Q: What is the Pryftan Fragment
ANSWER: The “Pryftan Fragment” is the name that Tolkien scholar John Rateliff gave to the three surviving pages of the earliest written account of the story that was eventually published as The Hobbit. Pryftan was the name of the dragon (not Smaug, which Tolkien adopted later). You can read the text of the Pryftan Fragment in The History of The Hobbit, Part One.
In the blog post to which I linked (written in 2007) John Rateliff points out some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s experimental ideas as preserved in both the Pryftan Fragment and other, contemporary, writings which Christopher Tolkien published in The Shaping of Middle-earth, Volume Four of The History of Middle-earth.
It is not really necessary for a casual Tolkien reader or fan to be concerned about what the Pryftan Fragment is. This is the stuff of which esoteric scholarship is made. Generations from now some intuitive scholar may stumble across a word combination that reveals deeper meaning behind some other Tolkien expression — these kinds of discoveries happen from time to time. But for now the Pryftan Fragment seems to have been accorded a less important place among Tolkien’s papers. It is most notable for being the “starting point” for the written story.
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
