Sauron Defeated (18 page)

The man who accosted the hobbits at Bag End (whose orc-like character is much emphasised) is called by Frodo 'Ruffian Sharkey'

(p. 91).

Frodo tells this man that he wants to see the Boss; to which he replies: 'I'm the Boss. I'm Sharkey all right.'

Subsequently Frodo again calls him 'Ruffian Sharkey'; and he slays him with Sting in single combat.

As the text stands there can be no solution to this unless it is supposed that my father changed his conception as he wrote without altering the earlier passages. This would probably mean that the name

'Sharkey', whatever its basis as a name, was transferred from the squint-eyed rascal at Bywater when my father saw that 'the Boss'

(Cosimo Sackville-Baggins) was being used now purely nominally by some more ruthless and sinister presence at Bag End: this was Sharkey'.(25) Then, suddenly, after the present draft was completed, my father saw who it really was that had supplanted Cosimo, and Saruman took over the name Sharkey'.(26)

At any rate, it is altogether certain that Saruman only entered the Shire in person in the course of the development of the present chapter. On the other hand, his previous baleful association with Cosimo Sackville-Baggins was present in the original draft, as is seen from Frodo's remarks at Bywater (p. 84) and Merry's at Bag End (p. 90: If I had known all the mischief Saruman had been up to, I d have stuffed my pouch down his throat').

It required much further work to attain the story as it stands in The Return of the King, and the vehicle of this development was the complicated second manuscript 'B', which was numbered 'LIX' and at first given the title 'The Mending of the Shire'. It seems very probable that Saruman's presence at Bag End had already arisen when my father began writing this text, and the references to 'Sharkey' are as in RK; but while in detail and in wording it advances far towards the final form he was still following A in certain features, and the major shift in the plot (whereby the fight at Farmer Cotton's house was removed) took place in the course of the writing of the manuscript.

Before that point in the story is reached the most notable feature is that Frodo retains his dominance and his resolute captaincy. The incident of the old 'gaffer' who jeered at the band of Shirriffs on their forced march from Frogmorton entered in B, but it was Frodo, not Merry, who sharply ordered their leader to leave him alone. The leader was still, and explicitly, Robin Smallburrow ('"Smallburrow!"

said Frodo. "Order your fellows back to their places at once"'); but his displacement by the officious and anonymous leader took place in the course of the writing of this manuscript.(27)

There was a notable development in B of Frodo's exposition to Pippin concerning Cosimo and Saruman and the pass to which the Shire has been brought (see pp. 83 - 4). This was removed (cf. RK

p. 285) when, on a rider inserted into B, it became Farmer Cotton who recounted from personal knowledge the recent history; but Cotton, of course, did not know who Sharkey was, and presumably would not have been much enlightened to learn that he was Saruman.

'I don't think you understand it quite,' said Frodo. 'Though

: you were at Isengard, and have heard all that I have since. Yes, Poor Cosimo! He has been a wicked fool. But he's caught in his own net now. Don't you see? Saruman became interested in us and in the Shire a good while ago, and began spying. [Added: So Gandalf said.] A good many of the strange folk that had been prowling about for a long while before we started must have been sent by him. I suppose he got into touch with Cosimo that way. Cosimo was rich enough, but he always did want more. I expect he started trading with Saruman, and getting richer secretly, and buying up this and that on the quiet. [Added: Saruman needed supplies for his war.]'

'Ah!' said Sam, 'tobacco, a weakness of Saruman's. [> 'Yes!'

said Pippin. 'And tobacco for himself and his favourites!] I suppose that Cosimo must have got his hands on most of it. And on the South-farthing fields, too, I shouldn't wonder.'

'I expect so,' said Frodo. 'But he soon got bigger ideas than that. He began hiring [> He seems to have hired] ruffians; or Saruman sent them to him, to "help him". Chimneys, tree-hacking, all those shoddy little houses. They look like imitations of Saruman's notions of "improvement". But now, of course, the ruffians are on top...'

The text then becomes that of RK; but after Frodo's admonition on the subject of killing (RK p. 285) it continues thus, following and expanding A (p. 84):

'It depends on how many of these ruffians there are,' said '

Merry. 'If there are a lot, then it will certainly mean fighting, Frodo. And it isn't going to be as easy after this. It may prove a nut tough enough for Gandalf's sledgehammer. After all we're only four hobbits, even if we're armed.'

'Well, we can't help Cousin Pimple tonight,' said Pippin; 'we need to find more out. You heard that horn-blowing? There's evidently more ruffians near at hand. We ought to get under cover soon. Tonight will be dangerous.'

'I've an idea,' said Sam. 'Let's go to old Cotton's. He always was a stout fellow, and he's a lot of lads that were all friends of mine.'

'D'you mean Farmer Cotton down South Lane?' said Frodo.

'We'll try him! '

They turned, and a few yards back came on South Lane -

leading out of the main road; in about a quarter of a mile it brought them to the farmer's gates.

In the story of their arrival at the farm, their welcome there and conversation with Farmer Cotton, my father followed A (pp. 84 - 6) closely, with some minor expansion but no movement away from the draft narrative (except that the imprisonment of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is made longer: '"They took his ma six months ago," said Cotton, "end o' last April" '). But from the bang on the front door the story changes:

There came at that moment a loud bang on the door. Farmer Cotton went softly down the passage, putting out the light. The others followed. There was a second louder bang.

'Open up, you old rat, or we'll burn you out! ' shouted a hoarse voice outside. Mrs. Cotton in a nearby room stifled a scream. Down the stairs that led into the kitchen five young hobbits came clattering from the two upper rooms where they slept. They had thick sticks, but nothing more.

'I'm coming,' shouted the farmer, rattling the chains and making a to-do with the bolts. 'How many is there?' he whispered to his sons. 'A dozen at least,' said Young Tom, the eldest, 'maybe all the lot.'

'All the better,' said Frodo. 'Now for it! Open up and then get back. Don't join in, unless we need help badly.'

The four hobbits with swords drawn stood back to the wall against which the door swung. There came a great blow on the lock, but at that moment the farmer drew the last bolt, and slipped back with his sons some paces down the passage [added: and round the corner out of sight]. The door opened slowly and in peered the head of the ruffian they had already met. He stepped forward, stooping, holding a sword in his hand. As soon as he was well inside, the hobbits, who were now behind the opened door, flung it back with a crash. While Frodo slipped a bolt back, the three others leaped on the ruffian from behind, threw him down on his face and sat on him. He felt a cold blade of steel at his neck.

'Keep still and quiet! ' said Sam. 'Cotton! ' called Merry.

'Rope! We've got one. Tie him up!'

But the ruffians outside began attacking the door again, while some were smashing the windows with stones. 'Prisoner!' said Frodo. 'You seem a leader. Stop your men, or you will pay for the damage!'

They dragged him close to the door. 'Go home, you fools! ' he shouted. 'They've got me, and they'll do for me, if you go on.

Clear out! Tell Sharkey! '

'What for?' a voice answered from outside. 'We know what Sharkey wants. Come on, lads! Burn the whole lot inside!

Sharkey won't miss that boob; he's no use for them as makes mistakes. Burn the lot! Look alive and get the fuel! '

'Try again!' said Sam grimly.

The prisoner now desperately frightened screamed out: Hi, lads! No burnings! No more burnings, Sharkey said. Send a messenger. You might find it was you as had made a mistake.

Hi! D'you hear?'

'All right, lads!' said the other voice. 'Two of you ride back quick. Two go for fuel. The rest make a ring round the place!'

'Well, what's the next move?' said Farmer Cotton. 'At least they won't start burning until they've ridden to Bag-end and back: say half an hour, allowing for some talk. The murdering villains! Never thought they'd start burning. They burned a lot of folk out earlier, but they've not done [any] for a long while.

We understood the Boss had stopped it. But see here! I've got the wife and my daughter Rosie to think of.'

'There's only two things to be done,' said Frodo. 'One of us has got to slip out and get help: rouse the folk. There must be 200 grown hobbits not far away. Or else we've got to burst out in a pack with your wife and daughter in a huddle, and do it quick, while two are away and before more come.'

'Too much risk for the one [that] slips out,' said Cotton.

'Burst out together, that's the ticket, and make a dash up the lane.'

The concluding passage, from 'There's only two things to be done,'

was written in a rapidly degenerating scribble, and the text ends here, not at the foot of a page. The story of the attack on the farmhouse had already shifted strongly away from that in the original draft (in which Frodo and Sam slew two of the marauders at the front door and four others were killed in the yard before the remainder fled); and at this point my father decided that he had taken a wrong turning. Perhaps he could not see any credible way in which they could burst out of the house (with the young Cottons and their mother in the midst) and through the ring of men unscathed. At any rate, the whole of this part of the B text, from ' "D'you mean Farmer Cotton down South Lane?"

said Frodo' (p. 96), was removed from the manuscript and replaced by a new start, with Frodo's saying in response to Sam's suggestion that they all go to Farmer Cotton's: 'No! It's no good getting "under cover" ', as in RK (p. 286), where however it is Merry who says this. It is Frodo also, not Merry, who answers Pippin's question 'Do what?'

with 'Raise the Shire! Now! Wake all our people!', and tells Sam that he can make a dash for Cotton's farm if he wants to; he ends 'Now, Merry, you have a horn of the Mark. Let us hear it!'

The story of the return of the four hobbits to the middle of Bywater, Merry's horn-call, Sam's meeting with Farmer Cotton and his sons, his visit to Mrs. Cotton and Rose, and the fire made by the villagers, is told in virtually the same words as in RK (pp. 286 - 8), the only difference being that it was on the orders of Frodo, not of Merry, that barriers were set up across the road at each end of Bywater. When Farmer Cotton tells that the Boss (as he is still named throughout B, though emended later to 'the Chief') has not been seen for a week or two B diverges a little from RK, for Tom Cotton the younger interrupts his father at this point:

'They took his ma, that Lobelia,' put in Young Tom. 'That'd be six months back, when they started putting up sheds at Bag End without her leave. She ordered 'em off. So they took her.

Put her in the Lock-holes. They've took others that we miss more; but there's no denying she stood up to 'em bolder than most.'

'That's where most of them are,' said the farmer, 'over at Michel Delving. They've made the old Lock-holes into a regular fort, we hear, and they go from there roaming round, "gathering". Still I guess that there's no more than a couple of hundred the Shire all told. We can master '*em, if we stick together.'

'Have they got any weapons?' asked Merry.

This perhaps implies that the Lock-holes were a prison in the days before any 'ruffian' came to the Shire. Subsequently Young Tom's story of Lobelia was removed from this part of the narrative, and replaced by Pippin's question 'Hobbiton's not their only place, is it?', which leads into Farmer Cotton's account of where else the 'ruffians'

hung out beside Hobbiton, as in RK (p. 288), and a different idea of the origin of the Lock-holes: 'some old tunnels at Michel Delving'.

Merry's question 'Have they got any weapons?' leads, as in RK, to Farmer Cotton's account of the resistance of the Tooks, but without his reference to Pippin's father (Paladin Took), the Thain, and his refusal to have anything to do with the pretensions of Lotho (Cosimo):

'There you are, Frodo! ' said Merry. 'I knew we'd have to fight. Well, they started it.'

'Not exactly,' said Farmer Cotton, 'leastways not the shooting. Tooks started that. You see, the Tooks have got those deep holes in the Green Hills, the Smiles (28) as they call 'em, and the ruffians can't come at 'em...'

With Frodo still firmly in the saddle at Bywater, Merry rode off with Pippin to Tuckborough (as he does not in RK). After they had gone, Frodo reiterated his injunction against any killing that could be avoided (as in RK, p. 289), but then continued: 'We shall be having a visit from the Hobbiton gang very soon. It's over an hour since we sent the four ruffians off from here. Do nothing, until I give the word. Let them come on!' In RK it is Merry who gives the warning that the men from Hobbiton will soon be coming to Bywater, and he concludes