The Treason Of Isengard by J.R.R. Tolkien;

Author:J.R.R. Tolkien;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

GALADRIEL

I have divided the draft manuscript of the ‘Lothlórien’ story into two parts, although at this stage my father continued without break to the end of FR Book II Chapter 7, The Mirror of Galadriel’; and I return now to the point where I left it on p. 234. From the coming of the Company to Cerin Amroth the draft is in thick, soft pencil, and very difficult.

The sun had sunk behind the mountains, and the shadows were falling in the wood, when they went on again. Now their paths went deep into dense wood where already a grey dusk had gathered. It was nearly night under the trees when they came out suddenly under a pale evening sky pierced by a few early stars. There was a wide treeless space running in a vast circle before them. Beyond that was a deep grass-clad dike, and a high green wall beyond. [?Rising] ground inside the circle was [??thick with] mallorn-trees, the tallest they had yet seen in that land. The highest must have been nearly 200 feet high, and of great girth. They had no branches lower than 3 fathoms above their roots. In the upper branches amid the leaves hundreds of lights gold and white and pale green were shining.

‘Welcome to Caras Galadon,’ he said, ‘the city of Nelennas which [?mayhap] in your tongue is called Angle.1 But we must go round; the gates do not look north.’

There was a white paved road running round the circuit of the walls. On the south side there was a bridge over the dike leading to great gates set on the side where the ends of the wall overlapped. They passed within into deep shadow where the two green walls ended [?in a] lane. They saw no folk on guard,2 but there were many soft voices overhead, and in the distance he [sc. Frodo] heard a voice falling clear out of the air above them.

The original pencilled text continues for some distance from this point, but my father partly overwrote it in ink, and (more largely) erased it wholly before the new text was set down in its place. Here and there bits of the original text were retained, and where it was not erased but overwritten a name or a phrase can be made out. There was no long interval between the two forms of the text; my father may in any case have rewritten this section mainly because it was so nearly illegible.

They passed along many paths and climbed many flights of steps, until they saw before them amid a wide lawn a fountain. It sprang high in the air and fell in a wide basin of silver, from which a white stream ran away down the hill. Hard by stood a great tree. At its foot stood three tall elves. They were clad in grey mail and from their shoulders hung long white cloaks. ‘Here dwell Keleborn and Galadriel,3 the Lord and Lady of the Galadrim,’ said Halldir.4 ‘It is their wish that you should go up and speak to them.

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