As before, the text continues on the same page (Ms. p. 61; Marq. 1/1/5:11), with no more than a skipped line in the middle of the page to mark where the later chapter break would be inserted.
He had escaped the goblins, but he didn’t know where he was. He had lost hood, cloak, pony, food, and his friends. He wandered on and on, and the sun began to go down towards the west – sinking towards the mountains. Bilbo looked round and noticed it. He looked forward and could see no mountains in front of him, only ridge and slopes falling towards low lands and plains. ‘I can’t have got right to the other side of the Misty Mountains can I – right to the edge of the Land Beyond’ he said. ‘O where o where can Bladorthin and the dwarves be? I only hope they are not still back in there in the power of the goblins’. So he wandered on; he was wondering very much whether he oughtn’t, now he had a magic ring, to go back into those horrible horrible tunnels and try and find his friends. He had almost made up his mind that he ought to, and was feeling very uncomfortable about it, when he heard voices.
He stopped and he listened. It didn’t sound like goblins. So he crept forward carefully. He was following a downward path with a rocky wall on one side. On the other side the ground sloped away, and there were dells below the level of the path, fringed or filled with bushes and low trees. In one of these dells under the bushes people were talking, several people. Bilbo crept still nearer, and suddenly peering between two big boulders he saw a head with a yellow hood on – it was Balin doing look-out.TN1 He could have clapped and shouted for surprise and joy, but he didn’t. He had still got the ring out [> on], for fear of meeting something unexpected and unpleasant, and he noticed that Balin was looking straight at him without noticing him. ‘I will give them all a surprise’ he thought. He crawled into the bushes at the edge of the dell, and listened. Bladorthin was talking, and so were the dwarves: they were discussing all that happened to them in the goblin-tunnels, arguing, and wondering, and debating what they should do now. Bladorthin was saying they couldn’t possibly leave Mr Baggins in the hands of the goblins without trying to find out if he was dead, or alive, and without trying to rescue him if they could.
‘After all he is my friend’ said the wizard, ‘and not a bad little chap. I feel responsible for him. I can’t think how you came to lose him’. The dwarves agreed, but they grumbled. They [didn’t ca[re to] >] wanted to know why he had ever been brought at all, why he couldn’t stick to his friends and come along with them, and said he had been more trouble than use so far – especially if they had got to go back into those abominable tunnels to look for him: they didn’t like that at all.TN2
The wizard spoke <quite> crossly: ‘I brought him, and I don’t bring things that are of no use’ he said. ‘He would have been more use in the end to you people than you imagine – and will be if we can only discover him again. Whatever did you want to drop him for, Bombur?’TN3
‘You would have dropped him’ said Bombur ‘if somebody suddenly grabbed you from behind in the dark, tripped up your feet, and kicked you in the back’.
‘Why didn’t you pick him up again?’
‘Good heavens – can you ask! Goblins fighting and biting in the dark, everybody falling over things, and hitting one another. You nearly chopped off my head with Glamdring, and Gandalf was stabbing here and there with Orcrist. All of a sudden [he >] you gave one of your blinding flashes, we saw the goblins running back yelping – and you shouted “follow me everybody”. Everybody followed, or so we thought; and we never had time to stop and count ourselves till we came to the lower gate, and found it open [> dashed into the gate-guards, drove them helter-skelter and rushed out]. And here we are – without the burglar, confusticate him!’
‘And here’s the burglar’ said Bilbo stepping down into the middle of them and taking off the ring. Bless me, how they jumped. Then they shouted with surprise and [with a certain>]TN4 delight. Bladorthin was as surprised [> astonished] as any of them, and probably more pleased than all: but he called to Balin and told him what he thought of a look-out man that let people walk right into them without warning like that. It’s a fact that Bilbo’s reputation went up [even >] a very great deal with themTN5 after that. If they had doubted before whether he was really a first-class burglar, they didn’t doubt it any longer. Balin was very puzzled indeed, and they all said it was a very clever bit of work. Indeed Bilbo was so pleased with their praise that he just chuckled inside and said nothing whatever about the ring; and when they kept on asking him how he did it he said ‘Oh, just crept along you know – carefully and quietly’. ‘Well, it’s the first time [even] a mouse has crept along quietly & carefully under my nose in broad daylight and not been spotted’ said Balin ‘and I take off my hood to you’ which he did. ‘Balin at your service’ he said.
‘Bilbo at yours’ said Mr Baggins.
Then they wanted to know all about his adventures since they lost him; and he sat down and told them everything – about bumping his head when he fell off Bombur’s back, and coming to himself all alone in the dark (but he didn’t mention finding the ring – ‘not just now’ he thought). Then he described the horrible Gollum and the competition more or less how it happened, except that he pretended his pocket had been empty [> didn’t say what had been in his pocket which Gollum couldn’t guess, nor did he say what Gollum’s lost present was].TN6
‘And then I couldn’t think of any other question with him sitting beside me’ he said. ‘So I said “what’s in my pocket?” And he couldn’t guess [with >] in three times. So I asked for my present, and he went to look for it, and couldn’t find it. So I said “very well help [added: me] to get out of this nasty place”. “Very well” he said and he showed me the passage to the gate. “Goodbye” he [> I] said, and I went on down’.
‘What about the guards?’ they asked ‘Weren’t there any?’
‘O yes lots of them, but I dodged ’em. I got stuck in the door, which was only open a crack, and I nearly got caught. In fact I lost lots of buttons’ he said looking sadly at his coat and waistcoat ‘but I managed to squeeze through in time – and here I am’.
The dwarves looked at him quite respectfully when he talked about dodging the guards and squeezing through, as if it wasn’t very difficult or very alarming.
‘What did I tell you?’ said Bladorthin. ‘Mr Baggins has more about him than you’d guess.’ Bilbo didn’t quite know what the wizard meant by that, but he smiled.
Then he had a few questions of his own to ask, for if Bladorthin had explained it all by now to the dwarves, he hadn’t heard how the wizard had turned up again, or where they had come to now.
So Bladorthin explained that the goblins’ presence [> the presence in the mountains of bad wicked goblins] was well known to Elrond.TN7 But their main gate [was >] came out on a different pass to the one they had been following, a seemingly much easier road, and therefore one people more often followed (and got caught if they were anywhere near the gates at night-fall). They [can’t >] couldn’t have made that [new] entrance high up in the mountains almost at the top of the pass (which had [been] supposed to be safe) until quite recently: nobody knew about it before.
‘I shall have to see if we can’t find a more decent giantTN8 to block it up’ said Bladorthin ‘or soon there will be no getting over these mountains at all’. Still as soon as the wizard heard Bilbo’s yell he guessed what had happened.TN9 In the flash [where >] which killed the goblins who were grabbing him, he had nipped inside the crack just before it snapped to. He followed after the drivers and prisoners right to the edge of the great hall, and there he sat down and worked up the best magic he could in the shadows. ‘A very ticklish business’ he said, ‘touch and go it was’. But of course Bladorthin had made a special study of [fire and >] bewitchments with fire and lights ([you remember >] even Bilbo had never forgotten the magic fireworks at Old Took’s mid-summer eve parties, as you probably remember). The rest we all know – except that Bladorthin knew about the goblin’s back-gate; as a matter of fact anybody who knew anything about [these parts >] this part of the mountains was well aware of it, but it took a wizard to keep his head in the tunnels and guide them in the right direction.
‘They made that gate ages ago’ he said ‘partly [to >] for a way of escape, if they needed it; partly as a way out into the Lands Beyond where they come in the dark and do a lot of damage. They guard it always, and no one has ever managed yet to block it up. They will guard it doubly after this’ he laughed.TN10 ‘We must be getting on’ he said. ‘They will be out after us in hundreds [before >] when night comes on, and already it is getting teatimish.TN11 They can smell our footsteps for [miles >] hours & hours after we have passed, and we must be miles on before dark. There will be a bit of moon, if it keeps fine, and that is lucky. Not that they mind the moon much, but we shall be able to see a bit better.’
‘O yes’ he said in answer to more questions from the hobbit ‘you lose track of time inside goblins’ tunnels. We were several days inside, and went miles & miles. We have come down through the heart of the mountains, and are right out on the other side. But we are not at the point where our pass would have brought us to; we are too far to the SouthTN12 – and we have some awkward country ahead. We are still pretty high up. Let’s get on’.
‘I am so dreadfully hungry’ said Bilbo, who suddenly remembered [> realized] he had been days inside the goblins’ places, and had never had more than two biscuits which he had kept in his pocket. Just think of it for a hobbit. He certainly was breaking his old habits, all to bits; but it made his tummy feel horribly empty, and his legs all wobbly now the [added: worst] excitement was over.
‘Can’t help it’ said Bladorthin ‘– unless you like to go back and ask the goblins nicely to let you have your pony and your luggage’.
‘O No, no, certainly not’ said Bilbo.
‘Very well then, we must just trudge on, or we shall be made into supper which will be worse than having none ourselves.’
The blackberries were still in flower, so Bilbo looked in vain from side to side as they went along. [So <?were> >] Of course there weren’t any nuts yet, nor even hawthorn-berries either. He nibbled a bit of sorrel, found a wild strawberry or two, and had a drink from a littleTN13 mountain stream that crossed the path. It was better than nothing, but it didn’t do much good.
On they went. The bushes, and the short grass among the boulders, and the <thyme> and sage and marjoram and rockroses began to disappear. They scrambled and slipped down a dreadful long steep slope of fallen stones made in a landslide. First <rubbish> and little pebbles rolled away from them; then larger bits of split stone went clattering down; [soon >] then large lumps of rock were disturbed and bounded off crashing down the slope raising a dust and noise, soon they were sliding down all huddled together in a fearful fashion all among slipping rattling crashing stones and slabs.TN14
The pine trees at the bottom saved them. They slid into the edge of a dark wood of them standing right up the slope and going on down down darker and darker into the valley. They caught hold of the trunks and stopped themselves, while the sliding stones went on down in front crashing among the trees and bounding among the branches until they came to rest far below, and all was quiet.
‘Well that has got us on a bit’ said Bladorthin ‘and [I would <?think>] even goblins tracking us will have a job to come down there quietly’.
‘I dare say’ said the dwarves [>Bombur],TN15 ‘but they won’t find it difficult to send stones bouncing down on our heads.’ They were rubbing their bruised legs and feet, and felt rather unhappy.
‘Very well let’s turn aside as soon as we can out of the path of the slide. Hurry up, look at the time.’ The sun had gone behind the mountains; already they were in darkening shadow here, though far away through the trees & over the tops of those growing lower down they could still see evening light on the plains beyond.
They went on now more easily, down the gentler slope of the great pine forest,TN16 picking out paths among the bracken (which was of course right high above Bilbo’s head), and marching along quiet as quiet over the pine-needle floors, while all the time the forest-gloom got deeper, and the forest-silence more still. There seemed no wind that evening to bring the sea-sighing noise [added: even] into the upper boughs.
‘Must we go any further?’ asked Bilbo when it was so dark that he could only just see Gandalf’s white beard wagging [in the >] by him, and so quiet he could hear their breathing like a loud noise. ‘My feet [> toes] are all bruised, and my legs ache; and my tummy is simply wagging like an empty sack’.
‘A bit further’ said Bladorthin.
After what seemed ever such a lot further, they came to an open ring where no trees grew. The moon was up, and was shining into the clearing – somehow it struck all of them, as not at all a nice place, although there was nothing wrong to see.
All of a sudden they heard a howl away down hill, a long shuddering howl.
It was answered by another away on [> to] the side [> right] and a good deal nearer to them; then by another not far [on >] away to the left. It was wolves, howling at the moon, wolves gathering together!
There were no wolves living near Mr Baggins’ hole at home, but he knew that noise. He had had it described to him. One of his cousins among the Tooks used to do it to frighten him – he had visited the forests in the north of Bilbo’s country and heard it there.TN17 To hear it out in the forest under the moon was too much for Bilbo; even magic-rings are not much use against wolves (and against probably very evil wolves, if they live under the shadow of goblin-infested mountains, in a country right on the edge of the wild and far into the unknown). Wolves of that sort smell keener than goblins, and don’t need to see you to find you!
‘What shall we do, what shall we do’ he cried. ‘Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves’ he said – and it became a proverb, though we now say ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ in the same sort of uncomfortable situations.
‘Up the trees quick’ said Bladorthin, and they ran to the trees at the edge of the glade, and hunted for ones that had branches fairly low, or were slender enough to swarm up. They found them only just in time, and up they went, up as high as ever they dare trust the branches. You could almost have laughedTN18 to see the dwarves sitting up in the branches with their beards dangling down, like old gentlemen gone cracked and playing at being boys. Fili & Kili were right up a slender larch like a tall thin Christmas tree. Dori Nori Ori, Oin & Gloin were more comfortable in a big pine with branches even sticking out like the spokes of a wheel at intervals. Bifur Bofur Bombur and Gandalf were in another. Dwalin and Balin had swarmed up a tall slender fir with few branches, and were trying to find a comf[ortable] place to sit in the top bows among its thin greenery.
Bladorthin who was tallestTN19 had found a tree which the others couldn’t get into. A great big pine almost standing [> standing almost] at the edge of the ring. He was hidden in its branches, but you could see his eyes shining in the moon as he peeped out.
And Bilbo? He couldn’t get into any tree, and was scuttling about from trunk to trunk like a rabbit that has lost its hole and has a dog after it.
‘You’ve left the burglar behind again’ said Bifur to Bombur, looking down.
‘I can’t be always carrying burglars on my back’ said Bombur ‘down tunnels, and up trees. What do you think I am, a porter?’TN20
‘He’ll be eaten if we don’t do something’ said Gandalf, for there were howls all round them now, getting nearer and nearer. ‘Dori’ he called, for Dori was lowest down in the easiest tree and also was a decent fellow ‘give Mr Baggins a hand up’.
Dori really behaved very well; for Bilbo couldn’t reach his hand when he climbed to the bottom branches and hung his arm down as far as ever he could reach. So Dori climbed out of the tree, let Bilbo climb up and stand on his back. Just then wolves [<?came> >] trotted howling into the glade. All of a sudden there were hundreds of eyes looking at them. Still Dori didn’t let Bilbo down; he let him scramble off his shoulders into the branches, and then he jumped for the branches himself. Only just in time.
A wolf snapped at his cloak as he swung up and nearly got him. There were crowds of them all round the tree in a minute, yelping, and leaping up at the tree trunk, with eyes blazing and tongues hanging out. But even the wild [added: wicked] weorgs [> wargs]TN21 (for so the evil wolves [of >] beyond the edge of the unknown are called) can’t climb trees. So for a time they were safe. Luckily it was warm and not windy, for trees are not very comfortable to sit in for long (with wolves all round below waiting for you) at any time, and in the cold and the wind they can be perfectly miserable places.
Evidently the ring was a meeting place of the wolves. They left guards at the foot of Dori’s tree, and went snuffling about till they smelt out all the trees where the others were. These they guarded too; then all the rest went and sat (in hundreds it seemed) in a great circle in the glade. In the middle of their circle sat a great grey wolf. He spoke to them in the dreadful wolf-language of the wargs. Bladorthin may have understood it; Bilbo didn’t, but it sounded as if it was all about cruel and wicked things, and probably was. The other wargs in the circle would answer their grey chief every now and again altogether, and the horrible cry almost made the hobbit fall out [added: of] his pine-tree.
I will tell you what Bladorthin heard, though Bilbo didn’t understand it. The wargs and the goblins often helped one another in wicked deeds. Goblins do not usually venture very far away from their mountains, unless they are driven out, and are looking for new homes, or are marching to war (which I am glad to say hasn’t happened for a long while). Sometimes they go on raids – especially to get slaves [> food or slaves] to work for them. Then they usually get the wargs’ help. Sometimes they ride on wolves like men do on horses.
It seemed that a goblin-raid had been planned for that very night. The wargs had come to meet goblins, and the goblins were late. (I expect [added: the reason was] the death of the Great Goblin and all the excitement caused by the dwarves, Bilbo, and the wizard for whom they were probably still hunting). In spite of the dangers of this far land bold men had lately been pushing up into it from the south again,TN22 and cutting down trees, and building themselves places to live in among the more pleasant woods farther down in the valleys away from the shadows of the hills, and along the river-shores. There were many of them and they were brave and well-armed and even the wargs dared not attack them if there were many together or in the bright day. But now they planned with the goblins’ help to attack some of the villages nearest to the mountains by night. If they did there would probably be no one left next day – except some few the goblins kept from the wolves and carried back as prisoners to their caves.
This was dreadful talk to listen to, not only from the thought of the danger to the brave woodmen and their wives and children, but also because of the position of the [dwarves and >] Bladorthin & his friends.
The wargs were angry and puzzled at finding them here in their very meeting place. They thought they were friends of the woodmen, who had come to spy on them, and would take news of their plans down into the valley – and then of course the war-horns would blow, and people would arm in all the villages, and the goblins and wargs would have to fight a fearful battle instead of capturing prisoners and devouring people waked suddenly from their sleep. So the wolves had no intention of going away and letting the people up the trees escape – at any rate not until morning. And long before that, they said, the goblin soldiers would be coming down from the mountains; and goblins can climb trees, or cut them down.
Now you can understand why Bladorthin listening to their growling and yelping began to feel that they were in a very bad place, and had not yet escaped at all.TN23 He wasn’t going to let them have it all their own way all the same, though he could not do much up here in a tall tree with wolves all round on the ground below.
He gathered the great huge pine cones off the branches of his tree. He set one alight with bright blue fire and threw it whizzing down among the circle of wolves. It struck one on the back, and immediately his shaggy coat caught fire, and he was leaping to and fro yelping horribly. Then another came, and another, one [blue >] in blue-flames, one in red, another green. They burst on the ground in the middle of the circle and went off in coloured sparks and smoke. A very big one struck the chief wolf on the nose, and he leaped in the air ten feet – and then rushed round and round the circle biting even at the other wolves in anger, fright, and pain.
The dwarves and even Bilbo shouted [with >] and cheered. The rage of the wolves was terrific, and the commotion they made filled all the forest. Wolves are terrified of fire at all times, and this was a most horrible and uncanny fire. If a spark got in your coat it stuck and burned into you, and unless you rolled over quick you were soon all in flames. You should just have seen the wolves rolling over and over to put the sparks on their backs out, and those that were burning running about howling, and setting others alight, till their own friends chased them away, and they fled off into the forest crying and yammering and looking for water.
‘What is all this uproar in the forest tonight?’ said the Lord of the Eagles. He was sitting, black in the moonlight, on the top of a pinnacle of rock that stood out [from >] alone on the Eastern edge of the Mountains. ‘I hear wolves’ voices. Are the goblins busy at mischief in the woods?’ He [called to two of his servants from >] swept up into the air, and immediately two of his army [> guards] leapt up to follow him from rocks on either hand. They circled in the sky and looked down upon the ring of the wargs, a tiny spot far far below. But eagles have keen eyes and can see a great distance, and the lord of the eagles of the misty mountains had eyes that could look straight at the sun unblinking, and could see anything moving on the ground a mile below even in the light of the moon.
So [they <?looked> >] though they could not see the people in the trees, they could [see >] make out the commotion among the wolves and the tiny flashes of fire, and hear the yelping and howling coming up faint from far beneath them. Also they could see the glint of the moon on goblin-spears and helmet, as long lines of wicked folk crept down the hill sides from their gate, and wound into the wood.
They knew then that some wickedness was going on, though they could not understand what was the matter with the wolves. [Eagles hate the goblins >] Eagles are not kind or gentle birds. They kill.TN24 But they are proud and strong, and they do not love the [cancelled: ev[il]] goblins. When they take any notice of them at all (which is seldom, for they don’t eat such creatures) they swoop on them and drive them shrieking to their caves, and stop whatever wickedness they are up to at the time. The Goblins [hate them and fear >] hate the eagles and fear them.
Tonight the Lord of the Eagles was filled with curiosity to know what was going on. So he summoned many of the eagles to him, and they flew slowly away from the mountains, and [sank slo[wly] >] then slowly circling ever round and round came down, down, down towards the ring of the wolves and the meeting place of the goblins.
A very good thing too. Dreadful things had been going on down there. The wolves that had caught fire and fled into the forest had set fire to it in places. It was summerTN25 and there had been little rain on this side of the mountains for some time. Yellowing bracken, fallen branches, deep piled pine-needles, dead trees were soon burning here and there. All round the clearing of the wargs flames were leaping. But the wolves did not leave the trees. Maddened and angry they were leaping and howling round the trunks, and cursing the dwarves in their horrible language with their eyes shining as red and fierce as the flames.
Then suddenly the goblins came running up, yelling. They thought a battle with the woodmen was going on, but they soon learned what had really happened. Some of them actually sat down and laughed. The others waved their spears, and clashed their shafts against their shields.
Goblins are not particularly frightened by fire.TN26 They got all the wolves together in a pack. They rushed round, and stamped, and beat, and beat and stamped until nearly all the flames were put out – but they did not put out the fire that was nearest to the trees where the dwarves were. No they fed that fire with branches, and bracken. Soon there was a ring of fire all round the dwarves, a ring which the goblins kept from spreading outwards; but it crept slowly on till it nearly licked those trees. Smoke was in Bilbo’s eyes, he could feel the heat of the flames, and through the reek he could see the goblins dancing round & round it like people round a mid summer bonfire, and outside the dancers stood the wolves at a respectful distance watching & waiting.TN27
Horrible things the goblins sang; and then they would stop and call out.
‘Fly away little birdies, fly away if you can
Come down little birds or [get roasted > get >] you will
get roasted in your nests.
Sing sing little birds, why don’t you sing.
Fifteen birds in a five fir trees
their feathers were fanned by a fiery breeze.
[The goblins > They had >] But funny little birds they had
no wings
O what shall we do with the funny little things
Roast em alive; or stew em in a pot
Fry them, broil them, and eat em hotTN28
‘Go away little boys’ said Bladorthin. ‘[Birds >] It isn’t bird-nesting time. Also naughty little boys that play with fire get punished’. He said it to make them angry, and show them he was not afraid of them (though of course he was, wizard though be might be); but they took no notice. They went on singing.
Burn, burn tree and fern!
Shrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch
To light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Bake and toast ’em, fry and roast ’em!
till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;
till hair smells and skins crack,
fat melts, and bones black
in cinders lie
beneath the sky!
So dwarves shall die,
and light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Ya-harri-hey!
Ya hoi!TN29
And with ‘ya hoi’ the flames were under Bladorthin’s tree, and soon beneath the others. The bark caught fire, the lower branches crackled. [cancelled: Still they clung on – but]
Then Bladorthin climbed to the top of his tree; the light [> sudden splendour] flashed from his wand like lightning, and he got ready to spring down right amid the spears of the goblins. [They scrambled away from > gave back >] That would have been the end of him, even though he might have [got >] killed many as [he] came down among them like a thunder bolt. But he never leaped.
Just at that moment the lord of eagles swept above the scene, seized him in his talons and was gone.
The goblins howled, and began to scatter. That was the worst thing they could have done, but the sudden black shadow of the swooping eagle terrified them. If they had stuck near the fire the eagles would . . .TN30
At once he was back for Bladorthin had spoken to him; and he cried to his eagles. Some swept down upon the wolves and goblins that were not too near the fire. The goblins yelled the wolves howled; arrows and spears went up into the air. [added: But] Down swept some of the eagles; the black shadow of their wings struck terror into their enemies, their talons tore at them. Others flew to the tree-tops and seized the dwarfs,TN31 as they scrambled up as high as they dared. Poor little Bilbo was nearly left behind again, but he caught hold of Dori’s legs as Dori was borne off, and up they went above the tumult & the flames, swinging in the air with his arms nearly breaking.
Far below the goblins and the wolves were scattering here and there in the woods. Eagles were still circling and sweeping above the battleground. The flames were leaping high, and crash fell the trees in which the dwarves had sheltered [added: in a flurry of sparks & smoke]. But the light was now faint below, [added: a red twinkle on the black floor].
They were high up in the sky, going up in strong sweeping circles ever upwards. Bilbo never forgot that flight, clinging on to Dori’s ankles, while he moaned ‘my arms my arms.’ (and Dori kept on saying ‘my poor legs my poor legs’). Heights made him [> Bilbo] giddy at the best of times.TN32 His head swam if he looked down and saw the country [> dark lands] opening wide [added: underneath] touched here and there with the moonlight on a hillside or a stream. The pale peaks of the mountains were coming nearer, moonlit spikes of rock, with black shadows [> sticking out of black shadows]. Summer or not it seemed cold. The flight ended only just before poor Bilbo’s arms gave way. He loosed Dori’s ankles with a gasp and fell on to the rough platform of an eagle’s eyrie. There he lay without speaking, and his only thought was [> his thoughts were] a mixture of surprise at being saved from the fire, and fear lest he fall off that narrow place into the dark shadows on each side.
He was feeling [cancelled: almost] very queer in his head after the dreadful adventures of the last few days (on only two biscuits!) and found himself asking [> saying]: ‘Now I know what a piece of bacon feels like when it is suddenly picked out of the pan on a fork and put back on the shelf’.
‘No you don’t’ he heard Dori saying: ‘because the bacon knows it will get back into the pan sooner or later; [But I have a >] and it is to be hoped we shan’t. Also Eagles are not forks’.
‘O no, not a bit like storks, forks I mean’ said Bilbo sitting up and looking anxiously at the Eagle who was perched closed by. He had wondered if he had been saying any thing rude. You oughtn’t to be rude to an eagle, when you only the size of a hobbit, and are up in his eyries at night! But the eagle sharpened his beak on a stone, [added: and trimmed his feathers,] and took no notice.
Soon another eagle came flying up. ‘The lord of eagles bids you to bring your prisoners down to the great shelf’ he cried and was off. The other seized Dori and flew off into the night, leaving Bilbo all alone; he had hardly strength to wonder what they meant by calling them ‘prisoners’. His own turn came soon. The eagle came back, seized Bilbo in his talons, and swooped off. Only a short way this time. Bilbo was laid down on a wide shelf of rock on the mountain side. There was no path down save by flying, and no path down from it except by jumping over a precipice. There he found all the others sitting with their backs to the wall. The Lord of Eagles also was there, and was speaking to Bladorthin.
It appeared they knew one another slightly, and were even on fairly friendly terms. Bladorthin had done one of them a service (healed him from an goblin’s arrow’s wound) once upon a time.TN33 So after all ‘prisoners’ only meant prisoners rescued from the goblins after all. They really did seem to have escaped from those dreadful mountains after all, for the Great Eagle was discussing plans for carrying them far away and setting them down well on their way out in the plains below. But he would not take them near places where men lived.TN34 ‘They will shoot at us with great bows’ he said, ‘for they will think we are after their lambs – or their babies. And at other times they might be right. But glad though we are to cheat the goblins of their sport, we will not risk ourselves for dwarves in the plains.’
‘Very well’ said Bladorthin, ‘we are already very much obliged to you. But we are nearly dead of [> famished with] hunger’.
‘I am dead [> nearly dead] of it’ said Bilbo in a weak voice.
‘That can perhaps be arranged [> mended]’ said the Lord of Eagles. And later on you might have seen a bright fire on the shelf of rock, and the figures of the dwarves gathered round it cooking, and smelt the smell of roasting. The eagles had brought up boughs of dry wood, and they had brought rabbits and hares and a lamb.
The dwarves managed all the preparations. Bilbo was too weak and weary (and he wasn’t much good at skinning rabbits or cutting up meat anyway); Bladorthin had done his share in lighting up the fire for Oin & Gloin had lost their tinder boxes. (Dwarves have never taken to matches). So ended the adventures of the misty mountains. Bilbo slept (with his tummy feeling full again – though he would have liked a bit of bread and butter even better) curled up on the rock. He slept curled up on the hard rock more soundly than ever he had done on his feather bed in his own little hole at home. All night he dreamed of it [> his own home] and wandered about in his sleep into all the different rooms looking for something he couldn’t find, & did not remember what it looked like.
TEXT NOTES
1 Note that Balin’s hood is yellow here, an error carried over from the Bladorthin Typescript (cf. p. 32 and Text Note 2 on p. 41). This is significant, as in both typescripts for Chapter I (Marq. Ms. 1/1/51:5 & 1/1/32:5) the hood is described as ‘scarlet’ (and the beard yellow, later changed in ink to ‘white’). This corroborates the evidence of the names, and forms additional proof that the manuscript already extended to this point (and beyond) before the typescript was even begun. For more on the dating of the typescript(s), see the Third Phase.
Curiously enough, Balin’s hood remained yellow in this chapter through both typescripts (1/1/56:1 & 1/1/37:1), even after the change to scarlet in the typescripts to Chapter I. This was clearly just a continuity slip on Tolkien’s part which he caught in the galleys, correcting the colour to ‘red’ before publication.
2 This paragraph was originally followed by the sentence ‘“Whatever did you drop him for, Bombur” said the wizard.’ which was cancelled and repeated (in slightly altered form) at the end of the following paragraph.
3 Both here and at the next two occurrences ‘Bombur’ was changed to ‘Dori’ in pencil – i.e., during the preparation of the First Typescript, a re-reading having apparently reminded Tolkien of what he had forgotten in the thirteen intervening manuscript pages: that, after the vivid description of Bombur’s sweaty misery under his unhappy burden, the final paragraph of Chapter IV clearly states that at the time of the attack Bilbo was once more being carried by Dori (cf. p. 134).
4 The final word in this cancelled passage, following ‘certain’, was left incomplete: it seems to read ‘amo’ and is no doubt short for ‘amount – i.e., ‘with a certain amount of’.
5 ‘them’ was later altered, in pencil, to ‘the dwarves’, making it clear that the wizard’s estimation of the hobbit remained unchanged.
6 This passage was later simplified, through ink cancellations and additions, to read ‘more or less how it happened, but not quite.’
7 Altered in pencil to read ‘to himself & to Elrond’.
Note the absence here of the phrasing from the book: ‘The wizard, to tell the truth, never minded explaining his cleverness more than once, so now he told Bilbo . . .’; this character-defining passage replaced the more straightforward original in the First Typescript (1/1/56:3).
8 The original reading of this sentence, ‘a more decent giant’, was changed in pencil to ‘a more or less decent giant’, the reading of the typescripts.
9 The original account of the wizard’s movements was quite different:
Still as soon as the wizard heard Bilbo’s yell he guessed what had happened. The crack closed and it was beyond his magic to open it. And he knew where the goblin’s back-gate was – people who knew this part of the mountains at all well (& Bladorthin did) were well aware of it. Off he dashed
The apparent reason for the rejection of this version must have been Tolkien’s realization of the time involved – for Bladorthin to have finished crossing the mountains, reached the gate, and run all of the way back up to the Goblin-King’s chamber would have taken hours if not days, yet his timely rescue comes only moments after the captive dwarves and hobbit reach the room (having run there at the best pace goblin-whips could muster). Therefore Tolkien rejected the ‘re-entry through the back-door’ rescue story as soon as he had written it, crossed out the passage, and on the same page continued with the replacement story wherein the wizard takes the same route as the captives, silently shadowing them and awaiting his chance.
10 Added in the bottom margin and marked for insertion at this point: ‘and they all [did >] laughed too: after all they had killed the Great Goblin [added: as well as several others] & so might be said to have had the best of it so far’.
11 Teatimish: i.e., ‘tea-time-ish’, that is around tea-time, or late afternoon. See Bilbo’s invitation to the dwarves in Chapter XVIII: ‘If ever you are passing my way . . . don’t forget to knock! Tea is at four, but any of you are welcome at any time!’ (p. 681, emphasis mine; DAA.352).
Since the scene is set in summer – they had celebrated midsummer in Elrond’s House, and the lack of nuts a few paragraphs later shows that autumn has not yet arrived† – that would still leave several hours of travel time before dark, but Bladorthin’s analysis of the situation (borne out by subsequent events) shows that they will need those hours and must delay no longer.
† See also p. 207 and Text Note 25 on p. 214.
12 Note that while the manuscript text specifically states that they have been diverted further south than would have been the case had they not been ambushed in the mountains, the maps agree with the published text that they have actually come too far north (see Plate I [bottom]). This detail merely reinforces how fluid Tolkien’s conception of the geography still was during the drafting of the story.
13 A partial cancelled word originally came between ‘little’ and ‘mountain stream’, perhaps ‘bab’ – that is, a little babbling mountain stream.
14 Like the approach to Elrond’s house and the climb up into the Misty Mountains, this scene derives from memories of Tolkien’s Alpine journey of 1911: ‘The hobbit’s (Bilbo’s) journey from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains, including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods, is based on my adventures in 1911’ – JRRT to Michael Tolkien, c. 1967; Letters p. 391; italics mine.
15 Here ‘the dwarves’ is changed to ‘Bombur’ and then stetted back again to ‘the dwarves’. However, both typescripts (1/1/56:4 and 1/1/37:4) give the reading ‘Bombur’, as does the published book.
16 Added at this point: ‘Then they turned aside northward’, changed in a darker ink to ‘Southward’. See Text Note 12 above for the significance of this change.
Bracken, by the way, are dense stands of tall ferns, especially those found in wastelands.
17 This adventurous Took cousin is never identified in the later genealogies. The forests to the north of Bilbo’s land never appear on the maps in the sequel, although it’s not safe to conclude they were deliberately removed from the later geography as some features disappeared or were not included in these maps through accident, not design. Indeed, the tree-men seen walking in the North Farthing (LotR.57) may be a relic of these unmapped forests.
The wolves from the north, at any rate, reappeared in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, where we are told that by Bilbo’s time ‘the wolves that had once come ravening out of the North in bitter white winters were now only a grandfather’s tale’ (LotR.17).
18 The typically Tolkienian parenthesis – ‘you would have laughed (from a safe distance)’ – was not added until the First Typescript (1/1/56:5).
19 In pencil, this phrase was changed to ‘much the tallest’, perhaps reflecting a shift of Gandalf from ‘little old man’ to a somewhat grander and more dignified figure. Compare the reading in the First Typescript (1/1/56:6), ‘a good deal taller than the others’, which is also that found in the published book (DAA.146).
20 In the First Typescript (1/1/56:6) and all subsequent texts, this conversation takes place between Nori and Dori, as in the published book; see Text Note 3 above for the shift from Bombur to Dori as Bilbo’s chief ‘porter’.
21 At its first occurrence the word was written ‘weorg’, then overwritten ‘warg’, the term used throughout thereafter. For more on the significance and origin of the name, see the commentary below.
22 Note the significance of the phrasing: that men are moving into those lands again. We were told as far back as Chapter I about ‘the mortal men who lived to the south, and even up the Running river as far as the valley beneath the mountain’ in Dale (see p. 71), but the real significance of Tolkien’s phrasing is that it gives a sense of underlying history, of more story than can be told in this one book – cf. ‘If you had heard only a quarter of what I have (and I have heard only a little tiny bit of what there is to hear)’. Tolkien later changed his ideas about the ‘pre-history’ of the Anduin vale, as it came to be called; see Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings and the essay printed as ‘Cirion and Eorl’ in Unfinished Tales for his final thoughts on the matter.
23 Note that the phrasing of the published text, where the wizard feels ‘dreadfully afraid, wizard though he was’ at hearing the warg-talk, is absent in the original, first appearing in the typescript (1/1/56:7). Bladorthin still calls the goblins ‘naughty little boys’ to ‘show them he was not afraid of them (though of course he was, wizard though he might be)’ a few pages later, in a passage that changed little from manuscript to publication aside from the alteration of ‘afraid’ to ‘frightened’ and a slight adjustment of the punctuation, both done at the time of the First Typescript. The epithet ‘naughty little boys’ was challenged by Arthur Ransome in his 1937 letter to Tolkien, but while he made most of the other changes Ransome suggested Tolkien kept the phrasing here. For more on the Ransome letter, see Appendix IV.
24 Originally this sentence ran ‘They kill things for their food, but only’. Left unfinished, it was abbreviated to simply ‘They kill.’ Later, perhaps feeling that this was too bald, Tolkien added ‘& hunt’ to the sentence above the cancelled passage.
25 Later ‘summer’ was changed to ‘late summer’ in pencil, probably at the time of the creation of the First Typescript. This change creates difficulties, however, as one would expect berries to be in fruit by ‘late summer’, and we are explicitly told earlier in this same chapter that it’s too early for blackberries (cf. p. 201). Such a time-frame would also, given the length of their time in Mirkwood, give some nuts time to ripen while they were in the forest, yet we are told this is not the case. Tolkien solved this problem by changing the phrase ‘late summer’ – the original reading in the First Typescript (typescript page 56; 1/1/56:8) – to ‘high summer’; the later reading then appears in both the Second Typescript (1/1/37:8) and published book (DAA.150).
The comment about there having been ‘little rain’ also seems odd in light of the torrential storm of two days before, when ‘two thunderstorms . . . come up from East and West and make war’ (p. 128, emphasis mine). Still, Tolkien is careful to specify that he was speaking of ‘this side of the mountains’, and perhaps he was considering having the eastern slopes of the Misty Mountains fall into a rain shadow.
26 The typescript adds ‘and they soon had a plan which seemed to them most amusing’ (1/1/56:9).
27 This passage was revised and expanded to read as follows:
. . . could see the goblins dancing round & round in a ring like people round a mid summer bonfire while some were hacking at the trunks of the trees they were clinging to. Outside the ring of dancers and the goblins with axes stood the wolves at a respectful distance . . .
The lines about the goblins hacking at the tree trunks survived into the page proofs, where this entire paragraph was so heavily revised that Tolkien recopied it neatly onto a separate page for the benefit of the typesetters, in the process achieving the text of this passage exactly as it stands today (see DAA.151): ‘. . . like people round a midsummer bonfire. Outside the ring of dancing warriors with spears and axes stood the wolves at a respectful distance . . .’ (Marq. 1/2/2: page 111 & rider). Thus the ‘goblins . . . with axes’ survive into the published book, although their significance had disappeared.
28 This poem is written directly into the manuscript and has its last two lines crowded into the right margin, with their proper placement indicated by an arrow. Given this roughness, it may represent the initial draft.
It’s possible to catch an echo in these lines of Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘Little Birds’ from Sylvie and Bruno Concluded [1893]. While the verbal echoes are slight, we know that Tolkien was fond of that poem (it ‘formed part of his large repertoire of occasional recitation’, according to Christopher Tolkien – HME IX, Foreword, page x), and he had one of his characters in The Notion Club Papers quote from it. See also p. 660 and Nt 30 on p. 65.
29 Unlike the preceding poem, which shows the hesitations of direct composition, this second goblin-poem is a clean copy with only one (marginal) change. It seems probable that it was copied into the manuscript from a separate rough draft that has not survived, as comparison with other poems in the Hobbit Ms. shows this was Tolkien’s regular practice.
30 This incomplete sentence, the paragraph it is in, and the first three sentences of the following paragraph (everything before ‘[But] Down swept some of the eagles’) were all struck out and replaced by the following, the first paragraph of which was written in the top margin and the second crowded into the left margin:
There was a howl of anger and surprise [<when> >] from the goblins. But the Lord of Eagles swept back again. Bladorthin had spoken to him and he cried to [his >] the great birds that were with him, and down they came like huge black shadows.
The wolves howled, and gnashed their teeth. The goblins yelled and stamped with rage, waving their tall spears in the air.
The unfinished thought clearly had been a tactical observation that the goblins would have been better able to resist the eagles’ ambush had they stayed together and kept near the flames.
31 In a rare slip, Tolkien originally wrote ‘dwarfs’ and only later altered it to his characteristic spelling used elsewhere throughout the book: ‘dwarves’.
This entire page (manuscript page 75; 1/1/6:13) was subject to extensive small changes which bring the text closer to, but do not yet achieve, the final version.
32 Added in the left margin and marked for insertion at this point:
He used to feel queer if he looked over the edge of quite a little cliff, & he had never liked climbing trees, (not having had to escape from wolves before). So you can guess how his head swam now,
33 ‘once upon a time’ – despite his praise of this traditional fairy-tale line in ‘On Fairy-Stories’, Tolkien never used it to begin any of his published fiction, and its occurrence here is one of the very rare uses of it anywhere in his work.
34 In a revision to the manuscript (1/1/6:14), ‘men’ is changed to ‘people’, but this emendation is not picked up in either typescript, nor in the published book, all of which have ‘men’.
This chapter introduces not one but two new races, both animal in shape but intelligent, having languages of their own. Each has strong ties to myth and folklore on the one hand and to Tolkien’s earlier writings on the other; the wolves to Draugluin and Carcharoth, the great guardians of Morgoth and Sauron, and the eagles to Thorondor King of the Eagles and the messengers of Manwë.
Wolves do not, of course, eat people. But legend and folk-belief has maintained otherwise from time immemorial, from Aesop’s fable of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ [sixth century BC] through fairy-stories like ‘Little Red Riding-Hood’ [seventeenth century French] and ‘Peter & the Wolf’1 to the modern day (Saki’s ‘Esme’ and ‘The Intruders’, Willa Cather’s My Antonia,2 Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and any number of Jack London stories). Perhaps the most famous literary account of a wolf-attack prior to Tolkien’s occurs in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe [1719] – in the later chapters, after Crusoe’s rescue from the island and return to civilization, he and Friday are set upon by a wolf-pack while travelling with a small group through the Pyrenees, repulsing the attack with great difficulty in a battle described with all Defoe’s characteristic vigor and attention to detail. Tolkien himself cited S. R. Crockett’s The Black Douglas [1899], a now justly forgotten novel, as his chief influence on the scene:
the episode of the ‘wargs’ (I believe) is in part derived from a scene in S. R. Crockett’s The Black Douglas, probably his best romance and anyway one that deeply impressed me in school-days, though I have never looked at it again. It includes Gil de Rez3 as a Satanist.
—JRRT to Michael Tolkien, c. 1967; Letters p. 391.
Closer examination of Crockett’s book shows that while there is indeed a battle with wolves in it, the scene bears little resemblance to Tolkien’s in The Hobbit (in fact, it is far closer to the battle outside Moria in The Lord of the Rings, which it probably did inspire). In Crockett’s historical romance, Chapter XLIX: ‘The Battle with the Were-wolves’ is devoted to a detailed account of how three Scotsmen (two servants and a cousin of the late Lord of Douglas of the title) are set upon by evil wolves in the forest of Machecoul as they attempt to rescue their dead lord’s sister and her maidservant from de Retz, who plans to sacrifice the two in a Satanic ceremony to regain his lost youth. The wolves are led by La Meffraye, a shape-changing witch in de Retz’s service,4 who takes the form of a great she-wolf. But rather than climb trees, as one of the servants prudently advises, the Scots put their backs against a bare lightning-struck pine and wait, watching the wolves muster in a ring all around them before finally charging for an eerily silent attack. The three of them eventually beat off the attack by sheer force of arms. Rather than actual fire, as in Tolkien, the scene is lit by ‘the blue leme of summer lightning’, also described as ‘the wild-fire running about the tree-tops’ and ‘[t]he leaping blue flame of the wild-fire’. The she-wolf (who does not personally take part in the charge, but directs her troops from a safe distance) eventually calls off the attack. The howls fade in the distance, becoming more human-like as they recede (one of the Scots remarks ‘these are no common wolves . . . There will be many dead warlocks to-morrow throughout the lands of France’), finally ceasing suddenly at cock-crow.
As this summary should make clear, Tolkien did not follow Crockett’s scene either in outline or detail: Tolkien’s wolves attack pell-mell and his heroes lack the Scots’ idiotic bravado (having considerably more sense), while Crockett’s villains do not receive timely aid (as per the wargs’ goblin-soldier allies) that requires a deus ex machina for the heroes’ escape. The only points in common are a wolf-attack in a forest clearing, the uncanny fire (magical but real in Tolkien’s case, merely illumination from distant lightning in Crockett’s), and the idea that the wolves are a lesser evil in service or allegiance to the real enemy.5
Tolkien’s wargs owe less to literary tradition than his own imagination, stimulated as always by philology. The word ‘Warg’ itself is derived from the Old English ‘wearg’,6 a word meaning both a literal wolf and also a figurative one, i.e., an outlaw. Clark Hall’s Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary [1894; rev. 4th ed., 1962] defines it as ‘(wolf), accursed one, outlaw, felon, criminal’ and glosses its adjectival forms as ‘wicked, cursed, wretched’. Tolkien himself, in a footnote to an unmailed letter, stated that
The word Warg used in The Hobbit and the L. R. [i.e., The Lord of the Rings] for an evil breed of (demonic) wolves is not supposed to be A[nglo]-S[axon] specifically, and is given prim[itive] Germanic form as representing the noun common to the Northmen of these creatures.
—JRRT to Mr. Rang, c. August 1967; Letters, p. 381.7
He reiterates this point, after distinguishing between the ‘internal’ history of names within the story8 and their ‘external’ history (‘the sources from which I, as an author, derived them’) in a letter to fellow fantasy author Gene Wolfe:
Warg . . . is an old word for wolf, which also had the sense of an outlaw or hunted criminal. This is its usual sense in surviving texts. [O[ld] E[nglish] wearg; O[ld] High German warg; O[ld] Norse varg-r (also = ‘wolf’, espec[ially] of legendary kind).] I adopted the word, which had a good sound for the meaning, as a name for this particular brand of demonic wolf in the story.9
Note that Tolkien stresses the demonic aspect of these creatures (and, in the Wolfe letter, that of their goblin allies: ‘Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning a demon, usually supposed to be derived from the Latin Orcus – Hell. But I doubt this . . .’),10 a feature which seems more in keeping with the wargs of The Lord of the Rings, whose bodies melt away with the daylight (cf. Note 5), than the wolves that tree Gandalf & Company. It could be argued that Tolkien’s thinking in the 1960s may have been influenced by his late speculations that the orcs, especially orc-leaders like the Great Goblin, Azog, and Bolg, might have been incarnated evil spirits similar in kind, if less in power, to the balrogs (for more on these ‘boldog’, see pp. 149 & 139). However, it can also be seen as a return to Tolkien’s portrayal of wolves in the early Silmarillion tradition, especially in the figures of Draugluin and Carcharoth.
According to ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’, the race of wolves was bred by Melko from dogs (thus reversing the actual historical relationship between the two species), making the wargs Mr. Baggins encounters yet another of the Children of Morgoth, in accordance with the pattern throughout this book. In the earliest story, the Cerberus-like guardian of the gates of Angband (or Angamandi, as it was then called) was Karkaras (‘Knifefang’), the Father of Wolves (eventually changed, through many intermediary stages, to Carcharoth, ‘the Red Maw’). Some characteristics of this monster persisted through all the permutations of the story: that he was greatest of all wolves who ever lived; his role in biting off Beren’s hand, swallowing the Silmaril, and eventually giving Beren his mortal wound; his death in the woods of Doriath (originally called Artanor) at the hands of Beren, Huan, and Lúthien’s father, his vitals half-devoured by the Silmaril’s ‘holy magic’ (BLT II.31, 33–4, 36–7, 38–9). The most important alteration, his loss of status as the first wolf or Father of Wolves, came through the introduction into the legendarium of a second great wolf, Draugluin, during the later development of the Beren & Lúthien story for ‘The Lay of Leithian’. This ‘old grey lord/of wolves and beasts of blood abhorred’ (lines 2712–2713, HME III.252), whose authority even Carcharoth recognizes and respects (lines 3754ff, HME III.290), is Sauron/Thû’s trusted pet ‘that fed on flesh of Man and Elf/beneath the chair of Thû himself’ (lines 2714–2715, HME III.252). Like Carcharoth, he can speak,11 perhaps anticipating ‘the dreadful wolf-language of the wargs’ in The Hobbit (p. 204).
The most important of all the legendarium’s wolves, however, is Sauron himself; Tolkien even considered having it be Thû the necromancer in wolf-form who devoured Beren’s companions one by one in the dungeons beneath Tol-in-Gaurhoth, the Isle of Werewolves (cf. the plot-outline for ‘The Lay of Leithian’ that Christopher Tolkien refers to as ‘Synopsis II’, cited on HME III.233). Not only is Thû referred to as ‘the Lord of Wolves’ but after Draugluin’s death at the hands (so to speak) of Huan, Thû takes the form of a demon wolf, hoping thus to fulfill the prophecy of Huan’s being slain by ‘the mightiest wolf of all’. Thû’s identification with wolves in ‘The Lay of Leithian’, which Tolkien was working on simultaneously with the original drafting of The Hobbit, is so great that his title as ‘Master of Wolves’ almost tends to overwhelm his identification in that work as ‘the necromancer’. We should also not forget that after his defeat by Huan and Lúthien he retreats to the forest of Taur-na-Fuin, which Tolkien elsewhere explicitly identified as Mirkwood (‘Taur-na-Fuin, which is Mirkwood’ – 1937 Quenta Silmarillion, HME V.282; see also ‘The Disaster of the Gladden Fields’, Unfinished Tales, page 281), the borders of which Gandalf and Company are approaching when they encounter the wargs. Thus, although Tolkien makes no explicit link in The Hobbit between the appearance of the wargs and the proximity of the necromancer’s tower, any reader of the older tales and lays coming to The Hobbit for the first time would not be surprised to find wolf-packs allied with goblins prowling about near any refuge of The Necromancer.
Unlike wolves, who have played the villain in any number of folk and fairy tales, from Aesop to the Reynard the Fox cycle to Brer Rabbit to modern-day stories of the type parodied by Saki’s ‘The Story of the Good Little Girl’ (e.g., ‘The Three Little Pigs’), eagles appear in surprisingly few well-known myths and folktales. There is the story of the eagle sent by Zeus to carry off Ganymede the Trojan to be his cup-bearer (a tale which gave its name to the Inklings’ favorite pub, The Eagle and Child, whose street-sign illustrates the scene). There is also the grimmer story of another eagle, also sent by Zeus, which each day rips out the liver of the bound titan Prometheus as punishment for his having helped mankind against the Olympians’ wishes. Descending from the level of myth to gossip, Sir Thomas Browne reports the old story that an eagle killed the Athenian playwright Æschylus (author of Agamemnon and Prometheus Bound, d. 456 BC) when, mistaking the great man’s bald head for a rock, it dropped a turtle on it from a great height.12
Further west and slightly later, this emblem of the King of the Gods came not unnaturally to be identified with the Roman emperor and thence with the empire itself. The imperial eagle was carried on the standards of Roman legions and later adopted in heraldry by all those who claimed to be the heirs of the Caesars: the Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and later the Emperors of Austria, the German Kaisers, and the Russian Czars (‘Kaiser,’ ‘Czar,’ and ‘Tsar’ simply being the German, Russian, and Polish equivalents of ‘Caesar’). Indeed, so prevalent was this usage that it is said one of Nostradamus’s predictions about ‘an eagle rising in the east’ was taken in World War I as a sign of victory by superstitiously minded advocates of virtually all the combatants.
Meanwhile, Christian iconography associated the eagle with John the Evangelist, Tolkien’s favorite apostle.13 Tolkien also seems to have been influenced by the medieval bestiary tradition (from which he drew the inspiration for at least two of his poems written in the 1920s, ‘Fastitocalon’ and ‘Oliphaunt’), with its curious and characteristic mix of allegorical significance and realistic detail – although much of the latter strikes a modern reader as decidedly fantastic. Bestiary lore (accurately) ascribed fantastically keen eyesight to the eagle: thus Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls [circa 1378–81], a literary work that combined the bestiary tradition with that of courtly love, described the eagle as ‘the ryal [royal] egle . . . That with his sharpe lok perseth the sunne’ (lines 330–331).14 The idea that eagles could look at the sun without blinking, which derives from the Bestiaries,15 made its way directly into Tolkien’s text (cf. p. 206: ‘eyes that could look straight at the sun unblinking’). Similarly, Chaucer describes the eagle as King of the Birds, a title Tolkien notes was later bestowed upon the eagle-lord of our story (cf. p. 229).
Outside the rather arcane bestiary tradition and Christian iconography (in, for example, The Book of Kells [eighth century]), however, eagles seem not to have figured greatly in the medieval imagination. While the eagle remained of great heraldic significance, medieval romance favored the hawk or falcon, those familiar birds used in the noble art of falconry, over their grander cousins.16 Aside from American Indian traditions, there seems to have been little fairy-tale or folklore resonance to eagles, other than the widespread folk belief that eagles carry off lambs and even sheep (used even today by many ranchers to justify the illegal poisoning and shooting of protected endangered species). Tolkien incorporates this enduring superstition directly into his text, putting it into the mouth of the Lord of the Eagles himself: ‘they will think we are after their lambs – or their babies. And at other times they might be right.’ Interestingly enough, this alarming statement was toned down in the revisions, with the ‘Ganymede’ element being taken out before the First Typescript (where it’s simply the lambs they’re after – cf. Marq. 1/1/56:11 and 1/1/37:10–11) and the lambs changed to sheep in the page proofs (Marq. 1/2/2 page 116). Perhaps Tolkien wanted to emphasize the size and majesty of these great birds; perhaps he wanted to give another example of the divisions between the good peoples of the story (thus laying the groundwork for the wood-elf episode and Siege of the Lonely Mountain that were to follow). Still, he makes it clear that, while not ‘kindly birds’ (as the published text puts it), they are nevertheless foes of evil who put a stop to the goblins’ ‘wickedness’ whenever they can.
Indeed, far from being Children of Morgoth (as has been the case with most of the other races the hobbit has encountered since leaving his home, always exempting the elves and elf-friends), a long-established tradition in Tolkien’s work going back to The Book of Lost Tales portrays eagles as the messengers of Manwë,17 guardians of Gondolin, bitter foes of Melko. We are told that Manwë created the eagles himself (1926 ‘Sketch of the Mythology’, HME IV.23; cf. also the 1930 Quenta, HME IV.102), who thus stand in direct opposition to Melkor the Morgoth’s forces. It was ‘Sorontur King of Eagles’ who delivered the message of banishment to Melko after the Two Trees were destroyed and the Silmarils stolen (and told him of the murder of his herald by the Valar):
and between that evil one and Sorontur has there ever since been hate and war, and that was most bitter when Sorontur and his folk fared to the Iron Mountains and there abode, watching all that Melko did.
—‘The Theft of Melko’, BLT I.149.
Sorontur (better known by his Gnomish name, Thorndor, and its later form Thorondor) and his eagles actually nest in Thangorodrim’s upper regions, ‘out of the reach of Orc and Balrog’ (‘Sketch of the Mythology’, HME IV.23), the better to keep watch on Melko’s doings. From here he witnesses Fingolfin’s duel with Melko and sallies forth to mar the dark lord’s face and rescue the fallen elvenking’s body (‘The Lay of Leithian’, lines 3608–3639; HME III.286–7). Later the eagles move their eyries to the Encircling Mountains surrounding Gondolin, to help guard this last elven refuge against Melko’s spies (‘Sketch’, HME IV.34). While they cannot prevent the fall of the city, the eagles do save the refugees from fallen Gondolin as they battle goblins and a balrog in a mountain pass in a scene strikingly similar to that in The Hobbit but predating it by more than a decade:
. . . Now Galdor and Glorfindel held their own despite the surprise of assault, and many of the Orcs were struck into the abyss; but the falling of rocks was like to end all their valour, and the flight from Gondolin to come to ruin. The moon about that hour rose above the pass, and the gloom somewhat lifted, for his pale light filtered into dark places . . . Then arose Thorndor, King of the Eagles, and he loved not Melko, for Melko had caught many of his kindred and chained them against sharp rocks to squeeze from them the magic words whereby he might learn to fly . . .
Now when the clamour from the pass rose to his great eyrie he said: ‘Wherefore are these foul things, these Orcs of the hills, climbed near to my throne; and why do the sons of the Noldoli [the Noldor] cry out in the low places for fear of the children of Melko the accursed? Arise O Thornhoth [‘eagle-folk’], whose beaks are of steel and whose talons swords!’
Thereupon there was a rushing like a great wind in rocky places, and the Thornhoth, the people of the Eagles, fell on those Orcs who had scaled above the path, and tore their faces and their hands and flung them to the rocks of Thorn Sir far below . . .
—‘The Fall of Gondolin’ [c. 1916–17]; BLT II.193.
The eagles even found their way into the story of Beren and Lúthien, rescuing them from certain capture after their escape from Morgoth’s halls. Their entry into the story is a relatively late one, however – the unfinished ‘Lay of Leithian’ breaks off just at the point where Beren loses his hand, and the eagles enter in only via a pencilled rider to the outline for the three unwritten cantos that were to conclude the poem:
. . . Thunder and lightning. Beren lies dying before the gate. Tinúviel’s song as she kisses his hand and prepares to die. Thorondor comes down and bears them amid the lightning that <?stabs> at them like spears and a hail of arrows from the battlements. They pass above Gondolin and Lúthien sees the white city far below, <?gleaming> like a lily in the valley. Thorondor sets her down in Brethil.
—HME III.309.
Tolkien himself felt that the eagles were a dangerous device, apt to be overused as a deus ex machina; he deplored their ubiquitous appearance throughout the first movie script for a potential Lord of the Rings movie sent to him in 1958 (JRRT to Forrest J. Ackerman, June 1958; cf. Letters p. 271).18 Indeed, in The Hobbit they appear only twice and in The Lord of the Rings only three times, with two of those episodes being off-stage (the rescue of Gandalf from Orthanc and the retrieval of his body from atop Zirakzigil).
Close examination of the Silmarillion texts shows the danger: the more times Tolkien re-wrote the stories, the more new episodes featuring the eagles worked their way in. Thus in the 1930 Quenta not only are all but one of the previous references intact19 – Manwë’s sending forth the Eagles, Thorondor’s maiming of Morgoth and rescue of Fingolfin’s body, the rescue of Beren and Lúthien before the gates of Thangorodrim,20 the removal from Thangorodrim to the Encircling Mountains to help ward Gondolin and guard the cairn of Fingolfin, their intervention at the pass on behalf of the fugitives of Gondolin – but we are also told that Melian summoned Thorondor to bear Lúthien to Valinor after Beren died (1930 Quenta, HME IV.115) and that the eagle-king aided in Fingon’s rescue of Maidros when he hung chained to the cliff-face of Thangorodrim (1930 Quenta, HME IV.102) – the latter tale seems to have entered in via the 1926 ‘Sketch of the Mythology’; cf. HME IV.23).
Clearly, Tolkien was fond of his eagles and found it difficult to keep them out of each of the major stories that make up the Silmarillion cycle. When he was asked to add colour illustrations to The Hobbit for the first American edition, one of the five watercolours was devoted to a beautiful painting of an eagle of the Misty Mountains.21 They also appear, of course, on the dust jacket – where they are placed in opposition to Smaug the dragon – and in the black and white interior illustration ‘The Misty Mountains looking West from the Eyrie towards Goblin Gate’, which serves as a tailpiece to Chapter VI (DAA.158, H-S#110 & #111).
Given Tolkien’s continued interest in the eagles, it is odd that in The Battle of Five Armies the wargs and goblins each count as a ‘people’ for purposes of the tally yet the eagles do not. Perhaps there are simply too few eagles present to be described as an ‘army’ (as seems to be the case with Beorn/Medwed: doughty though he be, there is but one of him), but the designation is made all the more curious by the importance of the role they play in the combat, which is strikingly similar to that described in the passage from ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ quoted above.
The most unusual feature of the whole eagle scene, however, is the unusual shift in point of view away from Thorin & Company for four paragraphs – an entire Ms. page. For the most part, Tolkien is careful to stay with his main characters; the only similar shifts occur late in the book when the story divides between the dwarves and hobbit inside the Lonely Mountain and the dragon flying around outside before he flies away to attack Lake Town. The dramatic excellence of the cutaway shows that he was right in departing here from his usual practice, but we should not fail to notice how unusual it is, nor to give Tolkien credit for abandoning a favorite point-of-view when doing so will advance the story’s dramatic impact.
Finally, we should note the mythic resonance of Bladorthin’s parting words to the eagles on p. 229 in what became the early part of the next chapter. ‘May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks’ sounds fanciful, but in Tolkien’s cosmology it has concrete aptness. His myth of the Sun and Moon, derived largely I believe from Egyptian cosmology (including the journey of the sun-boat through the Duat or Underworld from west to east each night), and his various geographical writings and drawings that make up the Ambarkanta or Shape of the World (reproduced in The Shaping of Middle-earth, HME IV) specify that in his subcreated world the atomosphere is divided into several discrete layers. The lower of these, Wilwa (later renamed Vista) composes the lowest level, the air that we breathe. Wilwa is furthermore subdivided into Aiwenórë or ‘Birdland’ and Fanyamar or ‘Cloudhome’. Above this lies a region variously called Silma, Ilma, and Ilmen at different stages in the mythology’s evolution. Silma/Ilmen is glossed ‘Sky, Heaven’ and defined as ‘The region above the air . . . Here only the stars and Moon and Sun can fly’ (HME IV.241). We are specifically told in the Ambarkanta that ‘From [Wilwa >] Vista there is no outlet nor escape save for the servants of Manwë, or for such as he gives powers like to those of his people, that can sustain themselves in Ilmen . . .’ (HME IV.236). The wizard’s words thus obliquely tie into the cosmology of the created world and reaffirm that the Great Eagles are indeed the eagles of Manwë, either spirits incarnated as birds or their (mortal) descendants, just as the wargs are descended from spirits of evil that had taken wolf-form. The eagles and the wargs neatly counterpoise each other, and each play in our story what had already by 1930 become their ‘traditional’ roles in the stories that comprised Tolkien’s legendarium: the one to threaten the heroes and the other to intervene when all hope had been lost and deliver them from evil, almost as a visible grace. Deus ex indeed.