The Peoples of Middle-earth Read Free Page A

although the title Foreword: Concerning Hobbits was used in the earlier versions.
    The original text given in The Return of the Shadow I shall call therefore P 1.
    My father made a typescript of this, P 2, and judging from the typewriter used I think it probable that it belonged to much the same time as P 1 - at any rate, to a fairly early period in the writing of The Lord of the Rings. In my text of P 1 in The Return of the Shadow I ignored the changes made to the manuscript unless they seemed certainly to belong to the time of writing (VI.310), but all such changes were taken up into P 2, so that it was probably not necessary to make the distinction. The changes were not numerous and mostly minor,(1) but the whole of the conclusion of P 1, following the words 'his most mysterious treasure: a magic ring' (VI.314), was struck out and replaced by a much longer passage, in which my father recounted the actual story of Bilbo and Gollum, and slightly altered the final paragraph.
    This new conclusion I give here. A part of the story as told here survived into the published Prologue, but at this stage there was no suggestion of any other version than that in The Hobbit, until the chapter Riddles in the Dark was altered in the edition of 1951. With all these changes incorporated, the typescript P 2 was a precise copy of the original version (see note 7).

    This ring was brought back by Bilbo from his memorable journey. He found it by what seemed like luck. He was lost for a while in the tunnels of the goblins under the Misty Mountains, and there he put his hand on it in the dark.
    Trying to find his way out, he went on down to the roots of the mountains and came to a full stop. At the bottom of the tunnel was a cold lake far from the light. On an island of rock in the water lived Gollum. He was a loathsome little creature: he paddled a small boat with his large flat feet, and peered with pale luminous eyes, catching blind fish with his long fingers and eating them raw. He ate any living thing, even goblin, if he could catch and strangle it without a fight; and he would have eaten Bilbo, if Bilbo had not had in his hand an elvish knife to serve him as a sword. Gollum challenged the hobbit to a Riddle-game: if he asked a riddle that Bilbo could not guess, then he would eat him; but if Bilbo floored him, then he promised to give him a splendid gift. Since he was lost in the dark, and could not go on or back, Bilbo was obliged to accept the challenge; and in the end he won the game (as much by luck as by wits). It then turned out that Gollum had intended to give Bilbo a magic ring that made the wearer invisible. He said he had got it as a birthday present long ago; but when he looked for it in his hiding-place on the island, the ring had disappeared. Not even Gollum (a mean and malevolent creature) dared cheat at the Riddle-game, after a fair challenge, so in recompense for the missing ring he reluctantly agreed to Bilbo's demand that he should show him the way out of the labyrinth of tunnels. In this way the hobbit escaped and rejoined his companions: thirteen dwarves and the wizard Gandalf. Of course he had quickly guessed that Gollum's ring had somehow been dropped in the tunnels and that he himself had found it; but he had the sense to say nothing to Gollum. He used the ring several times later in his adventures, but nearly always to help other people. The ring had other powers besides that of making its wearer invisible.
    But these were not discovered, or even suspected, until long after Bilbo had returned home and settled down again. Consequently they are not spoken of in the story of his journey. This tale is chiefly concerned with the ring, its powers and history.
    Bilbo, it is told, following his own account and the ending he himself devised for his memoirs (before he had written most of them), 'remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.' They were. How long, and why so long, will here be