Chapter VII
Medwed

The next morning he woke up with the eastern [> early] sun in his eyes. He jumped up to look at the time, and go and put his kettle on – and found he wasn’t at home at all. So he sat down again, and wished he could have a wash, and a brush. He didn’t get toast, nor tea, nor bacon. Only cold mutton. And after that he had to get ready for a fresh start. This time he was allowed to climb on an eagle’s back and cling on between the wings. The air rushed over him, and he shut his eyes. The dwarves were crying farewells and promising to repay the Lord of Eagles if ever they could; then off went fifteen eagles into the air.

The sun was still close to the eastern edge of things. The morning was cool, and mists were in the valleys & hollows and twined here & there among the peaks & pinnacles of the mountains. [But soon >] When Bilbo opened an eye to peep they [> the eagles] were already very high up and the world was far away, and the mountains falling back behind them into the distance. He shut his eyes again and held on tighter.

‘Don’t pinch’ said his eagle. ‘You need not be frightened like a rabbit.^TN1 It is a fair morning, and little wind. What is finer than flying.’ Bilbo would have liked to say ‘a warm bath, and breakfast on the lawn afterwards’^TN2 but he said nothing at all, & let go his clutch just a teeny-weeny bit.

After a good while the eagles must have seen [far >] the point they were making for even from their great height. They began to go down circling round in great circles. For a long while they did this, then Bilbo opened his eyes again. The rough feet of the mountains were left behind. The earth was much nearer now, and below them were trees, oaks and elms probably, and wide green lands, and a river running through it all. But cropping out of the ground, right in the path of the stream which looped itself round it, was a rock – almost a hill of stone, like a last outpost of the mountains, or a large piece cast miles into the plain by some giant among giants. Now quickly down to the top of this the eagles swooped one by one and set down their passengers.

‘Farewell’ they said ‘where ever you fare, till your homes [> nests > eyries] receive you at the journey’s end’. This is a polite thing to say among eagles.

‘May the wind under your wings bear you [as >] where the sun sails and the moon walks’ said Bladorthin, who knew the correct answer.^TN3

And so they parted. And though the Lord of the Eagles became king of the [> all] Birds in after days and wore a gold crown^TN4 ([added: made] of the gold given him by Bladorthin in remembrance), Bilbo never saw them again.^TN5 But he didn’t forget them.

There was [a] flat place on the top of the hill of stone, and a well worn path with many steps leading down it, to the river side, and a ford of huge boulders which led across to the grass land beyond the river. There was a little cave (a wholesome one) with a pebbly floor at the foot of the hill opposite the boulder-ford. Here the party gathered and discussed what was to be done.

The text continues without a break, but I interrupt it at this point to give the First Outline – at any rate, the earliest surviving one. Merely a brief, sketchy list of reminders to himself that Tolkien jotted down on a loose sheet of paper (Marq. 1/1/23:1),^TN6 it records episodes and some details that would occur in upcoming chapters.

Medwed the bear.

Mirkwood & <pygmies>.

disappearance of Bladorthin.

Long wanderings of the dwarves.

  <chestnuts>

[spring >] Long Lake

<capture> by the <Sea> elves.

swans   Mirkwood

  <ball of twine>

  dwarves beards

Not all of the ideas hinted at in this list of motifs and incidents are now recoverable, but the general outline of the tale is clear: the meeting with Medwed (Beorn) would shortly follow, prior to the wizard’s departure and their subsequent travails in Mirkwood. If the ideas are more or less in sequence, as seems to be the case, the ‘disappearance’ of Bladorthin suggests that the wizard would leave the party after they had entered Mirkwood, and that his absence would occur suddenly and inexplicably. Originally the ‘long wanderings’ were intended to be of much greater duration than came to be the case in the published text; the cancelled reference to ‘spring’ probably refers to the coming of the next year’s springtime while they are still lost without their guide in Mirkwood. The added reference to the dwarves’ beards might be another allusion to this (i.e., their beards growing long in their travels, à la ‘Rip Van Winkle’^TN7), or it might be a glimpse of the spider-story (cf. Chapter VIII). The chestnuts (if that is indeed the correct reading for this nigh-illegible word) probably form their food during their wanderings once the provisions they brought with them give out; starvation in the forest remained a serious threat right into the published book (paralleling an important folklore motif found in ‘Hansel & Gretel’, ‘The Babes in the Woods’, and elsewhere).

The ‘swans’ vanished from the story without a trace; whether the dwarves were eventually to follow swans from the marshes to the Long Lake as Tuor follows swans in ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ (BLT II.152) or simply saw swans (or swan-boats; see the illustration on p. 244 of The Annotated Hobbit) on the lake once they got there is now impossible to say. The ‘ball of twine’ anticipates the Theseus theme with Bilbo’s ball of spider-thread that plays a large part in the manuscript of the Mirkwood chapter – an important scene that did not make it into the published book. The party’s capture by elves is already foreseen, but here it seems to follow their belated arrival at the Long Lake. The reference to the Sea-elves, rather than the Wood-elves, is at first surprising but upon closer examination turns out to fit well not just with Tolkien’s concepts at the time but even with the published Silmarillion; see my commentary following Chapter IX. Note that the outline does not carry the story all the way to the end of the tale – it mentions nothing about the dragon and quest’s end, for example – but it does contain the seeds for the next four chapters.

The text continues at the start of a fresh page (manuscript page 79; Marq. 1/1/7:3):

‘I always meant to see you all safe [added: (if possible)] over the mountains’ said the wizard. ‘And more by good luck than by good management,^TN8 have done it. But we are now a deal further than I meant to go, for after all this is not my adventure.^TN9 I said I would get a burglar to help you, and I have, but I didn’t say I would come burgling with you.’

‘Still you are in an awkward plight, and so am I. We have no food, no ponies (except shanks’^TN10) – and you don’t know where you are. Now I can tell you that. You are miles south now [> still] of the path you would have followed, if we hadn’t met the goblins. Very few people live in these parts, unless they have come into it since I was here last, which is some long years ago. But there is a person I know, who lives not far away.^TN11 He made these steps on the hill.^TN12 But he doesn’t come here often, so it is no good waiting for him. We must go and find him; and if all goes well at our meeting, I think I shall be off and wish you like the eagles “farewell where ever you fare”.’

They begged him, not to go [> not to leave them]. They offered him dragon-gold. But he wouldn’t saying anything different. ‘We shall see, we shall see’ said he ‘and I think I have earned some of your dragon-gold already – when you have got it’.

[added: Then] They took off their clothes and bathed in the river which was cool [>shallow] and clear and stony-bed. Then refreshed if still hungry they went on;^TN13 and over the ford, and marched through the long green grass and down the avenues of wide oaks and tall elms.

‘What’s <his> name, and why did he call it The Carrock?’ asked Bilbo as they went along; he had been pondering the wizard’s words.

‘He calls it the carrock because carrock is his word for it’ said Bladorthin ‘he calls things like that carrocks, and this one the carrock because it is the only [one] near his home, & he knows it well.’

‘Who calls it – who knows it[?]’

‘The Somebody that I spoke about – a very great person. You must all be very polite when I introduce you. I shall introduce you slowly (one by one [> 2 by 2] in fact, I think) and you must be careful not to annoy him. He can be appalling when angry, though charming otherwise [> kind enough if humoured] – and [> but] he gets angry easily.

[Who is he>] The dwarves turned round when they heard Bladorthin talking like this to Bilbo. ‘Is that the person you are taking us to now?’ they asked. ‘Wasn’t there anybody more easy tempered! Hadn’t you better explain a little bit clearer?’ – and so on.

‘[No there wasn’t >] Yes it jolly well is! No there wasn’t! I was just beginning to . . . [added: explain]’ and so on, answered Bladorthin.

‘His name is Medwed. He is very strong. He is a skin-changer’.

‘What! a furrier; a man who calls rabbits conies and turns their skins into arctic fox??’ said Bilbo.^TN14

‘Good gracious heavens no no no No!’ said Bladorthin. ‘In the name of thunder [> all wonder] don’t mention the word furrier again as long as you are within a hundred miles of him, nor meat [> fur] rug, cape, tippet muff any other such idiotic words. He is a skin-changer – he is sometimes a huge black-bear, sometimes a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard.^TN15

‘I can’t tell you much more. Whether he is a bear descended from the great bears of the mountains that lived there before the giants came,^TN16 or a man descended from the old men who lived there before Smaug invaded the land and the goblins came into the hills out of the North, I can’t say. At any rate he is under no enchantment but his own.

‘He lives [in] an oak-wood, and has a great wooden house; and as a man he keeps cattle and horses, which are nearly as marvellous as himself for they work for him and talk to him. But he does not eat them. He eats wild things often [> sometimes, not often]. He keeps hives and hives of great fierce bees. He likes cream and honey. As a bear he ranges far and wide. I have seen him sitting all alone on the top of the carrock at night watching the moon sinking towards the Misty Mountains. I believe he does that often, and I believe he sometimes sleeps in the little cave [> and that is why I believe he once came from the mountains].’

But Bilbo and the Dwarves had [added: now] plenty to think about; and they said [> spoke] very little any more. They had still a long long walk before them. Up slope and down slope [> up slope and down dale] they went. Sometimes they rested under the trees, and Bilbo was so hungry he would have eaten acorns, if they had been ripe enough yet to fall [> have fallen to the ground].

It was mid afternoon before they noticed that great patches of flowers had begun to spring up, all the same kinds growing together as if they had been planted. But especially there was clover, great waving patches of coxcomb clover, and ordinary red clover, and wide stretches of short white sweet honeysmelling clover. There was a buzzing and whirring and a droning in the air. Bees were busy every where. And such bees. Bilbo had never seen anything like them. ‘If one was to sting me I should swell as big again as I am’ he thought. They were bigger than hornets, much bigger. Why the drones were as big as a small thumb, and [their bands of gold shone >] the bands of yellow on their deep black bodies shone like fiery gold.

‘We are getting near’ said Bladorthin ‘we are on the edge of his bee-pasture[s].’

After a while they came to a belt of tall old oaks, and beyond them to a high thorn hedge through which you could not see nor scramble.^TN17

‘You had better wait here’ said the wizard [added: to the dwarves] ‘and when I call or whistle come after me – one by one [> in pairs] mind, about five minutes between each [> each pair] of you. There is [a] gate somewhere round this way.’ And with that he went off along the hedge taking Mr Baggins with him.^TN18

They soon came to a high broad wooden gate, and beyond it they could see gardens, and a cluster of low wooden buildings, some made of unshaped logs, and thatched – barns, stables, sheds, and [a] long low house. All inside the hedge were rows and rows of hives with [fancy >] bell-shaped tops made of straw. The noise of the great bees flying to and fro and crawling in and out filled all the air.

The wizard and the hobbit pushed open the heavy creaking gate and went down a wide track towards the house. Some horses trotted up across the grass and looked at them intently with very intelligent faces, then off they galloped in front of them to the house. ‘They have gone to tell him’ said Bladorthin, and as he said it they came upon a courtyard three walls of which were made by the wooden house and its two wings. There was a great oak trunk lying, and many lopped branches beside it. Standing beside it [> near] was a huge man with a thick black-beard and hair, and great [bare] arms and legs with knotted muscles. He was dressed in loose black fur as low as his knees, and was leaning on a large axe. The horses were standing by him with their noses at his shoulder.

‘Ugh, here they are’ he said to the horses in a deep growling voice. ‘They don’t look dangerous – you can be off’ and he laughed a great rolling laugh, put down his axe and came forward.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ he asked [gruffly] standing in front of them and towering tall above even Bladorthin.^TN19 As for Bilbo he could have trotted through his legs without ducking his head to miss the bottom of the man’s fur garment.

‘I am Bladorthin’ said the wizard.

‘Never heard of him’ growled the man. ‘And what’s this little fellow?’ he said stooping down to frown at Mr Baggins with his bushy black eyebrows.

‘That is Mr Baggins, a hobbit of good family and unimpeachable reputation’ said Bladorthin (Bilbo bowed – he had no hat to take off, and was painfully conscious of his many missing buttons).^TN20 ‘I am a wizard – I have heard of you, if you have not heard of me. But perhaps you have heard of my good cousin Radagast who lives near the borders of Mirkwood?’

‘Yes yes: not a bad fellow. Now I know who you are.^TN21 What do you want?’

‘To tell you the truth, we have lost our luggage, nearly lost our way, and are rather in need of help – or at least advice. I may say we have had rather a bad time with goblins in the mountains.

‘Goblins?’ said the big man, less gruffly. ‘O! ho! so you’ve been having trouble with them, have you. What did you go near them for?’

‘Did not mean to. They surprised us in the mountains, which we had to cross; we were coming out of the Lands over West^TN22 into these countries. It is a long tale.’

‘You had better come inside and tell me some of it – if it won’t take all day’ said the man, and went in through his big door.

They found themselves in a wide hall with a fire [place] in the middle. Though it was summer there was a wood fire burning and the smoke was going up to the blackened rafters in search of the way out through a great opening in the roof. They passed through this hall and came through another [smaller] door into a sort of veranda with wooden pillars made of tree trunks. It faced south and was still warm, and filled with the light of the westering sun that slanted into it, and fell in gold on the garden full of flowers that came right up to the steps.

There they sat on wooden benches, while Bladorthin began his tale, and Bilbo [sat >] swung his dangling legs and looked at the flowers in the garden, wondering what their names could be – he had never seen half of them before.

‘I was coming over the mountains with a friend or two . . .’ said the wizard.

‘Or two – I can only see one, and a little one at that’ said Medwed.

‘Well to tell you the truth I did not like to bother you with a lot of us, until I found out whether you were busy – I will give a call if I may’.

‘Go on, call away!’

So Bladorthin gave a long shrill whistle, and presently Gandalf and Dori came into [> through] the hall and stood bowing low at the open door behind them.

‘One or three, you meant, I see’ said Medwed. ‘But these aren’t hobbits, these are dwarves!’

‘Gandalf at your service!’

‘Dori at your service’ said the two dwarves bowing again.

‘I don’t need it [> your service]’, said Medwed, ‘but I expect you need mine. I am not over fond of dwarves, but if it is true that you are respectable dwarves & not friends of Goblins, [I will >] and are not up to any mischief in my lands – what are you up to, by the way?’

‘They are on their way to visit the old country of their fathers, away east beyond Mirkwood’ said Bladorthin, ‘and it is entirely an accident that we are in your lands at all. We were crossing by the High Pass that should have been [> brought] us well to the north of your country, when we were attacked by the wicked goblins – as I was beginning to tell you’.^TN23

‘Go on telling then’, said Medwed, who was never [very] polite

‘There was a terrible storm, the stone-giants were out hurling rocks, and at the head of the Pass we found a cave. Into it we went for shelter, the hobbit and I and several of our dwarf friends . . .’

‘Do you call two “several”?’ asked Medwed.

‘Well, no! as a matter of fact there were more than two’.

‘Where are they – killed, eaten, gone home?’

‘Well, no! to tell the truth they didn’t all come when I whistled. Shy, I expect. [After >] You see, we are well aware that we are already rather a lot for you to entertain’.

‘Go on! whistle again. I am in for a party, it seems; and one or two more won’t matter much’, growled Medwed.

Bladorthin whistled again, but Nori and Ori were there bowing in the doorway almost before he had stopped, for (if you remember) he had told them to come along every few [> five] minutes or so.

‘Hello!’ said the big man ‘You came pretty quick – where were you hiding? Come on my jack-in-the-boxes!’

‘Nori at your service. Ori at your . . .’ they began, but ‘Thank you! I will ask for it [> your help] when I need it’ said he. ‘Sit down, and let’s get on with this tale, or it will [be] supper time before we end it.’

‘As soon as we were asleep’ went on Bladorthin ‘a crack at the back of the cave opened, goblins came out, and grabbed the hobbit and the dwarves, and our troop of ponies . . .’

‘Troop of ponies!’ said Medwed ‘What were you – a travelling circus? Or were you carrying lots of goods: – or do you call six a troop?’

‘Well no! as a matter of fact there were more than six of us’ said Bladorthin ‘and well – here are two more’. Instant that moment Balin and Dwalin appeared, and bowed extremely low till their beards swept the stone floor. The big man was frowning, so they did their best to be very polite. They were so comically polite that after a good long frown he burst into a deep chuckling laugh.

‘Troop is right’ he said. ‘A fine comic troupe. Come in my merry men, and what are your names. I don’t want your service; just your names, and then sit down.’

‘Balin & Dwalin’ they said and sat on the floor looking a bit surprised but not daring to be offended.

‘Now go on again!’ said Medwed.

‘Where was I?’ said the wizard. ‘O yes – I was not grabbed. I killed a goblin or two with a flash’ (‘good’ growled Medwed ‘it is some good being a wizard then.’) ‘and slipped inside the crack before it closed. I followed down the passages, and watched from the shadows while the prisoners were dragged before the Great Goblin. The hall was crammed with goblins. The king [> chief] was surrounded with [> by] thirty or forty armed soldiers, so it would have been pretty hopeless, even if they hadn’t been all chained together. I thought “what can a dozen do against so many?” –’

‘A dozen! – that is the first time I have heard eight called a dozen’ said Medwed. ‘Have you got some more jacks hiding in their boxes?’

‘Well yes, to tell you the truth there is Fili and Kili here as well’ said Bladorthin, as these two now appeared smiling and bowing.

‘That’s enough’ said Medwed ‘sit down and be quiet. [But before we go on – have we come to the end of the party or not. I am tired of these >] Now go on, Bladorthin!’

So Bladorthin went on [with the tale of that >] until he came to the fight in the dark and the loss of the hobbit [>, and the discovery of the lower entrance and their horror when they found that Mr Baggins had been mislaid]. ‘We counted ourselves, & found there was no hobbit – there were only fourteen of us left’.

‘Fourteen! That’s the first time I have heard one from ten make fourteen’ said Medwed. ‘Do you mean nine, or do you mean [there are still some jacks that haven’t >] that you haven’t told me yet all the names of your party?’

‘Well yes, to tell the truth I had not mentioned Oin and Gloin’ said Bladorthin ‘– and well, here they are, if you will forgive them for bothering you.’

‘O let ’em all come’ said Medwed. ‘Come along, come along! Sit down. But even now we have only got yourself and ten dwarves and the hobbit that was lost, and that only makes eleven (plus one mislaid) and not fourteen, unless wizards count differently to ordinary people. But get on with the tale!’ He didn’t show it any more than he could help, but really he was getting rather interested. As a matter of fact in old days he had known the very part of the mountains Bladorthin was now describing, and he nodded, and growled, when he heard of the hobbit’s reappearance, of their scramble [added: down the mountain side] and of the wolf-ring [added: in the woods]. When he heard of their climbing their trees and the wolves all underneath, he got up and strode about muttering ‘I wish I had been there; I would have given them more than fire works!’

‘Well’ said Bladorthin very relieved to see that his story was making a good impression ‘there we were with the wolves gone mad under us, and the forest beginning to blaze in places, when the goblins came down from the mountains, & discovered us. They yelled with delight and sang songs making fun of us:

‘Good heavens’ growled Medwed ‘Don’t pretend goblins can’t count. They can. Twelve is’nt fourteen [> fifteen], and they know it.’

‘Well no, of course not. There was Bifur and Bofur too. I haven’t ventured to introduce them before, but here they are.’

In came Bifur and Bofur. ‘And me’ said Bombur puffing up last: he was rather fat, and he didn’t like being left till last.

‘Well now there are fifteen of you’ said Medwed ‘And since goblins can count, I suppose that is all there were up in the trees. Now perhaps we can finish the tale without more interruptions’. You see how clever Bladorthin had been – Medwed was really very excited by their story, just like you were, and so he forgot to be rude and gruff and grumpy, and did not send them all off quick (as he usually did with all strangers that come to his gates).

When the wizard had finished the story, and told of the eagles, and of their flight to the Carrock, the sun had [gone >] fallen to the tops of the Misty Mountains, & the shadows were long in Medwed’s garden.

[‘Supper!’ he said >] ‘A very good tale’ said Medwed. ‘The best I have heard for a long while. You may be making it all up, of course, but you deserve a supper for the story all the same. Let’s have something to eat!’

‘Yes please’ they all said. ‘Thank you very much!’

Inside the hall it was now grown dark. Medwed clapped his hands and in trotted four beautiful white ponies, and a number of large [f<urred> hound >] long-bodied grey dogs. Medwed said something to them in a queer language like animal-noises turned into talk. In a minute they went out and came back with torches in their mouths, lit them at the fire, and stuck them in low brackets on the pillars of the hall near to the fire. The dogs could walk on their hind-legs and carry things in their fore-paws marvellously cleverly. Soon they had got out tables and trestles from the side walls and set them up near the fire. Then ‘baa! baa!’ was heard and in came beautiful white sheep led by a large coal-black ram. Some bore white cloths on their backs, some trays of cups and bowls some platters and knives, which the dogs took and laid quickly on the tables. These were very low, and beside them the ponies pushed little low stools & chairs with wide seats and short legs. But at one end was an enormous black chair for Medwed.

Such a dinner they ate as they had not eaten since they left the house of Elrond. The light of the torches flickered on the walls, and there were candles on the table. All the while Medwed in his gruff voice told tales of the wildlands on this side of the mountains, and specially of the dark and dangerous wood – the Great Forest – that lay more than a day’s long ride to the East. The Dwarves listened and shook their beards, for they knew they had to pass that forest, and that after the Mountains it was the worst of the dangers [> perils] they had to pass before they came to the dragon’s stronghold. They also told many stories of their own, but Medwed did not seem very interested; most of them were about gold and silver and jewels and the making of them, and he did not appear to care for such things: there were no things of gold or silver in his house, and few save knives of any metal at all.

They sat long at table, till it was dark night outside. Then the fires in the middle of the hall were built up with fresh logs and the torches put out, and there they sat in the light of the flames with the pillars of the hall standing tall and dark at top like trees of the forest. Whether it was magic or not Bilbo heard what sounded like a wind in branches stirring in the rafters, and the hoot of owls. He began to nod because he was very sleepy and the voices seem[ed] far away, until he woke with a start and heard the end of a song of the dwarves.

‘The wind was on the withered heath,

But in the forest stirred no leaf:

There shadows lay by night and day,

And dark things silent crept beneath.

The wind came down from mountains cold,

And like a tide it roared and rolled;

till branches groaned, the forest moaned,

and leaves were laid upon the mould.

The wind went on from West to East –

all movement in the Forest ceased,

But shrill and harsh across the marsh

Its whistling voices were released

The grasses hissed their plumes were bent

The reeds were rattling – on it went

o’er shaken pool neath heavens cool

[neath >] where racing clouds were torn & rent

It passed the lonely Mountain bare

And swept above the Dragons lair.

There black and dark lay boulders stark –

No light but of the moon was there’^TN25

The[n] Medwed stood up and said that the time had come for sleep – ‘for you’ he said. ‘In this hall you may sleep sound & safe, but I warn you not to stray outside its walls till the sun’s up, on your peril’.

Beds were brought from the sides of the hall and ranged in a row at one side. For Bilbo there was a little mattress of straw, and coverings of fur. He snuggled into them, too, very gladly, summer-time though it was.

Then Medwed went out, and the great door creaked & slammed. The fire burnt low; and Bilbo fell asleep. But in the night he woke; and saw^TN26 the fire had burnt to nothing but a few embers; the dwarves were asleep (by their breathing); a splash of white on the floor came from the high moon which was peering down through the smoke-hole in the roof.

There was a growling sound outside, and a noise as of some great animal scuffling at the door. Bilbo wondered what it could be – whether it could be Medwed in enchanted shape and if he would come in as a bear, and kill them. He hid under the skins, and in spite of his fright went at last to sleep again.

It was full morning when he woke – the dwarves were moving about: one of them had fallen over him on the floor, as a matter of fact, and was grumbling about it. Bofur it was.

‘Get up lazybones’ he said, ‘or there’ll be no breakfast left for you.’

Up jumped Bilbo. ‘Where is breakfast?’ said he.

‘Mostly inside us’ said the dwarves; ‘but what is left is out on the veranda. We have been about looking for Medwed, ever since the sun got up. But there is no sign of him anywhere. Breakfast we found laid on the veranda.’

‘Where is Bladorthin[?]’ said the hobbit, moving off to find breakfast, as quick as he could.

‘O[!] out and about somewhere’, they told him.

But Bilbo saw no sign of Bladorthin all day until evening. Just before sunset he came into the hall, where Bilbo and the dwarves were having supper – waited on by Medwed’s marvellous animals, as they had been all day. Of Medwed they had seen nor heard a sound, since the night before; and they were getting puzzled.

‘Where do you think he is?’ they asked Bladorthin as he came in, ‘and where have you been to all day, yourself?’

‘One question at a time – and none till after supper: I haven’t had a bite since breakfast’.

At last Bladorthin who had eaten two whole loaves (with butter and honey and clotted cream), and drunk a whole jug of mead (which is made out of honey) – pushed away his plates, and took out his pipe.

‘I will answer the second question first’ he said – ‘but bless me this is a splendid place for smoke-rings!’ And not for a long time could they get anymore out of him, he was so busy sending smokerings dodging round the pillars of the hall, changing them into all sorts of different colours, and setting them at last chasing one another out of the smoke hole in the roof. They must have looked very funny from outside – popping out into the air one after another green blue, red, silver-grey, yellow; big ones, little ones; little ones dodging through big ones, and joining into figures-of-eight, and going off like a flock of birds into the distance.

‘I have been picking out bear-tracks’ Bladorthin said at last. ‘There must have been a regular bear-meeting outside here last night. I soon saw that Medwed could not have made them all – there were far too many of them, and they were of various sizes too: I should say little bears, big [> large] bears, ordinary bears, and gigantic big bears must have been dancing outside from dark to nearly dawn. They came from almost all directions except West from over the river, from the Misty Mountains. In that direction [led >] only one set of footprints went – none coming, only going away from here. They were the largest set of all. I followed them as far as the Carrock. There they disappeared into the river, but the water was too deep and strong for me to cross just there. [I had to > beyond the Carrock >] The Carrock, if you remember, stands nearly in the middle of the river, and is join[ed] to this bank by a ford and stepping stones, but on the other side a deep swirling channel runs under its overhanging side. I had to walk miles before I could find a [ford >] wide stretch where the water was slow and shallow enough for me to swim, and then miles back to pick up the tracks. By that time it was too late for me to follow them far. They went straight away in the direction of the pine woods on the east side of the Misty Mountains, where we had our pleasant little meeting with the wargs the night before last.

‘And that I think has answered your first question, too’ ended Bladorthin, and he sat a long time silent.

The hobbit thought he knew what Bladorthin meant. ‘What shall we do’, he cried ‘– if he brings all the wargs and goblins down here, we shall all be caught and killed. But I thought you said he was not a friend of theirs!’

‘So I did – and don’t be silly. You had better go to bed. Your wits are asleepy’, said Bladorthin.^TN27

There was nothing else to do, so Bilbo did go to bed, and while the dwarves sang songs he dropped asleep, still puzzling his little [head]^TN28 about Medwed, till he dreamed a dream of hundreds of black bears dancing slow heavy dances round and round in the moonlight in the courtyard. Then he woke up and heard the same scuffling, scraping, snuffling, and growling as before.

Next morning, they were wakened by Medwed himself.

‘So here you all are still!’ he said. He picked up the hobbit and laughed: ‘not eaten by wargs or goblins, yet I see’. And he poked Mr Baggins’ waistcoat most disrespectfully. ‘Little bunny getting nice and fat again on bread and honey, I see’, he said. ‘Come and have some more!’.

So they went and had breakfast. Medwed was most jolly. He seemed to be in a splendidly good temper, and set them all laughing with his funny stories. They did [not]^TN29 have to wonder long where he had been, or why he was so nice to them; for he told them himself. He had been off over the river and right back to the mountains – from which you can guess he could travel quick, as a bear at any rate. He had soon found out, from the burnt clearing, that part of their story was true. But he had found out more than that. He had caught a warg and a goblin wandering in the woods – the goblin patrols were still hunting for the dwarves, and were fiercely angry because of the death of their great chief; and the wolves had not forgotten the burning of the chief warg’s nose, and the killing of many of his servants by Bladorthin’s fire.

So they told him. But they got no sympathy from him. He hurried home delighted to offer what help he could to Bladorthin & his friends.

‘What did you do to the goblin and the warg?’ said Bilbo.

‘Come & see!’

A goblin’s head was stuck on a pole outside Medwed’s gate, and a warg skin was nailed to a tree just outside. Medwed could be a fierce enemy. But now he was their friend; and encouraged by his kindness, they told him all their story.

This is what he promised to do for them. He would provide ponies for each of them, and a horse for Bladorthin, and would lade them with food (nuts, flour in bags; twice-baked cakes of flour and honey; sealed jars of cream; dried fruits, and pots of honey) to last them with care for weeks, yet easy enough carry.^TN30 Water he said they would not want until they came to the forest, for there were stream and springs along the road. ‘But your road through the forest is difficult and dangerous’, he said; ‘as difficult and dangerous as the path across the mountains. Water is not easy to find there, nor food. For the time is not come for nuts which is all there is growing there that can be eaten; and the wild things are dark queer and savage in there. I will provide you with skins for carrying water, which you had better fill before you enter the forest. You will see one stream, a strong black one, if you hold to the path, but I doubt if it is good to drink. I have heard that it carries enchantment, and brings a frightful drowziness. I will give you four bows and arrows,^TN31 but I doubt if you will shoot anything in the dim shadows of that place, without straying from the path – which you MUST NOT DO. And I doubt if it would be good to eat if you shot it.

‘Beyond the edge of the forest I cannot help you. There at the edge I must ask you to send back my horse and my ponies.’^TN32

They thanked him, of course, with many bows and sweepings of hoods and with many an ‘at your service, O master of the wide wooden halls!’^TN33

All the morning was busy with preparations. Soon after mid day they eat with Medwed for the last time and set off at a good pace, for said he: ‘The goblins will not dare to cross the river at the Carrock or to come near my house – it is well protected at night! – but the river bends towards the forest northwards, and so do the [forest >] mountains, and I have heard of their raiding across the river and into the forest before now! If they should track [> have tracked] you, or tracked the warg and goblin that I captured and have found my trail, they might try to cut you off that way. I should be off now as quick as may be!’.

So they said goodbye, and rode out a little gate from his high hedges on the east side. The sun was behind them, and the meadow lands lay all golden before them.^TN34 They rode N.E. as Medwed directed them towards the beginning of the track through the forest. The sun was only just going westward & the meadowlands lay all golden about them. It was difficult to think of goblins behind them, or the Dark paths before them.

After [> In] several days riding in sunny weather they met with no adventure and saw nothing save grass and flowers and birds [added: & scattered trees] and occasionally herds of red deer browsing or sitting in the noon in the shade of trees, or in the long grass with only the antlers of the harts [showing >] sticking up like dead branches of trees (thought Bilbo).

So eager were they to press on that they often rode on after dusk and into night beneath the moon, before they camped under a big tree. Then Bilbo thought he saw away to the right or to the left, the shadowy form of a great bear prowling along in the same direction. But if he dared to mention it to Bladorthin, the wizard only said: ‘Hush, hush – take no notice!’

At last one evening they camped at the very edge of the forest, which all day they could see as a black and <frowning> wall before them, getting ever nearer and nearer. The land began to slope up and up, and it seemed to Bilbo that a silence began to draw in upon them. Birds began to sing less. There were no more deer; not even rabbits to be seen. When they rested that evening, they were beneath the great overhanging trees at the edge. Their trunks were huge and gnarled, their branches twisted; their leaves were dark and long. Ivy grew about them, and trailed upon the ground.

‘This is “Mirkwood”’ said Bladorthin. ‘The greatest of all forests of the North. And now we [> you] must send back [these excellent beasts that we >] the ponies you have borrowed’.

The dwarves were inclined to grumble at this – but Blad. told them they were fools. ‘Medwed is not as far off as you think; and you had better keep your promises – to him at any rate. Mr Baggins’ eyes are sharper than yours’ said he, ‘if you have not seen each night after dark a great bear going along with us. Medwed loves these [horses >] ponies as his children – you can hardly guess what a favour he has granted you in letting them ride so far [> in letting you ride them so far]!’

‘What about your horse then?’ said Gandalf. ‘You don’t mention sending it back!’

‘I don’t, because I am not sending it’.

‘What about your promise then?’

‘I am not sending it back, I am riding it back’, said the wizard.^TN35 Nothing they could say would make him change his mind.

‘No!’ he said ‘you won’t catch me going through Mirkwood, unless I am obliged – and I am not. I told you some time ago that I was going to say goodbye, & that I had already come much further than I meant to.^TN36 You were lucky to have me to help you across the mountains! Not a step further this way, thank you! The rest is your affair – though if you ever find the dragon (& escape him again!) I hope you will remember your old friend. I have got other business on hand now that can wait no longer’.

And the next morning he said the same. The evening before the dwarves had turned the ponies’ heads back homewards, and sent them galloping away. They did not seem to mind the gathering dark – but rather to be glad to turn their tails towards the gloom of Mirkwood. As they went off, Bilbo could have sworn that a thing like a black bear left the shadows of the wood and trotted after them.

Now Bladorthin sat on the horse Medwed had lent him, and said ‘Farewell!’ Bilbo felt very unhappy. He had gone just inside the forest after breakfast, & it seemed as dark inside there in the morning as at night, and very secret – ‘a sort of watching & waiting feeling’ said the hobbit to himself.

‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ Bladorthin was saying – ‘straight through the forest is your way now. Don’t stray off the track – if you do it is a thousand to one you’ll never find the path again, or ever get out of Mirkwood; and then I don’t suppose I (or anyone else) will hear of you again!’

‘Do we really have to go through?’ said Bilbo

‘Yes you do, if you want to get to the other side. You must either go through, or give up your quest. And I am not going to allow you to back out, Mr Baggins, now – I am sure you can’t be thinking of it.’

‘No, no!’ the hobbit hastened to say (and between you and me I believe he really was speaking the truth: adventures were quite changing him) ‘No, I meant – is there no way round?’

‘There is if you care to go a hundred miles or so out of your way, north or south! But you wouldn’t get a safe path, even then. Remember you’re over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun, wherever you go. Before you could get round Mirkwood to the North, you would be right among the slopes of the North End of the Misty Mountains – and they are stiff with Goblins, hob-goblins or orcs of the worst description.^TN37 Before you could get round the forest to the south, you would come into the land of the Great Necromancer, whose dark hidden tower watches over a wide land – I don’t advise you to go that way, my dears!^TN38

‘Stick to the forest track, keep your peckers up,^TN39 hope for the best, and with a tremendous slice of luck you will come out one day and see the Long Marshes lying below you – and beyond them faint and far the top of the Lonely Mountain in the East. There is a path too across the Marshes . . .’

‘We know, we know!’ said Gandalf. ‘The marshes are on the borders of the lands we knew of old, and we have not forgotten. Thank you very much; goodbye! If you won’t come, you had better be off; and so had we. Goodbye!’

And so they parted. Bladorthin rode off west, but before he had gone out of hearing, he turned his horse, put his hands to his mouth, and shouted. They heard his voice come faintly: ‘Goodbye – Be good, take care of yourself [>yourselves] – and don’t leave the path.’

‘O Goodbye, and go away’, grumbled the dwarves, who were really very worried at his going off. There was nothing for it, however, and so they shoulder each the heavy packs they had to carry as they were now without ponies. Then they plunged into the Forest.

TEXT NOTES

1 The phrase that completes this sentence in the published book, ‘frightened like a rabbit, even if you look rather like one’ (DAA.[161]), is absent in the manuscript but present in both typescripts (1/1/57 and 1/1/38). For Tolkien’s denial of any connection between hobbits and rabbits, see his 1938 letter to The Observer (Appendix II) and also his 1971 letter to Roger Lancelyn Green (Letters p. 406). For T. A. Shippey’s rebuttal, see The Road to Middle-earth (rev. ed. p. 62), where he lists five places in the published book where Bilbo is compared to a rabbit (these correspond to DAA.76, 156, [161], 181, & 334). Note, however, that not all of these are present in the original draft (cf. pp. 93, 209, 228, 241 & 667), which supports Tolkien’s persistent and consistent denial of any connection in conception.

2 The sentence originally continued with the phrase ‘when the sun is <a late>’ followed by a final illegible word, the first letter of which seems to be l- and the fourth and fifth letters the ligature -gh, but I cannot make out the word itself.

3 For the significance of this passage in Tolkien’s mythology, and hence its appropriateness as ‘a polite thing to say among eagles’, see the last paragraph of the Commentary to Chapter VI above (p. 223).

4 Added in the margin: ‘and his fifteen chieftains [gold >] fine gold chains on their necks’.

5 This statement turned out not to be true, since in the manuscript of Chapter XVIII Bilbo encounters an eagle when he awakes on the battlefield after the Battle of Five Armies. However, there is no evidence that the battle had been foreseen this early on, and we may take this passage as evidence to the contrary. Later, after the manuscript was completed, Tolkien noticed the contradiction and changed the eagle in Chapter XVIII to a man of Lake Town (cf. pp. 678 & 683). He also changed the passage in this chapter to read as follows: ‘Bilbo never saw them again – except high and far off in the battle of Five Armies. But as that comes in at the end of this tale we will say no more about it just now’ (First Typescript, typescript page 61; Marq. 1/1/57:1), dropping the evocative final line of the original: ‘But he didn’t forget them’.

An ink emendation in the First Typescript changes the gold-giver from Gandalf (i.e., the wizard, replacing ‘Bladorthin’ in the manuscript) to ‘the dwarves’, so that ‘the gold that Gandalf sent them in remembrance’ becomes ‘the gold that the dwarves gave them’ – Tolkien having apparently decided it more appropriate for the gift to come from the surviving dwarves than the wizard.

6 This outline only takes up half of this page. The back of the sheet (1/1/23:2) is blank except for the following list of dwarf-names:

7 There might be an echo of this in the following passage from Tolkien’s ‘The Sea-Bell’ (ATB poem #15; originally published in 1934 under the title of ‘Looney’):

I crept to a wood: silent it stood

in its dead leaves; bare were its boughs.

There must I sit, wandering in wit . . .

For a year and a day there must I stay . . .

At last there came light in my long night,

and I saw my hair hanging grey.

‘Bent though I be, I must find the sea!

I have lost myself, and I know not the way,

but let me be gone!’

8 This sentence was changed several times in the course of writing. Originally it read ‘And more by good luck than by good management . . .’, immediately changed to ‘And by good management with good luck in plenty’ before finally reaching wording almost the same as that of the published book (cf. DAA.163): ‘And by good management and good luck, I have done it.’

9 The wizard’s departure had been prefigured for careful readers as far back as the opening chapter; otherwise his partnership with the thirteen dwarves would preclude the need for Bilbo’s addition as the lucky fourteenth member of the company.

10 Shanks’ ponies (later altered by Tolkien to shankses’ ponies), is an old expression meaning travel by foot – or, as the OED puts it, ‘one’s own legs as a means of conveyance’. Variants included Shanks’ mare, Shanks’ nag, etc., but Bladorthin chose the one most appropriate to hobbits and dwarves. Cf. the parallel term ‘ash breeze’ used by old-time sailors to refer to those dead calms when they must row their boats with ashwood oars.

11 This sentence and the one following it were altered to read ‘But there is somebody, that I know of, who lives not far away. That somebody made the steps on this hill’. The word ‘somebody’ was probably inserted in order to tie in with the wizard’s speech a few paragraphs later: ‘The Somebody that I spoke about’ (p. 231, emphasis mine). Similarly, the later line ‘What’s <his> name, and why did he call it The Carrock?’ (ibid.) is changed into the passive ‘And why is it called The Carrock?’

12 Added in top margin and marked for insertion at this point: ‘which he calls Sorneldin > Sinrock > Lamrock > the Carrock.’ For more on the significance of these invented names, see section iv of the Commentary below.

13 Tolkien revised the opening of this sentence to read ‘Refreshed if still hungry they went on’, then revised it again to read ‘When they had dried in the sun now strong & warm they were refreshed if still hungry; and they crossed over the ford . . .’

14 Furrier: a trapper, fur-trader. Coney, Conies: an archaic word for rabbit, still in use in rural dialects in England (cf. Sam Gamgee, LotR.680–82). Bilbo is thinking of a rustic trapper or poacher; his comment about ‘turn[ing] their skins into arctic fox’ probably contains not so much a view of the innate crookedness of fur-traders as a deliberate echo by Tolkien of Elizabethan slang, where ‘coney-catching’ meant a con game or swindle (the guileless victim being the rabbit or ‘coney’ to the conman’s weasel or fox). The latter meaning is remembered today chiefly because of a series of pamphlets by an early rival of Shakespeare’s, playwright Roger Greene, entitled The Art of Conny-catching [1591–2].

15 Several paragraphs followed this statement in the manuscript, each crossed out in turn (some before reaching the end of a sentence). Taken together, they reflect Tolkien’s considerable uncertainty about just what sort of being Medwed was. I reproduce the entire sequence here as it was originally written.

16 Initially this passage ran ‘before the giants and goblins came’, then the phrase ‘and goblins’ was deleted. This is significant in light of the rest of the sentence, which establishes a sequence of events: first came the great bears, then the giants, then the men of old, then Smaug and the goblins, the latter ‘out of the North’ (i.e., from Angband/Utumno/Thangorodrim). Either heritage, pre-giant mountain bear or pre-goblin man-of-old, marks Medwed as an aborigine (in the original sense), the last remnant of a displaced and vanished people.

For more on the werebear theme, see the Commentary below, section ii.

17 ‘a high thorn hedge through which you could not see nor scramble’ – note that the thorn tree was traditionally linked with the faerie folk in English and Irish folklore. In a traditional fairy tale or ballad, such a detail would signal the eldritch nature of the setting and its denizens; by including it in his description of Medwed’s house, Tolkien may be reinforcing the otherworldly, slightly eerie, uncanny nature of its inhabitant.

18 Since Medwed had ‘never heard’ of Bladorthin, how was the wizard familiar with the layout of Medwed’s yard and gate? Unless we assume Bladorthin frequently travelled incognito and in various guises – something we know is true of Gandalf the Grey as Tolkien later conceived him – then the simplest explanation is that he had not himself earlier visited the place but had had it described to him by his ‘cousin’, Radagast (the later Radagast the Brown).

19 In revisions, the word ‘even’ was deleted from the phrase ‘towering tall above even Bladorthin’, in keeping with the image of the wizard as merely a ‘little old man’ to the casual eye (cf. Bilbo’s first impression back in Chapter I, p. 30). Tolkien may, of course, have been deliberately writing from Bilbo’s perspective; after travelling so long with the dwarves and wizard, anyone taller than them all would stand out in the hobbit’s mind. Anders Stenström has done extensive calculations based on this paragraph to determine just how tall Beorn must have been (‘The Figure of Beorn’, Arda 1987, volume VII [1992]), but this seems too elaborate a framework on too slender a basis, given the ‘faerie magic’ aspect of much of the tale’s details.

20 ‘many missing buttons’ – lost when he escaped through the goblins’ ‘back door’ at the end of Chapter V (p. 163).

21 Medwed’s reply was expanded to read ‘Yes yes: not a bad fellow I know him well. Now I know who you are or who you say you are. What do you want?’

22 Bladorthin’s use here of ‘the Lands over West’ (a phrase which persisted into the published book; DAA.168) seems to be juxtaposed with ‘these countries’ – that is, the lands beyond ‘the Edge of the Wild’ (p. 244); the settled country contrasted with Wilderland (or, to use the later LotR terminology, Eriador as opposed to Rhovanion). If this is indeed the case, Tolkien did not pick up on and reuse the name elsewhere, leaving this its sole appearance. Perhaps more significantly, ‘Lands over West’ seems to be The Hobbit’s equivalent of the later Western Lands, a phrase used in the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion (HME IV.159 & 161) and the ‘(Earliest) Annals of Valinor’ (HME IV.264) to refer to Beleriand. By contrast, the earlier name ‘the Great Lands’ had applied to all lands East of the Sundering Sea although, like ‘Middle-earth’ itself, it seems to have sometimes been applied more to the westernmost of those lands. These parallels offer yet another hint that Bilbo’s world is more than just closely tied to that of the heroes of the older legendarium; it is the same world at a slightly later date.

23 Note that the original geography is still in place, where Medwed’s hall lay to the south of their intended route rather than to the north of it as in the published text.

24 The bottom of the next page (manuscript page 88; Marq. 1/1/7:12) is marked with a number of squiggles in ink, some of which are either overwritten by the last few lines of text or else scribbled over them (it really is impossible to tell). It seems as if Tolkien’s pen was giving him trouble, since he also traced over several words near the middle of the page with wider strokes in a darker ink.

These ink trills probably indicate a pause in composition, and I think it significant that similar doodling appears on the final page of Plot Notes A (Marq. 1/1/23:10). Since the rest of this chapter is based upon and derives directly from the very rough drafting of Plot Notes A, those Plot Notes were almost certainly written when the narrative had reached this exact spot.

25 This poem appears in the manuscript almost exactly as in the final text, with only a few minor changes. The replacement of ‘till’ with ‘The’ in the seventh line and the rephrasing of ‘neath [clouds]’ with ‘where racing clouds’ in line sixteen are made in ink in the manuscript, probably at the time of original composition. Such fluency in Tolkien’s poetry generally means that the poem was probably drafted on loose sheets that have not survived. The alternate option, that the poem predates the current work and was incorporated into The Hobbit but not written especially for it, is rendered unlikely by the explicit mention within the poem of both ‘the lonely Mountain’ and ‘the Dragons lair’, the latter corrected to ‘dragon’s lair’ in the typescript.

For the most part the earliest draft and published poem are word-for-word identical, aside from the addition of punctuation and adjustments of capitalization (and the replacement of ‘plumes’ with ‘tassels’ in line thirteen and ‘neath’ with ‘under’ in line fifteen). Curiously enough, though, the final line of the draft is later rejected and replaced by an additional five lines (that is, a new line to conclude the fifth stanza and a complete new sixth stanza to follow). The old line (‘No light but of the moon was there’) was replaced by the following in the typescript (typescript page 69; 1/1/67:9):

and flying smoke was in the air.

It left the world and took its flight

over the wide seas of the night.

The moon set sail upon the gale,

and stars were fanned to leaping lights.

This, of course, agrees exactly with the published text (DAA.178). As with the poem itself, no drafting of this additional stanza has been found among the Hobbit papers.

26 The words ‘and saw’ were cancelled, probably at the time of writing; their absence concentrates the effectiveness of the scene as Bilbo lies awake and listening in the dark.

Note that Bilbo here imagines himself as being in exactly the position of Beowulf’s companions when they bed down in the great empty hall of Heorot waiting for Grendel to come:

. . . many

valiant sea-fighters sank to hall-rest.

None of them thought he would ever return

from that long hall-floor to his native land,

the people and home-fort where he’d been raised,

for each one knew dark murder had taken

too many men of the Danes already,

killed in the wine-hall.

—Beowulf, tr. Howell Chickering, lines 689–696a.

27 The neologism ‘asleepy’ was almost at once changed to simply ‘sleepy’.

28 This missing word has been supplied editorially on the basis of the typescript version of this passage (1/1/57:11); that Tolkien wrote ‘little’ at the end of one line and began the next with ‘about Medwed’ is an indication of the speed at which he was setting down the draft of the story.

29 Once again the missing [bracketed] word has been supplied editorially, as required by the sense of the passage. This agrees with the sense of the typescript text of this passage, which combines the two sentences with a semicolon and begins the second clause with ‘nor did they have to wonder long . . .’ (the exact reading that remained into the published book; cf. DAA.181).

30 This passage, detailing their provisions for the journey through Mirkwood, was changed to read as follows in the typescript:

This was then later revised in black ink on the typescripts to a reading very close to the final, published text:

31 The specific detail of four bows was soon lost, replaced in the typescript by the more general ‘some bows’, the reading which remained thereafter. But the idea of the dwarves having only four bows resurfaced later, a good example of the phenomenon Christopher Tolkien points out (BLT I.9) where details which disappear between versions of one of Tolkien’s stories are not necessarily rejected but sometimes merely omitted through compression; see p. 357 below.

32 Here the paragraph ends in the manuscript (on the bottom of manuscript page 94, the verso of manuscript page 93), but the typescript continues Medwed/Beorn’s speech for one more significant sentence: ‘But I wish you all speed, and my house is open to you, if ever you come back this way again.’ – a bit of foreshadowing of Bilbo’s return visit, perhaps, retrospectively tipped into the earlier scene.

33 In the typescript, this is followed with another sentence, tying their current activities into the quest as a whole: ‘But their spirits sank at his grave words, and they all felt that the adventure was far more dangerous than they had thought, while all the time, even if they passed all perils the dragon was waiting at the end’. The final passage was later revised slightly, in ink, to read ‘even if they passed all the perils of the road, the dragon was waiting at the end’ (1/1/57:12).

34 At this point the text breaks off, and the bottom half of this page is a pencil map showing the relative positions of the mountain-pass (Chapter IV), Goblingate (Chapter V), the wargs’ clearing in the pinewood (Chapter VI), the unnamed great river (later the Anduin) as well as a tributary thereto running down from the mountains, the Carrock and Medwed’s steading, the borders of Mirkwood, and the path running northwest through the great forest. A dotted north/south line between Medwed’s steading and the entrance of the forest path represents Gandalf & Company’s route. This early sketch formed the basis for the more finished map appearing on Plate I [bottom] and hence ultimately the westerly portion of the Wilderland map that appeared as an endpaper in the published book (DAA.[399]).

In order to bring the text into accord with the map, a number of changes were made at the time of the typescript; no drafting of these changes survives. First, a penciled note was added to the end of the preceding paragraph in the manuscript: ‘Beorn tells them of North<ern> paths’. Then the text was re-arranged (cf. DAA.184–6), and a new passage was added to reflect the new conception:

^† Editor’s note: This stream appears as a southernly tributary to the Great River on the sketch-map.

35 There is a change in the handwriting at this point (the middle of manuscript page 97), indicating a slight pause in composition: the writing on the remainder of this page is smaller, darker, and neater than what precedes it.

36 Bladorthin’s intended departure is made explicit on Ms. page 79 (p. 230 of this book, corresponding to DAA.163), but it had been prefigured as far back as the first chapter (see the commentary on the ‘lucky number’ on page 14). Note, however, that while in the published book the wizard stresses his pressing engagements elsewhere (‘some pressing business away south; and I am already late through bothering with you people’ – DAA.187), here he states less emphatically ‘I have got other business on hand now that can wait no longer.’ Bladorthin also rather tartly remarks ‘you won’t catch me going through Mirkwood, unless I am obliged – and I am not’ – hardly words of reassurance to those about to undertake that very journey. Finally, Tolkien heightened the dwarves’ dismay at his departure via the insertion of the following passage into the published book: ‘Then they knew that Gandalf was going to leave them at the very edge of Mirkwood, and they were in despair’ (DAA.187); this passage first appears in the typescript (typescript page 74; 1/1/57:14). As we shall see subsequently, Tolkien at this point had no clear idea what Bladorthin’s ‘other business’ might be, merely that the dramatic necessity of the story required his departure at this point.

37 ‘Goblins, hob-goblins, or orcs of the worst description’ – in this, the only mention of hob-goblins or orcs in the original draft of The Hobbit, Tolkien established a false hierarchy between the three terms which he later explicitly spelled out in the prefatory note added to the revised paperback edition in 1966: ‘Orc is not an English word. It occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds)’ (DAA.[27]). As Tolkien himself later discovered when researching possible origins of the word ‘hobbit’ for the OED, ‘Alas! one conclusion is that the statement that hobgoblins were “a larger kind” is the reverse of the original truth’ (JRRT to Roger Lancelyn Green, 8th January 1971; Letters p. 406) – that is, the ‘hob’ in hobgoblin is probably a diminutive rather than the reverse. A hob-goblin, then, would in actual folklore usage be smaller than a regular goblin. So great is Tolkien’s influence over the fantasy genre, however, that the distinction has persisted into other writers’ work (such as that of the creators of the D&D game and the many novels derived thereof), even though based upon a fallacy.

For the distinction between ‘goblin’ and ‘orc’ in Tolkien’s work, see the commentary on Chapter IV (pp. 137–8).

38 The Great Necromancer’s ‘dark hidden tower’ was prefigured as far back as Chapter I. Gandalf & Company would certainly not want to go that way, since doing so spelled doom for his father’s dwarven party a century before. During the writing of The Lord of the Rings, the place gained an elven (Sindarin) name, first Dol Dúgol (‘The Dark Hill’), then Dol Dúghul (a refinement of essentially the same meaning), and finally Dol Guldur (‘Hill of Sorcery’, or perhaps ‘Sorcerer’s Hill’ – a rough parallel to The Necromancer’s Tower). See HME VII.178, 233–4, & 244 for the arising of the elven name, and Christopher Tolkien’s discussion of the first Middle-earth map on pages 296, 298, and 306 of the same volume for its placement (originally the tower was placed further to the east and only shifted when the border of Mirkwood contracted on the evolving map). On the relationship between this tower and Sauron’s tower in ‘The Lay of Leithian’, see the Commentary on pp. 20 & 83.

39 ‘Keep your peckers up’ – probably the most startling phrase in the entire manuscript, this is not nearly as salacious as it sounds but was common British slang of a slightly earlier period (in keeping with the yesteryear air of most of the hobbit’s accoutrements, especially in the Bag-End passage – all the OED’s citations are from the 1850s through 1870s, and include a passage from Dickens and one from Gilbert & Sullivan). Like all slang, it’s difficult to translate exactly but meant roughly ‘keep your courage (spirits, resolution) up’. In short, it’s the equivalent of the slightly later but much more familiar ‘keep a stiff upper lip’.

(i)
Bears

An important fact people often overlook in discussing The Hobbit is that it was originally written for a very specific audience, Tolkien’s three sons. While this is widely known as a biographical detail, few take into account the degree to which their likes and dislikes played a part in shaping the story. As Tolkien himself said, an author writes primarily to please himself and uses his own interests as a guide – something we see time and again in The Hobbit, with its incorporation of favorite themes and frequent borrowings from Tolkien’s professional subjects. Yet a writer is also naturally inclined to include things that he knows from first-hand experience will interest his audience, just as he may be tempted to exclude or down-play themes he knows bore them.¹ From the evidence of Tolkien’s various children’s stories, all of which originated as tales told to (or written down and then read to) John, Michael, and Christopher, we can emphatically conclude that one element they liked very much was Bears.²

Bears appear prominently in a number of Tolkien’s stories for his children, most notably in the figure of the North Polar Bear (Karhu), Father Christmas’s sidekick who provides most of the comic relief throughout the twenty-three-year series that makes up the Father Christmas Letters. Karhu’s antics provide most of the plot elements in this episodic epistolary story, either to cause some disaster that endangered the arrival of some particular requested present or to save the day in the nick of time (most notably in the battles against the goblins). In time North Polar Bear (or NPB, as he is also sometimes called) is joined by two rapscallion nephews, Paksu and Valkotukka, who become continuing minor characters very much in their uncle’s disaster-causing mode. Yet another bear, Cave-Bear, enters the story in the 1932 letter, and his progeny, the ‘Cave-cubs’, make an appearance a few years later in the letter for 1934.

Bears also play a prominent role in Mr. Bliss, whose unintended entourage runs afoul of the three bears: Archie, Teddy, and Bruno – based, according to Joan Tolkien, on the three teddy bears owned by Tolkien’s three sons at the time.³ In general the bear highwaymen are comic villains, mischievous rogues rather like the North Polar Bear in character, but openly larcenous in behavior. They are also, on the surface, considerably more threatening than the benign NPB, threatening at one point to eat our hero if he doesn’t do what they want. Tolkien assures the reader that they wouldn’t actually do it (Mr. Bliss, page 14), but even the possibility puts Mr. Bliss’s bears somewhere between Karhu and Medwed on the danger meter. Interestingly enough, there is even one scene in Mr. Bliss reminiscent of The Hobbit, where the bears have Mr. Bliss’s companions to supper at their house in the woods: ‘quite a large house, long and low, with no upstairs’ (Mr. Bliss, page 32). Even the illustration of the bears’ dinner party, while completely different in detail (due to the inclusion of modern-day amenities such as chairs, tablecloth, cutlery, overhanging lamp, and curtains), bears a striking resemblance to the illustration of ‘Beorn’s Hall’ in The Hobbit. In particular, both pictures use precisely the same point of view, looking down the length of the house or hall (compare DAA.170 [or H-S#116] with Mr. Bliss, page 31).

Medwed/Beorn does correspond to the bears in The Father Christmas Letters in two significant ways. Like Cave-Bear, Medwed is a survivor of an older, vanished world. Father Christmas describes Cave-Bear as ‘the eldest of the few remaining Cave-bears’ and casually remarks ‘I had not seen him for centuries’. Furthermore, the walls of Cave-Bear’s home are decorated with Neolithic cave-paintings strikingly similar to those found in the real world at Lascaux and Altamira. We are told that these have been in his family for over ninety generations, since before the time of Cave-men (‘when the North Pole was somewhere else’). However, unlike Medwed, Cave-Bear has not been expelled from his ancestral home by the goblins but simply ignores their presence as nothing more than an annoyance. Presumably, therefore, he shares Polar Bear’s immunity to goblin attacks – Father Christmas says in passing that ‘of course Goblins can’t hurt him [NPB], but their caves are very dangerous’, and while North Polar Bear is lost in the darkness he ‘boxed one or two [goblins] flat that came and poked him in the dark, and had said some very nasty things to them all’ (FCL, 1932 letter). Even more reminiscent of The Hobbit (and the Battle of Five Armies in particular) is the description in the next year’s letter of Polar Bear fighting a swarm of goblins that had invaded Father Christmas’s home, Cliff House: ‘Polar Bear was squeezing, squashing, trampling, boxing, and kicking Goblins sky-high, and roaring like a zoo, and the Goblins were yelling like engine whistles. He was splendid’ (to which NPB modestly adds ‘SAY NO MORE: I ENJOYED IT IMMENSELY!’ – FCL, 1933 letter). The illustration of this letter shows the bear crushing a goblin in each hand while trampling another, knocking down a fourth, and kicking two more across the room. Interestingly enough, the North Polar Bear seems to have swelled to twice his normal size in this depiction of the battle-scene – cf. Tolkien’s remark that Medwed/Beorn ‘seemed to have grown almost to giant-size in his wrath’ upon his appearance on the battlefield (DAA. 349). Clearly, the silly old bear could, upon provocation, become a dangerous foe – just as Tolkien says of Medwed, he is a good friend and a dangerous enemy (‘Medwed could be a fierce enemy. But now he was their friend; and encouraged by his kindness, they told him all their story . . .’ – p. 241).

This sense of danger held in check is very much present throughout the Medwed section, especially in its account of their first night in his hall (Bladorthin having already warned Gandalf & Company that the skin-changer can be ‘appalling when angry’). After welcoming them into his hall and feeding them ‘[s]uch a dinner [as] they had not eaten since they left the house of Elrond’,⁴ he warns them not to go outside till sun is up ‘on your peril’ (p. 239). Add to this Bilbo’s fears of being killed in his sleep when he hears growling in the night ‘and a noise as of some great animal scuffling at the door’ (ibid.), and the scene with the murdered orc and skinned warg (p. 241) which reveals just what Medwed does to those he considers his enemies.

All of this alarm is, of course, fully justified: unlike wolves and eagles, bears really DO eat people – a fact of which Shakespeare was well aware, hence his famous stage direction for one doomed character: ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’ (A Winter’s Tale, Act III scene iii), followed by a gruesome off-stage mauling as the character is torn limb from limb. The largest land predators, bears maul people every year even today. Yet, perhaps due to the influence of the teddy bear,⁵ they have ironically enough escaped the sinister reputation acquired by their lupine and aquiline cohorts. Many people who would be terrified to encounter a wolf in the wild actually approach bears they encounter in wilderness areas and national parks, often with tragic results. Bilbo knows better, and his attitude toward bears is wary caution, even after friendly relations with Medwed are firmly established.

(ii)
Bothvar Bjarki

Now that we know more about the dating of The Hobbit (see ‘The Chronology of Composition’), we can see that Medwed’s resemblance to the North Polar Bear is a case of source rather than influence. Indeed, NPB’s transformation in the 1932–33 letters from a figure of fun to a heroic doughty warrior (a process paralleled in The Hobbit with the dwarves and Bilbo himself as the tone shifts in the final chapters to become less like a fairy-tale and more like a saga – as CSL put it, ‘as if the battle of Toad Hall had become a serious heimsókn and Badger had begun to talk like Njal’)⁶ might be attributed to the influence of The Hobbit on the older series, particularly since it occurs just at the time when our best evidence suggests Tolkien was writing the story of Bilbo’s adventures. A far more promising source (as opposed to parallel) for Tolkien’s werebear lies in his professional interests. As so often, the figure of Medwed/Beorn marks one of those grounds where Tolkien’s scholarship and his storytelling for his children meet.

In this case, the flash-point is the story of Bothvar Bjarki. The lost Bjarkamál, a poem apparently similar to those preserved in the Elder Edda, told the story of a man who could at times assume the form of a bear. The original story is lost, but elements of it can be glimpsed from works it influenced, including both Beowulf and Hrolf Kraki’s Saga.⁷ Underlying both the epic poem and the saga according to some theories is a folk-tale about a feral child raised by bears, the Bear’s-Son Story. Tolkien himself was greatly interested in these speculations, and actually re-created the lost folktale in an unpublished short story, ‘Sellic Spell’.⁸

Bothvar’s story is only part of the greater saga of King Hrolf and his champions,⁹ which has been compared to the King Arthur and Charlemagne cycles: the story of a great king and his magnificent court, his brave champions (of whom Bothvar is the greatest) and his vile, deadly foes. In the best tradition the saga is full of bravery, treachery, lust, incest, enchantments, transformations, and battles. Bothvar himself is one of three sons of an unlucky prince who, rejecting the improper advances of his stepmother (a Lappish witch), was turned into a bear by the evil queen. A bear by day and a man by night, he begets triplets on a childhood sweetheart¹⁰ before being killed by hunters: the eldest child is only half-human, the middle one human save for a distorted foot, and the youngest, Bothvar, fully human – in appearance at least.¹¹ Eventually Bothvar grows up, avenges his father, and sets out on a heroic career, two of his greatest deeds being the transformation of a coward into a hero and the slaying of a Grendel-like beast that haunted King Hrolf’s hall. Becoming the chief of Hrolf’s champions, he marries the king’s daughter and becomes literally his right-hand man (‘Bothvar was prized and esteemed above them all, and sat on the king’s right hand next to him’). The most extraordinary event of his career, however, comes at its very end: in the final battle where Hrolf Kraki’s champions are besieged by an army of elves, norns, and evil men led by the king’s half-sister (the elf-woman Skuld) and her husband Hjorvarth. Although vastly outnumbered the king and eleven of his twelve champions fight bravely, aided by a mysterious ally:

So long as the bear fights for them, Hrolf Kraki’s forces triumph against overwhelming odds. However, one of the champions (the redeemed coward mentioned earlier, who has now become the most brutal of the champions) frets that Bothvar is nowhere to be seen on the battlefield and leaves the field seeking him. He finds Bothvar sitting in a trance and awakes him, urging him to be mindful of his glory, to join the battle and not hide like a coward. At that moment, Bothvar wakes and the bear vanishes. Bjarki berates his fellow champion (‘You have not been so helpful to the king by this action of yours as you think’) and the two men go outside, where they find that the tide of battle has turned against the heroes. Queen Skuld now begins to use black magic against them (‘she . . . had not brought any of her tricks into play while the bear was in king Hrolf’s host; but there was now such a change as when dark night follows the bright day’ – Gwyn Jones, p. 315), summoning up a monstrous boar and causing the dead to rise again when slain and continue fighting. Bothvar, King Hrolf, and the rest are all slain, only to be later avenged by Bothvar’s two brothers (the half-human outlaw Elgfrothi and King Thorir Houndsfoot) aided by a force sent by King Hrolf’s other half-sister (who is also his mother – it’s a complicated family tree), the Swedish Queen Yrsa.

Yet despite his apparent derivation from, or inspiration by, Bothvar Bjarki, Medwed/Beorn differs greatly from the ancient hero of the North. Medwed is a solitary, without wife or kin, living alone with his animals (indeed, it’s hinted that he might be an animal, or at least as much animal as human). Bothvar is one of three brothers (in the best fairy-tale tradition), each as extraordinary in his own way as he. Bjarki has parents and grandparents, and his father’s and mother’s tragedy is directly responsible for his prowess and strange powers. By contrast, Medwed notably lacks the ancestry established for most other characters in Tolkien’s story, including Bilbo, Gandalf/Thorin, Elrond, and later Bard. Wifeless and childless, he seems wholly without kinsmen or friends of his own kind (whatever that is), unless we count the unseen bears who rendezvous with him in the forest. Bothvar, by contrast, marries King Hrolf’s daughter Drifa and has several children by her. In this, and in personality, Medwed/Beorn seems less like Bothvar and more like his eldest brother Elgfrothi, the wildest of the three.

This Elgfrothi is ‘of a rather strange kind. He was a man above, but an elk from the navel down’ (hence his name, Elk-Frothi or elk-Frodo).¹² Unlike Bothvar, who becomes the champion of Hrolf Kraki’s court, Frothi becomes an outlaw, ‘an evil-doer, killing men for their money,’ living by himself in a hut in the mountains and waylaying travellers. Elgfrothi is unnaturally strong, beginning his exile after he has crippled many men and even killed some at wrestling games (in this he is slightly reminiscent of the hapless Túrin’s early history as an outlaw and robber); however, we are also told (rather ambiguously) that while he kills men for their money, ‘he had given peace to many men who were of little strength’. Despite this, however, he is not all bad: he bears no ill will to his more fortunate brothers and indeed offers to split all his gains with them (which by this point amounted to ‘immense wealth’ – Gwyn Jones, p. 271). After Bothvar has avenged their father, he visits his elder brother and Elgfrothi makes Bjarki drink his blood, making our hero stronger than ever. Together Elgfrothi and Bjarki seem to have provided hints that Tolkien combined into one character, who shares the elusive nature of his inspirations.

The dichotomy of Elgfrothi and Medwed’s solitariness contrasted with Bjarki’s gregariousness as a natural leader of men may explain one curious feature of the Beorn story: at the end of the book (here we are anticipating a bit), Tolkien breaks narrative continuity to tell us that Medwed/Beorn gathered the woodmen to him and ‘became a great chief afterwards in those regions & ruled a wide land between the mountains & the wood; & it is said that for many generations the men of his line had the power of taking bear’s shape, & some were grim men & bad’ – shades of Elgfrothi, perhaps? – ‘but most were in heart like Beorn, if less in size & strength. In their day the last goblins were hunted from the Misty Mountains & a new peace came over the edge of the Wild’.¹³ We are also told, in The Lord of the Rings, that at the time of Frodo’s journey some 80 years later the ‘Beornings’, as they were now called, were ruled by Beorn’s son, Grimbeorn the Old (LotR.245).

The motif of Medwed-Beorn as a chieftain or leader of an independent people would seem to derive from the hitherto neglected middle brother, Thorir Houndsfoot (‘He had hound’s feet on him from the instep . . . though for the rest he was the most handsome of men’ – Gwyn Jones pp. 268–9). When it comes his turn to set out and seek his fortune, he travels to the land of the Gauts, who make him their king ‘by reason of his size’ (the Gauts very practically pick whoever fits the throne best as their next king, rather than the other way around – Gwyn Jones, pp. 271–2). Thorir resembles Bothvar so much that when the latter shows up for a visit Thorir’s wife the queen mistakes him for her husband, and only Bothvar’s innate chivalry prevents him from cuckolding his brother the king in a scene strongly resembling an episode in the Welsh tale ‘Pwyll Prince of Dyfed,’ the first of the four branches of the Mabinogi. By incorporating echoes of the displaced prince becoming a king of men in his own right (or, in this case, creating a new people named after himself, along the lines of the historical Scyldings), Tolkien seems to be harkening back to the third of these three remarkable brothers.

One curious theme, hinted at in Tolkien’s notes and outlines, was never fully realized in the finished book. As the section of drafting given in Text Note 15 above indicates, Tolkien hesitated over whether or not Medwed was under some sort of enchantment, finally coming down with the magnificently equivocal statement that he is ‘under no enchantment but his own’. However, against this we must set the plot notes given between this and the next chapter, sketching out events between the guests bedding down for the night in Medwed’s hall in what is now the middle of Chapter VII to their capture by wood-elves at the beginning of Chapter IX. Written while Chapter VII was still being drafted, in these plot notes Tolkien states unequivocally: ‘Let bear be enchanted’ (1/1/23:5; see p. 293), underlining the point for emphasis. Nor did he forget this motif: Plot Notes F, a half-page of late pencilled notes written on the back of an unsent letter, ends with a mention of ‘Battle of Five armies and disenchantment of Beorn’ (1/1/23:3; see p. 629).

The idea underlying these two isolated references is never made explicit, but taken in context with Medwed/Beorn’s altered personality and behavior at the end of the book, they suggest that his ‘disenchantment’ and becoming a leader of men are linked. The exact nature of the enchantment, and the circumstances of its breaking, are obscure; mysteries like so much else about Medwed-Beorn. Perhaps it is even self-imposed (‘under no enchantment but his own’). In any case, in some way his role in the battle – killing the goblin-chief, slaying and scattering his followers – apparently fulfills the unknown conditions for breaking his ‘enchantment’. But unlike Bothvar, who projects his bear-form once and once only, Medwed/Beorn retains his shape-shifting ability and passes it along to his descendants. Even more curiously, the scanty information in LotR does not refer to his death but merely indicates that the rule has now passed to his son; from the text it is impossible to say that he did not eventually return at last to the mountains, vanishing back into his origins like Scyld Scefing (Shield Sheafing).¹⁴

(iii)
Beorn’s Hall

Like the figure of Medwed/Beorn himself, the illustration of his hall that accompanies the published book marks another mingling of Tolkien’s erudition with his storytelling gifts. A moody, evocative drawing in its own right, it exists in two distinct variants. The earlier, ‘Firelight in Beorn’s house’, is the more striking of the two, making more use of shadows and having red flames emanate from the central fire-pit. It also presents the hall from a decided slant, leaving the far end out of the viewer’s line of sight. A black and white reproduction of this piece appears in Artist & Illustrator (H-S#115) and in The Annotated Hobbit (DAA.171), but the original with its touch of colour has so far as I know never been published before: see Plate VI [bottom] in this book. The slight use of colour probably led to this original depiction of Beorn’s hall being rejected for publication: even a speck of colour would require the entire picture to be produced in colour, a much more expensive process than that for black-and-white art. The similar ‘Troll’s Hill’ – see Plate IV [bottom] – which was also not used in any edition of The Hobbit published in Tolkien’s lifetime, was probably rejected for the same reason.¹⁵

The second or replacement illustration, ‘Beorn’s Hall’ (DAA.170, H-S#116), offers a straightforward look down the length of the hall at more or less eye level, with a clear view of the long table (now with stump-seats), the fire-pit, a doorway at the far end, and a louver in the roof allowing smoke to escape. This drawing, being entirely in black and white, was used in the 1937 Hobbit and has been reproduced many times since.

A curious feature of the original, rejected illustration was discovered by Tolkien scholar J. S. Ryan in 1990:¹⁶ Tolkien had modelled ‘Firelight in Beorn’s house’ very closely on an illustration of a Norse mead-hall that had appeared in a work published just a few years before, An Introduction to Old Norse (1927), by his friend and collaborator, E. V. Gordon.¹⁷ And not just any mead-hall: the illustration appears in the midst of Gordon’s excerpt from Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, a section he titles ‘Bothvar Bjarki at the Court of King Hrolf’ (EVG, pp. 27–8). What’s more, since Hrolf Kraki is the same figure as Beowulf’s Hrothulf, nephew to the Danish king, his hall is better known to modern-day readers by its Old English name: Heorot, the Grendel-haunted seat of old King Hrothgar. Tolkien, then, has modeled Medwed-Beorn’s hall on a building he had studied carefully – in fact, the most famous such hall in Old English literature, every detail of whose description had been scrutinized by generations of philologists and archeologists.¹⁸ It’s just another example of his fiction bringing vividly to life something that came out of his scholarship, offering us a re-creation of what it’d be like to spend the night in such a building.

(iv)
The Carrock

As noted above (cf. Text Note 12), Tolkien did not originally bestow upon this geographical feature the name it bears now. Instead in the top margin of the page (manuscript page 79; 1/1/7:3), he scribbled the sequence Sorneldin > Sinrock > Lamrock > the Carrock.

Sorneldin would seem to derive from Tolkien’s invented languages, possibly the Gnomish (Sindarin) words for rock (sarn) and point (nel) – cf. the Gnomish Lexicon [1917], pp. 67, 60. More probably, it derives from the Qenya (Quenya) word for eagle (sorn, sorne), one of the derivatives of which is soron (high peak, pinnacle, crag) – cf. the Qenya Lexicon [1917–1920], p. 86. If so, then a memory of the rejected name might have influenced Tolkien when he came to illustrate the scene; see below.

Sinrock seems not to be Elvish at all, unless I have misread the (hastily scribbled) word and the third letter is actually -r-: sir being the Sindarin word for ‘river’ (Gnomish Lexicon p. 67) – cf. the great river of Beleriand, the Sirion, and Moria’s ‘Gate-stream’, the Sirannon. ‘River-rock’ suits the Carrock exceptionally well as a name, but it is unlike Tolkien to use mixed (Elven/English) forms by combining a Sindarin prefix with an English root, which may have lead to the word’s rejection. It seems far more likely that the name is a modernization of Old English: sin- (great, huge) + -rocc (rock): ‘The Great Rock’.

Lamrock I can find no explanation at all within the invented languages, the closest equivalents being Qenya lama (flock) and lambe (tongue), neither of which seems appropriate. Nor does the Old English word lam seem a likely candidate, as it means earth, dirt, or soil (all preserved in its modern descendant, loam). The answer probably lies, as in so much else of Tolkien’s non-Elven geographic nomenclature, in the rich field of English place-names.

Carrock, the fourth in this hastily-written sequence and the name chosen from that point forward, derives from a dialectical Old English (Old Northumbrian) borrowing from the Celtic. That borrowed word, carr, came to be especially applied to isolated rocks standing in the sea just off the Scottish and Northumbrian coasts, a close parallel to the water-surrounded Carrock of our story. Curiously enough, the root Celtic word (from which our modern word crag also descends) is itself an anomaly that has caused scholars of the Celtic languages much puzzlement. The various forms of it in Welsh, Irish, Scots, and Manx, while obviously sharing a common ancestor, do not follow the normal laws of sound-changes that would enable philologists to establish exactly how that lost ancestor would have been spelled or pronounced. It is thus one of those ‘asterisk words’ which, as T. A. Shippey points out, is exactly the kind of thing that attracted Tolkien’s attention.

As for the exact spelling ‘carrock’, Jim Allan’s An Introduction to Elvish [1974] states that ‘Carrock Fell is a mountain peak in the Skiddaw group in Cumberland’ (Allan p. 174). However, as Taum Santoski discovered, Tolkien’s source was probably his old mentor, Joseph Wright,¹⁹ who lists the word in Volume I of his monumental English Dialect Dictionary, noting that it was variously spelt currick (in Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland), carrock (Northumberland, Cumberland), corrock (‘North Country’), currack (‘North Country’, Durham), curragh (Durham), currock (Northumberland, Cumberland), and kirock (‘North Country’) and pronounced ke-rek. Wright defines the word as ‘1. A cairn, a heap of stones, used as a boundary mark, burial place, or guide for travellers’ and ‘2. A distant mountain by which, when the sun appears over it, the country folk tell the time of day’ (English Dialect Dictionary, Volume I, page 845).

We know that Tolkien was familiar with Wright’s book and used it often; in 1923, fresh from completing his A Middle English Vocabulary [1922] and deep into the Sir Gawain project, he wrote to Mrs. Wright (herself a distinguished philologist):

^† Editor’s note: ‘indispensable, essential, absolutely necessary’.

It seems likely that Tolkien’s interest in the word is linked to his time at Leeds, when he was living near the region where the word had once been used and where remnants of it remained behind in the nomenclature of the area. Tolkien provided ‘advice and encouragement’ as well as a foreword to W. E. Haigh’s book A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District in 1928, in which he talks about the value of such work (Hammond, Descriptive Bibliography, p. 290). That interest may also have been sparked by contact with A. H. Smith, one of his star pupils at Leeds and later the editor, compiler, and printer of Songs for the Philologists. Smith’s special field of study was delving into the origins of English place-names and he eventually published a number of books on the subject, becoming one of his generation’s leading experts in that field and serving as General Editor of the English Place-Name Society’s multivolume series exploring and explicating the place names of each English county.²⁰ Smith himself contributed two volumes to this series (vols. XXV and XXVI, English Place Name Elements, Cambridge Univ. Press, [1956]), in which he gives carrec as a place-name element, citing Carrock Fell in Cumberland as an example. The Cumberland volumes of the series (The Place Names of Cumberland by A. M. Armstrong, A. Mawer, F. M. Stemton, & Bruce Dikins, English Place-Name Society vols XX, XXI, & XXII [1952]) discuss Carrock Fell, near Mosedale in Cumberland, and note that the name had variously been listed in historical records as Carroc [1208], Carrok [1261], verticem de Carrock [1568], the mountain Carrak or Carrick [1610], and Carrock-Fell [1794]. Armstrong et al. simply note that ‘This is a British hill-name’ (vol. XXI, p. 305). Thus, Carrock-Fell was once simply known as ‘Carroc/Carrok/Carrock’, fell being a word meaning a barren or rocky hill. Similarly, verticem (vertex, height) is merely Latin for a mountain peak or high place.

Curiously enough, one of the sources Wright cites in the English Dialect Dictionary, The Denham Tracts, also contains the only known occurrence of the word ‘hobbit’ before Tolkien; see Appendix I. We have no proof that Tolkien ever read this work, but its frequent citation by Wright – a work Tolkien consulted closely – offers indirect proof that Tolkien was probably at least aware of Denham’s work, though it’s unlikely he was familiar with it. Denham describes a currack known locally as ‘The Lang [long] Man of Bollyhope’ and retells the story relating to it (bracketed additions were probably supplied by the Folk-lore Society’s editor, Dr Hardy):

Bolliope, or Bollyhope, is a high ridge of black mountains, about four miles from Wolsingham. On the top of this dreary and sterile track is a currack or curragh^† [a pillar of stones], known by the name of March stones on the Border. Tradition states that one clear summer’s evening, many long years ago, two tall figures were seen to meet on the top of the ridge, and at once proceed to mortal strife. The clash of arms was heard in the valley, and their forms, being set in relief against the clear blue sky, seemed to dilate to that of the giants of old. One of them was at length seen to fall, and the other, after hovering about for a short space, vanished from sight. On the morrow the mangled corpse of a tall man was found on the spot. No person, however, knew him; neither was there any inquiry made after him. He was buried where he fell, and the pile of stones which was reared on his grave is now know as the

I have been unable to trace the March Stones, but it’s suggestive that the cairn or currack in this case comes with suggestions of giantism, since the same hints apply to Medwed/Beorn himself. However, in the case of the ‘Lang Man’, Denham is at pains to point out that the dead man and his foe only seemed like ‘giants of old’ because of the length of their shadows, whereas Medwed turns out to be able to assume giant-size in truth (cf. Chapter XVIII).

Probably closely connected with this is the word hurrock, defined by Denham as ‘a piled-up heap of loose stones or rubbish; in fact, a collection of anything in a loose state’ (Denham Tracts, vol. I, p. 105; italics mine); Denham illustrates the word with a story about a shrewd Scots nobleman who bought a castle cheaply from King James by describing it as ‘only a hurrock of stones’ – only after he had sold it did the king visit and view the ‘noble pile . . . the stately feudal castle, with its many tours [towers] and grete chaumbres [great chambers] and hawles [halls]’, leading him to exclaim to the new owner: ‘Did thou na’ say that Raby Castle was only a hurrock of stanes! Ah! mon, I hae nae sic anither hurrock in a’ ma’ dominions.’ Wright not only lists the word in his English Dialect Dictionary (Volume III, page 289) but cites Denham as his source and repeats the chagrined king’s exclamation.

Even if we discount the ‘heap of stones’ definition for currock as due to confusion with the similar word hurrock, we still find that Tolkien has, for his own purposes, picked and chosen from among the cluster of meanings given in Joseph Wright and those preserved in modern-day Celtic words descended from it. THE Carrock of Tolkien’s tale is clearly neither a cairn nor a burial place. It’s distinctive enough to serve as a guide for travellers and could easily be used as a huge natural sundial whereby to judge the time of day, but Medwed would not have named it with the thought of strangers in mind, given how much he dislikes visitors, and there are no indications in the text that it serves any time-keeping purposes. A boundary marker seems closer to the mark – at the very least, it is within Medwed/Beorn’s territory: a spot he visits often and one which goblins and wargs shun for that reason.

These very factors – being easily seen from a long way off, possibly marking the edge of Medwed’s territory, and being within easy walking distance of his steading – account for its being a good place for the eagles to deposit their guests. Note, however, that Tolkien never commits himself to an actual definition of the word ‘carrock’, instead allowing his very detailed description (‘he calls things like that carrocks’) to stand in the place of a formal definition. Presumably the flat top that serves as a handy look-out, the carved steps, the little cave in its base, and even the ford across the river at its foot are all incidentals and it would still be a ‘carrock’ even without these: the key element seems to be an isolated hill surrounded by moving water, just as in the root-word carr (see above), except here transferred from coastal waters to standing alone in a great river that rushes by on either side. We know from the text that other carrocks exist (or what Medwed would call a carrock, which amounts to pretty much the same thing), and we do not have to look far on the map of Middle-earth to find another likely candidate: the island of Tol Brandir, a mountain standing alone in the same river further south (cf. LotR.393 & 414). And in fact in outlines for the chapter ‘Farewell to Lórien’ in The Lord of the Rings (Book Two Chapter VIII) we find the island later known as Tol Brandir was originally called ‘Tolondren the Great Carrock’ (Tol, island; ondren, of stone or perhaps great stone), contrasted by Christopher Tolkien with the ‘Little Carrock’ or ‘Lesser Carrock’ of The Hobbit (HME VII.268–9 & 287). The sheer peak rising out of fast-moving water was an image that appealed strongly to Tolkien, as is also testified by other ‘carrocks’ such as Tol Morwen (Silm.230) and perhaps Himling/Himring (cf. Unfinished Tales, pp. 13–14) left behind after the sinking of Beleriand, not to mention the great shoreless mountain rising from the sea glimpsed by St. Brendan the Navigator in ‘Imram’ (HME IX.297), apparently the remnant of Númenor’s Meneltarma, and the Nameless Isle or Lonely Isle that figured in so much of his early poetry.²¹ In July 1928, not long before beginning The Hobbit, Tolkien had painted Taniquetil as a great sheer mountain rising from the sea (see p. 21) – like Tol Brandir, a place where no human is allowed to step; like the Meneltarma and the Carrock itself, a climbable peak with a shrine or holy court or at least lookout spot on top.

Finally, we come to the curious illustration that Tolkien placed at the end of the preceding chapter in the final published book. Although labelled ‘The Misty Mountains looking West from the Eyrie towards Goblin Gate’, it seems to actually be a picture of the Eyrie itself (complete with eagle), with the main line of the Misty Mountains behind it, probably as viewed from atop the Carrock. It’s also possible that it was originally intended as a depiction of the Carrock itself. For one thing, although it lacks the flattened top described in the text, this peak seems separated from the rest of the Misty Mountains by a considerable stretch of lowland. This separation was even more pronounced in the draft illustration (H-S#110) that preceded the one which actually saw print (H-S#111; DAA.158), in which the central mountain is also much nearer the viewer. Note also the rippling lines around the base of the mountain, connected to left and right with fine parallel lines that cross the picture horizontally; it’s possible that these represent the river flowing from north to south, its waters lapping against the base of the Carrock as they flow around it. Finally, as Hammond & Scull point out, the central peak in this picture is a re-drawing of Mount Taniquetil itself (Artist & Illustrator, pp. 119 & 120), Tolkien’s archetype for this recurrent image in his works.

(v)
The Dolittle Theme

One theme or motif that runs throughout the book, having been hinted at in the warg and eagle scenes and later to reappear with the spiders of Mirkwood and in the crow, raven, and thrush scenes at the Lonely Mountain, briefly takes center stage in this chapter: Medwed’s ability to talk to his animals and understand their speech. This is an expression within The Hobbit of one of Tolkien’s favorite themes: in Middle-earth, everything talks, from a passing fox (LotR.85) to Túrin’s sword (Silm.225). Hence his ideal race, the elves, are linguists par excellence – Tolkien tells us in the final paragraph of The Lord of the Rings (Appendix F, LotR. 1171) that his elves’ name for themselves is Quendi, or ‘the speakers’. As Treebeard says, ‘Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learning their tree-talk. They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did’ (LotR.489; italics mine). Just how accomplished the elves of old became at this is hinted at in Legolas’s ability to hear the lament of the stones of Hollin for Celebrimbor’s folk: ‘deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone’ (LotR.301); Legolas is also able to assert that ‘the trees and the grass do not now remember them’, so long has it been since the elven folk of that land were destroyed or driven away. Nor is the impulse to communicate limited to the elves: Caradhras, the doors of Moria-gate, and the Silent Watchers at Cirith Ungol may not be able to speak, but all can understand and respond to speech. This makes sense in a world where a mountain like Caradhras or tree like Old Man Willow can have a distinct (and malign) personality and some control over their surroundings, and where a river-spirit (nymph) like Goldberry or genius loci like Bombadil can take on tangible human forms. In all these cases, Tolkien is incorporating into his world over and over again what he called ‘one of the primal “desires” that lie near the heart of Faërie: the desire of men to hold communion with other living things’ (OFS.19).²²

For readers the age of Tolkien’s sons in 1930–31, the generation that formed the original audience for his tale, Medwed’s ability to understand animal-language and his animal-friends acting as servants to set the table for their feast would immediately conjure up memories of another famous character in children’s fantasy, Doctor John Dolittle. Hero of the very popular series beginning with The Story of Doctor Dolittle [1920] and its much more famous sequel, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle ([1922], winner of the 1923 Newbery Award as the best children’s book of the year), Dolittle too has animal friends who keep house for him, even setting the table just as Medwed’s do in this chapter. Dolittle understands animal-language, not because he can assume their form or shares their nature, but because he is a great naturalist who can relate to animals on their own terms. He is in fact a philologist, although that term is never used: the whole focus of the series is on his ability to learn any language (such as, say, shellfish or fruit-fly), and on the unusual adventures to which his linguistic curiosity lead.

Dolittle himself and his assistant Stubbins (who joins the entourage in the second book and becomes the narrator thereafter, writing down these accounts at the end of a long and busy life – shades of Bilbo, perhaps?) are both very hobbit-like in personality, name, and habits. This is hardly surprising, since both Tolkien and Lofting were modeling their characters on the same originals: the English small-town and country folk of the previous century. Just as Tolkien drew on his childhood memories of growing up near Birmingham, so Lofting based Puddleby-on-the-Marsh on his native Berkshire (the county immediately south of Oxfordshire, whereas Tolkien’s Warwickshire lies on Oxfordshire’s northwest border). Tolkien is deliberately vague about the timing of his tale, as we have seen, although he did admit that ‘The Shire . . . is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee’²³’ (JRRT to A&U, 12th December 1955; Letters p. 230), while Lofting says in the opening paragraph of the first book that his story takes place ‘Once upon a time, many years ago – when our grandfathers were little children’ (Story, page 1); a later reference tells us this was back in the days before one of the animals encountered in the book became extinct (ibid., page 81). The second book is more specific, informing us that if we were to visit the site of Stubbins’ parents’ home today, some seventy years later, we would find a historical marker on the wall stating that ‘John Dolittle, the famous naturalist, played the flute in this house in the year 1839’ (Voyages, page 43).²⁴ Thus Lofting’s story is set in the very early years of Victoria’s reign, while Tolkien’s model for Bilbo’s Shire comes from the very end of that same reign.

Given his own lifelong interest in languages, it is not surprising that Tolkien would incorporate the central theme of the Dolittle books, talking to animals, into his own story at several points, especially since Lofting’s books were favorites of the Tolkien children,²⁵ his original audience for the new story. Of the many other features shared by both men’s work, incidental and otherwise,²⁶ one in particular seems worth noting: that both The Hobbit and the Dolittle books were illustrated by their respective authors in highly distinctive and individualized style. All in all, the Dolittle books were probably the model most in Allen & Unwin’s mind when they asked Tolkien for another hobbit book to turn The Hobbit from a stand-alone into a series, with results that they could not have foreseen.

(vi)
Radagast

With these words is introduced one of the most elusive of all Tolkien’s characters, who never actually appears on-stage at any point in The Hobbit and even in The Lord of the Rings shows up only in references to his absence (LotR.291), one second-hand account that essentially serves as a flashback (LotR. 274–5), and a few brief and not wholly complimentary allusions to his skills and judgement (LotR.276, 278–9). The few additional references to him in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales do not add so much as a single line of dialogue, and he remains a sort of Godot about whom we hear but never really meet. Unusually for Tolkien, we do not even know what language his name may be in, or what it means (see below). Nevertheless, so vast is Tolkien’s legendarium that all those short, passing references added together do tell us a good deal about the character as he evolved over time. In the face of Tolkien’s changing conception, it seems best to approach Radagast layer by layer, to distinguish Tolkien’s initial conception from the character’s later development.

The first and most important fact about Radagast is that he is claimed by Bladorthin not just as a fellow wizard (apparently one of many) but as a relative: in fact, his cousin. While this claim does not reappear in The Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf simply identifies him as ‘one of my order’ (LotR.274), neither is it removed from later editions of The Hobbit (cf. DAA.167).²⁷ Certainly there is nothing impossible about a wizard like Bladorthin having relatives, any more than Gandalf/Thorin’s having a cousin Dain (see Chapter XV) or Bilbo’s heirs being his cousins the Alibone Baggins (see Chapter XIX). And this remains the case even if we think of Bladorthin as more than merely human (something which the original text cannot resolve one way or the other; cf. the Commentary beginning on p. 49) – note the references by Father Christmas, who is sometimes described as a wizard (p. xxxvi), to his Green Brother (Letters from Father Christmas, 1930 & 1931 letters), not to mention their father, Grandfather Yule (ibid., 1930 letter). In the earliest stage of the mythology, at least some among the Maiar were the Valar’s children (cf. The Book of Lost Tales), and this conception lingered into the period when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit, as shown by references to ‘Fionwë and the sons of the Valar’ in the 1930 Quenta (HME IV.164) and to the ‘Children of the Valar’ in the ‘(Earliest) Annals of Valinor’ (HME IV.293). Nevertheless, in a world where there seem to have been many wizards (see pp. 688 & 696–7), Radagast is the closest thing to another Bladorthin: the latter refers to him as his good cousin, and Radagast is liked even by the unsociable Medwed/Beorn (‘not a bad fellow; I know him well’). And, while the plot notes make it clear that at the time he drafted this chapter Tolkien had no particular idea of where Bladorthin went or why, looking back from the end of the book we can see that in light of Tolkien’s eventual answer to those questions it seems very likely in retrospect that Bladorthin leaves Bilbo & Company at this point in order to go see Radagast, since he lives nearby,²⁸ to plan together how to drive away the Necromancer (about whom Radagast could expect to be well-informed, since he lives near his dark tower).

The Lord of the Rings adds a good deal more information about Radagast – who now becomes Radagast the Brown,²⁹ no longer Gandalf’s ‘cousin’ but one of my order; that is, one of the Five Wizards or Istari (LotR.606 & 1121; emphasis mine), and a fellow member of the White Council. The old idea that there are many wizards in the world gives way to the concept that there are only five, all Maiar (see also Unfinished Tales pp. 393 & 395). But the earlier concept is not entirely abandoned, and it reoccurs in Tolkien’s essay on the Istari drafted in 1954–5 as part of the very final stage of his work on The Lord of the Rings, the unfinished Index:

Tolkien intended at one point for Radagast to play a larger role in Bilbo’s new adventure, but exactly what that role would have been cannot now be guessed. In outlines and plot notes written in August of 1939, when Tolkien was contemplating a fresh start on ‘The New Hobbit’ and thinking of such radical changes as recasting the story with Bilbo rather than Bingo/Frodo as the hero, he includes Radagast’s name in a list of plot-elements, such as bringing a dragon to the Shire (shades of Farmer Giles!):

Unfortunately, in the absence of any development we cannot say what this episode would have been, nor how it would have fitted into the larger story. Radagast’s presence here was no doubt inspired by a desire to include all the elements possible from The Hobbit that had not already been explored; it is perhaps significant, given the absence of The Hobbit’s stone-giants from the sequel, that the ‘Adventure with [the] Giant Tree Beard’ appears in a similar list during this same period (HME VI.381).

A second reference to Radagast, during one of the early texts of the Council of Elrond, adds his name to an account of what would happen if they tried to send the One Ring overseas rather than destroy it: ‘It would be too perilous – and [Sauron’s] war would come over the Shire and destroy the Havens. [added in margin:] Radagast.’ (HME VI.396–7) – but this is so allusive that there is no way to tell what Tolkien had in mind; whether it was Radagast who proposed the idea or voiced the objection (in which case he must have been one of those gathered in Rivendell to discuss the crisis), or what part he might have played in such a scenario.

Within the published text, we learn from Gandalf’s words at the Council of Elrond that he considers Radagast

but in the account that follows we also gain the impression that Radagast is somewhat careless of detail, if not a little dim, since he cannot get the name of the Shire right.³¹ He comes across as a good fellow but not overbold, since he seems prepared to wash his hands of the dire business once he has fulfilled his task and delivered Saruman’s message, riding off ‘as if the Nine were after him’ (as indeed they might well be) rather than accompanying Gandalf to Orthanc or taking direct action against the Nazgûl. More importantly, he comes across as gullible, since he is taken in by Saruman – but, to be fair, so too is Gandalf, who promptly rides into Saruman’s trap. In his original draft of this passage, Tolkien considered the idea that Radagast was working with Saruman and had also turned to evil, deliberately luring Gandalf into their trap, but quickly rejected it (HME VII.131–4 & 138–9). When contrasted with Gandalf, all these shortcomings seriously diminish Radagast’s stature. Yet Tolkien has a way of exalting the humble, and Radagast is no exception. Just as he undertook this errand for Saruman despite his aversion to travel and also pressing concerns of his own (see below), so he immediately promises his aid when Gandalf asks it. What’s more, he delivers on his promise: it is ‘honest Radagast’ whose messenger delivers Gandalf from bondage and so foils Saruman’s plot (LotR.278–9).³²

After this point, Radagast vanishes altogether from the narrative, and his fate is one of the very few loose ends in a tightly-knit story. In some slightly later notes [circa 1940?] Tolkien considered giving Isengard to Radagast after Saruman is cast out from their order (HME VII.212), but this idea disappeared from the story before that scene was written. He does not attend the Council of Elrond, but then we are told he was ‘never a traveller, unless driven by great need’ (LotR.274). More ominously, when messengers from Rivendell reach his home at Rhosgobel in Mirkwood to bring him word of Frodo’s mission they find it abandoned (LotR.291), and he does not appear at the Grey Havens to take ship back to the Undying Lands at the end of the story. While Rhosgobel is not shown on the Middle-earth map published with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, we are told that it lay ‘near the Southern borders of Mirkwood’ (DAA.167; cf. also LotR.274), and it does appear on Tolkien’s original draft for that map reproduced in The Treason of Isengard (HME VII.305), near the Gladden Fields (cf. LotR.291) under the western eaves of the great forest roughly halfway between the Forest Road and Dol Guldur (here still known as Dol Dúghul).

The explicit statement that Radagast failed in his mission comes not from the main text of The Lord of the Rings but the unused Index entry on the Istari:

This view is reinforced by a scrap of alliterative verse on the sending of the Istari, which includes the passage:

In short, Radagast ‘went native’, and as such can be judged to have failed, but only if his mission is defined in the terms used in the Istari essay from the unpublished Index: to focus his attention on ‘Elves and Men’. Moreover, this judgement seems uncharacteristically harsh in light of what is said about Radagast within the actual published text of The Lord of the Rings. Radagast never supported Sauron in any way, and other indications suggest that defending birds and beasts against the earth-destroying Darkness that had ravaged the Brown Lands (once the Garden of the Entwives), desecrated the landscape before the Black Gate (‘Here neither spring nor summer would ever come again . . . a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing’ – LotR.657), and left Mordor a dying land (cf. LotR.956) was in fact part of Radagast’s mission – his special brief, as it were (see below). From ‘The Tale of Years’ (Appendix B, LotR.1127) and ‘The Hunt for the Ring’ (Unfinished Tales p. 338) we know that Sauron’s forces in Dol Guldur attacked the wood-elves’ realm in late June, or just before Radagast finally found Gandalf at Midsummer and hurried away homeward. In hindsight, it does not seem too much of a stretch to speculate that the cause of his haste to get Saruman’s and Gandalf’s business done was foreknowledge of the impending attack and concern over the denizens of the forest whom he had taken under his protection – a concern with which we would expect Tolkien to be altogether in sympathy, so long as it did not replace a concern for the greater world and its peoples (which, from the messengers he dispatched to Orthanc, it seems not to have done); cf. the sympathetic treatment of Treebeard, who transcends concern for his own forest into risking self-sacrifice for the good of others.

It seems that we have thus in Radagast someone who insofar as he is able opposes Sauron and all he stands for, and rightly values those creatures who are Yavanna’s domain, but perhaps undervalues the children of Ilúvatar upon whom all the other Istari focus. His devotion to birds and beasts can be seen as parallel to Gandalf’s fondness for hobbits, and his friendship with Beorn suggests that he aids not just the bears and other animals but also the wood-men who later become the Beornings. Perhaps Gandalf’s words to Denethor can be applied more literally to Radagast:

Tolkien’s later, post-Lord of the Rings writings on Radagast bear out this view. Thus his being foisted upon Saruman as a companion at Yavanna’s request in the account of the Valar choosing the Istari (date unknown; Unfinished Tales p. 393) need not be taken as a further diminishment of Radagast so much as yet another example of Saruman’s pride from the very beginning of his mission (one of the great Vala should not have to ‘beg’ a Maia to take a companion on a dangerous mission). Then too there is a curious passage in a meditation on Sauron’s motives written in the late 1950s, where Tolkien writes that Sauron believed others motivated wholly by self-interest like himself. The pronoun references in the following passage are unclear, but if I have interpreted them correctly then it casts both Gandalf and Radagast in a new light by closely associating them together in Sauron’s mind and contrasting them both with Saruman.

This closer association with Gandalf – in fact, a full circle returning to the days when he was Bladorthin’s only fellow wizard mentioned in The Hobbit – is reaffirmed in Tolkien’s last writings on the subject [circa 1972/73]. Here Tolkien discards the idea, traceable back to the essay on the Istari from the unused LotR Index, that all the other wizards except Gandalf had failed – e.g., where he said of the two Blue Wizards that

This idea had been most explicitly spelled out (albeit with no mention of Radagast, who once again proves the most elusive of all the wizards and the hardest to pin down) in Tolkien’s 1958 letter to Rhona Beare, where he says of the two unnamed wizards

In his final writings Tolkien reverses his earlier position, now suggesting instead that all four of the Istari except Saruman in some measure remained true to their missions. He affirms that Morinehtar [‘Darkness-slayer’] and Rómestámo [‘East-helper’], as he now names the two who journeyed into the East, were indeed sent into enemy-occupied territory [HME XII.384–5]. From what we now know of Radagast, we can surmise that the same must have been true of him, since he established his dwelling in southern Mirkwood, near the Necromancer’s lair in Dol Guldur. Furthermore, Tolkien no longer believes that the other two Istari, who may have come as early as the middle of the Second Age (circa S.A.1600; cf. HME XII.382), failed:

Significantly, in these same notes Tolkien suggests that ‘[p]robably Gandalf and Radagast came together’ to Middle-earth (HME XII.384), once again closely identifying the two as essentially kindred spirits. Certainly Radagast’s close friendship with the Great Eagles (another characteristic he shares with Gandalf), depicted throughout the mythology as the noblest of all creatures and the representatives of Manwë the Elder King, speaks well of his overall character, as does his association with Yavanna, who along with Elbereth and Ulmo were the Valar whom Tolkien seems most to have admired. In the end Radagast should probably be viewed as a good fellow and a worthy wizard, but not an exceptional character like Gandalf, who transcends his original mission to become ‘the Enemy of Sauron’ (LotR.1007). A desire to stress Gandalf’s achievement seems to have led Tolkien to denigrate the other Wizards in the period immediately following the completion of The Lord of the Rings, while a retrospective view many years later recognized that their contributions, while less than Gandalf’s, were nonetheless worthy of praise.

The Name ‘Radagast’

As with many of the names in The Hobbit, Tolkien never provided a satisfactory gloss on the name Radagast: we do not even know for certain what language he intended it to be in when he invented it: Slavic (like Medwed), Celtic (like the Carrock), Gothic (like the real-world models for the Wood-men), or Elvish (like Bladorthin). We might assume that Bladorthin and his cousin would share names in the same language, which would make ‘Radagast’ Gnomish/Noldorin (i.e., Sindarin), but there is little support in the glossaries of that language to support this assumption. It is true that rada appears as a pencilled addition to the Gnomish Lexicon [circa 1917], as a word meaning ‘track, path, way’ (Parma Eldalamberon XI.64), but this seems to be a temporary borrowing from Old English rad (= ‘road’; see below) that was not, so far as I can tell, taken up in later forms of the language. In the Etymologies, which postdate The Hobbit, RAD- appears as a word-root meaning ‘to return, to go back’, with several derivatives meaning ‘east’: e.g., radhon ‘east’, Radhrost ‘East-vale’, Radhrim ‘East-march’ (HME V.382). Either of these might plausibly be applied to the wizard, who does live east of the Edge of the Wild, but I can find no satisfactory explanation of -gast in Elvish, and Tolkien’s hesitance to identify the name suggests it could not be accommodated within Sindarin as it developed, whatever its origin. When Tolkien does provide an Elvish name for this wizard many years later, Aiwendil (= ‘Lover of Birds’), it is in Quenya, not Sindarin.³⁴

Both times when Tolkien did address the name’s linguistic affiliation, he suggested a Mannish (i.e., human, as opposed to elven) tongue. The first of these occurs in the essay on the Istari from the unfinished LotR Index [circa 1954–5] – that is, almost a quarter-century after he invented the name – where Tolkien states that Radagast

However, by this point in the legendarium Tolkien had established that the spoken language of Númenor was Adûnaic (cf. Appendix F, LotR.1163), and the name ‘Radagast’ predates the creation of the Adûnaic language by more than a dozen years. Nor does the word (almost certainly a compound, like Gand-alf and Saru-man) resemble the Adûnaic language known to us from other sources, such as the names of the last few Kings of Númenor (Ar-Adûnakhôr, Ar-Zimrathôn, Ar-Sakalthôr, Ar-Gimilzôr, Ar-Inziladûn, & Ar-Pharazôn; LotR. 1072–3) or the presentation of fragmentary texts in that language in The Notion Club Papers (see particularly HME IX.246–7 & 311–12, and ‘Lowdham’s Report on the Adûnaic Language’, ibid.413–40).³⁵ Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that an Adûnaic name would be given to a wizard in Rhovanion in the latter half of the Third Age.

It is possible, however, that by ‘the tongue of Númenor’ Tolkien meant not what we might call classical Adûnaic as it was spoken in the Second Age but Westron, the Common Speech descended from it, represented by modern English in The Lord of the Rings. It is more probable still, given the linguistic situation of the region in which Radagast lived (as described in Appendix F), that the name is neither Adûnaic nor Westron but belongs to a different member of the same language family:

Probably for this reason, Tolkien states in a very late note [circa 1972]:

That is, ‘Radagast’ comes from one of the languages belonging to what we might call the Atani language family, just as Latin and English both belong to the Indo-European (or, more properly, Indo-Hittite). The question, then, becomes which one. And, since Tolkien equated each of the Atani languages with a real-world European tongue, which real world language he used in this particular instance. The three primary candidates are Old English, Gothic, and one of the Slavic languages like Russian.³⁶

Of these, Old English fits best with Tolkien’s final conception of the language spoken in that part of the world in his legendarium at the time of Bilbo’s journey (or, if we take his system of parallels set down in Appendix F literally, the real-world language he chose to best represent the ‘Mannish’ language spoken in the Anduin Vale). It is the language spoken by the ancestors of the hobbits when they dwelt in that part of the world, it is the language spoken by the Eorlings, who also originated in that area, and best of all it is the language used in the (published) Hobbit itself for the werebear’s name, Beorn. And, as it happens, the name can indeed be parsed in Old English: rad is the name for one of the Old English runes (Rune 5 in the futhark); it stands for the letter ‘R’ and means ‘road’. And gast is the standard Old English word for ‘spirit’ (the direct ancestor of our modern ghost), with a range of meanings from ‘angel’ to ‘human being’;³⁷ ‘Spirit of the Road’ is not unlike the meaning I have suggested for Bladorthin, ‘the Grey Traveller’ (see p. 53).

However, despite the excellent fit in sound and etymology with Old English, there is the problem that Tolkien invented the name ‘Radagast’ before he changed Medwed’s name from the original Slavic to an Old English replacement, just as it predates the change from Noldorin Bladorthin to Old Norse Gandalf. We must therefore consider the possibility that the name is not Germanic at all but rather Slavic, and in fact the evidence for a Slavic Radagast is surprisingly strong, given how little role the Slavic languages played in Tolkien’s legendarium overall.³⁸ Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum [‘Deeds of the Bishops of the Hamburg Church’; late eleventh century] mentions that the Wends, a West Slavic people who lived between the Elbe and Oder Rivers (in the area more recently known as East Germany), had a holy city named Rethra (Jacob Grimm calls it ‘the chief place of Slav heathenism’; Teutonic Mythology, vol II. p. 663) in which there was a great temple devoted to the god Radegast; in fact, Johannes Skotus, Bishop of Mecklebury, was supposedly sacrificed to the god there in 1066. However, an earlier chronicler, Thietmar of Mersebury (whom Grimm calls ‘Dietmar’; d. 1016), applied the name ‘Rethra’ to the people and gave ‘Radegast’ as the name of the town, not the deity worshipped there (who, from other evidence, was probably the well-attested Svarogich).

With the charming naiveté endemic among nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers on mythology, who assume that all deities among any Indo-European people must correspond to some familiar figure in the Greek pantheon, Grimm confidently identified this Radegast as the Slavic equivalent to Wuotan (Wotan/Odin) in Germanic mythology, and Hermes (Mercury) in the classical pantheon (Teutonic Mythology, Preface pages xxx & liv, vol. I pages 130 & 248–9).³⁹ Nineteenth- and twentieth-century attempts to re-construct the lost Slavic pantheon eagerly seized upon the references in Adam of Bremen and a later chronicler, Helmold’s Chronica Slavorum [‘Chronicle of the Slavs’; later twelfth century], and the conclusions of Grimm to create a god, variously known as Radegast, Ragidost, Redigast, who may never have actually existed: a (modern) statue of him now stands on Mount Radhost in the Czech Republic near the Slovakian and Polish borders, and since the 1970s Radegast has been the name of a premium Czech beer named not for Tolkien’s character but after the presumptive and possibly fictitious ‘god of hospitality’.⁴⁰

Tolkien, who was always intrigued by attempts to recapture lost myths and preserve the last fragments of a people’s folklore (e.g., his fascination with Lönnrot’s Kalevala), might have been drawn to the presumptive Slavic Radegast by the references in Grimm, an author for whom he had a great deal of respect and with whom he identified in some respects.⁴¹ We have the example in his piece ‘The Name “Nodens”’ [1932] of his attempt to use all the tools of philology ‘to recall forgotten gods from their twilight’ (Report on the Excavation . . . [at] Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, page 135), and of course his borrowing of the name Eärendel from Cynewulf’s Crist, so it is entirely possible that ‘Radegast’ is another borrowing of the same type, lifted from its shadowy and debatable original context and given a wholly new meaning within his legendarium by Tolkien.

A final plausible candidate for Tolkien’s inspiration, and to my mind the most convincing of all, is the Gothic king or war-chieftain Radagaisus (died 406 AD), whose name is rendered Rhadagast in some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources.⁴² Tolkien’s great interest in the Goths (especially their language) was responsible for his vocation as a philologist specializing in the Germanic languages; his mentor when an undergraduate at Oxford was Joseph Wright, perhaps the world’s leading expert in Gothic at the time, and Tolkien’s first significant invented language was Gautiska or ‘Neo-Gothic’, in which he wrote one of his finest poems (‘Bagme Bloma’, appearing in Songs for the Philologists [1936], page 12).⁴³ He was also, as might be expected, well-versed in Gothic history.⁴⁴ Radagaisus’s story is told in Isidore of Seville’s History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, but the story was familiar to all readers of Edward Gibbon’s monumental The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776–88]. As Isidore [d. 636 AD] describes it, in the year 405 AD:

Despite the obvious similarity of the names Radagaisus/Rhadagast and Radagast, the actual historical figure seems an odd choice to have inspired Tolkien to create his character, since one of the few things we know about Radagast in The Hobbit is that he gets along well with his neighbors, even the notoriously irascible Medwed. The historical Radagaisus was a sort of Gothic Boadicea, a pagan leader noted for his hostility to Christians, who fought Huns, Romans, and fellow Goths in a violent and ultimately disastrous campaign in 405–6 AD. Gibbon, for example, describes him as ‘the implacable enemy of Rome’ and ‘a devout Pagan’ who practiced human sacrifice.⁴⁵ However, we should note that Tolkien was quite willing to borrow a name from a less than attractive historical figure when it suited his purposes (that is, when something about the name attracted him), the best example being Alboin of the Lombards (Longbeards), whom even his namesake Alboin Errol in The Lost Road thinks less sympathetic than the rivals he destroyed, the Gepids (HME V.37; see also Christopher Tolkien’s commentary in ibid.53–4). In fact, Alboin’s career was remarkably like Radagaisus’s some two and a half centuries before, except that Alboin was successful in leading his people (described as being both pagans and Arians) into Italy and conquering and settling a large section of it; compare also Tolkien’s interest in and apparent admiration for Hengest, who led the (successful) Germanic invasion of Britain (Finn and Hengest, The Book of Lost Tales). Of course, there is always the possibility that Tolkien may simply have been amused by the comic possibilities of assigning a grandiose or otherwise inappropriate name, something he does over and over again in his works, from Galathea the cow (who shares the name of the statue brought to life in the story of Pygmalion) and Julius Agricola (the Roman general who conquered the part of Britain Tolkien considered his home county) in Farmer Giles of Ham to Fortinbras, Odovacar, and Sigismond as hobbit-names⁴⁶ (cf. the family trees in Appendix C of The Lord of the Rings [LotR.1137] and HME XII.85–118 for many more examples), not to mention using ‘Fingolfin’ as the name of the goblin-king whose decapitation created the game of golf.

In the end, it seems likely that Tolkien was attracted to the name precisely because of its ambiguity and uncertain status, just as he was to the cruxes in Beowulf and puzzling words preserved in old manuscripts like ‘Earendel’ and ‘sigelwara’ (see p. 719), to the explication of which he devoted much of his career, both philological and creative. The ‘Radegast’ of the chronicles probably represents an attempt to record in Old High German a now-lost Slavic name which might originally have referred to a place, or to a forgotten god, or been an epithet for another god that was later mistaken for a separate deity.⁴⁷ The ‘Radagaisus’ of late Roman history similarly represents an attempt to capture in Latin a Gothic name, possibly *Radagais (Gothic: ‘counsel-spear’),⁴⁸ rendered Rœdgota (OE: ‘counsel-Goth’) in Alfred’s Boethius and Rhadagast by early modern writers. Out of these Tolkien chose Radagast as the name he wanted for his character, who proves just as elusive as his namesake(s).