according to HoME, at first Tolkien thought it was the Riders who 'did it'; then he changed his mind, and preferred it to be a human job. We don't know why - and as it is only written on a note he jotted down for himself, it might have been just an ephmeral idea - but he did omit Trotter reconsideration of his assertion the inn will not be attacked, so it seems he did take this change seriously. But in 1955, when working on the appendices and The Hunt for the Ring, he returned to his original idea. ...

To sum up, Tolkien switched back and forth between the ideas [that it was Black Riders vs. that it was Ferney &/or other ruffians]. The text gives no clear proof either way, although both seem to have serious problems with them. There are clear indications pointing both ways - the attack on Crickhollow, and Strider's words - but either could easily be a red herring.


Was this left unclear on purpose? I would like to think this is another case of what Curious and FarFromHome used to call "deliberate ambiguity" - but this is only a hunch of mine.

Sador, http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=839553#839553

Then sador adds in a later post:
But regarding the presentation of the whodunnit question - after all I have written above, it seems NEB and dernwyn were right in principle - in the fourth phase of writing, Tolkien did write a note on which the Riders option was written down, but struck out, and instead of it Ferny and the Southerner were named as the culprits. He did revise the tenth and eleventh chapter with that in his mind - he deleted one sentence which clearly indicated otherwise - but this did not change materially the chapter as written; like he decided to omit Harry Goatleaf's encounter with the Riders which he did write in the drafts, he decided to keep this matter dark, creating the atmosphere of suspense and ambiguity which makes the Riders such a successful character.
In a way, it's like changing 'Trotter' to 'Strider', or 'Barnabas Butterbur' to 'Barliman' - one could easily argue that the fact that during the story's developement Tolkien thought the culprits were others makes no difference - once he had come to consider the question, he unequivocally decided on Ferny and co.


The problem is that apparently JRRT forgot this decision, and kept in memory his original concept - in two (perhaps three) future chapters he had dropped hints pointing to the Riders, as well as retaining (adding? I don't have the time to check) the contradicting statement in The Shadow of the Past, and in The Tale of Years he did the same. Presumably, had he written down explicitly in the book that it was Ferny he would have remembered it - but being written on a single note, he did not.
So the chapters in which the raid on the inn are described point at the Ferny and his friends as the housebreakers (although, as Curious stated, they must have had some magical help to do so without raising the alarm), while other chapters indicate otherwise. Ferny is a small fish, and Aragorn states later that the Enemy would never let the likes of him know what they were looking for, and wouldn't it be risky to let Ferny near the Ring? (Although again, Aragorn's guess is contradicted by the story of Grishnakh...)
This results in a wonderful ambiguity.Was it deliberate? At the stage of writing, probably not. But I would like to think that during the revising stages, JRRT did notice it and left it in deliberately.

sador http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=839929#839929

most profound issue imaginable. Anyway, it is as JRR Tolkien wanted it and left Galadriel "downstream" so to say. It makes sense from a plotting point of view to have her enter the story when she did.

Would she have argued for any other course of action than Elrond & Gandalf did? Would her arguments have been redundant with theirs? Then she would have been diluted as a thinker and independent ruler.