Addenda and Corrigenda to
The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion
(2005, 2008) Arranged by Date

Here The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion is abbreviated ‘RC’ for convenience, e.g. ‘RC:655’ = Reader’s Companion, p. 655.

pp. 7–8, note for They dressed in bright colours . . . : Janka Kaščákova, ‘“It Snowed Food and Rained Drink” in The Lord of the Rings’, Middle-earth and Beyond: Essays on the World of J.R.R. Tolkien (2010), discusses the importance of food and drink in Tolkien’s characterization of Hobbits, in their everyday life, in their songs and speech, and in how they react when in uncertain or dangerous circumstances. In the same volume, Kathleen Dubs finds in ‘No Laughing Matter’ that most of the humour in The Lord of the Rings is associated with the Hobbits not only in their own jests, banter, and reactions, but also in their interaction with other characters.

p. 8, ll. 20–1: In regard to ‘an unpublished sketch (referred to in Artist and Illustrator, p. 99)’, this rough sketch made by Tolkien for his American publisher has since been published in John D. Rateliff, The History of The Hobbit, Part Two: Return to Bag-End (2007), pl. xii, and in our Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (2011), fig. 102. See also The Art of The Hobbit, fig. 103, for enlarged details of Bilbo Baggins from seven of Tolkien’s illustrations.

pp. 104–5, note for ‘Elen sila lúmenn’ omentielvo . . . : Further on the alteration of omentielmo to omentielvo, see comments by Carl F. Hostetter in ‘Five Late Quenya Volitive Inscriptions’, Vinyar Tengwar 49 (June 2007), pp. 38, 49.

p. 182, note for he sang over it a slow song . . . : Edward Pettit has suggested in ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Use of an Old English Charm’, Mallorn 40 (November 2002), that Aragorn’s use of athelas while singing was inspired by the Anglo-Saxon charm known as ‘Against a Sudden Stitch’, meant to heal, among other things, a sudden stabbing pain. See also Carol A. Leibiger, ‘Charms’, in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006).

p. 550, note for before ever a ship sailed hither from the West: Extend the boldfaced quotation as: We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The gloss on heathen in our note for p. 853 (III: 129), Reader’s Companion p. 573, should appear at this point, the first use of ‘heathen’ in the story.

John R. Holmes notes in ‘“Like Heathen Kings”: Religion as Palimpsest in Tolkien’s Fiction’, The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien (2011), that ‘the word “heathen” jumps out at the reader in these two passages [new edn., pp. 825 and 853]. . . . It seems out of place in a novel in which . . . religious references are conspicuous by their absence’ (p. 119). And he comments that ‘surely a philologist as careful as Tolkien, in a work that had been as heavily revised as The Lord of the Rings, could not have been insensitive to the semantic dissonance created by the word “heathen” in the Denethor passages. He would have known that his readers would apprehend the word as an exclusively Christian term . . .’ (p. 121). Holmes follows with a discussion of the etymological associations of the word, and points out that Tolkien often used ‘common words still in circulation . . . but in contexts that subtly suggested that another, and as it turns out, older, meaning must be showing through, like the earliest inscriptions on a palimpsest’ (p. 123).

p. 573, note for only the heathen kings . . . : Although this is the most appropriate place (i.e. p. 853 or III: 129) for our comments on suicide, we should have glossed heathen at its first use in The Lord of the Rings, p. 825 (III: 98–9): ‘We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West.’

p. 739: Add before sub-section ‘On Translation’:

p. 798, l. 11: For ‘> That–glass’ (with an en dash) read ‘> That—glass’ (with an em dash).

p. 802, l. 10 from bottom: For ‘midsummer’ read ‘mid-summer’.

p. 803, l. 8 from bottom: The single quotation mark before ‘That’ should be inverted.

p. 806, l. 2: For ‘Cermië, Urimë’ read ‘Cermië, Úrimë’ (adding an acute accent to the second name).

p. 806, ll. 21–2: The second ŋ in l. 21 appears to have been set boldface; it should be normal weight. For ‘ŋ is used for ng in sing’ read ‘ŋ is used for ng in sing’.

p. 807, l. 5: Add another textual change at the beginning of the note in square brackets: ‘Númenorean’ > ‘Númenórean’.

p. 809, l. 15: For ‘past his full’ read ‘past his full,’ (with a comma).

p. 811, l. 6: For ‘elenÁtri’ read ‘elentÁri’.

p. 874, col. 1: Add cross-reference: Old Man Willow (character) see Willow, Old Man.

p. 23, ll. 21–2: A reader has pointed out that the historical suling, hide, and carucate are measures of area, whereas Tolkien uses sullong as a measure of length. It was not our intention to equate Tolkien’s sullong with the historical suling, only to point out that a sullong (suling) exists in our world, and that Tolkien presumably adopted this alternate spelling as the name of one of the Hobbit ‘long measures’ in one of his manuscript workings.

p. 42, ll. 3–4: On Breton precursors of the name Meriadoc, see further, Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), p. 103.

p. 52, l. 12 from bottom: For ‘twelve dwarves’ read ‘thirteen dwarves’.

p. 78, between ll. 2 and 3, add:

p. 93, l. 16: For ‘messenger’ read ‘message’.

p. 108, l. 2: In regard to the phrase ‘netted stars’, in some cultures the Pleiades are described in terms of a sieve or wickerwork.

p. 108, ll. 4–6: For ‘cluster of seven stars’ read (to avoid quibbling) ‘cluster of stars’. It has been suggested to us that this should read ‘nine stars’, even though the cluster actually contains hundreds of stars, most of which are not visible to the naked eye; but historically, the Pleiades have been referred to as seven stars (in some cultures, six), and are named, as we state, after the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione (who themselves have stars named for them in the constellation).

p. 119, l. 19 from bottom: For ‘there was sound’ read ‘there was the sound’.

p. 120, ll. 5–6: For ‘most of dream’ read ‘most of the dream’.

p. 123, between ll. 2 and 3, add:

p. 151, l. 2: For ‘Strange as news’ read ‘Strange as News’.

p. 178, l. 7 from bottom: For ‘the pierce the barriers’ read ‘to pierce the barriers’.

p. 200, l. 10: For ‘eastern border of Mordor’ read ‘eastern border of Gondor’.

pp. 248–9, note for in the Riddermark of Rohan: On the relation of mark and march(es), see p. 28.

p. 327, l. 5 from bottom: for ‘Sarn Ford’ read ‘Sarn Gebir’.

p. 383, ll. 6–7 [REVISED]: More than one reader has queried our statement that ain’t is ‘generally pronounced very like “ent”’, and rightly so. The general pronunciation of ain’t, according to current dictionaries as well as the Oxford English Dictionary, 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’. We have added a note, above, for p. 44 (‘sees things that ain’t there’), citing research into Tolkien’s use of dialectal English by Nils-Lennart Johannesson and noting that, according to The Linguistic Atlas of England (1978), the predominant pronunciation of ain’t in Warwickshire and Oxfordshire is, in fact, [ent] and not [eınt]. Johannesson calls Treebeard’s statement (‘There are Ents and Ents, you know; or there are Ents and things that look like Ents but ain’t’) ‘a quibble of Shakespearean proportions’ (‘Studies in Tolkien’s Language III: Sure as Shiretalk – On Linguistic Variation in Hobbit Speech (Part One)’, Arda 5 (1988 for 1985), p. 42). (The informants in the dialect survey were born in the 1870s and 1880s, and surveyed in the 1950s and early 1960s.)

To further amend our statement in question, ain’t is a contraction not only of ‘are not’ (as in the words glossed) but also of ‘am not’, ‘is not’, etc.

p. 404, ll. 10–11 from bottom: The element dwimor- in Dwimordene is derived from Middle English dweomer, Old English (ge)dwimor, -er ‘illusion, phantom’ (compare our explanation of dwimmerlaik, p. 562) + dene ‘wooded valley’ (also spelled dean), from Old English denu.

p. 501, l. 6 from bottom: Although our gloss is correct (per the English Dialect Dictionary), it has been suggested to us that ‘nar’ is more likely a colloquial version of no, and this may be so. The usage seems to be absent from our standard, dialect, and slang dictionaries, but online sources say that it is common in the ‘Geordie’ speech of north-east England.

p. 532, ll. 3–5 from bottom: The element dwimor- in Dwimorberg is derived from Middle English dweomer, Old English (ge)dwimor, -er ‘illusion, phantom’ (compare our explanation of dwimmerlaik, p. 562) + berg ‘mountain’ from the German.

p. 533, l. 5 from bottom: For ‘Book VI’ read ‘Book V’.

p. 539, l. 10 from bottom: For ‘Callanash’ read ‘Callanish’.

p. 562, note on dwimmerlaik: See also Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), pp. 108–10.

p. 627, l. 8 after titling: For ‘permitted from rising’ read ‘permitted to rise’.

p. 634, l. 12: For ‘cessation’ read ‘cession’.

p. 674, l. 7: For ‘a narrow inlet of the sea’ read ‘an inlet of the sea or estuary’.

p. 694, note on the Tower of the Dome of Osgiliath: One reader takes issue with our statement that ‘domes (as a matter of engineering) cannot have towers’, pointing out that some domes have cupolas (evidently taking cupola by its broad definition as an ornamental structure atop a dome or roof). He also observes that some cathedrals (for instance) have bell towers separate from the main building. None of this, however, makes the phrase ‘Tower of the Dome of Osgiliath’ less curious or provides, to us, an adequate explanation.

p. 698, note on he became a friend of Gandalf . . . : For a lengthy discussion of Gandalf in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings relative to Merlin in Arthurian tales, see Frank P. Riga, ‘Gandalf and Merlin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Adoption and Transformation of a Literary Tradition’, Mythlore 27, nos. 1/2, whole nos. 103/104 (Fall/Winter 2008). The subject is also considered by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), pp. 81–5.

p. 723, l. 1 from bottom: For ‘for lack of space’ read (to be scrupulously correct) ‘evidently for lack of space’. That is almost certainly the reason for the omission, however, conveyed strongly in the correspondence of May 1955 between Tolkien and Allen & Unwin. The text of the Appendices runs almost to the end of the final page of the final gathering of the volume, with barely more than an inch of blank space remaining, and publication of The Return of the King was already delayed, with copies urgently wanted. If the Bolger and Boffin family trees had been included in the original edition, either Tolkien would have had to reduce the text by two pages, no doubt a difficult proposition under the press of time, or Allen & Unwin would have had to allow an extra gathering, which may not have been possible (for economic or practical reasons, or both), as it does not seem to have been considered.

p. 89, l. 4: For ‘bringing out’ read ‘bringing it out’.

p. 90, l. 15: For ‘Bilbo ‘as fierce’ read ‘Bilbo is ‘as fierce’.

p. 458, ll. 4–5 from bottom: The error ‘mountains’ for ‘mountain-wall’ entered also into the Allen & Unwin and Houghton Mifflin editions. It was confirmed by Christopher Tolkien to be an unauthorized alteration, and was first corrected in 1987.

p. lvii, l. 8–9: For ‘nor we have been able’ read ‘nor have we been able’.

p. 188, note for There stood the trolls . . . : In discussing an example of Scandinavian folklore, W.A. Craigie commented that ‘it is sudden death to night-trolls if day breaks upon them, the dawning was their destruction, so that each of them became a pillar of rock, and are now those which stand there’ (Scandinavian Folk-Lore: Illustrations of the Traditional Beliefs of the Northern Peoples (1896), p. 62).

p. 383, ll. 6–7 [REVISED]: See expanded revision dated 27 December 2011.

p. lvii, l. 14 from bottom: Here we note that ‘Bindbole’ is ‘so spelled’, and two lines later, that Brockenborings ‘is spelled thus’, and other examples may be found of ‘spelled’ so spelled. More frequently in the Reader’s Companion, however, we have used ‘spelt’. Both, in fact, are permissible according to our authorities, the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English and the Oxford Style Manual, and equal use of each form as quoted in the larger Oxford English Dictionary is noted by H.W. Fowler in his examination of ‘-t and ed’ in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (though personally he leaned – or leant – towards -t); still, only one form should be used in a text. The present authors know that they occasionally differ in spelling preferences, but apparently failed to notice our variation of ‘spelled’ and ‘spelt’ when writing the Reader’s Companion; and for practical purposes, there’s nothing to be done now except to confirm that the Americans and the English are two peoples divided by a common language, or at least by their orthography. We do recall regularizing to ‘spelled’ in the Companion and Guide (except for one stray Scull-Hammond ‘spelt’ in the Chronology). Tolkien himself used ‘spelt’, and we retained this of course in quotation.

p. lix, l. 16: For ‘Place-Names’ read ‘Place-names’. Our entirely arbitrary preference in this book – but not followed consistently – was to use hyphenated ‘place-name(s)’, and to use lower-case ‘-names’ in titles of books with ‘Place-names’, but upper-case ‘-Name’ seems appropriate for ‘English Place-Name Society’ and in common usage.

pp. 56–7, note for They lived on the Hill itself . . . : The place-name Bagshot is found in both Surrey and Wiltshire, with disagreement among authorities as to its origin. We note in particular -shot as from Old English *scēot, but neglected to deal with Bag- except in terms of folk-etymology. Eilert Ekwall in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (4th edn., 1960) explores a variety of possible derivations for Bag- under ‘Bagley’: ‘In Scand[inavian] languages bagge means “a wether, a ram”, [Middle Dutch] bagghe means “a small pig”. There may have been an [Old English] word bacga denoting some animal’ (p. 23). A.H. Smith discusses Old English *bagga ‘bag’ at length in his English Place-name Elements (1970), eventually sugesting that the word ‘must have had extensions of meaning to suit the [place-names], either topographical “hill resembling a bag” (which would be appropriate in some [place-names]) or, as with the Swed[ish], [Middle Dutch] words, “an object or creature resembling a bag”. . . . The most appropriate native wild animal is the badger . . .’ (p. 17). Referring to Anglo-Saxon personal names, the Cambridge Dictionary of Place-names makes the Surrey Bagshot ‘Bacga’s nook’ and the one in Wiltshire ‘Beocc’s gate’, without elaboration.

p. 56, l. 6 from bottom: For ‘dwelling’ read ‘dwelling)’.

p. 56, final line: For ‘Place-Names’ read ‘Place-names’.

p. 57, note for gentlehobbit: Merlin deTardo, referring to discussion on theonering.net, has called our attention to Tolkien’s use of ‘old man’ to refer to Gaffer Gamgee in Book I, Chapter 3 (‘The old man seemed put out.’) in contrast with his care to use ‘gentlehobbit’ rather than ‘gentleman’. Tolkien may well have chosen here, as earlier in The Hobbit, to have emended ‘old man’ to ‘old fellow’ (or the like). It has also been noted that in The Lord of the Rings he used compound words such as kinsman, postman, and waterman to apply to Hobbits, to which we would add (off the top of the head) the surnames Holman and Sandyman; but one could argue that kinsman, etc. are not only (in traditional, if not politically correct, grammar) gender-neutral but also species-neutral, while gentleman (‘gentle’ + ‘man’) cannot be gender-neutral and therefore was a good candidate for ‘hobbit’ transformation. While there are ‘man’-less alternatives to kinsman, etc. – such as relative – they have too contemporary a tone relative to the rest of the Lord of the Rings prose; and to have used instead ‘kinshobbit’, ‘posthobbit’, and so forth would have overdone the conceit.

p. 78, ll. 16–17 from bottom: For ‘place name’ read ‘place-name’.

p. 116, ll. 5–8: We quote from Tolkien’s Nomenclature that ‘-windle [as a second element] does not actually occur [in English place-names] (withywindle was modelled on withywind, a name of the convolvulus or bindweed)’. As Jason Fisher has pointed out, however, there is in Surrey a ‘Windle Brook’, near Windlesham (and Bagshot). Eilert Ekwall suggests that Windle Brook may be a back-formation from Windlesham (perhaps from ‘Winel’s hām’), though ‘the name of the brook may have been [unrecorded Old English] Windol ‘winding brook’, the name being a derivative of Old English windan “to wind”’ (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (1960), p. 522). The latter point is also noted by Tom Shippey in The Road to Middle-earth (1992), p. 98. (The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-names (2004), p. 684, declares the origin of Windlesham ‘partly uncertain’, ‘possibly “the settlement with or by a windlass”, OE *windels + hām’. The element of ‘winding’ is nonetheless present.)

p. 143: The notes beginning 141 (I: 152): a long arm was groping . . . and 141 (I: 152): they were in a kind of passage . . . are reversed in order.

p. 150, ll. 15 and 17 after titling: For ‘place names’ read ‘place-names’; for ‘place name’ read ‘place-name’.

p. 157, note for Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She, l. 2: For ‘female and male’ read ‘female and male respectively’. The switch of gender is explored further by Yvette L. Kisor in ‘“Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She”: Some Noted on a Note in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007).

p. 163, note for their power is in terror: At this point, Merry has asked if the Black Riders will attack the inn at Bree. Strider thinks not, since ‘that is not their way . . . they will not openly attack a house where there are lights and many people – not until they are desperate. . . . But their power is in terror, and already some in Bree are in their clutch. They will drive these wretches to some evil work: Ferny, and some of the strangers, and, maybe, the gatekeeper too.’ But then, as it seems, the Riders do attack: the windows to the hobbits’ bedrooms have been forced, and violence done to beds and bolsters; and Merry’s ponies have been driven from the stables. Merlin DeTardo has referred us to Tolkien’s ‘New Plot’ of 26–7 August 1940, in which, after a cancelled statement that the Black Riders ‘attack the Inn but fail’, Bill Ferney and the Southerner ‘burgle the Inn and try and get more news’ on the Riders’ behalf (The Treason of Isengard, p. 71). In a late (probably 1954 or 1955) text, on the other hand, as we quote on p. 166, ‘the Inn [is] attacked by the two Riders in early hours before dawn’ (The Hunt for the Ring). In The Lord of the Rings proper, Tolkien is not explicit as to the agents of the events at Bree.

p. 459, note for That is the only way big armies can come: See also pp. 609–10, note for p. 928.

p. 826, l. 20 from bottom: For ‘Place-Name’ read ‘Place-name’.

p. 365, ll. 14–19 [REVISED]: We have examined this point in the Lord of the Rings papers at Marquette, and found that ‘other’ was a typesetting error for ‘others’ in the original printing of The Two Towers. Christopher Tolkien has since written to us that his note in The Treason of Isengard (p. 404, n. 15) was not meant as a suggestion, but to indicate a clearly evidenced error.

p. 10, l. 23: For ‘connexion with the word fród’ read ‘connexion is with the old word fród’.

p. 269, l. 7: For ‘It not is here genitive’ read ‘It is not here genitive’.

p. 365, ll. 14–19: We have examined this point in the Lord of the Rings papers at Marquette, and found that ‘other’ was a typesetting error for ‘others’ in the original printing of The Two Towers.

p. 574, ll. 19–20: For ‘August’ (three instances) read ‘March’.

p. 724, final entry: We have been reminded that Fíriel, a daughter of Elanor (daughter of Samwise), is mentioned in note 2 to the preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962). Her name, Tolkien says, if connected with the poem Fíriel, ‘must be derived from it; it could not have arisen in Westmarch’.

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 Oxford English Dictionary, 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 from bottom: 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’ (Joseph Wright, 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 Oxford English Dictionary cites 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.