Session 169 - we skipped a passage!

Bruce N H

Active Member
Hi all,

I was listening to session 169 from three weeks ago and we skipped a passage. Now, I'm not going to raise a red flag for any word or comma we miss discussing at length (I do, after all, hope we finish this discussion in my lifetime (only to go on to "Exploring the Silmarillion", which we definitely won't finish in any of our lifetimes)), but this one seemed important enough to mention.

In 169 we discussed Gandalf's brief description of his stay in Rohan, Boromir and Strider discussing whether the Rohirrim would pay a tribute of horses to Mordor, and Gandalf meeting Shadowfax. All very important stuff, and enough meat there that I'm surprised we didn't spend two sessions on this, but there were a couple of lines we did not discuss at all.

Standing up for the valor of the Rohirrim, Boromir says "... our allies, dwelling still in the lands that we gave them long ago." And a few lines later he says "...for the horses of the Riddermark come from the fields of the North, far from the Shadow, and their race, as that of the masters, is descended from the free days of old." I don't have any real grand conclusion here, but in the chronology of the story, this is the first mention of the origin story of Rohan. The Rohirrim as a people group date back to ancient times, they originally come from the North (or at least their horses did) and were granted the land of Rohan by Gondor, for whom they are allies (the allies thing came up earlier when Boromir said that only the Rohirrim would come to Gondor when they were in need). We don't get the Ride of Eorl the Young yet, but it's definitely under the surface.

--
I generally don't spend a lot of time in Exploring on the history of the writing of LotR - that's a Mythgard Academy HOME topic - discussions here IMO should stay within the logic of the story as brought to us by Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and Findegil. That said, these lines are definitely a later addition by Tolkien. This is all based on a quick skim of the HOME books, so I might well have missed something, but I dug into the textual history of Rohan.

In the writing of the story, Tolkien first has Gandalf mention visiting Rohan in what Christopher Tolkien calls the "fourth version" of the Council in Treason of Isengard. There we get that Gwaihir takes Gandalf to Rohan where they have horses, and already here we get that some of those horses are "descended from the Elder Days." Gandalf takes Shadowfax (Greyfax) and leaves. Then in the "fifth version" of the Council we get pretty much the same information about Rohan and their horses.

Finally we get some actual Rohan history in "The Riders of Rohan". As they are pursuing the orcs Aragorn (Trotter still) tells Gimli and Legolas about the "horse-Masters" - "They have long been friends with the people of Ondor and the lords of Minas Tirith, though they are not akin to them. After the fall of Isildur they came out of the North beyond Mirkwood, and their kinship is rather with the Brandings the Men of Dale, and the Beornings of the woods, among whom still may be seen many Men, tall and fair, like the Riders of Rohan." I think in the textual history that was the first origin of the history of Rohan, unless as I said I missed something.

Later in Treason of Isengard in "The Story Foreseen from Fangorn" we first get the name of Eorl. Theoden says "Not long shall this hall (which Brego son of Brytta [changed later in pencil to Eorl son of Eofor] built." Then in "The King of the Golden Hall" when they get to Meduseld: "As they stood in the darkness by the doors of the hall and saw on one of the hangings the figure of the young man on a white horse Aragorn said: 'Behold Eorl the Young! Thus he rode out of the North to the Battle of the Field of Gorgoroth.' A very difficult draft preceding this has 'the Battle of Gorgoroth where Sauron was [?overthrown],' making it clear that at this stage my father conceived the Eorl came south to the great battle in which Gil-galad and Elendil were slain and Isildur took the Ring."

In quickly skimming through the next two HOME books I didn't see any discussion of Tolkien going back and revising the Council again, but it's obvious that it was after Tolkien wrote the near-final version of what became the Two Towers he went back and inserted the words Boromir said about Rohan at the Council.

Bruce / Bricktales
 
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