The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

I can do a few things – like carpentry and gardening: I did not feel inclined somehow to make other people’s chairs, or grow other people’s vegetables for a living. I suppose some tiny touch of dragon-curse came to me. I am gold-lazy.’

      ‘Then Gandalf did not tell you anything? You were not actually escaping.’

      ‘What do you mean? What from?’

      ‘Well, this black rider,’ they said.

      ‘I don’t understand them at all.’

      ‘Then Gandalf told you nothing?’

‘Not about them. He warned Bilbo a long time ago about the Ring, of course.¹ “Don’t use it too much!” he used to say. “And only use it for proper purposes. I mean, do not use it except for jest, or for escaping from danger and annoyance – don’t use it for harm, or for finding out other people’s secrets, and of course not for theft or worse things. Because it may get the better of you.” I did not understand.

      ‘I seldom saw Gandalf after Bilbo went away. But about a year ago he came one night, and I told him of the plan I was beginning to make for leaving Bag-end. “What about the Ring?” he asked. “Are you being careful? Do be careful: otherwise you will be overcome by it.” I had as a matter of fact hardly ever used it – and I did not use it again after that talk until my birthday party.’

      ‘Does anyone else know about it?’

      ‘I cannot say; but I don’t think so. Bilbo kept it very secret. He always told me that I was the only one who knew about it (in the Shire).² I never told anyone else except Odo and Frodo who are my best friends. I have tried to be to them what Bilbo was to me. But even to them I never spoke of the Ring until they agreed to come with me on this Journey a few months ago. They would not tell anyone – though we often speak of it among ourselves. – Well, what do you make of it all? I can see you are bursting with secrets, but I cannot guess any of them.’

‘Well,’ said the Elf. ‘I don’t know much about this. You must find Gandalf as quick as you can – Rivendell I think is the place to go to. But it is my belief that the Lord of the Ring³ is looking for you.’

      ‘Is that bad or good?’

‘Bad; but how bad I cannot say. Bad enough if he only wants the ring back (which is unlikely); worse, if he wants payment; very bad indeed if he wants you as well (which is quite likely). We fancy that he must at last after many years have found out that Bilbo had it. Hence the asking for Baggins.⁴ But somehow the search for Baggins failed, and then something must have been discovered about you. But by strange luck you must have held your party and vanished just as they found out where you lived. You put off the scent; but they are hot on it now.’

      ‘Who are they?’

‘Servants of the Lord of the Ring – [?people] who have passed through the Ring.’

      This ends a sheet, and the following sheet is not continuous with what precedes; but as found among my father’s papers they were placed together, and on both of them he wrote (later) ‘About Ring-wraiths’. The second passage is also part of a conversation, but there is no indication of who the speaker is (whoever it is, he is obviously speaking to Bingo). It was written at great speed and is extremely difficult to make out.

Yes, if the Ring overcomes you, you yourself become permanently invisible – and it is a horrible cold feeling. Everything becomes very faint like grey ghost pictures against the black background in which you live; but you can smell more clearly than you can hear or see.⁵ You have no power however like a Ring of making other things invisible: you are a ringwraith. You can wear clothes. [> you are just a ringwraith; and your clothes are visible, unless the Lord lends you a ring.] But you are under the command of the Lord of the Rings.⁶

      I expect that one (or more) of these Ringwraiths have been sent to get the ring away from hobbits.

In the very ancient days the Ring-lord made many of these Rings: and sent them out through the world to snare people. He sent them to all sorts of folk – the Elves had many, and there are now many elfwraiths in the world, but the Ring-lord cannot rule them; the goblins got many, and the invisible goblins are very evil and wholly under the Lord; dwarves I don’t believe had any; some say the rings don’t work on them: they are too solid. Men had few, but they were most quickly overcome and …… The men-wraiths are also servants of the Lord. Other creatures got them. Do you remember Bilbo’s story of Gollum?⁷ We don’t know where Gollum comes in – certainly not elf, nor goblin; he is probably not dwarf; we rather believe he really belongs to an ancient sort of hobbit. Because the ring seems to act just the same for him and you. Long ago [?he belonged] …. to a wise, cleverhanded and quietfooted little family. But he disappeared underground, and though he used the ring often the Lord evidently lost track of it. Until Bilbo brought it out to light again.

      Of course Gollum himself may have heard news – all the mountains were full of it after the battle – and tried to get back the ring, or told the Lord.

      At this point the manuscript stops. Here is a first glimpse of an earlier history of Gollum; a suggestion of how the hunt for the Ring originated; and a first sketching of the idea that the Dark Lord gave out Rings among the peoples of Middle-earth. The Rings conferred invisibility, and (it is at least implied) this invisibility was associated with the fate (or at least the peril) of the bearers of the Rings: that they become ‘wraiths’ and – in the case of goblins and men – servants of the Dark Lord.

Now at some very early stage my father wrote a chapter, without number or title, in which he made use of the passage just given; and this is the first drafting of (a part of) what ultimately became Chapter 2, ‘The Shadow of the Past.’ As I have noticed, in the second of these two passages marked ‘About Ring-wraiths’ it is not clear who is speaking. It may be Gildor, or it may be Gandalf, or (perhaps most likely) neither the one nor the other, but indeterminate; but in any case I think that my father decided when writing the draft text of the second chapter that he would not have Gildor discussing these matters with Bingo (as he certainly does in the first of these ‘Ring-wraith’ passages, p. 74), but would reserve them for Gandalf’s instruction, and that this was the starting-point of the chapter which I now give, in which as I have said he made use of the second ‘Ring-wraith’ passage. Whether he wrote this text at once, before going on to the third chapter (IV in this book), seems impossible to say; but the fact that Marmaduke is mentioned shows that it preceded ‘In the House of Tom Bombadil’, where ‘Meriadoc’ and ‘Merry’ first appear. This, at any rate, is a convenient place to put it.

      Subsequently my father referred to it as a ‘foreword’ (see p. 224), and it is clear that it was written as a possible new beginning for the book, in which Gandalf tells Bingo at Bag End, not long before the Party, something of the history and nature of his Ring, of his danger, and of the need for him to leave his home. It was composed very rapidly and is hard to read. I have introduced punctuation where needed, and occasionally put in silently necessary connective words. There are many pencilled alterations and additions which are here ignored, for they are anticipations of a later version of the chapter; but changes belonging to the time of composition are adopted into the text. There is no title.

      One day long ago two people were sitting talking in a small room. One was a wizard and the other was a hobbit, and the room was the sitting-room of the comfortable and well-furnished hobbit-hole known as Bag-end, Underhill, on the outskirts of Hobbiton in the middle of the Shire. The wizard was of course Gandalf and he looked much the same as he had