The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

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 Bilbos speaking it in Chapter 1 (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 9 and 11).

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 the 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, &c.

       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; &c.

      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.