I was thinking about this the other day, and I realized that, what with all the appendices, etc., I couldn’t remember the answer… Is the Red Book of Westmarch from which the LotR material is supposed to be taken a copy that descends from the Gamgees, or one that descends from Gondor? I thought it (or the scribes) made a journey between Minas Tirith and the Shire at some point, hence all that extra stuff about Goldilocks, and Merry and Pippin’s later years, and Arwen and Aragorn, etc. Which way did the travel take place, and whose copy eventually wound up in the Professor’s hands?
Either Merry or Pippin took a copy of the Red Book to Gondor long after Frodo & Co. went over the Sea. Gondorian scribes added much (and possibly redacted some) while making copies. As I’ve written elsewhere, I think the grieving winds song was added by them; clearly almost all the Appendices were their work as well. (The bit on pronunciation is obviously the Greater Perfesser’s work.) And, of course, Tolkien added bits himself. The anachronistic bits in The Hobbit and Book I of Lord of the Rings are his doing, and possibly the talking fox in LOTR as well.
So to answer your question – the version we have is the English translator’s.
Tolkien’s copy came from the Gondorian line. While I’m sure that Sam and his descendants appreciated the book more, they wouldn’t have devoted nearly as many resources to preserving, archiving, and re-scribing that the royal archivists would have. Sam’s copy would have very quickly become covered in food spills, hand smudges, and baby drool, all of which are signs of a well-loved object, but none of which is conducive to long-term survival of a text.
Baby Drool probably explains Catbarion
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the Adunaic vs Sindarin vs. Quenya vs. other etymology for that one! I even tried to work in Beruthiel and her cats. Finally I read Foster’s explanation…
:smack:
Yours is a good explanation too.
Who or what is Catbarion? Google is just bringing up a couple of folks using that as a username, some misspellings like CatBaron, and this thread.
It’s a misspelling for Oatbarton, a village in the Shire, that appears in some (early) editions. Obviously the Perfesser got a better pair of reading glasses at some point and realized the error (or he found another early Red Book mansuscript and decided he had mistranslated.)
When I did the search it brought up one of my old threads where I mentioned Catbarion and Oatbarton.
So who is the Lesser Perfesser?
CJRT, of course!
So, to get this straight - The Silmarillion was Bilbo’s work, right?
Bilbo translated a lot of the writings in Rivendell from the elvish.
And as I recall (and, no, I’m not looking it up) the Gondorian Scribes found it a work of great knowledge and learning… then proceeded to edit it and no doubt redact a bunch.
I just wasn’t clear if those books Bilbo wrote (“Translations from the Elvish”) were indeed the Silmarillion or some lesser/different work.
Any recipes?
Clives Staples Lewis. It’s in the RhymerFaq.
Where is this faq?
The answer to that is also in the faq.