Sauron Defeated Read online

  J. R. R. TOLKIEN

  Sauron Defeated

  THE END OF THE THIRD AGE

  The History of The Lord of the Rings

  PART FOUR

  THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS

  and

  THE DROWNING OF ANADÛNÊ

  Christopher Tolkien

  COPYRIGHT

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SEI 9GF

  www.tolkien.co.uk

  www.tolkienestate.com

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1992

  Copyright © The Tolkien Estate Limited and C.R. Tolkien 1992

  ® and ‘Tolkien’® are registered trade marks of The Tolkien Estate Limited

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780261103054

  Ebook Edition © May 2021 ISBN: 9780007348268

  Version: 2021–05–18

  Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

  DEDICATION

  To

  TAUM SANTOSKI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Illustrations

  Note on Accessibility

  Foreword

  PART ONE: THE END OF THE THIRD AGE

  IThe Story of Frodo and Sam in Mordor

  IIThe Tower of Kirith Ungol

  IIIThe Land of Shadow

  IVMount Doom

  VThe Field of Kormallen

  VIThe Steward and the King

  VIIMany Partings

  VIIIHomeward Bound

  IXThe Scouring of the Shire

  XThe Grey Havens

  XIThe Epilogue

  Appendix: Drawings of Orthanc and Dunharrow

  PART TWO: THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS

  Introduction

  Foreword and List of Members

  The Notion Club Papers Part One

  The Notion Club Papers Part Two

  Major Divergences in Earlier Versions of Part Two

  (i)The earlier versions of Night 66

  (ii)The original version of Lowdham’s ‘Fragments’

  (iii)The earlier versions of Lowdham’s ‘Fragments’ in Adunaic

  (iv)Earlier versions of Edwin Lowdham’s Old English text

  (v)The page preserved from Edwin Lowdham’s manuscript written in Númenórean script

  PART THREE: THE DROWNING OF ANADÛNÊ

  (i)The third version of The Fall of Númenor

  (ii)The original text of The Drowning of Anadûnê

  (iii)The second text of The Drowning of Anadûnê

  (iv)The final form of The Drowning of Anadûnê

  (v)The theory of the work

  (vi)Lowdham’s Report on the Adunaic Language

  Searchable Terms

  Other Books by J.R.R. Tolkien

  About the Publisher

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Arundel Lowdham’s ‘Fragments’

  The Tower of Kirith Ungol

  Mount Doom

  First copy of the King’s letter

  Third copy of the King’s letter

  Orthanc I

  Orthanc II

  Orthanc III

  Dunharrow I

  Dunharrow II

  Title-page of The Notion Club Papers

  The surviving page of Edwin Lowdham’s manuscript:

  Text I, recto

  Text I, verso

  Text II

  NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY

  The internal page references in this text relate to the printed version of the book; they do not match the pages of your ebook. Hyperlinks have been added which will direct you to the relevant reference. After a hyperlink has been activated (especially to any of the images) we recommend using your device’s “Back” button to return to the original location. Where no hyperlink is present you can use your ebook reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage. If a hyperlink opens in a footnote pop-up window, we recommend selecting the ‘go to footnote’ option and then using your device’s ‘Back’ button to return to your previous location.

  All of the special characters below appear in this ebook. If your e-reader is not displaying these characters you may find this affects your reading enjoyment of the ebook.

  Text

  Character

  ö

  û

  Æ

  ó

  ð

  FOREWORD

  With this book my account of the writing of The Lord of the Rings is completed. I regret that I did not manage to keep it even within the compass of three fat volumes; but the circumstances were such that it was always difficult to project its structure and foresee its extent, and became more so, since when working on The Return of the King I was largely ignorant of what was to come. I shall not attempt a study of the history of the Appendices at this time. That work will certainly prove both far-ranging and intricate; and since my father soon turned again, when The Lord of the Rings was finished, to the myths and legends of the Elder Days, I hope after this to publish his major writings and rewritings deriving from that period, some of which are wholly unknown.

  When The Lord of the Rings had still a long way to go – during the halt that lasted through 1945 and extended into 1946, The Return of the King being then scarcely begun – my father had embarked on a work of a very different nature: The Notion Club Papers; and from this had emerged a new language, Adunaic, and a new and remarkable version of the Númenórean legend, The Drowning of Anadûnê, the development of which was closely entwined with that of The Notion Club Papers. To retain the chronological order of writing which it has been my aim to follow (so far as I could discover it) in The History of Middle-earth I thought at one time to include in Volume VIII, first, the history of the writing of The Two Towers (from the point reached in The Treason of Isengard) and then this new work of 1945–6, reserving the history of The Return of the King to Volume IX. I was persuaded against this, I am sure rightly; and thus it is in the present book that the great disparity of subject-matter appears – and the great difficulty of finding a title for it. My father’s suggested title for Book VI of The Lord of the Rings was The End of the Third Age; but it seemed very unsatisfactory to name this volume The End of the Third Age and Other Writings, when the ‘other writings’, constituting two thirds of the book, were concerned with matters pertaining to the Second Age (and to whatever Age we find ourselves in now). Sauron Defeated is my best attempt to find some sort of link between the disparate parts and so to name the whole.

  At a cursory glance my edition of The Notion Club Papers and The Drowning of Anadûnê may appear excessively complicated; but I have in fact so ordered them that the works themselves are presented in the clearest possible form. Thus the final texts of the two parts of the Papers are each given complete and without any editorial interruption, as also are two versions of The Drowning of Anadûnê. All account and discussion of the evol
ution of the works is reserved to commentaries and appendages which are easily identified.

  In view of the great disparity between Part One and Parts Two and Three I have thought that it would be helpful to divide the Index into two, since there is scarcely any overlap of names.

  I acknowledge with many thanks the help of Dr Judith Priest-man of the Bodleian Library, and of Mr Charles B. Elston of Marquette University, in making available photographs for use in this book (from the Bodleian those on pages 42 and 138–41, from Marquette those on pages 19 and 130). Mr John D. Rateliff and Mr F. R. Williamson have very kindly assisted me on particular points in connection with The Notion Club Papers; and Mr Charles Noad has again generously given his time to an independent reading of the proofs and checking of citations.

  This book is dedicated to Taum Santoski, in gratitude for his support and encouragement throughout my work on The Lord of the Rings and in recognition of his long labour in the ordering and preparation for copying of the manuscripts at Marquette, a labour which despite grave and worsening illness he drove himself to complete.

  Since this book was set in type Mr Rateliff has pointed out to me the source of Arundel Lowdham’s allusion to ‘the Pig on the Ruined Pump’ (p. 179), which escaped me, although my father knew the work from which it comes well, and its verses formed part of his large repertoire of occasional recitation. It derives from Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno, chapter X – where however the Pig sat beside, not on, the Pump:

  There was a Pig, that sat alone,

  Beside a ruined Pump.

  By day and night he made his moan:

  It would have stirred a heart of stone

  To see him wring his hoofs and groan,

  Because he could not jump.

  In Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, chapter XXIII, this becomes the first verse of a poem called The Pig-Tale, at the end of which the Pig, encouraged by a passing Frog, tries but signally fails to jump to the top of the Pump:

  Uprose that Pig, and rushed, full whack,

  Against the ruined Pump:

  Rolled over like an empty sack,

  And settled down upon his back,

  While all his bones at once went ‘Crack!’

  It was a fatal jump.

  On a very different subject, Mr Noad has observed and communicated to me the curious fact that in the Plan of Shelob’s Lair reproduced in The War of the Ring, p. 201, my father’s compass-points ‘N’ and ‘S’ are reversed. Frodo and Sam were of course moving eastward in the tunnel, and the South was on their right. In my description (p. 200, lines 16 and 20) I evidently followed the compass-points without thinking, and so carelessly wrote of the ‘southward’ instead of the ‘northward’ tunnels that left the main tunnel near its eastern end.

  PART ONE

  THE END OF THE THIRD AGE

  I

  THE STORY OF FRODO AND SAM IN MORDOR

  Long foreseen, the story of the destruction of the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom was slow to reach its final form. I shall look back first over the earlier conceptions that have appeared in The Return of the Shadow and The Treason of Isengard, and then give some further outlines of the story.

  The conception of the Fiery Mountain, in which alone the Ring could be destroyed, and to which the Quest will ultimately lead, goes back to the earliest stages in the writing of The Lord of the Rings. It first emerged in Gandalf’s conversation with Bingo Bolger-Baggins, predecessor of Frodo, at Bag End (VI.82): ‘I fancy you would have to find one of the Cracks of Earth in the depths of the Fiery Mountain, and drop it down into the Secret Fire, if you really wanted to destroy it.’ Already in an outline that almost certainly dates from 1939 (VI.380) the scene on the Mountain appears:

  At end

  When Bingo [> Frodo] at last reaches Crack and Fiery Mountain he cannot make himself throw the Ring away. ? He hears Necromancer’s voice offering him great reward – to share power with him, if he will keep it.

  At that moment Gollum – who had seemed to reform and had guided them by secret ways through Mordor – comes up and treacherously tries to take Ring. They wrestle and Gollum takes Ring and falls into the Crack.

  The mountain begins to rumble.

  Two years later, in a substantial sketch of the story to come (The Story Foreseen from Moria’) it was still far from clear to my father just what happened on the Mountain (VII.209):

  Orodruin [written above: Mount Doom] has three great fissures North, West, South [> West, South, East] in its sides. They are very deep and at an unguessable depth a glow of fire is seen. Every now and again fire rolls out of mountain’s heart down the terrific channels. The mountain towers above Frodo. He comes to a flat place on the mountain-side where the fissure is full of fire – Sauron’s well of fire. The Vultures are coming. He cannot throw Ring in. The Vultures are coming. All goes dark in his eyes and he falls to his knees. At that moment Gollum comes up and wrestles with him, and takes Ring. Frodo falls flat.

  Here perhaps Sam comes up, beats off a vulture and hurls himself and Gollum into the gulf?

  Subsequently in this same outline is found:

  They escape [from Minas Morgol] but Gollum follows.

  It is Sam that wrestles with Gollum and [?throws] him finally in the gulf.

  Not long after this, in the outline ‘The Story Foreseen from Lórien’ (VII.344), my father noted that ‘Sam must fall out somehow’ (presumably at the beginning of the ascent of Mount Doom) and that Frodo went up the mountain alone:

  Sam must fall out somehow. Stumble and break leg: thinks it is a crack in ground – really Gollum. [?Makes ?Make] Frodo go on alone.

  Frodo toils up Mount Doom. Earth quakes, the ground is hot. There is a narrow path winding up. Three fissures. Near summit there is Sauron’s Fire-well. An opening in side of mountain leads into a chamber the floor of which is split asunder by a cleft.

  Frodo turns and looks North-west, sees the dust of battle. Faint sound of horn. This is Windbeam the Horn of Elendil blown only in extremity.

  Birds circle over. Feet behind.

  Since the publication of The Treason of Isengard there has come to light an outline that is obviously closely related to this passage from ‘The Story Foreseen from Lórien’ (which does not necessarily mean that it belongs to the same time) but is very much fuller. This I will refer to as I. The opening sentences were added at the head of the page but belong with the writing of the text.

  (I)Sam falls and hurts leg (really tripped by Gollum). Frodo has to go alone. (Gollum leaps on Sam as soon as Frodo is away.)

  Frodo toils on alone up slope of Mt.Doom. Earth quakes; the ground becomes hot. There is a narrow path winding up. It crosses one great fissure by a dreadful bridge. (There are three fissures (W. S. E.).) Near the summit is ‘Sauron’s Fire-well’. The path enters an opening in the side of the Mt. and leads into a low chamber, the floor of which is split by a profound fissure. Frodo turns back. He looks NW and sees dust and smoke of battle? (Sound of horn – the Horn of Elendil?) Suddenly he sees birds circling above: they come down and he realizes that they are Nazgûl! He crouches in the chamber-opening but still dare not enter. He hears feet coming up the path.

  At same moment Frodo suddenly feels, many times multiplied, the impact of the (unseen) searching eye; and of the enchantment of the Ring. He does not wish to enter chamber or to throw away the Ring. He hears or feels a deep, slow, but urgently persuasive voice speaking: offering him life, peace, honour: rich reward: lordship: power: finally a share in the Great Power – if he will stay and go back with a Ring Wraith to Baraddur. This actually terrifies him. He remains immovably balanced between resistance and yielding, tormented, it seems to him a timeless, countless, age. Then suddenly a new thought arose – not from outside – a thought born inside himself: he would keep the Ring himself, and be master of all. Frodo King of Kings. Hobbits should rule (of course he would not let down his friends) and Frodo rule hobbits. He would make great poems and sing great songs, and all the earth should blossom, and al
l should be bidden to his feasts. He puts on the Ring! A great cry rings out. Nazgûl come swooping down from the North. The Eye becomes suddenly like a beam of fire stabbing sheer and sharp out of the northern smoke. He struggles now to take off the Ring – and fails.

  The Nazgûl come circling down – ever nearer. With no clear purpose Frodo withdraws into the chamber. Fire boils in the Crack of Doom. All goes dark and Frodo falls to his knees.

  At that moment Gollum arrives, panting, and grabs Frodo and the Ring. They fight fiercely on the very brink of the chasm. Gollum breaks Frodo’s finger and gets Ring. Frodo falls in a swoon. Sam crawls in while Gollum is dancing in glee and suddenly pushes Gollum into the crack.

  Fall of Mordor.

  Perhaps better would be to make Gollum repent in a way. He is utterly wretched, and commits suicide. Gollum has it, he cried. No one else shall have it. I will destroy you all. He leaps into crack. Fire goes mad. Frodo is like to be destroyed.

  Nazgûl shape at the door. Frodo is caught in the fire-chamber and cannot get out!

  Here we all end together, said the Ring Wraith.

  Frodo is too weary and lifeless to say nay.

  You first, said a voice, and Sam (with Sting?) stabs the Black Rider from behind.

  Frodo and Sam escape and flee down mountain-side. But they could not escape the running molten lava. They see Eagles driving the Nazgûl. Eagles rescue them.

  Make issue of fire below them so that bridge is cut off and a sea of fire bars their retreat while mountain quivers and crumbles. Gandalf on white eagle rescues them.

  Against the sentence ‘He is utterly wretched, and commits suicide’ my father subsequently wrote No.

  Another outline, which I will call II, is closely related to outline I just given. It is written in ink over a briefer pencilled text, very little of which can be read – partly because of the overwriting, partly because of the script itself (my father could not read the conclusion of the first sentence and marked it with dots and a query).1