The War of the Ring (46 page)

Final assault on Minas Tirith [added: [11 >] 10 night]. Nazgul appear. Pelennor wall is taken. Sudden charge of Rohan breaks siege. Theoden and Eowyn destroy Nazgul and Theoden falls

[struck oat: Feb. 12]. Aragorn arrives (having crossed the mountains with his rangers, he drove off the Southrons). Aragorn enters Minas Tirith and meets Denethor and Faramir.

4. [Added: 12] Gandalf and Aragorn and Eomer and Faramir defeat Mordor. Cross into Ithilien. Ents arrive and Elves out of North. Faramir invests Morghul and main force comes to Morannon. Parley.

A suggestion that Aragorn should cross the mountains into Gondor is found in the notes E on p. 243; in these notes is found also the first mention of the coming of Rangers from the North, referred to also in the narratives F and G (pp. 247, 249). The Pukel-men entered in F

(p. 245), where they are called Hoker-men, Hocker-men; in G they are Pookel-men (p. 248), and in typescript H Pukelmen (p. 251).

The text that I give next, 'IV', is reproduced on p. 261. This is a very battered page (38) of great interest, since it carries what is undoubtedly the earliest drawing of Minas Tirith, around which is written an outline in faint pencil. The line that runs up to the right of the White Tower indicates the mountain behind the city, with the name Mindolluin written across the summit. Whether my father already conceived the 'Hill of Guard' to be joined to the mountain mass by a shoulder cannot be said.

The outline reads as follows (with contractions expanded and some punctuation added):

(IV) Gandalf and Pippin reach Minas Tirith dawn. Description of Minas Tirith and its huge 'cyclopean' concentric walls - it is in fact a fort and town the size of a small mountain. It has 7 circles with 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 gates before the White Tower is reached.

They are challenged on the borders of the Cityland, Pelennor,(39) about which ruins of an old wall ran. Gandalf

[?carries messages] from Rohan and speaks some pass[?word]

and they let him by in wonder. So he rides up to the 6th court and dismounts. There Pippin is re..... They pass into High City (Taurost) and so come before Denethor who at first does not recognize Gandalf.

(The earliest sketch of Minas Tirith.)

Denethor comes out to his [? throne]. News. Denethor has lit the beacons because what his spies tell. Faramir. Boromir.

Throne empty. Denethor has seat in front. He comes in after Gandalf arrives. He has a secret letter from Faramir (telling of Boromir's death and meeting with Frodo, but not overtly mentioning Ring).

This seems to have been my father's first setting down on paper of his conception of Minas Tirith.

The next two outlines ('V' and 'VI') were developed from III, and are very closely related: they were certainly written at the same time.

From the rejected sentence in VI 'He has a secret' it is seen that my father had IV in front of him, for in that text appears 'He has a secret letter from Faramir'. The rejected reference in V to 'Dunharrow under the Halifirien' relates this outline to the note on Dunharrow in II (see p. 257). There is thus good reason to think that V and VI derive from 1944 rather than 1946, and it is notable that in V appears the first glimpse of the story that would emerge as the passage of the Paths of the Dead.

(V) Book V.

Gandalf and Pippin ride to Minas Tirith (3-4, 4-5 arriving at sunrise on 6). Interview with Denethor - reasons for the beacons: a great fleet from south is approaching mouths of Anduin. Also messages from secret scouts in Ithilien report that

'storm is about to burst'.

Muster of Gondor (Forlong the Fat etc.). Pippin on the battlements sees the full moon; and thinks of Frodo.

Theoden reaches Dunharrow [struck out: under the Halifirien] (Feb. 5 evening). Pukel-men. They find muster already begun and not at Edoras. Rangers have come! Gandalf had been at Edoras and issued orders: Nazgul crossed the plain (3-4 and on 4). Beacons are reported that night. Messengers arrive in morning. Theoden prepares to ride. Gamling in charge at Helm's Deep. Galdor the old seneschal (40) of Edoras in Eastfold.

Eowyn rides with Eomer and Theoden.

Theoden sets out at nightfall (6). At Edoras they hear tidings of invasion of Wold. ? Eomer rides off north but rejoins main host later with news that the Ents have come out of Fangorn and destroyed this N. diversion. They pass on at all speed into Anorien.

Aragorn is not there. He had fallen into converse with the messengers of Gondor and getting guides from the men of Harrowdale had passed into the mountains with his Rangers.

Great darkness over land (Feb. 8). Faramir comes. Host of Morghul crosses Great River at Osgiliath (night of 8) and assails Gondor (9). At same time S[outhron] fleets come up the Great River and send a host into Lebennin, while another host from Morannon crosses River to north on a boat-bridge and links with the Morghul-host. Gondor is defeated in night battle 9-10.

Gandalf in White Tower does not yet reveal himself. [In margin: Gandalf looks in Palantir?] Black hosts gather about the wall of Pelennor. Morning of 10 Nazgul are seen: men fly. At sunrise on 10 there is a sound of horns. Charge of Rohan. Rout of the enemy. [Scribbled in margin: Eomer wounded.] Theoden is slain by Nazgul; but he is unhorsed (41) and the enemy is routed.

[Added: Gandalf leads charge in white.] Theoden is laid in state in tomb of kings. [Struck out: Great grief of Merry. Meeting of Merry and Pippin.]

[Added: News comes that fleet is coming up River......]

News comes from South that a great king has descended out of the mountains where he had been entombed, and set such a flame into men that the mountaineers (where the purer blood of Gondor lingered?) and the folk of Lebennin have utterly routed the Southrons, and burned [> taken] their ships. The fleet sailing up the River is an ally! Aragorn reaches Osgiliath by ship like a great king of old. (Frodo's vision?)(42) Meeting of Gandalf and Aragorn and Faramir at Osgiliath evening of 10.

Closely related to outline V is the following text ('VI'), which I incline to think was written second.

(VI) Gandalf and Pippin ride to Minas Tirith (3-4, 4 - 5, 5-6) arriving at the Outer Wall of Pelennor at daybreak and seeing sunrise on the White Tower on morning of Feb. 6. On night of 5-6 they see the beacons flare up, and are passed by messengers riding to Rohan. Pippin sees moonrise about 9 p.m.

Description of Minas Tirith and its 7 concentric walls and gates. Gandalf and Pippin come into the presence of Denethor.

Empty throne. Denethor has a seat in front. [Struck oat: He has a secret] They exchange news. Reasons of Beacons: news of scouts in Ithilien that 'storm is coming'; Southrons are marching in; most of all - a great fleet from South is approaching the mouths of Anduin. Muster of Rohan [read Gondor) is going apace- catalogue.

(7) Great Darkness spreads from East. Faramir returns.

Pippin on the battlements.

Theoden reaches Dunharrow (5 evening). Merry sees Pukelmen. They find Muster has already begun, owing to special instructions by Gandalf, who had stayed at Edoras on 4 and owing to passage of Nazgul. Rangers have come! [Struck out: Aragorn and Eomer already there?] That night the beacon lights are reported. In morning messengers arrive from Gondor.

Theoden gets ready to ride. Eowyn and Eomer go with him.

[Struck out: But Aragorn (after secret converse with Aragorn takes Merry]

Here outline VI ends, but the lower half of the page is taken up by a map, which is redrawn in part and discussed in a note at the end of this chapter.

NOTES.

1. The illegible word might be already, in which case my father omitted the words been riding. The word I have given as four might be read as fire.

2. The words by nightfall tonight are perfectly plain, but my father must have intended something else, since it was now several hours after nightfall. In the outlines V and VI (pp. 262-3) the messengers from Minas Tirith reach Edoras the following morning (6 February).

3. As in text B, the moon rises 'round and full out of the eastern shadows' ('now almost at the full,' RK). - At this stage the beacons were fired on the last night of Gandalf's ride; in the final form it was on the night preceding the last (the journey taking four nights), and so when Pippin woke in the dawn beside the wall of the Pelennor 'Another day of hiding and a night of journey had fleeted by' (RK p. 20). This sentence was added to the text of the chapter much later.

4. Possibly this means 'longer than the time that they had in fact taken'.

5. Here and subsequently, and again in text B, the river's name is written Snowborn, but at two of the occurrences in A the u was inserted.

6. At this point my father drew in the text a very simple little sketch of the 'upland field' set into the mountain's side, essentially the same as the lower of the two sketches on the page reproduced on p. 239, but without the falling stream.

7. My father first wrote 'ale of Hama', i.e. his 'funeral-ale', funeral feast (cf. bridal from bride-ale, marriage feast). He changed this to ... ale of Hama, intending some compound term of the same sense, but I cannot decipher it.

8. This is a reference to Theoden's words to Merry and Pippin at the end of 'The Road to Isengard': 'May we meet again in my house!

There you shall sit beside me ...'

9. This contradicts the statement a few lines above that 'Eowyn comes forth and greets Theoden and Aragorn.' The story that Aragorn (with Legolas and Gimli) had gone on ahead and reached Dunharrow before Theoden is not present in text B, which undoubtedly followed A; it appears however in the time-schemes C and D (pp. 140-1).

10. Halbarad first appeared in The Lord of the Rings as the name of Shadowfax: see VII.152, 390.

11. The Sea of Nurnen, the Nargil Pass, and the River Harnen all appear on the First Map (Map III, VII.309). - The text ends with a reference to Umbar that I cannot decipher.

12. Eowyn was struck out, and wine! written in the margin; which I take to mean that Eowyn was not seated, for she bore the wine.

13. The queries might mean that my father was uncertain of the correctness of his interpretation of the pencilled forms (in the one case it might be Umbor or Umbar; in the other the second vowel of Nargil, Nargul cannot now be read under the ink overlay). But this does not seem very likely. Both these names appear in text A (p. 237), where Nargil is clear, though Umbar could be read as Umbor. Umbar and Haven of Umbar appear on the First Map (VII.309) and on the map that I made in 1943; and on the latter the pass through the southern mountains of Mordor is named Nargil (on the First Map the name was pencilled in roughly and is hard to read, but was apparently Narghil, VII.310).

14. As originally drawn, a pass over the mountains in this region is clearly defined on the First Map: see Map IV", square P11

(VII.314), connecting to Map III, square Q 11 (VII.309). Here the Blackroot rises in an oval lake. With the superimposed portion Map IV(D-E) (VII.319) the connections become unclear, especially since a different convention was used in the representation of the mountains, but at any rate there is no clear indication of a pass.

The 1943 map retains the oval lake and the broad pass, but its relation to the First Map is here difficult to interpret (VII.320).

Possibly it was to this feature that my father referred in his note on that map (VII.321 note 1): The White Mountains are not in accord with the story'. On late maps, as is to be expected, no pass breaks the line of the mountains.

15. In the Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings (A Tolkien Compass, ed. Lobdell, p. 200) my father noted of the name Pukel-men: 'It represents Old English pucel (still surviving as puckle), one of the forms of the puk- stem (widespread in England, Wales, Ireland, Norway and Iceland) referring to a devil, or to a minor sprite such as Puck, and often applied to ugly misshapen persons.'

16. In place of this, RK has: '... a winding line of Riders crossing the ford and filing along the road towards the camp prepared for them. Only the king and his guard were going up into the Hold.'

17. RK has here: 'Such was the dark Dunharrow, the work of long-forgotten men'; cf. text H, p. 251.

18. At this point my father's writing suddenly becomes very much more rapid and rough.

19. Cf. 'The King of the Golden Hall' in VII.447, where Aragorn says: 'If I live, I will come, Lady Eowyn, and then maybe we will ride together.'

20. I think that Eowyn's naming her father Eothain is most likely to be a mere slip, for Eomund father of Eomer and Eowyn was established (VII.393 etc.), and Eothain was the name of Eomer's squire (VII.400-2); but see further p. 350 and note 13. In LR