Crossroads by Simon J. Cook

Crossroads

. . . for if elves are true, and really exist independently of our tales about them, then this also is certainly true: elves are not primarily concerned with us, nor we with them. Our fates are sundered, and our paths seldom meet. Even upon the borders of Faërie we encounter them only at some chance crossing of the ways.

J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-stories ('Fairy-story')

The Road Goes Ever On (1967) sets to music (by Donald Swann) some of the songs of the Red Book. We step in this post, however, through a sort of appendix in which J.R.R. Tolkien provides annotated translations of two Elvish songs. Rather than texts attributed (implicitly or explicitly) to in-world sources, as we have become used to, Tolkien here speaks directly to his readers. Back in 1967 The Silmarillion was unpublished (and unfinished), and our author appears to have intended these late commentaries to point readers of The Lord of the Rings to the hidden western half of the map of the story.

This post reads out of these two commentaries a red thread running through the adventures of Frodo Baggins, in the stitches of which we may discern the miraculous aid of the Valar. Readers of The Lord of the Rings can pick up this thread in the Shire, catch it between Weathertop and Rivendell, watch it double up on itself in Lothlórien, weave around the heroism of Sam in Cirith Ungol, and reappear for the final time on the way to the Grey Havens. The main parts of the post trace this thread, and only in conclusion do I address what it might mean for my ongoing attempt in this portion of this SWG series to delineate the Elf-tower on the western margin of the story. My interest in the thread, however, arises because of the initial stitch, invisible in the Red Book but revealed by The Road Goes Ever On. In his commentary, Tolkien discloses that, within Middle-earth, this red thread originates with the Stone of Elendil in Elostirion on Emyn Beraid.

From Elostirion to the Woody End

Elostirion never appears in the narrative of The Lord of the Rings, and so we make a beginning in the House of Elrond, directly east of the western Elf-tower of Emyn Beraid, beyond the Shire, the Barrow-downs, and Weathertop. As Frodo leaves the Halls of Fire in Rivendell, 'a single clear voice rose in song' and the Hobbit halts for a moment to look back, 'enchanted, while the sweet syllables of the Elvish song fell like clear jewels of blended word and melody':¹

A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
silivren penna míriel
o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-díriel
o galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, sí nef aearon!

Elvish voices have potency beyond any mortal voice. Sitting in the Hall of Fire, the words of another Elvish song had taken shape before Frodo's eyes, gifting him visions of lands and things he had never seen; as he falls into an ever more dream-like enchantment, the Hobbit seems to enter a vision of Valinor in the days of the Two Trees, feeling himself sinking into an endless running river of silver and gold—then Bilbo Baggins begins to chant the tale of Eärendil, and at the sound of his mortal voice Frodo comes back to himself. We are left to guess what visions came to Frodo as he heard A Elbereth Gilthoniel as he left the Hall of Fire. But this is neither the first nor the last time that Frodo hears what Tolkien in The Road Goes Ever On names an Elvish 'hymn' to Elbereth.

For palan-díriel in the hymn, Tolkien gives 'after-having-gazed' (past participle), and comments: 'This is a reference to the palantír upon the Tower Hills (the "Stone of Elendil")'. We are to take it that the Elvish singer in Rivendell has recently returned from a pilgrimage to Emyn Beraid, undertaken for the purpose of looking 'afar at Eressëa (the Elvish isle) and the Shores of Valinor'.² The hymn that is sung in Rivendell, Tolkien adds, is 'evidently similar' to that heard by the Hobbits in the Woody End of the Shire on September 24, 3018 of the Third Age, when the sounds of Gildor Inglorion and his company of Elves disturb a Ringwraith:

No doubt Gildor and his companions, since they appear to have been going eastward, were Elves living in or near Rivendell returning from the palantír of the Tower Hills. On such visits they were sometimes rewarded by a vision, clear but remote, of Elbereth, as a majestic figure, shining white, standing upon the mountain Oiolosse (S. Uilos). It was then that she was also addressed by the title Fanuilos.³

Round the corner may await a new road or a secret gate. Sometime around 22 September, 3018, Gildor Inglorion looked into Elendil's Stone in Elostirion, wherein he may have received a vision of Elbereth watching from afar on the high mountain of Valinor. Gildor and his company of Elves then walked east, over the Far Downs and the White Downs, and entered the Shire. We pick up the story at the crossroads on September 24, as a Ringwraith in the Woody End flees from the sound of Elvish voices:

One clear voice rose now above the others. It was singing in the fair-elven tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little, and the others knew nothing. Yet the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words which they only partly understood.⁴

When the three Hobbits first hear A Elbereth Gilthoniel, what appears within their minds are not visions but words—translated spontaneously within their minds from a language that two do not understand at all. The Ringwraith has already slipped back into the shadows, Pippin asks about Black Riders, the Elves confer amongst themselves, and their leader, Gildor Inglorion, breaks custom and offers the Hobbits their protection for the night. 'Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielmo', replies Frodo: 'A Star shines upon the hour of the meeting of our ways'.⁵ That night, under the leaves of the trees of the Shire, Sam feigns sleep by Frodo's side as his master and Gildor engage in that curious conversation on which concludes 'Three is Company', the third chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring:

'The Elves have their own labours and their own sorrows, and they are little concerned with the ways of hobbits, or of any other creatures upon earth. Our paths cross theirs seldom, by chance or purpose. In this meeting there may be more than chance; but the purpose is not clear to me, and I fear to say too much.'⁶

We are presuming that Gildor had looked into the singular palantír in the Elf-tower only a few days earlier. Through the Stone he may have communicated (silently, by mutual vision) with someone looking into the Masterstone in the Tower of Avallonë on Eressëa. But if so, nothing in his words now suggests that it has prepared him for an encounter with the heir of Bilbo Baggins, who is missing Gandalf and is sought by Ringwraiths. The Elf is troubled by the absence of the wizard and Frodo does not tell him of the Ring. Had he known the full picture, Gildor might have taken Frodo all the way to Rivendell; what he does is send out messages that the Hobbit is astray bearing a burden without guidance, and counsels Frodo to depart the Shire without delay and with friends—thereby giving an Elvish stamp of approval to the conspiracy of four Hobbits unmasked in the house in Crickhollow the next night in the following chapter. But Gildor will not tell Frodo what a Black Rider is, and what he does say of them is less than comforting:

'. . . my heart forbodes that, ere all is ended, you, Frodo son of Drogo, will know more of these fell things than Gildor Inglorion. May Elbereth protect you!'

Does Elbereth protect Frodo from the Ringwraiths over the course of his long journey to Mount Doom? Tolkien observes in his commentary that Elbereth was 'often thought of, or depicted, as standing on a great height looking towards Middle-earth, with eyes that penetrated the shadows, and listening to the cries for aid of Elves (and Men) in peril or grief.'⁷ Let's follow what happens when, in the wake of Gildor's blessing and in two separate passages of extreme peril, first Frodo and then Sam invoke Elbereth.

Weathertop to Rivendell

After the Barrow-downs, the Hobbits pass through Bree and are joined by Strider, who guides them to Weathertop. Having avoided the Ringwraiths by off-road adventures with Tom Bombadil, the Black Riders turn up again in Bree and, before he reaches Rivendell, Frodo twice invokes Elbereth. Any possible efficacy of these invocations is overshadowed, however, both by immediate context and by recent adventures. When Bombadil speaks others obey, as do Frodo and Sam when he first addresses them. Bombadil knows the right song for the right occasion, but as the Hobbits learn as they listen to him talk in his own house, the voice of Bombadil is itself an enchantment.

When Frodo challenges the Ringwraiths with the name of Elbereth, his voice has not the power of Bombadil. On Weathertop, under the ruins of an ancient Númenórean tower destroyed by the witch-king of Angmar, Frodo cries, 'O Elbereth! Githoniel!' as he strikes at the feet of the fell-king. Strider afterwards says that the name Elbereth was more deadly than the sword, but it is hard to see how the name inflicted any harm on the undead Ringwraith. Two weeks later, Frodo faces the Ringwraiths across the Ford of Bruinen and invokes both Elbereth and Lúthien, whereupon the fell-king raises his hand and Frodo is struck dumb while his sword breaks and falls from his shaking hand.

Yet the ways of providence are inscrutable and the fact is that Frodo survives to Rivendell, though only just. Actually, on reflection, Frodo Baggins seems protected all the way from the crossroads of the Woody End: Farmer Maggot sees the Hobbits to the ferry, Gildor's messages reach Tom and Goldberry, who are expecting them, Strider is hiding by the road when the Hobbits bid goodbye to Bombadil, and Aragorn passes Frodo on to Glorfindel, whose horse carries the Hobbit to the Ford, where the river rises at Elrond's command. It is all about framing. Consider Weathertop again. Frodo puts on the Ring and enters the wraith world. It does not look good. Yet pierced by the blade of the undead Witch-king of Angmar, the swooning Frodo glimpses the living heir of Elendil leaping to his aid, flaming brands in either hand. One could not ask for better mortal protection against this Ringwraith.⁸

Galadriel's Lament

The Ringwraiths are unhorsed at the Ford and the next hint of one is by the Great River, where Legolas cries, 'Elbereth Githoniel!' and with his bow shoots a Nazgûl out of the sky.⁹ On winged mounts the Ringwraiths reappear as the story in the South passes from Isengard to Minas Tirith, and as Frodo and Sam cross the Dead Marshes with Gollum, though it is as a Black Rider that the Witch-king of Angmar leads an army out of Minas Morgul. Before rejoining Frodo and Sam on the foothills of the Ephel Dúath, however, it helps to consider the other Elvish song for which Tolkien provides an annotated translation in The Road Goes Ever On: Namárië, Galadriel's lament:¹⁰

An sí Tintálle Várda Óiolósseëò
Ve fányar māryat Élentāri órtanè,
ar ílye tíër ùndu-lāve lúmbulè;
ar sínda-nōrië-llo caíta mórnië
i fálmalínnar ímbe mèt, ar hīsië
ùn-tūpa Càlacíryo mīri óialè.

For now the Kindler, Varda, the Queen of the Stars, from Mount Everwhite has uplifted her hands like clouds, and all paths are drowned deep in shadow; and out of a grey country darkness lies on the foaming waves between us, and mist covers the jewels of Calacirya for ever.

Tolkien comments:

After the destruction of the Two Trees, and the flight from Valinor of the revolting Eldar, Varda lifted up her hands, in obedience to the decree of Manwe, and summoned up the dark shadows which engulfed the shores and the mountains and last of all the fana (figure) of Varda, with her hands turned eastward in rejection, standing white upon Oiolosse.

The last survivor of those 'who had led the revolting Noldor to exile in Middle-earth', Galadriel had a special ban placed on her return to Valinor. 'But it was impossible for one of the High-Elves to overcome the yearning of the Sea', and when Frodo meets Galadriel, she is 'burdened' with desire to return from exile.

From Galadriel's perspective, Frodo Baggins may sound the footsteps of doom, but he brings also the sea wind of Emyn Beraid. The third and final hearing of A Elbereth Gilthoniel in The Lord of the Rings is back in the Woody End. As Sam and Frodo ride to the Grey Havens they again meet Gildor Inglorion and his company of Elves, and with them is Galadriel. The ban has been lifted in reward for her opposition to Sauron, 'but above all for her rejection of the Ring'. So even as Galadriel sings of Varda turned to her in a posture of rejection, her encounter with Frodo Baggins of the Shire has laid the conditions for Elbereth to change her body language and appear to Galadriel as she does in the visions of those Elves who look in the Stone of Elendil in Elostirion.

By Phial and Invocation: A Hobbit's Guide to Stairs

On his departure from Lórien, the Lady Galadriel gives to Frodo a crystal phial that holds the light of Eärendil's star. As the king of the Black Riders pauses on the march out of Minas Morgul and Frodo feels commanded to put on the Ring, his hand moves rather to the phial of Galadriel, till that moment a treasure almost forgotten. The narrative had prepared us for this moment back in Edoras, where Gandalf invoked Galadriel as he wove magic to leave Wormtongue sprawling on his face. Gandalf has been sent back from death, so presumably knows what he is talking about. The protection of Elbereth is now aligned with the gift of Galadriel. And this is no doubt a lucky chance for Samwise Gamgee, who is otherwise totally alone as he faces Shelob in the tunnel and then climbs to the topmost chamber of the watchtower of Cirith Ungol.

Having climbed two terrible external staircases only to enter an ambush in a tunnel, Samwise son of Hamfast takes the phial of starlight and Sting, the sword of the Bagginses, and faces the primordial spider. Even as Sam sees his own death in the many eyes of Shelob, 'a thought came to him, as if some remote voice had spoken'.¹¹ Touching the phial of Galadriel, Sam recalls the hymns of the Elves in the Shire and in Rivendell. 'And then his tongue was loosed and his voice cried in a language which he did not know':

A Elbereth Gilthoniel
o menel palan-diriel,
le nallon sí di’nguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!

A translation of Sam's invocation is given in The Road Goes Ever On:¹²

O Elbereth Star-kindler,
from firmament gazing afar,
to thee I cry here beneath death horror.
Look towards (watch over) me, Fanuilos!

Miraculously, Sam survives, and soon sets off to rescue his master from the Orcs of the two towers. With the phial alone Sam passes the Two Watchers that bar the way into Cirith Ungol. After climbing all the stairs of the watchtower and discovering only two locked doors and a dead end, he sits down, weary and defeated, and sings not an Elvish but a Hobbit song, ‘In western lands’:

... beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep ....

Like Blondel, the minstrel of Richard the Lionheart, Sam hears a voice answering. But Sam already knows that Frodo is at the very top of this tower, his problem is that he does not know how to reach it. An Orc appears, carrying a ladder, and the answer dawns on Sam: 'the topmost chamber was reached by a trap-door in the roof of the passage.' The password that Sam sets in the high chamber is Elbereth. Finally, after descending ladder and stair, the two Hobbits must again break the will of the Two Watchers.

'Gilthoniel, A Elbereth!' Sam cried. For, why he did not know, his thought sprang back suddenly to the Elves in the Shire, and the song that drove away the Black Rider in the trees.¹³

On this same day that Frodo and Sam escape the Tower of Cirith Ungol, outside the walls of Minas Tirith, Meriadoc Brandybuck takes the blade given him by Bombadil from the barrow and cleaves the undead flesh of the Witch-king of Angmar, the fell-enemy on Weathertop, who is then dispatched by Éowyn.

Crossroads

With the heroics of Sam on the border of Mordor the red thread running in and out of the narrative of The Lord of the Rings becomes almost visible. This red thread marks Elbereth's protective watch over the quest of Frodo Baggins. Tracing this thread backwards we discover that it is first stitched into the narrative at the crossroads of the Woody End, when Elves singing a hymn to Elbereth disturb a Ringwraith sniffing out a Hobbit.

As a name on the map of Middle-earth, the Woody End is but a part of the Shire, a region of the Eastfarthing with some trees.¹⁴ As a crossroads in the story, however, it is a secret gate to hidden paths that run west of the moon and east of the sun. Twice, Frodo and Gildor meet in the Woody End. After the first meeting the Hobbit continues east to the house at Crickhollow, where commences his series of three far-seeing dreams or visions of, respectively, Elostirion, Orthanc, and Valinor (considered in the previous two posts). On the second meeting, Frodo joins Gildor and the other Elves on their last ride in Middle-earth—west, to the Havens, to depart over the sea.

For long years scholarship and fandom has obsessed over the secondary world of Tolkien's stories at the expense of his narrative craft. To the best of my knowledge, his various authorial reflections on this narrative crossroads have never been collated. For example, the header of this post, a quotation from 'On Fairy-stories', declares that since the fates of Elves and mortals are sundered their encounters are 'chance'. Readers may expect the scholarly essay to illuminate Tolkien's fairy-story, but the relationship is the other way round: Gildor gives the Elvish reply to the mortal scholar, suspecting purpose rather than chance. Gildor's High Elvish perspective is embodied in the greeting given to him by Frodo: 'A Star shines upon the hour of the meeting of our ways'—those who seek a hidden purpose at the crossroads should look to Eärendil's star and the domain of Elbereth. Tolkien's (infamous) claim that this Elvish phrase predated The Lord of the Rings, which fashioned a situation in which it could be a common greeting, becomes less obscure when we reflect on the meaning of the phrase in relation to the crossroads drawn in the narrative.¹⁵ 'Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielmo' is a formulaic expression of the authorial vision that, in the late 1930s, gave shape and meaning to the encounter in the woods of the Shire that we read in 'Three is Company'.

The crossroads of the Woody End is the key to unravelling the documentary evidence given to us in Return of the Shadow, the first volume of the early drafts of The Lord of the Rings. The volume is almost entirely taken up with the story that we know from the first book of Fellowship, the long-expected party and the journey from Bag End to Rivendell, the writing and re-writing of which generated even as it resolved intricate narrative tangles, arising chiefly from the absence of the wizard. The very first draft of the new Hobbit story can be dated to the week before Christmas 1937, but only from summer 1940—when the Hobbit Peregrin Boffin becomes Aragorn the heir of Elendil—can we say that Tolkien was writing the story of the end of the Third Age in the War of the Ring. Careful inspection of Return of the Shadow charts the path to this story through 1938 and 1939, with the successive drafts like a series of essays, teasing out the relationships between diverse story elements and hammering out vital fairy-tale concepts. But as underlined in an unpublished letter of 1964, to Przemysław Mroczkowski, this visible advance was directed by an underlying idea that gradually drew into focus, among other things, the hidden significance to the whole story of one early plot element, namely a Hobbit's chance encounter with an Elf:

I am grateful for what you say of my opus, and I think you are right: this simultaneity of different planes of reality touching one another and so affecting others, but tangentially, was part of the not so much intended, but deeply felt idea that I had. In the case of the Elves this is explicit (I 93-94).¹⁶

The (first edition) reference is to the last two pages of 'Three is Company', the conversation between Gildor and Frodo. Here is a key to reading Tolkien’s great story of Frodo Baggins and the end of the Third Age. But this post is not a dissertation on the art of The Lord of the Rings. I am seeking only the meaning of the Elf-tower on the margins of this story (and doing so as a long-way-round to gaining insight into the Anglo-Saxon tower that is built and destroyed in a story that Tolkien had told in London back in November 1936). So, let's follow the red thread back to the origin identified in The Road Goes Ever On, stepping from the crossroads to the high tower with a view on the sea.

Stone in Tower

When he meets Frodo, Gildor Inglorion is journeying from Elostirion, wherein he may have gazed upon a clear but remote vision of Elbereth on the high mountain of Valinor. What is the significance of this view in the Stone in this tower for the story of Frodo Baggins as told in the Red Book?

One mistake must be avoided in answering this question, which is to confuse a window with a door. Such confusion suggests an overlooking of the fundamental asymmetry of visual relationship between Elves in Middle-earth and Varda in Valinor. Elbereth on the mountain needs no palantír to watch over those in Middle-earth—they are seen and heard, and possibly aided, without the mediation of tower or stone. But Elbereth is invisible to all but Elves who happen to be inside Elostirion looking into the Stone of Elendil (even then it seems they must get lucky). This Stone is a singular window, the only window onto Valinor in Middle-earth in this age of the world. Through this window the Elves may see Elbereth, who requires neither window nor door to see, hear, and aid those who cry to her in peril from within the shores of our Middle-earth.

The red thread can be traced back to Elostirion, but the protection of Varda does not enter Middle-earth through the Stone in this Elf-tower. This is not to deny any impact of Gildor's vision on the story of Frodo Baggins. Seeing changes the seer, and maybe ripples of the vision inform Gildor's conversation with Frodo. More to the point, I think Tolkien had the notion that Gildor and his company did receive a vision of Elbereth and that something of this vision was passed on to the Hobbits through the words and melody of the Elvish hymn. In other words, my guess is that, by an enchantment beyond my comprehension, the song casts a spell that is responsible for Frodo's three far-seeing visions of the three following nights. But calling forth dreams and visions is one thing and actively protecting a Hobbit from a Ringwraith is quite another. The Stone in the Elf-tower looks only out to sea; it may allow communication with another in Eressëa, but it is a nonsense to imagine it as the point where miraculous power enters Middle-earth. This Stone is a window with a view, a singular view on the further shores of the shoreless sea; but when Frodo steps into this view he does so by riding to the havens and boarding a ship.

Elbereth stands on the mountain in Valinor and watches and listens to the cries of those in peril in Middle-earth beyond the sundering sea, and her hands hold no palantír. In the days of the War of the Ring, a vision of Elbereth on the mountain is hidden to all but High Elves who enter Elostirion and look in the Stone. Yet the remote aid of Elbereth is almost visible in the story told of how Sam rescues Frodo from Cirith Ungol, and once we grant miraculous intervention here, we may begin to discern it also between earlier lines of the narrative—an intervention that counters the will of the Ringwraiths, servants of Sauron, the Eye in the Dark Tower. But the Stone of Elostirion is not a point of entrance into Middle-earth of this miraculous aid from those beyond the Sea. Following the red thread from the crossroads back to the western Elf-tower and the Stone of Elendil within we arrive at a window, not a door. Looking through this window, a High Elf like Gildor might glimpse the light of Valinor that is hidden in the Hobbit-narrative set down in the Red Book, yet central to the design of Tolkien's great story of the end of an age of Middle-earth.

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This post is dedicated to Anna Berkovitch, Phil Walch, and Silky Goosiness of the Fanatics Plaza—three jewels among Hobbits, each of you gave me light when I had none.

Works Cited

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "Many Meetings."
2. J.R.R. Tolkien and Donald Swann, The Road Goes Ever On: Song Cycle, 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin: London, 1978), 73. Cf. Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, in The Silmarillion, where it is told that Elendil 'would at whiles see far away even the Tower of Avollonë upon Eressëa'. It seems that Elves see further than did Elendil. Compare also Gandalf's desire to direct the Orthanc Stone over an ocean of time and see Valinor in the time of the Two Trees.
3. Tolkien and Swann, The Road Goes Ever On, 73-74.
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "Three is Company."
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "Three is Company" (first edition; later editions have omentielvo). The translation is from War of the Jewels, Quendi and Eldar: "The principal linguistic elements concerned." In Fellowship: "A star shines on the hour of our meeting," leaving implicit the two "roads" that cross on a meeting.
6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "Three is Company."
7. Tolkien and Swann, The Road Goes Ever On, 73.
8. My friend Tom Hillman doubts the intervention of Elbereth at the Ford because Frodo is moved by hatred (private correspondence).
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Great River."
10. Tolkien and Swann, The Road Goes Ever On, 66-70. All quotations in this section are from these pages.
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "The Choices of Master Samwise."
12. Tolkien and Swann, The Road Goes Ever On, 72. Note the parallel of Sam's speaking an Elvish tongue he does not know with his understanding of the speech of the Orcs (which in the narrative it is suggested may have to do with the Ring).
13. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."
14. "Woody End," Tolkien Gateway, February 13, 2024, accessed April 5, 2024: 'Woody End was an upland region of the Eastfarthing of the Shire, lying between the Green Hill Country on the west and the Marish on the east. Its woods were the sources of the Stock-brook and the Thistle Brook. One of the northern eaves of the region was Woodhall.' The entry also notes the two meetings of Frodo and some Elves on September 24, 3018 and September 22, 3021 (and offers an improbable Old Hobbitish etymology).
15. Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "205 to Christopher Tolkien," dated February 12, 1958. A collation of Tolkien's various reflections on the narrative crossroads of the Woody End needs to work through the spatial model of enchantment that informs 'On Fairy-stories'. In this essay, Faërie is a perilous realm with borders, and enchantment arises when we step from our everyday, ordinary waking world over (or under) one of these borders and into Faërie. A classic illustration is the journey into (an ever deepening) enchantment of the four Hobbits who leave the house in Crickhollow in the Shire and enter the Old Forest, adventure in the Withywindle Valley, and end up in the house of Tom Bombadil. But 'Three is Company' undermines this model, drawing Ringwraiths and Elves within the Shire. As Gildor puts it: 'The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.' I take it that we are to understand that the borders of Faërie may appear anywhere, and that outside is already inside.
16. "Unpublished letter of 1964, to Przemysław Mroczkowski," Parts of the letter may be read on the Christies website, accessed April 11, 2024. The letter was auctioned in 2009. Tolkien in the letter proceeds to a discussion of Tom Bombadil that has aroused some interest. For an ingenious reading, see Priya Seth, "Tom Bombadil: Cracking the 'Enigma" Code,'" January 10, 2018, accessed April 11, 2024.