The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

and a creak of wheels on the road. The shadow straightened up and retreated.’ This was soon replaced, without the creak of wheels being explained; but it suggests that he had some intervention other than Elves in mind.

      15 This was another portion that was re-typed. The passage immediately preceding the Elves’ song was different in the earlier form:

It seemed to be singing in the secret elf-tongue, and yet as they listened the sounds, or the sounds and the tune together, seemed to turn into strange words in their own thought, which they only partly understood. Frodo afterwards said that he thought he heard words like these:

      The song also had certain differences, including a second verse that was rejected.

       O Elbereth! O Elbereth!

       O Queen beyond the Western Seas!

       O Light to him that wandereth

       Amid the world of woven trees!

       O Stars that in the Sunless Year

       Were kindled by her silver hand,

       That under Night the shade of Fear

       Should fly like shadow from the land!

       O Elbereth! Gilthonieth!

       Clear are thy eyes, and cold thy breath! &c.

      In the last verse the form is Gilthoniel. Extensive rough workings are also found, in which the first line of the song appears also as O Elberil! O Elberil! (and the third O Light to us that wander still); from these is also seen the meaning of the Sunless Year, since my father first wrote the Flowering Years (with reference to the Two Trees; see the Quenta Silmarillion §19, V.212). – It seems to have been here that the name Elbereth was first applied to Varda, having been previously that of one of the sons of Dior Thingol’s Heir: see V.351.

      16 In the original draft it was added here that the Elves ‘were crowned with red and yellow leaves’; rejected, no doubt, because it was dark and they bore no lights.

17 At an earlier point in the chapter (p. 52) the typescript read ‘a day even finer and hotter than the day before (Bingo’s birthday, that already seemed quite a long while past).’ It was of course on the evening of the day following the birthday party that Bingo and his companions set out, and my father realising this simply changed ‘before’ to ‘of’ and removed the brackets, as in the text printed. Here, however, he neglected to change ‘yesterday’ (see also note 24). These slips are odd, but do not seem to have any particular significance.

It is seen subsequently how these Elves could have ‘heard all about that from the Rivendell people’, for Bingo tells Gildor (p. 63) that Gandalf ‘went off with the dwarves and the Rivendell elves as soon as the fireworks were over.’ The meeting between them is in fact mentioned later (p. 101).

18 The typescript runs straight on from we have heard all about that, of course, from the Rivendell people to ‘O Wise People,’ said Frodo, and the passage beginning ‘Then who are you, and who is your lord?’ said Bingo is an addition. In the typescript as typed the leader of the Elves is not named until towards the end, where after they had eaten ‘Bingo remained talking with Gildor, the leader of the Elves’ (p. 62); all references to Gildor before that are corrections in ink

19 As the text was typed, Bingo said: ‘Because we have seen two Black Riders, or one twice over, today.’ The changed text accompanies the story of the Rider who paused momentarily beside the hollow tree (see note 11).

      20 For the ‘elf-latin’ (Qenya) see the Lhammas §4, V.172.

      21 This passage is an alteration of the text as typed, which read:

       … we are very easy to please (for hobbits). For myself I can only say that the delight of meeting you has already made this a day of bright Adventure.’

       ‘Bilbo was a good master,’ said the Elf bowing. ‘Come now, join our company, and we will go. You had best walk in the middle …’

      22 This sentence replaced the following:

       ‘Be careful, friends,’ said one laughing. ‘Speak no secrets! Here is a scholar in the elf-latin and all the dialects. Bilbo was indeed a good master.’

      See note 21 and the altered passage referred to there.

23 This is the first occurrence of the name Gildor in the text as typed; see note 18.

24 For my birthday the day before yesterday the text as typed had yesterday; see note 17.

25 The conversation between Bingo and Gildor to this point, beginning at You can fence yourselves in, but you have no means of fencing it out (p. 63), is the last of the replacement typescript pages. The differences from the earlier form are in fact very slight, except in these points. Bingo did not say that Gandalf had told him not to put off his journey later than the autumn, but simply ‘He helped me, and seemed to think it a good idea’; and Gildor’s reply therefore begins differently: ‘I wonder. He may not have known they were in the Shire; yet he knows more about them than we do.’ And Bingo said that Odo and Frodo ‘only know that I am on a Journey – on a sort of prolonged (and possibly permanent) holiday from Hobbiton; and making for Rivendell to begin with.’

      26 Struck from the typescript here: ‘and it might prevent you from taking it.’

27 Struck from the typescript here: ‘(for the matter is outside the concern of such Elves as we are).’

      It is characteristic that while the dramatis personae are not the same, and the story possesses as yet none of the dimension, the gravity, and the sense of vast danger, imparted by the second chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, a good part of ‘Three is Company’ was already in being; for once the journey has started not only the structure of the final narrative but much of the detail is present, though countless modifications in expression were to come, and in several substantial passages the chapter was scarcely changed afterwards.

While ‘Bingo’ is directly equatable with the later ‘Frodo’, the other relations are more complex. It is true that, comparing the text as it was at this stage with the final form in FR, it may be said simply that ‘Odo’ became ‘Pippin’ while Frodo Took disappeared: of the individual speeches in this chapter which remained into FR almost every remark made by Odo was afterwards given to Pippin. But the way in which this came about was in fact strangely tortuous, and was by no means a simple substitution of one name for another (see further pp. 323–4). Frodo Took is seen as a less limited and more aware being than Odo, more susceptible to the beauty and otherness of the Elves;