O! Wanderers in the shadowed land
despair not! For though dark they stand,
all woods there be must end at last,
and see the open sun go past:
the setting sun, the rising sun,
the day’s end, or the day begun.
For east or west all woods must fail…
Forests are central to Tolkien’s world. The old professor had a love of trees and things that grow. One imagines him even now, seated on the grass, leaning back against the trunk of an oak tree, smoking his pipe and humming to himself.
What was it that Tolkien loved so much about the wood? He has undoubtedly left us plenty to consider in his letters, but one can guess easily enough. The forest was ever present in the old myths, particularly the Germanic ones. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, a language that came over to Britain from the dialects of what is now northern Germany. The Völsunga Saga of the Norse and its medieval Germanic equivalent, the Nibelunglied, both feature heroes who spend much of their time gallivanting around the forest, running into dwarves and even a dragon along the way.
The island of Britain used to be covered by forests as well, but most of them were cut down long before Tolkien was born. A few remain as relics of a more ancient world: the New Forest, Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest, and even Wychwood in Tolkien’s own county of Oxfordshire. One must imagine these forests as they were in centuries past. They would have covered hundreds or even thousands of square miles and seemed endless to one caught inside. The trees would have been so thick as to block out the sun in places. The forest floor would have been covered in years of fallen leaves, all in varying states of decay. The only sound would be that of the wind, or the song of birds, or the occasional movement of a squirrel.
While we often think of forests as happy, magical places, they would have seemed equally foreboding and sinister to our forebears. Without the heavy machinery needed to easily clear trees and remove stumps, human-made paths would have been few and perhaps indistinguishable from deer paths. It would have been very easy to get lost. Without the ability to easily locate the sun, one could lose all sense of direction quickly and end up walking twenty miles in the same direction without coming near an exit point. This was a time when wild animals were greater in number and variety. It would not have been so odd to come across a wolf or a bear. In the growing dark of night, it would have invoked terror.
This is the world that Frodo and his friends enter in this chapter. The Old Forest is one of several great woodlands in Middle-earth. Others include Lόrien, Fangorn, and Mirkwood (previously known as Greenwood the Great). These forests are seen to have a more pleasant character by nature, but they become dark and foreboding when attacked by Men or infiltrated by dark magic.
The long life of trees is associated with memory and continuity. Before even the Elves walked through Middle-earth, the trees were there. The forests are also alive in every sense of the word. Trees in Tolkien’s world are conscious beings which display a considerable amount of intelligence. (Here I speak mostly of the ones that live in the great woods.) Consider Merry’s description when the hobbits first enter the Old Forest.
But the Forest is queer. Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on, so to speak, than things are in the Shire. And the trees do not like strangers. They watch you…I have only once or twice been in here after dark, and then only near the hedge. I thought all the trees were whispering to each other, passing news and plots along in an unintelligible language; and the branches swayed and groped without any wind.[1]
Why should the forest not like strangers? Because it is the oldest thing around and therefore has first right to the land. It is revealed that at some time in the past, there was a battle of sorts between the hobbits of Buckland and the forest. The trees moved near the protective Hedge and leaned over it, but the hobbits came out and cut down many trees, burning a strip of land just east of their enclave. “After that the trees gave up the attack, but they became very unfriendly,” Merry tells us.[2] No wonder!
An unmistakable feature of Tolkien’s works is the battle between nature and industry. We see people who live in harmony with nature and those who seek to simply use it for their own advantage. I do not believe Tolkien was a liberal environmentalist in quite the way we think of one today. Remember what I said: most of England’s forests had been destroyed by the time Tolkien was born. Rivers had been dammed. Historic sites had been paved over with roads. This was not simply a disregarding of nature, but an erasing of historic memory.
Tolkien was not a complete rustic, nor do I believe he would have encouraged us to be. He lived in a house. He rode in cars. He made great use of the modern printing press. But he looked with suspicion on those who saw nature as a thing to be conquered or overcome rather than simply harnessed and treasured. He believed we lose something when we move further and further away from nature: from the world of our ancestors. In this, I believe he was right.
Once again, this philosophizing does not seem to be the first thing on the minds of the hobbits, who simply want to get through the Old Forest and make their way upon the East Road. They have the feeling that they are being watched and the trees harbor ill will toward them, viewing them as intruders. At one point, this suspicion seems to get the best of Pippin. “‘Oi! Oi!’ he cried. ‘I am not going to do anything. Just let me pass through, will you!’”[3]
At certain points, openings appear in the trees, and the hobbits see more of the sun. However, they seem to diverge farther and farther from their original path, until they are quite certainly going in the wrong direction. The darkness and gloom of the forest is overwhelming, and they have moments of despair. They never wanted to get involved in forest politics. They simply wanted to pass through the wood, thus avoiding the former terror of the Black Riders. It is at this point that they sing the lyric quoted at the beginning, “Wanderers in the shadowed land despair not! For though dark they stand, all woods there be must end at last…”[4]
The dark forests of life can seem truly endless. The light of the sun becomes barely visible. Hope is nothing more than memory. These are the moments when we must remember that no forest is truly endless. We must cling to the hope that we will one day find our way: that help will come, and we will experience deliverance.
The hobbits begin seeing odd trails whose creator they know not. They are near the Withywindle River, which they had been hoping to avoid. Merry explained why earlier: “The Withywindle valley is said to be the queerest part of the whole wood – the centre from which all the queerness comes, as it were.”[5]
Sure enough, as the hobbits pass by the river, they are overcome by a feeling of sleepiness. We are told that “they could almost hear words, cool words, saying something about water and sleep.”[6] Very soon, Frodo has been pushed into the river by a tree in his sleep, while Merry and Pippin are swallowed up by the roots of a monstrous tree known as Old Man Willow. Sam first saves Frodo and then the two of them attempt to free the others, but the fire they set only makes the tree angry. It is at this point that Frodo yells “Help!” to no one in particular.
Here enters one of the oddest and most debated characters in the Tolkien legendarium: Tom Bombadil. He comes on the scene almost as a deus ex machina, and indeed, there are some who have hypothesized the possibility that he is god-like. However, we have seen the clues of his presence: the trails he has left.
Tom Bombadil seems very much like something out of a children’s book. He wears a hat with a blue feather stuck in it, yellow boots, and a blue coat. He has a long beard, sings fanciful rhyming tunes, and carries water lilies. His wife’s name is Goldberry. He might be at home in the Dr. Seuss tales.
Hey dol! Merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fall al the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo![7]
The song of Tom Bombadil has a real power. It rouses Merry and Pippin and puts Old Man Willow in his place. Tom Bombadil can affect nature with his song, and yet he does not use it to conquer nature. He seems rather to cultivate nature and drive it on to a more harmonious existence. Consider his words to the tree.
‘You let them out again, Old Man Willow!’ he said. ‘What be you a-thinking of? You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!’[8]
Music has a power in Tolkien’s world which is clearly seen in this chapter. It puts the hobbits to sleep and wakes them up again. It awakens things to life and sends the trees back to sleep. In this era of entirely commercialized music, when any digitally produced song is available on demand with the click of a button, we have perhaps lost our sense of wonder at the spontaneous outbreak of song, particularly that oldest instrument of all: the human voice. For Tolkien, music is not simply about entertainment. It is productive and creative. It has the power to make the world a better place, although just like nature, it can be twisted to evil ends.
For neither the first time or
the last, our heroes make it out of their scrape. They are led to the house of
Tom Bombadil, where they will encounter things as strange and wonderful as
anything in the Old Forest.
A FEW NOTES ABOUT SOURCES:
- The articles in this series freely include references to material in other books by J.R.R. Tolkien that are part of the same narrative, particularly The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. Citations will only be provided in the case of direct quotations.
- Any citations that include merely a number are from J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings, Single volume movie tie-in edition (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994). - All biblical quotations are taken from The New American Standard Bible (1995 edition), copyright The Lockman Foundation.
[1] 108
[2] 108
[3] 109
[4] 110
[5] 111
[6] 114
[7] 116
[8] 118