The Peoples of Middle-earth (13 page)

Subsequently the C.S. name was changed in F 1 to Satun-nargia, and finally to Phurun-nargia (with corresponding changes of kubal, kubu to phurun, phur-).

20. The whole of the discussion in $41 of the name Suza of the Shire and the reason for the use of 'Farthing' is lacking in F 1; but after the reference to English wich, bold, bottle there is a footnote which was not taken up in F 2:

In one case I have coined a word: smial (or smile if you prefer it so). The Hobbits used a peculiar word of their own, gluva

[written later nearby: Rohan globa], for 'an inhabited hole'. I would have left it unchanged but it would have looked outlandish in an English context. Accordingly I have used smial, since the ancient English smygel 'a hole to creep in' would, had it survived or been adopted by latterday Hobbits, have now had some such form.

21. In F 1 the Hobbit name for 'Hornblower' was Rhasputal, changed to Rasputa as in F 2.

22. In F 1 my father first wrote Tuk but emended it to Tuca; in F 2

he wrote Tuca, but then erased the final -a.

23. In F 1 the adjective tuca was described as 'a Fallohide word meaning "great" ', corrected to the reading of F 2.

24. The footnote at this point concerning the masculine ending -a is absent in F 1.

25. The footnote concerning the 'to us rather ridiculous subnames or titles' of the heads of the Brandybuck clan is absent in F 1. See the commentary on $45.

26. Hamanullas: in F 1 the name was Amanullith, subsequently changed to Hamanulli.

27. In F 1 the name was Tuk, later corrected to Tuca, as previously (see note 22).

28. The names in F 1 were Shuran-kaphir and Zarkaphir, changed to Assargamba and Zaragamba as in F 2.

29. F 1 has the same note, but in addition it is said that Bophan was

'of Harfoot origin',-and also that 'to Hobbits in general Bophan was as devoid of meaning as Boffin today.'

30. In F 1 the account of Gamgee was the same, but the underlying names were different: the Hobbit name was Charbushi, derived from the place-name Charb(b)ash; the Common Speech word meaning 'game' was charab; and the place-name ending was

-bash, -bas. These forms were then corrected to those in F 2.

Charbash appears again in the note on Cotton in F 1.

31. In F 1 the Shire word for 'Hobbit' was kubud and the obsolete Common Speech word from which it was derived was kubud(u)r

'hole-dweller'; Theoden's word was kugbadru. These forms were then changed: the Shire word became cubut (plural cubudil), derived from obsolete C.S. cubadul, and Theoden's word cugbadul.

In F 2 cubuc and the associated words and forms were all first written cu-, changed to cu-. The Common Speech and Rohan forms were a good deal altered in the text and I have given only those finally adopted: thus the plural of cubuc was first cubuga and then cubugen, the obsolete C.S. word was cubugl(a), and the Rohan word was cugbagul (again in $56).

32. In F 1 it is said that 'Bilbo is the actual Hobbit name': see note 24.

33. In F 1 the name was written Mauro before being changed to Maura.

34. The note in F 1 on the true name of Meriadoc is the same, but with the spellings Khilimanzar, Khilik.

35. The note on Peregrin (Pippin) read in F 1, before emendation: The Hobbit name is Rabanul. This is not a name of C.S. form; it is said to be [Fallohide >] a Harfoot name; but since it is also said to mean 'traveller', and was in any case the name of a legendary rover and wanderer, I have chosen Peregrin to represent it. Of Peregrin, Pippin is I suppose a not impossible pet-form, though it is not so close to Peregrin as Rubul is to Rubanul. But rubul is in C.S. the name of a kind of small apple.

36. The original discussion of the name Sam in F 2 was rejected and replaced. I give the second form, since it scarcely differs from the first except in clarity. In F 1 the same statement was made, but the linguistic elements were different. His real name was Bolnoth; the common Shire-name (Ban in F 2) was Bol, held to be an abbreviation of Bolagar; the prefix meaning 'half-, almost' was bol-; and the word in the Common Speech meaning 'wise' (zir(a) in F 2) was noth. These were changed to the forms in F 2, but with Bannatho for Bannatha (see note 24).

37. For Tomacca F 1 has Tomak (and k for c in other names in this passage, as throughout), and for Arambil has Shambil; Farmer Cotton's full name is Tomakli Lothron, changed subsequently to Tomacci.

38. In F 1 Butterbur's real name was Barabush Zilibraph, the first name meaning (like Barabatta in F 2) 'quick-talker, babbler', shortened to Barabli, and the second a compound of zilib 'butter'

and raph(a) a 'burr'. This latter was changed to Zilbarapha, the form first written in F 2. At the end of the note F 1 has: 'the nickname which the landlord of "The Pony" had so long borne that Frodo had never heard his true given-name'.

With the discussion of Butterbur the text F 1 ends, but my father added the following in pencil later:

A final note on the other languages. Now since the language of Rohann and of Dale were akin, that of Rohann closely akin in origin to the Common Speech, it seemed plain that having converted all C.S. into English the more northerly (archaic and less blended) tongues must be represented in the same way.

The language of Men in Dale has thus been given (so far as its names show) a Norse cast; and since as has been said the Dwarves adapt their names and speech to those of Men among whom they live, all the Dwarves of the North have names of this Northern type (in fact the actual names of Dwarves in Norse). The Rohirrim are therefore appropriately represented by speaking a tongue resembling ancient English. It will thus be noted that for the archaic Rohan cugbadul in relation to Hobbit cubut [see note 31] I have ..... [? ancient] English holbytla in relation to hobbit.

From here to the end of the text (so far as it is given here, see note 42) F 2 exists in two forms, both consisting of two sides of a single manuscript page: the second form is a fair copy of the first, and follows it very closely, with for the most part only very minor alterations of wording. I give here the second version, with a couple of differences of form recorded in the following notes.

39. In the first form of the F 2 text the real word in Rohan corresponding to Theoden is turan, where the second form has turac-.

40. The first form had tunga where the second has tung.

41. These are forms of the same prehistoric stem, with differing vowels (smeag being the ancient English form, smaug the Scandinavian, while smygel is an English development of the stem smug).

42. The remaining eight pages of the F 2 manuscript are taken up with an account of pronunciation, with sections on consonants, vowels, and accent, which was subsequently removed to become (in much developed form) the first part of Appendix E. I give here only the brief preface to this account.

In transliterating words and names from the ancient languages that appear in the Red Book I have attempted to use modern letters in a way as agreeable to modern English eyes as could be combined with reasonable accuracy. Also I have used them as far as possible with the same value in all the languages concerned. Fortunately the languages of the Westlands of the period were fairly euphonious (by European standards) and simple in phonetic structure, and no very rare or difficult sounds appear to have occurred in them.

Hobbit names, as has been explained, have all been converted into English forms and equivalents and can be pronounced accordingly. Thus Celador Bolger has c as in cellar, and g as in bulge. But in the alien languages the following points may be observed by those who are interested in such matters.

Noldorin appears, of course, for Sindarin throughout (see the commentary on $$5, 18). For Celador Bolger, who does not appear in The Lord of the Rings, see pp. 94, 96.

COMMENTARY.

$2. So far as I have been able to discover, my father never used the adjective 'Mannish', whether of language or tradition, before its occurrence in this work. The change of 'Human' to 'Mannish' in F 1 (see note 2 above) therefore marks the entry of this term.

$3. The use of the term Lembi 'Lingerers', for those of the Eldar who

'remained behind in the north-west of Middle-earth', is a clear indication of date, substantiating the conclusion already reached that this earliest version of Appendix F was at any rate written before the middle of 1950 (see p. 28 and note 1). In the long and extremely complex history of the classification of the divisions of the Elvish peoples and their names, this represents the stage reached in the Quenta Silmarillion $29 (V.215), where by a change that can be dated to November 1937 the old term Lembi 'Lingerers' became the name for those of the Eldar who were 'lost upon the long road' and never crossed the Great Sea (V.215, 219). Thus while this earliest version of Appendix F certainly belongs to the time when the end of the actual narrauve of The Lord of the Rings had been reached, it equally clearly preceded the new work on the legends of the First Age which included (as well as the Annals of Aman, the Grey Annals, and many other works) the revision of the Quenta Silmarillion: for in that revision the term Lembi was first changed to Lemberi and then removed, and the name Sindar emerged (for a detailed account see X.163-4, 169 - 71). As noted in X.91, the name Sindar does not occur in The Lord of the Rings apart from the Appendices.

$4. The name Lindar had been replaced by Vanyar when the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals were written.

The statement here concerning Quenya, the 'Elven-latin' originally deriving from the language of the Lindar, echoes that in the Lhammas or 'Account of Tongues' of the 1930s (see V.172; 193, 195). It may be noted that the expression 'Elven-latin' survived in the published form of Appendix F (RK p. 406): '[Quenya] was no longer a birth-tongue, but had become, as it were, an "Elven-latin" ...'.

$5. The name Quenta Noldorion, for Quenta Silmarillion, seems to be unique in this place (where it occurs in both texts). - Nothing is said in this work of the adoption of Sindarin (or as it is called here, Lemberin) by the Exiled Noldor: this fundamental development (which first appears in the earliest version of the 'linguistic excursus'

in the Grey Annals, XI.20-1) had not yet emerged (see further under $18 below). But the idea found in the earlier forms of that 'excursus' (XI.21, 25, 27) that the two languages, Noldorin and Sindarin, changed in similar ways and 'drew together' appears in the footnote to $5.

$7. In the list of Alterations in last revision 1951 (see X.7), often referred to, occurs 'Atani N[oldorin] Edain = Western Men or Fathers of Men'. It is possible that the form in F 1, Atanni, replacing Atanatari (note 3 above), was the earliest occurrence of the name.

In the sentence 'In that war three houses of the Fathers of Men aided the Elves ...' the word 'the' is not casually absent before 'three houses': cf. $10, 'the native tongue of the Fathers of Men themselves before those of the Three Houses passed over the Sea.'

The statement concerning the loss of the original language of the Atani shows a curious uncertainty (see note 4 above): from the original version in F 1, 'their chieftains learned the Noldorin speech, and some indeed forsook their own tongue', revised to the form in F 2 'the people of these houses learned the Noldorin speech, and forsook their own tongue', which was then altered to 'the lords of these houses learned the Noldorin speech'. That my father should have entertained at all at this time the idea that the original language of the Atani (of the Three Houses) was wholly lost is remarkable. In this connection it is interesting to compare what he wrote in drafting for the chapter Faramir (later The Window on the West), which can be dated precisely to May 1944 (VIII.144). Here, in a passage concerning the Common Speech which was only removed from the chapter at a late stage (see VIII.162), Faramir had said: Some there are of Gondor who have dealings with the Elves ... One great advantage we have: we speak an elvish speech, or one so near akin that we can in part understand them and they us.' At this Sam exclaimed: 'But you speak the ordinary language! Same as us, though a bit old-fashioned like, if you'll pardon my saying it.' Then Faramir replied (VIII.159 - 60):

'Of course we do. For that is our own tongue which we perhaps preserve better than you do far in the North. The Common Tongue, as some call it, is derived from the Numenoreans, being but a form changed by time of that speech which the Fathers of the Three Houses [struck out: Hador and Haleth and Beor] spoke of old. This language it is that has spread through the western world amongst all folk and creatures that use words, to some only a second tongue for use in intercourse with strangers, to some the only tongue they know. But this is not an Elvish speech in my meaning. All speech of men in this world is Elvish in descent; but only if one go back to the beginnings. What I meant was so: [the lords >] many men of the Three Houses long ago gave up man-speech and spoke the tongue of their friends the Noldor or Gnomes: a high-elvish tongue [struck out: akin to but changed from the Ancient Elvish of Elvenhome]. And always the lords of Numenor knew that tongue and used it among themselves. And so still do we among ourselves ...