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Old 08-11-2022, 01:24 PM   #38
William Cloud Hicklin
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p. 138: It's 11.20, almost definitely. It's possible to read the digit as a 3, but I'm pretty sure it's a 2.

68 vs 69 miles: Again, 9 is possible but I'm pretty sure it's an 8. The "69" may be a backreading from Gandalf's Ride, but the original entry here necessarily predates that.

"Gandalf halts 176 miles from Edoras"- this is a case where I silently repaired a minor JRRT error. He only actually struck through "Gandalf halts," but it is evident that the next line "176 miles from Edoras" was also rejected, since the next sentence contradicts it (and 192 accords with Gandalf's Ride). This may have overstepped my (self-imposed) editorial bounds, but I felt two contradictory sentences back to back would confuse the reader

1 pm/4 pm: The entry originally had "10 a.m.," which Tolkien crossed out, writing 1 pm above. I have no idea where H&S got 4.

p.62 Slag-mound. It's definitely singular, H&S must have added the S to regularize it to the published text. The hyphen is not so definite- it might just be a leading serif to the M, but ordinarily when Tolkien did that (he didn't always), the serif is well above the line and curved. T was highly variable in his use of hyphenated words (e.g. hog-back vs hogback; Zirak-zigil vs Zirakzigil), but on balance I think he used a hyphen here.


p.82 Eomer and his picked body. Now, that's interesting. T definitely wrote in 17 above 18 (which has a very bold cross-stroke or crossout). However, a faint penciled line might tie the 17 to a new moon symbol, written beside the original 17 later changed to 22 (Theoden's cortege). Therefore you may be right (and my Note 130 an absurdity)

p.78 "Ring is destroyed." That is correct, although the "is" is very indistinct and tangled up with the end of "Ring."
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Last edited by William Cloud Hicklin; 08-11-2022 at 06:49 PM.
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