Tom Bombadil

• 1. Introduction

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  Tom Bombadil first appeared in print in a poem published in The Oxford Magazine in 1934. He was already married to Goldberry and already the master of a small forest valley beside the Withywindle river. Tolkien had invented him years before The Lord of the Rings took shape, initially inspired by a Dutch doll belonging to his children. He calls himself the "Eldest" and the "Master". He claims to remember the first raindrop and the first acorn. He says he knew "the dark under the stars when it was fearless, before the Dark Lord came from Outside". The One Ring at the center of The Lord of the Rings holds no power over him. Tolkien himself called Bombadil "not an important person - to the narrative", yet also said he "represents something that I feel important". What that something is has occupied readers and scholars ever since.

• 2. Voice and Verse

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  The "merry fellow" of the 1934 poem lives in a small valley and spends his days wandering and exploring nature at his leisure. Several of the valley's residents attempt to capture him for their own ends. Old Man Willow, the Badger-folk, a barrow-wight, and even Goldberry each make their attempt. None succeed. The power in Bombadil's voice defeats every enchantment and commands its caster back to their natural existence. When Goldberry herself tries to hold him, he captures her in turn and, at the poem's close, marries her.

  A second poem, "Bombadil Goes Boating", anchors him more firmly in Tolkien's geography. He journeys downstream on the Withywindle and then onto the Brandywine river, where Hobbits live at Hays-end. Birds, otters, and Hobbits challenge him along the way. He charms them all. His journey ends at the farm of Farmer Maggot, where he drinks ale and dances with the family. The charmed birds and otters work together to bring his boat home. The poem includes a nod to the Norse lay of Otr. Bombadil threatens to give a disrespectful otter's hide to the barrow-wights. They would cover it in gold except for a single whisker. The Tolkien scholar John D. Rateliff proposed that Goldberry should be seen as one of the fays. These are spirits in the same order as the Maia, "a nymph" to Bombadil's genius loci. The poem's geography and characters, including Old Man Willow and the barrow-wight, migrated directly into the earliest drafts of The Lord of the Rings.

• 3. In the Old Forest

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  Merry and Pippin are the first to need Bombadil's help in The Fellowship of the Ring. Old Man Willow traps them in the Old Forest. Frodo and Sam call out, and Bombadil arrives and sings the tree to sleep. After the rescue, the four Hobbits spend two nights at Bombadil's house. There, Goldberry, now called the "Daughter of the River", serves as host alongside Tom. The house serves as one of Frodo's five Homely Houses in the narrative.

  Two nights in Bombadil's house are enough to show that the One Ring cannot touch him. He can wear it and remain visible. He can see Frodo clearly when the Ring makes Frodo invisible to others. He tosses it into the air until it appears to vanish, then produces it from his other hand. At the Council of Elrond, in Book Two, giving Bombadil the Ring for safekeeping is considered and then set aside. Gandalf's reasoning is exact: "the Ring has no power over him". But Bombadil would not find the Ring especially important, Gandalf adds, and might simply misplace it.

  Before the Hobbits leave, Bombadil teaches them a rhyme to summon him if they face danger again within his borders. The warning proves necessary almost immediately. A barrow-wight traps all four on the Barrow-downs, and Bombadil rescues them. He gives each Hobbit a long dagger taken from the treasure in the barrow. He refuses to cross beyond his own land but directs them to the Prancing Pony Inn at Bree. Near the end of The Return of the King, Gandalf tells the Hobbits that Bombadil is "quite untroubled". He is "not much interested in anything that we have done and seen", Gandalf says, save their visits to the Ents. The dream Frodo has on his second night in Bombadil's house seems to resurface when he sails into the West at the novel's very close.

• 4. An Intentional Enigma

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  In a 1937 letter to Stanley Unwin, Tolkien described Bombadil as the spirit of the vanishing landscapes of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. That letter predated the writing of The Lord of the Rings and referred to the earlier poem. When Tolkien placed Bombadil in the novel, the character's nature became considerably harder to define.

  In one letter responding to readers, Tolkien wrote that Bombadil in the novel is "just an invention". He connected the character to "a delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself". He linked Bombadil specifically to "Botany and Zoology (as sciences) and Poetry". In a separate letter, Tolkien added that he did not think Bombadil was improved by philosophizing. He included the character, he wrote, "because I had already invented him independently", in The Oxford Magazine, "and wanted an adventure on the way".

  "Even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are," Tolkien wrote. "Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)." Bombadil does not fit neatly into any of the categories of beings Tolkien created. When Frodo asks Goldberry who Tom Bombadil is, she does not explain. She simply says: "He is". Some critics read this as a reference to God's declaration "I Am that I Am" in the Book of Exodus. Tolkien denied that this was an influence.

• 5. The Finnish Echo

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  David Elton Gay, a scholar of folklore, argued that Bombadil was directly modelled on Vainamoinen, the demigod at the heart of the Kalevala. The Kalevala is Elias Lonnrot's 1849 collection of Finland's oral tradition. Gay also wrote that Tolkien was inspired by the poetry of the Kalevala more broadly.

  Vainamoinen is the oldest immortal in the Kalevala. He lives in a small forested country that he controls but does not own. He is fearless because he is powerful, and his power operates through song and knowledge rather than force. He sings "day by day unwearied", not for any strategic aim but for the pleasure of singing itself. As the oldest living being, he was present at the creation of the world. He heard the names of all beings, knows the songs of their origins, and helped to shape the land. Gay set these traits beside Bombadil's, point by point, and found a consistent match.

  Gay's comparison offers the most developed external source for Bombadil's traits. It leaves open the question of where Bombadil fits within Tolkien's own invented cosmology.

• 6. Scholars and Archetypes

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  Verlyn Flieger, a Tolkien scholar, posed a pointed question: if Sauron has an opposite in The Lord of the Rings, who is it? Not Aragorn, his battlefield opponent. Not Gandalf, his spiritual enemy. Flieger's answer is Bombadil, the earthly Master who feels no desire to dominate anything. The Christian scholar W. Christopher Stewart extended this reading. He found in Bombadil an embodiment of knowledge pursued purely for its own sake, driven by wonder rather than will. In Stewart's view, this explains Bombadil's indifference to the One Ring. The Ring exists only as an instrument of power, and Bombadil has no interest in power.

  Jane Beal, writing in the Journal of Tolkien Research, applied a different framework. She found that Bombadil could be understood through the four levels of meaning used in medieval scriptural exegesis. At the literal level, he is a wooden doll that belonged to Michael Tolkien. At the allegorical level, he is the spirit of the vanishing English countryside. He is also a figure parallel to the first, prelapsarian Adam, associated with Zoology, Botany, and Poetry. At the moral level, he is a storyteller representing Tolkien himself. At the anagogical level, he is a figure of the second Adam, Jesus.

  The psychologist Timothy R. O'Neill read Bombadil through Carl Jung in The Individuated Hobbit, published in 1979. O'Neill identified Bombadil as the manifestation of the Self archetype, Original Man, "the cosmic seed from which Man develops". The Tolkien scholar Patrick Grant noted that Jung himself described a comparable figure. Jung wrote of the "vegetation numen", a king of the forest associated with wood and water, a description that closely recalls Bombadil.

  Robert Foster, author of an early guide to Middle-earth, suggested in 1978 that Bombadil is one of the Maiar, the angelic beings sent from Valinor. The Tolkien scholar and philosopher Gene Hargrove argued in the journal Mythlore in 1986 that Tolkien deliberately made Bombadil enigmatic while leaving clues. Hargrove's candidate was one of the Valar, specifically Aule, the archangelic demigod who created the dwarves.

• 7. Absent from the Screen

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  Norman Shelley played Bombadil in the 1955-1956 BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's reaction was blunt: he called the performance "dreadful". Two choices in the adaptation troubled him even more. Goldberry was announced as Bombadil's daughter, and the Willowman was called "an ally of Mordor (!!)". Tolkien added the double exclamation himself.

  Peter Jackson's film trilogy omits Bombadil entirely, along with the adventures in Crickhollow, the Old Forest, and the Barrow-downs. Jackson explained that he and his co-writers felt the character did little to advance the story, and including him would make the film unnecessarily long. Christopher Lee concurred, noting the scenes were left out to make time for showing Saruman's capture of Gandalf.

  Esko Hukkanen played Bombadil in the 1993 Finnish miniseries Hobitit. Bernard Mayes voiced him in the 1979 Mind's Eye recordings and also voiced Gandalf in the same production. The 1991 Russian adaptation Khraniteli included Bombadil alongside Goldberry and the Barrow-wight. Rory Kinnear plays Bombadil in the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. There, the character serves as a guide to Gandalf.

  In The Lord of the Rings Online, a MMORPG, Bombadil serves as a main character in Book 1 of the epic quests. He also appears as a playable character in the LEGO The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit video games. Since those games adapt Peter Jackson's films rather than the novels, he has no role in the main story. He appears instead as an unlockable character in the hub world. In Magic: The Gathering's expansion The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, he appears on a card of the "God" type. The 1969 Harvard Lampoon novel Bored of the Rings cast him as "Tim Benzedrine", a stereotypical hippie married to "Hash-berry". One of Bombadil's songs gets rewritten in the parody as a psychedelic chant: "Toke-a-lid! Smoke-a-lid! Pop the mescalino!"