[davem]

Estelyn

What I find very interesting in Christopher Tolkien's introduction to the fourth version is this statement:
Quote:
Bilbo's marriage (as was inevitable, I think) has been rejected.
Why would he consider it "inevitable"?! Unfortunately, he doesn't explain that remark.

Why can't he have Bilbo getting married? Well, Tolkien has already told us at the end of The Hobbit that Bilbo lived happily ever after to the end of his days

As we're starting the Shadow of the Past discussion today, I've knocked together something.

Apologies first of all, because Child has made some of the folowing points, but I put this together last night, & can't face going over the whole thing to excise anything repititious.

The first version of the Shadow of the Past is interesting in the way it shows how Tolkien was developing the concept of the Rings.

Gandalf is telling Bingo about the fate of the hobbits if the Enemy should be victorius:

It would be a mortal blow if if the dark power should overcome the Shire, & if all these jolly, greedy, stupid Bolgers, Bagginses, Brandybucks, Hornblowers, Proudfoots & whatnot became wraiths’.

Bingo shuddered. ‘But why should we?’ he asked; ‘and why should the Lord want such servants, & what has all this to do with me & the Ring?’

It is the only Ring left,’ said Gandalf. ‘And hobbits are the only people of whom the Lord has not yet mastered any one.

‘In the ancient days the dark master made many Rings, & he dealt them out lavishly, so that they might be spread abroad to ensnare folk. the elves had many, & there are now many elf-wraiths in the world; the goblins had some & their wraiths are very evil & under the command of the Lord. The dwarves had seven, but nothing could make them invisible. In them it only kindled to flames the fire of their greed...In this way the master controlled them. Men had three rings, & others they found in secret places cast away by the elf-wraiths: the men-wraiths are servants of the Lord, & they brought all their rings back to him; till at last he had gathered all into his hands again that had not been destroyed by fire - all save one.

It fell fromthe hand of an elf as he swam across a river; & it betrayed him, for he was flying frompursuit in the old wars, & became visible to his enemies, & the goblins slew him. But a fish took up the ring & was filled with madness, & swam upstream, leaping over rocks & up waterfalls until it cast itself on a bank & spat out the ring & died.

So we have the rings made, not by Elves seduced by the dark Lord, but by the dark Lord himslef, & we have multiple wraiths - even elvish ones. Any one who possesses a ring becomes a wraith. But these wraiths are not automatically servants of the dark Lord - only the men-wraiths. We even have elf wraiths casting their rings away (to become what?) Also, there is a definite similarity between what the effect of the Ring on the fish, & the effect of the Silmaril on Carcharoth.

But then it gets even more interesting:

There was long ago living by the bank of a stream a wise, clever handed & quiet footed little family. I guess they were of hobbit-kind.....The most inquisitive & curious-minded of that family was called Digol...He found the ring in the mud of the river-bank under the roots of a thorn tree; & he oput it on, & when he returned home none of his family saw him while he wore it. He ws pleased with his discovery & concealed it, & he used it to discover secrets, & put his knowledge to malicious use, & became sharp-eyed & keen-eared for all that was unpleasant.

So, no Smeagol! No murder. This Gollum is an innocent corrupted by the Ring. But then why call it a ‘birthday present’ (apart from the fact that one could say that this was the day ‘Gollum’ was ‘born’). But he goes the same way as Smeagol & retreats to the caves under the mountains. Eventually he wants to be free of it:

He wanted to slip out & leave the mountains, & smell the open air even if it killed him...But that would have meant leaving the Ring. And that is not easy to do. The longer you have had one the harder it is.

So he decides to give it away. And then Bilbo happens along. (At this point Tolkien is still bound by the account in the original Hobbit) .

Later Gandalf gets around to telling Bingo how the Ring can be destroyed:

I fancy you would have to find one of the Cracks of Earth in the depths of the Fiery Mountain, & drop it down into the Secret Fire, if you really want to destroy it.

So, the Secret Fire (capitalised in the original) is within the earth! But Ainullindale was already written by this time, & the Secret Fire was established as the equivalent of the Holy Spirit, so what is Tolkien’s meaning here? The Secret Fire , in the depths of the earth is the only thing that can destroy the Ring.

In the second version: Ancient History, there is more detail about the dark Lord:

Both elves & dwarves were troubled, especially those that occasionally arrived or passed by coming from a distance, from east or south. ...they constantly mentioned the Necromancer, or the enemy; & sometimes referred to the Land of Mor-dor & the Black Tower.

In this version though, the hobbits will become ‘enslaved’, not turned into wraiths, if the Necromance wins. But its still the Necromancer who makes the Rings. Interestngly, when he loses the one ring he loses control of all the others & their possesors. The elves, though, are a different case:

But the Elves resist his power more than all other races; & the high-elves of the West, of whom some still remain in the middle-world, percieve & dwell at once both [in] this world & the other side without the aid of rings.

So the high Elves exist in two worlds simultaneously - reminding one of Frodo’s Ring-induced vision of Glorfindel at the Ford of Bruinen, where he saw the Elf as a being of ‘shining light’.

As to men:

But all the Nine Rings of men have gone back to Sauron, & borne with them their possesors, kings, warriors & wizards of old, who became Ring-wraiths & served the maker, & were his most terrible servants

Interesting to see that the whole idea of the Istari has not yet appeared - wizards were among the Ring-wraiths. So Gandalf himself is still human - in the story at this point he is said to have aged quite a bit since the events of the Hobbit. Perhaps this accounts for Gandalf’s fear of the ring - other wizards have succumed. Also at this time we have the story of Gilgalad (sic), Orendil, & his son Isildor, who cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand. But the Ring is still spat out by a fish & found by Digol.

In the ‘Fourth Phase’ version, Gandalf tells Frodo (yes, we’re finally at Frodo!) :

There are many sorts of ring, of course. Some are no more than toys (though dangerous ones to my mind) & not difficult to contrive if you go in for such things - they are not in my line

- as CRT notes, preparing the way for Saruman ring maker. Its in this version that the Smeagol/Deagol storyline appears, as do the ‘Cracks of Doom in the depths of Ororuin, the fire-mountain’. But Gandalf doesn’t mantion the making of the rings, so the whole history of the Elven smiths of Eregion hasn’t appered (or hasn’t been written down. Generally, though, this version follows the lines of the final published version.

What strikes me is that any of the versions would have worked as stories, but there is a sense that Tolkien ‘knew’ subconsciously the story he really wanted to tell & was struggling along till he became conscious of it.

(I know, I know! Like the tourist who was asked what she thought of her first production of Romeo & Juliet, & replied 'She didn't like it because the writer had used too many quotes')

As to quotes, its difficult to discuss HoME because you don't know how many people have read it, & if you don't give quotes then you exclude people. Besides, I don't expect many (any) people to have read all this post