The Peoples of Middle-earth (72 page)

2. haulm: the stalks of cultivated plants left when the ears or pods have been gathered; corn-leeps: leep (leap) is an old dialect word for a basket (Old English leap).

3. Ivonwin: the Noldorin (i.e. later Sindarin) form Ivann for Yavanna appears in the Etymologies, V.399, stem YAB 'fruit'.

4. This was written at the same time as the rest of the manuscript, but set in as printed, and was excluded from the quotation marks added later to the body of the text. The words Quente Quengoldo ('Thus spoke Pengolod') also belong to the time of writing.

PART FOUR.

UNFINISHED TALES.

XVI.

THE NEW SHADOW.

This story, or fragment of a story, is now published for the first time, though its existence has long been known.(1) The textual history is not complicated, but there is a surprising amount of it.

There is, first, a collection of material in manuscript, beginning with two sides of a page carrying the original opening of the story: this goes no further than the recollection of the young man (here called Egalmoth)(2) of the rebuke and lecture that he received from Borlas (3) when caught by him stealing apples from his orchard as a boy. There is then a text, which I will call 'A', written in rapid but clear script, and this extends as far as the story ever went (here also the young man's name is Egalmoth). This was followed by a typescript in top copy and carbon 'B', which follows A pretty closely and ends at the same point: there are a great many small changes in expression, but nothing that alters the narrative in even minor ways (the young man, however, now bears the name Arthael). There is also an amanuensis typescript derived from B, without independent value.(4)

Finally, there is another typescript, 'C', also with carbon copy, which extends only to the point in the story where the young man -

here named Saelon (5) - leaves Borlas in his garden 'searching back in his mind to discover how this strange and alarming conversation had begun' (p. 416). This text C treats B much as B treats A: altering the expression (fairly radically in places), but in no way altering the story, or giving to it new bearings.

It seems strange that my father should have made no less than three versions, each showing very careful attention to improvement of the text in detail, when the story had proceeded for so short a distance.

The evidence of the typewriters used suggests, however, that C was made very substantially later. The machine on which B was typed was the one he used in the 1950s before the acquisition of that referred to in X.300, while the italic script of A could with some probability be ascribed to that time; but the typewriter used for C was his last.(6) In his Biography (p. 228) Humphrey Carpenter stated that in 1965

my father 'found a typescript of "The New Shadow", a sequel to The Lord of the Rings which he had begun a long time ago but had abandoned after a few pages.... He sat up till four a.m. reading it and thinking about it.' I do not know the source of this statement; but further evidence is provided by a used envelope, postmarked 8 January 1968, on the back of which my father scribbled a passage concerning Borlas, developing further the account of his circumstances at the time of the opening of the story (see note 14). This is certain evidence that he was still concerned with The New Shadow as late as 1968; and since the passage roughed out here would follow on from the point reached in the typescript C (see note 14) it seems very likely that C dates from that time.

Such as the evidence is, then, the original work (represented by the manuscript A and the typescript B) derives from the 1950s. In a letter of 13 May 1964 (Letters no.256) he wrote:

I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall [of Sauron], but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless - while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors - like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage. I could have written a 'thriller'

about the plot and its discovery and overthrow - but it would be just that. Not worth doing.

From the evidence given above, however, it is seen that his interest in the story was subsequently reawakened, and even reached the point of making a new (though incomplete) version of what he had written of it years before. But in 1972, fifteen months before his death, he wrote to his friend Douglas Carter (Letters no.338): I have written nothing beyond the first few years of the Fourth Age.

(Except the beginning of a tale supposed to refer to the end of the reign of Eldarion about 100 years after the death of Aragorn.

Then I of course discovered that the King's Peace would contain no tales worth recounting; and his wars would have little interest after the overthrow of Sauron; but that almost certainly a restless-ness would appear about then, owing to the (it seems) inevitable boredom of Men with the good: there would be secret societies practising dark cults, and 'orc-cults' among adolescents.) To form the text that now follows I print C so far as it goes, with the sinister young man given the name Saelon; and from that point I give the text of B, changing the name from Arthael in B to Saelon.

THE NEW SHADOW.

This tale begins in the days of Eldarion, son of that Elessar of whom the histories have much to tell. One hundred and five years had passed since the fall of the Dark Tower,(7) and the story of that time was little heeded now by most of the people of Gondor, though a few were still living who could remember the War of the Ring as a shadow upon their early childhood. One of these was old Borlas of Pen-arduin. He was the younger son of Beregond, the first Captain of the Guard of Prince Faramir, who had removed with his lord from the City to the Emyn Arnen.(8)

'Deep indeed run the roots of Evil,' said Borlas, 'and the black sap is strong in them. That tree will never be slain. Let men hew it as often as they may, it will thrust up shoots again as soon as they turn aside. Not even at the Feast of Felling should the axe be hung up on the wall! '

'Plainly you think you are speaking wise words,' said Saelon.

'I guess that by the gloom in your voice, and by the nodding of your head. But what is this all about? Your life seems fair enough still, for an aged man that does not now go far abroad.

Where have you found a shoot of your dark tree growing? In your own garden?'

Borlas looked up, and as he glanced keenly at Saelon he wondered suddenly if this young man, usually gay and often half mocking, had more in his mind than appeared in his face.

Borlas had not intended to open his heart to him, but being burdened in thought he had spoken aloud, more to himself than his companion. Saelon did not return his glance. He was hum-ming softly, while he trimmed a whistle of green willow with a sharp nail-knife.

The two were sitting in an arbour near the steep eastern shore of Anduin where it flowed about the feet of the hills of Arnen.

They were indeed in Borlas's garden and his small grey-stone house could be seen through the trees above them on the hill-slope facing west. Borlas looked at the river, and at the trees in their June leaves, and then far off to the towers of the City under the glow of late afternoon. 'No, not in my garden,' he said thoughtfully.

'Then why are you so troubled?' asked Saelon. 'If a man has a fair garden with strong walls, then he has as much as any man can govern for his own pleasure.' He paused. 'As long as he keeps the strength of life in him,' he added. 'When that fails, why trouble about any lesser ill? For then he must soon leave his garden at last, and others must look to the weeds.'

Borlas sighed, but he did not answer, and Saelon went on:

'But there are of course some who will not be content, and to their life's end they trouble their hearts about their neighbours, and the City, and the Realm, and all the wide world. You are one of them, Master Borlas, and have ever been so, since I first knew you as a boy that you caught in your orchard. Even then you were not content to let ill alone: to deter me with a beating, or to strengthen your fences. No. You were grieved and wanted to improve me. You had me into your house and talked to me.

'I remember it well. "Orcs' work," you said many times.

"Stealing good fruit, well, I suppose that is no worse than boys'

work, if they are hungry, or their fathers are too easy. But pulling down unripe apples to break or cast away! That is Orcs'

work. How did you come to do such a thing, lad?"

'Orcs' work! I was angered by that, Master Borlas, and too proud to answer, though it was in my heart to say in child's words: "If it was wrong for a boy to steal an apple to eat, then it is wrong to steal one to play with. But not more wrong. Don't speak to me of Orcs' work, or I may show you some!"

'It was a mistake, Master Borlas. For I had heard tales of the Orcs and their doings, but I had not been interested till then.

You turned my mind to them. I grew out of petty thefts (my father was not too easy), but I did not forget the Orcs. I began to feel hatred and think of the sweetness of revenge. We played at Orcs, I and my friends, and sometimes I thought: "Shall I gather my band and go and cut down his trees? Then he will think that the Orcs have really returned." But that was a long time ago,' Saelon ended with a smile.

Borlas was startled. He was now receiving confidences, not giving them. And there was something disquieting in the young man's tone, something that made him wonder whether deep down, as deep as the roots of the dark trees, the childish resentment did not still linger. Yes, even in the heart of Saelon, the friend of his own son, and the young man who had in the last few years shown him much kindness in his loneliness.(9) At any rate he resolved to say no more of his own thoughts to him.

'Alas!' he said, 'we all make mistakes. I do not claim wisdom, young man, except maybe the little that one may glean with the passing of the years. From which I know well enough the sad truth that those who mean well may do more harm than those who let things be. I am sorry now for what I said, if it roused hate in your heart. Though I still think that it was just: untimely maybe, and yet true. Surely even a boy must understand that fruit is fruit, and does not reach its full being until it is ripe; so that to misuse it unripe is to do worse than just to rob the man that has tended it: it robs the world, hinders a good thing from fulfilment. Those who do so join forces with all that is amiss, with the blights and the cankers and the ill winds. And that was the way of Orcs.'

'And is the way of Men too,' said Saelon. 'No! I do not mean of wild men only, or those who grew "under the Shadow", as they say. I mean all Men. I would not misuse green fruit now, but only because I have no longer any use for unripe apples, not for your lofty reasons, Master Borlas. Indeed I think your reasons as unsound as an apple that has been too long in store.

To trees all Men are Orcs. Do Men consider the fulfilment of the life-story of a tree before they cut it down? For whatever purpose: to have its room for tilth, to use its flesh as timber or as fuel, or merely to open the view? If trees were the judges, would they set Men above Orcs, or indeed above the cankers and blights? What more right, they might ask, have Men to feed on their juices than blights?'

'A man,' said Borlas, 'who tends a tree and guards it from blights and many other enemies does not act like an Orc or a canker. If he eats its fruit, he does it no injury. It produces fruit more abundantly than it needs for its own purpose: the continuing of its kind.'

'Let him eat the fruit then, or play with it,' said Saelon. 'But I spoke of slaying: hewing and burning; and by what right men do such things to trees.'

'You did not. You spoke of the judgement of trees in these matters. But trees are not judges. The children of the One are the masters. My judgement as one of them you know already.

The evils of the world were not at first in the great Theme, but entered with the discords of Melkor. Men did not come with these discords; they entered afterwards as a new thing direct from Eru, the One, and therefore they are called His children, and all that was in the Theme they have, for their own good, the right to use - rightly, without pride or wantonness, but with reverence.(10)

'If the smallest child of a woodman feels the cold of winter, the proudest tree is not wronged, if it is bidden to surrender its flesh to warm the child with fire. But the child must not mar the tree in play or spite, rip its bark or break its branches. And the good husbandman will use first, if he can, dead wood or an old tree; he will not fell a young tree and leave it to rot, for no better reason than his pleasure in axe-play. That is orkish.

'But it is even as I said: the roots of Evil lie deep, and from far off comes the poison that works in us, so that many do these things - at times, and become then indeed like the servants of Melkor. But the Orcs did these things at all times; they did harm with delight to all things that could suffer it, and they were restrained only by lack of power, not by either prudence or mercy. But we have spoken enough of this.'