The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

by exiles of Númenor are mentioned in the second version of The Fall of Númenor (V.28, 30). – The substance of this passage was also afterwards placed in the Prologue (see note 6), and there also the towers are called ‘Elf-towers’. Cf. Of the Rings of Power in The Silmarillion, p. 292: ‘It is said that the towers of Emyn Beraid were not built indeed by the exiles of Númenor, but were raised by Gilgalad for Elendil, his friend.’

8 came at last back to the road: this is of course the road they had been walking on originally, ‘the road to Buckland’; at this time there was no causeway road running south from the Brandywine Bridge on the west bank of the river (and no village of Stock).

       9 In FR (p. 109) the distance is ‘well over twenty miles from end to end.’ See p. 298.

      10 This genealogy was afterwards wholly abandoned, of course, but the mother of Meriadoc (Marmaduke) remained a Took (Esmeralda, who married Saradoc Brandybuck, known as ‘Scattergold’).

11 Melissa Brandybuck appeared in the fourth version of ‘A Long-expected Party’, on which occasion she danced on a table with Prospero Took (p. 38).

12 Bingo told Gildor (p. 63) that Gandalf ‘went off with the dwarves and the Rivendell elves as soon as the fireworks were over.’ This is the first appearance of the story that Marmaduke/Meriadoc had been at Hobbiton but had left early.

13 We met some more Elves on the way: these were the Elves of Gildor’s company, who thus already knew about the Party when Bingo, Frodo and Odo encountered them (p. 68, note 17).

14 Cf. the note cited on p. 41: ‘Where is G[andalf] asks Odo – said I was old and foolish enough now to take care of myself said B.’

      15 This ‘chant’ was emended on the typescript thus:

       Bless the water, O my feet and toes!

       Praise the bath, O my ten fingers!

       Bless the water, O my knees and shoulders!

       Praise the bath, O my ribs, and rejoice!

       Let Odo praise the house of Brandybuck,

       And praise the name of Marmaduke for ever.

This new version belongs to the time of the manuscript portion at the end of the chapter (note 16).

16 Here the typescript ends, and the remainder is in manuscript; see p. 109.

17 and once we heard his horse: this is a reference to the revised passage in the second chapter, where it is told that a Black Rider stopped his horse for a moment on the road beside the tree in which the hobbits were sitting (p. 55 and note 11).

18 This is a reference to the road within Buckland. Cf. p. 53: ‘the ordinary way to Buckland was along the East Road to the meeting of the Water and the Brandywine River, where there was a bridge, and then south along the River.’

      19 It is clear from this that my father had not yet foreseen the hobbits’ visit to the house of Tom Bombadil.

      Note on the Shire Map

      There are four extant maps of the Shire made by my father, and two which I made, but only one of them, I think, can contain an element or layer that goes back to the time when these chapters were written (the first months of 1938). This is however a convenient place to give some indications concerning all of them.

I An extremely rough map (reproduced as the frontispiece), built up in stages, and done in pencil and red, blue, and black inks; extending from Hobbiton in the West to the Barrow-downs in the East. In its inception this was the first, or at least the first that survives. Some features were first marked in pencil and then inked over.

       II A map on a smaller scale in faint pencil and blue and red chalks, extending to the Far Downs in the West, but showing little more than the courses of roads and rivers.

      III A map of roads and rivers on a larger scale than II, extending from Michel Delving in the West to the Hedge of Buckland, but without any names (see on map V below).

      IV A small scale map extending from the Green Hill Country to Bree, carefully drawn in ink and coloured chalks, but soon abandoned and marking only a few features.

       V An elaborate map in pencil and coloured chalks which I made in 1943 (see p. 200), for which III (showing only the courses of roads and rivers) was very clearly the basis and which I followed closely. No doubt III was made by my father for this purpose.

      VI The map which was published in The Fellowship of the Ring; this I made not long before its publication (that is to say, some ten years after map V).

      In what follows I consider only certain features arising in the course of this chapter.

Buckland is almost exactly south-east from Woodhall (p. 89). Buckland was still here the name of the village (see note 1 above); Bucklebury first appears on p. 92. On map I Bucklebury does indeed lie south-east (or strictly east-south-east) from Woodhall, but on map II the Ferry is due east, and on III it is east-north-east, whence the representation on my maps V and VI. In the original edition of FR (p. 97) the text had here ‘The Ferry is south-east from Woodhall’, which was corrected to ‘east’ in the revised edition (second impression 1967) when my father observed the discrepancy with the published map. The shifting had clearly come about unintentionally. (It may be noticed incidentally that all the maps show Woodhall on a side road (the ‘lane’) going off from that to Buckland; see p. 66, note 10).

The road bears away to the left … and then sweeps round south when it gets nearer to the River (p. 89). This southward sweep is strongly marked on map I (and repeated on map II), where the Buckland road joins the causeway road above the village of Stock (as Frodo says in FR, p. 97: ‘It goes round the north end of the Marish so as to strike the causeway from the Bridge above Stock’). At the time when this chapter was written there was no causeway road (note 8). This is another case where the text of FR accords with map I, but not with the published map (VI); in this case, however, my father did not correct the text. On map III the Buckland road does not ‘sweep round south’: but after bearing away to the left or north (before reaching Woodhall) it runs in a straight line due east to meet the road from the Bridge. This I followed on my map V; but the village of Stock was not marked on III, which only shows roads and rivers, and I placed the road-meeting actually in the village, not to the north of it. Although, as I clearly recollect, map V was made in his study