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“Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow;
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.”
What is that place—that miraculous place where all is well? Where anxieties fade away into bliss, and the hurts of this world are made to flee? Where is that place? What is it? Does such a thing exist? Will you take me there?
I have never known such a place in all my years—never felt what it is to be, for once, without fear. Even in dreams, I have felt the cold sting of anxiety and the absence of peace. Upon waking, the pain has filled me immediately, like a rush of blood I cannot escape. Oh, how I longed to escape! To know for once the peace that surpasses comprehension. This is sehnsucht, my friends: holy longing.
Such a place the hobbits find in this chapter, and it is a thing of beauty. In the house of Tom Bombadil and his love, Goldberry, the normal rules of fear do not apply. Not that there is no thought of fear, for even here it crashes against the gates. But that is the point exactly: it makes an attempt, but it is overcome. It is cast back into the night.
Upon crossing this magical threshold, the four hobbits are greeted by Goldberry, who tells them, “Let us shut out the night! … For you are still afraid, perhaps, of mist and tree-shadows and deep water, and untame things. Fear nothing! For tonight you are under the roof of Tom Bombadil!”
This is the cry of the light to those who live on earth: Fear not! Fear nothing!
We want to believe it. Of course we do! Yet the memory of shadow haunts our hearts. Can we trust this strange apparition that tells us not to fear? Not to fear would be to let down our guard: to accept that we are in the presence of something greater than ourselves, which is capable of protecting us against everything we fear. Are Tom Bombadil and Goldberry such persons? It seems so, for Frodo’s reaction is immediate.
‘Fair lady Goldberry!’ said Frodo at last, feeling his heart moved with a joy that he did not understand. He stood as he had at times stood enchanted by fair elven-voices; but the spell that was now laid upon him was different: less keen and lofty was the delight, but deeper and nearer to mortal heart; marvelous and yet not strange. ‘Fair lady Goldberry!’ he said again. ‘Now the joy that was hidden in the songs we heard is made plain to me.’[1]
Yes, to be around Goldberry and Tom Bombadil is to be in the hearing of music of the sweetest kind. It is more than a collection of notes. It has the power to enliven and encourage. It keeps the anger of the forest at bay and rouses all that is beautiful to join in the celebration.
We have seen previously how the Elves love to sing their ancient songs, but when we encounter Tom Bombadil, we find a song more ancient still: a song that rang out under the starry sky before evil ever entered the world. It was there before the Elves, and one gets the sense that if the Elves ever desert Middle-earth completely, this song of Tom will still be there. He is more unchanging than the earth itself and relatively untroubled by the goings on outside his forest.
“He is.”[2]
These words of Goldberry about her husband have sent Tolkien scholars and fans into a tizzy. After all, the Hebrew Bible calls God “I AM.” There is a certain similarity there, but one that Tolkien rejected. Tom Bombadil is not God Almighty. Very well, then. What is he?
“He is the Master of wood, water, and hill,” she tells us. This means not that he owns the trees as one might one a home, but that he exercises a kind of dominion over all and is immune to normal anxieties. “Tom Bombadil is the Master. No one has ever caught old Tom walking in the forest, wading in the water, leaping on the hill-tops under light and shadow. He has no fear. Tom Bombadil is master.”[3]
The next day, Frodo is still uncertain of his host’s identity. He has stayed in his home, ate his food, and slept in his bed, but he cannot understand the nature of the one who has granted him all these things. “Who are you, Master?” he asks, and receives an interesting response.
Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside.[4]
There seems to be a link between Tom’s ancientness and his lack of fear. He is not a man. He is not an elf. He is older than them. Indeed, he was there before the event that changed Tolkien’s created world of Arda forever: when Melkor invaded and attacked the light. He knew what it was to live without fear, when there was only the light and the music to comfort him and nothing to cause concern.
That is all well and good, but that time has gone. It is a memory of only the most ancient and greatest. Men, of which hobbits are a kind of subset, live in fear of death. Elves do not suffer natural decay, and yet they fear the darkness brought in by Melkor, later called Morgoth. Even the Maiar—the angelic class of beings to which Gandalf and Sauron belong—are clearly subject to fear. And in our story, there is one thing above all else that is causing fear: the Ring.
Frodo has enough trust in Tom to show him the magical Ring. Yet when he hands it over, something most unusual happens.
It seemed to grow larger as it lay for a moment on his big brown-skinned hand. Then suddenly he put it to his eye and laughed. For a second the hobbits had a vision, both comical and alarming, of his bright blue eye gleaming through a circle of gold. Then Tom put the Ring round the end of his little finger and held it up to the candlelight. For a moment the hobbits noticed nothing strange about his. Then they gasped. There was no sign of Tom disappearing! Tom laughed again, and then he spun the Ring in the air – and it vanished with a flash. Frodo gave a cry – and Tom leaned forward and handed it back to him with a smile.[5]
Not only does the Ring seem to have no effect on Tom, either physically or emotionally, but he seems to have power over the Ring! It cannot make him disappear, but he can cause it to vanish. What’s more, when Frodo puts on the Ring, he becomes invisible to his fellow hobbits, but not to Tom. What on earth is going on?
Perhaps a word about the Ring is due at this time. It was created by Sauron, a powerful Maia. He poured a good bit of his own power into it. He was therefore able to use it to bend lesser beings to his will, and even beings of his own class. However, we have not yet been able to see how the highest class of beings—the Valar—react to it, nor what would happen if it was encountered by Eru, the One who is sovereign over all things. By implication, I think it is safe to say that neither Eru nor the Valar can be controlled by the Ring, for their power is greater than Sauron’s.
It is also worth asking why Tom Bombadil can see Frodo when the latter is wearing the Ring. Well, why does a person vanish in the first place when they put on that piece of gold jewelry? They do not actually cease to be. They pass into another realm: the realm of shadow. More will be said about this mysterious place later on, but suffice it to say that there is more to Middle-earth than what is visible to the naked eye. There are layers of existence and things hidden from mere mortals. It is not entirely clear where Men go after they die, nor are we given details of the Outer Darkness into which Morgoth was thrown at the end of the First Age of Arda.
I sense that Tom’s ability to see Frodo when others cannot is because he exists in multiple realms, or is not entirely bound by them. When combined with the fact that Tom’s powers appear to be superior to the Ring, I am led to the conclusion that he is either one of the Valar or some kind of being in a class of his own. I do not believe he is Eru, for the supreme One never seems to involve himself directly and physically in the world he created. But is Tom Bombadil one of Eru’s creations, or was he simply with Eru in the beginning, as the Valar and Maiar were? I think perhaps Goldberry has given us the answer: “He is.” There never was a time when he was not, and there will never be a time when he is not. Like the other Valar, he cannot be killed or destroyed, though he could potentially be bound by one or more Valar greater than himself.
But I have wandered a long way from the hobbits at this point. Even after entering the house of Tom Bombadil, they are still afraid of what lies outside. They have very recently been chased by Black Riders and attacked by Old Man Willow. But the words of Goldberry bid them rest in peace. “‘Have peace now,’ she said, ‘until the morning! Heed no nightly noises! For nothing passes door and window here save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hill-top. Good night!’”[6]
That night, three of the hobbits have strange dreams. Pippin imagines himself trying to escape an attacking willow tree. Merry imagines that he is about to be drowned. Both are calmed upon waking by the memory of Goldberry’s words. But Frodo’s dream is of a somewhat different character.
Then he saw the young moon rising; under its thin light there loomed before him a black wall of rock, pierced by a dark arch like a great gate. It seemed to Frodo that he was lifted up, and passing over he saw that the rock-wall was a circle of hills, and that within it was a plain, and in the midst of the plain was a pinnacle of stone, like a vast tower but not made by hands. On its top stood the figure of a man. The moon as it rose seemed to hang for a moment above his head and glistened in his white hair as the wind stirred it. Up from the dark plain below came the crying of fell voices, and the howling of many wolves. Suddenly a shadow, like the shape of great wings, passed across the moon. The figure lifted his arms and a light flashed from the staff he wielded. A mighty eagle swept down and bore him away. The voices wailed and the wolves yammered. There was a noise like a strong wind blowing, and on it was borne the sound of hoofs, galloping, galloping, galloping from the East. ‘Black Riders!’ thought Frodo as he wakened, with the sound of the hoofs still echoing in his mind. He wondered if he would ever again have the courage to leave the safety of these stone walls. He lay motionless, still listening; but all was now silent, and at least he turned and fell asleep again or wandered into some other unremembered dream.[7]
Frodo’s dream is of a different character than those of the other hobbits. They see shadows of the day before, but he sees things his waking eyes have never witnessed. This is the second time this has happened, the first being his dream of the tower by the sea. What could account for it? The answers are not provided at this time, but later evidence will show that what Frodo experiences in sleeping is more akin to a vision than a dream, and it fills him with fear. Fear of Black Riders, yes, but also fear of something else: a dark tower of stone, fell voices, howling wolves, and some kind of magic staff. Gandalf carries a staff. Does anyone else?
The overwhelming feeling Frodo has is that he does not want to leave the walls of Tom Bombadil’s home, the one place where he need not fear. There a power greater than the Ring protects him from evil, but unlike Tom, Frodo feels a need to rid the rest of the world of the Ring’s evil. He has felt the chill of anxiety that Tom has not. That is why he must go on, further into darkness, until the light may return again.
The hobbits are warned that the place they are going next—the Barrow-downs—is plagued by Wights. This land seems to be the location of ancient kingdoms, where “the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords.”[8] All their weapons and wealth are now buried in green mounds, but the Barrow-wights still patrol. “Even in the Shire the rumour of the Barrow-wights of the Barrow-downs beyond the Forest had been heard. But it was not a tale that any hobbits like to listen to, even by a comfortable fireside far away.”[9]
Into this land of fear the
hobbits must now tread, and tread carefully at that, but they have a plan. They
will stick to the western slope to avoid as much of the Downs as possible,
meeting up with the East Road at its north side. The plan sounds good enough,
but you know what they say about the best laid plans. The hobbits may soon be
reminded of just how unique the joy and peace of Tom Bombail’s house really is.
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] 121
[2] 122
[3] 122
[4] 129
[5] 130
[6] 123
[7] 125
[8] 128
[9] 128
