Plot Notes A

Don’t forget the key found in troll’s lair.^TN1

After visit to Beorn

They tell Beorn of their quest.^TN2

Darkness falls. They are given beds in the hall. Moon shines in through the louver. Beorn stands up and bids them goodnight, but warns them they must not stray outside the hall till dawn on their peril. He goes out. They go to sleep.

Bilbo wakes up to hear growling outside, & scraping & snuffling at the doors. Next morning no sign of Beorn; but they find breakfast laid on the veranda. The sheep horses and dogs wait on them. Night comes again. More growling. Next morning Beorn is there. He is very pleasant to them. They find out he has been right away back to the mountains & found out their story was true. He has caught a warg and a goblin. He is delighted to think of the death of the chief goblin. So they tell him of their quest & ask his help. He lends them ponies and food. They are to ride these as far as the edge of the great forest, then to send them home; but to treat them well and not ride them fast.

They start off – [or so it >] and ride till dark. Bilbo thinks he sees a big bear sneaking in the trees at their side. Sh! says Gandalf^TN3 (=Blad) – take no notice.

They camp at edge of the great forest; and send back the ponies. In the moon they see them trotting back with a big bear trotting after them.

In the morning it is as dark in the forest almost as night.

‘Do we have to go through?’ says Bilbo.

Yes says Bladorthin – we shd. have to go^TN4 a hundred miles either way to get round it – and the North we should be back at the Misty Mountains again and [added: at the] south end the Necromancer lives. At this point there is a track through. But it is a narrow one. Don’t stray off it – if you do you won’t find the path again & I don’t know what will happen. When you get to the other side you will come to the Long marshes^TN5 but you will already see far and faint the Lonely Mountain in the East. There is a path across the Marshes. We know, we know said Gandalf – that is on the borders of our own land, & we have not forgotten – beyond the marshes are the wide fields and then at last we come if we turn half south to Long Lake, but <hurrying> straight on we shall come to the <west> of the Mountain and the Secret Entrance.^TN6

All right, then said Blad. Now off you go. Take care of yourselves & goodbye.

He wouldn’t stay. No he said. This is your affair I have come much farther than I meant. I have other business on hand now that can wait no longer. And off he went back towards Medwed.^TN7

The dwarves & Bilbo plunge into the forest. Very dark and silent. Black squirrels peep at them; and all kinds of queer <sneaky> creatures in the undergrowth. They see a sort of track like a rabbit track & stick to it – in a long line. They go on till their food is getting short (– stretch out with beechnuts^TN8 & acorns). Bilbo climbs a tree and <sees> Purple Emperors only they are black. but the forest seems still to stretch on far ahead. Night comes. They see a light not far from the track. peering through the trees they see people sitting in a clearing having a feast. They are so hungry that they disobey the warning and creep off towards the light to beg food. when they get there the lights go out and they are in pitch dark. They can’t even see one another. Fall^TN9 over in dark trying to find one another. They cannot find track again. See light again. It goes out again as they creep up. This goes on till they are quite bewildered. At last they [get into spider’s >] lose [track >] one another.^TN10 Voices all over wood answering and calling. Die away. Bilbo alone. Finds himself in a huge spiders web.

The spider comes at him. He kills her^TN11 – takes her thread and in dim light of day has marvellous luck to come across the track. Ties thread to a tree; puts ring on^TN12 and goes off. back towards spiderwebs – which he finds by thread.

He calls Dori Nori, Oinn & Gloinn, Balin Dwalin, Bivur & Bombr, Fili Kili Gandalf.^TN13 Faint answer comes, and he finds them all hung up, in webs twined round – like spider-meat. All except Gandalf who with orcrist had killed a spider & escaped. He cuts down Dori and with his help is releasing others when the spiders come back swinging from the branches of the trees.

Battle with spiders. When the spiders cannot overcome them they go off and spin black webs all round so that the dwarves are shut in – and hundreds more come up: poisonous spiders.^TN14

The spiders are sitting up in the branches spinning black webs – and guarding their prisoners. Bilbo hears them talking about the nice <pretty> meat. Luckily he has his ring. He picks up a stone and <strikes> a spider down. Great <commotion>. They all come towards him. He slips off in another direction & knocks down another spider

Then when they have all swung down on the ground he sings a song.

Old fat spider spinning in a tree

" " " can’t spy me

Attercop! Attercop!

Won’t you stop,

Stop your spinning and seek for me?

Old Tom-noddy all big body

Old Tom noddy can’t spy me

Attercop! Attercop

Down you drop,

You never will catch me in your tree.^TN15

Then he threw another stone. Only <a few> spiders came down, others ran along the branches and swung from tree to tree. They wove webs all round the clearing^TN16 He went to a different place and sang.

Lazy lob and crazy Cob

Are weaving webs to wind me.

Then he <illegible>

<See the> tender meat is hanging sweet

but still they can not find me.

Here [am] I naughty little fly

[I go by and laughing fly >] You are fat and lazy

[Th I go by >] and [I] laughing fly as I go by

Through your cobwebs crazy^TN17

Then he slashed one of their webs to pieces.

They all came in that direction and so he led them far away & then crept back and loosed the dwarves.

The spiders found out before he <finished> – and the dwarves found out his ring but they did not lose their respect because of his brave deed.

They had a dreadful time following Bilbo’s thread. Spiders after them. Spiders in front weaving thick webs to stop them. But the dwarves beat them off with branches at the rear while Bilbo cut the webs ahead.

At last the spiders got tired of following. So they got back to the track.

Where was Gandalf?

Caught by wood elves. Took him to the caves of their king. they had had a battle with dwarves long ago and did not like them so he shut Gandalf up and sent people to look for the <others>.^TN18

The dwarves were all captured by the woodelves but Bilbo popped on his ring and followed them into the caves.

Description of the woodelves caves.^TN19

Bilbo stuffs his pockets <with> fairy cakes^TN20 & goes back for Bladorthin. <Frighten> by <big bear>. Medwed finds him and sends for Bladorthin. who has luckily been staying with him.^TN21

Bladorthin angry. He comes and speaks to the woodelves king, and the dwarves are released, under pressure of <pledging> rich gifts when they go back that way <& they must>^TN22

Bladorthin says ‘Now really good bye.’

<Then> woodelves <guard> them to the end of the forest.

Over the marshes. First sight of the lonely Mountain All burnt.^TN23

[added in top margin:]

In spring <he>

All shut up in it. Bilbo can’t find his way out [> get out the magic gates].^TN24 lives by stealing food. Finds Dori’s cell. <Must> get a message to Bladorthin (Dwarves made to work). Winter comes & Bilbo must go.

[added at bottom of page:]

In Spring

Bilbo escapes by <hiding> in a barrel which they are <wheeling> out Medwed – <agrees> to find <eagles> & send a message. Bladorthin found at last.

TEXT NOTES

1 The underlined phrase and the line about the troll-key are written in slightly smaller and hastier handwriting and may have been added later.

For the uncertainties about whether or not Medwed was enchanted, see p. 247 & 259. And for more on the enchanted bear theme, see the commentary on Bothvar Bjarki starting on p. 256 above and also Plot Notes F (p. 629).

2 This line and the one immediately preceding it each have a line drawn through them, indicating that they are false starts which were soon cancelled.

3 The word ‘Gandalf’ is struck through here. This first hesitant application to the wizard of the name under which he has long since become famous did not stick; within six lines Tolkien was once again calling the character ‘Bladorthin’. Not until near the end of the Second Phase, in the Lonely Mountain chapters, was the wizard’s new name actually adopted (see pp. 476 & 482 below).

4 A cancelled word or partial word follows ‘to go’ here which might read ‘near’ (i.e., nearly) or ‘nor’ (i.e., north).

In addition to Tolkien’s reversion to the name ‘Bladorthin’ here and henceforth, only six lines after adopting ‘Gandalf’ as the name of the wizard and despite the confident listing of name changes at the start of the document, note the wizard’s use of first person plural here: ‘we shd. have to go’ and ‘we should be back’. This usage is curious, given his immediate departure from them at the top of the next page; along with the sketchy ‘First Outline’ given on p. 229 above this suggests that Tolkien was undecided about the exact point at which the wizard and the others would part company, although the departure itself had been foreseen from the very first chapter (see the references to ‘Mr. Lucky Number’). In any case, his reversion to ‘you’ a few sentences later simply highlights the fluidity of these notes, with ideas emerging in the process of putting words to paper.

5 The ‘Long Marshes’, capitalized as if a proper name, appears in Chapter VII (p. 244; cf. also DAA.189) but the name appears nowhere else in the book. The marshes themselves go all the way back to ‘The Pryftan Fragment’, appearing on Fimbulfambi’s Map (cf. Frontispiece), although in the event neither Bilbo nor the dwarves ever have any adventures there. See also p. 370 below.

6 The word I have read here as hurrying might instead be keeping.

Note that although this description of the terrain on the eastern side of Mirkwood does not quite match the final geography of the published book, it matches up perfectly with the first rough sketch of the lands near the Mountain which occurs as the last page of Plot Notes B (see pp. 366–7). It also fits tolerably well with the early version of the Wilderland Map that appears on Plate I [bottom]. By contrast, in the Wilderland map that accompanies the published text (DAA.[399]) the ‘Elf-path’ leads from the ‘Forest Gate’ in the west to the Elvenking’s Halls near the eastern edge of Mirkwood but does not actually reach the forest’s border (travel further east presumably all being along the Forest River). Moreover, heading due east from the end of the path on this map would not bring the traveller to the Lonely Mountain but instead to Lake Town.

7 The detail that Bladorthin was heading back ‘to Medwed’ (whose name has already reverted back to the original after the ‘Beorn’ of the opening paragraphs) soon disappeared, but it remained implicit even in the published text: ‘I am not sending the horse back, I am riding it’ – [i.e., riding it back]. That Tolkien was uncertain about the wizard’s activities and whereabouts after leaving Bilbo’s company is clear from the various options and suggestions occurring in the final paragraphs of these Plot Notes; see below.

8 The second half of this word is unclear, and it’s possible that Tolkien here wrote ‘beechmast’ (which means much the same thing), just as he did in the ‘Enchanted Stream’ episode he interpolated into the next chapter (see pages 351 & 357).

9 The second half of this word is obscured by an ink-blot, but Tolkien has written the missing letters in above it.

10 The cancellations and changes this line underwent were all made while it was first being written, a good indication of the speed with which Tolkien was setting down his thoughts.

11 The use of the female pronouns for the spider is significant, since this makes her the only female character to actually appear in The Hobbit; see Commentary following Chapter VIII.

12 The words ‘puts ring on’ are later struck through.

13 Tolkien later slightly revised this line, adding in the two missing dwarf-names as follows: Dori Nori [Ori], Oinn & Gloinn, Balin Dwalin, Bivur [Bovur] & Bombr, Fili Kili Gandalf. The rhythm of the original sentence is better, and once again the omissions testify to the speed with which these rough plot-notes were written.

The variant spellings of some of the dwarf-names here are not certain, given the roughness of the writing, but it seems as if Tolkien were experimenting with the idea of changing several of the other dwarf-names, no doubt as part of the Gandalf > Thorin / Bladorthin > Gandalf / Medwed > Beorn shift contemplated on the first page of these plot-notes. In each case the variant, which occurs only here, would de-Anglicize the name and bring it more into line with the form found in the Edda (see Appendix III).

14 When he had reached this point, Tolkien cancelled the four preceding sentences (everything from ‘All except Gandalf’ to ‘poisonous spiders’) with a single slash through just over six lines (roughly a quarter of this manuscript page), then resumes in the middle of the page.

15 The spider-poem appears with no extant preliminary drafting, although some such probably existed. Tolkien made only two minor changes in the text here, changing ‘spy’ to ‘see’ in the second line and ‘in’ to ‘up’ in the final line. When he came to write this poem into the actual manuscript (see Chapter VIII, p. 311) in the fully developed text of the passage based upon these plot-notes, he made two further minor changes in wording: ‘seek’ in line five became ‘look’, and ‘You never will’ became ‘You’ll never’ in the final line. Other than a few typographical changes, the poem otherwise remains unchanged from its first appearance here through into the published book.

For more on ‘Attercop’ (adder-spider) and ‘Tom-noddy’, see p. 321.

16 This sentence is written in the top margin and marked for insertion at this point.

17 In marked contrast to the first spider poem (‘Attercop’), the second spider-poem (‘Lazy lob’) is full of changes and hesitations, seeming to indicate that what we have here might be the initial composition. Indeed, it looks as if Tolkien initially thought it might be as short as two lines: the cancelled line beginning ‘Then he’ was probably an anticipation of the line that follows the poem (‘Then he slashed’).

Even so, relatively few changes were needed to bring this draft into the form found in the full manuscript: a few typographic corrections, the deletion of a superfluous ‘and’ in the penultimate line, and a new version of line three: ‘I am far more sweet than other meat’ make it match the version found in the first full text of Chapter VIII (see p. 311 below). In the First Typescript, the poem appears divided into two stanzas, as in the published book, and the final two lines replaced by

– again, the reading of the published text (which remained unaltered through all three editions in Tolkien’s lifetime). No drafting survives for the typescript variations, which are typed cleanly into the text of both typescripts.

While presented as a piece of spontaneous doggerel, very much along the lines of the songs Curdie makes up to annoy the goblins in MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (see commentary on Chapter IV), this little bit of verse is actually quite sophisticated in its metrics, employing internal rhyme, alliteration, and a variable number of syllables per line, often an odd number. In fact, Tolkien seems to be employing a loose form that is almost a parody of the Old English line, with four beats per line and a caesura in each odd-numbered line; the actual number of syllables being of only minor importance.

18 The final word may instead be ‘dwarves’.

19 The initial ‘D’ which begins this line is given a calligraphic treatment very like that of Father Christmas’s tremulous script.

20 Fairy cake, or cupcakes, is a rather surprising light-hearted detail that was soon lost, but the idea of a special fairy-food associated with the elves re-emerged much later in The Lord of the Rings as elven waybread, or lembas. Known as cupcakes in the U.S., ‘fairy cakes’ are best known to American audiences from their appearance in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (episode 8); see The Complete Hitchhiker Scripts [1980, 1985], pages 165–6.

21 The phrase ‘who has luckily been staying with him’ was struck through, no doubt as too convenient, not to mention being out of accord with the ‘pressing business’ Bladorthin claimed prevented him from accompanying Gandalf and company into Mirkwood. It does, however, match with the idea that the wizard was riding back to Medwed with the borrowed horse; see Text Note 7 above.

22 ‘And they must’: I take this to mean that there is no alternate route available, for the reasons Bladorthin lays out for Bilbo on the eaves of Mirkwood. If so, it may be an indication that Tolkien had not yet thought out the final section of the book and that the re-establishment of the Kingdom under the Mountain was not yet envisioned; it certainly suggests that the overthrow of the Necromancer and decimation of the goblins of the northern mountains were not yet part of the story.

23 It is probably not the Mountain itself that is ‘all burnt’ but the landscape surrounding it, the so-called Desolation of Smaug; see p. 483ff.

24 The revision regarding the magic gates appears at the top of the page and is marked for insertion following the line ‘Description of the woodelves caves’. It marks the introduction of this motif; see p. 380, where the Elvenking says ‘There is no escape through my magic doors, for those who are once brought inside’ (cf. DAA.223).

Tolkien’s Plot Notes

Part of Tolkien’s compositional method was from time to time to stop and write out in very rough summary form the events of the story to come. Sometimes, as in this case, the material covered a few chapters; in other cases, as with Plot Notes B (see pp. 361–6), it was an attempt to sketch out the rest of the story to the end. This pre-drafting then formed a basis for the actual first draft that followed, and sometimes (as with the two spider-taunting poems) here and there the actual words of the plot notes find their way into the final published book. This is however the exception; for the most part these plot notes are very rough, often filled with sentence fragments and incomplete words, contradictory ideas, and other examples of ‘thinking on paper’. Since they represent the very first time Tolkien set down ideas about what was to happen in the book, and since those ideas sometimes diverge dramatically from what he finally settled on, they are among the most interesting and valuable sections of the entire manuscript. Unfortunately, because they are simply rough notes intended only for his own use and were typically written at great speed, they are also among the most illegible of all the Hobbit manuscripts. In this edition I have edited them as little as possible in order to convey something of the informality of this material: inserting all the quotation marks and similar punctuation would make these pages seem more finished and definitive than is in fact the case. As usual, doubtful readings are enclosed in French brackets: <thus>.

The most remarkable thing about these plot notes occurs in the first three lines, where Tolkien arrives at the final forms of the names for three major characters, then fails to implement that change (cf. his later reluctance to abandon Bingo for Frodo in the Lord of the Rings drafts, e.g. HME VI.221). Not until some time later, after a lengthy break in composition that may have lasted as long as a year, did he incorporate these name changes: see pages 437, 472, 476, & 679 below. It is particularly notable that the name Thorin (Oakenshield) emerged complete, with his cognomen or epithet already present, and indeed all the new names appear in their exact final forms, even though their adoption was delayed for several more chapters.

For the most part these plot notes adhere closely to the story as it actually came to be written, though with some significant departures. Unsurprisingly, the further into the story it goes the more it drifts from the familiar events, and the end of the tale is entirely absent. Thus, here Gandalf (= Thorin) evades capture by the spiders not because he has been enchanted by the wood-elves but by his own martial prowess, and his capture by the elves comes afterwards. Also, Tolkien was in considerable uncertainty about how Bilbo was to rescue the dwarves from the wood-elves’ dungeons. The magic of the Elvenking’s Gates seems to have been stronger in the initial conception, preventing even the unseen Bilbo from escaping that way, and hence leading to the episode of the barrels as a means of escape not for the dwarves but for Bilbo himself. In all three variants on the last page of these Plot Notes Tolkien re-introduces both Medwed and Bladorthin, the latter of whom re-enters the story just long enough to get Gandalf & Company out of one last tight spot before once again vanishing. Some of the ideas Tolkien considered here but ultimately rejected seem to have influenced the next set of plot notes as well; see pp. 361ff.

Finally, some apparent departures between the Plot Notes and the familiar text are the result of later changes to the latter – for example, Dori plays a more prominent role in the story in these projections. There is no mention of the enchanted stream here, but then that entire episode is similarly absent from the initial draft of what is now Chapter VIII, having only entered in later through an interpolation (see ‘The Enchanted Stream’, p. 347). Similarly, the idea that Bilbo would find the lost path again and use spider-thread to guide the dwarves back to it, although it does not appear in the published book, was part of the first full draft; see pages 309–14 and ‘The Theseus Theme’, p. 335.