See here for the complete list of addenda and corrigenda to the original edition of 2005. See here for addenda and corrigenda specific to the text first published in 2008 or shared by the two editions. In the present list, which accounts for entries posted beginning 4 May 2008, an asterisk (*) indicates that a detail applies only to the newer edition.
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. 305, l. 7 from bottom: For ‘Galadhon’ read ‘Galadon’.
p. 264, l. 9 from bottom: For ‘war horn’ read ‘war-horn’.
p. 370, l. 25: For ‘436’ read ‘437’.
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. 422, ll. 9, 10: For ‘550’ read ‘551’.
p. 429, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘those you now wear’ read ‘those you wear now’.
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. 491, ll. 11, 12 from bottom: For ‘722’ read ‘723’.
p. 513, l. 18 from bottom: For ‘N[úmenórean’ name]’ read ‘N[úmenórean] name)’.
p. 523, l. 6: For ‘769’ read ‘768’.
p. 527, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘777’ read ‘776–7’.
p. 528, ll. 11, 12, 14: For ‘777’ read ‘778’.
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. 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. 609, l. 6: For ‘remember vaguely’ read ‘remember it vaguely’.
p. 625, l. 2: For ‘954’ read ‘954–5’.
p. 625, l. 3: For ‘swords. . . . And’ read ‘swords. . . . [paragraphs:] And’.
p. 644, l. 6: For ‘Then Éowyn gave to Merry’ read ‘This is an heirloom’.
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. 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. xvii, l. 17: For ‘messges’ read ‘messages’.
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. 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. 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. 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. 155, l. 14: For ‘some time considerable’ read ‘some considerable’.
p. 343, l. 14 after titling: For ‘of Second’ read ‘of the Second’.
p. 513, l. 4 from bottom: For ‘he case’ read ‘the case’.
p. 534, l. 11: For ‘he fact’ read ‘the fact’.
p. 728, l. 11 from bottom: For ‘more that two’ read ‘more than two’.
p. 843, col. 2, entry for ‘Concise Oxford English Dictionary’: For ‘152, 152’ read ‘152, 153’.
p. 859, col. 2, entry for ‘Gregorian Calendar’: For ‘lxvii–l’ read ‘xlvii–l’.
p. 892, col. 1, entry for ‘War, and Tolkien’: For ‘lxxvii–lxviii’ read ‘lxxvii–lxxviii’.
*p. 854, col. 1, entry for ‘First World War’: Add subheading: ‘Great Britain, treaty obligations in 540–1’.
*p. 883, col. 1, entry for ‘Second World War’: Add subheading: ‘Great Britain, treaty obligations in 540–1’.
p. 893, col. 2: Add cross-reference: ‘World War see First World War; Second World War’.
p. xxiii, l. 12 from bottom: For ‘Book III’ read ‘Book II’.
*p. lxiv, l. 5 from bottom: Delete ‘in Anórien,’.
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. 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.
*p. 76, l. 5: For ‘many an age, I hope’ read ‘many an age’.
*p. 97, block quotation at foot of page: At the end of the first paragraph, the three-dot ellipsis should be a four-dot ellipsis, i.e. including the full stop after ‘again’.
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. 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. 401, l. 9: For ‘Beowulf’ read ‘Beowulf’.
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. 541, l. 1: For ‘Théodon’ read ‘Théoden’.
*p. 541, l. 7: For ‘Luxemburg’ read ‘Luxembourg’.
*p. 541, l. 15: For ‘there independence’ read ‘their independence’.
p. 808, ll. 13–14: This note, incorrect in different ways in both editions of RC, should read: ‘I think – No, I will not say,’ > ‘I think—No, I will not say,’ [en dash > em dash, to better indicate pause].
*p. 832, col. 1, entry for ‘Aman’, l. 5: For ‘175’ read ‘176’.
*p. 833, col. 1, entry for ‘Anórien’: ll. 2, 4, for ‘541’ read ‘542’.
p. 835, col. 1, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘Backarraper’ read ‘Backarapper’.
p. 841, col. 2, entry for ‘Celebdil’, l. 3: For ‘compared to the Jungfrau’ read ‘compared to the Silberhorn’.
*p. 842, col. 2, entry for ‘Cirion’: Add reference to p. 541.
p. 848, col. 2, entry for ‘Eldar: Noldor’: Add, in first sequence of numbers, reference to p. 176.
*p. 851, col. 1, entry for ‘Eorl the Young’: Add reference to p. 541 to first sequence of numbers, and to subheading ‘Oath of’.
p. 860, col. 1, add entry: ‘Greyhame (earlier Grayhame) 369’.
*p. 860, col. 1, l. 5: For ‘Grimá’ read ‘Gríma’.
p. 865, col. 1, entry for ‘Jungfrau’: Delete ‘and Celebdil’.
p. 878, col. 1, entry for ‘Rammas Echor’: Add reference to p. 541 (2005 edn.) or p. 542 (2008 edn.).
*p. 880, col. 2, entry for ‘Rohan’: l. 5, add reference to p. 542; l. 16, for ‘541’ read ‘540’.
p. 884, col. 2, add entry: ‘Silberhorn 267’.
*p. 887, col. 2, entry for ‘Théoden’: Add reference to p. 541.
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