31-08-2004, 16:27
Je n'ai rien trouvé d'autre dans HoME sur les patates que ce rapide passage en mentionnant brièvement l'existence:<p><small>Potatoes [struck out: and seeds of [... tomatoes?](1) also] were brought from Aman by Oromë the Hunter on his journeys in Middle-earth. And the Elves knew them for long, having been instructed by Oromë how to cultivate and cook them. They were large fields around the Falas, and much later the Grey Havens (especially in Harlindon, while [added: after the ruin of Beleriand,] Forlindon was mostly reknowned for its fields of that special corn from Aman used in the making of Lembas, see <i>Of Lembas</i>, XII:395), But it is not until the coming of the Númenoreans to the shores of Belfalas that the Afterborn began to use it in the preparation of their common food. Rohanese 'haggis' was often served with [boiled?] potatoes. Aragorn's rather disgusted reaction when Eowyn brought him some of her own cooking during the journey to Helm's Deep is not to be attributed to her own quality as a chief, [struck out: out of question for a well-educated princess,] but to him not knowing that typical custom from Rohan, where it was served to warriors and horsemen alike before a battle(2).<p>(1) The reading is uncertain, as the text was later emended with an additional layer of purple ink pencil. Tabacco might have been intended as first, but the whole text was finally struck out on later revision, probably at the time the Appendix were written and the discovery of tabacco attributed to the Hobbits.<br>(2) This statement refers to some episode not found in any of the drafts previously published in VII, but also appears with a very similar wording in an hitherto unpublished letter from my father to Jack Peterson, a reader from New Zealand."<p>HoME XIII, p. 235, <i>The Romance of Aragorn and Eowyn</i></small><p>Didier.<br>