Once again the text continues without break, although this time what later became the third chapter starts at the top of a new page (manuscript page 32; Marq. 1/1/3:1); the chapter title for this short chapter (‘A Short Rest’) was added much later.
They did not sing or tell stories anymore that day, even though the weather improved; nor the next day, nor the day after.TN1 They camped under the stars, and their horses had more to eat than they did. For there was plenty of grass, but their bags were getting low, even with what [Gandalf >] Bladorthin had brought back on his white horse.
One afternoon they forded the river at a wide shallow place full of the noise of stones and foam. The far bank was steep and slippery. When they got to the top leading their ponies, they saw the great mountains had marched down very near to them. Already they were [> seemed to be] only a day’s amble from the feet of them [> the nearest mountain]. Dark and drear they looked, though there were patches of sunlight on their brown sides, and behind their shoulders the tips of snow peaks gleamed.
‘Is that the mountain [> Mountain]’ said Bilbo in a solemn voice; looking at the nearest one – a bigger thing than he had ever seen before.
‘Of course not!’ said Balin ‘this is only the beginning of the Misty Mountains,TN2 and we have got to get through or over or under them somehow, before we get to the wide land beyond. And it is the deal of a way and all from the tother side of these mountains to the Lonely Mountain in the East where Smaug lies on our treasure’.
‘Oh!’ said Bilbo, & just at that moment he felt tireder than he ever remembered. He was thinking once again of his comfy chair beside the fire in his favourite sitting room in his hobbit hole with the kettle singing. Not for the last time.
Now Bladorthin led the way. ‘We must not miss it, or we shall be quite done for’ he said. ‘We need food for one thing, and rest (in reasonable safety) – and it is very necessary to tackle the misty mountains by the one and only proper path, or else we shall get lost in them, and never come back.TN3
They asked him where he was making for. ‘You are now at the very Edge of the Wild’ he answered. ‘Somewhere ahead is the Last Decent HouseTN4 – I have been there already and they are expecting us.’
You would fancy it ought to have been easy to make straight for that house: There seemed no trees, and no hills, and no breaks in the ground, though it sloped up ahead to meet the feet of the mountain, the colour of heather and rock, with grass green and moss green where the rivers and rivulets were.TN5
That is what it looked like in the afternoon sun. Still you couldn’t see a house. Then when you rode on a bit you began to understand that that house might be hidden anywhere at all between you and the mountains. There were quite unexpected valleys [full of trees >] narrow with steep sides that you came on all of a sudden, and look into surprised to find them full of trees and a rushing water at the bottom. There were gullies you could almost jump over, but very deep with waterfalls in them. There were ravines that you couldn’t jump across, or get down into or climb out of. There were bogs, green pleasant sort of patches some of them with flowers growing; but ponies never came out again that walked on that grass with packs on their backs.
And it was a much much wider land from the ford to the mountain than ever you bargained for. And the only road [> path] was marked by white stones. Some of the stones were small enough,TN6 and heather and moss were half over others. Altogether it was a slow business.
It seemed only a little way they had gone following Bladorthin, his head and beard wagging this way and that as he searched for the path, when the day began to fail. Tea time had long gone by, and it seemed suppertime soon would do the same. There were moths and flies about. There was no moon. Bilbo’s pony began to stumble on the stones.
They came to the edge of a steep fall in the ground so suddenly that Bladorthin’s horse nearly fell over it.TN7 ‘There it is’ said the wizard and they came to the edge and looked, and they saw a valley far below. They could hear the noise of hurrying water rising from rocks at the bottom, the scent of trees was in the air, and there was a light on the valley side across the water.
Bilbo never forgot the way they slithered and slipped in the dark down the steep zigzag path into that valley. The air grew warmer as they got [added: lower] down, and the smell of the pine trees made him drowsy till he nodded and bumped his nose on his pony’s neck, or got nearly shaken out of his seat when it slipped on [> by a sudden trip over] a stone or a root. But they all felt a deal more cheery when they came to the bottom. There was [a] comfortable sort of feeling in that valley in the twilight. The noise of the water under the bridge they crossed by had a wholesome sound.TN8 There was green grass in patches among the rocks of the river’s shores. ‘Hm’ said the hobbit; ‘it feels like elves’TN9 – and he looked up at the stars. They were burning bright; and just then there was a burst of laughter in the trees.
O! What are you doing,
And where are you going?
Your ponies need shoeing!
The river is flowing!
O! tra-la-la-lally
here down in the valley!
O! What are you seeking,
And where are you making?
The faggots are reeking,
The bannocks are baking!
O! tril-lil-lil-lolly
the valley is jolly,
ha! ha!
O! Where are you going
With beards all a-wagging?
No knowing, no knowing
What brings Mister Baggins
And Balin and Dwalin
down into the valley
in June
ha! ha!
O! Will you be staying,
Or will you be flying?
Your ponies are straying!
The daylight is dying!
To fly would be folly,
To stay would be jolly
And listen and hark
Till the end of the dark
to our tune
ha! ha!
So they laughed and sang in the trees. Elves of course, and soon Bilbo could see them as the dark deepened. He loved them as nice hobbits do, and he was a little bit frightened of them too.TN10 Dwarves don’t get on so well with them. Even decent enough dwarves like Gandalf and his friends think them foolish (which is a very foolish thing to think) and get annoyed. But elves laugh at them, [and] most of all at their beards.
‘Well well’ said a voice, ‘just look at dear old Bilbo the hobbit on a pony, my dear! Isn’t it delicious!’
‘Most astonishing and wonderful’
And then off they went into another song as ridiculous as the one I have written down in full.
At last one, a tall young fellow, came out from the trees and bowed to Bladorthin and to Gandalf.
‘Welcome to the valley’ he said.
‘Thank you’ said Gandalf a bit gruffly. Bladorthin was already off his horse and among the elves talking merrily to them.
‘You are a bit off the path’ said the elf, ‘that is if you are making for <the> only way across the water, and the house beyond. We will set you right, but you had best [get off >] get on foot till you are over the bridge. Are you going to stay [added: a bit] and sing with us, or will you go straight on? Supper is preparing over yonder’ he said ‘I can smell the wood fires and the baking’.TN11
Tired as he was Bilbo would have liked to stay a while. Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things. Also he would have liked to find out how these people knew his name so pat and all, though Elves are wondrous people for news,TN12 and know what is going on among the peoples of the lands as quick as water flows or quicker.
But the Dwarves were all for supper just then. So on they went, leading their ponies, [to a >] till they found a good path, and so in the end came down to the river’s very brink. It was flowing fast as mountain streams do of a summer evening when sun has been on the snow far away all day. There was only a narrow bridge without parapet, and narrow as [a] pony could well walk on, and over it they had to go, slow and careful, one by one, each leading his pony by the bridle. The elves had brought bright lanterns to the shore, and they sang a merry song as the party went across.
‘Don’t dip thy beard in the foam father,’ they cried to Gandalf who was bent almost on hands and knees. ‘It is long enough without watering it. Mind Bilbo doesn’t eat all the cakes’ they called ‘he is too fat to get through key-holes yet’.
‘Hush hush good people, and good night’ said Bladorthin who came last. ‘Valley[s] have ears, and elves have over merry tongues. Good night’.
And so at last they came to the Last Homely House, and found its doors flung wide.
Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are swift to tell about [> quickly told about], and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable palpitating and even fearsome and gruesome to see or pass through make [> may make] a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. They stayed long in that good house, [all >] a week at least, and they found it hard to leave, and Bilbo would gladly have stopped there for ever and ever (not even supposing a wish would have taken him right back to his hobbit-hole without trouble). Yet there is not much to tell about it [> their stay].
The master of the house was an elf-friend – one of those people whose fathers came into the strange stories of the beginning of history and the wars of the Elves and goblins, and the brave men of the North.TN13 There were still some people in those days [who were >] who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Elrond the master of the house was one. He was as good to look at (almost) as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as Christmas. And his house was perfect, whether you liked food or sleep or work or storytelling or singing or just sitting and thinking best. Bad things did not come into that valley.
I wish I had time [to] tell you even a few of the tales or one or two of the songs that they heard in his house. They all [> All of them], and the ponies as well, grew wonderfully rested and strong in a few days there. Their clothes were mended, and their bruises and tempers and hopes as well. Their bags were filled with food and provisions light to carry but strong to bring them over the mountain passes. Their plans were improved, and discussed and made better [> improved with the best advice]. And so the time came to midsummer eve, and they were to go on again with the early sun on midsummer morning. Elrond knew all about all runes of every kind. He looked at [their map >] the swords they had brought from the Trolls’ lair, and he said:
‘These are not troll-make. They are old swords, very old swords of the elves that are called Gnomes,TN14 and they were made in Gondolin for the goblin-wars. They must have come from a dragon’s hoard, for dragons it was that destroyed that city many ages ago.’ He looked at the keys and he said ‘these are [dwarf-make, and >] troll-keys, but there is one in the bunch that is not. It is a dwarf-key.’
‘So it is’ said Gandalf, when he looked at it. ‘Now where did that come from.’
‘I couldn’t say’, said Elrond ‘but I should keep it safe and fast if I were you.’ And Gandalf fastened it to a chain and put it round his neck under his jacket.
[He >] Elrond looked at their map, and he shook his head; for if he did not altogether approve of dwarves and their love of gold, he hated dragons and their cruel wickedness, and he did not like to think of the ruin of the town of dale, and its merry bells, and the burned banks of the bright river Running.
The moon was shining – it was now getting near the full [> a broad crescent]. He held up the map and its white light shone through it. ‘What is this?’ he said.
‘There are moon-letters underneath the plain-runes, which say “five feet high the door and three may walk abreast”’.
‘What are moon-letters?’ asked Bilbo full of excitement. He loved maps (as I have told you before); and also he liked runes and letters and cunning hand writing, though his own hand was a bit thin and spidery.
‘Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you can’t see them’ said Elrond ‘not when you look straight at them. They can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more it must be [the same shaped >] a moon of the same shape and season as the day they were written. The dwarves invented them, and wrote them with silver pens. These must have been written on a midsummer’s eve [with the moon >] in a crescent moon – a long while ago.’
‘What do they say?’ asked BladorthinTN15 – a bit vexed, perhaps, that even Elrond should have found this out first, though really there hadn’t been a chance before, and [added: there] wouldn’t have been another till goodness knows when.
‘Stand by the grey stone where the thrush knocks. Then the [rising >] setting sun on the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key hole.’TN16
‘Durin, Durin’ said Gandalf. ‘He was the father of the fathers of one of the two races of dwarves, the Longbeards, and my grandfather’s ancestor.’
‘Then what is Durin’s Day?’ said Elrond.
‘The first day of the dwarves’ New Year’ said Gandalf ‘and that is, as everyone knows, the day of the first moon of autumn. And Durin’s day is that [added in pencil: first] day when the first moon of autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But I do not see that all this helps much.’TN17
‘That remains to be seen’, said Bladorthin. ‘Is there any more writing?’.
‘None to be seen by this moon’ said Elrond, and he gave him back the map, and they went down the water to see the elves dance and sing.
The next morning was mid-summer morning and as fair as fair could be: blue sky and never a cloud and the sun dancing on the water.
Now they rode away with their hearts ready for more adventure, and a knowledge of the road they must follow over the mountains to the land beyond.
TEXT NOTES
1. Added in the top margin: ‘They had begun to feel that danger was not far away on either side’.
2. This marks the first occurrence in the text of ‘the Misty Mountains’ used as a proper name; earlier (in the dwarves’ song and on p. 90) it had been treated as a (lower-cased) description, not a name (as indeed it is again in Bladorthin’s speech later on this same manuscript page).
3 This was altered to ‘or else you will get lost in them, and have to come back and start at the beginning again – if you ever even get back.’ Note that the change distances Bladorthin from the rest, implying that he will survive no matter what happens to the rest of them, an implication that ties in with Gandalf’s words in the Pryftan Fragment about Bladorthin being the ‘probable exception’ to the possibility that they may all never return from the quest (p. 7).
4 The ‘Last Decent House’ was changed to the ‘Last Homely House’ by a revision in the right-hand margin. This change must have taken place very soon after this page was written, since ‘Last Homely House’ is the form used the next time Elrond’s house is named.
5 This passage was revised to read as follows:
There seemed no trees, and no hills, or valleys to break the ground in front, which sloped ever up ahead to meet the feet of the mountain, the colour of heather and rock, with grass green and moss green where the rivers and rivulets might be.
6 The word ‘enough’ here is circled, as if for deletion, but not actually cancelled.
7 As in the preceding note, the word ‘it’ here is circled but not cancelled.
8 This sentence was cancelled.
9 The word ‘feels’ here is written over another word, but I cannot make out the overwritten word it replaced (it may even have been the same word less legibly written). The sentence does raise the question of how Bilbo knows what elves ‘feel’ like; Bladorthin had not mentioned elves at all as having anything to do with their destination. The reading ‘it feels like elves’ also appears in the First Typescript (Marq. 1/1/53:2), where it is altered in ink to ‘smells like elves’, the striking phrasing of the published book.
10 This sentence was revised to read ‘He loved them as hobbits do, but he was a little bit frightened of them as well’; added in the top margin and marked for insertion at this point is the rather ominous phrase ‘as people are who know most about them’. The original inclusion of ‘nice hobbits’ carries an implication of other, unnamed, not so nice hobbits, but we will not meet them (in the persons of the Sandyman family) until The Lord of the Rings.
11 This is an early example of the preternatural abilities of elven senses, best known through Legolas’s phenomenal eyesight in The Lord of the Rings (LotR.443, 446, 450, [528]–529).
12 This sentence was slightly revised to read ‘how these people knew his name and all. Elves are wondrous folk for news . . .’
13 These ‘strange stories of the beginning of history and the wars of the Elves and goblins, and the brave men of the North’ are, of course, the Lost Tales and Long Lays, another allusion by Tolkien within The Hobbit back to the core of the legendarium.
14 Pencilled additions change this phrase to read ‘The elves that are now called Gnomes, but were once called Noldor’. Since most of the pencilled changes to the Second Phase manuscript date from the time when Tolkien was creating the First Typescript, this addition was probably made a year or two after this page was originally written.
15 Tolkien began to write ‘Ga’ – i.e., the name ‘Ga[ndalf]’ – here, then cancelled it and wrote the wizard’s name instead.
16 At the end of this paragraph, Tolkien has added the following in smaller letters and within brackets:
[I have marked the moon letters in red on the map]
Tolkien may be referring here to a lost copy of the Lonely Mountain map that came between Fimbulfambi’s Map (see Frontispiece) and Thror’s Map I (Plate I [top]); so far as I know no copy of Thror’s Map with the moon-letters in red survives. See ‘The First Map’ (p. 23) for more evidence of this lost map.
Tolkien and, later, Allen & Unwin’s production department, struggled over the best way to produce the secret writing on the map. The ideal solution would have been to have the moon letters as a watermark that only showed up when the page was held up to light, but this would have been prohibitively expensive. Tolkien’s preferred solution was to write the moon-letters in reverse on the back of the page, producing a similar effect much more economically.† Unfortunately, Allen & Unwin decided to use both maps in The Hobbit as endpapers, meaning that they were glued into the inside front and back covers of the book, so that the ‘secret writing’ had to appear on the front of the map. In the end, the best compromise they could contrive was to have the letters of the ‘invisible writing’ be drawn in outline to show that they were different from the rest of the detail. Compare Douglas Anderson’s simple but elegant low-tech solution in The Annotated Hobbit of printing the map twice, once in Chapter I without the hidden writing (DAA.50) and then again in Chapter III with the moon-letters revealed (DAA.97).
† Not until 1979 was Tolkien’s idea finally put into practice, when the two maps from The Hobbit were published in poster format; Thror’s Map has the moon-runes printed in reverse on the back, clearly visible when the map is held up to the light [copyright 1979 Allen & Unwin, printed by Henry Stone & Sons, Banbury].
17 The next paragraph, on the top line of the next page (Ms. page 39; Marq. 1/1/3:7), began ‘Well, well’, but this was rubbed out in an inky smear and a new paragraph begun beneath (‘That remains to be seen’).
This brief chapter contains the most explicit references yet linking The Hobbit to the mythology out of which it grew. Elrond and Gondolin come directly from the Silmarillion tradition, while the ‘Last Decent House’ (renamed the Last Homely House before the end of the chapter) is clearly inspired by the Cottage of Lost Play that had appeared in the frame story of The Book of Lost Tales, where ‘old tales, old songs, and elfin <sic> music are treasured and rehearsed’ (BLT I.20) – a description strikingly like that of Elrond’s house, which ‘was perfect, whether you liked food or sleep or work or storytelling or singing or just sitting and thinking best’ (p. 115), and of which the narrator says ‘I wish I had time [to] tell you even a few of the tales or one or two of the songs that they heard in his house’ (ibid.). It is in the House of Lost Play (as it is also called; cf. BLT I.189) that Eriol the wanderer hears all the stories that together make up the ‘Lost Tales’, just as much later it is in Elrond’s House (not yet named ‘Rivendell’)1 that Bilbo in his retirement collected the stories that made up The Silmarillion (cf. LotR.26–7 & 1023).
One can sympathize with the dwarves for thinking the elves of the valley foolish: despite the narrator’s protest, nothing about their behavior in this chapter indicates anything differently. Their depiction owes something to the frivolous elves of much of The Book of Lost Tales – as for example the original version of ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’, where Lúthien dances among white moths in a ‘silver-pearly dress’ and hides herself ‘beneath a very tall flower’ after her brother bolts at the sight of Beren (BLT II.11). Alongside the grave, even grim, elves of some of the early tales – Fëanor and Turgon come readily to mind – are the stereotypical dancing fairies of Victorian and Edwardian children’s literature2 (for example, the Solosimpi or ‘shoreland dancers’ in BLT I.129). Tolkien is blending two traditions here. The one, of elves as sages and warriors and lovers, derives from medieval works such as Sir Orfeo, the Mabinogion, certain Arthurian romances, and the legends of the Tuatha de Danaan,3 and is represented here by Elrond and later the Elvenking (and in The Lord of the Rings by Glorfindel, Elrond, Legolas, Galadriel, and Arwen). The other, the image of elves as delicate little fairy dancers or pipers, derives from Jacobean writers like Drayton and Shakespeare and is represented here by the elves in the trees. This latter strand found expression in Tolkien’s work mainly through his poetry, especially poems such as ‘The Princess Ni’ (published 1924, revised as ‘Princess Mee’ ([ATB poem #4, pp. 28–30]), ‘Tinfang Warble’ (first published in 1927 and reprinted in BLT I.108), and ‘Goblin Feet’.
‘Goblin Feet’ is of some importance, despite its stark contrast to Tolkien’s subsequent treatment of Faerie,4 because insofar as Tolkien had any reputation at all outside his own family as a writer for children prior to the publication of The Hobbit, it rested upon this slight little poem, which originally appeared in Oxford Poetry 19155 but was quickly reprinted in much less academic surroundings, such as The Book of Fairy Poetry (a lavishly-illustrated coffee-table book that appeared in 1920) and Fifty New Poems for Children [1922].6 Tolkien later came to disavow the idea of elves as cute little fairies and moved his own elves firmly in the direction of medieval elf-lore; the Rivendell episodes in The Hobbit mark virtually its last appearance in the ‘main line’ of his legendarium.
Within Tolkien’s own family, of course, there was already a well-established tradition of frivolous elves in The Father Christmas Letters, and these probably had a greater impact on the depiction of the elves in The Hobbit than any other single factor, since both those annual letters and Mr. Baggins’ story were originally written for the same audience: Tolkien’s own children. The ‘Snow-elves’ had already appeared in the annual letters by 1929,7 before writing on The Hobbit itself had begun, and were soon joined by the ‘Red Gnomes’ in 1932 (written just when The Hobbit was reaching its climax). In later letters, we find various references to ‘Elves and Red gnomes’ [1934], ‘Red Elves’ who ‘turn everything into a game’ [1935] and ‘Red and Green Elves’ [1936]; while these postdate the drafting of our story, they predate its publication and reflect the attitude towards elves prevalent among its intended audience (some later elements, such as the elves’ war with the goblins in 1932 and again in 1941, seem to derive from The Hobbit itself).
If in some features the elves of the valley echo the worst excesses of Edwardian and Georgian fairy sentimentality, other elements suggest traditional fairy lore – i.e., folk-lore rather than fairy tales. The approach to Rivendell mingles realistic detail, probably derived from Tolkien’s 1911 Alpine walking tour,8 with the eeriness traditionally associated with the borders of Elfland; we are clearly entering a secret world of heightened sights, sounds, and colours (cf. the smell of the trees). Another good example of the mix of realism and fantasy that is so much a hallmark of Tolkien’s work are the stars that appear brighter when seen from Elrond’s valley – a happy mix of myth (stars shine brighter on an elven place) and fact (stars can in fact be seen better when the observer is in a valley or pit looking up than when he or she is in a flat, open space). The chapter is filled with hints that elves can be dangerous, perfectly in keeping with the terror the Fair Folk inspired in most folk who believed in them – many of the recorded encounters with them in medieval lore are in the form of cautionary tales, like Tolkien’s own ‘Ides Ælfscýne’ (see pp. 57–8 & 59), and charms against elf-shot remained current from Anglo-Saxon times to the nineteenth century.9 Elves were blamed for everything from developmentally disabled children (‘changelings’) to sudden deaths, from lamed horses to mysterious pregnancies. Perilous yet fair, they were treated with the same wary respect as the Furies and God: to speak their proper name was to invite their attention and hence court disaster. Note Bladorthin’s use of the traditional euphemism ‘good people’ (p. 114) and his ‘laying’ of them when he commands them to hush. Their mocking of others’ difficulties (people who can’t swim crossing the fast-running stream) shows a traditional heartlessness out of keeping with Tolkien’s elves elsewhere;10 Bilbo is wise to feel ‘rather afraid’ of them. Their being uncannily well-informed, even to the extent of knowing Bilbo’s name (and, in the typescript and published text, his errand), is here just another example of elven magic; in later versions, where Bladorthin explicitly states at the end of the preceding chapter that during his scouting ahead he had spoken to some of Elrond’s people and gotten word of the trolls from them (DAA.83), we can rationalize this away by assuming that the wizard had at that earlier meeting told the elves all about his companions and their quest.
The most important character in this chapter, however, is neither frivolous nor sinister, but ‘kind as Christmas’.11 Elrond, the Master of the House, comes directly to The Hobbit from the mythology, having first appeared in ‘The Sketch of the Mythology’ some four years previously (i.e., 1926), where he is described as ‘half-mortal and half-elfin’ <sic> (HME IV.38). It is remarkable how among the shifting names and relationships of the lords and ladies of the Noldor that Elrond’s name and genealogy remained unchanged through all the various texts that comprise the Silmarillion tradition. From the first he is the son of Eärendel and Elwing,12 saved by Maidros or Maglor13 when the Sons of Fëanor destroyed the refugees of Gondolin and Doriath. We are further told that
When later the Elves return to the West, bound by his mortal half he elects to stay on earth. Through him the blood of Húrin (his great-uncle)14 and of the Elves is yet among Men, and is seen yet in valour and in beauty and in poetry.
—‘The Sketch of the Mythology’, HME IV.38.
The number and kind of the half-elven or elf-friends had not yet been fixed when The Hobbit was written, and it took Tolkien several years and much experimentation to sort out their exact nature. For one thing, no clear distinction had yet been drawn between the elf-friends, or survivors of the elves’ human allies, and the half-elven, the offspring of unions between elves and men – largely a moot point in any case, since intermarriage between the human chieftains and rulers of the elves (Beren and Lúthien, Tuor and Idril, Eärendel and Elwing) and attrition in the wars against Morgoth had so drastically reduced the numbers of both that the few survivors could essentially be considered as one people. This point is made explicit in the 1930 Quenta, where after Morgoth’s defeat the herald of the Valar
summon[s] the remnants of the Gnomes and the Dark-elves that never yet had looked on Valinor to join with the captives released from Angband, and depart; and with the Elves should those of the race of Hador and Bëor alone be suffered to depart, if they would. But of these only Elrond was now left, the Half-elfin; and he elected to remain, being bound by his mortal blood in love to those of the younger race; and of Elrond alone has the blood of the elder race and of the seed divine of Valinor come among mortal Men.
—1930 Quenta, HME IV.157–8.
The manuscript makes clear one puzzling point, first raised I think by Christina Scull, that arises in relation to Elrond’s ancestry: since he is the direct descendant of Turgon, the king of Gondolin (father of Idril mother of Eärendel father of Elrond), why does Elrond not lay claim, as rightful heir, to Glamdring, his great-grandfather’s sword? The answer, of course, is that when the scene was first drafted the swords were not named but merely identified as elf-blades from Gondolin, much as the hobbits’ weapons in The Lord of the Rings are never given specific antecedents beyond being Númenórean blades forged during the war against Angmar. By the time the names and prior owner were added (in the First Typescript; Marq. 1/1/53:5) –
This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore
– Elrond’s tacit abnegation was already part of the story. More importantly, Elrond’s identification of the swords ties The Hobbit very explicitly to the very first of the Lost Tales Tolkien wrote, and evidently one of his favorites: ‘The Fall of Gondolin’.15 While it is very plausible that Turgon’s sword would have fallen into goblin hands, given the scenario described in ‘The Fall of Gondolin’, Elrond’s comment that ‘dragons destroyed that city many ages ago’ creates difficulties in the chronology. The reference only two chapters before to Beren and Lúthien’s activities of less than a century ago – a mere nothing in the elvish scheme of things – and the very presence of Elrond himself, who is certainly not described as an elf (at the end of the chapter Elrond, the hobbit, the wizard, and the dwarves go outside ‘to see the elves’ dance and sing) and seems not to have been conceived of as an immortal or even particularly long-lived at this point, argues against a long gap in time between Gondolin’s fall and Mr. Baggins’ adventure. Indeed, in the first chronology of the war against Morgoth, the ‘Annals of Beleriand’ (which date from the early 1930s), dwarves first appear in the Year of the Sun 163; Thû is cast down by Beren and Lúthien about the same time, in A.B. 163–4; the Fall of Gondolin occurs just over forty years later, in A.B. 207; and the Age ends with Morgoth’s downfall and the departure of Fionwë’s host in A.B. 250 (‘The [Earliest] Annals of Beleriand’, HME IV.300, 307, & 309–10). By that scheme, Mr. Baggins’ unexpected party would have occurred no more than 14 years after the fall of Thangorodrim, which is clearly exceedingly improbable. These difficulties probably led to Tolkien’s deletion of the reference to Beren and Lúthien’s adventure, which together with Elrond’s undefined status and nature enable Gondolin and its ruin to recede into the distant, legendary past.
By contrast with the elvish material, Durin’s Day represents a new element in the mythology. We have already touched on Durin himself (see commentary p. 77); now we learn a bit more about dwarven culture, and that their new year begins ‘as everyone knows’ (a typical Tolkienism) on ‘the day of the first moon of autumn’ – a detail probably inspired by the Jewish calendar, which is also lunar in nature and begins its new year in late September or early October (in contrast to the traditional medieval year, which began on the first day of spring).16 Durin’s Day was originally a much simpler affair than it later became, and the oddity of the dwarves’ having a new year’s day that they can’t predict (‘it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again’ – DAA.96) is avoided. It is significant also that originally Durin’s Day arrives on the first moon of autumn, changed before publication (actually in an emendation to the First Typescript) to the last new moon of autumn – a date more in keeping with the Celtic calendar, which began the new year on 1st November. This change created an error or inconsistency in the next chapter that was not corrected until 1995: in Chapter III and Chapter XI, Durin’s Day occurs on the last moon of autumn, as per the emendation. But Tolkien missed the reference in Chapter IV, where the dwarves upon leaving Elrond ‘thought of coming to the secret door in the Lonely Mountain, perhaps that very next first moon of Autumn – “and perhaps it will be Durin’s Day” they had said’ (DAA.101–2).
Finally, a few miscellaneous points. This chapter reinforces (p. 111) the ‘homesick’ motif, first introduced in the previous chapter (p. 90) and later to play such a large part in Mr. Baggins’ characterization. It is easy to understand the wizard’s embarrassment over Elrond’s discovery of the moon letters – Bladorthin had, after all, had the map in his possession for the better part of a century without discovering this vital clue – but the serendipity of Elrond’s chance discovery is of an order comparable with the finding of the key in the troll lair in the previous chapter, or Bilbo’s discovery of the Ring later on; one particular phase of the moon would only coincide with a specific night of the year roughly once per century. It is also noteworthy that Gandalf’s hiding the key under his jacket enables him to keep it through the goblin and wood-elf encounters that are shortly to follow, suggesting that one or both of these plot-elements had already been anticipated.