"J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit (reprint)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

Dzhon Ronal'd Ruel Tolkien. Hobbit

In this reprint several minor inaccuracies, most of them noted by
readers, have been corrected. For example, the text on pages 32 and 62 now
corresponds exactly with the runes on Thror's Map. More important is the
matter of Chapter Five. There the true story of the ending of the Riddle
Game, as it was eventually revealed (under pressure) by Bilbo to Gandalf, is
now given according to the Red Book, in place of the version Bilbo first
gave to his friends, and actually set down in his diary. This departure from
truth on the part of a most honest hobbit was a portent of great
significance. It does not, however, concern the present story, and those who
in this edition make their first acquaintance with hobbit-lore need not
troupe about it. Its explanation lies in the history of the Ring, as it was
set out in the chronicles of the Red Book of Westmarch, and is now told in
The Lord of the Rings.

A final note may be added, on a point raised by several students of the
lore of the period. On Thror's Map is written Here of old was Thrain King
under the Mountain; yet Thrain was the son of Thror, the last King under the
Mountain before the coming of the dragon. The Map, however, is not in error.
Names are often repeated in dynasties, and the genealogies show that a
distant ancestor of Thror was referred to, Thrain I, a fugitive from Moria,
who first discovered the Lonely Mountain, Erebor, and ruled there for a
while, before his people moved on to the remoter mountains of the North.

Chapter I. An Unexpected Party

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet
hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare,
sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a
hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a
shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a
tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke,
with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished
chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats - the hobbit was fond
of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight
into the side of the hill - The Hill, as all the people for many miles round
called it - and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side
and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms,
cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to
clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on
the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in),
for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking
over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.
This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The
Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind,
and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them
were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything
unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without