The Peoples of Middle-earth Read Free

to mean when he first wrote them.
    I should also have noticed that the statement in the early texts of Appendix D (The Calendars), pp. 124, 131, that the Red Book 'ends before the Lithe of 1436' refers to the Epilogue to The Lord of the Rings, in which Samwise, after reading aloud from the Book over many months, finally reached its end on an evening late in March of that year (IX.120-1).
    Lastly, after the proofs of this book had been revised I received a letter from Mr Christopher Gilson in which he referred to a brief but remarkable text associated with Appendix A that he had seen at Marquette. This was a curious chance, for he had no knowledge of the book beyond the fact that it contained some account of the Appendices; while although I had received a copy of the text from Marquette I had passed it over without observing its significance. Preserved with other difficult and disjointed notes, it is very roughly written on a slip of paper torn from a rejected manuscript. That manuscript can be identified as the close predecessor of the Appendix A text concerning the choice of the Half-elven which I have given on pp. 256-7. The writing on the verso reads:
    and his father gave him the name Aragorn, a name used in the House of the Chieftains. But Ivorwen at his naming stood by, and said 'Kingly Valour' (for so that name is interpreted): 'that he shall have, but I see on his breast a green stone, and from that his true name shall come and his chief renown: for he shall be a healer and a renewer.'
    Above this is written: 'and they did not know what she meant, for there was no green stone to be seen by other eyes' (followed by illegible words); and beneath it: 'for the green Elfstone was given to him by Galadriel'. A large X is also written, but it is not clear whether this relates to the whole page or only to a part of it.
    Mr Gilson observes that this text, clearly to be associated with work on the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen (see p. 263), seems to be the only place where the name Aragorn is translated; and he mentions my father's letter of 17 December 1972 to Mr Richard Jeffery (Letters no.
    347), who had asked whether Aragorn could mean 'tree-king'. In his reply my father said that it 'cannot contain a "tree" word', and that
    '"Tree-King" would have no special fitness for him'. He continued: The names in the line of Arthedain are peculiar in several ways; and several, though Sindarin in form, are not readily interpretable. But it would need more historical records and linguistic records of Sindarin than exist (sc. than I have found time or need to invent! ) to explain them.

    PART ONE.

    THE PROLOGUE
    AND APPENDICES TO
    THE LORD OF THE
    RINGS.
    I.

    THE PROLOGUE.

    It is remarkable that this celebrated account of Hobbits goes so far back in the history of the writing of The Lord of the Rings: its earliest form, entitled Foreword: Concerning Hobbits, dates from the period 1938 - 9, and it was printed in The Return of the Shadow (VI.310-14).
    This was a good 'fair copy' manuscript, for which there is no prepara-tory work extant; but I noticed in my very brief account of it that my father took up a passage concerning Hobbit architecture from the chapter A Short Cut to Mushrooms (see VI.92, 294 - 5).
    Comparison with the published Prologue to The Lord of the Rings will show that while much of that original version survived, there was a great deal still to come: the entire account of the history of the Hobbits (FR pp. 11-15) in section 1 of the Prologue, the whole of section 2, Concerning Pipe-weed, and the whole of section 3, Of the Ordering of the Shire, apart from the opening paragraph; while corresponding to section 4, Of the Finding of the Ring, there was no more than a brief reference to the story of Bilbo and Gollum (VI.314).
    In order to avoid confusion with another and wholly distinct 'Foreword', given in the next chapter, I shall use the letter P in reference to the texts that ultimately led to the published Prologue,