Many of these additions and corrections, referenced to the original hardback and mass market paperback editions, are now part of the revised (trade paperback) edition published in spring 2008 by HarperCollins. A few of the changes we submitted for the new edition, however, were not incorporated, or only partially incorporated, and several new errors were introduced in editing and typesetting. See here for addenda and corrigenda specific to the new edition.
Although in the Reader’s Companion we note certain textual errors and corrections in various editions of The Lord of the Rings, and specially list those emendations we made to the editions of 2004–5, we do not document every error and correction in every edition and printing. To have done so would have occupied us for many months past our deadline for publication, and in any case such analysis is better suited to Wayne’s descriptive bibliography of Tolkien, which he is to revise and augment.
Here The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion is abbreviated RC for convenience, e.g. ‘RC:655’ = Reader’s Companion, p. 655.
p. xvii: For ‘Yuval Kfir’ read ‘Yuval Welis’, and place in correct alphabetical order.
p. xxiii, l. 12 from bottom: For ‘Book III’ read ‘Book II’.
p. xlvi, l. 6: For ‘Minas Morghul’ read ‘Minas Morgul’.
p. lix, l. 13 from bottom: The second character of the Old English word, mistakenly set by the printer as a question mark, should be a -y- with a macron.
p. lxiv, ll. 5–6 from bottom: For ‘the region at the eastern end of the Ered Nimrais, in Anórien,’ read ‘the mountainous region of the promontory of Andrast’.
p. lxv, ll. 2–3: For ‘Andrast’, not in Anórien. ‘My father’ read ‘Andrast. My father’.
p. lxvii, l. 22: For ‘Second Age 1977’ read ‘Third Age 1977’.
p. lxxiv, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘or at any rate reviewed’ read ‘or at any rate have reviewed’.
p. lxxvi, l. 18: For ‘purported’ read ‘purposed’.
p. lxxviii, l. 18 from bottom: For ‘stealthily’ read ‘shabbily’.
p. 4, ll. 17–18: For ‘in height between 3 and 4 feet in height’ read ‘in height between 3 and 4 feet’. Our transcription from the Bodleian manuscript has ‘in height’ twice, but Christopher Tolkien’s transcription published in Unfinished Tales, p. 287, has only the first instance, and is undoubtedly correct.
p. 26, l. 15 from bottom: For ‘east of Hobbiton’ read ‘west of Hobbiton’.
p. 33, note on Boffins: Fredrik Ström reminds us that a ‘Sergeant Boffin’ appears in Tolkien’s Mr. Bliss.
p. 35, ll. 21–4: In the Lambengolmor Tolkien linguistics forum, message 840, Fredrik Ström took issue with our mention of hay (= dried grass) in our statement that ‘the term hayward originally referred to one who protected the fences around lands enclosed for growing hay (Old English hegeweard), later more generally applied to one who prevents cattle from breaking through into enclosed fields with growing crops’, and argues that the more general application, which we call ‘later’, in fact is the earlier. In message 843 Wayne replied that our gloss should have pointed to Tolkien’s own for hayward in Nomenclature, as we do in our gloss for Hob Hayward on RC:655. For our note on RC:35 we consulted Reaney and Wilson, the Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames, which says: ‘The original duties of the hayward seem to have been to protect the fences round the Lammas lands when enclosed for hay (Coulton), hence his name, O[ld] E[nglish] hegeweard “guardian of the fence or hedge”’. There may be an element of folk etymology at work in this instance. We would now revise our note as follows:
10 (I: 19). haywards – Those charged with maintaining fences and hedges, especially to prevent cattle from breaking through into enclosed fields with growing crops. Hayward derives from Old English hege ‘hedge, fence’ (not heg ‘hay, grass’) + weard ‘guard, warder’. See also notes for pp. 99 and 998.
p. 38, l. 11 from bottom: The note for ‘But pity stayed him’ should be preceded by the paragraph heading 12 (I:21–2): At length they came to a halt.
p. 39, ll. 1–3 from bottom: Julian Wilson has pointed out to us that Tolkien does, in fact, suggest in The Hobbit that Gandalf disbelieves Bilbo’s first story, in Chapter 6 (‘He gave Bilbo a queer look from under his bushy eyebrows . . . and the hobbit wondered if he guessed at the part of his tale that he had left out’). Our note refers, rather, to the words in the Prologue he [Gandalf] continued to be very curious about the ring, which we should have quoted instead, thus:
13 (I: 22). he continued to be very curious about the ring – There is no hint of this curiosity in The Hobbit. In Chapter 6, Bilbo omits mention of the ring when he tells his story to Gandalf and the dwarves, and when he does tell of the ring in Chapter 8, Gandalf is not present.
p. 51, l. 13 after title: For ‘Dormiston’ read ‘Dormston’.
p. 52, ll. 12–23: On eleventy-first, see further, the discussion of eleventy-one in Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), pp. 112–13.
p. 56, l. 16 from bottom: In Amon Hen 199 (May 2006), p. 23, David Doughan comments that we could have said more about the word gaffer. While we would not go as far as he suggests, we should have mentioned that gaffer is recorded in general English dialect use also with the meaning ‘grandfather’, and is found ‘prefixed to a proper name as a term of respect’ (English Dialect Dictionary).
p. 61, l. 1 from bottom: For ‘Galdalf’ read ‘Gandalf’.
p. 65, l. 6 from bottom: For ‘backarraper’ read ‘backarapper’. As backrapper, the word is recorded by Joseph Wright in his English Dialect Dictionary as Warwickshire dialect. See also Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), pp. 92–3.
pp. 69–70: The notes for paragraphs beginning ‘Well, I’ve made up my mind’ and ‘I am old, Gandalf’ are reversed in order.
p. 76, l. 5: For ‘many long years, I hope’ read ‘many an age’. Our point in this note should have been that ‘is freed’ in the first and second editions became ‘will be freed’ in the third, along with ‘many an age’ > ‘many long years, I hope’.
p. 89, l. 10 from bottom: For ‘depts’ read ‘depths’.
p. 97, block quotation at foot of page: In this and other quotations from Marquette MSS 4/2/36 (The Hunt for the Ring) we slightly reorganized and reformatted Tolkien’s manuscript for ease of reading, following the example of the Hunt for the Ring section of Unfinished Tales, though with greater indication of editorial action through the use of square brackets. This primarily involved expression in words what Tolkien wrote only as abbreviations, each of the nine Black Riders being designated by an initial, A through I: thus, for instance, Tolkien’s ‘G keeps to the east’ became ‘[One] keeps to the east’. Some readers, however, as is often the wont of enthusiasts, have been concerned to know in even greater detail what Tolkien wrote in his manuscript as distinct from the printed result; and considering this, we see that we omitted to include some necessary square brackets, and should have included ellipses at certain points. In the quotation on p. 97, l. 3, for ‘?fares’ read ‘[?fares]’; and l. 3 from bottom, for ‘again’ read ‘again. . . .’
p. 108, note on Borgil: In ‘A Definitive Identification of Tolkien’s “Borgil”: An Astronomical and Literary Approach’, Tolkien Studies 2 (2005), pp. 161–70, Kristine Larsen also argues that Borgil should be identified with Aldebaran, ‘the sole astronomical object which truly fits the etymological, astronomical, and literary evidence’. ‘However,’ she adds, ‘in the end, one can never know with absolute certainty whether Tolkien meant for Aldebaran to be Borgil (as astronomical inaccuracies do infrequently appear in his work), unless further manuscripts are discovered which shed light on his thinking in this matter’ (p. 168).
p. 111, l. 4 after title: For ‘26 September’ read ‘25 September’.
p. 116: The text from The Hunt for the Ring given here continues in Marquette MSS 4/2/36 with a comment by Tolkien that the Nazgûl would not touch the Baranduin, as its waters were ‘Elvish’. In Unfinished Tales, p. 344, Christopher Tolkien comments that his father ‘nowhere explained the Ringwraiths’ fear of water’, and quotes relevant words from MSS 4/2/36. ‘But it is not made clear’, he adds, how the Ringwraiths ‘crossed other rivers that lay in their path, such as the Greyflood. . . . My father did indeed note that the idea was difficult to sustain.’ Nonetheless, it is an issue we might have done well to explore in a note. Our memories are unclear as to why we did not.
between pp. 124 and 125: Following the fourth verse of the poem, the fifth verse was overlooked in our transcription from the Oxford Magazine:
‘You bring it back again, there’s a pretty maiden!’
said Tom Bombadil; ‘I do not care for wading!
Go down! Sleep again, where the pools are shady
far below willow-roots, little water-lady!’
This is identical to the fifth verse of the version of 1962.
p. 136, ll. 12–13 from bottom: For ‘only at the beginning of the First Age when the Sun first rose in the heavens’ read ‘when the Sun first rose in the heavens late in the First Age’.
p. 137, ll. 13–17 from bottom: Although the OED cited as the earliest use of barrow-wight Lang’s Essays in Little (1891), Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner in The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), p. 216, note that the compound appeared much earlier still, in Grettis Saga: The Story of Grettir the Strong, translated by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon (London, 1869), Chapter 18: ‘Everything in their way was kicked out of place, the barrow-wight setting on with hideous eagerness. . . .’
p. 138, l. 9: For ‘at the rising of the Sun at the beginning of the First Age’ read ‘at the first rising of the Sun’.
p. 138, ll. 7–8 from bottom: For ‘little people arrive’ read ‘little People arriving’.
pp. 151–7, rectos, running title: For ‘THEPRANCING PONY’ read ‘THE PRANCING PONY’.
p. 151: The paragraph headings and associated notes beginning 153 (I: 165): ‘Hi! Nob!’ he shouted and 153 (I: 165): ‘There now!’ said Mr. Butterbur are reversed in order.
p. 151, ll. 12–13 from bottom: Nob is in fact another nickname for Robert, like Bob. This is overlooked by the Oxford Dictionary of First Names but noted in discussions of Robert, Nobbs, etc. in dictionaries of surnames.
p. 155, l. 14: For ‘some time considerable’ read ‘some considerable’.
p. 159, ll. 4, 5 after the chapter title: Twice, for ‘164’ read ‘163’.
p. 164, l. 17 from bottom: An ellipsis (. . .) should follow ‘stealth.’
p. 165, second paragraph of the quotation: In Marquette MSS 4/2/36 the first part of this paragraph appears in the portion of the text indicated by an ellipsis earlier on RC:165. We transcribed it out of order to make the movements of the various Ringwraiths easier to trace. The words on ll. 15–16, ‘On 28 September they’, should be within square brackets, as an editorial insertion. On l. 17, for ‘?lurks’ read ‘[?lurks]’. On l. 19, for ‘unwatched’ read ‘unwatched. . . .’ On ll. 19–20, for ‘Early on 29 September’ read ‘On 29 September’. At this last point, we evidently meant to write ‘Early in the night of 29 September’ (i.e. the night of 29–30 September): Tolkien is explicit in The Hunt for the Ring that the Ringwraiths ‘came back to Crickhollow’ on 29 September, and in ‘A Knife in the Dark’ (Book I, Chapter 11) it is clear that night had fallen when all three Riders assembled at Crickhollow. It is possible, however, that in his brief, somewhat elliptical account of events in the Hunt for the Ring chronology Tolkien intended ‘as night passes’ to qualify only ‘watch’ and not ‘come back to Crickhollow’. (For that matter, ‘come back’ hardly seem the correct words to describe the movements of Khamûl who, lurking nearby – a sufficient source of the unease felt by Fatty Bolger during the day – must have chosen a position close enough to Crickhollow to see if anyone left. And the Rider who had been left by the Road with the horses had apparently not previously been near Crickhollow.)
p. 170, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘I should say,’ answered Strider read ‘Perhaps,’ said Strider.
pp. 175–6: The notes beginning 193 (I: 206). the Silmarils and 193 (I: 206). the Elves of the West are reversed in order.
p. 191, l. 9: For ‘solution, as was’ read ‘solution), as was’.
p. 191, l. 7 from bottom: For ‘trick-cyclist’ read ‘a trick-cyclist’.
p. 194, l. 22: For ‘resassemble’ read ‘reassemble’.
p. 218, ll. 17–18 from bottom: For ‘bearing a flame’ read ‘flame-bearer’. See further, Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner in The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), pp. 132–3. Flammifer is Latin; compare aquifer ‘water-bearer’, conifer ‘cone-bearer’, etc.
p. 249, l. 20: For The rest must be brief read The rest must be more brief.
p. 253, ll. 9–10: For ‘Celebrimbor was deceived by Sauron, but rejected him as soon as he realized his purposes. In the First Age’ read ‘For instance, Celebrimbor was deceived by Sauron, but rejected him as soon as he realized his purposes; and in the First Age’.
p. 262, l. 6 from bottom: For ‘defeated’ read ‘been defeated’.
p. 264, l. 9 from bottom: For ‘war horn’ read ‘war-horn’.
p. 264, l. 2 from bottom: For ‘born’ read ‘borne’.
p. 269, l. 11: For ‘uzu’ read ‘uzn’.
p. 300, l. 15: For ‘Lurenandë’ read ‘Laurenandë’.
p. 305, l. 7 from bottom: For ‘Galadhon’ read ‘Galadon’.
p. 308, l. 3: For ‘diffusing’ read ‘defusing’.
p. 319, l. 9: For ‘atempt’ read ‘attempt’.
pp. 321–3: The notes beginning 362 (I: 377): ‘And you?’ she said and 362 (I: 377): ‘Many things I can command are reversed in order.
p. 323, l. 7: For ‘star’ read ‘stair’.
p. 327, ll. 7-17 after titling: In Amon Hen 199 (May 2006), p. 24, Helen Armstrong adds to our note that ‘“long home” is a term that exists in Middle English, meaning simply “the grave”’. Tolkien himself comments on the phrase at the start of Some Contributions to Middle English Lexicography (Review of English Studies, April 1925, p. 210), noting an unrecorded occurrence (‘langan hame’) in the Old English Vision of Leofric which is ‘specially interesting in showing that the expression meant “grave” and not “the future life,” or “heaven”’.
p. 343, l. 14 after titling: For ‘of Second’ read ‘of the Second’.
p. 345, l. 21: For ‘22 January 1419’ read ‘22 February 1419’.
p. 348: The two notes under the heading 393 (I: 410): The sun, already long fallen are reversed in order.
p. 351, running title: For ‘THEFELLOWSHIP’ read ‘THE FELLOWSHIP’.
p. 361, ll. 4–7 from bottom: Julian Wilson remarks in correspondence that the plural hilts has the same sense as the singular hilt. Tolkien evidently came to prefer hilt and emended some instances of hilts in The Lord of the Rings. Later editors have noted his preference and applied it to corrected texts of this work.
p. 370, l. 25: For ‘436’ read ‘437’.
p. 374: In the four boldfaced citations, the volume number (roman numeral) I should read II.
p. 383, l. 1: Preceding this note should be a paragraph heading: 464 (II: 67): ‘Hoo now!’ replied Treebeard.
p. 383, ll. 6–7: Timothy Fisher has queried our statement that ain’t is ‘generally pronounced very like “ent”’. Indeed, the general pronunciation of ain’t, according to current dictionaries as well as the OED, uses the rising vowel sound as in day, not the short e of went. What we should have said was that the construction of Treebeard’s ‘Ents but ain’t’ strongly suggests that Tolkien meant to make a joke based on a similar pronunciation of Ent and ain’t. Many readers have taken it as such, e.g. in the Rómenna Meeting Report of 24 August 1985, it is ‘noted that in at least some British dialects, the words “Ent” and “ain’t” are probably pronounced identically’. Certainly there was in Tolkien’s England, and is still, considerable regional variation in vowel sounds, and there is some comment on the Web that ain’t in (some parts of?) southern England is pronounced ‘ent’; but we can find no authoritative statement to this effect. The pun, however, is clearly there in Tolkien’s text. In any case, ain’t is a contraction not only of ‘are not’ (as in the words glossed) but also of ‘am not’, ‘is not’, etc.
p. 389, l. 9 from bottom: For ‘back’ read ‘behind’.
p. 390, l. 6 after titling: For ‘carried’ read ‘carried’ (italics).
p. 392, ll. 19–29: In Amon Hen 199 (May 2006), p. 25, Helen Armstrong suggests that the balrog as ‘a thing of slime’ ‘is a fine description of a cold, wet, fire-extinguished balrog’. Our comment was not meant to identify the balrog of Moria as itself a shape-changer, only that (as we wrote, emphasis added) ‘Gandalf’s account recalls shape-changers in myth and legend’.
p. 397, l. 5 from bottom: For ‘Gondor’ read ‘Gondolin’.
p. 401, l. 9: For ‘made by the coast-guard to Beowulf and his men’ read ‘made in Beowulf by Wulfgar, herald to the king Hrothgar, at the door of Heorot’.
p. 422, ll. 9, 10: For ‘550’ read ‘551’.
p. 429, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘those you now wear’ read ‘those you wear now’.
pp. 435–9: In regard to the ride of Gandalf and Pippin to Minas Tirith, Tolkien wrote to Elsie Honeybourne on 21 December 1967 that ‘an easing of tension was needed at the end of the “Book” (but of course provided instinctively and not by planning). To ride with Gandalf must have been like being borne by a Guardian Angel, with stern gentleness a most comforting combination to children (as we all are)’ (www.bloomsburyauctions.com, for their sale of 24 May 2007).
p. 444, l. 11: Tom Shippey discusses ninnyhammer in his ‘History in Words: Tolkien’s Ruling Passion’, The Lord of the Rings, 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, ed. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2006), pp. 32–4.
p. 445, ll. 13–14: Tom Shippey makes a brief comment about noodles, relating it (as we did, through the OED) to ninnyhammer, in his ‘History in Words’ cited above, p. 33.
p. 459, note for p. 642: In response to our note on ‘That is the only way big armies can come’, one reader (among several who have written to us on this point) has suggested that Gollum was referring to big armies opposed to Sauron, who would attack Mordor in the north rather than in the Morgul Vale. The fact remains, however, that Gollum says ‘That is the only way big armies can come’ immediately after stating that Sauron ‘will come out of the Black Gate’, the sequence of words naturally tending to the interpretation that ‘big armies’ refers back to Sauron’s forces. Another reader has suggested that the Black Gate is the only way for big armies to come out of the interior of Mordor, where they did not have to cross mountains; but this seems to us too fine a distinction for Gollum to be making.
p. 464, l. 7 from bottom: Before the note for ‘in-falling freshet’ there should appear a paragraph heading, 651 (II: 259): Here they washed themselves.
p. 465, ll. 10, 11 from bottom: For ‘656’ read ‘657’.
p. 475, l. 4: The quotation mark after ‘Age’ should be single, not double.
p. 475, l. 20: The quotation mark after ‘gods’ should be double, not single.
p. 485, l. 16: For ‘shattered visage’ read ‘a shattered visage’.
p. 491, ll. 11, 12 from bottom: For ‘722’ read ‘723’.
p. 499, l. 13: For ‘revulsion of fear’ read ‘revulsion or fear’.
p. 513, l. 18 from bottom: For ‘N[úmenórean’ name]’ read ‘N[úmenórean] name)’.
p. 513, l. 4 from bottom: For ‘he case’ read ‘the case’.
p. 521, l. 12: In regard to daymeal, Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner in The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), p. 101, cite the gloss of dag-mál in Cleasby and Vigfusson’s Icelandic–English Dictionary: ‘one of the divisions of the day . . . synonymous with dagverðarmál breakfast-time . . . when the ancient Icel[anders] used to take their chief meal, opposed to náttmál, night-meal or supper-time’. Tolkien, however, places the ‘daymeal’ of Gondor in the evening.
p. 523, l. 6: For ‘769’ read ‘768’.
pp. 527–37, rectos, running title: For ‘THEGREY COMPANY’ read ‘THE GREY COMPANY’.
p. 527, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘777’ read ‘776–7’.
p. 528, ll. 11, 12, 14: For ‘777’ read ‘778’.
p. 534, l. 11: For ‘he fact’ read ‘the fact’.
p. 536, l. 3 of the second block quotation: For ‘Lamedan’ read ‘Lamedon’.
p. 541, between ll. 2 and 3, add:
803 (III: 77). Fealty kept he; / oaths he had taken, all fulfilled them. – Théoden was bound by the oath Eorl had sworn to Cirion (see note for p. 512). Tolkien would have been well aware that Britain entered both the First and Second World Wars in accord with undertakings made in treaties. Britain was a guarantor of the neutrality of the then newly established independent state of Belgium, and of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg under the Treaty of Twenty-four Articles agreed in 1839. Following Germany’s invasion of Luxembourg on 2 August 1914, and of Belgium during the night of 3–4 August when Belgium refused to accept Germany’s demand that its troops be allowed free passage across Belgian territory, Britain gave Germany an ultimatum: that unless it agreed to the withdrawal of its troops by 11.00 p.m. on 4 August, Britain would consider itself at war with Germany. In 1939 a similar ultimatum was given to Germany on 3 September following its invasion of Poland on 1 September. On 31 March 1939 the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had assured the Poles that if their independence were threatened Britain would lend them all possible support; a treaty to this effect was signed on 25 August 1939.
pp. 563–71, rectos, running title: For ‘THEPELENNOR FIELDS’ read ‘THE PELENNOR FIELDS’.
p. 571, ll. 3, 6, 9 from bottom: The boldfaced words to be glossed should be in italics, as set in the original poem.
p. 571, ll. 1–6 from bottom: The notes for ‘the South-kingdom’ and ‘Stoningland’ should be placed before that (in the middle of the page) for ‘There Théoden fell . . .’
p. 580, l. 20: The separate note for ‘the high tongue’ should be joined, as a separate paragraph, to the preceding note, in which the glossed words are included in the quotation, thus: The high tongue is Quenya.
p. 580, ll. 2–4 from bottom: The paragraph on ‘The Valinorean language . . .’ should follow that for ‘Rustics’.
p. 580, ll. 2–3 from bottom: In the Lambengolmor Tolkien linguistics forum, message 850, Fredrik Ström correctly commented that our gloss asëa aranion ‘leaf of kings’ is not attested in Tolkien’s writings. In message 851, however, Arden R. Smith defended this translation as an extrapolation from the gloss of athelas ‘kingsfoil’ in an unpublished etymology by Tolkien together with ‘the transparent meaning of aranion “of kings”’.
p. 581, l. 1: For ‘864’ read ‘865’.
p. 581, ll. 1–9: The note for ‘no virtue . . .’ should follow the heading ‘Your pardon lord!’.
p. 607, l. 13: For ‘Marges’ read ‘marges’.
p. 608, final line: Jaakko Pirinen has pointed out to us, and is undoubtedly right, that here Shriekers refers to the Nazgûl.
p. 609, l. 6: For ‘remember vaguely’ read ‘remember it vaguely’.
p. 611, l. 8: For ‘before dawn, on 18 March’ read ‘before dawn, on 19 March’.
p. 625, l. 2: For ‘954’ read ‘954–5’.
p. 625, l. 3: For ‘swords. . . . And’ read ‘swords. . . . [paragraphs:] And’.
p. 635, l. 5: For ‘representative)’ read ‘representative’.
p. 637, ll. 16–18: Delete the erroneous sentence ‘In ‘Silmarillion’ writings prior to The Lord of the Rings there is no mention of any sapling, fruit, memorial, or image of Telperion.’
p. 644, l. 6: For ‘Then Éowyn gave to Merry’ read ‘This is an heirloom’.
p. 647, l. 7: For ‘note for p. 409’ fead ‘note for p. 499’.
p. 653, l. 3 after titling: For ‘to’ read ‘towards’.
p. 653, ll. 16–19 after titling : The note for ‘Bree-hill’ should follow the note for ‘At length they came to Weathertop’.
p. 653–4: The note for ‘up-away’ should follow the note for ‘Pickthorn’ on p. 654.
p. 655, l. 15 after titling: In the Lambengolmor Tolkien linguistics forum, message 844, Fredrik Ström queried our comment ‘See also note for p. 107’, suggesting that ‘p. 10’ (i.e. our note on hayward) was meant instead. Although too much time has now passed to be sure, we are inclined to think that we did mean ‘p. 107’, referring to our mention of guards at the Hay Gate. This query does point, unfortunately, to a regrettable duplication of comments on hayward on RC:35 and RC:655. The first note was written early in the project and forgotten 620 pages later.
p. 659, l. 11 from bottom: For ‘getting under cover’ read ‘“getting under cover”’.
p. 662, ll. 3–5 from bottom: The note for ‘All the chestnuts were gone’ should follow the note for ‘tarred sheds’.
p. 666, l. 4: Add to the note: Shale is the shell or outer covering of the nut.
p. 670, l. 20: For ‘qWest’ read ‘West’.
p. 702, ll. 8–17: In Amon Hen 199 (May 2006), p. 25, Helen Armstrong suggests that we quibble too much over Arwen’s phrase ‘There is now no ship that would bear me hence’: ‘Had Arwen been able to cross the Sea, she could have done so then, never mind the Havens. It seems likely from this and other context . . . that Arwen could not sail, will she or nill she.’ This may be so.
p. 703, l. 17 from bottom: For ‘Second Age 1977’ read ‘Third Age 1977’.
p. 706, l. 20: For ‘azog’ read ‘AZOG’ (in small caps).
p. 707, l. 19 from bottom: For ‘27 September’ read ‘20 September’.
p. 710, l. 11: For ‘physical order’ read ‘physical disorder’.
p. 724, addendum to note about the Brandybuck family tree: ‘Sevilodorf2’ observed in theonering.net’s Reading Room forum that Gorbadoc ‘Broadbelt’ Brandybuck is said to have died in 1363, but in Book I, Chapter 1, Gaffer Gamgee states that Drogo and Primula Baggins were visiting Gorbadoc at the time of their deaths, which Tolkien gives as 1380. The date ‘1363’ in the family tree has remained the same since the first edition.
p. 724, penultimate entry: Tolkien noted in one of his check copies of The Lord of the Rings that he had told a correspondent in 1965: ‘I believe he married a sister of Fredegar Bolger of the Bolgers of Budgeford’ (The Peoples of Middle-earth, p. 117).
p. 727, ll. 4–6: For ‘do not count’ read ‘need not count’, according to the 2004–5 corrected text, p. 388. The citation ‘I: 404–5’ of course refers to the uncorrected text with ‘do not count’.
p. 728, l. 11 from bottom: For ‘more that two’ read ‘more than two’.
p. 747, l. 24: For ‘First’ read ‘Fire’.
p. 747, l. 30: For ‘bits’ read ‘bites’.
pp. 750 ff.: When transcribing the Nomenclature we did not realize that although Tolkien included various cross-references to entries for Mathom and Smials under ‘Things’, he apparently never wrote those entries themselves; at least, they are not present in our copy-text. They are, however, present in the Nomenclature as published in 1975 in A Tolkien Compass. We suppose that Christopher Tolkien noticed the lack of Mathom and Smials when he edited the Nomenclature for A Tolkien Compass, and supplied them himself. These read:
Mathom. Leave unchanged; it is not Common Speech, but a word peculiar to hobbits (compare Smials, and see III 414). The meaning is defined in I 14 as ‘anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away’. It represents Old English máðm ‘ precious thing, treasure’.
Smials. A word peculiar to hobbits (not Common Speech), meaning ‘burrow’; leave unchanged. It is a form that the Old English word smygel ‘burrow’ might have had, if it had survived. The same element appears in Gollum’s real name, Sméagol. See III 414–15.
p. 753, entry for Barrow-wights, l. 3: For ‘grafghest ‘grave-ghast’’ read ‘grafgeest ‘grave-ghost’’.
p. 753, entry for Beechbone, l. 3: For ‘Büchenbein’ read ‘Buchenbein’, without the umlaut.
p. 760, entry for Maggot, l. 3: For ‘maðe’ read ‘maða’.
p. 762, entry for Quickbeam, l. 8: For ‘Vogenbeere’ read ‘Vogelbeere’.
p. 768, entry for Doom, Mount Doom, l. 6: For ‘tumoipäivä’ read ‘tuomiopäivä’.
p. 770, entry for Firien, l. 4: For ‘Dunbarrow’ read ‘Dunharrow’.
p. 771, entry for Hardbottle, l. 5: For ‘ottle’ read ‘Nobottle’.
p. 773, entry for Lake Evendim, l. 2: For ‘dust’ read ‘dusk’.
p. 775, entry for Sarn Ford, l. 1: For ‘Sarn-thrad’ read ‘Sarn-athrad’.
p. 777, l. 1, entry for Tarlang’s Neck: For ‘plan’ read ‘plain’.
p. 780, entry for Elder Days, l. 9: For ‘Aldre’ read ‘Äldre’.
p. 807, ll. 1–3 from bottom: In two places, for ‘slope,’ (with a comma) read ‘slope.’ (with a full stop).
p. 808, l. 13: For ‘think–No,’ (with an en dash and no spaces, i.e. the corrected text) read ‘think—No,’ (with an em dash and no spaces as intended). Also this line, in two instances, for say’, read say,’ (with the comma inside the closing quotation mark).
p. 809, ll. 2, 4 from bottom: For ‘Gorthas’ read ‘Gorthad’.
Works Consulted: A useful reference work for understanding Tolkien’s language in The Lord of the Rings (and other works), published after we wrote the Reader’s Companion, is The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006) by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner. We have cited this selectively in addenda, but it is also worth consulting more broadly.
p. 832, entry for Aman: Add, in first sequence of numbers, reference to p. 176.
p. 835, col. 1, entry for ‘Auden, W.H.’: For ‘xxxvi’ read 'xxxvii'.
p. 835, col. 1, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘Backarraper’ read ‘Backarapper’.
p. 841, col. 1, entry for ‘Calendars’: Add see reference to ‘Chronology’.
p. 841, col. 1, entry for ‘Canker’: For ‘481’ read ‘480’.
p. 841, col. 2, entry for ‘Celebdil’, l. 3: For ‘compared to the Jungfrau’ read ‘compared to the Silberhorn’.
p. 843, col. 2, entry for ‘Concise Oxford English Dictionary’: For ‘152, 152’ read ‘152, 153’.
p. 848, col. 2, entry for ‘Eldar: Noldor’: Add, in first sequence of numbers, reference to p. 176; and following ‘Elves of the Light 712;’, add ‘Elves of the West 176;’.
p. 850, col. 1, entry for ‘Elves’, l. 21 from bottom: For ‘Elves flight West’ read, with added apostrophe, ‘Elves’ flight West’.
p. 854, col. 2, entry for ‘Framgar’: This should read ‘Frumgar’ and be combined with the entry correctly spelled at the foot of this column, thus: ‘Frumgar lxv; name 703’.
p. 855, col. 2, entry for ‘Galmód’: For ‘Galmód’ read ‘Gálmód’.
p. 859, col. 2, entry for ‘Gregorian Calendar’: For ‘lxvii–l’ read ‘xlvii–l’.
p. 860, col. 1: Add reference: ‘Greyhame (earlier Grayhame) 369’.
p. 860, col. 1: Add cross-reference: ‘Gríma see Wormtongue’.
p. 863, col. 2, entry for ‘Index (unfinished)’, l. 1: For ‘lxxxi, lxix’ read ‘lxix, lxxxi’.
p. 864, col. 2, entry for ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator’, l. 4: For ‘539–6’ read ‘539–40’.
p. 865, col. 1, entry for ‘Jungfrau’: Delete ‘and Celebdil’.
p. 871, col. 1, entry for ‘Moon(s)’, l. 6: For ‘26’ read ‘261’.
p. 872, col. 2, entry for ‘Narsil’: Add reference to p. 161.
p. 875, col. 1: Add cross-reference: ‘One Ring see Ring’.
p. 878, col. 1, entry for ‘Rammas Echor’: Add reference to p. 541.
p. 882, col. 2, entry for ‘Sauron’: Add cross-reference at end: ‘see also Eye’.
p. 884, col. 2: Add entry: ‘Silberhorn 267’.
p. 890, col. 2: Add cross-reference: ‘Umbar, Corsairs of see Corsairs (Shipmen) of Umbar’.
p. 892, col. 1, entry for ‘War, and Tolkien’: For ‘lxxvii–lxviii’ read ‘lxxvii–lxxviii’.
p. 893, col. 2: Add cross-reference: ‘World War see First World War; Second World War’.
p. 893, foot of col. 2: Move ‘Wormtongue, and Saruman 404’ to p. 894, with other entries for ‘Wormtongue, Gríma’.
p. 894, col. 1, entry for ‘Wormtongue, Gríma’: Add, following ‘and Gandalf 428;’, ‘and Saruman 404;’.
We are indebted to Magnus Åberg, Chris Anderson, Helen Armstrong, David Bratman, Marjorie Burns, Pieter Collier, Merlin DeTardo, Timothy Fisher, Troels Forchhammer, John Garth, David Giraudeau, Jay Hershberger, David Kiltz, Yuval Kfir, Joe Kraemer, Christopher Kreuzer, Oliver Loo, Brian P. Maxwell, Johan Olin, Jaakko Pirinen, Alan Reynolds, Helios De Rosario Martínez, Laura Schmidt, Manuel Schnell, ‘sevilodorf2’, Fredrik Ström, ‘Thaliorne’, Petri S. Tikka, Angela Wagner (‘Nielíqui Erurén’), Tony Wearing, Julian Wilson, and Danny Zumbrun for calling some of these points to our attention.
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