Free The War of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

legends, and the names that they use in Rohan have a meaning!'
    18. In the original draft for this passage 'the strange figure came quickly on to meet them until it was about fifty [written above: a hundred] yards away. Then it stopped and lifting its grey arms and long hands to its mouth it called in a loud voice like a
    [?ringing] trumpet. "Is Gandalf with this company?" The words were clear for all to hear.'
    19. The page of the manuscript that includes this passage was replaced by another, which introduced little significant change; but in the rejected page Bregalad and Gandalf speak of 'the trees', and only in the replacement do they call them 'the Huorns'.
    Several other terms in fact preceded Huorns: see pp. 47, 50, 52.
    20. In the rejected page referred to in note 19 Bregalad said that Treebeard 'wishes to know what to do with Saruman', at which Gandalf 'laughed softly, and then was silent, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Hm," he mused, "hm - yes, that will be a problem." ' Cf. the outline for the chapter (p. 26).
    21. The original drafting for the description of Nan Gurunir reads thus:
    On either side the last long arms of the Misty Mountains reached out down into the plain, bare and broken ridges half-hidden now in smoke. And now they came upon a strange thing. It seemed to them that ruinous rocks lay ahead, out of which in a new-riven channel came the river, flowing where they stood back into its old course; yet higher up the valley the former bed was dry.
    'Yes, I knew it,' said Gandalf. 'Therefore I drew you this way. We may cross with no difficulty to the Gates of Isengard.
    As some of you who have journeyed here may know, of old the Isen flowed down, fed by many mountain-springs and streams, until it was already a swift and powerful water ere it left Nan Gurunir - it swept past the walls of Isengard upon the East.
    That river you claimed as your boundary, but Saruman did not agree. But things have changed. Come and see!'
    This was not used at all in the completed text of the first version of the story. It was not the first appearance of the diversion of the Isen: cf. 'The Story Foreseen from Fangorn', VII.436: 'At North end [of Isengard] they let in the River Isen but blocked its outflow. Soon all the floor of the circle was flooded to many feet deep.'
    In the passage just cited the meaning must be that the Isen had not been sent back into its former course after the drowning of the Circle of Isengard, but continued to flow in its new channel.
    Gandalf's words 'I knew it. Therefore I drew you this way. We may cross with no difficulty to the Gates of Isengard' must mean that that is why he had led the company along the east bank of the Isen from the Fords (p. 28), for thus they would only have to cross the dry former bed of the river, to the east of its new course.
    22. Later, in 'Flotsam and Jetsam', Merry told (TT p. 171) that when the great host left Isengard 'some went off down the highway to the Fords, and some turned away and went eastward. A bridge has been built down there, about a mile away, where the river runs in a very deep channel.' See p. 56.
    23. Differences from the final form were that a part of the Circle of Isengard on the western side was formed of the mountain-wall itself (this was taken up from the draft but rejected from the completed manuscript in the act of writing); there were two entrances, there being in addition to the great southern arch 'a small gate at the north, near the mountains' feet'; the circle was
    'almost two miles from rim to rim' ('a mile', TT); 'through it by many carven channels water flowed, entering as a stream from the mountains beneath the northern gate, and watering all the hidden land'; and the windows in the walls of the circle are described (in the preliminary drafting only) as 'countless dark windows and deep, square-cut, menacing'.
    24. This picture was drawn on the back of a page of the examination script of the poet John Heath-Stubbs, who took the final