, to consider altering the structure to the extent of getting rid of Odo and Frodo from this episode by making them the advance party to Buckland, while Bingo's walk from Hobbiton would be with Merry and Sam - which seems to imply that Merry had been let into the secret of the Ring. Sam might be supposed to have known of it from his eavesdropping under the window of Bag End at the end of the chapter 'Ancient History', and my father also revised the text here and there in pencil in order to 'allow this version to stand if Bingo's ring is unknown to any but Sam.' A point he did not make here is the distinction between the others knowing about the Ring and Bingo's knowing that they knew; and when he reached the conversation in the house in Buckland (not much later, for the text of the two chapters is continuous in the manuscript) he had decided that they did know, but had kept the knowledge to themselves (as in FR, p. 114).

  I give now the greater part of this first variant version.

  They came to a gate, beyond which a rutted lane ran between low hedges towards a distant clump of trees. Frodo stopped. 'I know these fields!' he said. 'They are part of old Farmer Maggot's land.(2) That must be his farm away there in the trees.'

  'One trouble after another! ' said Bingo, looking nearly as much alarmed as if Frodo had declared the lane to be the slot leading to a dragon's lair. The others looked at him in astonishment.

  'What's wrong with old Maggot?' asked Frodo.(3)

  'I don't like him, and he doesn't like me,' said Bingo. 'If I had thought my short cut would bring me near his farm today, I would have gone by the long road. I haven't been near it for years and years.'

  'Why ever not? ' said Frodo. 'He's all right, if you get on the right side of him. I thought he was friendly to all the Brandybuck clan. Though he is a terror to trespassers, and he does keep some ferocious-looking dogs. But after all we are near the borders here and folk have to be more on their guard.'

  'That's just it,' said Bingo. 'I used to trespass on his land when I was a youngster at Bucklebury. His fields used to grow the best mushrooms.(4) I killed one of his dogs once. I broke its head with a heavy stone. A lucky shot, for I was terrified, and I believe it would have mauled me. He beat me, and told me he would kill me next time I put a foot over his boundaries. "I'd kill you now," he said, "if you were not Mr Rory's nephew,(5) more's the pity and shame to the Brandybucks."'

  'But that's long ago,' said Frodo. 'He won't kill Mr Bingo Baggins, late of Bag-end, because of his misdeeds when he was one of the many young rascals of Brandy Hall. Even if he remembers about it.'

  'I don't fancy Maggot is a good forgetter,' said Bingo, 'especially not where his dogs are concerned. They used to say he loved his dogs more than his children. And Bilbo told me (only a year or two before he left the Shire) that he was once down this way and called at the farm to get a bite and drink. When he gave his name old Maggot ordered him off. "I'll have no Baggins over my doorstep. A lot of thievish murderous rascals. You get back where you belong," he said, and threatened him with a stick. He's shaken his fist at me, if we passed on the road, many a time since.'(6)

  'Well I'm blest,' said Odo. 'So now I suppose we shall all get beaten or bitten, if we are seen with the marauding Bingo.'

  'Nonsense! ' said Frodo. 'Get into the lane, and then you won't be trespassing. Maggot used to be quite friendly with Merry and me. I'll talk to him.'

  They went along the lane, until they saw the thatched roofs of a large house and farm-buildings peeping out among the trees ahead. The Maggots and the Puddifoots of Stock and most of the folk of the Marish were house-dwellers...

  At this point a long digression was introduced (following that in the original version, p. 92) on the subject of hobbits living in houses; see pp.294-5.

  ... and this farm was stoutly built of brick and had a high wall all round it. There was a strong wooden gate in the wall opening on to the lane. Bingo lagged behind. Suddenly as they drew nearer a terrific baying and barking broke out, and a loud voice was heard shouting: 'Grip! Fang! Wolf! Go on, lads! Go on! '

  This was too much for Bingo. He slipped on the Ring, and vanished. 'It can't do any harm this once,' he thought. 'I am sure Bilbo would have done the same.'

  He was only just in time. The gate opened and three huge dogs came pelting out into the lane, and dashed towards the travellers. Odo and Sam shrank against the wall, while two large grey wolvish-looking dogs sniffed at them. The third dog halted near Bingo sniffing and growling with the hair rising on its neck, and a puzzled look in its eyes. Frodo walked on a few paces unmolested.

  Through the gate came a broad thickset hobbit with a round red face (7) and a soft high-crowned hat. 'Hullo! hullo! And who may you be, and what may you be doing?' he asked.

  'Good afternoon, Farmer Maggot! ' said Frodo.

  The farmer looked at him closely. 'Well now,' he said. 'Let me see - you'll be Mr Frodo Took, Mr Folco's son, if I am not mistook. I seldom am, I've a rare memory for faces. It's some time since I saw you round here, with Mr Merry Brandybuck...

  The opening encounter with Maggot is then exactly as in the other variant of the episode, which is to say exactly as in FR p. 102, as far as 'to the great relief of Odo and Sam the dogs let them go free.' Then follows:

  Odo and Frodo at once went through the gate, but Sam hesitated.

  So did the third dog. He remained standing growling and bristling.

  This was altered in pencil to read:

  Odo joined Frodo at the gate, but Sam hesitated in the lane. Frodo looked back to beckon Bingo, and wondered how to introduce him, whether to give his name, or hope that Maggot's memory was less good than he boasted, and say nothing; but there was no sign of Bingo to be seen. Sam was watching one of the dogs. It was still standing growling and bristling. It all seemed rather queer.

  This was one of the changes made 'to allow this version to stand if Bingo's ring is unknown to any but Sam' (p. 288).

  'Here, Wolf!' cried Farmer Maggot, looking back. 'Dang it, what's come to the dog. Heel, Wolf! '

  The dog obeyed reluctantly, and at the gate turned back and barked.

  'What's the matter with you?' said the farmer. 'This is a queer day, and no mistake. Wolf went near off his head when that fellow came riding up, and now you'd think he could see or smell something that ain't there.'

  They went into the farmer's kitchen, and sat by the wide fireplace. The dogs were shut up, as n
either Odo nor Sam concealed their uneasiness while they were about. 'They won't harm you,' said the farmer, 'not unless I tell them to.' Mrs Maggot brought out beer and filled four large earthenware mugs. It was a good brew, and Odo found himself fully compensated for missing the Golden Perch. Sam would have enjoyed it better, if he had not been anxious about his master.

  'And where might you be coming from and going to, Mr Frodo?' asked Farmer Maggot with a shrewd look. 'Were you coming to visit me? For if so you had gone past my gate without my seeing you.'

  'Well, no,' said Frodo. 'To tell you the truth (since you guess it already) we had been on your fields. But it was quite by accident. We lost our way back near Woodhall trying to take a short cut to the causeway near the Ferry. We are in rather a hurry to get over into Buckland.'

  'Then the road would have served you better,' said the farmer. 'But you and Mr Merry have my leave to walk on my land, as long as you do no damage. Not like those thievish folk from way back West - begging your pardon, I was forgetting you were a Took by name, and only half a Brandybuck as you might say.(8) But you aren't a Baggins or you'd not be inside here. That Mr Bingo Baggins he killed one of my dogs once, he did. It's more than 30 years ago, but I haven't forgotten it, and I'll remind him of it sharp too if ever he dares to come round here. I hear tell that he is coming back to live in Buckland. More's the pity. I can't think why the Brandybucks allow it.'