If the ring Bilbo found wasn’t the One Ring what other ring could it have been? Gandalf acts like there are magical rings hidden in every nook and cranny of Middle Earth.
Any of the Dwarf, Human or Elf rings, at least
They knew where the Elven rings were. I remember Gandalf mentioning that he’d stumbled across the whereabouts of one of the Dwarven rings in the dungeons of Dol Guldur but nobody had ever found them all. They thought the Ringwraiths were dead?
IIRC there were a lot of minor rings made by the elves of Eregion in the process of learning the craft of ring-making.
There were other rings, elves had been making magic rings since the First Age. But probably few of them would have had the ability to make a hobbit invisible, and I think that’s part of what made Gandalf suspicious and sent him to check out whether it might be the One Ring. The other thing that made him even more suspicious was the way it had stretched out Bilbo’s life span.
My memory is fuzzy on this point, but I thought that in The Hobbit, Bilbo lied to Gandalf and didn’t tell him he had found a magic ring. Maybe by the end Gandalf had figured it out based on events, but Bilbo never came clean? And that doesn’t speak to the ways that Tolkien ret-conned The Hobbit later to fit into the LotR narrative.
Gandalf long relied on Saruman’s assurance that the One Ring had passed down the Anduin and was lost in the sea. This deflected his suspicions. Plus the presence of the minor rings that the Noldorin smiths made in Eregion prior to making the great rings made Gandalf willing to assume it was a minor ring that Bilbo had, after Gandalf got the real story out of Bilbo.
Fun fact: In JRRT’s original writings on elves and rings, a LOT of rings were made, a LOT of elves took them up and got converted into invisible wraiths over time.
In The Hobbit no one but Gollum and Bilbo knew about the Ring’s power of invisibility. It really annoyed the spiders and Smaug yet it was after the events in The Hobbit that Gandalf found out it could do that and the “real” story about how Bilbo obtained it.
I don’t recall that Isildur exactly told anyone of the invisibility either, though he certainly knew and tried to use it to no avail to escape some great number of extant Orcs even after Sauron’s fall. He must have wrote about it as Aragorn pretty much fills in the blanks involving Isildur’s death.
ETA: It may have been Gandalf’s research in Gondor where he read Isildur’s account of the invisibility aspect. It would seem nobody else read this stuff and knew about Rings of Power that made at least humans and hobbits invisible.
Weren’t there 2 versions of The Hobbit, the pre- and post- LOTR versions?
In the current printed version, when Bilbo first rejoined Gandalf, Thorin & Co. on the other side of the Misty Mountains, he told them all about Gollum, but not about the ring. He just said, “Oh, just crept along, you know—very carefully and quietly.”
Later, when he and the dwarves were fighting the spiders in Mirkwood, he had to tell them about the ring:
“In the end Bilbo could think of no plan except to let the dwarves into the secret of his ring. He was rather sorry about it, but it could not be helped.”
Then after the battle:
“There they lay for some time, puffing and panting. But very soon they began to ask questions. They had to have the whole vanishing business carefully explained, and the finding of the ring interested them so much that for a while they forgot their own troubles. Balin in particular insisted on having the Gollum story, riddles and all, told all over again, with the ring in its proper place.”
But I don’t think he ever told Gandalf about the ring in The Hobbit.
Yes, the original has Bilbo “winning” the ring from Gollum in the riddle contest and using it to escape. Dunno if in the first edition he repeatedly lies to Balin & Co about the story, yet of course that’s later explained by Gandalf (in LotR - the retcon Roderick refers to) as the Ring exerting its influence: “Yeah after 500 years with this creature I needed a change and let’s start by lying to everyone”
Isildur was perhaps effected by the Ring yet when Elrond was telling him to toss it into Mt. Doom, Isildur wasn’t all about “No way - this thing makes me invisible.” it was all about “Sauron killed my father and, you may recall Elrond, that my father came to the aid of your leader Gil-Galad and I cut Sauron’s hand off so the Ring is mine, mine, mine”
Elrond “The Wise” didn’t seem too curious about that Ring when he presumably heard of Isildur being missing/dead. I still don’t know how Goblin-Town was allowed to exist after Elrond’s wife / Galadriel’s daughter was murdered passing over the Misties. “Hey it’s dangerous to go there” was his best advice in both books.
Celebrian was not murdered, but tortured by orcs and rescued by her sons. She lost all joy of being in Middle-earth, and went west.
Thanks for the correction. Good on Elladan and Elrohir, and sure the Elves of both Rivendell and Lorien had diminished in numbers and power, yet we don’t hear of any retribution.
I just don’t like Elrond. In The Hobbit he checks out Orcrist and Glamdring, “Cool! This one was my great-grandfather’s sword and all this gear (dunno if he saw Bilbo’s (ETA: Mithril coat from Smaug hoard) Sting) was made in Gondolin!” Those nearby Trollshaws sure are dangerous. Anyways, watch out for the Misty Mountain Hop.
The Silmarillion passage makes this plain:
“For Isildur would not surrender [the ring] to Elrond and Círdan who stood by. They counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin night at hand… But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: ‘This I will have as weregild for my father’s death, and my brother’s. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?’ And the Ring that he held seemed to him exceedingly fair to look on; and he would not suffer it to be destroyed.”
Yep. And Gil-Galad absolutely knew about the One Ring and told both Círdan and Elrond everything as he entrusted (EtA: Narya and Vilya) to them. I’d like to think he could have used Narya instead of getting killed by Sauron, yet Cirdan who really was wise gave it to the correct Istari.
Dunno when Isildur discovered the invisibility aspect yet he gets killed somewhere near the Gladden Fields and The One Ring is forgotten about because, hey, we flattened the Barad-Dur and Sauron ain’t coming back and that ring is lost and clearly without it Sauron won’t be back, Barad-Dur won’t be rebuilt and all is swell. Why these Wizards keep coming, who knows?
And yet what happens, Necromancer and Barad-Dur is rebuilt without Sauron possessing his precious.
This is true. From my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, in Chapter 2 (“The Shadow of the Past”) there is a conversation between Gandalf and Frodo, where Gandalf is talking about magic rings. And he says:
So there you go, from Gandalf’s own lips, there were lesser rings that were made as byproducts when the Elves were trying to perfect the craft of ring-making, and preceded the twenty Rings of Power that became part of legend. (The One Ring, the 3 Elven rings, the 7 Dwarven rings, and the 9 given to the Nazgul.)
Yes, in the very next paragraph, as Gandalf is speaking to Frodo, he explains why he is sure that this particular ring is one of the Rings of Power.
Based on the invisibility property, Bilbo’s personality changes, and the way Bilbo didn’t age much (even for a Hobbit who live a bit longer than Men), those all pointed to the ring being a Ring of Power. Tossing it in the fire so that the inscription of the One Ring was what proved which exact Ring it was.
Now, I’ll admit that Gandalf doesn’t say that a regular magic ring can’t make a person invisible, he just says what happens when a Great Ring is used to make a person invisible (when they do it too often they “fade” and become permanently invisible like the Nazgul). So it’s possible that the lesser ones also can make you invisible but don’t have the danger of fully corrupting you if you use them too much. I’m curious what he meant when he said all magic rings were dangerous but the Great Rings were perilous.
All sources of power are dangerous. Any ring grants power of some sort or other, and so they’re all dangerous. Doesn’t necessarily mean that mortals absolutely shouldn’t use them, but they need to be careful if they do so.
I’m pretty sure there’s a source somewhere for Gandalf saying that no lesser ring could grant invisibility, but I’m not sure where-- It might be from one of the Appendices, or Unfinished Tales.
Especially as he had Narya, perhaps the most powerful of all the 9/7/3. Certainly one of the peril’s was that the wielder of The One had dominance vis-a-vis all the power that Sauron vested in it. I don’t know if Círdan or Elrond were not wearing their rings in the last alliance because of that.
Had Círdan given Narya to Saruman that would have been a bad thing. I reckon even Saruman didn’t know who held the Three. And Saruman certainly would have tried (?) to take Narya from Gandalf if he knew. So posessing them comes with a bit of peril.
Interesting to ponder - if Isildur was capable of wielding the One Ring (as say, Boromir in his madness would do yet somehow Faramir did not) would Isildur become Lord of the Rings? Gondor would become a center of power, he’d have the Witch King at his will.
Círdan and Elrond knew Isildur held The One Ring and pretty much should have thrown him into Orodruin as Isildur would live forever and Rule Them All. Send all the Istari you want then.
I love you guys.
I believe Gandalf addresses that (although I’m traveling and can’t look it up). He says that nobody can resist the power of the Ring forever and that because Sauron placed so much of himself into it, the Ring would ultimately always remain loyal to Sauron and betray its wearer. Maybe one of the first-born could have taken full control - but that’s a a big maybe and I seriously doubt any mortal being could have. I mean, Gandalf was a fricking archangel and didn’t think he could do it.
That’s why destroying the Ring destroyed Sauron. They were too closely linked.
I can’t say that I recall anything about Gandalf saying that, and I’ve read LOTR, SIL, UT, HOMES 1-12, and other sources. I think something like that would have stuck in my mind, as I always wondered about those lesser rings and wanted to find out more. I recall the early draft versions of ringlore in HOMES discussing many more rings, and their effect on elves and I need to do some selective searching of those texts to see if there’s more in the section about ‘elf-wraiths’.
I might have just plain missed such a quote too. I’ve been known to do that.
ETA: Aha, from “Return of the Shadow” there’s a fragment where someone (presumed elvish, probably Gildor or an early version of Gildor) is speaking to Bingo (later Frodo) about the creation of rings:
"In the very ancient days the Ring-lord made many of these
Rings: and sent them out through the world to snare people. He
sent them to all sorts of folk - the Elves had many, and there are
now many elfwraiths in the world, but the Ring-lord cannot rule
them; the goblins got many, and the invisible goblins are very evil
and wholly under the Lord; dwarves I don’t believe had any; some
say the rings don’t work on them: they are too solid. Men had few,
but they were most quickly overcome and… The men-wraiths
are also servants of the Lord. "
So it seemed these rings turned goblins invisible at any rate.
Of course it’s just an early draft by JRRT and not canon, but still . . .