There is another continent, which idle men have discussed at length, going to great lengths both to catalogue its beauties and its wonders, and to outdo the accounts of their predecessors as regards both beauty and wonder (the properties of the thing described passing, as it were, into the descriptions, so that men have rightly said, whether in praise or in jest, that these are the Beautiful Books). About this continent I will say nothing except that its ruler, if it have one, is just, and in it one can find either in the spirit or in the flesh, if my reader knows the meaning of those phrases, and the minds of men cannot decide for themselves upon which of the two things they represent is there present, the patterns of all things. One hopes to see that other continent, but a great sea separates that world from us. No one has returned to give us tidings of the other side, once he set sail for it, though many have set sail.

There has been some motion, however, in the other direction. Legends that have been handed down to us concomitantly with the Beautiful Books (though these legends are older than any of those books) relate to us news of a wonderful thing, a being of great beauty and stature. So they would have him, for whenever one hears the old tales one hears talk of a blinding fire burning round his person, and he is said to have been dark as a shadow, though of beautiful shape, in his face as perfect as ice - but his eyes, if one looked into them, if one could catch them under his hood, shone with the same light, the same heat, the same flame, that surrounded his person. His brightness outshone all.

But who else do the legends tell us came here upon that fateful voyage? (For there has been nothing like it since, and one wonders whether there will be anything like it again. A man would sooner arrive at that continent than anyone from that continent would arrive here. And yet that is the strange feeling we men must have about this matter, who think that our voyage to that continent will somehow be quicker, when it comes, than the voyage of any being from that continent to us has been or would be, should any more ever set out for our land, in the course of human events.) They were people that we know - the people of this, our Middle Earth - the dwarves, humans, the hobbits, and of course the elves.

He, that Great One, that Dark One, Sauron, was an elf if ever there was one, of that, though some High Elves might deny it (but indeed, it would not be holy for them to deny anything which is true, since even the truth, so sing the High Elves when they yearn, has a place in that Beautiful Land), we can at least be sure. But as to the identities of the elves, the humans, the dwarves, and the hobbits, much has been forgotten, and much must yet remain obscure. They each have among themselves their own names and their own legends, legends which explain to themselves both themselves and each other, and as is the nature of such explanations, names very often differ. For the dwarves recall the wisdom of their ancestors, which same wisdom is, in Hobbit chronicles, so often lampooned. It must be true what they say, that wise men stumble into ditches looking up at stars, a cause of amusement to some, and for amazement to others.

But of those amused and those amazed I will allow others to speak. What I am about to reveal to you, is the privy of all and only those men who being not only called wise, yet indeed are. And yet this was revealed to me by others, and by you, I trust, will be revealed to others still, though you must always choose for your confidants men of great discernment, men of true understanding. For assuredly, whoever understands the words herein contained, if they have any meaning at all, is wise. (Remember to burn this document.)

For I must tell you of the rings. Circles, I know, are holy things, and will always command men's interest. Metals, too, are of use in crafting wonders, and the dwarves were great workers of metal, men skilled in revealing the secrets of the earth. Men cannot know what wonders the dwarves get up to, in their great halls and laboratories, but I have heard legends of pure light splitting into colors, of the splitting even of the smallest parts of earth, in short, of deep analyses - and though they live in the caverns close to the hot parts of our world, they understand well the habits of mice, of bats, and rats. For their relation to the goblins who inhabit those regions, and with which they are constantly at war (it being the nature of goblins to hoard precious metals, and it being the nature of dwarves to find them, for that is their skill), I beg you look in the Bibliography under the section entitled History, for I can only direct you to those books, if you would like to read them.

As for the rings, the dwarves forged them and the elves, to the shame of those we now call High, blessed them with great blessings, which only the most precious of metals were capable of receiving. We have no such metals here in Middle Earth, though the dwarves have delved great halls into the Misty Mountains, hoping to discover what in the Elven tongue is known as melrith, and having discovered in those mountains something not of all like properties, but nonetheless a kind of close facsimile or image of the former, which they name in their own tongue melrith, but which is called mithril in the Elven legends and songs. There is a curious essay, which I myself do not think is much worth reading, but which I mention to indulge what I must call a certain fondness in myself for antiquities, by a hobbit named Baggins (the hobbits left Middle Earth long ago, as the Beautiful Books assure us), claiming that the great rings were in fact made from mithril - but this is impossible, as the Elvish legends assure us in their turn that the metal of the rings was melrith. For certainly in the Song of Isildore it is written:

And at the melrith'ed finger swung the man his blade.

The Elven songs also speak of a metal

…which gleams like melrith from beyond the sea -

though afterwards the language of the song seems to change, and I must confess I can no longer divine the meaning.

The One Ring, certainly, was made of melrith, and it follows that the other rings were melrith too. For we must here refer to the Beautiful Books, and ask how it is that anything but like could have such power over likes?

There was, in any event, One Ring, whose properties are well known, and have been subjected to thorough scientific examination. I refer the reader to the sections of the Bibliography on Physics. What interests us here, is that the inscription speaks of OTHER rings, and it is in these Other Rings that I am here interested.

There were, besides the One, first three, then seven, then nine. (There is another curious paper by this same Baggins on the subject, which is based on a remark in the biography upon which he seems chiefly to comment, There and Back Again, whose author is unknown. The paper raises a question which is curious, and which I do not believe it has answered, namely, why are the first two numbers prime, but not the third? Baggins also quotes a verse he claims to have heard from Thorin Longbeard himself (though I find this preposterous):

Three are the beautiful things, and beauty is one,

Though the fire is one, yet it burns for seven days,

And on the last day, it rides with the Nine.

Baggins himself admits to being especially puzzled by the meaning of this last word, the Nine, but I conjecture that the nine referred to are indeed the nine rings.

These nine rings were given to nine men, whose names I have not been able to discover, though Bilbo's own I must admit ingenious speculations on the subject are referenced in the appendix to this chapter. I disagree with him only on one point, where he argues that Isildore was among their number. For as we all know, Isildore fell shortly after the Great War, and it is impossible that anyone who falls can return (for which see the introduction).

A final and curious fact is that the original hobbits, since there once were and perhaps still are such creatures, were not given any rings. One wonders why exactly it was they came. Perhaps because they were so fond of us men? And certainly they are fond creatures - for I must admit I have always, when I hear legends and stories, or when I read books, even the Beautiful Books, been fond of them.