The Peoples of Middle-earth Page 4
10On holbytla translated ‘hole dweller’ see p. 49, §48 and commentary (p. 69).
11This is to be associated with the early version of Appendix F, §§22–3 (p. 38): ‘… before their crossing of the Mountains the Hobbits spoke the same language as Men in the higher vales of the Anduin … Now that language was nearly the same as the language of the ancestors of the Rohirrim’.
12The second figure of the date 1347 is slightly uncertain, but it looks much more like a ‘3’ than a ‘1’.
13The significant changes made in the Second Edition (1966) were few. On FR p. 14, where the later text has ‘There for a thousand years they were little troubled by wars …’ to ‘… the Hobbits had again become accustomed to plenty’, the First Edition had simply ‘And thenceforward for a thousand years they lived in almost unbroken peace’ (thus without the mention of the Dark Plague, the Long Winter, and the Days of Dearth). At the beginning of the next paragraph the reading of the Second Edition, ‘Forty leagues it stretched from the Far Downs to the Brandywine Bridge, and fifty from the northern moors to the marshes in the south’, was substituted for ‘Fifty leagues it stretched from the Westmarch under the Tower Hills to the Brandywine Bridge, and nearly fifty from the northern moors …’. My father noted that the word ‘nearly’ was (wrongly) omitted in the text of the Second Edition, ‘so this must be accepted’.
On FR p. 16, in Three Elf-towers of immemorial age were still to be seen on the Tower Hills’, the words ‘on the Tower Hills’ were an addition, and in a following sentence ‘upon a green mound’ was changed from ‘upon a green hill’. At the end of this first section of the Prologue (FR p. 17) the sentence ‘Hobbits delighted in such things …’ was in the First Edition put in the present tense throughout.
Lastly, in the first paragraph of the third section, FR p. 18, the sentence ‘Outside the Farthings were the East and West Marches: the Buckland; and the Westmarch added to the Shire in S.R. 1462’ was an addition.
14A few further differences in P 6 from the published text may be recorded. In the paragraph concerning the script and language of the Hobbits (FR p. 13) P 6 had: ‘And if ever Hobbits had a language of their own (which is debated) then in those days they forgot it and spoke ever after the Common Speech, the Westron as it was named’, this being changed to the reading of FR, ‘And in those days also they forgot whatever languages they had used before, and spoke ever after the Common Speech …’ And at the end of the paragraph the sentence ‘Yet they kept a few words of their own, as well as their own names of months and days, and a great store of personal names out of the past’ is lacking. Cf. the original version of Appendix F, pp. 37–8, §§21–3.
The founders of the Shire were still Marco and Cavallo (pp. 6, 9; later changed to Marcho and Blanco); and the second of the conditions imposed on the Hobbits of the Shire (cf. the text given on p. 9) was ‘to foster the land’ (changed later to ‘speed the king’s messengers’). The first grower of pipe-weed in the Shire was still Tobias Hornblower, and still in the time of Isengrim the First (p. 6); the date was apparently first written 1050 as before, but changed to 1020. Later Isengrim the Second and the date 1070 were substituted, but Tobias remained. The footnote to this passage (p. 6) was retained, but ‘about 400 years’ was later altered to ‘nearly 350’. The third of the Longbottom brands now became ‘Hornpipe Cake’, but was changed back to ‘Hornpipe Twist’.
15In the Foreword as published this concluding paragraph began:
Much information, necessary and unnecessary, will be found in the Prologue. To complete it some maps are given, including one of the Shire that has been approved as reasonably correct by those Hobbits that still concern themselves with ancient history. At the end of the third volume will be found also some abridged family-trees …
When P 6 was written, of course, the idea that The Lord of the Rings should be issued as a work in three volumes was not remotely envisaged. The published Foreword retained the reference to ‘an index of names and strange words with some explanations’, although in the event it was not provided.
16I did not carry my account of the history of The Shadow of the Past so far as this: see VII.28–9.
17In this connection it is interesting to see what my father said in his letter to Sir Stanley Unwin of 10 September 1950 (Letters no.129):
I have now on my hands two printed versions of a crucial incident. Either the first must be regarded as washed out, a mere miswriting that ought never to have seen the light; or the story as a whole must take into account the existence of two versions and use it. The former was my original simpleminded intention, though it is a bit awkward (since the Hobbit is fairly widely known in its older form) if the literary pretence of historicity and dependence on record is to be maintained. The second can be done convincingly (I think), but not briefly explained in a note.
The last words refer to the note required for the new edition of The Hobbit explaining the difference in the narrative in Riddles in the Dark. Four days later he wrote again (Letters no. 130):
I have decided to accept the existence of both versions of Chapter Five, so far as the sequel goes – though I have no time at the moment to rewrite that at the required points.
II
THE APPENDIX ON LANGUAGES
Beside the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits, whose development, clear and coherent, into the Prologue has been described in the last chapter, there is another text of a prefatory or introductory nature; and it is not easy to see how my father designed it to relate to the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits. Indeed, except in one point, they have nothing in common; for this further text (which has no title) is scarcely concerned with Hobbits at all. For a reason that will soon be apparent I give it here in full.
It was typed on small scrap paper, and very obviously set down by my father very rapidly ab initio without any previous drafting, following his thoughts as they came: sentences were abandoned before complete and replaced by new phrasing, and so on. He corrected it here and there in pencil, either then or later, these corrections being very largely minor improvements or necessary ‘editorial’ clarifications of the very rough text; in most cases I have incorporated these (not all are legible). I have added paragraph numbers for subsequent reference. Notes to this section will be found on page 26.
§1This tale is drawn from the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, preserved for the most part in the Great Red Book of Samwise. It has been written during many years for those who were interested in the account of the great Adventure of Bilbo, and especially for my friends, the Inklings (in whose veins, I suspect, a good deal of hobbit blood still runs), and for my sons and daughter.
§2But since my children and others of their age, who first heard of the finding of the Ring, have grown older with the years, this tale speaks more clearly of those darker things which lurked only on the borders of the other tale, but which have troubled the world in all its history.
§3To the Inklings I dedicate this book, since they have already endured it with patience – my only reason for supposing that they have a hobbit-strain in their venerable ancestry: otherwise it would be hard to account for their interest in the history and geography of those long-past days, between the end of the Dominion of the Elves and the beginning of the Dominion of Men, when for a brief time the Hobbits played a supreme part in the movements of the world.
§4For the Inklings I add this note, since they are men of lore, and curious in such matters. It is said that Hobbits spoke a language, or languages, very similar to ours. But that must not be misunderstood. Their language was like ours in manner and spirit; but if the face of the world has changed greatly since those days, so also has every detail of speech, and even the letters and scripts then used have long been forgotten, and new ones invented.1
§5No doubt for the historians and philologists it would have been desirable to preserve the original tongues; and certainly something of the idiom and the humour of the hobbits is lost in translation, even into a language as similar in mood a
s is our own. But the study of the languages of those days requires time and labour, which no one but myself would, I think, be prepared to give to it. So I have except for a few phrases and inscriptions transferred the whole linguistic setting into the tongues of our own time.
§6The Common Speech of the West in those days I have represented by English. This noble tongue had spread in the course of time from the kingdoms of Fornost and Gondor, and the hobbits preserved no memory of any other speech; but they used it in their own manner, in their daily affairs very much as we use English; though they had always at command a richer and more formal language when occasion required, or when they had dealings with other people. This more formal and archaic style was still the normal use in the realm of Gondor (as they discovered) and among the great in the world outside the Shire.
§7But there were other languages in the lands. There were the tongues of the Elves. Three are here met with. The most ancient of all, the High-Elven, which they used in secret as their own common speech and as the language of lore and song. The Noldorin, which may be called Gnomish, the language of the Exiles from Elvenhome in the Far West, to which tongue belong most of the names in this history that have been preserved without translation. And the language of the woodland Elves, the Elves of Middle-earth. All these tongues were related, but those spoken in Middle-earth, whether by Exiles or by Elves that had remained here from the beginning, were much changed.2 Only in Gondor was the Elvish speech known commonly to Men.
§8There were also the languages of Men, when they did not speak the Common Tongue. Now those languages of Men that are here met with were related to the Common Speech; for the Men of the North and West were akin in the beginning to the Men of Westernesse that came back over the Sea; and the Common Speech was indeed made by the blending of the speech of Men of Middle-earth with the tongues of the kings from over the Sea.3 But in the North old forms survived. The speech of the Men of Dale, therefore, to show its relationship has been cast in a Northern form related distantly to the English which has been taken to represent the Common Speech. While the speech of the Men of Rohan, who came out of the North, and still among themselves used their ancestral language (though all their greater folk spoke also the Common Speech after the manner of their allies in Gondor), I have represented by ancient English, such as it was a thousand years ago, or as far back from us about as was the day of Eorl the Young from Théoden of Rohan.4
§9The orcs and goblins had languages of their own, as hideous as all things that they made or used; and since some remnant of good will, and true thought and perception, is required to keep even a base language alive and useful even for base purposes, their tongues were endlessly diversified in form, as they were deadly monotonous in purport, fluent only in the expression of abuse, of hatred and fear. For which reason they and their kind used (and still use) the languages of nobler creatures in such intercourse as they must have between tribe and tribe.5
§10The dwarves are a different case. They are a hard thrawn folk for the most part, secretive, acquisitive, laborious, retentive of the memory of injuries (and of benefits), lovers of stone, of metals, of gems, of things that grow and take shape under the hands of craft rather than of things that live by their own life. But they are not and were not ever among the workers of wilful evil in the world nor servants of the Enemy, whatever the tales of Men may later have said of them; for Men have lusted after the works of their hands, and there has been enmity between the races. But it is according to the nature of the Dwarves that travelling, and labouring, and trading about the world they should use ever openly the languages of the Men among whom they dwell; and yet in secret (a secret which unlike the Elves they are unwilling to unlock even to those whom they know are friends and desire learning not power) they use a strange slow-changing tongue.6 Little is known about it. So it is that here such Dwarves as appear have names of the same Northern kind as the Men of Dale that dwelt round about, and speak the Common Speech, now in this manner now in that; and only in a few names do we get any glimpse of their hidden tongue.
§11And as for the scripts, something must be said of them, since in this history there are both inscriptions and old books, such as the torn remnants of the Book of Mazarbul,7 that must be read. Enough of them will appear in this book to allow, maybe, the skilled in such matters to decipher both runes and running hands. But others may wish for a clearer key. For them the Elvish Script (in its more formal shape, as it was used in Gondor for the Common Speech) is set out in full; though its various modifications used in writing other tongues, especially the High-Elven or the Noldorin, must here be passed over. Another script plays a part both in the previous account and the present one: the Runes. These also, as most other things of the kind, were also an Elvish invention. But whereas the flowing scripts (of two kinds, the alphabet of Rúmil and the alphabet of Fëanor, only the later of which concerns this tale) were developed in Elvenhome far from Middle-earth, the Runes, or cirth, were devised by the Elves of the woods; and from that origin derive their peculiar character, similar to the Runes of the North in our days, though their detail is different and it is very doubtful if there is any lineal connexion between the two alphabets. The Elvish cirth are in any case more elaborate and numerous and systematic. The Dwarves devised no letters and though they used such writing as they found current for necessary purposes, they wrote few books, except brief chronicles (which they kept secret). In the North in those regions from which the Dwarves of this tale came they used the cirth, or Runes. Following the general lines of translation, to which these records have been submitted, as the names of the North have been given the forms of Northern tongues in our own time, so the Runes were represented by the runes of ancient England. But since the scripts and runes of that account interested many of its readers, older and younger, and many enquiries concerning them have been made, in this book it has been thought better to give any runic inscriptions or writings that occur in their truer form, and to add at the end a table of the cirth, with their names, according to the usage of Dale, among both Dwarves and Men. A list of the names that occur is also given, and where they are taken from the ancient records the language to which they belong is stated and their meaning, or the meaning of their component parts, is added.
§12The word Gnomish is used above; and it would be an apt name, since whatever Paracelsus may have thought (if indeed he invented the word), to the learned it suggests knowledge. And their own true name in High-Elven is Noldor, Those that Know; for of the Three Kindreds of the Elves in the beginning, ever the Noldor were distinguished both by their knowledge of things that are and were in this world, and by the desire to know yet more. Yet they were not in fact in any way like to the gnomes of our learned theory, and still less to the gnomes of popular fancy in which they have been confused with dwarves and goblins, and other small creatures of the earth. They belonged to a race high and beautiful, the Elder Children of the World, who now are gone. Tall they were, fairskinned and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, and their voices knew more melodies than any mortal speech that now is heard. Valiant they were and their history was lamentable, and though a little of it was woven with the fates of the Fathers of Men in the Elder Days, their fate is not our fate, and their lives and the lives of Men cross seldom.8
§13It will be noted also that in this book, as before, Dwarves are spoken of, although dictionaries tell us that the plural of dwarf is dwarfs. It should, of course, be dwarrows; meaning that, if each, singular and plural, had gone its own natural way down the years, unaffected by forgetfulness, as Man and Men have, then dwarf and dwarrows we should have said as surely as we say goose and geese. But we do not talk about dwarf as often as we talk of man, or even goose, and memories are not good enough among men to keep hold of a special plural for a race now relegated (such is their fate and the fall of their great pride) to folktales, where at least some shadow of the truth is preserved, or at last to nonsense tales where they have become mere figures of fun who do not wash their ha
nds. But here something of their old character and power (if already diminished) is still glimpsed; these are the Nauglir9 of old, in whose hearts still smouldered the ancient fires and the embers of their grudge against the Elves; and to mark this dwarves is used, in defiance of correctness and the dictionaries – although actually it is derived from no more learned source than childhood habit. I always had a love of the plurals that did not go according to the simplest rule: loaves, and elves, and wolves, and leaves; and wreaths and houses (which I should have liked better spelt wreathes and houzes); and I persist in hooves and rooves according to ancient authority. I said therefore dwarves however I might see it spelt, feeling that the good folk were a little dignified so; for I never believed the sillier things about them that were presented to my notice. I wish I had known of dwarrows in those days. I should have liked it better still. I have enshrined it now at any rate in my translation of the name of Moria in the Common Speech, which meant The Dwarf-delving, and that I have rendered by The Dwarrow-delf. But Moria itself is an Elvish name of Gnomish kind, and given without love, for the true Gnomes, though they might here and there in the bitter wars against the Enemy and his orc-servants make great fortresses beneath the Earth, were not dwellers in caves or tunnels of choice, but lovers of the green earth and of the lights of heaven; and Moria in their tongue means the Black Chasm. But the Dwarves themselves, and this name at any rate was never secret, called it simply Khazad-dûm, the Mansion of the Khazad, for such is their own name for their own race, and has been so, since their birth in the deeps of time.10