As noted on page 361, these two pages (1/1/10:3–4) form a single sheet which replaced the original third and fourth pages (1/1/25:1–2) of Plot Notes B, which had begun with the same four words (the fifth and final page, describing the end of the story, was left in place; see page 366). Significantly, Bladorthin ‘(Blad.)’ is still the wizard’s name, suggesting that this outline was written during the composition of Chapter XI (which had used Bladorthin for the wizard’s name early in the chapter but shifted to using Gandalf by the chapter’s end). For discussion of significant developments and variations from the Plot Notes it replaced, see the commentary following the transcription.
[page] 3
Bilbo earns his reward: – the dwarves say now he must go in, if he is to fulfil his contract. They won’t go with him, only Balin Yellow-beard comes part of the way, in case he calls for help.
Hobbit creeps into dark mountain. Easier than he thought. Absol.TN1 straight tunnel going gently down for a great way. Begins to see a light at end, getting redder and redder. A bubbling snoring sound. It gets v. warm. Vapours float up.
B. peeps into the great bottomost dungeon at Mountain’s root nearly dark, save for glow from Smaug. The great red dragon is fast asleep upon a vast pile of precious things. He is partly on one side: B. can see he is crusted underneath with gems.
B. steals a cup to show he has been there.TN2 [Describe some of things dimly seen especially swords and spears]
Dwarves pat him on the back. Wrath of Dragon, who comes out to hunt the thief, and settles flaming on the Mount. Then flies all round it roaring.
Terror of dwarves, hiding under rocks. They dig holes.
Bilbo goes back again. The D. is only pretending to be asleep. Bilbo catches glint in his eye and stays at mouth of tunnel. [added: slips on his ring. D. asks where he has gone to.] [added in margin: B. does not say who he is but says he came over the water in a barrel, D thinks he is one of LongLake men] (Riddling?).TN3 D. tries to poison his mind with half-truths ag.TN4 the dwarves. Says they don’t worry about him or paying him. Supposing they could get treasure how cd. they carry it off? They <didn’t> tell you <shares won’t> work.
B. says they have not only come for treasure but revenge.
D. laughs.
B. flatters him, and says he cert. never imagined Smaug was so tremendous.
D says no warrior could kill him now. He is armoured with gems underneath. B. asks him to show – and sees a patch.TN5 Then he escapes but D. sends fiery spurts after him.
B goes back and talks to dwarves. Warns them dragon knows of exit. <Asks> them about plans. They are a bit flummoxed. They tell him of the Jem of Girion king of Dale, which he paid for his sons’ arming in gold & silver mail made like steel.TN6
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B. creeps in third time and waits in shadows till Dragon creeps out of hall
He steals a bright gem which fascinates him
The dragon returning finds theft: and is awful rage.TN7
He goes to war with the Lake Men. The people sees him coming and cut bridges to lake-dwelling. D. flies over them and set houses alight, but dare not settle right in lake. They quench fire with water and shoot darts at him. Glint of gems in dragon’s belly in light of fire. He settles at side of lake and tries to starve them out.
Dwarves see the steam from afar; and are bent on carrying out gold. B. watches them stagger out. But warns them D. will come back to entrance of tunnel? What can they do with gold.
Burglary is no good – a warrior in the end. But no one will go with him. Bilbo puts on ring and creeps into dungeon. and hides. Dragon comes back at last and sleeps exhausted by battle.
Bilbo [takes >] plunges in his little magic knife and it disappears. he cannot wield the swords or spears.
Throes of dragon. Smashes walls and entrance to tunnel. Bilbo floats <away> in a golden bowl on D’s blood, till it comes to rest in a deep dark hole. When it is cool he wades out, and becomes hard & brave.
Discovers sources of Running River and floats out through Fro[nt] D[oor]. in a golden bowl.
Found by the scouts of the Lake-Men.
The dwarves dig through the tunnel and take possession of their old homes but the gold is mostly crushed, and they cannot use it because of the dragon’s body
The men of <the> Lake and Woodelves come up and besiege the dwarves. Attempt to block F. Door.
Bilbo sorrowful meets Blad. in the <illegible> place of Laketown.TN8
Blad rebukes the besiegers. And makes dwarves pay Bilbo.
A share of his <part> he gives to Lake-men, and to wood-elves (though they may not deserve it).
They escort Blad & B back through Mirkwood.
This entire page, from ‘B. creeps in third time’ to ‘back through Mirkwood’, was struck through with a single slash. At the same time that this page was cancelled, Tolkien wrote in the left margin of this page and underlined:
Dragon killed in the battle of the Lake
This change almost certainly dates from the same time as the two new pages that replace the canceled page were written, which was demonstrably after the next chapter (Chapter XII) had already been drafted, and probably most of the following chapter as well. I treat this new material separately as Plot Notes D and have placed it following the next chapter, beginning on page 568.
TEXT NOTES
1 ‘Absol.’: Absolutely (see Plot Notes B, page 363).
2 That is, he steals the cup to prove to the dwarves that he reached the treasure-chamber, not to alert Smaug to his presence.
The following sentence is bracketed by Tolkien in the original, and the word spears underlined for emphasis. Compare the parallel passage in Plot Notes B: ‘He sees shields and spears’, where one of these spears had been projected to play a crucial role in the climax as the weapon with which Bilbo was to kill the sleeping dragon (see page 364). Interestingly enough, while its significance disappeared after this point, these spears survive as an element in Smaug’s horde and actually appear in the painting ‘Conversation with Smaug’ (Plate XI [top]), made some five years later after the book had been published.
3 ‘Riddling’ here indicates not a riddle-game such as Bilbo had played with Gollum but instead the first indication of the ‘riddling talk’ whereby Bilbo identifies himself while refusing to tell the dragon his actual name. The ‘barrel-rider’ motif first emerges here in the interpolated passage (although puzzlingly enough Bilbo claims to have ridden in a barrel, not on one – perhaps Tolkien here is thinking of Bilbo’s solitary escape in a barrel from Plot Notes A; see page 296), along with Smaug’s mistaken conclusion that the men of Lake Town are behind this intrusion.
4 ‘ag.’: i.e., against.
5 ‘a patch’: i.e., a bare patch.
6 ‘his sons arming’: since the apostrophe is missing in this very lightly punctuated passage, we cannot tell for certain whether the right form is sons or son’s. I have concluded that the former is more probable, since the manuscript of the next chapter (written from this outline) uses the plural – ‘which he paid for the arming of his sons, in coats of dwarf mail the like of which had never before been made’ – and is punctuated accordingly.
For the spelling ‘Jem’, carried over from Plot Notes B, see page 364.
‘gold & silver mail made like steel’: This passage further develops the mithril coat which later plays such an important part in The Lord of the Rings, although that term would not arise for almost another decade (see HME VI.465 & also 458). This remarkable piece of armor is not associated with Bilbo here, although it had been in page 5 of Plot Notes B (see page 366), nor is it a unique item since one was made for each of King Girion’s sons. The presence of these suits of mail within Smaug’s horde is incidentally proof of the mingling of ‘much of the wealth of [Girion’s] halls and towns’ with the dwarves’ goods mentioned by Bard in the parley before the Gate (see page 648).
7 Presumably Tolkien meant to write here either ‘is [in an] awful rage’ or possibly ‘[h]is awful rage’ but in the haste of getting thoughts down on paper left the sentence compressed.
8 The illegible word is probably ‘market’, though it might also be ‘smashed’.
Into the Lonely Mountain
Since the story sketched out in Plot Notes C represents Tolkien’s projection of what would happen in Chapters XII and the chapters to follow, it was obviously written before Chapter XII (from which it notably diverges) was begun, probably while Chapter XI was still in progress – cf. the use of ‘Bladorthin’ near the beginning of Chapter XI on manuscript page 137 (page 472 in this book) and in these Plot Notes, whereas by manuscript page 141 near the end of Chapter XI (page 476 in this book) ‘Gandalf’ had finally replaced it as the wizard’s name. Interestingly enough, rather than start a new outline Tolkien retained the same pagination and made the new material a replacement for the now-superseded middle section of Plot Notes B (which had been written at the end of Chapter VIII, probably the preceding year).
The new material at first follows the pages it replaced closely, particularly in the first six paragraphs, where many of the same words and phrases recur, although thereafter Plot Notes C develops and reshapes the material. Bilbo is still the dragon-slayer, but the sequence of events inside the Mountain is now somewhat different. Instead of stealing a cup on his first visit, another cup on his second, talking with the dragon on his third visit, and deliberately entering the tunnel a fourth time for the express purpose of killing Smaug in order to earn the Jem of Girion as his reward, as in Plot Notes B, Bilbo now steals a cup on his first visit, has an extended conversation with the dragon on his second visit, steals ‘a bright gem’ on his third visit when the dragon is (briefly) away, then hides within his lair on his fourth visit and stabs the weary dragon after Smaug returns from his attack on Lake Town – a sequence much closer to that of the published book, where the first three of these visits occur more or less as in this outline.
Instead of a spear found within the hoard (page 364), Bilbo now kills the dragon with his little knife (Sting, although that name has not yet arisen), apparently losing it in the process, driving it in so deeply that it ‘disappears’ within the dragon. His motivation now seems to be less pure greed, as in the preceding version of the Plot Notes, and more a desperate pragmatism: the dwarves are too busy carting gold up the secret passage to face the urgent question of what to do when Smaug returns, forcing Bilbo to take it upon himself. By contrast, Plot Notes B had stressed how ‘Bilbo keeps on looking at his gem’ (i.e., the Jem of Girion), which the dwarves tell him he must earn; the very next line describes his going to kill the sleeping dragon (page 364), strongly suggesting cause and effect: he wants the gem so badly he’d take on a dragon to get it. Plot Notes C thus somewhat downplay the theme of possessiveness in Bilbo himself, although we are told that the bright gem (presumably the Jem of Girion, which the dwarves had told him about shortly before) ‘fascinates’ him; this motif would later return strongly in Plot Notes D (see page 568).
It is interesting to note that the Lake-men fare rather better in their battle with Smaug here and in Plot Notes B than in any other version of the story, making them indeed the only community attacked by a dragon who succeed in driving it off in all of Tolkien’s work: the Rodothlim of the early Túrin story and their later analogues the elves of Nargothrond, the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the men of Dale at the time of Smaug’s advent, the Lake Men of the published tale, even the villagers of Bimble Bay in the poem ‘The Dragon’s Visit’ [1937] all see their peoples decimated and their city or town destroyed.1 By contrast, the people of Lake Town’s spirited defense leaves the dragon temporarily stymied: once the bridges are destroyed he cannot reach his enemies, and any buildings he sets alight they ‘quench with water’. Far from cowering or fleeing, they resolutely ‘shoot darts2 at him’ whenever he flies over, although these cannot hurt him because of his gemstone armoring. Given that they have an endless supply of fresh water and are presumably skilled as fishermen (which, given their boatcraft and the placement of their town over the water, seems a reasonable assumption), Smaug’s attempt to ‘starve them out’ seems unlikely to succeed. Small wonder that the dragon eventually abandons his siege and returns exhausted to the mountain, no doubt to plot his next move.
Smaug’s death-throes, which destroy Lake Town in the published version, here take place within the Mountain and are vividly depicted in terms partially derived from the old saga and partly from the death of Glorund in the Túrin story.3 In particular, the enormous flood of blood that gushes out, enough to float Bilbo in a golden cup,4 comes directly from Volsunga Saga, where Regin advises Sigurd to dig a pit in Fafnir’s path to his favorite watering hole but treacherously plans for his protégé to drown in the dragon’s blood, leaving Regin in sole possession of the treasure – a plan Odin foils by advising Sigurd to dig many pits, which drain off the excess blood.5 In one particular the final book is closer to Tolkien’s sources than are these Plot Notes: Morris has his dragon’s last words be a lament that he dies ‘far off from the Gold’ (Sigurd the Volsung page 126), and in the published Hobbit of course Smaug dies at Lake Town (‘he would never again return to his golden bed’ – DAA.313) and his bones thereafter lie among its ruins.6 Here, by contrast, Smaug dies atop his vast sleeping-bed of gold, and the tumult of his death-agonies collapses the secret tunnel7 in which the dwarves had stored all the gold they had carted away from Smaug’s lair during his absence.
One idea about Smaug’s death from these Plot Notes did survive into the final book, albeit in a very different form. Here we are told that ‘the gold is mostly crushed, and they cannot use it because of the dragon’s body’, whereas in the published tale the many gems attached to Smaug’s underbelly are similarly lost to the dwarves when the dragon plummets into the lake; it is known where the gems lie deep in the water amid the ruins of Lake Town but none dare dive down through ‘the shivering water’ surrounding the dragon’s bones to retrieve them (DAA.313).8
The idea that Bilbo becomes ‘hard and brave’ because he waded in dragonblood comes from yet another version of the Sigurd legend, not the Eddic poems nor the saga but the Nibelungenlied [circa 1200], which derives from German rather than Norse tradition:
When he slew the dragon at the foot of the mountain the gallant knight bathed in its blood, as a result of which no weapon has pierced him in battle ever since . . . When the hot blood flowed from the dragon’s wound and the good knight was bathing in it, a broad leaf fell from the linden between his shoulder-blades. It is there that he can be wounded . . .
—The Nibelungenlied, tr. A. T. Hatto [rev. ed., 1969], page 121.9
Similarly, Thidreks Saga, a rambling thirteenth-century romance about Theodoric the Great, includes at one point a somewhat confused version of the Sigurd story (in which Regin is the dragon, rather than the dragon’s brother), stating that after killing the dragon Sigurd ‘smears his body with dragon’s blood, except where he cannot reach between the shoulders, and his skin becomes horny’ (ibid., page 375; cf. also The Saga of Thidrek of Bern, tr. Edward R. Haymes [1988], pages 107–8 & 210). Since Tolkien did not develop the theme, there’s no way to know how Bilbo’s becoming a great warrior, one of the few dragon-slayers in Tolkien’s legendarium, would have influenced the end of the book, but it seems likely that having become ‘hard and brave’, ‘a warrior in the end’, he would play a significant role in the battle gathering in the east described on the last page of the composite Plot Notes B/C (‘the Battle of Anduin Vale’; see pp. 366 & 375). The deft drawing-together of so many themes and characters who had appeared earlier in the book – Medwed/Beorn, the goblins, the woodmen, the wargs, and possibly the eagles – on the return journey would therefore in this projection still occur only after Bilbo had parted company with Thorin and the dwarves, forming the great adventure still to come on his homeward journey.
One point Plot Notes C does make clear that had been hazy in the original Plot Notes B material is exactly when Bladorthin re-enters the story. As in the final lines of Plot Notes A (page 296), here the wizard’s reappearance is still enough to set things to rights and avoid bloodshed or further unpleasantness: Bladorthin rebukes the besiegers and makes the dwarves pay Bilbo the dragon-slayer his fair share, a portion of which Bilbo then parcels out to the Lake-men and wood-elves though, as Tolkien tartly observes, the latter ‘may not deserve it’ (a true enough statement based on what he had written about them so far in this book). Even with the major recastings and expansions to come, the linkage between Bilbo’s share and the dragon-slayer’s share (a large part of which gets turned over to the Men of the Lake and the wood-elves) remains, though after these had become two separate characters the scene of Bilbo giving the Gem of Girion (or Arkenstone, as it came to be called) to the character who had replaced him as dragon-slayer had to be invented.
Finally, the brief passage telling how the dwarves tunnel back through the partially collapsed secret passage ‘and take possession of their old homes’ seems to be our first glimpse of the re-establishment of the Kingdom under the Mountain. As corroboration of this, we are told that Bladorthin and Bilbo set out on the return journey, yet no mention is made of any of the dwarves accompanying them, suggesting that Thorin & Company remain behind at the Lonely Mountain (contrast Plot Notes B, page 366, where this could be inferred but was not actually stated). The deaths of Thorin, Fili, and Kili that darken the penultimate chapter of the published book had not yet arisen; there it is Thorin’s cousin Dain who becomes the new King under the Mountain, but here there is no reason to think that it is anyone other than Thorin himself, finally restored to his full inheritance.